World’s Strangest

Today is Martin Luther King day, one of only four United States federal holidays that commemorate an individual person. Undoubtedly one of the great orators of his time, many of his speeches are available on YouTube, and I thought I’d share some of them here. Famously and intensely opposed to the war in Vietnam, King spoke [...]

They’ve got gleaming, flawless teeth, hair that could withstand hurricane-force winds and emotions that run high when giving away a case of Turtle Wax. But scratch just below the surface of a classic game show host, and you may be surprised at what you find. Regis Philbin When you think of “Regis Philbin” and “game show,” the [...]

Many people board an airplane flight thinking that if anything goes wrong, they will probably die. We board anyway, knowing that the odds of something going wrong are pretty small. In these seven stories, hundreds of passengers thought it was the end for them, but thanks to skilled pilots and crew members (and a fair [...]

Quick, when you think about working in a hotel, what do you think about? Being a receptionist? Part of the cleaning crew? How about a coin polisher, a mud manager and … a duckmaster?! Judy Mandell of the Los Angeles Times writes about the more unusual behind-the-scenes hotel jobs. Take for instance, Jason Sensat’s job. He’s [...]

“The NBA was a symphony, it was scripted; the ABA was jazz.” —Ron Grinker Rival leagues were all the rage in North American sports in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but none has had as lasting an impact as the American Basketball Association. The ABA’s six-year war with the NBA resulted in a merger that [...]

Will at A Journey Around My Skull asked readers to create bookplates in the style of the early-20th century magazine Der Orchideengarten (previously at Netaorama) for a contest. They were to include orchids and other flowers, corpses, giant insects, monsters, or diseases. The entries are quite interesting! Memphis artist Michelle Duckworth was the overall winner. [...]

The Hornets were supposed to be the Spirit, while the Grizzlies were almost named the Mounties. Why is a team in Los Angeles nicknamed the Lakers, and what’s a team called the Jazz doing in Utah? As the NBA season tips off tonight, here’s the story behind the nicknames of all 30 teams. Atlanta Hawks In [...]

On Tuesday night, ESPN aired Barry Levinson’s The Band that Wouldn’t Die, the second installment of its 30 for 30 documentary series. Levinson’s film tells the story of the Baltimore Colts’ marching band, a group that continued marching in Baltimore even after the team relocated to Indianapolis in 1984. While we were watching the grim [...]

I’ve said before that I love Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band the same way a dog loves its master: unconditionally, and with the sort of enthusiasm that makes gratuitous slobbering forgivable, and today, Mr. Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen – The Boss, the patron saint of the working man, the protector of all that [...]

Here’s something you may not know about me: I’m a sucker for limited-edition candy. Most of the time I can pass through checkout lines with ease, not even batting an eyelash at the rows of M&Ms and Kit-Kats. As soon as you stamp “Limited Edition” on the wrapper and give it a quirky flavor, though, [...]