Daily Dispatch

Four Weird and Oz-Mazing ‘Oz’ Facts

Oz: the Great and Powerful crashes into movies theaters today harder than Dorothy’s farmhouse killed a witch. Brush up on your Oz knowledge before you go see the movie.

Wizard of Oz• Published in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the first Oz book, and the basis for the classic 1939 film, but it’s not the first thing author L. Frank Baum ever published. Decades earlier, he was a chicken farmer, specializing in Hamburgs, a rare German breed. In 1886, Baum published a chicken raising guide called The Book of the Hamburgs: A Brief Treatise Upon the Mating, Rearing, and Management of the Different Varieties of Hamburgs. (The Oz novels are much more entertaining.)

RIP Alvin Lee

Reuters:

British blues-rock guitarist Alvin Lee, who was best known for his performance with rock band Ten Years After at Woodstock in 1969, died on Wednesday at age 68, his family said.

“With great sadness we have to announce that Alvin unexpectedly passed away early this morning after unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure,” the family said in a statement on the singer’s official website.

Ten Years After—”Spoonful”:

Lost TV Pilots & The Nat King Cole Show

Our Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader TUNES INTO TV, which had been a reader request for many years, has turned out to be a darn big hit. An excerpt from a review over at Amazon:

Some great articles here, there are brief histories on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS. Inventors such as Smirnoff and Farnsworth are given their due, and since modern day tv wouldn’t be where it is without them, it’s wonderful that they’re mentioned.

I really enjoyed their piece about the 1968 showing of Heidi, and the uproar it caused. I would recommend this book, for any up and coming tv historians who need to get a quick overview of the medium. It helped refresh my memory, and introduced me to a few stories I didn’t know about.

JThree
Williston North Dakota

Why thank you, JThree, much obliged.

We thought you might like a look at what’s inside this book, so here are two excerpts for your reading pleasure.

First, some TV pilots you may not have heard about.

A Kick-in-the-Pants Note From a Fan

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Via private message on FaceBook, yesterday:

Oof, Carrie C., what a story. Sad—but with a happy ending! Hooray! It is so thoughtful of you to take the time to send us that note. We are truly touched. Thank you more than we can say – truly.

P.S. We asked Carrie exactly how she uses the Kindle to accommodate her impaired vision. We thought we’d pass it on in case it can help anybody else out there:

An Odd Holiday: National Public Sleeping Day

pillows for national sleeping dayGrab your pillows: National Public Sleeping Day is just around the corner, on February 28th. How to celebrate: take a nap in public. That’s it. The dubious, obscure holiday dates all the way back to 2011, and ever since bloggers and news organizations have used it to discuss sleep health issues, or use it as an excuse to run a cheeky photo of their boss napping while on the clock.

Meteorite Hits Frozen Lake? And a Joke

The Guardian has a great – and large – collection of videos, photos, and reports from news media and just regular folks on the wild meteor event that occurred in Russia last night. Including this shot:

Space.com says it was the largest meteor event in 100 years. The blast: it was more powrful than that produced by the nuclear weapon detonated by North Korea the other day. (Wow!)

NASA says, based on very preliminary data, the meteor was almost 50 feet in circumfrence:

Based on the duration of the event, it was a very shallow entry. It was larger than the meteor over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009. Measurements are still coming in, and a more precise measure of the energy may be available later. The size of the object before hitting the atmosphere was about 49 feet (15 meters) and had a mass of about 7,000 tons.

The meteor, which was about one-third the diameter of asteroid 2012 DA14, was brighter than the sun. Its trail was visible for about 30 seconds, so it was a grazing impact through the atmosphere.

But here’s what we want to note:

Gill Communication? 3 Weird Fishing Techniques

fishing techniques
Some guy with a really BIG fish.

Fishing is definitely not for the impatient, especially during winter. Have you ever tried ice fishing? It’s fun…if you enjoy sitting in a frosty shack while waiting for a nibble that may never come. Naturally, many fishermen have tried to take the tedium out of angling. The following three fishing techniques will certainly increase your chances of a big catch.

Monopoly “Iron” Token Out, “Cat” In

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Wow – hadn’t even heard they were doing this! We would have started a “toilet” token movement!

The Monopoly iron is going off to that giant linen closet in the sky.

The token, a staple of the Hasbro board game since the 1930s, is being retired after only garnering 8% of fan votes in a “Save Your Token” campaign. The Scottie dog was the clear choice for fans and game players from 185 countries, getting 29% of the vote.

While the iron leaves the game, a new cat will take its place passing “GO!” and collecting $200 going forward. The feline piece conquered its own competition in a separate vote on theMonopoly Facebook page, winning over four other proposed tokens — a toy robot, guitar, helicopter and diamond ring — with 31%.

Monopoly extras:

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is the Bravest Man in the World

Ranulph FiennesSo you’ve probably never heard of Ranulph Fiennes. No, he’s not the father of actor Ralph Fiennes (they’re actually third cousins). All you need to know about him is that he’s one of the most fearless—and curious—people on Earth. It’s even official. In the 1980s, Guinness World Records named the British writer/adventurer/knight/politician “The World’s Greatest Living Explorer” by the Guinness Book of World Records. Now nearly 70, Fiennes continues to embark on incredibly dangerous expeditions. His many adventures could easily fill a dozen biographies, but here are a choice few.

“George Clooney Paid Your Bill”

From the Huffington Post:

As the customer finished his meal at Grill Royal restaurant and went to pay, he learned the $134.66 bill had been covered, UPI reported.

The waiter told him George Clooney was behind the gesture. The actor thought he and his friends, who were seated at the next table, had disturbed the man.

“That’s not true at all,” the man told Bild newspaper. “They had behaved in a very cultivated manner. I was stunned.”

Uncle John Says:

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