"Lucy In The Sky" Girl Died This Year

If you are a Beatles fan or even if you are not you may be familiar with it. "Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds" is a song that appears on the Beatles most renowned album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band." It came out in 1967 at the height of the Psychedelic rock craze of the late 1960's. The inspiration for the song came from a 3 year old girl named Lucy Vodden who was a friend of John's young son Julian at school. If you don't know the story it goes like this: Julian came home from school one day with a painting he had done and was eager to show it to his father. John looked at it and said "It's beautiful Julian, what do you call it?" Then Julian said "It's a picture of my friend Lucy from school flying through the sky with diamonds on." John immediately got sparked with an idea and went off and wrote the song. The inspiration for the song has been quite happy over the decades to remain out of the spotlight about it and has kept a low profile and never really sought any attention. Her name was Lucy O'Donnell until 1996 when she married her childhood sweetheart and became Lucy Vodden. She only admitted to being the inspiration for the song in a BBC interview in 2007 for the first time. She also expressed a little bit of an embarrassment about the song and the drug references that are always attached to it. The song was banned on British radio when it came out because the BBC claimed it was about LSD. The Beatles denied this at first but Paul McCartney in 2004 basically admitted that the drug reference was "...Pretty obvious." Lucy Vodden for the last several years of her life had been living with the disease known as Lupus. It is a tissue disease that attacks the body's cells and causes inflammation and can often be debilitating and painful during particularly severe flare ups. In late September while on vacation with her husband she developed a complicating infection and was rushed to the hospital. She died on September 22, 2009 at the age of 46. Julian Lennon has announced that he will release a song in December with all the proceeds going to support the work of the Lupus Foundation.

Poker And The Presidents

There are some who have noticed a similarity between the game of poker and the presidency. That both of these "games" involve high stakes in some cases, a little bit of luck, the ability to successfully bluff your opponent, having the confidence to double down when you feel you have the advantage, knowing when to hold em and knowing when to fold em, and finally when you have done all that you can to just let the chips fall where they may. Some of our nations Commander's in Chief have been known to be better at the game than others. President Obama is known to engage in a hand of poker from time to time and did so often it is reported when he was in the Senate with many of his fellow Senators. He has sometimes used it as a way of breaking the ice with new colleagues and people he meets. Those who have engaged in the game with him state that he loves to play but just for fun. He is averse to playing for high stakes or making very large wagers and just likes to use the game as a way to relax with some friends and extend his political contacts and play for small pots so that there is no real pressure. Some other former presidents who fall into this category are Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., and Harry Truman. There are some former presidents who have had more of an interest in the high stakes nature of the game and were willing to take some chances to make some real money. President Eisenhower got interested in the game early in life and was already a high stakes poker player by the time he got to West Point as a young cadet. He was successful enough at it that he won himself enough money to buy his girlfriend Mamie Dowd an engagement ring when they were courting and paid for all of his uniforms at the academy. The best presidential poker player by far however was Richard Nixon. While in the Navy during World War 2 Nixon actually won a total of over $8000. It was enough money for him to finance his first run for Congress after he left the service, which he won.

Smart Bullets Coming Soon To An Army Near You

There is nothing like having an advantage over an enemy in war and smart bullets may be the ultimate advantage. The military is working on gaining such an edge with new technologies that will give future armies the ability to fight with smart bullets. Also known as EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance) They are bullets that when fired will be able to sense air currents and zero in on moving targets by adjusting their positions in mid flight to stay on course to hit a target. Some types will be laser guided. What this will mean is that soldiers will be able to fire their weapons without having to visually sight their targets before firing. They will be able to stay physically out of harms way and shoot from around corners and from behind hills and buildings and the smart bullets will still be able to hit their targets. The technology is not unlike the current Predator drones that the military is utilizing now in Afghanistan which are completely computer driven and unmanned and are assigned a target and then use GPS technology to fly to and zero in on a target and strike it. Some of these technologies have small computers inside which are able to send and receive data to constantly update their information especially if they are fired at moving targets and need to adjust in order to hit them. Some of the research is being conducted at the University of Florida in Gainesville and is being funded by Military contractor Lockheed Martin.

Search For Original Darwin Notebook Goes On

November 24th, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the release of Charles Robert Darwin's controversial book about evolution "On The Origin Of Species." It first appeared on this date in 1859 and has been at the center of a controversy about creationism and evolution ever since. When Darwin first set out as a young man of 22 on his trip to the Galapagos Islands on board the H.M.S. Beagle in 1831 he took with him and ended up filling up a total of 15 notebooks worth of information and observations that he made while there about the wildlife forms in nature that he observed. What he wrote in these books changed the way human beings viewed the world. All 15 books were maintained at Darwin' s home named Down House in a section of southern England known as Kent. In the 1960's the books which were all on display there were microfilmed. By the early 1980's someone had noticed that one of the books about The Galapagos Islands was missing. It is suspected that someone stole it. The maintainers of Down House would not mind having it back and have been asking the public for some help in finding it. They say the book is notebook sized, square, bound in a red leather cover, and has a gold clasp. On the cover in Darwin's own handwriting are the words Galapagos and Lima.

Senator Robert Byrd Nears 57th Year In Congress

We all know that nothing lasts forever but West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd is sure making a real run at trying to dis-prove it. On November 18th, 2009 he served his 20,744th day in Congress which broke the record for longest service. He has now attended over 18,500 Senate roll calls. Has been elected to the Senate 9 times since 1958 and that was after he had served 6 years in the House Of Representatives beginning in 1953. He has now served under 11 presidents. There have been only 44 to date. Born on November 20, 1917 with the original name of Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr. His mother died one year later a victim of the Flu Pandemic of 1918. He was handed over as a child to an aunt and uncle who renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd and raised him. He has been a democrat all his life but that is not to say that he has been liberal all that time, far from it. He especially seemed conflicted about the issue of race at times in his life. He joined the KKK in 1942 at the age of 24 and held two titles. One was Klegle, which is a recruiter, and the other was as an Exalted Cyclops which was a title he was elected to by the other members. A fierce southern racist by this time he wrote in 1944 "...I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side..." during World War Two. He quit the KKK in 1952 citing a dis-interest in the cause just before his election to the House for the first time. In 1965 he voted against the Voting Rights Act (which banned discriminatory practices against blacks with regard to voting) but voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (which banned discriminatory practices with regard to housing among other things based on race, religion, etc.) He supported The War In Vietnam in the 1960's but opposed the War In Iraq in 2003. Needless to say his health in recent years has been a bit concerning. Frequent trips to the hospital (the latest in May 2009 for what was described as "An Infection") have caused many to wonder about his fitness for service. He has at times appeared sluggish and confused on the floor of the Senate and has often been brought to the Senate floor in a wheelchair so that he could attend votes. On November 20, 2009 he will turn 92. On January 3, 2010 he is set to complete his 57th consecutive year of service.

Postscript -- Robert Byrd Died on June 28th, 2010 at age 92.

The Rise And Fall Of The Berlin Wall

On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall the event is being marked everywhere it seems. It was a watershed moment which was overdue. The first signs of the wall were seen on August 15th, 1961. It was at first a simple barbed wire fence that was erected on the orders of Soviet General Secretary Nikita Kruschev as a response to the increasing number of East Germans who were fleeing to West Germany and causing embarrassment to the Soviets internationally. During the construction anything that was in the path of the wall was removed including houses, A church, and a cemetery. Over the years the wall grew to become a double wall actually. It was two parallel walls that ran side by side with a "no mans land" or "Death Zone" in between them. The final length of the wall was 155 kilometers which is about 100 miles. The space in between the two walls was fitted with all kinds of traps designed to prevent anyone from successfully making it across. The ground was fitted with spike strips that would pierce a persons feet or shoes if he walked or ran on them. This area was nicknamed "Stalin's Lawn." The dirt in the "Death Zone" was constantly raked and kept soft in order that a person's footprints would be left behind if anyone had been there. The Wall itself had alarm systems that would quickly alert the armed guards in their watchtowers of anyone trying to get across. There were 186 total watchtowers that had 6 guards each posted. The guards had orders to shoot to kill. There were even barriers to prevent motor vehicles from getting through. At certain points the zone was guarded by dogs and minefields that were triggered by trip wires that would also in certain sections set off auto-fire devices or "spring guns" that would shoot out shrapnel in all directions. The wall itself had doors every so many feet that the guards used to inspect the wall both from the inside and outside for maintenance purposes. These doors each had two separate locks that required two separate keys from two different guards in order to open them. It is estimated that several hundred individuals lost their lives between 1961 and 1989 trying to breech the wall. Over 10,000 were caught and prosecuted by the East Germans for attempting to flee. The wall was finally taken down by a protest that grew out of control on November 9th, 1989. Protesters began hacking at the wall with sledge hammers and picks and knocking pieces of the wall off. Almost immediately President Ronald Reagan was given the bulk of the credit for causing this to happen. He gave a somewhat famous speech in 1987 in which he urged then Soviet General Secretary Mikail Gorbachev to "...Tear Down This Wall." While he is rightly deserving of some of the credit he is not however deserving of all of it. More credit in fact belongs to Gorbachev who deliberately did nothing to squelch the rising protest which led to the collapse of the wall. He could have easily stopped it but chose not to. The end of the Berlin Wall opened up the possibility for East Germany and West Germany to be united again as one country. That is exactly what happened almost one year later on October 3rd, 1990.

Winningest Teams In Sports History

In sports it is as Vince Lombardi once said: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." With the Yankees winning their latest title the other day it got me to wondering just who are the most successful teams in the history of their own sports. As it turns out the list contains the teams that you would figure it would contain. As far as baseball goes The Yankees are by far at the top of the list. With their win against the Phillies they captured their 27th title in the history of the team on November 4th, 2009. They are now officially 27 for 40 in terms of the number of World Series wins relative to the total number of Appearances in the fall classic. They have won the most by far but they have lost the most by far as well with 13 total World Series defeats. An interesting thing to note here is that by the time The Yankees won their first World Series in 1923 The Boston Red Sox had already won 5 including the first one in 1903.
In Hockey for the most part The Montreal Canadiens have been to their sport what the Yankees are to baseball but not so much lately. The Canadiens have won a total of 24 titles in 34 appearances between the years of 1916 to 1993. They have won nothing since.
Basketball has what turns out to be the most competitive rivalry going in sports. It is between the Boston Celtics and the L.A. Lakers respectively. The Celtics have won a total of 17 NBA titles in 20 appearances in the finals over the years. The Lakers, with their win last year raised their total to 15 titles in 28 appearances. With both teams still being very competitive this one is still going strong so stay tuned.
As far as Football goes it's a little complicated. If you go by the total number of Super Bowl wins then it would be The Pittsburgh Steelers with 6 including the one they won this year. If you go by the total number of NFL titles including before the Super Bowl existed then it would be The Green Bay Packers with 12 total titles. They have won 9 NFL titles and 3 Super Bowls. They have however only won once since 1967.