“That’s why how stocks fare in the first five trading days of January is key. The last 36 times stocks rose at the start of the month, they were higher at year’s end 31 times, the [Stock Trader’s] Almanac says.”
There had never been an NFL team go 0-16 before this year, or 16-0 before last year either. I’m guessing the odds on those events were a lot longer than the odds the first five trading days of 2009 being indicative (7.2 to 1).
Mary Tyler Moore is 71 today.
On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Moore played Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman “making it on her own” in 1970s Minneapolis. MTM first pitched her character to CBS as a young divorcee, but CBS executives believed her role as Laura Petrie was so firmly etched in the public mind that viewers would think she had divorced Dick Van Dyke (and that the American public would not find a divorced woman likable), so Richards was rewritten as a woman who had moved to the big city after ending a long affair. Richards landed a job working in the news department of fictional WJM-TV, where Moore’s all-American spunk played off against the gruff boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner), world-weary writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod) and pompous anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). In early seasons, her all-male work environment was counterbalanced by a primarily female home life, where again her character contrasted with her ditzy landlady Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) and her New York-born neighbor and best friend, Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper).
Angelina Jolie’s dad is 70. That would be four-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner, Jon Voight. Voight won his Oscar for Coming Home, as did co-star Jane Fonda. The film had eight nominations, three wins.
Marianne Faithfull is 62. Faithfull is a descendant of Count Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the 19th century author and source of the term “masochism.” Her signature song, As Tears Go By, was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Mayday Malone is 61. That’s Sam, Ted Danson.
Two-time Oscar nominee Jude Law is 36.
Two women, Jennifer Jones and Alicia Sgro, have sued Wal-Mart and others for alleged injuries — including punches to the face from an unknown assailant — that took place during the stampede that preceded Wal-Mart’s Black Friday ‘Blitz’ sale. (Black Friday is that day after Thanksgiving when the holiday shopping season officially kicks off.)
Something between 10 and 20 percent of gift cards go unused. Don’t let that happen to you.
Freakonomics reported two years ago on one of the deadweight costs of Christmas.
“But even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers …”
On this date 51 years ago Tobin Rote threw for four touchdowns and ran for another as the Detroit Lions defeated the Cleveland Browns, 59-14, in the NFL championship game. It was the Lions’ third title of the Fifties, all over the Browns.
Since then the Lions have missed 42 out of 51 post seasons (counting this year) and are 1-9 in games when they did make it. Only the Cardinals have done worse.
For nearly all of that time the Lions have been owned by William Clay Ford, grandson of Henry and son of Edsel Ford. The Lions aren’t exactly built Ford tough.
From Pro Football Weekly (June 29, 2000)
Tobin Rote, the quarterback who guided the Lions to their last NFL championship in 1957 while filling in for injured Hall of Famer Bobby Layne, has died. He was 72….
The Lions platooned Rote and Layne at quarterback before Rote finished off the ’57 season after Layne broke his leg in the regular season’s second-to-last game.
In the divisional playoff, the Lions trailed the 49ers 24-7 at halftime. Through the dressing room walls at San Francisco’s old Kezar Stadium, they could hear the 49ers already beginning their celebration.
“We could hear them laughing,” Rote said in ’91. “The walls were paper thin. They were going on about how they were going to spend their championship game money. It made us angry.”
In the second half, the Lions scored three touchdowns in four minutes, 29 seconds and went on to win 31-27.
The next Sunday at home in Briggs Stadium, the Lions won their third championship in six years with a 59-14 rout of the Browns. Rote threw four TD passes and ran for another.
“This is us. We own this. We did this. So man up.”
Lions Coach Rod Marinelli to the team after they ended the season unfeated, 0-16.
Would we had had a president who could accept responsibility like that these past eight years.
Marinelli quoted by Peter King – SI.com.