1960 – US Olympic Ice Hockey Team beats USSR 3-2 en route to gold medal.
1963 – Mickey Mantle of NY Yankees signs a baseball contract worth $100,000.
1964 – The government of Italy asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over.
1973 – White Sox slugger Dick Allen signs 3-year $750,000 contract.
1992 – Tiger Woods, 16, becomes youngest PGA golfer in 35 years.
Today in History
February 27, 2015 by
Today In History
January 27, 2014 by
1785 – 1st US state university chartered, Athens Georgia
1823 – President Monroe appoints 1st US ambassadors to South America
1894 – 1st college basketball game, U of Chicago beats Chicago YMCA 19-11
1926 – 1st public demonstration of television, John Logie Baird, London
1967 – Beatles sign a 9 year worldwide contract with EMI records
Greatest Basketball Players of All Time
March 29, 2013 by
If you’ve ever watching a gripping basketball game played at the highest levels of the game, then you know the unique brand of athleticism that a truly great basketball player possesses. Read on to learn about five of the very best players to ever hit a basketball court:
Michael Jordan
Many basketball fans and sports experts consider Jordan to embody the peak of human capabilities when it comes to the sport of basketball. His career accomplishments are dazzling. An inductee of the Basketball Hall of Fame, he was a 14-time NBA All-Star, a member of six NBA championship teams, and a five-time NBA MVP, and he holds the all-time record for the most points per game in NBA history. At the height of his game, he was also a hugely popular figure for his charisma and general sportsmanship.
Magic Johnson
This phenomenal Los Angeles Lakers player is one of the most famous figures in basketball history, known for his dazzling versatility on the court. Sports experts tout Johnson’s ability to play every position with consummate skill and also his talent for generating a positive team spirit. He was a 12-time NBA All-Star, a three-time NBA MVP, a member of five NBA championship teams, and holds the all-time record for most assists per game in NBA history.
Bill Russell
Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics was widely revered for his many skills on the court, and especially for his virtuosic abilities when it came to defensive positions. He was considered the kind of athlete who made everyone around him a better player. Russell was the member of 11 NBA Championship teams, was a 12-time NBA All-Star, holds the record for having the second highest number of rebounds in all of NBA history, and has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Shaquille O’Neal
Shaquille O’Neal is known for his size and remarkable agility, and widely considered one of the best centers that professional basketball has ever seen. He’s known for innovating moves like the “drop step,” an effective offensive move designed to help him achieve slam dunks, and he became celebrated for his accuracy when it came to dunking. O’Neal was a member of four NBA Championship teams, was a 15-time NBA All-Star, one-time NBA MVP, and three-time NBA All-Defensive Team selection.
Wilt Chamberlain
Chamberlain is celebrated for his phenomenal ability to consistently do one of the most important things in the game of basketball – score points. He played the center position and is considered by many sports fans, experts, and fellow players to be one of the greatest and most dominant players in NBA history. His statistics and accomplishments are the stuff of legend. He was a 13-time NBA All-Star, four-time NBA MVP, two-time NBA All-Defensive Team selection, and he has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Most Important Philosophers of All Time
March 8, 2013 by
Philosophy is, in a nutshell, the study of the human experience – how we understand and react to the world. There have been a number of important thinkers who developed the discipline, but these five philosophers are the ones that you need to know.
Plato
The founder of the first school of higher education in the Western world, Plato’s teachings inspired virtually every future thinker in Western philosophy. His theories of forms, immaterial abstractions that possess the true nature of their material counterparts, is vital for study of philosophy.
Aristotle
Without Aristotle’s development of written systems to analyze and criticize, the development of philosophy would have been very different. His teachings covered an incredibly broad spectrum of subjects.
Rene Descartes
Widely regarded as the father of modern philosophy, Descartes was not only a great thinker who advanced the concept of dualism, he also developed Cartesian geometry, one of the most important mathematical breakthroughs of the 17th century.
Confucius
The central thinker of Eastern philosophy, Master Kong Qiu, who we know as Confucius, was born in 551 BC and helped make the empires of China some of the most robust on Earth. His systems of morals and ethics paralleled and even surpassed the ones being developed in Greece at the same time.
John Locke
Regarded as the “Father of Liberalism,” philosopher John Locke brought concepts of humanism and universal freedom into the arena of thought. He was a huge influence on the framers of the Constitution and the first Presidents of the United States.
Who Are The Greatest Ever NASCAR Drivers?
December 21, 2012 by
People who aren’t NASCAR fans don’t understand what the big deal is about driving around in a circle for a few hours, but the difference between a good driver and a great one is staggering. If you’d like to learn more, look into the careers of these five drivers:
Bill Elliott
The first NASCAR driver to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, Elliott was one of the most dominant wheelmen of the 1980s, being named the group’s Most Popular Driver a staggering 16 times and winning two Daytona 500 races and a NASCAR championship.
Darrell Waltrip
When you’re named after the scariest shark to ever hit the silver screen, you’d better have aggression in spades. Waltrip was one of the most outspoken drivers in the 1980s, helping create storylines that drew new fans into the racetrack. He also excelled behind the wheel, bringing home 84 wins throughout his career.
Jeff Gordon
One of the faces of the second generation of NASCAR drivers, Gordon’s good looks and confident personality helped make him a breakthrough star in the tail end of the 1990s. His four Brickyard 400 victories put him a class apart from every other driver in the sport today.
Richard Petty
With a total of over 200 wins in his NASCAR career, “The King” is by far the most successful driver to ever get behind the wheel. Seven NASCAR championships, an equal number of Daytona 500 victories, and both a father and a son in the business earn him a spot.
Dale Earnhardt Sr.
“The Intimidator” was exactly that – behind the wheel of his car, nobody would stand in his way. Starting his career in 1979, Earnhardt became one of the sport’s most notorious figures, and his passing in 2001 was a tearful moment for all race fans.
Five of History’s Most Eccentric Artists
November 30, 2012 by
A high degree of creativity has frequently been known to bring with it an ample dose of eccentricity. History is full of artists and other extremely innovative thinkers whose behavior fell outside the realm of the status quo. Read on to learn about some of the most idiosyncratic artistic figures that ever existed:
Vincent Van Gogh, 1853 – 1890
Van Gogh was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose originality and brilliance made a huge impact on the visual arts. His eccentricities displayed themselves from an early age. He was unable to hold a job due to his wild emotional swerves and unusual behavior, and his personal life was a roller coaster as well – at one point, he stuck his hand in a flaming lamp in order to get the attention of a woman who had rejected his marriage proposal. His most iconic and famous act of eccentricity is an incident in which he cut off part of his ear.
Andy Warhol, 1928 – 1987
Andy Warhol was a major figure in the American pop art movement, creating works that explored the interactions between advertisement, capitalism, celebrity culture, and artistic expression. His public persona was noted for its unpredictability and eccentricity, and this way of acting (behavior focused on challenging social norms) added to his cache as an artist.
Salvador Dali, 1904 – 1989
Salvador Dali was a Spanish surrealist painter whose highly innovative, imaginative, and vivid work continues to yield a huge impact on the visual arts today. He was famous for living entirely on his own terms, never concerned about fitting into the norms of mainstream society. He wore a dramatic fake mustache, kept an exotic ocelot as a pet, donned elaborate capes and walking ticks, and referred to himself in the third person during interviews, among many other eccentric tendencies.
Henry Darger, 1892 – 1973
Henry Darger was an American writer and artist who became famous after death when his 15, 145 page manuscript was found, along with hundreds of drawings and paintings illustrating the book. He has become celebrated as a symbol of the “Outsider Artist” in American culture – that is, an artist who has not been formally trained and does not have any involvement with the art world. Darger lived a reclusive and eccentric existence as a menial worker at a hospital, befriending very few people and spending his spare time compulsively collecting bits of trash.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo was a celebrated Italian painter and sculptor during the Renaissance period. His stunningly ingenious works and polymathic mind made him a major artistic figure of his time and long afterwards. He was also well known for his personality quirks and unusual tics – for example, there are many stories of him having temper flare-ups and screaming at statues. Michelangelo also distributed lifestyle eccentricities, living in squalor like a pauper despite his financial successes as an artist. His assistants claimed that he often slept with his shoes up and rarely changed his clothes.
Intriguing Facts About Game Theory
November 23, 2012 by
Social scientists have worked for generations on ways to model and understand human behavior. One of the most intriguing branches of this kind of sociology is game theory, which uses basic principles of competition to try to explain what motivates people. Here are some of the field's most interesting discoveries:
The games in game theory aren’t like games you play with the family – they’re more like mathematical models of behavior. Some of the most famous include the “normal form game,” which is expressed in a matrix of boxes that illustrate player’s choices, as well as the “centipede game,” used to examine situations where players can risk increasing amounts of a reward or lose it all.
Game theory enjoyed a boost of popularity during the 1950s, as analysis of the classic “prisoner’s dilemma” puzzle tied in with psychology to model human beings' motives for behaving the ways they do.
One of the disciplines that uses game theory most extensively is economics. Because most economic transactions can be judged as two parties wishing to obtain the greatest reward for the lowest risk, using game theory models to understand their behaviors is very effective. The key model for economic studies is the Nash equilibrium, which represents the best possible response from all players. You might have heard the name Nash in the recent film A Beautiful Mind.
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