Sometimes it’s nice to remember the days when amateur athletes were top dogs.The New York Times reports on Joe Burk, who “won honors on Thames and Pacific.” Dude rowed and played football at Penn, was a single-scull champ afterwards, then won the Navy Cross on a PT boat in World War II.
With Jenna Bush engaged to be married, this seems like as good a time as any to clarify a fact about her past: Jenna and her twin sister Barbara were born in Dallas.
Stunning news from New York: actor Heath Ledger, the star of the movies Brokeback Mountain and A Knight’s Tale, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday afternoon.
Republican Fred Thompson has dropped out of the 2008 presidential race. The Washington Post has details.That leaves five serious contenders for the GOP nomination.
Factoid of the day: On the same day that Communist icon Vladimir Lenin died — 21 January 1924 — TV
Tom Brady and the New England Patriots are now one win away from the first 19-0 season in NFL history.The Patriots beat San Diego on Sunday, 21-12. That punched their ticket to Super Bowl XXXX-somethingorother on February 3rd, where they’ll play the New York Giants.
Actress Susanne Pleshette has died at age 70. She had surgery in 2006 for lung cancer.
A Rosa Parks mug shot?
Chess champ Bobby Fischer has died in his adopted home country of Iceland. Here are the opening lines from selected obituaries:”Bobby Fischer, the eccentric genius and high school dropout who became the only US world chess champion, has died in self-imposed isolation…” – The Financial Times
News reports say eccentric chess champ Bobby Fischer has died in Iceland at age 64.This video (5 mins.) captures the turmoil of Fischer’s 1972 win over Boris Spassky. Fischer won the championship, but never defended it and gave up his title in 1975.