THEY SAY IT’S all the fault of a poor church mouse. It was the winter of 1818 in the village of Oberndorf near the Austrian Bavarian border. It’s a poor region and often the people starve.
EVERYBODY KNOWS SANTA, the Christ-free saint of stuff. He was turned into a pop culture icon by an Atlanta marketing executive who sold ice-cold bubble brew. The world cherished his product as the liquid form of liberty and opportunity; but only when the temperatures were high. Atlanta’s sales numbers took a deep dive into the toilet as soon as Americans began their seasonal love affair with a miss from Switzerland. Something had to be done. Black sugar water can’t just be America’s favorite drink when the sun shines. No matter the weather, when Americans are thirsty, the Atlanta bubble brew should pop into their minds.
THE MOONLIGHT SONATA is a piano piece by Ludwig van Beethoven that he wrote in 1801. “Moonlight Sonata” is also the code name that planners of the German Luftwaffe gave their raid on the British city of Coventry in the night from Nov. 14-15, 1940.
IT FEELS LIKE no day goes by without someone announcing that they can predict the end of the world. It’s next Tuesday at 5 p.m. Those predictions come with a deluge of Bible verses that allegedly prove the point. And then doomsday comes and the sun sets on another failed doomsday prophet.