A Brief History On February 20, 1952, Los Angeles-native Emmett Ashford became the first African-American umpire to work in integrated (mainly white) professional baseball when he left his Post Office job to work for the International Southwestern League. Digging Deeper Ashford then went on to umpire in other mostly white professional leagues, reaching his minor-league pinnacle as the Umpire-in-Chief of the Pacific Coast League, where he trained and directed all the umpires and mediated arguments over rules.  In 1966, Ashford became the first black major league umpire, officiating in the American League. Ashford worked as a major league umpire until 1970,…

A Brief History Quick! Give me the top ten things that could destroy your planet. Quick! Give me your top ten favorite foods. Admit it, you started to make a list. Top ten lists are extremely popular and permeate our media. How could we not come to adore them? There are top ten lists of Do It Yourself renovations, foods and apocalyptic countdowns on the television, the radio and the internet. Top ten lists are everywhere, we can no longer turn on a television without surfing past a top ten something. Our culture is fascinated by them. History and Headlines — A…

A Brief History On February 18, 1930, Elm Farm Ollie (Also known as “Nellie Jay,” “Sunnymede Ollie,” and “Sky Queen.” Say, why does a cow need aliases???) made aviation history as the first cow to fly in a fixed wing airplane.  Since non-fixed wing aircraft include either helicopters or autogyros, we wonder if any cows flew in those first.  Just saying… Digging Deeper Not only did Elm Farm Ollie make the first bovine flight, but she also became the first cow to be milked while flying in an airplane.  (Who seriously keeps track of this stuff?  The FAA, Federal Animal Aviation?) …

A Brief History People have often fallen in love with performers whose songs strike the listener to the core.  Sometimes it is the look, the clothes, the words, the beat, the rhythm, the dance moves, the gyrations or just the plain old sex appeal oozing off the singer like drops of water dripping off a young Ursula Andress as she comes out of the ocean in Dr. No.  Other times, the song itself is the turn on, with a combination of the right words sung the right way with the right voice coming together in a sort of sexual serendipity that makes…

A Brief History On Tuesday, February 17, 2015, according to Harmonix, two new songs will be made available as downloadable content (DLC) for video game Rock Band 3 on the Playstation 3.  These songs will also be available on the Xbox 360 this week as well.  They are the second batch of songs to be released in 2015, with the first batch having arrived in January. Digging Deeper The new songs are: 1.  “Rise of the Fenix” (2012) by Tenacious D “Rise of the Fenix” is from Tenacious D’s third studio album of the same name.  The album reached number…