On June 22, 1938 thousands of boxing fans poured through the turnstiles at Yankee Stadium. Most couldn’t wait to to boo Max Schmeling, the German fighter they viewed as Hitler’s white hope against African-American heavyweight…
Posts published by “W.E. Reinka”
The other day at a red light, a Cadillac Escalade SUV sat in front of me, looming over the Toyota Cressida to its right. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had no idea what…
In early 1950s television, Richard Carlson starred in “I Led Three Lives.” Each episode started with a dramatic voiceover: “This is the fantastically true story of the Herbert A. Philbrick, who for nine frightening years…
What is the greatest risk factor for getting cancer? Tobacco? Environmental pollution? Try age. The longer we live, the more likely our chances that we’ll contract some form of cancer. Since all of us grow…
Here we were, on the brink of nuclear destruction, and my parents couldn’t grasp the necessity of a fallout shelter. We were a typical 1950s middle class family. Dad brought home the bacon and Mother…
They murdered the jockey within 48 hours. It took two weeks before a hiker found the trainer downstream from a hunting cabin in Idaho with two bullets in the back of the head. Golden Gate…
During the first half of the twentieth century, Americans could count on death, taxes and the same sixteen teams in Major League Baseball. All sixteen teams huddled in the northeast quadrant of the country. Boston,…
Back in the days of stock ticker machines, standardized company abbreviations or ticker symbols reduced the costs of quotations ticked across telegraph lines. Although ticker tape was an early casualty to the electronic revolution, ticker…