Friday Blog

December 6 is not only the birthday of my twin sisters Jan and Jody but is also the 70th birthday of the extremely unique comedian, Steven Wright. Although Jody and Jan can be very funny, I’m going to focus today on Monsieur Wright.  Steven got his start along with some other great comedians in the early 1980s at the Ding Ho Chinese Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Ding was an unlikely venue for comedy to thrive, but it became a hot spot for people who wanted a few laughs. Within just a few years the Ding launched the careers of Lenny Clarke, Jimmy Tingle, Bobcat Goldthwait, Denis Leary, Paula Poundstone and Steve Sweeney. In 1982, a producer for the Johhny Carson discovered Steven Wright at The Ding and booked him for the Tonight Show. Carson was absolutely floored by Wright’s nonsensical one-liners delivered in his classic deadpan style. Steven had many reengagements on the Tonight Show before he moved on to acting gigs, production ventures and God knows what else. Here are some of Steven’s classic observations: I intend to live forever – so far, so good. Change is inevitable except from vending machines. If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving isn’t for you.  The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.  Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.  I went to a restaurant that serves “breakfast at any time. So, I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks. I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder. I almost had a psychic girlfriend, but she left me before we met. Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it’s the scenic route. How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink? The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it. If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong? Since light travels faster than sound, isn’t that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak? Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks? When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody’s perfect, so I stopped practicing. What happens if you get scared half to death twice? There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.” Whose cruel idea was it for the word “lisp” to have an “s” in it? If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be? What’s another word for Thesaurus?” I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums. I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second. OK, so what’s the speed of dark. A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths. I got on this chairlift with this guy I didn’t know. We went halfway up the mountain without saying a word. Then he turned to me and said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve gone skiing in ten years.” I said, “Why did you take such a long time off?” He said, “I was in prison. Want to know why?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “I pushed a total stranger off a Ferris wheel.”    Have a great weekend. My book, “Get Smarter-Be Amazed” includes more words of wisdom from Steven Wright as well as George Carlin, Henny Youngman, Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, Groucho Marx and others. Go to www.tedcurtinstories.com to read reviews and connect to online booksellers. It’s a wonderful gift that will be embraced by its recipients.

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Once again as a public service I am providing useless factoids for the Thanksgiving table to keep the discussions uncontroversial. So, when you start hearing words like Trump or Zohran you can jump in and say “I read this interesting tidbit, the other day” The First Thanksgiving The Mayflower covered the 2750 journey from Southampton England to Plymouth at the tortuously slow speed of 2 MPH. The 101 passengers lived on the ship’s cramped 2,000 square foot/ 5.5-foot-high lower deck. The Pilgrims might have been Randy Newman’s inspiration for his 1970s hit, “Short People”. Over half of the voyage’s survivors died during the harsh 1620/1621 winter. In the Spring, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe met the surviving Pilgrims, most of whom were suffering from malnutrition. Squanto not only taught the settlers how to cultivate corn but also helped the Pilgrims forge an alliance with the Wampanoag tribe. As a sign of gratitude, the settlers invited the Native Americans to a three-day gathering that included hunting and fishing events.  Law of Compound Lineage  There are an estimated 35 million people worldwide who descended from the 101 Pilgrims. Mayflower scions include patricians like John Adams, Franklin Roosevelt and the two Presidents Bush. A less likely suspect is Clint Eastwood who is a descendant of Governor William Bradford. Alan Shephard, the first American in space, traced his roots to Richard Warren, one of the first settlers to encounter the local tribesmen. Norma Jeane Mortenson AKA Marilyn Monroe was a descendant of John Alden- yes that guy from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish”.  Random Food Facts The 736 million pounds of turkey that Americans eat on Thanksgiving approximates the weight of the Empire State Building. If you are feeling sluggish after finally pushing away from the table don’t blame the turkey. The tryptophan doesn’t really have an effect because it is countered by all the other amino acids contained in the meal. If you’re tired, it’s likely from all the preparation, socializing, and adult beverages Mageirocophobia is the fear of cooking  Lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables  Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth. The teabag was accidently invented by Thomas Sullivan in New York City in 1908. Efficiency-minded Americans quickly adopted the teabag, but they were not sold in Britain until the 1950s.  A can of tuna fish usually has a sell- by- date of 3 to 5 years but experts claim it will last much longer. They also claim a nine-year-old can shouldn’t go bad or even taste worse than one that is four years old. On the other hand, I suggest you occasionally check the sell-by-date on your mayonnaise jar.  If you put a can of Diet Coke in water, it will float but regular Coke will sink. Since the drinks’ formulas are a trade secret, we can only speculate that sugar causes the regular Coke to sink. Non-Food Trivia The cigarette lighter was invented in 1823  The match was invented three years later The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting. (I guess the males are too busy combing their manes) Amazing but ApparentlyTrue If you shuffle a pack of cards, it’s likely that the exact order has never existed before in the history of the universe. Cassandra Lee at McGill University explains “There are somewhere in the range of 8 x 1,067 ways to sort a deck of cards. To put that in perspective, even if someone could rearrange a deck of cards every second of the universe’s total existence, the universe would end before they would get even one billionth of the way to finding a repeat.” If that’s too much math to absorb, Ms. Lee has a more succinct explanation: “There are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than there are atoms on the earth.” Have a very Happy Thanksgiving. If you want an easy Christmas or Chanukah gift that will be greatly appreciated, order “Get Smarter-Be Amazed”. Go to www.tedcurtinstories.com for direct links to Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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November 7 marks the anniversary of the birth of Madame Marie Curie. Born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw in 1867, Maria graduated from high school at age fifteen but was denied admittance to Polish universities because of her gender. In 1891, Maria moved to Paris. After working as a governess, Mariia changed her name to the more French sounding, Marie and enrolled at The Sorbonne.  After earning top honors, she was awarded a scholarship. Having little money, Marie lived on bread, butter and tea and she was constantly fainting due to hunger.  Her poor eating habits and fainting episodes continued even after she became famous.   In 1895, Marie married fellow scientist Pierre Curie and the two began studies of the properties of uranium. The duo did not have a well-equipped laboratory but rather, a converted shed that was exposed to the elements. In 1898, in their dingy laboratory, Marie theorized that there must be another element causing uranium to be highly radioactive. The Curies extracted a black powder that was 330 times more radioactive than Uranium. Marie named the element Polonium in honor of her homeland. The couple soon became convinced that there was yet another substance that contributed to high levels of radioactivity.  After further experimentation, they discovered radium. These breakthroughs radically changed the understanding of the nature of matter and established the foundations of radioactivity. Marie coined the term “radioactivity” to describe the ability of certain elements to emit radiation without the need for an external source.  Their findings laid the foundation for the development of nuclear physics and the understanding of atomic structure. The Curies received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903. A woman had never won the prize before, and the Nobel committee only agreed to honor Marie because her husband insisted. Three years later, Pierre suffered a gruesome death, after falling under the wheels of a horse drawn wagon. Marie refused a pension offered by the government but did accept The Sorbonne’s offer to take Pierre’s faculty position, thereby becoming the first woman professor at the university. In 1911, Marie was publicly shamed for carrying on a love affair with a fellow scientist and she fell into a deep depression. Albert Einstein who had met Marie at a scientific conference sent a letter of encouragement to her, writing “I have come to admire your intellect, your drive, and your honesty, and I consider myself lucky to have made your personal acquaintance”. World War I After observing the carnage on World War I battlefields, Marie designed mobile radiography units by installing Xray machines into cars. Twenty mobile units, all operated by women were deployed and 200 additional X-Ray machines were installed in field hospitals. It is estimated that one million lives were saved by this initiative. Marie also tried to sell her Nobel Prize and gold medals to help the war effort, but the French National Bank declined her offer. Radioactivity The Curies were driven by scientific advancement rather than money.  Accordingly, they did not patent the radium-isolation process.  Radium became such a hot commodity for traders and industrialists that the cost of a single gram grew to $100,000, preventing the Curies from buying the material for additional research. Still, Marie investigated the use of radiation to treat cancerous tumors. She and her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie laid the foundation for modern radiation therapy. They became the only mother-daughter pair to hold Nobel Prizes when Irene won the chemistry prize in 1935.  Pierre and Marie both died unaware that radioactive elements were damaging to their health. Their scientific papers are still radioactively contaminated and are preserved in lead-lined boxes. Marie actually kept a radium sample at her bedside as a nightlight.  Marie Curie, the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different sciences (Physics and Chemistry) died at the age of 67 from aplastic anemia caused by her prolonged exposure to radiation.  Einstein observed “she probably was the only person whom fame and money could not corrupt”. Have a great weekend. For a great holiday gift, check out my book, “Get Smarter-Be Amazed”. Go to www.tedcurtinstories.com for direct links to Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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“The Conqueror”, a big screen epic produced by Howard Hughes was released in 1957. It is considered one of the worst movies ever made, carrying a fantastically low IMDB rating of 3.4 on a 10-point scale.  What truly separates the movie from all others is that it was filmed in a location riddled with high levels of nuclear contamination. The unfortunate choice of locations may have resulted in the cancer deaths of 92 of the 220 people who worked on the set including Hollywood icons John Wayne and Susan Hayward.  Making a Bomb No, this paragraph isn’t about the construction of an atomic bomb but rather the crafting of a comically horrible movie. It was the story of a turbulent love affair between a Mongol warrior chief and the daughter of his worst enemy. The screenplay was written with Marlon Brando in mind for the lead. When John Wayne visited Dick Powell who had been assigned to direct “The Conqueror”, Powell expressed misgivings about the script. However, Wayne became enthralled with the story and despite Powell’s protestations said he wanted the lead role. Powell later said, “Who am I to turn down John Wayne?”. Years later, Wayne mused that the moral of the film was “not to make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you’re not suited for.” The Shooting  Hughes chose to film in St. George, Utah because its rustic scenery was thought to resemble Mongolia. St George was just over 100 miles downwind from the U.S. Military Nuclear Testing Site where eleven atomic bombs were exploded above ground in 1956. The average payload was between 30 to 45 kilotons, far more than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima. By the early 1950s it was known that nuclear blasts produce massive amounts of highly radioactive fallout. However, authorities labeled the area as safe even though abnormal levels of radiation had been detected. So, the show went on and when on-location filming wrapped up, Hughes shipped 60 tons of radioactive Utah dirt to his Hollywood studio so that reshoots would be realistic Fallout  Within a few years of filming “The Conqueror”, members of the cast and crew began experiencing various ailments. In 1963, Pedro Armendariz, a brilliant actor who appeared in over 100 films, was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer. Armendáriz promptly committed suicide at the age of 51.  That same year director Dick Powell succumbed to lymphatic cancer at the age of 53. The great Susan Hayward’s career ended in 1972 when she was diagnosed with skin, breast and uterine cancer. Three years later, she died of brain cancer at the age of 57.  That same year, two-time Golden Globe award winner, Agnes Moorehead died of uterine cancer at the age of 74. Costar and all-round badass Lee Van Cleef died of throat cancer in 1989 at the age of 72. Several hundred Shoshone Native Americans had been cast as Mongol warriors for “The Conqueror”. They were not included in the production’s cancer statistics however 1970s studies found that leukemia rates in the Shoshone Indians of the St. George area were five times higher than the rest of Utah.  John Wayne was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1964 and had his left lung removed. This was about the time that the U.S. Surgeon General made the connection between cigarettes and cancer (although most people already suspected the link). Wayne was estimated to be a five pack a day man. As his “Conqueror” co-stars started to die, “The Duke” rejected the radiation theory and blamed his illness on cigarettes. He died of stomach cancer in 1979 at the age of 72. By the early 1970s, Howard Hughes became convinced that his decision to film in St. Geoge had resulted in the deaths of many innocent people. Racked by guilt, Hughes paid $12 million to buy all existing copies of the film. He then quit the film industry after a 30-year involvement.  Further Study If you are interested, a documentary about the infamous movie was released in 2023. The Conqueror-Hollywood Fallout has received excellent reviews on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. It is available on Amazon Prime.  Have a great weekend.

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My college classmate, Duffy Brent who serves as a docent at The American Heritage Museum in Hudson, Massachusetts, recently turned me on to the incredible story of Jumping Joe Beyrle. Joe was the first American paratrooper to land in France on D-Day. He also has the distinction of being the only soldier to fight for both the United States and the Soviet Union against the Nazis.  Intrigued, I read “Beyond Hitler’s Lines” which is an engrossing story of Beyrle’s amazing exploits. Born in 1923 in Muskegon, Michigan, one of Joe’s first memories was standing with his father in a government food line during The Great Depression. When Joe graduated from high school in 1942, he turned down a baseball scholarship from Notre Dame and enlisted in the army.  Beyrle volunteered to become a paratrooper and was assigned to a parachute division known as the “Screaming Eagles”. Beyrle specialized in demolition and was deployed to England to prepare for the upcoming invasion against the Nazis. While still in training, Beyrle volunteered for two covert missions- successfully delivering gold bars to the French Resistance in occupied France. 2,501 U.S. paratroopers died on D-Day and many more were wounded or listed as missing. The plane carrying Beyrle came under enemy fire over the Normandy coast, and he was forced to jump from the exceedingly low altitude of 360 feet. Joe lost contact with his fellow paratroopers after his landing. Undaunted, he successfully blew up a power station. After performing a few more solo sabotage missions, he was captured by German soldiers. Over the next seven months, Beyrle was held in seven different German prisons. He escaped twice but was recaptured both times. After the second escape, he set out for Poland but boarded a train to Berlin by mistake. Beyrle was then savagely tortured by Gestapo agents but ironically his life was spared by German military officials who determined that the Gestapo had no jurisdiction over prisoners of war.  Taken to yet another POW camp, Joe escaped in early January,1945. He headed east, hoping to meet up with the Soviet army. After a few weeks he encountered a Soviet tank brigade. Joe raised his hands, holding a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and shouted in Russian, “American comrade!”. The battalion commander was Aleksandra Samusenko, the highest-ranking Soviet female tank officer. Impressed by Joe’s story, she allowed him to join her unit on its way to invading Berlin. Beyrle’s demolitions expertise was very useful to his new battalion, and he assisted in the liberation of his former prison camp. One month later, he was wounded during a German air attack.  Beyrle was evacuated to a Soviet hospital where he received a visit from Soviet Field Marshall George Zhukov. The legendary general was amazed by Joe’s story and provided Beyrle with official papers to help him rejoin American forces.  A Soviet military convoy delivered Beyrle to the US embassy in Moscow. There he learned that the U.S. War Department had reported him as killed in action on June 10, 1944. A funeral had been held in his honor in Muskegon.  On April 21, 1945, Beyrle returned home and celebrated V-E Day, with friends and family.  He married JoAnne Hollowell in 1946 in the same church and by the same priest who had held his funeral mass in 1944. Joe spent 28 years as a factory shipping supervisor before his retirement.  Jumping Joe was honored on the fiftieth anniversary of V-E Day by President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin. Beyrle died in his sleep in 2004 during a visit to Toccoa, Georgia where he had trained as a paratrooper.  Deservedly, he is interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Ironically his son, John Beyrle served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2012. Have a great weekend. I’m back blogging but due to an increased volunteer workload and a new cable show, I’m cutting back to twice a month.

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I recently came across a story that I found to be very interesting if not astounding. On June 25,1894 Anna Cohen Kopchovsky, a 5-foot 3-inch, 100-pound mother of three left Boston with the goal of becoming the first woman to bicycle around the world. Annie was a Jewish-Latvian immigrant married to a peddler. She helped her growing family make ends meet by selling advertising space for several newspapers. In the 1880s, British born Thomas Stevens had become the first man to cycle around the world, a journey that took 33 months. Legend has it that two Boston businessmen bet $10,000 on whether a woman could duplicate that feat. The 23-year-old Anna seized on that nebulous story and started publicizing that she was going to take on the (alleged) challenge. She was a masterful promoter as evidenced by a crowd of over 500 gathering at the Massachusetts State House to see her start her trek. The Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company of New Hampshire’s handed Kopchovsky $100 in sponsorship money. In exchange, she hung an advertising placard on her bike and changed her surname to “Londonderry” for the journey. The first time Annie had ridden a bike was a few days before her departure. The 42-pound bicycle was nearly half of Annie’s weight. For her world-wide trip she only packed a change of underwear and a pearl-handled revolver. Her ambitious goal was to circle the globe in fifteen months. Annie headed west but when she arrived in Chicago, she realized that would be unable to get across the Rockies during the winter. So the adventurer reversed course and headed to New York, thankfully on a much lighter bike. In NYC, she hopped on a steamer ship bound for France. Journeying across France, Annie sent telegrams to local newspapers advising  them of her impending arrival. At each stop, she gave lectures and provided bicycling demonstrations. When she boarded a ship in Marseille bound for Alexandria, a drum and bugle corps played and thousands of well-wishers cheered. Annie rode and sailed across the Mideast and Asia. She claimed that she visited Russia and North Korea and maintained that she had been briefly imprisoned in China during the Sino-Japanese War.  Her final foreign destination was Japan where she boarded a San Francisco bound ship. Annie arrived in California in March 1894 and spent the next six months cycling across the U.S. On her final segment, Londonderry claimed that she was nearly killed by a runaway horse in California and broke her wrist in an encounter with a drove of pigs in Iowa. She reached her final destination, Chicago, on September 12, 1894, fourteen days ahead of schedule. Truth and Fiction In the 1890s, radical innovations in bicycle design transformed cycling from a somewhat perilous enterprise into a pleasurable, less hazardous and even utilitarian recreation. Bicycle sales exploded as did the popularity of the sport. Bicycles became mass produced and men increasingly used them to commute to work. Because of Annie Londonderry’s exploits. many women took up bicycling for the first time. Women’s fashions changed dramatically as ladies followed Annie’s example and abandoned their corsets and billowy skirts in favor of much more comfortable bloomers. Annie Londonderry was a gifted storyteller and shameless self-promoter. Historians have never verified the existence of a $10,000 wager or an alleged $5,000 prize that Annie continually referenced. And was she really ever thrown into a Chinese jail or injured in a confrontation with a herd of swine? Maybe not. But what is undisputed is that she was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe on a bicycle. Annie became a symbol of freedom, and so did the bicycle itself. World-famous suffragist Susan B. Anthony declared “the bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” Anna Cohen Kopchovsky AKA Annie Londonderry died of a stroke on Nov. 11,1947. She left behind some amazing accomplishments and a lifetime of service as an inspiration to women across the globe.   Have a great weekend summer and a wonderful summer. I’m taking the summer off from blogging. If you don’t own it already, make sure to order a copy of the ultimate beach read “Get Smarter-Be Amazed” on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com. See you in September.

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