NFL stars who played in the CFL: Doug Flutie, Ricky Williams, and Joe Theismann.
• Players. CFL teams get one more player than NFL teams: 12 vs.11. The extra man is usually employed as a backfielder. On offense, Canadian teams employ two slotbacks, instead of one tight end as Americans do. On defense, the formation includes two halfbacks and one safety, instead of the single American safety.
• The line of scrimmage. In the NFL, the offensive and defensive lines line up just 11 inches apart from each other—the length of the football. In Canada, a full yard is mandated, which means that more teams take a risk on the last down.
• Downs. Canadian football uses three downs, not four. And the amount of time allotted for a play is just 20 seconds, half of what the NFL allows. Combined with the three downs, it makes for a faster-paced game.
• Scoring. Scoring in the CFL is the same as in American football, with the exception of the “rouge point.” One point is awarded to the kicking team when they miss a field goal or punt the football and the receiving team opts to take a knee rather than attempt to run it down the field. A rouge point is also awarded if the ball goes out of bounds in the end zone during a kick.
MONEY
In the 1950s and early ’60s, the NFL and CFL were pretty much on par financially. That’s because the main source of revenue was admission to games. TV changed all that. The NFL now has multibillion-dollar deals to air its games. Canada, with about one-tenth the population of the United States, has fewer TV outlets, which means less TV revenue. And that affects player salaries: The average NFL player makes about $1.1 million a year. The average CFL player makes about $50,000, and many have to get off-season jobs to make ends meet. The highest-paid CFL player ever: Rocket Ismail. In 1991 the Toronto Argonauts drafted the Notre Dame star and offered him $18.2 million for four seasons, more than any player had ever been offered in CFL or NFL history to that point. (The Argonauts got around the $3.8 million salary cap by using a “marquee player” exemption loophole. They also got a huge cash transfusion that year from the team’s new owners—hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and movie star John Candy.)
Long distance: The first telephone answering machine was 3 feet tall.
Huge TV revenues led the CFL to try to expand into the United States in 1993, with the addition of the Sacramento Gold Miners. They added more teams the following year—in football-friendly cities that had no NFL team, such as Birmingham, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Memphis, Miami, and Shreveport—but getting Americans interested turned out to be an uphill battle because the CFL was essentially introducing them to a new sport. The Baltimore Stallions went to the Grey Cup champion ship finals in 1994 and won the cup in 1995. Nevertheless, all American teams were shuttered that year, thanks to poor attendance and no TV contract.
OTHER QUIRKS
• More games. The CFL’s regular season is 18 games vs. the NFL’s 16. The season runs from June to November (in America it runs from September to February). And since there are only eight teams in the CFL, each team plays all the others at least twice.
• NFL games are almost all played on Sunday. In Canada, they’re played throughout the week but primarily on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And just as Thanksgiving in the U.S. features a double-feature of televised football games, Labor Day in Canada offers football on TV all day.
• In the NFL, cheerleaders are hired individually by each team, which controls budgets and public appearances. In the CFL, the cheerleaders are employees of a separate umbrella organization: Canadian Football League Cheerleading.
• Only player in both the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and the American Pro Football Hall of Fame: Warren Moon, quarterback of the Edmonton Eskimos from 1978 to ’83 and then an NFL star (primarily with the Houston Oilers) from 1984 to 2000.
• Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball, had played for the minor league Montreal Royals in the mid-1940s, and he was accepted and well liked there. Believing that the city—and football—was ready for black players, in 1946 Montreal Alouettes boss Lew Hayman hired Herb Trawick. The NFL didn’t draft any black players until 1949.
Spudnik: Potatoes have been grown in space.
THEY WENT THATAWAY
Some famous people aren’t just remarkable for how they lived, but also for how they died. Take these folks, for example.
KING ALEXANDER OF GREECE (1893–1920)
Claim to Fame: Alexander reigned from 1917 to 1920. He was a first cousin of Prince Philip of England.
Cause of Death: Killed by monkeys
Details: On October 2, 1920, the king was walking his dog through the Royal Garden in Athens—now called the National Garden—when one of the monkeys that lived there attacked the dog. (Some sources claim it was the dog that attacked the monkey.) When Alexander tried to separate them with a stick, a second monkey came to the defense of the first, and the king was badly bitten by both. He died from his wounds three weeks later.
Note: Alexander became king during World War I after his father, King Constantine I, was forced off the throne because of his pro-German sympathies. After Alexander’s death, Constantine returned to the throne, making Alexander a rare example of a king who succeeded his father and was succeeded by him as well. Constantine abdicated a second time in 1922, this time for good.
JOHN A. ROEBLING (1806–69)
Claim to Fame: The engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge
Cause of Death: Killed by the Brooklyn Bridge
Details: On June 28, 1869, Roebling was standing on a dock surveying the location of the tower on the Brooklyn side. When an approaching ferry pressed up against the dock, Roebling got his right foot caught between the boat and the dock and his toes were badly crushed. They were amputated later that same day. Roebling refused further medical treatment, perhaps contributing to his developing tetanus, a disease caused when a wound is infected by a strain of bacteria commonly found in dirt. Tetanus can be fatal, and in Roebling’s case, it was. After a week of suffering terrible seizures, he died on July 22.
Jack Haley, who played the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and famously sang “If I Only Had a Heart,” died in 1979. Cause: heart attack.
Note: Roebling’s son Washington, who took over supervision of the project after his father’s death, was nearly killed by the Brooklyn Bridge as well. Long hours spent in caissons, the pressurized underwater chambers used to construct the bridge’s foundation, left him severely disabled by decompression sickness, more commonly known as “the bends.” For the remaining decade that it took to finish the bridge, he supervised the project from his house via intermediaries, rarely returned to the job site, and did not attend the bridge’s opening in 1883.
MARCUS GARVEY (1887–1940)
Claim to Fame: Leader of a New York-based “Back-to-Africa” movement in the 1910s and 1920s
Cause of Death: Killed by his own obituary
Details: Garvey, who was born in Jamaica, believed that people of African descent would never win equal rights in majority-white countries and felt it made more sense for them to return to Africa. His views made him a controversial figure even within the African-American community. By 1940 he had long since been deported from the United States as an “undesirable alien” and was living in London. After he suffered a stroke that January, some newspapers mistakenly reported that he’d died, prompting one prominent African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender, to run a full, and very unflattering, obituary. On May 18, Garvey read it and was so upset by its negative tone that he suffered a second stroke and died three weeks later, on June 10, 1940.
JASPER NEWTON “JACK” DANIEL (1846–1911)
Claim to Fame: The distiller who created Jack Daniel’s Whiskey
Cause of Death: An unsafe safe
Details: Daniel had a terrible time remembering the combination to his office safe (no word on whether whiskey was a factor), and it was usually his nephew’s job to open it. One morning, however, Daniel came in to work early and his
nephew wasn’t there. Daniel tried to open the safe himself and got so frustrated in the attempt that he kicked it, striking it so hard that he broke his toe. The toe became infected, and he developed septicemia, or blood poisoning, which killed him on October 10, 1911. Daniel’s last words (according to the distillery): “One last drink, please.”
MIKE EDWARDS (1948–2010)
Claim to Fame: Cellist and founding member of the rock group Electric Light Orchestra. Edwards was with ELO from 1972 to 1975.
Caused of Death: Killed by a bale of hay
Details: In the United States, bales of hay are often rectangular in shape and don’t weigh much more than 100 pounds. In the United Kingdom, the bales are wheel-shaped and can weigh more than 1,300 pounds. In September 2010, Edwards happened to be driving past a farm in Devon, in Southwest England, when a farmer lost control of just such a bale. It rolled down a slope, bounced over a 15-foot hedge, and demolished the cab of the van Edwards was driving, killing him instantly.
MATTHEW VASSAR (1792–1868)
Claim to Fame: A wealthy brewer, in 1861 Vassar donated $408,000 and 200 acres of land to found a college for women in Poughkeepsie, New York. Thanks to his generosity, Vassar College was the first such institution that was comparable to men’s colleges in terms of funding and equipment.
Cause of Death: Dropped dead while delivering his farewell speech
Details: Vassar turned 76 in 1868, the year he decided to step back from his close involvement in the college. On June 23, 1868, he made his final speech to the board of trustees. One topic he planned to cover: his gratitude that none of the students or faculty had become ill or died during the school’s first three years of instruction. According to the minutes of the meeting, Vassar was eleven pages into the speech “when he failed to pronounce a word which was upon his lips, dropped the papers in his hand, fell back in his chair insensible, and died at precisely ten minutes to 12 o’clock p.m. by the clock in the College Tower.” After a prayer, the trustees adjourned until 3:00 p.m. and then reassembled to listen to a trustee finish reading the speech.
Movie Fact: Highest-grossing movie about Twins: Twins (1988).
The tuatara, a lizard native to New Zealand, has a third eye on the top of its head.
KINGS, SIZED
Here’s the long and short (and wide) of some of the world’s most powerful monarchs.
NOT SHORT ENOUGH
It’s no surprise that Charles VIII of France was short when he became king in 1483—he was only 13 years old. As the years passed, his head continued to grow but his body didn’t keep up, making him not only short, but also disproportionate. He did have one thing going for him: He was courteous. In fact, “Charles the Courteous” became his nickname long before 1498, the year he escorted his wife down a dark corridor toward a tennis match, bowed to allow her to pass beneath the door’s low lintel, and then stood up too fast, crashing his head into a wooden beam. He died of a skull fracture nine hours later.
THE KING’S MINIATURE PAINTER
At 5'4", Charles I was the shortest king in British history. That may be why he kept a 19-inch-tall dwarf at court—to have at least one man he could look down on. In 1649, after England’s Second Civil War, the British monarchy was abolished and Charles I was executed, leaving him a head shorter. (He regained his stature after Parliament permitted his head to be sewn back onto his body so that his family could pay their last respects.) The monarchy was restored in 1660, and at 6'2", Charles II towered over his late father. His future wife, Catherine of Braganza, however, was short. So short, in fact, that when they met, Charles said, “My God, they’ve sent me a bat!”
HIS ROYAL WEAKNESS
Five-foot-five-inch King Frederick William I of Prussia (1688–1740) surrounded himself with giants. His Potsdam Giant Guards—a special regiment of the Prussian Infantry—had a minimum height requirement of 6’2”. The Potsdam Giants never saw battle, though. Frederick just liked to watch them perform drills, led by their mascot, a bear. “The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me,” Frederick confided to the French ambassador, “but tall soldiers...they are my weakness.”
The current London Bridge (in London) is owned by a public charity, Bridge House Estates.
HEY, GOOD LOOKIN’
The Venetian Ambassador once called 6-foot-tall Henry VIII “the handsomest potentate he’d ever set eyes on.” That must have been before the British king got fat. Henry seldom ate fruit or vegetables. Instead, he indulged in eels, whales, porpoises, boars, snails, swans, and peacocks. Historians note that Henry had many symptoms of scurvy—a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C: swollen face, ulcerated legs, lethargy, bloating, and wild mood swings. He also ended up with a 52-inch waistline, weighed 300 pounds, and needed several servants to carry him about in a chair on poles.
SHRIMP À LA KING
Believing that the 900-year-old House of Savoy needed a boost, King Umberto I of Italy did some selective breeding. In 1896 he matched his 5'3" son, Prince Victor Emmanuel, to the tallest royal he could find: 6-foot-tall Elena of Montenegro. While he waited for his own son, Umberto II, to grow up, Victor Emmanuel did all he could to elevate his own stature. He had the legs of his throne cut short so his feet touched the floor and the back seat of his royal car raised so his subjects could see him through the window. The Italians adored il piccolo—”the little one”—but he appointed Benito Mussolini to Prime Minister, and Mussolini backed Germany in World War II, a disaster for Italy and its people. In 1946 the little king abdicated, hoping his 6-foot-tall son could hold the throne. He couldn’t. The Italian people voted to make Italy a republic and gave the last Savoy monarch the boot.
QUEEN-SIZED
Like most senior citizens, Queen Victoria suffered from shrinkage—she lost five inches, going from 5' in her youth to 4"7'' in her old age. And by the end of her life (age 82), England’s longest-reigning monarch was almost as wide as she was tall. A pair of her bloomers that sold at auction in 2009 had a 50-inch waist.
World’s first movie theater: Vitascope Hall, in New Orleans (1896). Price of admission: 10¢.
THE GOLDEN PAGE
These facts are worth their weight in Au.
• Gold’s chemical symbol is Au. Why not G? Because the “au” is short for aurum, the mineral’s name in Latin.
• Gold reflects heat and radiation so well that NASA used it to coat the plastic visors of astronauts’ space-suit helmets to provide protection from the Sun’s powerful rays.
• Gold-to-Go ATMs dispense 24-karat gold coins and gold bars. The machines update their prices every 10 minutes (based on current gold prices) and are “largely” burglar-proof and tamper-resistant.
• The most gold ever stored in Fort Knox was in 1949. At the time, there were 701 million ounces there, or 69.9 percent of all the known gold in the world. How much is in there today? The government won’t say.
• For three years, a North Carolina family used a heavy rock found on their farm as a doorstop. In 1802 they sold it to a jeweler for $3.50. Bad move: It turned out to be a 17-pound gold nugget.
• Yellowknife, a city in Canada’s Northwest Territories, is famous for having streets “paved with gold.” (Waste from local gold mines was used to make some of them.)
• The infamous 1838 relocation of the Cherokee known as the “Trail of Tears” is directly linked to gold. The tribe controlled most of the land in the North Georgia. Almost immediately after gold was discovered there in 1828, the Georgia legislature began plans for their removal.
• On average, a ton of ore dug from a gold mine yields only a single ounce of gold.
• Elvis Presley had many custom Cadillacs, but designed only one himself: a gold custom Eldorado convertible with gold pearlescent paint (40 coats), a gold-plated steering wheel, a solid-gold hood ornament, and gold records mounted on the cloth top. The car wasn’t built until 1987—10 years after Elvis died. (There’s a Hot Wheels version.)
King George
II of England had a pet armadillo. He called it “Indian Monster.”
MISERY INDEXES
Here’s a look at some famous and not-so-famous indexes that are used to measure the bad things in life.
THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE
Background: Robert Simpson was the head of the National Hurricane Center in August 1969 when Hurricane Camille—one of the most powerful ever to hit the United States—bore down on the Gulf Coast states. New forecasting tools had enabled the Center to predict Camille’s intensity, and Simpson raised such an alarm that more than 81,000 people evacuated the affected areas. Result: Fewer than 300 people were killed when it hit. Nonetheless, Simpson felt that a more effective way of communicating the size and likely impact of a hurricane was needed. So he contacted a Florida engineer named Herbert Saffir, who had recently devised a five-category windstorm scale for the United Nations to predict how much damage would be caused to structures hit by winds of various strengths. Simpson and Saffir worked to incorporate potential damage from storm surges and flooding intro hurricane predictions; their Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale made its debut in 1971.
How It Works: Hurricanes are classified into five categories according to wind speed: Category 1 (74–95 mph), Category 2 (96–110 mph), Category 3 (111–130 mph), Category 4 (131–155 mph), and Category 5 (156 mph and greater).
Details: The scale has proven ineffective at predicting flooding and the height of storm surges. Both vary too much according to local factors such as the shape of the coastline and slope of the continental shelf where the hurricane makes landfall. In 2010 these elements were removed; now it’s solely a wind scale.
Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® Page 17
