Marked This Day

On this day in 1984, Baby Fae received a heart transplant--from a baboon. Besides reminding me of that melodramatic movie Untamed Heart with Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei, in which Christian Slater thought that he had a baboon heart and refused to get a needed heart transplant because he believed his baboon heart contained his love for Marisa Tomei (not as bad as it sounds actually), and Baby Fae's moniker being really close to that of the vastly underrated R&B singer/producer Babyface (“When Can I See You” is a damn good song), Baby Fae’s little baboon-heart miracle was really rather sad. Amazing but sad. She was the fourth person to receive an animal heart, but none of previous three lasted longer than 3 ½ days. Baby Fae fought and kicked and survived for 20 days before her little body finally succumbed. Amazing. But sad. Sometimes life is like that. Like the band playing as the Titanic went down. Or the story of Zach Sobiech. Or when Lt. Eric Ellison attended Kazzie Po...

On this day in 1910 (the video date is incorrect), Barney Oldfield defeated Jack Johnson. In two five-mile car races. Which would make sense because Barney Oldfield was a racecar driver and Jack Johnson was a boxer. So in what has to be the most unsurprising outcome to a competitive endeavor ever, the racecar driver beat the boxer in a car race. Amazing, right? 'Twas the Captain Obvious of competitions. I wonder if Michael Jordan would have beaten Barry Bonds in a one-on-one basketball game when they were both in their primes? Even if Barry was juicing--not much of a contest. Would Tom Brady beat Bryce Harper in Home Run Derby? I wonder if J.J. Watt could outskate Tara Lipinski? See what I’m getting at here? Barney Oldfield, a racecar driver, beat a Jack Johnson, a boxer, in a car race. What does that prove? It’s like a bad episode of Shaq Vs. Remember that show (the idea for which Shaq may or may not have stolen from Steve Nash)? But there was no handicap. Of course the sad reali...

On this day in 1982, John Z. DeLorean was arrested after he was caught with cocaine. A lot of cocaine. 55 lbs of cocaine. 24 million dollars worth of cocaine. Great Scott! That’s a lot. Though he was later acquitted, one has to imagine that Johnny Z. might have wished that the DMC-12 actually possessed the ability to disrupt the space-time continuum once hitting 88 mph and undergo temporal displacement to either a. not buy 55 lbs of cocaine or b. not get caught with it. That is assuming that DeLorean watched the classic that is Back to the Future . He was in deep financial trouble by 1985, hence the 24 million dollar drug deal. That really is a lot of cocaine. Odds are that DeLorean had some other things on his mind rather than seeing the kid from Family Ties drive his car into “good ole 1955.” The sports almanac from BttF II was what he really needed. With that little knick-knack he could have forgotten all about the drugs and just gambled his way back into automotive relevance. Un...

Ahh Love. Crazy little thing. It has inspired great works of art but has also caused violence and war. It can make you do crazy things. It made Lloyd Dobbler hold up a boombox playing a Peter Gabriel classic even after Diane Court gave him a break-up pen. It made Jack Dawson let Rose hog a perfectly good door and freeze to death in the North Atlantic. And it happens in real life to. Like when Thomas Jefferson, the man who was not impressed by anything, jumped over a fountain while walking with Maria Cosway in Paris. TJ broke his wrist. That broken wrist and TJ losing self-control was unusual, but hardly an issue--besides the broken wrist. And the little fact that Maria Cosway was married. So once his bones healed, on this day in 1786, Thomas Jefferson penned one of the most famous love letters ever written. In “A Dialogue between the Head and the Heart,” Jefferson wrote to Cosway about how his desires to be with her were in conflict with his knowledge that doing so would go against hi...

On this day in 2008, Luc Costermans set a world speed record for blind drivers when he punched a borrowed Lamborghini Gallardo to 192 mph on an airstrip near Marseilles. I'm not sure if this impressive or just nuts. Truth is, they often go hand in hand. You ever try to drive blind? I'm not asking if you’ve ever purposely made yourself blind and then tried to drive a car, although I kind of am. Maybe you were young and foolish and blindfolded yourself, or maybe you had a friend start an impromptu game of Scent of a Woman and covered your eyes. Or maybe you wear eyeglasses and are too young to wear Transition Lenses, and then one morning, on the way to work, the sun not only to discriminate against you, but decides to shine directly into your fogged windshield making your visibility less than zero so are you are pretty much driving while blind and may or may not have wound up on a median at some point. Maybe that is too specific of an example. My point is, if you were foolish en...

On this day in 1970, the greatest TV station in the history of great TV stations went live. You might be thinking HBO. Good guess. But that was two years later. FX has some good stuff. But that didn't start till 1994. No, if you have kept up with these markings at all, you know that I'm talking about PBS. The station you grew up with. Big Bird, although he has been supplanted by Elmo, Mr. Rogers, and Bob Ross. If you watched PBS as a child, no matter how messed up your home life was, there is a good chance you are at least moderately well-adjusted. You can't get too crazy when Bob tells you to paint some happy trees or Mr. Rogers informs you it is a beautiful day. But PBS isn't just about valuable life-lessons as you mature. It is also about blowing your mind with new facts. It's about Ken Burns and a 12 hour movie on The Civil War or baseball. Or Charlie Rose talking to every noteworthy person who has lived in the last few decades. It's getting stellar BBC show...