Tidbits of Grand Forks - December 8, 2022

This week, Tidbits inspects the evil arch enemies of heroes, those wicked scoundrels we love to hate.

• DC Comics debuted Catwoman in Batman comics in the Spring of 1940, under the name “The Cat.” She was the arch enemy of Batman, and the alter ego of Selina Kyle, a Gotham City cat burglar and jewel thief. Selina had no superpowers, relying on her physical and intellectual gifts to pull off her various crimes. She was an accomplished acrobat, a martial arts expert, boxer, and street-fighter. The clever Catwoman was a master of disguise, and able to sneak up on groups of people with ease. Actress Lee Meriwether was the first to take Catwoman to the big screen in the first “Batman” film in 1966. However, Julie Newmar was Catwoman in the 1966-1967 television series, with Eartha Kitt taking over the role for the final season when Newmar exited the show. Michelle Pfeiffer starred in the role in 1992’s “Batman Returns,” followed by Halle Berry in “Catwoman” (2004), Anne Hathaway in 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” and Zoe Kravitz in “The Batman” in 2022. In the comic books, Catwoman leaves her life of crime to help out Batman in 1951 and 1952, but was back to burglary in 1954 issues. She is ranked Number 11 on the “Top 100 Comic Book

Who was Goldfinger’s Korean manservant in the 1964 James Bond movie?

Erik Magnus Lehnsherr was the archenemy of the X-Men. What is the nickname of this villain?

• Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 literary work The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde told the story of London scientist Dr. Henry Jekyll, who battled his dark side, unsuccessfully repressing the evil urges of his wicked personality. Dr. Jekyll created a potion that would release the evil in a person, which would take over the body and soul. After committing acts of evil, the person could drink the potion and be changed back into his original self. Dr. Jekyll transformed into a younger, smaller, crueler, violent person, Edward Hyde, who committed several crimes, including the murder of a member of Parliament with no remorse whatsoever. Jekyll became so obsessed with his dark side that after a time he was no longer able to control the process of returning to his original self, eventually becoming his evil counterpart of Mr. Hyde permanently. Stevenson’s novella impacted our language, with the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” coming to refer to persons with a dual nature – good on the outside, but sometimes dreadfully evil.

• The villain in the 1964 film Goldfinger was Auric Goldfinger, a wealthy smuggling magnate obsessed with gold and planned to detonate a bomb in the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. Goldfinger was the third movie in the James Bond series, with Sean Connery in the role of the famous MI6 agent, a movie based on Ian Fleming’s seventh Bond novel, published in 1959. Fleming derived the name from an architect named Erno Goldfinger who had designed Fleming’s Hampstead, England home. The role of Goldfinger was played by German actor Gert Frobe. Frobe spoke very little English; consequently, his lines were dubbed by British television actor Michael Collins. Frobe was originally a violinist who gave it up for theater work. In his later years, he had roles in Mercedes Benz commercials.

VILLAINS (continued):

• Cruella de Vil was first introduced in British author Dodie Smith’s 1956 novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, with her name a combination of the words “cruel” and “devil.” In the book, she is a spoiled, glamorous heiress and fashion designer. Cruella is married to an unnamed furrier, whose character wasn’t transferred over to 1961 Disney animated feature film, removed along with Cruella’s her pet cat. She hatches a plan to steal Dalmatian puppies belonging to Anita and Roger Radcliffe, with a plan to turn them into fur coats. Cruella is deeply disappointed on the night of the pups’ birth, finding them utterly spotless, but is reassured by Anita that spots appear when puppies are a few weeks old. Actress Glenn Close portrayed Cruella in two live-action Dalmatian movies in 1996 and 2000, followed by Emma Stone in the role in 2021’s “Cruella.”

• The villain in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the cold and heartless Nurse Ratched, the tyrant of Salem State Hospital. She was introduced as Big Nurse in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, which was adapted into a 1975 film. As head administrative nurse at the mental institution, she maintained order amongst the patients through humiliation, revoking of privileges and necessities, and other inhumane behavior. Ratched’s time as a World War II Army nurse contributed to her tyrannical demeanor. Kesey modeled the character after the head nurse of the night shift in a psychiatric ward in an Oregon facility where he once worked. Years later, Kesey bumped into the woman, and commented that she was “a whole lot more human” than he remembered. The American Film Institute ranks Nurse Ratched as the fifth greatest movie villain of all time.

actor played crazed former football referee Stanley Craver in a series of Nike commercials in the 1990s?

first-round NFL Draft pick for the Kansas City Chiefs in 1990 missed the entire 1991 season due to injuries sustained in a scooter accident? Who was the last NHL team to win their very first Stanley Cup?

the lawyer, college basketball analyst and former Duke basketball standout who successfully defended a costume company against a lawsuit by the creators of Barney the purple dinosaur in 1999? Who was coach of the Dallas Stars when they won the 1999 Stanley Cup? What team did they defeat? What is the most goals scored by U.S. men’s team in a World Cup soccer game?

VILLAINS (continued):

• L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” describes the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West as a beautiful yellow castle, with long hallways carpeted in yellow velvet and windows covered in yellow silk. That’s far from the creepy fortress depicted in the classic 1939 film, home of the flying monkeys. In the book, the Witch is an old hag with three pigtails and an eyepatch, while the film featured a frightening witch with green skin. The Wicked Witch of the West was not the sister of the Wicked Witch of the East in the Baum novel. In the original version, the only desire of the Western Witch was to obtain the magic silver shoes, which would increase her power. In the film, the shoes, of course, were the ruby slippers, which were changed to red to show off the industry’s newly-introduced Technicolor process. Silver shoes just weren’t as exciting as bright red ones.

• Agatha Trunchbull is the evil and tyrannical headmistress of Crunchem Hall Primary School in Roald Dahl’s 1988 novel “Matilda,” which was adapted into a 1996 film. It’s an unlikely profession for someone who despises children, doles out excessive punishment, and torments them regularly, including grabbing girls by their pigtails and hurling them into the flower bed. Her strength is due to her large size and past history as a shot putter and javelin thrower in the Munich Olympics. Dahl based the character on the “mean and loathsome” owner of the sweetshop he regularly visited as a child in Wales. Ms. Trunchbull finally meets her match in the six-year-old student Matilda, who is capable of telekinesis, and with the help of the other children drives the villainess out of the school.

NUGGET OF KNOWLEDGE

It’s believed that Robert Louis Stevenson derived his inspiration for Mr. Hyde from a friend, a French teacher who appeared to lead a normal life. The man poisoned his wife with opium, and was convicted and executed for her murder in 1878.

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by Lucie Winbourne

In the early 1990s, cyclists who doped at the Tour De France used so much erythropoietin that they had to exercise throughout the night to avoid having heart attacks in their sleep.

• Pringles once tried to evade a hefty tax payment by claiming their product wasn't potato chips.

• Do bears appreciate beauty like us humans? Some wildlife experts think so, as there have been many sightings of the animals sitting at scenic points and staring out at vistas of mountains, rivers, etc. They appear to have no other purpose there than enjoying the view!

• Humans are more likely to die at around 11 a.m. than any other time of day.

• Who needs Harry Potter? Not the city of Christchurch in New Zealand. Until 2021, the city paid Ian Brackenbury Channell $16,000 a year to act as a state-appointed wizard. His duties? To perform "acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services" for two decades.

• In the first few centuries of the Christian Era, controversy over whether or not Jesus was divine at birth created political and social unrest that frequently resulted in full-scale warfare.

• Some DVD copies of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" include a subtitle track called "Subtitles for People Who Don't Like the Film," comprised of lines from Shakespeare's "Henry IV Part 2" that vaguely match what the actors are saying.

Thought for the Day: "Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

• On December 16, 1773, a group of highly disgruntled Boston colonists board three ships loaded with taxed tea from Britain. While it would undoubtedly have been enjoyed by the locals, following the refusal of officials to return it, the men hurled the tea into Boston Harbor as a form of protest against "taxation without representation."

• On December 13, 1978, the U.S. government honors women's suffrage icon Susan B. Anthony by minting a dollar coin named for her, but its close similarity to the quarter ultimately doomed it for public acceptance.

• On December 14, 1997, in advance of a visit from Pope John Paul II, Cuban president Fidel Castro declares Christmas to be an official holiday for the first time since his takeover in 1959.

• On December 12, 1917, with a loan of $90, Father Edward Flanagan founds an orphanage originally called The City of Little Men, dedicated to caring for at-risk children, with national headquarters in the village of Boys Town, Nebraska, for which it was later renamed.

• On December 17, 1969, the U.S. Air Force closes its "Project Blue Book,'' started in 1952 to determine whether UFOs were a threat to national security and to analyze UFO-related data. The closure came after concluding there was no actual evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind the 12,618 UFO sightings it had collected.

• On December 15, 2001, the Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens to the public after a team of experts spent 11 years repairing it, at a cost of over 30 million euros. While the Tower was stabilized, this third attempt at eliminating its famous lean also notably failed.

• On December 18, 1912, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson discovered human remains in the Piltdown gravel pit in Sussex, England. Dubbed the "Piltdown Man," he was thought to represent the missing evolutionary link between apes and mankind until it was confirmed at a 1953 international congress of paleontologists that the specimen was a fraud, consisting of skull parts both human and orangutan.

OUT OF THIS WORLD

THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE

Orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 340 miles above its surface, the Hubble Telescope explores the universe. Here are the facts about this scientific instrument.

• The Hubble Telescope was named in honor of astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, a scientist who discovered that distant clouds of light were other galaxies, showing that the Milky Way is just one of many. Additionally, in 1929, Hubble determined that the farther a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it appears to be moving away.

• The Hubble Telescope was launched into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. It captured its first image about a month later, on May 20, that of Star cluster NGC 3532.

• Traveling at 17,000 mph, the Hubble completes an orbit of Earth every 95 minutes. Since its launch, the telescope has orbited the Earth close to 190,000 times. It doesn’t travel to any celestial objects — stars, planets, or other galaxies — it provides pictures of them.

• The telescope’s views are clear and concise because it’s located above the Earth’s atmosphere, which can distort light and block wavelengths, and where clouds can obstruct the view. The Hubble cannot capture images of Earth because its orbit is too fast for the camera’s exposure time.

• The Hubble is 43.5 feet in length, about the size of a long school bus, with a diameter of 14 feet. When it was launched, it weighed 24,000 lbs., but now weighs in the neighborhood of 27,000 lbs. Periodic service missions by astronauts keep the telescope in optimal working order, updating its equipment to extend its life. There have been five such missions, beginning in 1993, with the most recent in 2009.

• The telescope’s primary mirror measures 94.5 inches in diameter, weighing 1,825 lbs. It collects its energy from two 25-ft. solar panels, storing it in six nickel-hydrogen batteries, with a capacity equal to about 22 average car batteries.

• The life expectancy of the Hubble was estimated at 15 years at the time of its launch. The successful servicing missions have kept the device productive, with continual operation expected for at least another decade. Because of atmospheric drag, a force that affects the orbits of satellites that are in a low-Earth orbit, the Hubble’s altitude is gradually decreasing, requiring its return to Earth, unless a propulsion module can boost it into a higher orbit.

• The Hubble is extremely accurate, able to lock onto an object with an equivalency of shining a laser on a human hair a mile away. Its farthest observation is that of the Galaxy GN-z11, about 13.4 billion light years away. Just how far is that? With a light-year equivalent to the distance light travels in one year, multiply that figure of about 6 trillion miles by 13.4 billion!

• Over the years, the Hubble has made close to 1.5 million observations. The cost of this mission has been about $16 billion since its initial inception in 1977. However, this doesn’t include the cost of its space shuttle launch or any of the five servicing missions.

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Workout Goals for 2023?

We love our new exercise coach. This is the young student who used us as guinea pigs for a college class project, graduated and has now been hired by the senior center as our permanent workout guru. It's only been a month, and already we want to make him Employee of the Year.

Somehow he managed to convince the town to spend large dollars to outfit a space in the rec center dedicated to workout equipment for seniors. But we haven't just been turned loose with all that fancy new gear. Coach has required that we all have a personal session with him wherein he will instruct us on each machine and fill out our personal goal sheet with the weights and repetitions for each one. Periodically he will stalk through the room, instruct on posture, scrutinize someone's goal sheet and ensure the machine's weight is set correctly.

The bonus for us is that the cost per month is less than one-quarter the amount charged by the regular gyms in our area.

Is a gym workout in your plans for 2023? While you might not be lucky enough to have a personal coach and a brand-new dedicated-for-seniors exercise room at your rec center, you still might be able to join a gym near you.

Do you qualify for a low-cost SilverSneakers fitness membership through your Medicare advantage or supplemental plan? Many plans have this benefit (standard Medicare does not), and over 17,000 gyms across the country participate.

If you find a local gym (don't forget about the YMCA), ask whether a fitness expert will show you how each machine works and to generate an exercise plan for you. It's often included in the membership.

One bonus to signing up for a gym membership at this time of year is that gyms frequently offer discounts for the new year.

Matilda Charles

by Freddy Groves

Were You Stationed at Fort Ord?

I remember Fort Ord as a beautiful place to live, with perfect weather and the ocean right over the sand dunes. It was idyllic.

But now over a thousand veterans have developed cancer after having served at Fort Ord. The likely culprit: chemicals in the drinking water, 40 of them, with trichloroethylene, or TCE, being most notable for causing different types of cancer. And once again, leaking tanks allowed chemicals to leach into the water supply.

It wasn’t until an anonymous call in 1984 that the EPA and other agencies learned about illegal dumping of drums of chemicals that were leaking into the soil. It was two years before the Army decided to clean it up. But there was concern in 1985 about the level of chemicals, and studies were done. The conclusion of many of the tests: Chemicals exceeded safe limits. An order went out that those doing cleanup were not to tell the community, the press or other government agencies.

The EPA labeled Fort Ord as a Super Fund site in 1990 because of leaking underground petroleum tanks, a landfill, a motor pool, a target range, a burn pit for drums of chemicals and other culprits.

The base closed in 1994, but the housing was still used until 1997.

Ring any bells? Think back to Camp Lejeune and all the years it took to get the illnesses listed as presumptive after exposure to all the chemicals. And at this writing, Lejeune is the only base where the Department of Veterans Affairs assumes that service there caused so many of the health problems ... not only in veterans but their spouses and children.

Veterans who have become ill after serving at Fort Ord have gone to the VA for care and have been told there’s no service connection between their illnesses and Fort Ord.

To read more about Fort Ord, see www.fortordcleanup.com and click on “Cleanup Programs.” To see what was known when, click on “Documents.” Or call them at 800-852-9699.

This week, Tidbits breathes in some facts on halitosis, a condition that affects about 25% of the population. What is it? Bad breath!

• The makers of Listerine came up with the term halitosis in the early 1900s. The owner’s son combined the Latin word “halitus,” meaning “breath,” with the Greek suffix “osis,” intending the word to sound like a medical condition.

• The inventor of Listerine was Dr. Joseph Lawrence, a St. Louis doctor who admired the work of British doctor and surgeon, Dr. Joseph Lister, considered the founding father of antiseptics. Lister was the first surgeon to perform an operation in an operating chamber sterilized with antiseptic, along with instruments cleansed with carbolic acid, resulting in a drastic reduction in post-operative infections. Dr. Lawrence developed an alcohol-based formula to use as a surgical antiseptic and named in Listerine in honor of Lister. Lawrence then licensed his product to a local pharmacist.

• Listerine was put forth to dentists in 1895, and was sold as the first over-the-counter mouthwash in America in 1914.

• Listerine claimed it killed “the germs found in the mouth,” and, indeed, the most common cause of halitosis is poor oral hygiene. The breakdown by bacteria of particles of food left in the mouth produces sulfur compounds, creating a foul odor. If you eat garlic, onions, or certain spices, as the body breaks down these compounds, they enter the bloodstream, and are carried to the lungs, and even your skin, which affects your breath.

HALITOSIS (contInued):

• Tobacco users not only have bad breath, they are more likely to have gum disease, another contributor to halitosis.

• There’s a fancy name for dry mouth -- xerostomia – a major factor in bad breath. Saliva helps cleanse your mouth, clearing food particles from the mouth and preventing unwanted bacteria. If you’re sufficiently hydrated, you’ll have healthy amounts of saliva. Reduced production can result from consuming dehydrating beverages such as coffee and alcohol. Certain medications can affect saliva production, such as antihistamines, diuretics, sedatives, and antidepressants. Sleeping with your mouth open dries out your mouth. We all know about the resulting morning breath!

• Infections from oral surgery, such as tooth removal, can cause halitosis, as can tooth decay, gum disease, or mouth sores. Inflamed tonsils and sinus infections can also contribute. Those undergoing chemotherapy for cancer can have a unique mouth odor as a result of the chemicals. Acid reflux disease can also produce an unpleasant breath odor.

• Although vitamin supplements can be a great way to boost your immune system, those who take them in large quantities are prone to bad breath. Frequent dieting, especially those focused on quick weight loss with an unbalanced diet, can lead your body to function abnormally, and contribute to bad breath.

• Americans spend about $660 million a year on products, such as gum, mints, and mouthwashes, to give them fresh breath. It’s the third most common reason people go to the dentist, right after tooth decay and gum disease. Aside from underlying health conditions, the best treatment for halitosis is regular brushing, flossing, and keeping your mouth hydrated.

Quiz Answers

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

A bullwhip Maleficent Oddjob Magneto Jaws

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Sports Answers

6. 7. 8. 1. 2. 3.

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4. 5. 6.

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