Monthly Archives: May 2022

Steve Martin made a delightful cameo on last nights episode of Saturday Night Live, during his Only Murders in the Building co-star Selena Gomezs hosting debut. In a pretaped sketch, Gomezs Taylor Gosh introduced Archie Gizmo (Martin), the mastermind behind the whoopee cushion. Gizmo explains that he was just a struggling gag inventor in the 60s, looking for a sound to accompany his whoopee-cushion prototype, when he met Ms. Dina Beans (Aidy Bryant, of course). Her energy was magnetic; her eyes were endless, Gizmo says of Beans. And every time she sat down: gas. We then watch as Dina Beans is struck by lightning (twice!) and attacked by snakes each of her misfortunes inspiring one of Gizmos inventions. Bryant and Martin are electric (pun intended) together, and Gomez is perfectly deadpan as the documentarys host (The automobile, paper cup, dancing, computer: These were all invented.) Watch the full sketch above.

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Steve Martin Explains the History of the Whoopee Cushion on SNL - Vulture

SPARE PARTSThe Story of Medicine Through the History of Transplant SurgeryBy Paul Craddock

Paul Craddocks Spare Parts: The Story of Medicine Through the History of Transplant Surgery opens midoperation, as a donor organ (this lifeless gray mass, as Craddock describes it) is sewn into place. Clamps released, the new kidney comes alive, or appears to. Before my eyes, the surgeon removed these devices and in a matter of seconds the kidney turned from gray to pink, then almost red, Craddock writes. It seemed as if life itself had cascaded from one mans body into anothers. The operation is described as state of the art, yet Craddock, a senior research associate in the division of surgery and interventional sciences at the University College of Londons medical school, sets out to show the ancient roots of transplantation. Transplant surgery is far from an exclusively modern phenomenon, he writes, with a surprisingly long and rich history that stretches back as far as the pyramids.

And so we are off, on a thrilling and often terrifying ride through transplantation and the theories and techniques that made it possible. It begins in Renaissance Italy, where the push for rhinoplasty came not from kings but from the general populace, who had perfected skin grafts long before the European medical profession such as it was. (The Sushruta Samhita, a 500 B.C. Sanskrit text that Craddock cites, described skin grafts, among hundreds of other surgeries.) Craddocks tantalizing opening assertion is that late-16th-century specialists were merely catching up with farmers, who had long ago learned a way to graft skin from an arm to a nose, masking nasal bridge collapses caused by syphilis or mutilation from duels, both common. In Italy, skin grafting had evolved as a peasants operation, linked culturally and technically to the farmers procedure of plant grafting.

The book is arranged chronologically by procedure: from that 16th-century skin grafting to 17th-century blood transfusions to 18th-century tooth transplants. It skips lightly over the 1800s (and the development of germ theory, anesthesia and nursing) and winds up with 20th-century kidney and heart transplants. Craddock explains the scientific theories underlying each new technique and then he highlights a star, or several. In addition to nose repair, Leonardo Fioravanti claimed to have cured leprosy and discovered the antiseptic attributes of aquavit and urine; in 16th-century Bologna, he urinated on patients (literally) while metaphorically urinating on a medical establishment he saw as devoted to moribund classical texts. As Craddock puts it, Fioravanti preferred to base his own medical system on the collective, intuitive wisdom of centuries a live tradition with no written component as opposed to a raft of dead, book-learned knowledge.

The reigning such text was by Galen of Pergamon, the first-century Greek philosopher, who was silent on skin grafts (Aristotle related the bodys largest organ to the crust on a polenta) but famously described health in terms of the four humors blood, yellow bile, phlegm and black bile, the flow of which was thought to be affected by mood, personality and the stars. Medicine was a matter of humoral balance, often regulated by bleeding. Galens anatomical descriptions, though still gospel in the 16th century, were hampered by a Roman rule against dissection of humans. When Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist, published On the Fabric of the Human Body in 1543, based on his own dissection of corpses, it helped to highlight the importance of scientific observation and to reconceive the heart as pumplike. It also stressed the idea that blood was better inside the body than out inspiring a slew of experiments that made life in Paris and London horrible for dogs. The heart was now perceived as a ruler or king, the seat and organ of all passions, prompting questions about dogs (whether a fierce Dog by being often new stocked with the blood of a cowardly Dog, may not be more tame) and then humans. In 1667, French doctors infused a man with calfs blood in part to improve his character. Sheep, docile in the Bible, were a go-to for human transfusion, though a butcher, infused by members of an English scientific society, irritated doctors when he slaughtered and then ate his donor. By 1700, a faint professional decorum, fortified by public ridicule, shut the experiments down.

The generally unsuccessful attempts to transplant teeth, Craddock argues, coincided with a view of the body as a machine, complete with transferable parts complicating the work of philosophers, and enriching that of salespeople. Enter the dentist, offering advice (gargle with urine!) and private tooth transplants to fancy customers put off by public tooth-yankers. The new teeth were eventually supplied by young and poor mouths: As Craddock points out, the dystopian reality of body shopping has a dark precedent in teeth. The search for what animated the human machine also led to theories on nerves and the associated disorders observed to particularly affect the more developed upper classes. The soul was body-bound, a material thing that pulsed through it.

Cut to 1901. Immunology is a new discipline, and the previous blood types dog, cat, sheep, human have evolved into our modern iteration, named by the Viennese researcher Karl Landsteiner. In the same year, Alexis Carrel, a young French surgeon whose mother owned textile factories, studied with Marie-Anne Leroudier, one of Lyons finest embroiderers (and one of very few women featured in Spare Parts). Leroudiers dexterity in handling unfathomable intricate decaying fabrics taught the young surgeon how to stitch together blood vessels, making kidney and heart transplants as well as bypass surgery possible, though her contributions were minimized by Carrel and the bulk of Western scientific history. After being drummed out of Europe, Carrel, whose experiments make Dr. Frankenstein look like a genial Marcus Welby, landed in 1930s New York, where his passion for eugenics earned him the friendship of Charles Lindberg. Together, they would invent a perfusion device to keep an organ viable outside the body all in the pursuit of weeding the weak from society. Carrels book, Man, the Unknown, was a U.S. best seller in 1936; the German edition praised the Nazis eugenics work.

The first heart transplant surgeons were less health- than prize-oriented. As one doctor put it: Virtually all the patients subject to the procedure died, having satisfied the macho aspirations of their surgeons. Meanwhile, any technical successes had more to do with medicines deeper communal understanding of immunology how to address organ rejection than with surgical breakthroughs.

Craddocks conclusion is meant to feel hopeful: According to colleagues at U.C.L. in London, printing an entire replacement body part might only be a decade away. But it doesnt reassure so much as concern a reader, especially given the case of Paolo Macchiarini, the U.C.L.-affiliated celebrity surgeon (unmentioned by Craddock) widely lauded for performing the worlds first synthetic trachea transplants using stem cells but currently on trial in Sweden for aggravated assault against his patients. In fact, what inspires most hope is what ends up seeming like the accidental subtext of Spare Parts. It relates to the way Renaissance Italian farmers saw themselves in trees: distinctly individual trees that, as Craddock notes, science has only recently become aware are in communication with one another, not to mention us. If we look more carefully at the forest, the past indicates, we just might repair ourselves through the trees.

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A Medical History of Transplant Surgery Thats Not for the Squeamish - The New York Times

WINDHAM A group of four buried in a local cemetery with no names engraved on headstones were honored Saturday with a new historical marker.

The towns African American Committee, along with the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, unveiled a new historic plaque Saturday to commemorate the lives of three men Pompey, Jeffry, Peter Thomas and one woman, Rose, all honored for the growth and prosperity of the Windham community.

The process got its start when Shelley Walcott, a member of the Windham committee, read an article about unmarked graves of enslaved African Americans being discovered in the local Cemetery on the Hill.

That discovery was due to extensive research done by local historian Brad Dinsmore.

I have wondered about the history of blacks in Windham, Walcott said at the ceremony Saturday.

The plaque unveiled Saturday will eventually find a permanent place atop a granite monument at the cemetery.

The 1883 History of Windham states that they were buried in that part of the original cemetery on the hill in the southeasterly corner, near the highway.

Dinsmore spoke at the ceremony Saturday, saying the fact the graves were unmarked was a moral travesty.

And its literally a grave injustice, Dinsmore said. But our town is going to rectify this today.

Dinsmore continued, saying the new marker will tell their stories and will be a permanent reminder of their names and their roles in shaping Windhams history.

The new plaque to be placed at the cemetery reads that Pompey and Jeffry, both skilled artisans, were hired out by their enslaver to clear land for Windhams early farms.

Pompey was also hired out to work on the old town meeting house located in this cemetery. They and other enslaved men and women helped to build the town of Windham, the plaque reads.

Walcott said making the discoveries and now paying tribute to those lying in unmarked graves is a way to make sure the past is appreciated and honored.

Black lives in the town of Windham do matter, she said.

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Marker unveiled to honor African American history in Windham - Eagle-Tribune

Capped by probably the biggest baseball brawl ever, between the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves on Sunday, August 12th, the 1984 season was the worst for fighting in more than a quarter century.

The Padres had twice beaten the second-place Braves in the weekend series and led them by 10 1/2 games in the old National League West, en route to their first World Series appearance in franchise history.

The battle in old Fulton County Stadium was like a tag-team wrestling match with 50 participants (plus coaches) instead of the customary four inside the ring.

Why did it erupt?

Oh, the usual your-guy-threw-at-my-guy retaliation, only the teams didnt settle their scores with one brushback pitch, or even with one donnybrook. They came out of their dugouts THREE TIMES, twice for violent struggles. But some Braves fans (five of them), operating on possible alcohol ingestion and the misguided notion that this activity on the field was an invitation for audience participation, were arrested for joining in the fracas and taken off the field in handcuffs.

RELATED: Watch San Diego Padres vs Atlanta Braves: Live stream, TV channel for MLB Sunday Leadoff Game on Peacock and NBC

Understandably, the level of violence was alarming to National League President Chub Feeney. The hand of justice was most felt by San Diego Manager Dick Williams. He received a $10,000 fine and a 10-day suspension. Across the field, Atlanta Manager Joe Torre, received a $1,000 fine and three days off. A record seventeen players, a dozen of them Padres, including two acting managers, and five Braves were fined, suspended or both.

Williams, a world-class bench jockey during his playing career in the 50s, had admitted ordering each of his pitchers to aim for Braves starter Pascual Perez, who had opened the game by nailing leadoff man Alan Wiggins in the back with a fastball on his first pitch. In the bottom of the second inning, Perez came to bat against San Diego starter Ed Whitson. He threw behind Perez head with his first pitch but missed him three times. He was tossed out of the game along with Williams. Reliever Greg Booker followed and came close to hitting Perez in the fifth inning. He was also asked to remove himself from the premises.

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Incredibly, it was not until Perez fourth at-bat that Craig Lefferts finally made contact. That eighth-inning bullseye set off the first of two bench- clearing brawls.

Lefferts told NBC at the time: Its unfortunate and something you hate to see happen in this game but they started it and we had to do something about it so we finished it.

Another brawl followed in the ninth when Atlanta reliever Donnie Moore hit Graig Nettles with his second pitch, the result of their confrontation the previous inning. Padres players ejected after the first brawl returned to the field to join in the melee.

Now, have you ever heard of something like this? Braves slugger Bob Horner, watching the proceedings from the press box with a broken arm, rushed down to the clubhouse, changed into his uniform and came onto the field. Outfielder Champ Summers of the Padres spotted him and raced across the field to warn him not to get involved for his own good. Of course, other gathered around him to listen in.

The intervention of security police was all that prevented the brouhaha from becoming an all-out riot involving both teams and the fans. The ninth inning was played with both benches and bullpens cleared of personnel in their respective clubhouses, except for those due to hit, and with police lined in front of both dugouts. Braves announcer Chip Caray said on WTBS, Welcome back to guerrilla baseball from Atlanta.

In his postgame comments, Torre called Williams, an idiot and you can spell that with a capital I. Williams said hed meet Torre anytime, anyplace to settle matters.

RELATED: Mr. Stats Notes: Manny Machado the key to victory for Padres in 2022

Ive never seen violence like that. Its a miracle somebody didnt get seriously hurt. It took baseball down 50 years, umpiring crew chief John McSherry told the Atlanta Constitution at the time. Just a few days earlier, McSherry had refereed a brawl between the Chicago Cubs and New York Mets at Wrigley Field. It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. It was pathetic, absolutely pathetic.

Oh, a footnote: Atlanta won the game 5-3 and Pascual Perez, who was never ejected, got the win.

Could this happen in todays game? Tim Flannery, the former Padres infielder who later won three rings on Bruce Bochys coaching staff at San Francisco, thinks not.

You know, its funny, that fight comes up every year near the anniversary in August, Flannery said. Its so different today. Its hard for todays players to understand. Theyve sanitized the game with no collisions at second base and at home and bigger bases.

RELATED: 2022 MLB on Peacock schedule: How to watch, live stream Sunday morning baseball games online

Flannery made one other point.

When you look back on the 80s, teams stayed together. Players didnt jump around from team to team nearly as much. Now, a team has a bad year and a player says I want out. The commitment is different today.

With that in mind for todays game, its hard to imagine anything resembling what took place on Sunday, August 12, 1984 in Atlanta.

I went to the archives for this piece thanks in part to the Society for American Baseball Research.

Padres vs Braves: Remembering one of the worst brawls in baseball history originally appeared on NBCSports.com

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Padres vs Braves: Remembering one of the worst brawls in baseball history - Yahoo Sports

Granting that maritime jargon can be esoteric, a few basic commandments have governed the English language for at least 500 years. One is: Thou shalt not confuse ships with boats. Ships carry boats, but not vice versa, and any surface vessel large enough to carry its own boats is a ship. When a layperson confuses the terms, it may seem like terminological pettifogging to correct the error but in a work of naval history, the standard is different. To call a heavy warship a boat, as is often done in these pages, is a cardinal error. Entire classes of giant battleships and aircraft carriers are introduced, for example, as Iowa-class boats, Yorktown-class boats, Illustrious-class boats and Bismarck-class boats.

In a quick look at Kennedys earlier works, no references to boats for ships are found. In Victory at Sea, the instances fall into a 70-page section of the book, in Chapters 8 and 9. The question arises: After decades of having used the terms correctly, did Kennedy write the mistaken phrases in this book? Or did he lose control of the editing process? In his acknowledgments, he names eight research assistants, seven at Yale and one at Kings College London. He claims sole responsibility for the final product, warts and all, and in a strict sense, he is right to. But with enough research assistants to organize a basketball team, one wonders whether better coaching was needed. At the very least, some part of the collective effort could have been diverted to identifying and correcting errors, for example, by searching Wikipedia.

In a mark of his confidence as a scholar, Kennedy does not gloss over his reliance on that online encyclopedia. He quotes from Wikipedia liberally in the main text, cites it more often than any other single source and regrets that he cannot acknowledge so many fine though anonymous authors by name. And indeed, Wikipedia does not deserve much of the disparagement often aimed against it. As a first look reference, it is a handy tool; this reviewer even consulted it while writing this review. Wikipedias articles on military history have improved in recent years, and many contain information not easily found elsewhere on the web. But, by Wikipedias own account, studies measuring its accuracy and reliability have been mixed, and its crowdsourced model means that any page can be edited by anyone, at any time, anonymously. For that reason, Wikipedia does not consider itself to be a reliable source and discourages readers from using it in academic or research settings. Many university professors would mark down a student paper that included uncorroborated Wikipedia citations. For a major university press to include more than 80 in one volume may be unprecedented. What on earth is going on in New Haven?

Kennedys professional legacy rests upon 50 years of distinguished scholarship. He is a legitimately great historian. No one book, much less a single faultfinding review, could dull a reputation that glitters so brightly. As the preface tells us, Victory at Sea was first conceived as an art book. After Ian Marshalls death, the project grew by degrees into something much bigger and more ambitious. If Kennedys motive in reimagining the book was to pay posthumous tribute to a dear friend, it lends a noble character to the enterprise, in which case the reviewer is a rascal who deserves to feel ashamed of the criticism offered here.

But what is true of maritime affairs is equally true in the profession of history: If you book the passage, you have to pay the freight. Scholarship progresses inexorably. Let a decade go by, and the price of updating ones expertise might be 20,000 pages of new reading. Researching and writing history is like a spinach-eating competition in which the only possible prize is another helping of fresh, steaming vegetables. In a valedictory passage in his acknowledgments, Kennedy seems to concede that some spinach was left uneaten: If I have failed to acknowledge another scholars work, I apologize; it has been a joy to give credit (in the endnotes) to so much earlier writing and research. The sentiment is generous but perplexing. To apologize seems a bit much better, perhaps, to call it a sense of regret? A consciousness of shortcoming? But if the point is to concede that Victory at Sea is based mainly on outdated scholarship, wouldnt the apology be owed to the reader, rather than the neglected scholars?

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The Battle for the Seas in World War II, and How It Changed History - The New York Times

Most of us who spend our time reading books gobble up their verbal contents, then set aside or at best shelve the container. But those receptacles have an identity and existence of their own: with their upright spines, their paper layered like skin and their protective jackets, books possess bodies and wear clothing, and they enjoy adventures or suffer mishaps as they circulate around the world. Overlooking the epic bulk of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer addresses the poem as his little book and sends it off into the future with fond parental solicitude, while in Thackerays Vanity Fair the heroine begins her career of rebellion by hurling a copy of Samuel Johnsons officious, prescriptive dictionary out of the window.

In Portable Magic, Emma Smith wittily and ingeniously studies books as objects, possessed by readers not produced by writers. Her title, borrowed from an essay by Stephen King, emphasises the mobility of these apparently inert items and their occult powers. Like motorcars or metaphors, books transport us to destinations unknown, and that propulsion has something uncanny about it. Smith begins with sorcerers conjuring as they consult books of spells; she goes on to examine the varieties of magical reading, which range from the spiritual transcendence of Saint Augustine, who was converted by a random perusal of the Bible, to the dark arts of a necromantic volume such as Mein Kampf, distributed to all households during the Third Reich as a sinister talisman, the bibliographic manifestation of Hitlerism.

In their packaging, early gospels brought heaven down to Earth, lettered in celestial gold and silver on regally purple parchment. Other books scrutinised by Smith have been desecrated or, as she cheekily puts it, visually pimped. Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell were imprisoned for replacing illustrations in genteel books with homoerotic pinups, although the Islington library that had them prosecuted now displays the defaced copies as artistic treasures. Elsewhere, Smith locates books with an incendiary intent: a paperback murder mystery from the apartheid era in South Africa secretes a bomb-making manual inside, and a 17th-century Venetian missal encloses a boxed pistol with a silken bookmark that activates its trigger. Better these lethal boobytraps than the blandly curated shelves of Gwyneth Paltrow, whose interior designer supplied her with job lots of blooks chosen for the soothing colour of their spines.

Etymologically, all books are analogues of the Bible, since the word biblion derives from a Semitic term for papyrus or scroll. On her way through the centuries, Smith teases some playful neologisms out of that ancient root. Fortune-tellers indulge in bibliomancy by opening books at random to find prophetic guidance, Ortons indecent collages are described as a creative biblioclasm, and the disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow exhibits an act of bibliocide when books in the New York Public Library are incinerated for fuel during a new ice age. Best of all is Smiths translation of the scholarly term incunabula as biblio-babies: these 15th-century printed books derive their name from the Latin for swaddling clothes or cradle, which makes them infants from Gutenbergs nursery. Nearer to the present, mass-marketed books challenge readers to multiply in their own unmechanical way. Paperbacks, Smith declares, were the baby-boomers of the book demographic, and Dr Spocks The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care was one of the new formats first huge successes.

Smith reads with all her senses alert. She listens to pages rustling when turned, sniffs bindings like a winebibber relishing the bouquet of a vintage, and deliciously inhales the woody vanilla musk of cheap secondhand bookshops; she knows the recipes for making ink, which in the case of one Norse saga involved boiling the berries of an Arctic shrub. Indulgent about the rings left by coffee mugs, she also treasures the spattered sauce on her kitchen copy of Claudia Rodens Med: books cater to every appetite.

Although Smith defines herself as a bookish academic, she balks at Arcimboldos 16th-century portrait of a man constructed from books, with fluttery pages for hair, ribs made of stacked tomes, and bookmarks for fingers. The monstrous figure in the painting reminds her that the book-human relationship is reciprocal: if we are made up of books, books are made up of us. Proving the point, she notices that a small Spanish-language Bible confiscated from a migrant at the US border is curved around the contours of a body, having been stuffed in a pocket for comfort and companionship during the long trek north to the Rio Grande.

In holding a book we clasp or embrace it or even nurse it on our laps: the meeting of minds relaxes into a closer communion, and when you finish Portable Magic its pages will be spotted with your fingerprints and dusted by traces of your DNA. Smith encourages this intimacy by puffing Phew! after a particularly strenuous page of argumentation and thanking readers who stay the course. Her wise, funny, endearingly personal book made me want to shake her hand, or give her a grateful, disembodied hug.

Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers by Emma Smith is published by Allen Lane (20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers review a spine-tingling adventure - The Guardian

A collection of the interesting and sometimes unusual events that happened this week in Arizona history.

On this date in 1899, the Phoenix Daily Herald ran an ad placed by a local contractor asking residents why they continue to spend $5, $10 or $15 a month on rent when they could own a lot in the heart of Phoenix for $65 to $200.

On this date in 1899, the Phoenix Daily Herald reported the departure of John Gorman, who was the tollgate keeper on the Riverside-to-Globe road until it was abandoned. Gorman took tolls for 18 years, often with a pistol or shotgun in his hand.

On this date in 1922, outlaws attempted the holdup of the Southern Pacific Golden State at Jaynes Station near Tucson. One was killed and the others fled as the express messenger used his shotgun.

On this date in 1898, Arizona barbers raised their prices to an unheard of high for a shave 25 cents.

On this date in 1910, Edward Hughes, one of the original locators of the Helvetia mines, died.

On this date in 1916, the town of Pima was incorporated.

On this date in 1929, high winds toppled the new Somerton Junior High school under construction at Somerton, south of Yuma. One workman was killed and another seriously injured.

On this date in 1930, outlaws set fire to the railway trestle between Miami and Globe in an effort to wreck the Southern Pacific train but the engineer opened the throttle and raced through the flames.

On this date in 1910, the Douglas police chief arrested the mayor on a charge of failing to hitch his horse.

On this date in 1910, a carload of wild broncos was shipped from Phoenix to New York where they would be ridden, three each day, at the New York Hippodrome by rodeo rider Bert Bryan.

Library of Congress

The New York Hippodrome, also known as the Hippodrome Theatre, in 1910.

On this date in 1931, Nogales dedicated its new international airport.

On this date in 1940, the University of Arizona radio bureau director said women were too artificial on the air to be successful.

On this date in 1900, an Arizona and New Mexico Railroad freight train crashed through a bridge near Clifton. Three people were killed and nine injured.

On this date in 1910, the Hotel Adams in Phoenix was destroyed by fire, with the loss estimated at $275,000 and two people killed. Gov. and Mrs. Richard Sloan, who were living in the hotel made their escape without injury.

Library of Congress

A view of Adams Street with Hotel Adams (left) in 1908 Phoenix.

On this date in 1865, the Prescott Post Office was established.

On this date in 1929, Federal Engineer H.J. Gault arrived in Yuma to begin the final survey of the All-American Canal.

On this date in 1910, Mr. John Gardner, Pima County census enumerator, reported that as he entered a Yaqui village in northern Pima County all the Indians quickly vanished. His total count for the village was one female.

On this date in 1890, the Arizona Republican published its first issue and would become the Arizona Republic 40 years later.

On this date on 1892, a stage coach line was established between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon.

On this date in 1916, private citizens of Arizona let the contract for a solid silver service to be presented to the battleship Arizona. The price was approximately $8,000.

On this date in 1862, the advance guard of the California Column reached Tucson under the command of Lt. Col. Joseph West and established Camp Lowell.

On this date in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act, giving free land to citizens who could qualify for ownership by living on the land.

On this date in 1910, the Arizona Daily Star announced that incorporation papers were to be filed by a company of local promoters who planned to build a resort in Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains.

On this date in 1931, border patrolmen discovered the skeleton of a 25,000-year-old mammoth near Hereford.

On this date in 1954, Dean Byron Cummings, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona and the person many believe was the first white man to see Rainbow Bridge, died.

NPS

The Cummings-Douglass Expedition of 1909 set out to find Rainbow Bridge. Center: Byron Cummings sitting between John Wetherill and William Douglass. It's debated who in the party was the first to see the landmark.

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Here's what happened this week in Arizona history: May 15-21 - KJZZ

The 1982 Los Angeles Lakers are probably the most forgotten about of the five championship teams of that decade.

The roster was extremely stacked as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the focal point, Magic Johnson was really coming into his own, and a plethora of excellent role players including Jamaal Wilkes, Norm Nixon, and Bob McAdoo filled in all of the gaps.

Due to the circumstances surrounding all of the other Lakers rings, this team has fallen under the radar a bit, but they made some history themselves. On May 15, 1982 the Lakers defeated the San Antonio Spurs, 128-123, to end their Western Conference Finals with a four-game sweep.

The Lakers had also swept the Phoenix Suns in the previous round, making them the first team in NBA history to sweep back-to-back seven-game playoff series.

It was truly a team effort on that night as there were six players in double-figures and it was those role players leading the way. Nixon paced the Lakers with 30 points and 10 assists while McAdoo had 26 points and eight assists.

Kareem and Magic were their normal stellar selves as Abdul-Jabbar had 22 points and nine rebounds, while Johnson finished with 22 points, nine rebounds, six assists and four steals.

The Lakers definitely needed everything they got to hold off the high-octane Spurs. George Gervin, one of the greatest pure scorers in NBA history, finished with 38 points and Mike Mitchell added 30, but it just wasnt enough.

L.A. was determined to reclaim their spot as the top team in the league after a disappointing playoff finish the year before. They wanted to establish their dominance and sweeping their way to the NBA Finals before dispatching of the Philadelphia 76ers was the perfect way to do just that.

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This Day In Lakers History: L.A. Becomes First Team To Sweep Back-To-Back Seven-Game Series - LakersNation.com

The slaughter of some 300 Lakota men, women and children by U.S. Army troops in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre marked a tragic coda to decades of violent confrontations between the United States and Plains Indians.

In the years leading up to the massacre, the Indigenous Lakota Sioux had suffered a generation of broken treaties and shattered dreams. After white settlers poured into the Dakota Territory following the 1874 discovery of gold in the Black Hills, they seized millions of acres of land and nearly annihilated the native buffalo population. As their traditional hunting grounds evaporated and culture eroded, the Lakota, who once roamed as free as the bison on the Great Plains, found themselves mostly confined to government reservations.

Throughout 1890, the Lakota endured droughts and epidemics of measles, whooping cough and influenza. The Lakota were very distraught at that time, says Lakota historian Donovin Sprague, head of the history department at Sheridan College and a descendant of both survivors and victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre. They lost massive amounts of land under the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, and many of them were dealing with the recent surrender to the reservation system, which forbade the Sun Dance, their most important religious ceremony, and required permission to leave.

A glimmer of hope, however, arose with a religious movement that swept across the Great Plains. The Ghost Dance movement, which first appeared in Nevada around 1870, gained popularity among the Lakota after its 1889 revival by the Paiute prophet Wovoka. Its adherents believed that participants in a ritual circular dance would usher in a utopian future in which a cataclysm would destroy the United States, eradicate white colonists from the continent and bring about the resurrection of everything they had losttheir land, their buffalo herds and even their dead ancestors.

Wearing white muslin shirts that they believed would protect against danger and even repel bullets, nearly one-third of the Lakota had joined the messianic movement by the winter of 1890. They saw the Ghost Dance as a panacea, Sprague says. All these great transitions were happening in their lives, and they thought this new religion offered them something.

Members of the 7th Cavalry firing the opening shots at Wounded Knee, where some 300 Lakota Sioux, many of them women and children, were slaughtered within minutes.

MPI/Getty Images

As the Ghost Dance movement spread, frightened white settlers believed it a prelude to an armed uprising. Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy, federal agent Daniel F. Royer telegrammed U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters from South Dakotas Pine Ridge Reservation in November 1890. We need protection, and we need it now.

This is a big problem on the reservations because federal agents thought those who danced were going on the warpath, like the stereotype, Sprague says. I suppose the authorities did think they were crazybut they werent, a Lakota at Pine Ridge later recalled. They were only terribly unhappy.

The federal government banned Ghost Dance ceremoniesand mobilized the largest military deployment since the Civil War. General Nelson Miles arrived on the prairie with part of the 7th Cavalry, which had been annihilated at the Battle of the Little Bighorn 14 years earlier, and ordered the arrest of tribal leaders suspected of promoting the Ghost Dance movement.

When Indian police attempted to take Chief Sitting Bull into custody on the Standing Rock Reservation on December 15, 1890, the noted Sioux leader was killed in the ensuing melee. With a military warrant out for his arrest, Sitting Bulls half-brother, Chief Spotted Elk (sometimes referred to as Chief Big Foot), fled Standing Rock with a band of Lakota for the Pine Ridge Reservation more than 200 miles away on the opposite side of the state.

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Chief Big Foot, leader of the Sioux, was captured at the battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Here he lies frozen on the snow-covered battlefield where he died, 1890.

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On December 28, the U.S. cavalry caught up with Spotted Elk and his group of mostly elders, women and children near the banks of Wounded Knee Creek, which winds through the prairies and Badlands of southwest South Dakota. The American forces arrested Spotted Elkwho was too ill with pneumonia to sit up, let alone walkand positioned their Hotchkiss guns on a rise overlooking the Lakota camp.

As tensions flared and a bugle blared the following morningDecember 29American soldiers mounted their horses and surrounded the Lakota. A medicine man who started to perform the ghost dance cried out, Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured their bullets cannot penetrate us. He implored the heavens to scatter the soldiers like the dust he threw into the air.

The cavalry, however, went tipi to tipi seizing axes, rifles and other weapons. As a soldier attempted to wrestle a weapon out of the hands of a Lakota, a gunshot suddenly rang out. It was not clear which side shot first, but within seconds the American soldiers launched a hailstorm of bullets from rifles, revolvers and the rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns that tore through the Lakota.

Spotted Elk was shot where he lay on the ground. Boys who only moments before were playing leapfrog were mowed down. Through the dust and smoke, women and children dove for cover in a ravine. Remember Custer! one cavalryman cried out as soldiers executed the defenseless at point-blank range.

When the shooting stopped hours later, bodies were strewn in the gulch. Some were breathing, most not. Victims who had been hunted down while trying to flee were found three miles away. Some had been stripped of their sacred shirts as macabre souvenirs.At least 150 Lakota (historians such as Sprague put the number at twice as high) were killed along with 25 American soldiers, who were mostly struck down by friendly fire. Two-thirds of the victims were women and children.

The dead were carried to the nearby Episcopal church and laid in two rows underneath festive wreaths and other Christmas decorations. Days later a burial party arrived, dug a pit and dumped the frozen bodies in a mass grave.

To add insult to injury, some of the survivors were taken to Fort Sheridan in Illinois to be imprisoned for being at Wounded Knee, Sprague says, until William Buffalo Bill Cody took custody of them for inclusion in his Wild West Show.The show was not a positive portrayal of their people, but it beat sitting in a jail cell.

Although Miles, who wasnt present at Wounded Knee, called the carnage the most abominable criminal military blunder and a horrible massacre of women and children,the U.S. Army awarded the Medal of Honor, its highest commendation, to 20 members of the 7th Cavalry who participated in the bloodbath.

When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, survivor Black Elk recalled in 1931, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud and was buried in the blizzard. A peoples dream died there.

It was not the last time blood flowed next to Wounded Knee Creek. In February 1973, activists with the American Indian Movement seized and occupied the site for 71 days to protest the U.S. governments mistreatment of Native Americans. The standoff resulted in the deaths of two Native Americans.

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What Happened at the Wounded Knee Massacre? - History

The PGA Championship is the third-oldest men's major championship, with the PGA of American owning and conducting the championship that is now the second major of the year and played in May.

The PGA Championship has been played in every month of the year except for January, but the tournament has most frequently been played in August, where it was the fourth major -- sometimes called Glory's Last Shot -- for decades. However, the PGA Tour worked out a deal with the PGA of America to move the PGA Championship to May so the Tour's FedEx Cup playoffs could conclude in August, before football season.

Before 1958, the PGA Championship was not a stroke-play event, but rather a match-play event. In 1958, the tournaments became a stroke-play event, equal to the other major championships: the Masters, US Open and British Open Championship.

Jack Nicklaus has the most victories in the event's stroke-play history, with five wins. Walter Hagen won five times in the match-play era, including four in a row from 1924-1927.

The PGA Championship is played over four days, and there is a cut for the qualifying field.

The open field of 156 players is reduced to the top 70 and ties for the final two rounds of the event. At the end of the 72-hole event, the lowest score wins. There are 20 spots in the field for PGA of America professionals who earn their way into the championship based on the results of the PGA of America Professional Championship. The rest of the field is invited through various criteria, but, in recent memory, the PGA of America has made sure their criteria effectively invites the entire top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

The PGA Championship moves around each year, going around the country to different venues. It has been rare for the PGA Championship to be played at a truly public course, with private clubs and resorts typically hosting the championship. The state of New York has hosted 13 times, followed by Ohio (11) and Pennsylvania (9).

The PGA Championship has always gone by the PGA Championship or PGA of America Championship.

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PGA Championship history, results and past winners - Golf News Net