This article is for quizzes on Thursday March 16th...

Scarface (also known as Scarface: The Shame of the Nation and The Shame of a Nation) is a 1932 American Pre-Code gangster film starring Paul Muni as Antonio "Tony" Camonte. It was produced by Howard Hughes and Howard Hawks, directed by Hawks, and Richard Rosson. The story is based on Armitage Trail's 1929 novel of the same name, which is loosely based on the rise and fall of Al Capone. The film features Ann Dvorak as Camonte's sister, and also stars Karen Morley, Osgood Perkins, and Boris Karloff. The plot centers on gang warfare and police intervention when rival gangs fight over control of Chicago. A version of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre is also depicted.
The film was the basis for the Brian De Palma 1983 film of the same name starring Al Pacino.

The first version of the film (Version A) was completed on September 8, 1931, but censors would not allow its release because of concerns that it glorified the gangster lifestyle and showed too much violence. Several scenes had to be edited, the subtitle "The Shame of the Nation" as well as a text introduction had to be added, and the ending had to be modified.

The alternate ending (Version B) differs from the original ending in the manner that Tony is caught and in which he dies. Unlike the original ending in which Tony escapes the police and dies after getting shot several times, the alternate ending starts with Tony reluctantly handing himself over to the police. After the encounter, Tony's face is not shown again. A scene follows in which a judge is addressing Tony during sentencing. The next scene is the finale, in which Tony (seen from a bird's eye view) is brought to the gallows, where he is finally put to an end by being hanged.

However, Version B still did not pass the New York censors, so Howard Hughes disowned it and finally in 1932 released Version A—with the added text introduction—in states that lacked strict censors (Hughes also attempted to take the New York censors to court). This 1932 release version led to bona-fide box office status and positive critical reviews. Hughes also made an attempt to release the film under the title "The Scar" when the original title was disallowed by the Hays office.

This article is for quizzes on Wednesday March 15th...

The Vitruvian Man (Italian: Le proporzioni del corpo umano secondo Vitruvio, which is translated to "The proportions of the human body according to Vitruvius"), or simply L'Uomo Vitruviano ([ˈlwɔːmo vitruˈvjaːno]), is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci around 1490. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the architect Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man. It is kept in the Gabinetto dei disegni e stampe of the Gallerie dell'Accademia, in Venice, Italy, under reference 228. Like most works on paper, it is displayed to the public only occasionally.
The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De architectura. Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the classical orders of architecture. Vitruvius determined that the ideal body should be eight heads high. Leonardo's drawing is traditionally named in honor of the architect.

This article is for quizzes on Tuesday March 14th...

Robert K. Ressler (February 21, 1937 – May 5, 2013) was a former FBI agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the English term "serial killer".
Ressler joined the FBI in 1970 and was recruited into the Behavioral Science Unit that deals with drawing up psychological profiles of violent offenders who typically select victims at random, such as rapists and serial killers.

In the early 1980s, Ressler helped to organize the interviews of thirty-six incarcerated serial killers in order to find parallels between such criminals' backgrounds and motives. He was also instrumental in setting up Vi-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). This consists of a centralized computer database of information on unsolved homicides. Information is gathered from local police forces and cross-referenced with other unsolved killings across the United States. Working on the basis that most serial killers claim similar victims with a standard method (modus operandi) it hopes to spot early on when a killer is carrying out crimes in different jurisdictions. This was primarily a response to the appearance of nomadic killers who committed crimes in different areas. So long as the killer kept on the move, the police forces in each state would be unaware that there were multiple victims and would just be investigating a single homicide each, unaware that other police forces had similar crimes. Vi-CAP would help individual police forces determine if they were hunting for the same perpetrator so that they could share and correlate information with one another, increasing their chances of identifying a suspect.

He worked on many cases of serial homicide such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Chase and John Joubert.

A serial killer is typically a person who murders two or more people, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant break (a "cooling off period") between them.

This article is for quizzes on Monday March 12th...

Paul Revere (December 21, 1734 O.S. – May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and a Patriot in the American Revolution. He is best known for alerting the colonial militia to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride" (1861).
Revere was a prosperous and prominent Boston silversmith, who helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British military. Revere later served as a Massachusetts militia officer, though his service culminated after the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame. Following the war, Revere returned to his silversmith trade and used the profits from his expanding business to finance his work in iron casting, bronze bell and cannon casting, and the forging of copper bolts and spikes. Finally in 1800 he became the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels.

This article is for quizzes on Thursday March 9th...

Uncle Sam (initials U.S.) is a common national personification of the American government or the United States in general that, according to legend, came into use during the War of 1812 and was supposedly named for Samuel Wilson. Its actual origin is obscure. Uncle Sam represents a manifestation of patriotic emotion.
The term Uncle Sam is reputedly derived from Samuel Wilson, a meat packer from Troy, New York who supplied rations for the soldiers during the War of 1812. There was a requirement at the time for contractors to stamp their name and where the rations came from onto the food they were sending. Wilson's packages were labeled "E.A – US." When someone asked what that stood for, a coworker joked and said, "Elbert Anderson (the contractor) and Uncle Sam," referring to Sam Wilson, though it actually stood for United States. Doubts have been raised as to this being the source of the term, as the claim did not appear in print until 1842. Additionally, the earliest reference to the term that has been found is from 1810, predating Wilson's contract with the government. As early as 1835, Brother Jonathan made a reference to Uncle Sam, implying that they symbolized different things: Brother Jonathan was the country itself, while Uncle Sam was the government and its power.

This article is for quizzes on Wednesday March 8th...

John Flammang Schrank (March 5, 1876 – September 15, 1943) was a resident of New York, best known for his attempt to assassinate former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt on October 14, 1912 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The 1912 Presidential election campaign was characterised by a serious split in the Republican Party between the conservative wing under President William Howard Taft and the liberal/reform wing under ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. After a bitter confrontation at the Republican Convention, Taft won renomination. Roosevelt led a bolt of his followers, who held a convention and nominated him for President on the ticket of the Progressive Party, nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party." Taft and his supporters attacked Roosevelt for being power-hungry, and seeking to break the tradition that U.S. Presidents only serve up to two terms in office.

On October 14, 1912, while Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Schrank attempted to assassinate him.

It is unclear when Schrank's interest in domestic politics grew to the point that he would attempt to kill Roosevelt. It is known that he was an opponent of a sitting President's ability to seek a third term in office.

According to documents found on Schrank after the attempted assassination, Schrank had written that he was advised by the ghost of William McKinley in a dream to avenge his death, pointing to a picture of Theodore Roosevelt. Different accounts claim that in the dream he instead saw McKinley rise from a coffin and point at Roosevelt, who was wearing a monk's robe.

Roosevelt was at the Gilpatrick Hotel at a dinner provided by the hotel's owner, a supporter. The ex-President was scheduled to deliver a speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium. News had circulated that Roosevelt was at the hotel, and Schrank (who had been following Roosevelt from New Orleans to Milwaukee) went to the hotel. The ex-President had finished his meal, and was leaving the hotel to enter his car when Schrank acted.

Schrank did shoot Roosevelt, but the bullet lodged in Roosevelt's chest only after hitting both his steel eyeglass case and a 50-page copy of his speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt decided the bullet could not have penetrated to his lung because he coughed no blood and, declining suggestions that he go to the hospital, delivered his scheduled speech.

This article is for quizzes on Tuesday March 7th...

Julius Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. As the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Oppenheimer is among those who are called the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first nuclear weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico; Oppenheimer remarked later that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
After the war, Oppenheimer became chairman of the influential General Advisory Committee of the newly created United States Atomic Energy Commission. He used that position to lobby for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. After provoking the ire of many politicians with his outspoken opinions during the Second Red Scare, he suffered the revocation of his security clearance in a much-publicized hearing in 1954, and was effectively stripped of his direct political influence; he continued to lecture, write and work in physics. Nine years later, President John F. Kennedy awarded (and Lyndon B. Johnson presented) him with the Enrico Fermi Award as a gesture of political rehabilitation.

Oppenheimer's achievements in physics include the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wavefunctions, work on the theory of electrons and positrons, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion, and the first prediction of quantum tunneling. With his students he also made important contributions to the modern theory of neutron stars and black holes, as well as to quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and the interactions of cosmic rays. As a teacher and promoter of science, he is remembered as a founding father of the American school of theoretical physics that gained world prominence in the 1930s. After World War II, he became director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

This article is for quizzes on Monday March 6th...

Oscar the Grouch is a character on the television program Sesame Street. He has a green body (during the first season he was orange), has no visible nose, and lives in a trash can. His favorite thing in life is trash, as evidenced by the song "I Love Trash". A running theme is his compulsive hoarding of seemingly useless items. "The Grouch" aptly describes his misanthropic interaction with the other characters, but also refers to his species. His birthday, as noted by Sesame Workshop, is on June 1. The character is performed by Caroll Spinney, and has been performed by him since the show's first episode. Since 2015, Eric Jacobson is the understudy for the character.

During the first season of Sesame Street, the street set was arranged in such a way that Spinney, who is right-handed, was forced to operate Oscar's head with his left hand. A subsequent redesign of the set allowed Spinney to switch hands.
In scenes where Big Bird and Oscar (both performed by Caroll Spinney) interact in a scene together, the situation has varied depending on the amount of lines one or the other is given. When Spinney performs Big Bird, a second puppeteer operates Oscar to Spinney's voice. These puppeteers have included Jerry Nelson (c. 1970's) and Jim Martin (1990's-2000's). Paul McGinnis also puppeteered Oscar at the 2003 Annual Sesame Workshop Benefit Gala.

As of Season 46, Spinney no longer puppeteers Oscar full-time on the show. Eric Jacobson has become Spinney's understudy for Oscar; sometimes lip-syncing to a prerecorded vocal track by Spinney, and other times doing the voice himself. Jacobson performed Oscar for his Sprout appearances on February 21, 2015, and also performed Oscar, un-dubbed, on a 2016 appearance on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and a YouTube video promoting the Sesame Studios channel. Spinney continues to puppeteer Oscar sporadically, such as at live events.

This article is for quizzes on Sunday March 5th...

Morris "Moe" Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972), was an American catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player, usually used as a backup catcher, and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball" than for anything he accomplished in the game. Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball".

A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read 10 newspapers a day. His reputation was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information, Please, in which he answered questions about the derivation of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

 As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was then sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, but, by the mid-1950s, was unemployed. He spent the last two decades of his life without work, living with various siblings

This article is for quizzes on Thursday March 2nd...

The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 (but dated 29 September) after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. Today, it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Germany. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of ethnic demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia, as most of its border defenses, and banks were situated there, as well as heavy industrial districts. Part of the borderland was invaded and annexed by Poland.
Because the state of Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference, it considered itself to have been betrayed by the United Kingdom and France, so Czechs and Slovaks call the Munich Agreement the Munich Diktat (Czech: Mnichovský diktát; Slovak: Mníchovský diktát). The phrase "Munich Betrayal" (Czech: Mnichovská zrada; Slovak: Mníchovská zrada) is also used because the military alliance Czechoslovakia had with France and Britain proved useless and also known because of the phrase "About us, without us!" This phrase is most hurtful for people of Czechoslovakia (Czech republic, Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia). Today the document is typically referred to simply as the Munich Pact (Mnichovská dohoda).

In Germany the Sudeten crisis led to the so-called Oster Conspiracy. General Hans Oster, deputy head of the Abwehr, and prominent figures within the German military who opposed the regime for its behaviour that was threatening to bring Germany into a war that they believed it was not ready to fight, discussed overthrowing Hitler and the Nazi regime through a planned storming of the Reich Chancellery by forces loyal to the plot.

This article is for quizzes on Wednesday March 1st...

Rick Deckard is a fictional character and the protagonist of Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
He was portrayed by Harrison Ford in the 1982 film adaptation Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott.

Rick Deckard is a specialist plainclothes police officer with the San Francisco Police Department in the early 21st Century, who goes after "andys" as they are called. In the film adaptation (see below), he was/is with the Replicant Detection Division (i.e. Blade Runner unit) of the Los Angeles Police Department. In this version the apprehension and termination of such renegade androids (here known as replicants) is euphemistically referred to as 'retirement'. Given the nature of this role he could also be considered an officially sanctioned bounty hunter (In the original novel the bounty hunter nature of the position is made more obvious). In both novel & film versions, he begins the story as a selfish, self-involved cop who seemingly sees no value in android life. His experiences within the novel cause him to develop empathy towards androids and all living things. In the film it is implied that he had already begun to undergo this sea change prior to the start of the film, causing his original resignation some time (around May 2019) before its opening.

Deckard is married to Iran who is one of the more empathetic characters in the novel. She is able to allow herself to go into a depression and sadness with others over the state of humanity, and is able to find the empathy necessary to care for an electric toad at the end of the novel. 

This article is for quizzes on Tuesday February 28th...

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney, for the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Lennon's son Julian inspired the song with a nursery school drawing he called "Lucy—in the sky with diamonds". Shortly after the song's release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the title nouns intentionally spelled "LSD". Lennon consistently denied this, insisting the song was inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books, a claim repeatedly confirmed by Paul McCartney.
In 1974, Elton John released a cover version as a single. Recorded at the Caribou Ranch, it featured backing vocals and guitar by John Lennon under the pseudonym Dr. Winston O'Boogie (Winston being Lennon's middle name). The single topped the US Billboard pop charts for two weeks in January 1975 as well as the Canadian RPM national singles chart for four weeks spanning January and February, eventually. The B-side of the single was also a John Lennon composition, "One Day (At a Time)", from Lennon's 1973 album Mind Games. As with the A-side, Lennon appears on the B-side, playing guitar.

This article is for quizzes on Monday February 27th...

Lars Ulrich (born December 26, 1963) is a Danish drummer and one of the founding members of the American heavy metal/thrash metal band Metallica. He was born in Gentofte, Denmark to an upper-middle-class family. A tennis player in his youth (he is the son of former tennis pro Torben Ulrich), Ulrich was originally a drummer in San Francisco. He then moved to Los Angeles at age sixteen in the summer of 1980 to train in the sport of tennis. However, rather than playing tennis, he began playing the drums. After publishing an advertisement in a local Los Angeles newspaper called The Recycler, Ulrich met James Hetfield and formed Metallica.
In 1981, Ulrich discovered British heavy metal band Diamond Head. He was excited about the band's style of music after purchasing their debut album Lightning to the Nations (1980). He traveled from San Francisco to London to see the band perform live at the Woolwich Odeon. Ulrich remains a fan of Diamond Head and mixed its album The Best of Diamond Head. Upon returning to America, Ulrich placed an ad in a local newspaper looking for musicians to start a band with him. James Hetfield replied to the ad, and Metallica was formed.

Later in 1981, Ulrich met James Hetfield in Downey, California and they formed the heavy metal band Metallica. He got the name "Metallica" from a friend, Ron Quintana, who was brainstorming names for a heavy metal fanzine he was creating, and Metallica was one of the options, the other being "Metal Mania." Ulrich encouraged him to choose Metal Mania, and used the name Metallica for himself. He became known as a pioneer of fast thrash drum beats, featured on many of Metallica's early songs, such as "Metal Militia" from Kill 'Em All, "Fight Fire with Fire" from Ride the Lightning, "Battery" and "Damage Inc." from Master of Puppets and "Dyers Eve" from ...And Justice for All. He has since been considerably influential due to both the popularity of his band, as well as his drum techniques, such as the double bass drum in the song "One" (...And Justice for All) and Dyer's Eve. Since the release of Metallica, Ulrich adopted a less focused and simplified style of drumming, and reduced his kit from a 9-piece to a 7-piece.

This article is for quizzes on Thursday February 23rd...


The Patterson–Gimlin film (also known as the Patterson film or the PGF) is a famous short motion picture of an unidentified subject the filmmakers have said was a Bigfoot. The footage was shot in 1967, and has since been subjected to many attempts to authenticate or debunk it.
The footage was filmed alongside Bluff Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River, about 25 logging-road miles northwest of Orleans, California, in Humboldt County. The film site is roughly 38 miles south of Oregon and 18 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. For decades, the exact location of the site was lost, primarily because of re-growth of foliage in the streambed after the flood of 1964. It was rediscovered in 2011. It is just south of a north-running segment of the creek informally known as "the bowling alley."

Filmmakers were Roger Patterson (February 14, 1933 – January 15, 1972) and Robert "Bob" Gimlin (born October 18, 1931). Patterson died of cancer in 1972 and "maintained right to the end that the creature on the film was real." Patterson's friend, Gimlin, has always denied being involved in any part of a hoax with Patterson. Gimlin mostly avoided publicly discussing the subject from at least the early 1970s until about 2005 (except for three appearances), when he began giving interviews and appearing at Bigfoot conferences.

The film is 23.85 feet long (preceded by 76.15 feet of "horseback" footage), has 954 frames, and runs for 59.5 seconds at 16 frames per second. If the film was shot at 18 fps, as Grover Krantz believes, the event lasted 53 seconds. The date was October 20, 1967, according to the filmmakers, although some critics believe it was shot earlier.

This article is for quizzes on Wednesday February 22nd...

Georges Claude (24 September 1870 – 23 May 1960) was a French engineer and inventor. He is noted for his early work on the industrial liquefaction of air, for the invention and commercialization of neon lighting, and for a large experiment on generating energy by pumping cold seawater up from the depths. He has been considered by some to be "the Edison of France". Claude was an active collaborator with the German occupiers of France during the Second World War, for which he was imprisoned in 1945 and stripped of his honors.
Inspired by Geissler tubes and by Daniel McFarlan Moore's invention of a nitrogen-based light (the "Moore tube"), Claude developed neon tube lighting to exploit the neon that was produced as a byproduct of his air liquefaction business. These were all "glow discharge" tubes that generate light when an electric current is passed through the rarefied gas within the tube. Claude's first public demonstration of a large neon light was at the Paris Motor Show (Salon de l'Automobile et du Cycle), 3–18 December 1910. Claude's first patent filing for his technologies in France was on 7 March 1910. Claude himself wrote in 1913 that, in addition to a source of neon gas, there were two principal inventions that made neon lighting practicable. First were his methods for purifying the neon (or other inert gases such as argon). Claude developed techniques for purifying the inert gases within a completely sealed glass tube, which distinguished neon tube lighting from the Moore tubes; the latter had a device for replenishing the nitrogen or carbon dioxide gases within the tube. The second invention was ultimately crucial for the development of the Claude lighting business; it was a design for minimizing the degradation (by "sputtering") of the electrodes that transfer electric current from the external power supply to the glowing gases within the sign.

The terms "neon light" and "neon sign" are now often applied to electrical lighting incorporating sealed glass tubes filled with argon, mercury vapor, or other gases instead of neon. In 1915 a U.S. patent was issued to Claude covering the design of the electrodes for neon lights; this patent became the strongest basis for the monopoly held in the U.S. by his company, Claude Neon Lights, through the early 1930s.

In 1923, Georges Claude and his French company Claude Neon, introduced neon gas signs to the United States, by selling two to a Packard car dealership in Los Angeles. Earle C. Anthony purchased the two signs reading "Packard" for $1,250 a piece. Neon lighting quickly became a popular fixture in outdoor advertising. Visible even in daylight, people would stop and stare at the first neon signs for hours, dubbed "liquid fire."

This article is for quizzes on Tuesday February 21st...

Standard Oil Co. Inc. was an American oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world of its time. Its controversial history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly.
Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, then, in later years vertical integration; the company was an innovator in the development of the business trust. The Standard Oil trust streamlined production and logistics, lowered costs, and undercut competitors. "Trust-busting" critics accused Standard Oil of using aggressive pricing to destroy competitors and form a monopoly that threatened other businesses.

John D. Rockefeller was a founder, chairman and major shareholder. With the dissolution of the Standard Oil trust into 34 smaller companies, Rockefeller became the richest man in the world, as the initial income of these individual enterprises proved to be much bigger than that of a single larger company. Its successors such as ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron are still counted among the companies with the largest income worldwide. By 1882, his top aide was John Dustin Archbold. After 1896, Rockefeller disengaged from business to concentrate on his philanthropy, leaving Archbold in control. Other notable Standard Oil principals include Henry Flagler, developer of the Florida East Coast Railway and resort cities, and Henry H. Rogers, who built the Virginian Railway.

This article is for quizzes on Monday February 20th...

The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card depicts the Pittsburgh Pirates' Honus Wagner, a dead-ball era baseball player who is widely considered to be one of the best players of all time. The card was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company (ATC) from 1909 to 1911 as part of its T206 series. Wagner refused to allow production of his baseball card to continue, either because he did not want children to buy cigarette packs to get his card, or because he wanted more compensation from the ATC. The ATC ended production of the Wagner card and a total of only 50 to 200 cards were ever distributed to the public (exact number unknown), as compared to the "tens or hundreds of thousands" of T206 cards, over three years in sixteen brands of cigarettes, for any other player. In 1933, the card was first listed at a price value of US$50 in Jefferson Burdick's The American Card Catalog, making it the most expensive baseball card in the world at the time.
The most famous T206 Honus Wagner is the "Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner" card. The card's odd texture and shape led to speculation that it was altered. The Gretzky T206 Wagner was first sold by Alan Ray to a baseball memorabilia collector named Bill Mastro, who sold the card two years later to Jim Copeland for nearly four times the price he had originally paid. Copeland's sizable transaction revitalized interest in the sports memorabilia collection market. In 1991, Copeland sold the card to ice hockey figures Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall for $451,000. Gretzky resold the card four years later to Wal-Mart and Treat Entertainment for $500,000 for use as the top prize in a promotional contest.

The next year, a Florida postal worker won the card and auctioned it at Christie's for $640,000 to collector Michael Gidwitz. In 2000, the card was sold via Robert Edward Auctions to card collector Brian Seigel for $1.27 million. In February 2007, Seigel sold the card privately to an anonymous collector for $2.35 million. Less than six months later, the card was sold to another anonymous collector for $2.8 million. In April 2011, that anonymous purchaser was revealed to be Ken Kendrick, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks. These transactions have made the Wagner card the most valuable baseball card in history.

This article is for quizzes on Thursday February 16th...

Leo Burnett (October 21, 1891 – June 7, 1971) was an American advertising executive and the founder of Leo Burnett Company, Inc.. He was responsible for creating some of advertising's most well-known characters and campaigns of the 20th century, including Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna, the Marlboro Man, the Maytag Repairman, United's "Fly the Friendly Skies," Allstate's "Good Hands," and for garnering relationships with multinational clients such as McDonald's, Hallmark and Coca-Cola. In 1999, Burnett was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Leo Burnett was born in St. Johns, Michigan, on October 21, 1891 to Noble and Rose Clark Burnett. Noble ran a dry goods store and as a young man, Burnett worked with his father, watching Noble as he designed ads for the business. After high school, Leo went on to study journalism at the University of Michigan and received his bachelor's degree in 1914.

In 1935, Leo founded the Leo Burnett Company, Inc. in a suite at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago. Soon after, the operation moved to the 18th floor of the London Guarantee Building. Today, the agency has 9,000+ employees in over 85 offices globally.

In December 1967, nearing the end of his career, Leo Burnett delivered his famous "When To Take My Name Off The Door" speech at the agency's annual holiday gathering.

Leo Burnett used dramatic realism in his advertising, the Soft sell approach to build brand equity. Burnett believed in finding the inherent drama of products and presenting it in advertising through warmth, shared emotions and experiences. His advertising drew from heartland-rooted values using simple, strong and instinctive imagery that talked to people. He was also known for using cultural archetypes in his copy, by creating mythical creatures that represented American values. This is evident on such campaigns as Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger, Pillsbury Doughboy and more famously the Marlboro Man.

This article is for quizzes on Wednesday February 15th...

The soybean car, more recently referred to as the hemp body car, was a car built with agricultural plastic. Although the formula used to create the plasticized panels has been lost, it is conjectured that the first iteration of the body was made partially from soybeans and hemp. The body was lighter and therefore more fuel efficient than a normal metal body. It was made in Dearborn, Michigan, through the work of scientist/botanist George Washington Carver and was introduced to public view on August 13, 1941. It was made, in part, as a hedge against the rationing of steel during World War II. It was designed to run on hemp fuel.
Henry Ford first put Eugene Turenne Gregorie of his design department in charge of manufacturing. Ultimately he was not satisfied with the proposed project, and gave the project to the Soybean Laboratory in Greenfield Village. The person in charge there was Lowell Overly, who had a background in tool and die design. The finished prototype was exhibited in 1941 at the Dearborn Days festival in Dearborn, Michigan. It was also shown at the Michigan State Fair Grounds the same year.

Because of World War II all US automobile production was curtailed considerably, and the plastic car experiment basically came to a halt. By the end of the war the plastic car idea went into oblivion.

According to Lowell Overly, the prototype car was destroyed by Bob Gregorie.

Others argue that Ford invested millions of dollars into research to develop the plastic car to no avail.

He proclaimed he would "grow automobiles from the soil" — however it never happened, even though he had over 12,000 acres of soybeans for experimentation. Some sources even say the Soybean Car wasn't made from soybeans at all — but of phenolic plastic, an extract of coal tar. One newspaper even reports that all of Ford's research only provided whipped cream as a final product.

This article is for quizzes on Tuesday February 14th...

In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupido, meaning "desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the war god Mars. He is also known in Latin as Amor ("Love"). His Greek counterpart is Eros.
Although Eros is generally portrayed as a slender winged youth in Classical Greek art, during the Hellenistic period he was increasingly portrayed as a chubby boy. During this time, his iconography acquired the bow and arrow that represent his source of power: a person, or even a deity, who is shot by Cupid's arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire. In myths, Cupid is a minor character who serves mostly to set the plot in motion. He is a main character only in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, when wounded by his own weapons he experiences the ordeal of love. Although other extended stories are not told about him, his tradition is rich in poetic themes and visual scenarios, such as "Love conquers all" and the retaliatory punishment or torture of Cupid.

In art, Cupid often appears in multiples as the Amores, or amorini in the later terminology of art history, the equivalent of the Greek erotes. Cupids are a frequent motif of both Roman art and later Western art of the classical tradition. In the 15th century, the iconography of Cupid starts to become indistinguishable from the putto.

Cupid continued to be a popular figure in the Middle Ages, when under Christian influence he often had a dual nature as Heavenly and Earthly love. In the Renaissance, a renewed interest in classical philosophy endowed him with complex allegorical meanings. In contemporary popular culture, Cupid is shown drawing his bow to inspire romantic love, often as an icon of Valentine's Day.