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 out against it powerfully on many occasions. This clip takes bits from several of his anti-war speeches.

I Have A Dream
Certainly his most famous speech, delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., August 28, 1963.

We Shall Overcome

Where Do We Go from Here?
Delivered at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, August 16th, 1967.

When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was 60 percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is 50 percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we view the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population … This is where we are. Where do we go from here?

Santa Rita Prison Speech
Dr. King speaking at the prison where Joan Baez had been imprisoned for demonstrating, in which he eloquently defends his opposition to the war in Vietnam. “I’m sorry, sir, but you don’t know me.”

Dr. King discussing his philosophy of non-violence on a television talk show.

I’ve Been to the Mountaintop — King’s Last Speech
Inspirational and prophetic, delivered the night before his assassination in Memphis.

Walter Kronkite’s report on the assassination.

Regis Philbin

When you think of “Regis Philbin” and “game show,” the first thing that probably comes to mind is Who Wants to be a Millionaire. But Reeg’s first venture into the world of consolation prizes was a short-lived 1975 show called The Neighbors. The premise was loosely based on The Newlywed Game; the panel consisted of five women (because females are the only ones who gossip, apparently) who lived in the same neighborhood. Two of the women were contestants and had to guess which one was the subject of the juicy secrets dished by the remaining three. The Neighbors lasted approximately as long as Regis’ hepcat singing career, which his former boss, Joey Bishop, praised as “giving hope to lots of people who can’t sing.”

Wink Martindale

Wink Martindale’s face is as memorable as his name; he’s hosted some 19 different game shows over the years, including Gambit, Tic-Tac-Dough and Debt. Winston Martindale was only 17 years old when he got his first job – a disc jockey for WHBQ in Memphis, Tennessee. Wink was the morning man at the radio station, and the evening DJ had a program that featured what was then called “race music:” R&B and dance songs played by African-American artists. One day in 1956 Sam Phillips of Sun Records arrived at WHBQ with a single called “Heartbreak Hotel” by a white artist who sounded black, and after hearing it Wink invited the singer, Elvis Presley, to appear on his local TV show called Teenage Dance Party. That June 16, 1956, interview marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the King of Rock and Roll and the game show legend.

Bob Eubanks

Bob Eubanks looks like he was born standing behind a podium, but he was so nervous while filming the premiere episode of The Newlywed Game in 1966 that he went 30 minutes without blinking (or so it seemed, according to producer Chuck Barris.) As a teen, Eubanks was an avid roller-skater and he won several National Championships in preparation for the rumored upcoming Olympic Trials. When roller skating wasn’t added to the Olympic roster of sports after all, he and a friend formed a partnership and opened a small string of teenage dance clubs in the L.A. area. He also worked as a DJ, which is how he got interested in concert promotion. In 1964 the Beatles wanted to play the Hollywood Bowl, but the major local promoter was unwilling to pay the band’s requested $25,000 fee. Eubanks borrowed the money against his house and presented the Fab Four live on August 23, 1964, in a show that would appear 13 years later as the number one album The Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl. (By the way, Bob denied it for years, but a Newlywed Game contestant really did give that notorious answer to the question “Where is the most unusual place you’ve ever made whoopee?”)

Peter Tomarken

Peter Tomarken hosted several short-lived game shows, but the one that had staying power was Press Your Luck. Game show enthusiasts may remember that Tomarken was the stunned man behind the podium when laid-off ice cream truck driver Michael Larson went on an unprecedented winning streak that required a two-part episode. Tomarken was also a licensed pilot and in his spare time used his own plane to volunteer for Angel Flight West, a non-profit organization that provided free non-emergency air transport for children and adults with serious medical needs or other compelling conditions. Sadly, on the morning of March 13, 2006, while en route to pick up a cancer patient in San Diego, Tomarken’s Beechcraft Bonanza A36 crashed into the Santa Monica Bay, killing both him and his wife.

Jack Narz

Jack Narz’s hosting career almost ended as quickly as it began. Eight months after Dotto debuted in January 1958 it was revealed that the show was “fixed” and Narz became embroiled in the famous Quiz Show Scandal of 1959. Luckily, a polygraph test proved that Narz was innocent of all charges, and two years later he continued a career that included games shows such as Beat the Clock and Concentration. Narz, whose brother Tom Kennedy is also a veteran game show host, was a fighter pilot during World War II and won a Distinguished Flying Cross for missions in the China-Burma theater. After the war he enrolled in broadcasting school and landed several jobs doing voice work for radio commercials. One of his TV gigs was as the off-camera announcer in the two-part pilot episode of The Adventures of Superman. Narz was paid $150 for saying “Join us every week for the adventures of Superman!”, and then received a royalty check for $1.98 for the rest of his life any time that episode was aired.

Colin Emm

The smoochy host of Family Feud was named Colin Emm when he was born in Gosport, England. He left home at 14, lied about his age, and joined the Merchant Marines. He went onstage during an open mic night and discovered a love of performing. He adopted the stage name Richard Dawson and was hired to be the opening act for a stage show starring actress Diana Dors, who was known as the British Marilyn Monroe. The two fell in love, married in 1959 and eventually had two sons. The coupled moved to Hollywood in 1962 because Diana was interested in pursuing a film career. She quickly grew restless, however, and left Richard two years later to return to England and start a relationship with a younger man. She gave him full custody of the boys, Mark and Gary, whom he doted on, and he continued to send her flowers on her birthday every year for the rest of her life. In 1981 the Johnson family competed on an episode of Family Feud, and Dawson took an interest in 24-year-old Gretchen. They were married in 1991 and have a daughter, Shannon Nicole.

1. British Airways Flight 38

Beijing to London
16 crew, 136 passengers
January 17, 2008

On approach to Heathrow airport, the plane began to drop faster than it should. The engines had lost all power, and pilot Peter Burkill had to glide the Boeing 777 in to avoid crashing into the houses of West London. Observers on the ground were horrified at how low the plane came in. There was not enough time to warn passengers before the plane hit the grass short of the runway, and crashed. Four crew members and 15 passengers were injured, but there were no fatalities. The most serious injury was a broken leg. The cause of the crash was later found to be ice crystals in the fuel. Procedures have since been developed to deal with such an occurrence. Image by Marc-Antony Payne.

2. British Airways Flight 9

London to Auckland
15 crew, 248 passengers
June 24, 1982

On the leg of the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Perth, the Boeing 747 ran into a volcanic eruption! Mount Galunggung threw a cloud of volcanic ash into the air, enveloping the plane. The ash was glowing with heat, and sulphuric smoke filled the plane. One by one, all four engines failed. Captain Eric Moody made an announcement:

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress.

Moody put the plane into a dive to restore oxygen to the cabins. One by one, the four engines came back to life, although one failed again. The crew had to land the plane at Jakarta, even though visibility was bad due to the damaged windscreen. However, the landing was perfect and no one was injured in the incident. An investigation revealed that the cloud of volcanic ash did not show up on radar because it lacked moisture. Pilots are now trained to look for signs of volcanic eruption.

3. FedEx Flight 704

Memphis to San Jose
3 crew, 1 hijacker
April 7, 1994

Fedex flight engineer Auburn Calloway hitched a ride on the DC10 cargo plane, but did not plan to land safely. He planned to attack the crew members, crash the plane into the Fedex terminal, and let his family collect on his life insurance. Calloway knew he was soon to lose his job at Fedex and wanted to punish the company as well as provide for his family. Calloway entered the cockpit and attacked first officer Jim Tucker and flight engineer Andy Peterson with a claw hammer. Then he went for captain David Sanders, but the other two men, despite injuries, fought back and the three drove Calloway out of the cockpit. He returned with a speargun. Tucker and Peterson were seriously injured, and could barely fight back. As Sanders tried to control Calloway, Jim Tucker rolled the plane to throw Calloway off balance.

The DC-10 was executing a barrel-roll at nearly 400 miles per hour—something the aircraft had never been designed to do. Peterson and Sanders were shouting “Get him! Get him!” to each other, as the three struggling men were tossed about the galley area, alternately weightless and pressed upon by three times their weight in G forces. By now, the aircraft was inverted at 19,700 feet, and the alarmed air traffic controllers in Memphis were desperately calling for Flight 705

Tucker put the plane through more bizarre maneuvers to avoid more violence. He sent the plane into a dive past 500 miles per hour -faster than any DC10 had ever flown before. This was not intentional; Tucker’s head injuries made his right hand useless at the controls. He managed to pull out of the dive. By this time, the Memphis terminal had cleared all runways for an emergency landing, although the ground crew did not know what was happening in the plane. Tucker landed the plane with Sanders and Peterson holding Calloway down on the floor. Calloway received a life sentence for air piracy and attempted murder. All three members of the flight crew all sustained life-changing injuries and can no longer fly commercially. The story was told in a book called Hijacked. Pictured is David Sanders receiving emergency treatment.

4. Air Canada Flight 143

Montreal to Edmonton
8 crew, 61 passengers
July 23, 1983

The Air Canada flight took off as scheduled despite the notice that the fuel gauges were not working. Despite manual checks, there wasn’t enough fuel to complete the flight. At 41,000 feet, fuel pressure indicators went off, and captain Bob Pearson decided to divert to Winnepeg. One engine gave out, then the other, and the Boeing 767 was just gliding. The tiny airport at Gimli was closer than Winnepeg, so the jumbo jet aimed in that direction. Pearson did not know that one of the airstrips at Gimli had been converted to a public racetrack and was in use that day. As the plane landed and skidded across 2,900 feet, spectators scattered as fast as they could. The ten injuries from the rough landing were minor. This Boeing 767 later became known as the Gimli Glider. There was not much danger of a fire upon landing, as all three fuel tanks on the plane were found to be completely empty. An investigation of the incident found that the pilots and mechanics were at fault and that airline management contributed to the chain of errors that led to the plane taking off with insufficient fuel.

5. British Airways Flight 5390

Birmingham, England to Malaga, Spain
6 crew, 81 passengers
June 10, 1990

The quality of every part of an airplane is crucial to safety. Before flight 5390 took off, the left cockpit windscreen had been replaced by a technician who used the wrong size bolts. At 17,300 feet, the window blew out. Captain Tim Lancaster had just removed his seat belt and had set the plane to autopilot. The sudden loss of pressure sucked Lancaster out the window! His body was outside the plane while his feet became entangled in the controls, which disconnected the autopilot. Flight attendant Nigel Ogden grabbed the captain and tried to pull him back into the plane. Copilot Alistair Atcheson took control of the plane and sent it into a dive to an altitude where the pressure could be stabilized. Chief steward John Heward helped Ogden hold onto the pilot’s legs. They could not pull him in due to the raging wind and cold temperatures at 11,000 feet. The crew, assuming Lancaster was dead, considered letting the pilot’s body go, but decided that was too risky as it could be sucked into an engine or damage a wing. Besides, he was partially blocking the hole where the window once was. Atcheson landed the plane at Southampton, despite the fact that the airport’s runway was shorter than recommended for the BAC 1-11 aircraft. Then the unexpected happened -captain Lancaster came to! He was hospitalized with a broken right arm and wrist and a broken left thumb as well as frostbite and shock. Minor injuries, considering he had ridden on the outside of an airliner at high altitudes for 18 minutes. Lancaster was the only person injured in the incident. He recovered and returned to flying a few months later.

6. China Airlines Flight 006

Taipei to Los Angeles
February 19, 1985
25 crew, 243 passengers

Ten hours into its flight, one of the Boeing 747’s engines failed. The pilots did not follow procedures to balance the remaining engines and the plane went into a dive from 41,000 feet. Passengers were exposed to a force of 5Gs as the plane dove 30,000 feet! They dropped six miles in two minutes. Pieces of metal flew off the plane as it rolled and dived. The pilots could not orient themselves with the horizon until they were under the clouds at 11,000 feet, and regained control by 9,600 feet. The failed engine was restarted, and the aircraft made an emergency landing in San Francisco. There were only two people injured in the incident. Jet lag is thought to have been a contributing factor in the incident.

7. US Airways Flight 1549

New York to Charlotte, North Carolina
5 crew, 150 passengers
January 15, 2009

Just after takeoff from LaGuardia airport, the Airbus 320 ran into a flock of geese. Birds were sucked into the engines and they lost thrust. Visibility was down because of birds splattered against the windscreen. Captain Chesley Sullenberger requested a return to LaGuardia, then realizing they wouldn’t make it, requested a landing at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Within seconds, Sullenberger knew they wouldn’t make it that far either, and guided the plane into the Hudson River. The crew evacuated the passengers, who stood on the wings until they were picked up by the many commercial, private, and rescue boats who responded. Seventy-eight people had minor injuries, mostly from the evacuation. It was later called the most successful plane ditching ever.

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 Duckmaster at the Peabody hotel:

At the Peabody hotel in Memphis, Tenn., five mallard ducks live in a penthouse on the roof. At 11 a.m. each day, they march to the lobby, where they splash in the fountain until 5 p.m., when the ceremony reverses. Duckmaster Jason Sensat feeds, cares for and trains the ducks.

“Many think this is a fun and glamorous job, and quite often it is with media interviews, travel and celebrity honorary Duckmasters — but it’s also a dirty job, as cleaning up after the flock is part of the job too,” Sensat says.

Read the rest: Link | Jason’s official page at The Peabody

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 brought four new teams to the larger league, but also brought innovations, financial gains (and one big cost), and significant star power that permanently altered American professional basketball.

The Spirits of St. Louis and Their Sweetheart Severance

How does a team that never played a single NBA game—and never will—manage to get four-sevenths of an annual NBA TV share every year? With a good lawyer and a little luck.

The owners of the Spirits of St. Louis, the Silna brothers, had no intention of joining the NBA—in fact, had the ABA played its 1976-77 season, the brothers were moving the team to Salt Lake City—but they negotiated hard, demanding entry into the larger league and threatening to hold up the agreement until they were satisfied. The Spirits’ attorney and part-owner Donald Schupak “just wore everyone out with his demands,” according to Mike Goldberg, former legal counsel to the ABA.

In exchange for going along with an agreement that dissolved the Spirits but allowed four other ABA teams to join the NBA, the brothers received $2.2 million up front, and receive one-seventh of the TV money received by each of those four surviving ABA teams … in perpetuity. (In practice, it has turned out to be slightly more than a four-seventh share, as the merger agreement specifies that their share may only be split across 28 teams. The NBA has 30 teams at the moment, so the brothers receive 30/49ths of a share.)

In the NBA’s current TV deal, that amounts to a $14.57 million check, every year, for doing nothing.

Each brother gets 45%, and Schupark gets 10%. I imagine this lottery ticket is in the back of the mind of nearly every alternative-league owner who has come along since the ABA-NBA merger.

The ABA Took on the NCAA, too—and Won

The NCAA, always looking for ways to limit student-athletes’ rights, had a “Four-Year Rule” that prohibited college players from leaving for pro careers until they had played four seasons for their schools. The ABA decided to challenge that rule, and the Denver Rockets signed a University of Detroit sophomore named Spencer Haywood to a three-year deal worth $450,000 (with most of the money deferred). They chose Haywood because he was dominating his college competition, but also because they could argue that he was a “hardship case” and needed to earn money to support his mother and nine siblings.

After a year of lawsuits, a judge ruled that the “Four-Year Rule” had no basis in law—similar to this February’s ruling by an Ohio trial judge that the NCAA’s by-law prohibiting players from using agents was invalid. Haywood was able to suit up for the Rockets, winning the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards before jumping ship and signing with the NBA’s Seattle Sonics for more money.

The ABA Had More Than Its Share of Hall of Famers

The ABA’s destruction of the NCAA’s rule preventing college players from leaving school early opened the door for the Virginia Squires to sign University of Massachusetts junior Julius Erving in 1970 as an undrafted free agent. (They paid the New York Nets $10,000 to settle a dispute over who had the rights to sign him.) Erving was a relatively unknown college player because college basketball at the time prohibited dunking, and dunking turned out to be the very thing that made Erving a legend, one later known as “Dr. J.”

Erving was just the headliner among players who started their professional careers in the NBA. Fellow Hall of Famer Moses Malone played two seasons in the ABA, with Utah and St. Louis, before jumping to the NBA. George Gervin, also a Hall of Famer, started out with Virginia, moved to San Antonio, then stayed with the club as the Spurs joined the larger league. Rick Barry and Dan Issel both played in the ABA and ended up in the Hall of Fame. Larry Brown played in the ABA for five years, then began his coaching career there, eventually earning his way into the Hall of Fame as well. Seven-foot-two Art Gilmore made six NBA All-Star Games, and a dispute over his rights was the main reason the Kentucky Colonels (who were one of the top-drawing teams in the ABA, even outdrawing ten NBA teams on a per-game basis in 1974-75) were left out of the NBA in the merger agreement. In fact, despite always working as the smaller league, ten of the 24 players in the first post-merger All-Star Game had played in the ABA.

And while he never suited up—for obvious reasons—Bob Costas got his start in broadcasting as the radio play-by-play announcer for the Spirits of St. Louis.

They Almost Merged Sooner

The ABA’s intention from the beginning was to force some kind of merger or other financial settlement with the NBA, and in the offseason between the 1969-70 and 1970-71 seasons, they nearly succeeded. The NBA had pooled its resources to keep several players out of the ABA, including Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld, after which the ABA filed an antitrust suit. The ABA had written documentation of the NBA’s plan to rig its entry draft, and used it to force settlement talks.

The NBA at the time didn’t sign underclassmen, leaving that group of players entirely to the ABA, triggering another set of lawsuits but also pushing the NBA to come up with such a plan to prevent a talent drain. This gave the ABA substantial leverage in their negotiations with the NBA.

The reason the merger failed, according to ABA co-founder and legal counsel Dick Tinkham, was that the players opposed it. Oscar Robertson led a Players Association lawsuit that argued that the merger would create a monopoly (technically, a monopsony—a single-buyer market for the services of players) and thus artificially restrict player salaries and flexibility. The U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee held a heading where Robertson and John Havlicek testified – no word on whether Havlicek stole the gavel – and the committee’s terms for approving the merger were unacceptable to the NBA, scotching the deal.

They Presaged Expansion/Relocation

The four teams that jumped from the NBA to the ABA (Denver, Indiana, San Antonio, and New Jersey) weren’t the only changes made to the NBA map, as the ABA placed franchises in several other cities that eventually housed NBA teams.

Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Memphis, and Miami all hosted ABA franchises at some point in the league’s history. Charlotte hosted some of the Carolina Cougars’ home games, along with three other cities in North Carolina. And San Diego proved a flop in the ABA, which didn’t deter the owners of the Buffalo Braves from moving the team to San Diego in 1978, renaming them the Clippers, only to move north to Los Angeles after flopping in San Diego too (although the team’s lousy performance was probably the main reason).

The Utah Stars showed the viability of an NBA team in Salt Lake City, with a first-year attendance average of 6,246 fans, setting a record for a new franchise in either the ABA or the NBA. The Stars lasted until early in the ABA’s final season—even averaging over 8,500 fans per game in their final full year—but owner Bill Daniels ran out of cash and the Stars folded just 16 games into the 1975-76 season after missing payroll. The NBA finally took advantage of the fertile market four years later, when the New Orleans Jazz moved to Salt Lake City, creating one of the most absurd team names in American professional sports.

More ABA Nuggets

George Mikan agreed to be the commissioner of the new league ten minutes before the introductory press conference, when owners finally capitulated to his demands (a three-year, $150,000 deal). Mikan’s major contribution, other than the credibility he brought to the endeavor? The red, white, and blue ball. According to Pluto Loose Balls, over 30 million red, white, and blue balls were sold. Mikan also championed the three-point line, an idea taken from the defunct American Basketball League.

Of course, Mikan also may have torched the league’s best chance to achieve some measure of equality with the NBA by botching negotiations with UCLA star Lew Alcindor—better known today as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar—in a story recently recounted on ESPN.com by Bill Simmons.
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Pat Boone was a part-owner of the Oakland Oaks franchise, and helped the team recruit disgruntled San Francisco Warriors star Rick Barry away from the NBA. Barry had to sit out the ABA’s first season after a judge ruled in favor of the Warriors by upholding the “reserve clause” in NBA contracts, the same type of language challenged by baseball’s Curt Flood three years later.
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The first president, Gary Davidson, was largely a figurehead, but ended up a key player in the founding of the World Football League in the 1970s, another alternate league that failed to achieve the ABA’s result of a merger with the stronger rival.
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According to Terry Pluto’s book Loose Balls, the ABA’s franchise in Houston, the Mavericks, reportedly drew a crowd of just 89 fans for one home game. A “home” game for the Memphis Tams, held in Jackson, Mississippi, had an announced crowd of 465. Of course, attendance records from the ABA remain a bit dubious; Indianapolis reporter Dave Overpeck overheard the GM of the San Diego Conquistadors, Alex Groza, tell a staff member, “Oh, let’s say the attendance is 1,764.”

For more on the ABA, check out Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls, a biography of the league with quotes from players, coaches, executives, owners, broadcasters, lawyers, and writers.

Keith Law of ESPN is an occasional contributor to mental_floss.

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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. Pictured is the bookplate by Ellis Nadler. Link

Atlanta Hawks
In 1948, the cities of Moline and Rock Island, IL, and Davenport, IA—collectively known as the Tri-Cities at the time—were awarded a team in the National Basketball League. The team was nicknamed the Blackhawks, who, like Chicago’s hockey team, were named after the Sauk Indian Chief Black Hawk. When the team moved to Milwaukee in 1951, the nickname was shortened to Hawks. The franchise retained the shortened moniker for subsequent moves to St. Louis and finally Atlanta in 1968.

Boston Celtics
Team owner Walter Brown personally chose Celtics over Whirlwinds, Olympians, and Unicorns (yes, Unicorns) as the nickname for Boston’s Basketball Association of America team in 1946. Despite the warnings of one of his publicity staffers, who told Brown, “No team with an Irish name has ever won a damned thing in Boston,” Brown liked the winning tradition of the nickname; the New York Celtics were a successful franchise during the 1920s.

Charlotte Bobcats
The three finalists in the name-the-team contest for Charlotte’s 2004 expansion franchise were Bobcats, Dragons, and Flight. Owner Bob Johnson was admittedly fond of the winning name—if his first name was Dragon, he might not have been so happy—while some of the league’s players were less than impressed. “It sounds like a girls’ softball team to me,” Steve Kerr told reporters. “I guess it shows there aren’t many good nicknames left to be had.” Bobcats CEO Ed Tapscott defended the decision: “I think the athleticism of the feline species plays well with the NBA concept,” he said. “Bobcats are indigenous to western North Carolina. It has not been used in a pro-sports environment. And, I guess there’s one additional connection people might talk about.” Charlotte had also considered Cougars, the nickname of Carolina’s ABA team in the 1970s.

Chicago Bulls
According to the Chicago Bulls Encyclopedia, team owner Richard Klein was brainstorming nicknames for his new franchise in 1966 and wanted a name that portrayed Chicago’s status as the meat capital of the world. Klein was considering Matadors and Toreadors when his young son exclaimed, “Dad, that’s a bunch of bull!” The rest is somewhat dubious history.

Cleveland Cavaliers
Fans voted Cavaliers the team nickname in 1970 in a poll conducted by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. The other finalists included Jays, Foresters, Towers, and Presidents. The Presidents nickname was presumably an allusion to the fact that seven former U.S. Presidents were born in Ohio, second only to Virginia. Jerry Tomko, who suggested Cavaliers in the contest, wrote, “Cavaliers represent a group of daring fearless men, whose life pact was never surrender, no matter what the odds.” (Tomko’s son, Brett, has been a big league pitcher since 1997.)

Dallas Mavericks
A Dallas radio station sponsored a name-the-team contest and recommended the finalists to team owner Donald Carter, who ultimately chose Mavericks over Wranglers and Express. The 41 fans who suggested Mavericks each won a pair of tickets to the season opener and one of those fans, Carla Springer, won a drawing for season tickets. Springer, a freelance writer, said the nickname “represents the independent, flamboyant style of the Dallas people.” That’s certainly an apt description for current team owner Mark Cuban.

Denver Nuggets
Denver’s ABA team was originally known as the Rockets. When the team was preparing to move to the NBA in 1974, they needed a new nickname, as Rockets was already claimed by the franchise in Houston. Nuggets, an allusion to the city’s mining tradition and the Colorado Gold Rush during the late 1850s, was chosen via a name-the-team contest.

Detroit Pistons
The Pistons trace their roots to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they were known as the Zollner Pistons. What’s a Zollner Piston? A piston manufactured by then-team owner Fred Zollner, who named the club after his personal business. When the team moved to Detroit in 1957, Zollner dropped his name from the nickname but retained Pistons. The name was fitting for the Motor City.

Golden State Warriors
The Philadelphia Warriors won the championship in the inaugural 1946-47 season of the Basketball Association of America. The Warriors moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco after the 1961-62 season and retained their nickname. When the team relocated across the Bay to Oakland in 1971, they were renamed the Golden State Warriors.

Houston Rockets
The Houston Rockets originally called San Diego home. Rockets was chosen via a name-the-team contest and was a reference to the city’s theme, “A City In Motion.” Liquid-fuel Atlas rockets were also being manufactured in San Diego. When the team moved to Houston in 1971, it made perfectly good sense to keep the name, as Houston was home to a NASA space center.

Indiana Pacers
According to Michael Leo Donovan’s book on team nicknames, Yankees to Fighting Irish: What’s Behind Your Favorite Team’s Name, the Pacers’ nickname was decided upon in 1967 by the team’s original investors, including attorney Richard Tinkham. The nickname is a reference to Indiana’s rich harness and auto racing history. Pacing describes one of the main gaits for harness racing, while pace cars are used for auto races, such as the Indianapolis 500.

L.A. Clippers
When the NBA’s Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego in 1978, the owners wanted to rebrand the team with a new nickname. They settled on Clippers, a popular type of ship during the 19th century. San Diego had been home to the Conquistadors and the Sails of the ABA during the 1970s. Donald Sterling bought the Clippers during the 1981-82 season and relocated them to his native Los Angeles in 1984. He lost all respect in San Diego but kept the Clippers name.

L.A. Lakers
How many natural lakes are there in Los Angeles? The short answer: Less than 10,000. When a pair of investors relocated the Detroit Gems of the National Basketball League to Minneapolis before the 1947 season, they sought a name that would ring true with the team’s new home. Given that Minnesota is “The Land of 10,000 Lakes,” they settled on Lakers. When the Lakers moved to Los Angeles before the 1960 season, their nickname was retained, in part because of the tradition the team had established in Minnesota.

Memphis Grizzlies
When Vancouver was awarded an expansion franchise in 1994 to begin play the following season, the team’s owners had tentative plans to name the team the Mounties. The Royal Mounted Canadian Police and fans alike objected, so team officials resumed their search for a name. The local newspaper sponsored a name-the-team contest, which club officials monitored before choosing Grizzlies, an indigenous species to the area, over Ravens. When the team relocated to Memphis before the 2002-03 season, FedEx was prepared to offer the Grizzlies $120 million to rename the team the Express, but the NBA rejected the proposal.

Miami Heat
In October 1986, the owners of Miami’s expansion franchise selected Stephanie Freed’s Heat submission from more than 20,000 entries, which also included Sharks, Tornadoes, Beaches, and Barracudas.

Milwaukee Bucks
Given the hunting tradition in Wisconsin, it’s no surprise that Bucks was the leading vote-getter in the team’s name-the-team contest in 1968. For an animal, fans could’ve chosen much worse: Skunks was among the other entries.

Minnesota Timberwolves
The ownership group for Minnesota’s prospective franchise chose Timberwolves through a name-the-team contest in 1986. The nickname beat out Polars by a 2-1 margin in the final vote, which was conducted in 333 of the state’s 842 city councils. Tim Pope, who was one of the first fans to nominate Timberwolves, won a trip to the NBA All-Star Game. Pope submitted 10 nicknames in all, including Gun Flints. “I thought a two-word name would win,” he told a reporter. The most popular entry in the contest was Blizzard, but the team wanted a nickname that was more unique to its home state. “Minnesota is the only state in the lower 48 with free-roaming packs of timber wolves,” a team official said.

New Jersey Nets
The New Jersey Americans joined the American Basketball Association in 1967 and moved to New York the following season. The team was renamed the New York Nets, which conveniently rhymed with Jets and Mets, two of the Big Apple’s other professional franchises. Before the 1977-78 season, the team returned to New Jersey but kept its nickname. In 1994, the Nets were reportedly considering changing their nickname to the Swamp Dragons or Fire Dragons to boost its marketing efforts.

New Orleans Hornets
Most NBA fans know that the New Orleans Hornets originated in Charlotte and have also spent some time in Oklahoma City. Fewer people know that the Hornets were originally going to be called the Spirit. When George Shinn and his ownership group announced that Spirit would be the nickname of Charlotte’s prospective expansion franchise in 1987, the fans voiced their displeasure. It didn’t help that some fans associated the nickname with the PTL Club, a Charlotte-based evangelical Christian television program that was the subject of an investigative report by the Charlotte Observer for its fraudulent fundraising activities. Shinn decided to sponsor another name-the-team contest and had fans vote on six finalists. More than 9,000 ballots were cast and Hornets won by a landslide, beating out Knights, Cougars, Spirit, Crowns, and Stars. Afterwards, Shinn noted that the nickname had some historical significance; during the Revolutionary War, a British commander reportedly referred to the area around Charlotte as a nest of hornets.

New York Knicks
The term “Knickerbockers” referred specifically to pants rolled up just below the knee by Dutch settlers in the New World during the 1600s. Many of these settlers found homes in and around New York City, where a cartoon drawing of Father Knickerbocker became a prominent symbol of the city. In 1845, baseball’s first organized team was nicknamed the Knickerbocker Nine and the name was evoked again in 1946 when New York was granted a franchise in the Basketball Association of America. Team founder Ned Irish reportedly made the decision to call the team the Knickerbockers.

Oklahoma City Thunder
When the Seattle SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City after the 2007-08 season, fans voted on potential nicknames from an original list of 64 possibilities. Thunder was chosen over Renegades, Twisters, and Barons, and the name was extremely well received. The team set sales records for the first day after the nickname was revealed. “There’s just all kinds of good thunder images and thoughts, and the in-game experience of Thunder,” team chairman Clay Bennett told reporters. The SuperSonics had been named for an airplane called the SuperSonic Transport. The plane was to be built by Boeing, which had a large plant in the Seattle area.

Orlando Magic
When the Orlando Sentinel sponsored a name-the-team contest for Orlando’s prospective expansion franchise, Challengers—an allusion to the space shuttle that crashed in 1986—was the most popular suggestion. Other entries included Floridians, Juice, Orbits, Astronauts, Aquamen, and Sentinels, but the panel of judges, including Orlando team officials who reviewed the suggestions, decided to go with Magic. The name is an obvious nod to the tourism-rich city’s main attraction, Disney World.

Philadelphia 76ers
The Syracuse Nationals were relocated to the City of Brotherly Love in 1963 and the team was renamed the 76ers, an allusion to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776.

Phoenix Suns
General manager Jerry Colangelo, only 28 at the time, settled on a name for his expansion franchise using a name-the-team contest in 1968. Colangelo chose Suns over Scorpions, Rattlers, and Thunderbirds, among the other suggestions included in the 28,000 entries. One lucky fan won $1,000 and season tickets as part of the contest, which included such obscure entries as White Wing Doves, Sun Lovers, Poobahs, Dudes, and Cactus Giants.

Portland Trail Blazers
In 1970, Portland was granted an expansion franchise in the NBA and team officials announced a name-the-team contest. Of the more than 10,000 entries, Pioneers was the most popular, but was ruled out because nearby Lewis & Clark College was already using the nickname. Another popular entry was Trail Blazers, whose logo is supposed to represent five players on one team playing against five players from another team.

Sacramento Kings
The Kings’ royal lineage stretches all the way back to the founding of the National Basketball League’s Rochester Royals in 1945. The Royals retained their nickname after a move to Cincinnati in 1957 and became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings through a name-the-team contest in 1972. The name remained unchanged when the franchise relocated to California in 1985.

San Antonio Spurs
A group of San Antonio investors purchased the Dallas Chaparrals from the American Basketball Association in 1973 and promptly changed the team name to the San Antonio Gunslingers. Before the Gunslingers played their first game in their new home, the ownership group renamed the team the Spurs. Some accounts indicate that the name was voted upon in a name-the-team contest. It may have just been a coincidence that one of the team’s main investors, Red McCombs, was born in Spur, Texas.

Toronto Raptors
The ownership group of Toronto’s prospective expansion team conducted extensive marketing research across Canada in 1994 and held a nationwide vote that helped team officials come up with a list of potential nicknames. Raptors, which Jurassic Park helped popularize the year before, was eventually chosen over runners-up Bobcats and Dragons.

Utah Jazz
No, Utah isn’t known for its Jazz. The team originated in New Orleans in 1974 and club officials decided to keep the name after relocating to Salt Lake City in 1979. The Jazz nickname was originally chosen through a name-the-team contest, which produced seven other finalists: Dukes, Crescents, Pilots, Cajuns, Blues, Deltas, and Knights. Deltas would’ve translated to Salt Lake City rather well (the airline of the same name has a hub there), while Cajuns may have been even worse than Jazz.

Washington Wizards
In the early 1990s, Washington owner Abe Pollin was becoming frustrated with the association of his team’s nickname and gun violence. After Pollin’s friend, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated, Pollin decided to take action and announced his plans to rename the team. A name-the-team contest was held and fans voted on a list of finalists that included Wizards, Dragons, Express, Stallions, and Sea Dogs. Not long after Wizards was announced as the winning name before the 1997-98 season, the local NAACP chapter president complained that the nickname carried Ku Klux Klan associations. Previous nicknames for the franchise include Packers and Zephyrs.

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1 & 2. The Seattle White Sox (or Florida White Sox)

The South Siders have almost hit the road on two separate occasions during the last few decades. The first potential move came in the 1970s, after Bud Selig purchased the Seattle Pilots and moved the team to Milwaukee. While Selig’s purchase wouldn’t seem likely to directly affect the Sox, the sale nearly triggered a massive reshuffling of the American League. A plan emerged in 1975 for the White Sox to slide into the vacant Seattle market while the Athletics left Oakland for a new home in Chicago, a move that sort of made sense because longtime A’s owner Charlie Finley was from the Chicago area.

That deal quickly fell through, but the team came even closer to leaving Chicago in 1988. After failing to secure funding for a taxpayer-supported new stadium, the team’s ownership group eyed St. Petersburg as a potential new landing spot. Fans in Florida even started printing Florida White Sox shirts as it became increasingly clear the Sox would be moving to the Sunshine State. Indignant Chicago fans inundated St. Petersburg Mayor Robert Ulrich’s mailbox with dirty pairs of white socks to let him know those were the only pieces of pale hosiery he’d be getting. Eventually, though, the state legislature relented in an eleventh-hour deal that saved the team $60 million in new construction costs and kept the White Sox in Chicago.

3. The Saskatoon Blues

Pet food company Ralston Purina bought the NHL’s St. Louis Blues in 1977, but it had a tougher time marketing hockey than it did with kibble. The company lost around $1.8 million a year on the Blues during its ownership, but upper management didn’t mind bleeding a little cash to keep a hockey team in St. Louis. However, following an internal power shift in 1983, Ralston Purina decided it no longer wanted any part of this white elephant and quit putting any money into the team. The Blues didn’t even make any selections in the 1983 NHL Draft in Montreal; the team didn’t even send a representative.

Obviously, Ralston Purina was hot to sell the team, and they found a buyer in Edmonton Oilers founder Bill Hunter. Hunter and his investment group planned to buy the team and move it to hockey-crazed Saskatoon. The NHL wasn’t too keen to lose a big market like St. Louis, though, and nixed the deal. Eventually businessman Harry Ornest bought the team and kept it in St. Louis.

4. The St. Louis Patriots

Not everyone was trying to get out of St. Louis, though. In 1992, St. Louis native James Orthwein bought the New England Patriots with the hope of moving the franchise to his hometown. Orthwein, who was the great-grandson of Anheuser-Busch founder Adolphus Busch, never got his relocation act together, though, and in 1994 he sold the team to current owner Robert Kraft.

5. The Louisville Rockets

At the beginning of this decade, the Houston Rockets briefly flirted with a move to Louisville, KY. Although the move never got all that close to happening, it was memorable thanks to a rumor about the team’s potential Louisville arena, a Kentucky Fried Chicken-sponsored home called – what else? – “The Bucket.”

6 & 7. The Toronto Oilers and Edmonton Maple Leafs

Teams swap players all the time, but swapping cities? It almost happened in the NHL in 1980. At the time the Toronto Maple Leafs were hemorrhaging money with a lousy roster, and the Edmonton Oilers had a stacked squad that would end up winning five Stanley Cups over the course of the next decade.

According to Oilers owner Peter Pocklington, Leafs owner Harold Ballard called him up with a novel proposition: the teams would simply swap markets. The Oilers would move to Toronto and pay Ballard $50 million in cash for slipping into the bigger market, while the Leafs would take the Oilers’ old spot in Edmonton. Pocklington wrote in his autobiography that he was all for the move, but Ballard got cold feet and backed out at the last minute.

8. The Memphis Hornets

The Memphis Grizzlies are right up there with the Los Angeles Clippers in the race for the dubious title of the NBA’s biggest laughingstock, but they won at least one major battle this decade. On March 26, 2001, both the then-Vancouver Grizzlies and the moribund Charlotte Hornets applied to relocate to Memphis. When the NBA granted the Grizzlies the right to move to Elvis’ old city, the Hornets had to scramble to find another landing place. After eyeing Norfolk, Louisville and St. Louis, the Hornets settled for New Orleans and moved to the Big Easy for the start of the 2002-2003 season.

And the Time the Colts & Rams Swapped Deeds

Who needs to swap cities when you can just swap deeds? It happened with the Colts and the Rams in 1972. Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom was tiring of owning an NFL team in Baltimore thanks to his squabbles with the local media and the Orioles’ ownership. He did like owning a team, however. Rather than move the team, Rosenbloom would just have to get creative.

Enter Robert Irsay, who was considering becoming a minority owner in any deal to buy the Colts. Irsay and Rosenbloom came up with a clever way to make everyone happy: Irsay would buy the L.A. Rams. Irsay then traded the deed to the Rams for the deed to the Colts and $3 million in cash. Just like that, the teams changed hands without moving an inch. Irsay, of course, would become Baltimore’s number one public enemy in 1984 when he moved the Colts to Indianapolis.

[Mayflower/Baltimore Colts image credit: Lloyd Pearson, Baltimore Sun]

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1. Bruce has fans in high places. Barack Obama has said that there are “a handful of people who enter into your lives through their music and tell the American people’s story. Bruce Springsteen is one of those people.” He’s also said that he ran for President because he couldn’t be Bruce Springsteen.

2. Another fan was the late Joe Strummer. The Clash frontman was asked about the Boss for a TV documentary in mid-90s and he responded with a fax that said, among other things, “Bruce is great…if you don’t agree with that, you’re a pretentious Martian from Venus” and “The DJ puts on ‘Racing in the Streets’ and life seems worth living again.”

3. Dr. Ruth Westheimer once visited Bruce backstage at a show. She told him she liked what he said in his songs about love and sex, but she wished he’d mention contraception once in a while.

4. The late Warren Zevon was also Bruce’s friend, fan and collaborator. When Zevon was diagnosed with mesothelioma, he refused any treatment he thought would incapacitate him and headed to the studio—with plenty of friends in tow—to record his final album, The Wind. Springsteen provided background vocals and electric guitar for two songs, one of which won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal. Springsteen later appeared on a tribute album to Zevon, performing his song “My Ride’s Here.”

5. Bruce had a bit of a hard time in school. When he was in third grade, a nun stuffed him into a garbage can under her desk, claiming that’s “where he belonged.” Years later, at Ocean County College, legend has it that his fellow students petitioned the administration to have him expelled.

6. Of course, he had his fans, too. Some of the girls in his high school approached the administration with a petition demanding that Bruce’s band at the time, the Castiles, be given more attention and respect.

7. When the Springsteen’s were living in Freehold, New Jersey, their house was near a Nestle’s factory. When the wind was just right, Bruce has said, he could smell chocolate all day long.

8. The first song a young Bruce learned play on the guitar was the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.”

9. There really is an E Street. It runs northeast through the New Jersey shore town of Belmar. According to Springsteen lore, the band took its name from the street because original keyboard player David Sancious’ mother lived there and allowed the band to rehearse in her house.

10. The titular avenue of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” is also in Belmar. [Image courtesy of NJ.com.]

11. “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” was guitarist Steven Van Zandt’s debut with the E Street Band. He came up with the idea for the horn intro and became the de facto arranger when he sang the line for the horn section.

12. The working title of Darkness on the Edge of Town was American Madness, also the title of a 1932 Frank Capra movie. Early copies of the album were mistakenly released inside covers for Barbra Streisand’s Songbird.

13. In 1979, Bruce saw the Ramones play at the Fast Lane in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He met the band and Joey Ramone asked Bruce to write a song for them. Springsteen wrote “Hungry Heart” and considered giving it to them, but hung on to it at the urging of his manager.

14. The first place Springsteen saw his first-wife-to-be, Julianne Phillips? One of .38 Special’s music videos.

15. This exchange from Bill Simmons’ column on ESPN.com is simply brilliant:

Q: My favorite YouTube clip is the Boss’ greatest TV performance: his surprise duet with the Wallflowers at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. Keep in mind, the VMAs had grown tiresome by the mid-’90s and Bruce had sort of slipped into irrelevancy with passable acoustic albums like Tom Joad. The situation was ripe for “sad former rock star shows up and creeps everyone out” potential (which did happen a few years later with Axl Rose.)

But Bruce comes out looking leaner and meaner than he had in years, complete with bad-ass goatee and leather jacket, and snatches “One Headlight” right out of Jakob Dylan’s feeble hands. He nails a great guitar solo, makes tons of great Bruce faces and even turns in the classic sharing-vocals-at-the-same-mic-stand move. You’re literally watching Bruce rediscover his ability to rock as the song goes on. It’s like Elvis’ 1968 comeback special. Watching this live with my college buddies at the time, I predicted a Bruce creative surge, which actually happened in the late-’90s, peaking with his reunion with The E Street Band and what is still the only artistically valid musical statement about 9/11: The Rising.

So, it begs the question: what would be the sports equivalent? You’d need a superstar, returning after a notable absence, who makes a comeback and rediscovers his “love of the game,” and in the process, mortally wounds or breaks the spirit of an up-and-coming star with a great pedigree, right?
–M. Drury, Hoboken, N.J.

A: …I actually remember watching that live, seeing Bruce and saying, “I’m not getting my hopes up, but he looks pretty damned good,” then watching in disbelief as he completely blew Dylan off the stage….Before we get to the answer, I wanted to point out a couple of things before you dive into the video:

1. The Wallflowers were flying pretty high at the time (looking back, you could even make the case that they were the most underrated mainstream band from the latter half of the ’90s), and it’s quite possible that Bruce completely derailed young Jakob, who already had enough of an uphill battle as Bob Dylan’s son before another music legend hijacked his signature song as he was standing right there. I always thought the Wallflowers should have been bigger than they were. What would have happened if Bruce didn’t agree to play the ‘97 VMAs? We may never know.

2. There’s nothing funnier than Bruce creeping over to someone else’s microphone, then overpowering the other guy as spit flies everywhere. (I’m convinced this is why Little Stevie initially left the E Street Band, he just couldn’t take it anymore.) I always thought this would be a good SNL skit — just Bruce walking around and randomly hijacking somebody else’s microphone in various places (a street performer in a subway station, Michael Buffer doing “Let’s get ready to rummmmble,” a stewardess giving the pre-flight instructions, and so on).

3. “One Headlight” couldn’t have been more in Bruce’s wheelhouse. One of the best examples of a song that would have been twice as good if the band had just given it to the Boss from Day 1 and said, “Look, this could be a hit for us, but it’s a potential Hall of Fame song for you, you have it.” Some other examples: “See a Little Light” by Bob Mould; “Taillights Fade” by Buffalo Tom (and just for the record, I absolutely love those guys, but that would have been a top-five Bruce song); “Way Down Now” by World Party; “Rain King” by Counting Crows; “Expresso Love” by Dire Straits; the theme to “Beautiful Girls”; “Turn the Page” by Bob Seger; and my personal favorites, “Santa Monica” and “You Make Me Feel Like A Whore” by Everclear. Bruce also would have done much better with “I Am Mine” than Pearl Jam did because Eddie Vedder mailed in that entire album during his “I don’t want to be famous anymore” stage. But this should be Bruce’s next album: “Songs I Should Have Sung.”

4. So what’s the sports equivalent of Bruce blowing Dylan off the stage? I was leaning toward MJ and the Bulls sweeping the Magic in the ‘96 playoffs, with the post-baseball MJ as Bruce and Nick Anderson (already reeling after blowing those four freebies in the ‘95 Finals) as Jakob Dylan. But I like this example better: Jack Nicklaus roaring from behind to win the ‘86 Masters, with Greg Norman and Seve Ballesteros (both of whom choked down the stretch) combining for the Dylan role. Remember, Norman was considered Nicklaus’ heir apparent at the time, and everyone thought Seve was going to become the dominant golfer of that decade; they ended winning three more majors combined and that’s it. Plus, the Nicklaus/Springsteen parallels are almost perfect, right down to their popularity, their respective résumés and the similar points of their careers at the time of the events. That seems like the logical choice to me.

16. With the sole exception of 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, all of Bruce’s albums since 1975’s Born to Run have been in the Top 5 of the US Album Chart.

17. Springsteen lore has it that Bruce was once spotted in a movie theater watching Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (which comments on artist/fan relations). The fan who saw him challenged Bruce to prove he didn’t regard his own fans with the contempt as the Allen stand-in in the movie by coming to meet his mom and have dinner. Bruce did so and supposedly still visits the fan’s mother every time he’s in St Louis.

18. There’s a fantastic bootleg community within the larger world of Bruce fans. The most notable sources for such bootlegs probably being Jungleland and The Bruce Springsteen mp3 Bootleg Index. Amid the studio outtakes and concert boots, there’s also some really neat fan-made compilations at the Bootleg Index. Want a collection of great performances of “Thunder Road” spanning 25 years? Praise the superfans, it’s there.

19. When Bruce tells us that “they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night” in “Atlantic City,” he’s referring to Phil Testa, the underboss of the Philadelphia crime family under Angelo Bruno. Bruno was killed in 1980, and Testa, who got his nickname from his involvement in a poultry business, succeeded him as don of the family. His nine-month reign ended when conspirators in the family placed a nail bomb under his porch and detonated it when he walked out the front door.

20. After a 1976 concert in Memphis, a most certainly inebriated Springsteen went to Graceland at three in the morning, jumped the wall, and ran to the front door. Security grabbed him before he could make it to the door and sent him packing. Knocking wouldn’t have done much good, anyway. Elvis was in Lake Tahoe at the time.

21. According to Frank Stefanko, a photographer and friend of Bruce, Springsteen is a pretty good photographer and enjoys taking pictures of “weird Jersey billboards [and] funny signs on the sides of diners.”

22. When Bruce decided to dissolve the E Street Band in 1989, he gave each member $2 million in severance pay.

23. In December 1999, the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery was woken up with Bruce’s song “Rendezvous” on the day they were scheduled to rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope.

24. In May 1977, Bruce and Steve Van Zandt went to an Elvis Presley concert in Philadelphia. A few days later Bruce wrote “Fire,” and allegedly sent a demo of the song to Presley that summer, hoping he might cover it. Whether the tape got sent or not, Presley died that August and Bruce wound up giving “Fire” to Robert Gordon. Gordon’s version of the song was covered by the The Pointer Sisters who made it a hit in 1979.

25. The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia, where Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack and Frederick Douglass’ diaries have been preserved, recently prepared some Springsteen-abilia—including dozens of notebooks containing everything from lyrics to tour information and a to-do list that lists “extra garage door openers”—for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum exhibit “From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen.” Best item: an orange composition book with lines on the cover for the owner to fill in a name, address, and subject. The spaces read: “Bossinheimer Jones / Cool Street / Your Mama.”

26. There’s more Springsteen ephemera at the Asbury Park Public Library, which houses the Bruce Springsteen Special Collection, possibly the world’s largest collection devoted to the Boss and his bands. The collection—which is open by appointment to the public—includes some 10,000 books, magazines, fanzines, web articles, newspaper articles, academic journals and papers, comic books, song books, tourbooks, etc., with items from 42 different countries dating as far back as 1964.

27. When then-CBS President Clive Davis heard the ten tracks slated for Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., he didn’t think the album had a hit single on it. Springsteen went back to work and composed two more songs with more commercial potential, “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night.” Problems arose when keyboard player David Sancious and bassist Gary Tallent weren’t able to return to the studio to record the new songs. On top of that, Bruce wanted to incorporate saxophone into both songs, but didn’t have a sax player. He got in touch with Clarence Clemons, who came to the studio for a session. The two songs were recorded with the one-off lineup of Clemons on sax, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez on drums and Springsteen on everything else (except the piano on “Blinded,” which was played by Harold Wheeler).

28. The title for “Kitty’s Back,” from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle was inspired by a neon sign Springsteen saw promoting the return of popular stripper a Jersey Shore club.

29. The song “Thundercrack,” which appears on Tracks, was regularly performed live from 1972 until drummer Vini Lopez left the band amid controversy in ‘74. When Springsteen was finishing the overdubbing and mixing for Tracks in 1998, he brought Lopez to record in order to keep the song’s gang vocals true to the song’s original intention.

30. According to local legend, a fan bought the screen door of the house at 68 South St. (left side of this duplex) in Freehold, NJ—a house Springsteen had once lived in—from the homeowner in the early ‘80, thinking it was the screen door mentioned in “Thunder Road.” [Image courtesy of brucebase.org.uk.]

31. Bruce’s then-wife Julianne Phillips and then-wife-to-be Patti Scialfa both appear in the music video “Glory Days.” Awkward.

32. In November 1996, Bruce played a benefit concert in the gymnasium of his former grade school, the St. Rose of Lima School in Freehold, NJ. Only Freehold residents were allowed to purchase tickets.

33. In September 2005, “Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium” drew a crowd of 330 educators, journalists, historians, musicologists, and fans to hear over 100 presentations on Springsteen scholarship. This weekend, another symposium will take place at Monmouth University and include a tribute to Danny Federici and presentations like “Springsteen: The Road to Resilience in Hard Times,” “Born (Again) in the USA: The Age of Springsteen,” “Springsteen and Social Consciousness Panel,” “Songwriters By The Sea” and “Ten Years Burning Down the Road: Bruce Springsteen in the 21st Century.”

34. Thanks to the Boss, the Stone Pony is one of the most famous nightclubs in the world. It’s so closely associated with Bruce that you might think he got his start at there, but the club only opened in 1974, when Springsteen already had two albums out.

35. Springsteen has taken the stage at the Stone Pony some 90 times, but except for private charity shows in the last few years, these appearances are rarely billed as his gig and most are just guest appearances at other artists’ shows.

36. He has a comet named after him.

37. Madam Marie, the fortune-teller in “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” is as real as E Street. Marie Castello told fortunes on the Asbury Park boardwalk from 1932 until her death in 2008 at age 93. The fortune-telling booth is still there and is run by Madam Marie’s family.

Phew…let’s break from some videos, shall we?

38. In this wonderful bit of satire, Adolf Hitler is excited about traveling to Jersey to see his first Springsteen show. And then everything goes wrong.

39. One of my favorite things to do while listening to Bruce is overemphasizing the quirks of his speech: the “meehgic in the night” in “Thunder Road”, the “hoo ha heh huh” in “Born to Run”, the incomprehensible countups and countdowns in various songs. Ben Stiller apparently enjoys this, too.

40. As you might know, we here at the _floss are huge fans of the music on Sesame Street, from Stevie Wonder’s brilliant performances, to “Mahna Mahna.” Sesame Street has done two Bruce covers that I know of (if I missed any let me know): “Born to Add,” a mashup of “Born to Run” and “Jungleland” sung by a character called Bruce Stringbean…

…and “Barn in the USA,” which features Stringbean backed by the S Street Band.

41. Here’s Weird Al having a bit of fun with the Boss, interrupting (improving?) the video for “Brilliant Disguise.”

42. Bud Light’s “Real Men of Genius” ads somehow never get around to paying tribute to Mr. Over-the-Top Springsteen Fan. Luckily, this parody fills in the gap.

43. Finally, here’s one of my favorite Bruce performances: Thundercrack at the Convention Hall in Asbury Park, featuring the Max Weinberg 7.

And we’re back!

44. In 1972, Springsteen saw the “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” image in a boardwalk souvenir store. He bought it, brought it to Columbia Records and told them that was the title and image he wanted on his first album.

45. A line from the song “Night” on Born to Run goes “the circuit’s lined and jammed with chromed invaders.” The Circuit is a nickname for the drive around Kingsley Street and Ocean Avenue in Asbury Park.

46. The live debut of the E Street Band, with Max Weinberg on drums and Roy Bittan on piano, occurred in September 1974 at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA. That show marked the first time that Springsteen earned $5,000 for a night’s work.

47. When the band was recording, “Jungleland,” the epic that closes Born to Run, it took 16 hours (with no bathroom breaks, at least according to Clemons) to work out and record Clarence Clemons’ sax solo. When the Boss pointed this out to Clemons, he was surprised. He thought it had only been five.

48. According to Springsteen lore, Bruce first met Clarence “Big Man” Clemons while playing at a club in Asbury Park. It was a stormy night with strong winds and when Clemons opened the door to the club, it flew off its hinges. Springsteen likes to use the story as proof that Clemons, the E Street Band’s personal Paul Bunyan, can blow the doors off any room he’s in.

49. We’re not the only people celebrating Bruce’s birthday. If you live in Philadelphia, check out the World Café tonight for The Boss’ Birthday Bash, featuring local musicians covering their favorite Bruce songs.

50. One might consider October 19, 1984, “the night Rosalita died.” As far back as the song was written, almost every regular set at a Springsteen concert was closed with an extended version of “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight).” But on that fateful night in Tacoma, Washington, Rosie was dropped from set list. Springsteen biographer Dave Marsh has said the song was to disrupt the expectation of ritual from the fans and remind them that the Boss was in charge.

51. Ernest “Boom” Carter doesn’t have the same name recognition as some other E Streeters, but even if you’re only a casual Bruce fan, you’ve heard his work. Carter’s only performance with Springsteen was his drum track on “Born to Run.” Carter’s successor to the drum throne, Max Weinberg, has said that he could never reproduce Carter’s drum parts in concert and eventually stopped trying.

52. Weinberg isn’t a fan of Darkness on the Edge of Town because his performance on “Something in the Night” bothers him. Towards the end of the song, the band cuts out and Bruce starts singing over Max’s drums. A few seconds into it, Max loses the beat and noticeably slows down the song.

53. Bruce inspires some pretty extreme acts of fandom (besides this post, I mean). Over the summer, JamsBio presented us with “No Retreat, No Surrender,” a “worst-to-first countdown of every album cut in Springsteen history” plus some bonus songs. In all, they ranked and wrote about (sometimes at length) 200 songs. They ranked “Real Man” from Human Touch last and “Born to Run” first.

54. If you’ve ever read Stephen King’s The Stand, you probably can’t help but imagine Bruce as the character Larry Underwood. Well, King felt the same way, saying the in the foreword for the reissue of the novel that Springsteen, based solely on his music videos, would’ve been a perfect choice for the book’s movie adaptation.

55. In 1984, a Houston radio station poked some fun at Springsteen’s epic concerts by having early-morning deejays claim that the show Springsteen started the night before was still going on.

56. When Springsteen played near Washington, D.C., in 1988, Oliver North’s secretary sent a note to Bruce backstage saying she’d like to meet him. His written reply was, allegedly, “I don’t like you. I don’t like your boss. I don’t like what you did. Thank you.”

57. Bruce and the E Street Band have toured and performed all over the world, but their strangest show might be the matinee they played Sing Sing prison in 1972, a set that featured plenty of R&B covers and Clarence Clemons singing Buddy Miles’ “Them Changes.”

Why We Love Bruce Springsteen

58. Rick Shea, fridaybrucefix: My friend Howard and I caught a handful of shows on the Reunion tour. One night, during the extended intro to “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” Bruce was working the crowd into a sing along frenzy, making it clear that he would not kick the song into gear until HE decided the crowd was singing loudly enough. I turned to Howard and said “That man standing on the piano is in complete control of the building.” He was.

One of the things I love about Bruce is his absolute mastery of his craft. I can’t think of a better band leader and entertainer. He is entirely comfortable, at home, and happy on stage, in complete control of the building. His mastery comes out in his song selections and arrangements, in the emotional arc and pacing of his shows, and in his quarterbacking of his band. While he’s a great vocalist and musician, his greatest talent may be his songwriting.

Bruce writes extraordinary songs to which we each connect in our own way. By writing so openly and honestly about his life, he encourages us to think about ours. Some songs act as mirrors through which I reflect on matters in my own life. Others are windows into issues and questions in other people’s lives and in the world around me. His music and lyrics entertain and inspire me, and his songs continue to be great company on my life’s journey.

Thanks Bruce, and happy 60th!

59. Peter Chianca, Blogness on the Edge of Town: “Why do you love Bruce Springsteen?” My initial response is wondering whether “love” is even the right word – admire and respect, yes, but love? He’s not my wife, or a puppy. On the other hand, I do write a whole Springsteen blog, which some would say puts me in restraining order territory. So why is it?

I suppose it could be how he annoyed snooty grammarians the world over when he wished that “these Badlands start treating us good.” Or how he’s never once interrupted Taylor Swift on national television. Or that he’s the rare artist who still actually has something to say, be it about 9/11, George Bush or mature relationships. (No offense, Fergie.)

Also, by playing raucous concerts while pushing 60, he makes us feel like there is hope for middle age, even if just standing through one of those concerts at age 40 makes my ankles hurt for three days. He can even inspire people with small children and ankle pain to actually go to a show that doesn’t feature a Muppet or a guy in a dinosaur suit.

And he can make those same people feel like we did at 16, when music mattered and rock n’ roll could set us free, and maybe even save the world. For that last reason alone, just having Bruce still out there gives some of us – OK, me – a little more faith in humanity. And if that’s not worthy of a little love, I guess I don’t know what is.

60. Matt Soniak: Some of my most vivid childhood memories involve driving home on summer nights from…somewhere – the amusement park, a backyard barbecue, wherever, there were a lot of nights like this – my mom and my brother would be asleep in the backseat and I’d be up front next to my dad, the Springsteen fanatic. We would, more often than not, be listening to Born to Run. I don’t think I really had any interest in music at that age, and I really didn’t get it, but I knew I liked that album. I liked the way the band essentially became one instrument on “She’s the One,” I liked the sound of the harmonica on “Thunder Road” and more than anything I liked the saxophone solo on “Born to Run.” That sax made the hair on my arms stand straight up every time I heard it, and it still does today.

My father died one New Year’s Eve almost a decade ago, so I never got a chance to really understand him or connect with him anymore than a stubborn teenager can connect with his equally stubborn father. I’ve had Born to Run this whole time, though, so I’ve been able to grasp that a little better. And because of his attachment to it, that album (and, really, all of Springsteen’s music), has been the lens through which I’ve come to understand him—if only just a little bit.

“Born to Run” provides the occasional encouraging shove that my dad once gave me, a reminder that, no matter what sort of hell you find yourself in, there’s open road in front of you and all you need to do is go. It may not be better than wherever it is you wind up, and the journey there may be just as awful, but Bruce has a way of making even the worst, most miserable moments in life sound so downright majestic. Good or bad, if that sax solo is the soundtrack to anything you do, you’re lucky to have experienced it.

Happy Birthday, Bruce.

A special thanks to Rick and Peter for taking the time to gush talk about Bruce with us, and to Erica Palan, who contributed some E Street trivia.

You can imagine, then, that Halloween is a wonderful and dangerous time for me (as if I needed another reason to adore Halloween). Today’s post is inspired by not one, but two limited-edition, Halloween-inspired Dots I spied on the shelves at the grocery store this weekend. Read on for those and eight more limited-edition candies with flavors a little left of center.

1. Candy Corn Dots. I’m not sure why I picked these up in the first place, because I’m not particularly fond of Candy Corn. Oh, I’ll eat it, but after about five pieces I regret it. The Dots were no exception. Just like Candy Corn, though, I continued to consume the Dots even after I was tired of eating them. I can’t explain why. It just happens.
2. Blood Orange Dots. I saw these after I saw the Candy Corn Dots, and I suppose I should have been skeptical, but instead I was elated – Blood Orange! That’s a pretty sophisticated flavor for candy. And they’re black, so you get the added bonus of giraffe tongue. These were delightful. And there was only one box on the shelf, so I’m glad I snatched them up. The picture of the Dots is from Sugar-Hi, whom I will have to agree to disagree with about the Candy Corn Dots.

3. Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms. I haven’t had these, but maybe you have – they were a promotion for Transformers: Rise of the Fallen and I believe they are still in stores. Candy Addict wasn’t terribly impressed with them, but other reviewers and commenters have raved, comparing the taste to a PB&J or even strawberry milk, in one instance.

4. Reese’s Peanut Butter and Banana Crème. Peanut Butter and Banana… hmm. If that rings a bell, it might be your Elvis Alarm going off: the King loved fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. What better way to celebrate the Man From Memphis’ 30th deathiversary by commemorating his love of junk food in a handy little bite-sized form? I’m not going to lie; they were pretty good. And although they were terrible for you, you can take heart in the fact that Elvis sometimes liked the additions of honey and bacon on his PB&Bs, so by only adding the banana, Hershey was really being fairly health-conscious. Or something.

5. You may have noticed that Hershey’s Kisses has really been experimenting the last few years, but none of the flavors are really that outrageous: Hot Cocoa, Mint Truffle, Cherry Cordial, Coconut. No big deal. But if you look a little deeper into the Kiss Repertoire – the Asian market – you’ll find Green Tea Kisses. Green tea-flavored items are also called “matcha” and they’re not uncommon in Asia and Europe.

6. Kit Kat has also hopped on the Matcha bandwagon, but there’s an even-stranger flavor lurking around in certain markets: Red Bean Kit Kats. Yep. Cybele over at CandyBlog reviewed it (and Kit Kat Fruit Parfait as well) and said it wasn’t too bad – kind of earthy, like beets or kidney beans – and that the pumpkin-flavored Kit Kats were much worse. I’m going to take her word on that one, I think.

7. But wait, there’s more from the test kitchen at Kit Kat: Wine. Esurientes, where the picture comes from, sampled the grapey confection and was underwhelmed at first, but then tried them first thing in the morning when no other tastes were lingering in her mouth and discovered them to taste quite alcoholic. I like wine, and I like chocolate, but I’m not entirely sure I want them all mashed together in a Kit Kat. Nor do I want Soy Sauce-flavored Kit Kats… although I might be able to get behind Sweet Potato Kit Kats.
8. You know how Mythbusters did the whole Mentos-and-soda experiment? Now you can replicate it in your stomach with cola-flavored Mentos. OK, without the big geyser, probably. But that’s definitely not the only out-of-the-ordinary flavor over at Mentos – other flavors have included raisin (ew) and black currant, along with other usual fruity suspects (strawberry, apple, peach, etc.).

9. Twix Java wasn’t in stores long, and when it the limited quantity ran out it left a void in the sweet tooths of many angry candy and caffeine addicts… including, fittingly, Candy Addict. Similarly, the loss of Twix Cookies-n-Cream in the ‘90s sparked some die-hard fans to create petitions to bring the creation back – the one I linked to is only one of many!

10. At first glance, Skittles hasn’t gone too far outside of the box (or the bag, as it were). Skittles Smoothies, Skittles Tropical, Skittles Wild Berry – they’re all vaguely fruity flavors. But then there’s Skittles Liquorice and Skittles Unlimited. Skittles Liquorice, as you can probably tell by the spelling, is a European sensation that gives the candies various anise tastes, including black liquorice, mint, spice and vanilla. Canada’s Skittles Unlimited – released at the same time as the U.S.’s Carnival Skittles – included fairy floss, jam doughnut, toffee apple and popcorn. Oh, and if you completely loathe the very idea of Chocolate Skittles (S’mores, Brownie and pudding flavors, among others), you’re not alone: Cracked.com has a very funny post about what an evil mixture they are.

I know I’ve probably just barely scratched the surface of all of the limited edition and strangely-flavored candies out there, so if I missed your favorite, share it in the comments! And if anyone has had some of those really strange Kit Kat flavors, give us your review.

Stacy Conradt is on Twitter.