IN FRATERNAM MEAM: HISTORY HAPPENED HERE......

IN FRATERNAM MEAM

Friday, May 12, 2006

HISTORY HAPPENED HERE......

WHY CABS ARE YELLOW
Chicago car dealer John Hertz had an idea to make money off his inventory of used cars: turn them into cabs for people who could'nt afford pricey limousines. To attract riders, he painted the cabs sunnyside up. By 1925, Hertz' Yellow Cab Company had produced 2,700 cabs -- the largest taxi fleet in the world. John Hertz also statred another business or America's newly mobile masses: DrivUrSelf, which later became Hertz Rent-A-Car.

FROM HIGH SCHOOL TO THE HIGH COURT
Thurgood Marshall remembered being tossed out of class -- often -- for clownin around at Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore. His teacher would punish him by making him recite the Constitution of the United States. By graduation, Marshall had it memorized -- which proved useful when, in 1967, he became the first African-American on the U.S. Supreme Court.

GEORGE WASHINGTON SURVEYED HERE
In 1749, George Washington went to work as a land surveyor at a stone office in White Post, Va. It was his first job. His employer was Lord Fairfax, believed to be the only English lord living in the Colonies. George's task: to set boundaries for furture farms for new colonies. But he did much more. He learned how to live on the frontier and accumulated important details about the area, which would serve him well as he planned troop movements in the French Indian war.

WHERE WE FIRST LOVED LUCY
Lucilee Ball already was a successful actress when she married Desi Arnza, a handsome Cuban babdleader. But she confessed she was petrified when, on Dec. 17, 1941, she and Desi debuted a live act -- a comic skit, some song and dance at the modest Ritz Theatre in Newburgh, NY. "The audience loved it",, procalimed the local paper. Encouraged, the newlyweds went on to transform their lovebird luncaies into the show I Love Lucy, drawing audiences to the new medium that was TV.

WHY IT'S SAFE TO FLY
When he flew mail in the early '30s, Elrey Jeppeson would find his way by following road maps, train lines and even waving farmers below. Convinced that there had to be a safer method, Jeppeson and his wife, Nadine, a pioneer stewardess for United Airlines, started scaling mountains and water towers, all in effort to get critical elevations for their new navigation charts. They moved to this tidy Cape Cod house on Denver's Grape street in 1941 and expanded their mom-and-pop business -- Jepp Charts -- interntaionally. The Navy adapted Hepp Charts to help guide its fliers through the dangerous skies of WWII. Astronaut John Glenn sent a letter whith this succint tribute , "I would'nt be here if it wasn't for you".

SWEET INSPIRATION
In 1920, a confectioner named Harry Burt found a neater way to sell his mouth-watering but messy chocolate coated ice cream: on a stick. Burt dubbed his patented creation the Good Humor Bar and began producing the treats from a confectionary in Youngstown, Ohio. Soon, he took them directly to the streers, dispatching a dozen frosty trucks driven by men in white suits. The bells announcing these at-your-door confections quickened young pulses across the country, guratnateeing sweet memories for generations.

WE GET A KICK OUT OF HIM
Turn-of-the-century neighbors of the Porters in Peru, INd., head lots of music coming from this grand home, the birthplace of Cole Porter -- inlcuding a little ditty called "The Song of the Birds".Written in 1901 by the 10-year-old prodigy for his doting mama, Kate, the tune may not have had the suave wit of classic Porter compositions such as "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "Begin the Beguine". But it came form the heart -- which then belonged to Mama. It was Kate Porter who insisted that Cole start violin lessons at 6, piano at 8, and who later published 100 copies of one of those first homewgrown songs.

(Source: PARADEMAG by: Gerri Hishey)

posted by infraternam meam @ 8:57 PM

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