Author: Steve Atkinson

The classic book by J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings was first published as three volumes; The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King on July 21, 1954, on November 11, 1954 and on October 20, 1955 respectively in the United Kingdom.

The book was created as a single volume and was broken up into sections by the publisher.

When The Fellowship of the Ring was published, an index was promised. However that complete Index and Appendices were not complete until the 1966 revised edition was printed. These Appendices gave a view of the World of Middle-Earth and it’s three Ages that Tolkien began in 1917.

While recovering from “Trench” fever in 1917 Tolkien began work on a tale he called The Fall of Gondolin part of a larger project he would name The Book of Lost Tales. The Lord of the Rings would become part of this world.

While his children were young he began telling them a fairy tale of a Hobbit by the name of Bilbo Baggins who lived in a hole in the ground. With the encouragement of his friend C.S. Lewis, (Lewis would later create his own children tales The Chronicles of Narnia), Tolkien finished The Hobbit tale in 1933. In 1936 the manuscript was shown by a family friend to publisher Stanley Unwin. The Hobbit was published in 1937.

The Lord of the Rings was begun as its sequel in 1937 and took until 1953 to complete. Tolkien was exacting in the writing of his tales and would work his Middle-Earth mythology his entire life, with The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit being the only major works of this mythology published during his life.

Harrington, Delaware is the home of one of the biggest events to be held in Delaware during the summer. The Delaware State Fair draws folks from all around the Delmarva Peninsula for an annual trip of fun and entertainment. The annual fair begins on July 19th and runs through July 28th 2018

The fair began with a meeting of men in 1919 who were interested in starting an event for “promoting and encouraging agriculture”. It was incorporated as the Kent/Sussex Fair in January 1920. After 30 acres were purchased a month later it was all go for the first fair that opened on July 27, 1920.

The fair has grown over its nearly 100 year history to include New Castle County becoming the Delaware State Fair in 1962.

One highlight of the fair is their concerts with a a number of famous acts performing each year. One of this year’s shows is Southern Uprising with Travis Tritt, Charlie Daniels, The Marshall Tucker Band and The Outlaws performing live Wednesday, July 25th, 2018. (Click HERE for more Information on this Concert)

It may seem as if the Delaware State Fair, which expects to see 300,000 attendees, is a place for entertainment. The fairgrounds includes a large carnival area as well as the Harrington Raceway and Casino for adult entertainment. But its roots were in agriculture and those roots are still there with the Delaware 4-H showcasing their accomplishments.

The City of Harrington was named for Samuel M. Harrington, President of the Delaware Railroad in 1859, although the town was a settlement as early as 1730. The Clark family had established an inn, tavern and a store in the area and was known as Clark’s Corner. Even though it a hub of activity, it wasn’t until the arrival of the railroad that the town grew and became a key hub of the area as a transportation hub.

The website for 4-H 4-h.org says that, “4-H is a community of young people across America who are learning leadership, citizenship and life skills.” It is administered by the Cooperative extension System of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The 4-H’s are Head, Heart, Hands and Health.

The organization serves over 6 million members in the United States from ages 5 to 21 reaching kids throughout America from urban neighborhoods to suburban schoolyards to rural farming communities.

The 4-H started as youth program in Clark Count, Ohio in 1902 and with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 Congress created the Cooperative Extension Service of the USDA. Included within the CES charter the work of various boys’ and girls’ clubs involved with agriculture, home economics and related subjects. By 1924 these clubs became organized as “4-H” clubs and the clover emblem was adopted.

The organization is often associated with summer camps, county fairs and state fairs.

National 4-H Council is the national, private sector non-profit partner of 4-H and the Cooperative Extension System. National 4-H Council focuses on fundraising; brand management; communications; legal and fiduciary support to national and state 4-H programs; and operation of the full-service National 4-H Youth Conference Center in Chevy Chase, Md., and the National 4-H Supply Service the authorized agent for items bearing the 4-H Name and Emblem.

A Friday that occurs on the 13th day of any month is considered to be a day of bad luck in many cultures around the globe. Any month that begins on a Sunday will contain a Friday the 13th. Every year has at least one and some may have as many as three Fridays the 13th. There will be 48 occurrences in 28 years cycle of years. This is an average of 1.7 times per year.

There has not been a historical date identified as the origin of the superstition. Before the 20th century, although there is evidence that the number 13 was considered unlucky, and Friday was considered unlucky, there was no link between them.

Friday the 13th doesn”t even merit a mention in E. Cobham Brewer’s voluminous 1898 edition of the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. There is and entry for “Friday, an Unlucky Day” and “Thirteen Unlucky.”

Paraskevidekatriaphobics is the name for people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute estimates that more than 17 million people are affected by a fear of this day.

On May 9, 1980 an independent film independent slasher film directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller with the title Friday the 13th was released. The film’s budget was less than $ 600,000. While not a critical hit is was a box-office success.

In 2018 there will be two Friday the 13th. The first was in April and the second in July. The next Friday the 13th is more than a year away in September of 2019. 2019 will also have two with the other being in December.

She may have wanted to live, but on June 3, 1955 Barbara Graham, who was nicknamed “Bloody Babs” by the press, was executed in the California gas chamber. On that same day the accomplices, Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins were also executed. They had been convicted of the murder of Mabel Monohan.

Graham was the third woman in California to die by gas.

Born Barbara Elaine Wood in Oakland, California on June 26, 1923, she had a misspent youth as a poor student and sent to a reform school as a teenager. Part of this may have been due to her being raised by extended family. When she was born Graham’s mother was a teen and sent to the same reform school her daughter would be sent.

She had tried to reform, upon release from reform school in 1939 she had married and enrolled in a business college. The marriage failed. By 1953 when she married Henry Graham, she had been married twice more, worked as a prostitute and involved with drugs and gambling.

Henry Graham was a harden criminal and through him she met Jack Santo and Emmet Perkins, beginning an affair with Perkins. It was Perkins who learned of Mabel Monohan, a 64 year old widow who was thought to be keeping a lot of money in her house. It was during a robbery that Monhan was killed. Barbara reportedly pistol-whipped Monohan, cracking her skull and they then suffocated her with a pillow. They also left the house after finding nothing of value.

In 1958 Susan Hayward played Graham in the movie I Want to Live. Hayward won an Academy Award for her role. The movie strongly suggested that Graham was innocent. This claim was incorrect since evidence would point to her guilt.

Coca-Cola was first sold on May 8, 1886 at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. It was sold as a patent medicine for 5 cents. At the time carbonization was thought to good for heath. For the first few months only a few glasses were sold each day.

The formula was created by John Sith Pemberton. It was originally a cocawine, an alcoholic beverage that combined wine and cocaine. In 1886 Georgia introduced Prohibition which forced him to replace the wine with non-alcoholic syrup.

When Pemberton began work on a coca and kola (cola) nut beverage, his intention was to develop a product to stop headaches and calm nervousness. It’s also thought that he was trying to create a pain reliever for himself and other wounded Confederate veterans.

The famous Coca-Cola logo was created in 1885 by Frank Mason Robinson. Robinson at the time was Pemberton’s bookkeeper. Not only did Robinson name the product he was the one who chose the logo’s distinctive cursive script, a typeface known as Spencerian script.

Coca-Cola used the imagine of Santa Claus so well in some of their ads of the early 20th century, some have credited them with the invention of the modern Santa Claus, the Jolly Old Elf in the red suit. That image was common by the time and derives greatly from the 19th century drawings of Santa Claus by Thomas Nast.

In 1971 Coca-Cola started to use an advertising jiggle called, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sings. The song was written by Roger cook, Roger Greenaway, Bill Backer and Billy Davis. The jiggle was so popular that it was recorded by the New Seekers and became a Number 1 hit.

At 12:22 on Monday May 4, 1970, 29 members of a group of 77 National Guard troops from A Company and Troop G fired shots towards a group of students at Kent State. 13 seconds and about 67 shots later it ended. Some shots were in the air as warnings, others to induce injury and not kill. The outcome was 4 deaths and another 9 receiving injuries.

The National Guard had been called to the campus after a war protest of May 1st got out of hand. They arrived on campus on the morning of May 2nd. At the time of the shooting they were in the process of clearing a scheduled but a campus declared unauthorized protest.

The students who died as a result of the wounds they suffered that day were: (Name, distance from Guard, Injury)
Jeffrey Glen Miller, 265 ft, shot through the mouth – killed instantly
Allison Krause, 343 ft, fatal left chest wound
William Knox Schroeder, 382 ft, fatal chest wound
Sandra Lee Scheuer, 390 ft, fatal neck wound

Wounded:
Joseph Lewis Jr., 71 ft, hit twice in the right abdomen and left lower leg
John R. Cleary, 110 ft, upper left chest wound
Thomas Mark Grace, 225 ft, struck in left ankle
Alan Canfora, 225 ft, hit in his right wrist
Dean Kahler, 300 ft, back wound fracturing the vertebrae – permanently paralyzed from the chest down
Douglas A. Wrentmore, 329 ft, hit in his right knee
James Dennis Russell, 375 ft, hit in his right thigh from a bullet and in the right forehead by birdshot – both wounds minor
Robert F. Stamps, 495 ft, hit in his right buttock
Donald Scott MacKenzie, 750 ft, neck wound

Even now 48 years later the reason for the shooting has not been fully determined. It may have been that the Guardsmen felt in danger. Some students were approaching them throwing objects and one reports has it that a sniper fired upon the guard.

One of the widely read book about the shootings is James Michener Kent State: What Happened and Why published in 1971. The book does contain a number of errors probably because it was produced so quickly and release so soon after the event. The Kent May 4 Center (www.may4.org) does list this as a non-recommended book. They offer a list of recommended and non-recommended books.

Singer/Songwriter Neil Young after seeing pictures of the shooting wrote the song Ohio. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young recorded the song on May 15, 1970 and released as a single in June. The song became to many an anthem for the times giving a tribute that may last forever to the ‘Four dead in Ohio’.

The 1960’s was a time for protest. Most of the protests were against the undeclared War that the United States was fighting in Vietnam. Many things came from these protest including political protest songs, the Summer of Love and the first crusade to save the environment.

Many of the protesters were college students with college campuses being one of the places where protests reached a boiling point. One of the largest campus protest began on April 23rd in 1968 at Columbia University in New York.

Tensions in the United States were high. Just a few weeks before Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis. Students had been prevented to protest at Low Library and they moved to the construction site of a new Gym. The construction of the Gym had already touched off negative sentiment on the campus. The Gym was being built in two levels, with the lower level facing Harlem, stated for use by the black neighborhood and the upper for use by Columbia. This separation was interpreted as segregation.

From the construction area, Mark Rudd, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chairman, moved the students to Hamilton Hall. It was at Hamilton Hall that the students began the week long protest by taking over the Hall. Part of the students demands were for the University to end their associated with the construction of the Gym.

In the early hours of April 30, the New York City Police ended the demonstrations. As many as 150 students were injured with over 700 protesters arrested.

This wasn’t the end of the student protests at Columbia during that semester. There was a second round of protest on May 17-18. This ended with 113 people arrested. The protest did achieved two of their goals when Columbia decided to pull out of their association in construction of the Gym with eventually its construction being scrapped.

Bettie Page, who has been described as the girl with hair as dark as midnight and a smile that could melt an iceberg, is perhaps the the best known and most popular pin-up model of all time. Bettie Page embraced sexuality in the 1950s, a time when being a sexual woman was kept behind closed doors. She graced covers of many magazines in many poses. Many of them wearing not much more than a smile.

She was born on April 22, 1923, the second of Walter Roy Page and Edna Mae Pirtle’s six children. Troubles caused her parents to divorce when Bettie was only 10 years old, her mother placed her and her two sisters in an orphanage while she worked and saved money.

Bettie married in February 1943 and after receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Peabody College she moved to San Francisco with her husband. It was here that she got her first modeling job and traveled to many places. In 1947 she filed for divorce and moved to New York.

In 1950 she meet Jerry Tibbs, a police officer and amateur photographer. Tibbs took pictures that became her first pin-up portfolio. Soon a photographic modeling career was in full bloom.

In 1955, Bettie was named “Miss Pinup Girl of the World.” and was the centerfold in Playboy’s January issue. The “Girl with the Perfect Figure,” was appearing in everything from record albums to playing cards.

In the years of the 1960’s and 1970’s she lived as a normal everyday person. In the 1980’s she emerged after a countrywide search for Bettie. She died on December 11, 2008 after being hospitalized with pneumonia. She was scheduled to be released, suffered a heart attack from which she never regained consciousness.