In 1917, the Carolina Beverage Company was established in Salisbury NC, which is strategically located along a major railroad distribution system. There the company manufactured a soda with a deep burgundy color, a very sweet cherry flavor, and a huge amount of carbonation. This bubbly, fruity concoction was aptly branded “Cheerwine.” The brand grew slowly [...]
As we move from July into August, all thoughts turn to sandy beaches, lazy afternoons, and the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, the year was originally laid out as ten months stretching from early Spring to the winter solstice. The first four months were named after gods (Mars, Aphrodite, Maia and Juno) and the rest [...]
Hey Mister, can you help me out? I need a fix. Can you lend me $5 for a Big Mac? In a newly released study, the Scripps Institute in Florida has concluded something we all sorta suspected: junk food may be as addictive as cocaine. In the study, researchers monitored the brain activity of rats [...]
Ralph Waldo Rose was a big man. Six foot five, 250 pounds. He attended a big school, the University of Michigan. In 1904, he was the Big Ten champion in both the shot put and discus. After graduation, he went on to win seven Amateur Athletic Union titles in the shot put, discus and javelin. [...]
Dent McSkimming was a beat reporter for the St. Louis Star while still in high school. He served in World War 1, came home and wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, studied for one year at Stanford, spent some time in Mexico City writing for an English-language newspaper, and in World War 2 served in [...]
Children are more pliable, more flexible, more resilient and more durable than adults. It’s official. Not because the AMA says so. It wasn’t proven by some decades-long research study conducted by orthopedists. And you won’t see it on any life insurance mortality actuarial tables. Nope, you’ll see it later this weekend in a backyard near [...]
Take, for example, the case of the Old Barracks. The Colony of New Jersey built five military barracks in 1758; the one in Trenton was at that time the largest building in town. In 1776, the “Old Trenton Barracks” was captured and occupied by British and Hessian soldiers, after they had chased George Washington clear [...]
On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, it’s becoming clear that the waters of the world are being destroyed by…water. DUH: Sometime in the last 10 years or so, we all decided that water that comes out of a bottle is purer than water that comes out of the tap. FACT: bottled water is a [...]
Your assignment today is to write a story of only about 1500 words. But there’s a catch: all the words in your story have to be two syllables or less, OK? Oh, there’s one other thing: you can only use a total of 236 different words, so you’ll have to repeat a lot of them. [...]
As the NCAA basketball tournaments tipped off, researchers at The Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sports did a little research. They looked at the graduation rates of the 65 men’s and 64 women’s teams, utilizing a metric called the APR (Academic Progress Rate) which the NCAA uses to measure teams’ graduation performance. A perfect [...]
