Quotations Book - Famous Quotations

"This site has 43,061 quotations by 7,960 authors in 1,328 subjects. We also have 4,082 proverbs and 72,299 fortunes in 72 collections."

If you're ever stuck for some words of wisdom, you'll find something here. You can search by author or subject. If you want, you can even subscribe to their RSS feed.

A few random quotes:

Mark Twain -

"Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."

Voltaire -

"Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills."

Friedrich Nietzsche -

"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication."

Ist Olympic Winter Games

"In 1921, the International Olympic Committee voted to stage "International Sports Week 1924" in Chamonix, France. This event was a complete success and was retroactively named the First Olympic Winter Games. The first event to be decided in Chamonix was the men’s 500m speed skating. The first gold medal went to Charles Jewtraw of the United States. A. Clas Thunberg of Finland earned medals in all five speed skating events: three gold, one silver and one bronze. Norway’s Thorleif Haug dominated Nordic skiing, winning both cross-country races and the Nordic combined. The Canadian ice hockey team won all five of their matches, outscoring their opponents 110 to 3."

While the rest of the world prepares for the 2006 games that begin today, this page takes you back to the first winter games. Here you can find facts, highlights, photos, and even a couple of video clips.

This is from the official Olympic website, so you can also get info on the current winter games as well as all the other winter and summer games since 1896.

The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures

"This presentation features 68 motion pictures produced between 1898 and 1901 of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine Revolution. The Spanish-American War was the first U.S. war in which the motion picture camera played a role. These films were made by the Edison Manufacturing Company and the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company and consist of actualities filmed in the U.S., Cuba, and the Philippines, showing troops, ships, notable figures, and parades, as well as reenactments of battles and other war-time events. The Special Presentation presents the motion pictures in chronological order together with brief essays that provide a historical context for their filming."

Some of these are really hard to see or make out details, but I like'em for their historical value none the less. There are institutions that restore a degree of clearity to old films, and I hope they get around to these, assuming they haven't.

I can't see any young kids having any interest in these, unless they're like I was (and still am); really interested in the way things were. These films were made about a war just over a hundred years ago, but from my perspective, it wasn't that long ago because my grandmother was alive then, and in another 20 years, my mother would be born.

What's special about this war is that it had such a profound affect on the hundred years to follow. If you take time to look into it, you'll see that it was a war that wasn't even necessary. What was basically an accident, led to our prominence as a world power. Who would've thought that a hundred years later, we'd again be fighting in a war, this time Iraq, that's also considered to have been unnecessary, and will have a profound affect on the hundred years to come.

My Birthday

February 5th is my birthday, and since I go by the name "Jack Benny" to honor him, I'll let you all celebrate with me by posting a direct download for an MP3 of one of the "real" Jack Bennys' old radio shows from Feb. 17, 1946. Here, you'll see that Jack wasn't always '39', in fact, he'd been fudging his age for a number of years before he ever reached '39'. In this show, Jack claims to have just turned 37, but Don Wilson points out that he was 37 the last year, and the year before that, and before that.

The title of the show is...

"Rochester Lost at Sea - Briefly MP3"

In the show, after Jack talks about his birthday with Don, Phil Harris is late (again) so Mary Livingston plays his part in a routine with Jack till Phil finaly arrives. Later Jack tells that while taking a violin lesson from Professor LeBlanc (played of course, by Mel Blanc), he learned Rochester was lost at sea.

To find out how everything turns out, well, you'll just have to tune in and enjoy.