The burnt out remains of The Crooked House pub near Dudley, England, on July 8,, 2023. The owners of a quirky 18th century British pub destroyed in a fire last year have been ordered by a local council to rebuild it, keeping with its previous lopsided specifications. The watering hole — known as the Crooked House for its leaning walls and tilting foundation — in the village of Himley in central England, was gutted by a fire and subsequently demolished last August. (Jacob King/PA via AP)
Visits: 10
Cheers to being crooked again. Quirky English pub bulldozed after a fire to be rebuilt as it was.
The owners of a quirky 18th century British pub unlawfully bulldozed after a mysterious fire last year were ordered on Tuesday by a local council to rebuild it — and to stick to its original, lopsided dimensions.
Its demise saddened many in the village, about 210 kilometers (130 miles) northwest of London, and became the subject of a criminal investigation. Three people were arrested and later released on bail in connection with the blaze but no one was charged.
In a statement, the South Staffordshire Council said it had “engaged with the owners” and now ordered the pub rebuilt “back to what it was prior to the fire” by February 2027 or face prosecution for failing to comply. The notice was served on owners, Adam and Carly Taylor and the company secretary of ATE Farms, which bought the inn. They have 30 days to appeal the notice.
The fire took place two weeks after the pub was sold by operator Marston’s. Two days later — and before a cause could be determined — the pub was bulldozed without authorization, which raised questions among local residents.
Roger Lees, the leader of the council, praised campaigners whose “aim is to see the Crooked House back to its former glory.” More than 35,000 people joined the ‘Save The Crooked House (Let’s Get It Re-Built)’ Facebook page.
“We have not taken this action lightly, but we believe that it is right to bring the owners, who demolished the building without consent, to account and we are committed to do what we can to get the Crooked House rebuilt,” Lees said.
Andy Street, the mayor of the wider West Midlands region who has supported the pub’s reconstruction, welcomed the decision in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “Fantastic work from South Staffordshire Council,” Street said.
The pub, originally built as a farmhouse in 1765, started sinking on one side as a result of extensive coal mining in the area, which is part of England’s region widely known as the Black Country, a reference to its industrial and mining heyday in the mid-19th century.
Around 1830, it became a pub and was called The Siden House — siden meaning crooked in the local dialect.
In the 1940s, it was renamed the Glynne Arms but was condemned as unsafe and scheduled for demolition until a forebear of Marston’s bought it and made it safe.
Renamed as The Crooked House, it became a tourist attraction, drawing visitors to admire its odd structure, one side standing about 1.2 meters (4 feet) lower than the other.
Now, there is only three years to go until the pub rises again and thirsty regulars can sip a beer — or two.
Aissam Dam, 11, the first person to receive gene therapy in the U.S. for congenital deafness, at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.Credit...Hannah Beier for The New York Times
Visits: 24
Gene Therapy Allows an 11-Year-Old Boy to Hear for the First Time.
Gina Kolata visited the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and met with Aissam Dam, his father and the researchers they worked with.
Aissam Dam, an 11-year-old boy, grew up in a world of profound silence. He was born deaf and had never heard anything. While living in a poor community in Morocco, he expressed himself with a sign language he invented and had no schooling.
Last year, after moving to Spain, his family took him to a hearing specialist, who made a surprising suggestion: Aissam might be eligible for a clinical trial using gene therapy.
On Oct. 4, Aissam was treated at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, becoming the first person to get gene therapy in the United States for congenital deafness. The goal was to provide him with hearing, but the researchers had no idea if the treatment would work or, if it did, how much he would hear.
The treatment was a success, introducing a child who had known nothing of sound to a new world.
“There’s no sound I don’t like,” Aissam said, with the help of interpreters during an interview last week. “They’re all good.”
While hundreds of millions of people in the world live with hearing loss that is defined as disabling, Aissam is among those whose deafness is congenital. His is an extremely rare form, caused by a mutation in a single gene, otoferlin. Otoferlin deafness affects about 200,000 people worldwide.
The goal of the gene therapy is to replace the mutated otoferlin gene in patients’ ears with a functional gene.
Although it will take years for doctors to sign up many more patients — and younger ones — to further test the therapy, researchers said that success for patients like Aissam could lead to gene therapies that target other forms of congenital deafness.
It is a “groundbreaking” study, said Dr. Dylan K. Chan, a pediatric otolaryngologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and director of its Children’s Communication Center; he was not involved in the trial.
The one in which Aissam participated is supported by Eli Lilly and a small biotechnology firm it owns, Akouos. Investigators hope to eventually expand the study to six centers across the United States.
Special earphones being used for Aissam’s hearing test. His form of deafness is rare, caused by a mutation in a single gene, otoferlin. Credit…Hannah Beier for The New York Times
Aissam’s trial is one of five that are either underway (the others are in China and Europe) or about to start.
Deaf Experiences
Gene Therapy: A genetic treatment targeted a particular kind of congenital deafness that allowed an 11-year-old boy to hear for the first time. Soon it will be tried on younger children.
Language in Evolution: Ubiquitous video technology and social media have given deaf people a new way to communicate. They’re using it to transform American Sign Language.
Investigators from all five of the studies will be presenting their data on Feb. 3 at a meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology.
The studies, researchers said, mark a new frontier for gene therapy which, until now, had steered clear of hearing loss.
“There has never been a biological or medical or surgical way to correct the underlying biological changes that cause the inner ear to not function,” Dr. Chan said.
Although otoferlin mutations are not the most common cause of congenital deafness, there is a reason so many researchers started with it. That form of congenital deafness, said Dr. John A. Germiller, an otolaryngologist who is leading the CHOP study, is “low hanging fruit.”
The mutated otoferlin gene destroys a protein in the inner ear’s hair cells necessary to transmit sound to the brain. With many of the other mutations that cause deafness, hair cells die during infancy or even at the fetal stage. But with otoferlin deafness, hair cells can survive for years, allowing time for the defective gene to be replaced with gene therapy.
Aissam’s trial at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is among five that are either underway (the others are in China and Europe) or about to start.Credit…Hannah Beier for The New York Times
There’s an advantage in using gene therapy to allow children to hear. Most of the mutations that affect hearing — there are approximately 150 — do not affect any other part of the body. Some genes are actually unique to the ear.
The inner ear is a small closed compartment, so gene therapy delivered there would not affect cells in other parts of the body, said Manny Simons, chief executive and co-founder of Akouos and senior vice president of gene therapy at Lilly.
But getting the genes to the cochlea, a spiral-shaped cavity close to the center of the skull, is challenging. The cochlea is filled with fluid, is lined with 3,500 hair cells and is encased in a dense dome of bone with a tiny, round membrane. Sound sets off a wave of fluid in the cochlea and stimulates the hair cells to transmit signals to the brain. Each hair responds to a different frequency, enabling a person to hear the richness of sound.
The gene therapy consists of a harmless virus carrying new otoferlin genes in two drops of liquid that are delicately injected down the length of the cochlea, delivering the genes to each hair cell.
Yet despite the promise of otoferlin gene therapy, finding the right patients for the trial was difficult.
One issue is the very idea of treating deafness.
“There is an internal Deaf community that doesn’t see itself as needing to be cured,” said Dr. Robert C. Nutt, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician in Wilmington, N.C., who is deaf.
Some Deaf parents, he added, celebrate when their newborn baby’s hearing test indicates that the baby is deaf too and so can be part of their community.
Making the issue of gene therapy even more complicated is the standard intervention for otoferlin hearing loss: a cochlear implant. The device, which uses electrodes to stimulate auditory nerves in the inner ear, allows patients to hear sounds, especially those needed to understand speech. But the implant does not provide the full richness of sound — and is said to assist in hearing but without restoring it completely.
Dr. John Germiller, an otolaryngologist who is leading the CHOP study.Credit…Hannah Beier for The New York Times
Most babies born with otoferlin deafness get cochlear implants in infancy and are therefore ineligible for the trial. The implants somewhat alter the cochlea, which could hamper the interpretation of gene therapy results.
The Food and Drug Administration, which allowed the CHOP study to go forward, asked that, for safety reasons, the researchers start with older children, not infants, and treat only one ear.
The challenge for the U.S. study was to find older children whose parents would agree to the study, who had otoferlin deafness and who did not have cochlear implants.
Aissam never had cochlear implants. He never had schooling in Morocco to help him develop communication skills. But three years ago, when he was 8, his father, Youssef Dam, a construction worker, got a job in Barcelona, Spain. For the first time, Aissam went to school, enrolling in a school for the deaf, where he learned Spanish Sign Language. Soon after, his family learned of the gene therapy trial.
When Aissam was deemed eligible to be patient No. 1, Lilly and Akouos paid for him and his father to live in Philadelphia for four months, while Aissam received gene therapy and follow-up hearing tests.
No one knew whether the nerve cells that communicate with the hair cells of the cochlea would still be intact and functional in someone who had been deaf for 11 years, Dr. Simons of Lilly said.
It was not even clear what dose of the new genes to give. All that the researchers had to go on were studies with mice. “We were flying blind,” Dr. Germiller said.
Aissam’s results, his doctors said, were remarkable. In an interview at CHOP, his father said through an interpreter — he speaks a North African language from the Amazigh family, commonly known as Berber — that Aissam was hearing traffic noises just days after the treatment. When Aissam had a hearing test two months later, his hearing in the treated ear was close to normal.
But no matter how well the gene therapy works, the researchers recognize that Aissam may never be able to understand or speak a language, Dr. Germiller said. The brain has a narrow window for learning to speak beginning around ages 2 to 3, he explained. After age 5, the window for learning spoken language is permanently shut.
Hearing can still help patients even if they never learn to speak, he noted. They can hear traffic or know when someone is trying to communicate. The ability to hear also can help with lip reading.
Aissam signing to an interpreter during an interview at the children’s hospital.Credit…Hannah Beier for The New York Times
Now that gene therapy has proved safe for Aissam and for another child in Taiwan treated two months after him, researchers at the hospital in Philadelphia are able to move on to younger children. They have two lined up, a 3-year-old boy from Miami and a 3-year-old girl from San Francisco, both of whom got cochlear implants in only one ear, so that the other could be treated with gene therapy.
If the Lilly trial of otoferlin gene therapy is proved to be effective and safe, “there will be a lot of interest in other genes” that cause deafness, said Dr. Margaret A. Kenna, an otolaryngologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor of otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Kenna, an investigator in the Lilly trial, added, “It’s been a long time coming.”
“For decades people have been saying, ‘When is this going to work?’” Dr. Kenna said. “I didn’t think gene therapy would begin in my practice lifetime. But here it is.”
The other is supported by Otovia Therapeutics and various programs in China.
A third study is sponsored by Regeneron and Decibel Therapeutics. Researchers in Europe so far have treated one child, who is younger than 2, and in one ear. Another study by Sensorion is expected to start this month.
On a recent frigid morning, Aissam sat in a conference room at CHOP and, with the help of three translators, patiently answered questions about his remarkable experience. He’s a solemn child with a round face and big brown eyes. There was an interpreter for his father, and the sign language team had a Certified Deaf Interpreter — a person who is deaf translated his signs into American Sign Language — and an interpreter who knew American Sign Language and spoke his words.
Their system worked to a certain extent but robbed the conversation of spontaneity and forced Aissam to answer in short sentences or phrases, minimizing the expression of his personality.
But Aissam managed to convey the wonder of hearing.
Noises and voices frightened him initially, he said. But then, as the world of sound opened up, he began to enjoy every sound he heard — elevators, voices, the sound of scissors snipping his hair at a barbershop.
And there was music, which he heard for the first time one day while getting his hair cut.
Asked if there was a sound he particularly liked, Aissam did not hesitate.
“People,” he signed.
Gina Kolata reports on diseases and treatments, how treatments are discovered and tested, and how they affect people.
Move around a lot? Simple question. I myself have stayed put for the past 35 years. Before that I must have moved maybe 10 different times. Several different cities in California and Ohio.
According to U.S. Census data, the total number of Americans who moved in 2023 was 25.6 million. While that seems high (and it is!), that’s still a whopping 9% fewer than the total number of people who moved in 2022.
How about you? Move a lot? Over 25 million people moved last year. People move for jobs, pay less taxes, or be near family who have moved. So what’s your reason?
In 1924 a Professor predicted a bomb that could destroy humanity. ACME Photo
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What do you think the world will be like in 100 years?Below are a few thoughts from 1924 and I’ll give you a link of more predictions from 1924. I want you to make a prediction of what the world will look like in 100 years from now2124.
What do you think the world will be like in 100 years? The people of 1924 certainly had some thoughts — many surprisingly prescient, and many hilariously wrong. USA Today recently rounded up a selection of 2024 predictions from a century ago, including several regarding the state of transportation.
Real estate mogul Joseph P. Day thought daily commutes to the office might be done via plane, while Swedish architect Ben Bjorkson rather accurately predicted how roadways might take over U.S. cities. “In the city of a hundred years from now, I see three-deck roads, speedways through the heart of town, skyscrapers with entrances for automobiles as high as 15 stories, monorail expresses to the suburbs replacing streetcars and motor-omnibuses, ever-moving sidewalks, and underground freight carriers which will go in all directions,” he said.
Others — like paleontologist E.L. Furlong, who thought horses would be extinct in the wild by 2024 — were thankfully wrong. But perhaps most eerily, British scientist Archibald M. Low seemed to anticipate both the internet and the rise of working from home in his book Wireless Possibilities. He wrote that future societies would be able to sign checks “by the rapid transmission of motion,” trace criminals, and conduct business remotely.
“What a help to the man who objects to a large city! Why could he not conduct his business from his house in comfort instead of having his spats washed every week in order to maintain his financial reputation?” Low said.
Just putting this out there. From Science to Humanity’s Well-Being: 9 Extraordinary Examples of the Power of Music.
AUTHORMarika Spitulski
Anyone who listens to music — which is around 90% of the population — has likely experienced its power to soothe, stir up emotion, connect, and jog memories. Whatever the mood or moment, the soundtrack possibilities are endless. But the power of music stretches far beyond merely comforting or entertaining its listener — studies show that the art form is also full of possibilities when it comes to the world of science.
Research has proven that music can be harnessed to improve mental health, reduce pain, and otherwise profoundly affect our brains. From the fields of neurology to astronomy, music has contributed to unique advancements in the way we understand ourselves and the world. These findings support the idea that music can serve as a catalyst for healing, breaking barriers, and connecting — sometimes without us even being aware of its impact.
The relationship is a two-way street: Scientists have used music to enhance their field, and musicians have used science to enhance their art. To highlight this intersection, we compiled the below music-meets-science examples, ranging from music being used to help people with dementia to astrophysicists using planets’ orbits to create musical rhythms.
Well-Being and Music: Using Music to Reduce Pain and Feelings of “Unpleasantness”
Aleksei Morozov/ iStock
Research has shown that music has the power to reduce physical pain and provide comfort. And an October 2023 paper published in Frontiers in Pain Research added to that body of research, finding that listening to your favorite songs is particularly effective.
“In our study, we show that favorite music chosen by study participants has a much larger effect on acute thermal pain reduction than unfamiliar relaxing music,” lead author Darius Valevicius said in a statement. “We also found that emotional responses play a very strong role in predicting whether music will have an effect on pain.”
The scientists also evaluated musical themes to see if they affected pain relief, and found that “moving or bittersweet emotional experiences” seemed to result in lower ratings of pain and unpleasantness.
Neurology and Music: Scientists Re-Create Pink Floyd Song by Analyzing Listeners’ Brain Waves
In August 2023, Scientists re-created a portion of Pink Floyd’s 1979 hit “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1” by analyzing the brain waves of people listening to it.
Researchers played 90% of the song for epilepsy patients undergoing surgery to curb seizures, and trained a computer model on their neural activity collected via brain electrodes, per Science. The team then programmed the algorithm to come up with the remaining 10% — about 15 seconds of music — based on the patterns it had learned. The resulting audio is an eerie, echoey simulacrum.
“We’re on the threshold of lots of things — the fusion of neuroscience and computer engineering, and really, in many ways, the sky’s the limit,” study lead Ludovic Bellier told Fortune. The work provides insight into how the brain processes music, and may be used to help people who struggle to speak due to injuries or diseases.
Mental Health and Music: Study Shows Music May Benefit Mental Health as Much as Exercise
AsiaVision/ iStock
Music lovers will tell you that bopping along to your favorite song is a surefire way to feel better, but a scientific review published in JAMA concluded that music’s benefit to mental health is actually comparable to that of exercise. In other words, singing your heart out in the shower could be as good for your mind as a jog around the block.
Researchers analyzed data from 26 studies involving a combined 779 adult participants. Each study measured the impact of making and listening to music on health-related quality of life (HRQOL). The review, published in March 2022, found “moderate-quality quantitative evidence of associations between music interventions and clinically significant changes in mental HRQOL.”
After comparing that evidence to data on other approaches, the authors noted that the results are within the range of the “average effects of established non–pharmaceutical and medical interventions (e.g., exercise, weight loss).” Read more.
Technology and Music: Machine Turns Heartbeats of Children With Heart Defects Into Rhythms
About 40,000 children in the U.S. are born with congenital heart defects, or CHD, each year. In an effort to hold space for this condition in an intentional way, a father of two sons who have heart issues reached out to Swedish audiovisual artist and woodworker Love Hultén.
From there, the CHD-4 was born: a unique drum-like machine that decoded electrocardiograms from four children with heart defects and transformed the patterns into sequences, which ultimately produced sounds based on their unique heartbeats (the individual shape, pace, and beats per minute).
Fast Company described Hultén’s invention as a “one-of-a-kind machine designed to produce rhythm and music where there is none,” with Hellqvist adding that “it takes dark and heavy experiences and transforms them into something beautiful. Into hope and change.”
Astrology and Music: Astrophysicists Bring a Sound to Saturn’s Moons and Rings
Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto used music to bring a sense of Saturn to Earth — despite the planets being hundreds of millions of miles apart.
The team “converted Saturn’s moons and rings into two pieces of music,” said astrophysicist Matt Russo in a press release from the institution. They made the music based on the patterns of “orbital resonances” and “rhythmic gravitational tugs” that were then converted into musical harmony. This data was collected via the Cassini spacecraft, a mission that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017.
Dan Tamayo, a postdoctoral researcher at CITA and the Centre for Planetary Sciences at U of T Scarborough, explained: “Saturn’s magnificent rings act like a sounding board that launches waves at locations that harmonize with the planet’s many moons, and some pairs of moons are themselves locked in resonances.”
A March study published in Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy also found that while music helped improve cognitive functions of patients with Alzheimer’s, the influence was even greater when the patients were involved in the music making.
Attention and Music: Using Music to Stay Focused
Have trouble staying focused? Consider turning on some tunes. A Stanford study showed that “music moves [the] brain to pay attention” by engaging certain areas and, ultimately, increasing cognitive activity. Per a press release from the institution, “Music engages the brain over a period of time … and the process of listening to music could be a way that the brain sharpens its ability to anticipate events and sustain attention.”
That being said, music isn’t broadly beneficial to every task on your to-do list. Psychologists have found that music is more distracting than beneficial when it comes to studying.
“Multitasking is a fallacy; human beings are not capable of truly multitasking because attention is a limited resource, and you can only focus on so much without a cost,” cognitive psychologist Brian Anderson said in a Texas A&M University press release. “So when you’re doing two things at the same time, like studying and listening to music, and one of the things requires cognitive effort, there will be a cost to how much information you can retain doing both activities.”
Artificial Intelligence and Music: AI Completing the Beatles’ Final Song
Forty-five years after John Lennon first started working on the song, artificial intelligence put the finishing touches on what we know today as “Now and Then.” According to the official video’s description, the unexpected gift is thanks to a software system that allowed for the song to be completed with contributions from all four Beatles in the piece — and is a reflection of the band’s “endless creative curiosity and shared fascination with technology.”
There’s no question AI is changing the way music is being curated, played, and created, and this is one example of how it can be used to salvage something beautiful.
“It marks the completion of the last recording that John, Paul, George, and Ringo will get to make together,” the video’s description reads, “and celebrates the legacy of the foremost and most influential band in popular music history.”
Music and Togetherness: Singing With Others Is Good for Us
Vladimir Vladimirov/ iStock
A growing body of research shows that singing together at any occasion boosts well-being. One of the reasons for that is endorphins, those happy hormones runners are always going on about.
“Singing is one of the mega-mechanisms we use for bonding,” Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, told The Guardian. “Singing in the shower gives you a bit of an uplift, but when doing it communally, there’s something about the synchrony of singing that creates this massive endorphin uplift.”
Dunbar set out to prove singing’s bonding power in a 2015 study, in which strangers sang together for an hour and left as, well, not strangers. “It was as if they’d known each other since primary school,” he recalled.
He noted that the prolonged exhalation and breath work required while singing likely contributes to its health benefits. Going forward, this research could help inform therapies for dementia, Parkinson’s, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, long COVID, and more.
BOSTON - SEPTEMBER 9: Lighthouse keeper Sally Snowman, employed by the USCG, traditionally waves to tourists as they arrive on Little Brewster Island for a tour, Sept. 9, 2016. The island's lighthouse, Boston Light, turns 300 years old next week and is ready for its celebration. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Visits: 38
‘We’ll leave the light on for you’: America’s last lighthouse keeper is leaving her post.
Sally Snowman, 72, became guardian of the historic lighthouse constructed in 1716, in 2002. She is its 70th keeper. “The first 69 were all men,” she proudly told CBS News
“It’s called a stewardship transfer,” she said. There will be a transfer of ownership through the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000.
Such a sad day. this ended a tradition that started when the lighthouse was built in 1716.
Her hope is that she can keep working at Boston Light as a volunteer tour guide, Snowman shared with NPR.
As the sun rose in California yesterday morning, so, too, did a new airship backed by Google co-founder and dirigible fanatic Sergey Brin.
Pathfinder 1 flew its first test flight on Wednesday after 10 years spent developing the next-gen airship full of “blood, sweat, and tears,” according to LTA Research CEO Alan Weston. With funding from the billionaire Brin, LTA (“Lighter Than Air”) has claimed huge breakthroughs in modernizing the old-fashioned technology.
Longer than three Boeing 737s, the electric aircraft could usher in a new, greener era in flight:
LTA’s airships could eventually carry 200 tons of cargo each—roughly 10 times as much as a Boeing 737, according to Weston, making them a viable alternative to freight planes, ships, and trains.
Weston and Brin want to use the airships for humanitarian relief missions since the aircraft doesn’t require much infrastructure to take off or land.
Looking ahead…Pathfinder 1 has a long journey of tests before it can fly irl. The plan is to move the operation from Cali to Akron, Ohio, where LTA is already planning to make a larger version of the craft. The airships will be among friends—Akron serves as the headquarters of Goodyear and its dwindling fleet of advertising blimps.—CC
Youngstown Ohio. Home of Youngstown Ohio. I was born in a city that at one time was known for its Steel Mills, and Italian mobsters. But the city had five local lads that won world champion boxing titles.
Five world champions are lightweight champion Harry Arroyo (40-11-0), cruiserweight titlist Jeff “Prime Time” Lampkin (39-19-1), lightweight champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini (29-5-0), middleweight champ Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik (40-2-0) and bantamweight titlist Greg “The Flea” Richardson (31-8-1).
“These aren’t minor belts won, but belts from the big three which is the IBF, WBA and WBC. Another local boxer who never won a world title but came so close was Ernie Shavers.
The West Region team from El Segundo, California was helped to the Little League World Series title by Louis Lappe's hero ball. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Visits: 24
Little League World Series: California’s El Segundo wins title with walk-off home run vs Curaçao.
California’s El Segundo is bringing home the Little League World Series championship title after a 6-5 victory over the team from Willemstad, Curaçao, on Sunday.
The thrilling game ended with a walk-off home run from Louis Lappe, who was given a perfect setup from the booth by ESPN broadcaster Karl Ravech.
The West Region team from El Segundo, California was helped to the Little League World Series title by Louis Lappe’s hero ball. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
With the score tied in the sixth inning, Lappe stepped to the plate.
“Curaçao has not allowed a home run at the World Series,” Ravech said in an announcer jinx for the ages. Almost instantly, Lappe, the series’ home run leader, sent one flying for the win.
California has been in the championship game 24 times and now has its eighth title. The region has the most victories by any U.S. team but hadn’t won since 2011.
The team had some of the best bats in the tournament, including Lappe and Brody Brooks. En route to the U.S. title on Saturday, Lappe had five RBIs, including a three-run homer as California beat Texas 6-1.
But Curaçao didn’t go down without a fight. Having appeared in the LLWS championship four times, the team was hoping for its first win since 2004 — its only title. Last year, the team made it to the championship game and lost to Hawaii 13-3. Five of its players returned from last year’s disappointment, the most in the tournament.
Down 5-1 in the top of the fifth, Nasir El-Ossais showed the grit of a seasoned veteran. With two outs, he tied the game 5-5 on a dramatic grand slam to right field off Max Baker.
“I am sweating right now, and not from the heat,” El-Ossais’ dad said after the play, adding that emotions were at an all-time high.
Curaçao overcame a big deficit thanks to El-Ossais, but California’s pitching strength and defense won it. Brooks, a shortstop and strong pitcher, tied the World Series record by scoring 13 runs. On Sunday, he had a single and finished the tournament with 12 hits and three home runs.
In a tear-filled postgame interview, El Segundo manager Danny Boehle said he told his team “the game’s not over.” He was surprised Curaçao pitched to Lappe, who said he was close with the Curaçao players and offered kind words after hitting the winning home run.
There was plenty of sportsmanship all over the stadium in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “Great job, keep your head up,” Lappe recalled telling the opposing team.
California also posed for photos with Japan after the victory:
Celebrate the Holiday. This weekend remember those who can’t be with us because they died defending their country. Also it gives me a chance to post my wife’s great decorating skills.
Sit back and post a poem or two, or even a song. Also enjoy the pictures or post your own.
Decoration theme is the red white and blue. Hopefully you enjoy Mrs. M’s decorating. It’s a joy of love for her.
(Original Caption) 8/9/1936-Berlin, Germany- With what is obviously the greatest of ease, Cornelius Johnson of the United States, without even doffing his sweatshirt, is clearing the bar at a height which other competitors found difficult to surmount. Johnson placed first; Dave Albrittson and Delos Thurber, also of the United States, captured second and third honors respectively.
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How Olympian Cornelius Johnson’s Legacy Lives on Through an 87-Year-Old Oak Tree.
Cornelius Johnson won gold in the high jump for the United States at the 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany. Along with his medal, he took home an oak sapling and planted it in the yard of his family’s Los Angeles home. Though Johnson died just 10 years later, at age 32, the oak tree still stands tall — a physical representation of his legacy as one of the many Black American athletes who took the podium during those Games and resisted the then-ethos of the country that hosted them.
“Him planting his tree was a way of saying ‘I beat you, we won,’” Susan Anderson, a curator at the California African American Museum, told CBS News. Johnson’s tree is one of about two dozen oaks left standing from the 1936 Olympics, and it has now been designated as a historical monument in LA.
That designation is due in part to the work of Christian Kosmas Mayer, a Vienna-based artist with a particular interest in trees with historical significance. He lobbied to save this one when the land was bought by a developer and, thankfully, he was successful.
“Now it grows in what we call Koreatown in Los Angeles, a very diverse, multiethnic, multi-language area, absolutely the opposite of what the Nazis would have dreamed of as their future,” Mayer told CBS. “So I think it’s a beautiful symbol for how things can turn out much better.”
NEWELL, W.Va. — Dave Springer stands alone in a sea of lids, jars, dishes, cups and bowls. One hand, in a dark blue rubber glove, holds a jar lid, while the other holds the scraper he’s using meticulously to smooth away every mark and imperfection. Then he places the casting on the boards to dry, and picks up another.
Meanwhile, nearby is an oversized bin filled with dishes, cups, jars, lids and saucers that didn’t make the cut.
The clay molds are so moist, I have an overwhelming childlike urge to squeeze the clay between my fingers.
Willie Jones, a second-generation caster, stands beside the bin of castoffs wiping down hundreds of teapots with a damp sponge. Some of them he will add to the bin of misfit pottery.
“Nothing goes to waste here; we just mix all of that together and recast them into new pieces,” Mr. Jones explains.
Mr. Springer says he has been an artisan for the Fiesta Tableware Company for 17 years — before that, he spent 23 years at the former Hall China across the river in East Liverpool. “I’m proud of being a caster, to be able to touch the product — and perfect it — knowing it is going to be used and enjoyed by a family, or admired by a collector or used over and over again in a diner,” he said, looking up from his task with a broad smile.
“I know it is a cliché to say we don’t make things in America anymore, but the truth is we don’t. I like that I am part of a craftsmanship that still does, that still takes pride in making things here knowing they are appreciated, used and enjoyed,” he says. Then he goes back to the task at hand.
Both Mr. Springer and Mr. Jones are working inside the former Homer Laughlin China Company’s cavernous building located along a ridge overlooking the Ohio River. It’s a company that began in 1871 when neighboring East Liverpool’s city council offered $5,000 to anyone who would agree to build a four-kiln factory that produced white ware.
Brothers Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin won that competition and proceeded to build a pottery factory in East Liverpool. While the brothers had worked in the pottery industry — at one time over 300 pottery companies (yes, 300) were in this area — they weren’t naturals at the technical aspects of manufacturing.
But they pressed forward, broke ground and within two years opened for production with two kilns. When their first batch of cups were cooled, all the handles fell off.
Within a year, however, they had over 100 employees; two years later, they earned a medal for the best white ware at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. By 1877, Shakespeare wanted out, and Homer renamed the business “Homer Laughlin China Company.”
At the time, all American china companies — despite being more expensive than the European imports — were seen as inferior to English china, to the point that many American potters would add the word “royal” to their trademark to fool buyers.
Not Homer. He designed a mark that showed the American Eagle on top of the British Lion.
Liz McIlvain, president and CEO of Fiesta Tableware, and daughter Katie Bricker, the general marketing manager, are the great-great- and great-great-great-granddaughters of W.E. Wells, Homer Laughlin’s one-time bookkeeper, who became head of the company in 1896 when Laughlin sold his interest. They are standing near the very office where Wells fell ill in 1931, and later passed away, after running the company for nearly 40 years.
“When Wells took over, they moved operations here to Newell from East Liverpool on the former Newell farm. When they finished this factory, it immediately became the largest pottery plant in the country,” explained Ms. Bricker.
Designer Frederick Hurten Rhead, hired in 1927, made the company iconic: He created the “Fiesta” collection, introducing the colorful dinnerware to the American public in 1936 at the Pittsburgh China & Glass Show.
The American public was enthralled with the colorful, sturdy and inexpensive dinnerware in green, cobalt blue, yellow, red and ivory. Within a year, the company added a sixth color, turquoise, and had sold over a million pieces.
Ms. Bricker said the first line of Fiesta pottery had 34 different pieces that included bowls, plates, pitchers, candle holders, pots and trays. “What made American families want them wasn’t just the simple and sturdy design — they loved the bright colors. Remember America was in the midst of the Great Depression. Those colors made them feel good about themselves,” she said.
Ms. Bricker said uranium dye played a big part in why the colors achieved such brilliance. “Right after World War II began, the Homer Laughlin China Company had to discontinue using the compound because the military needed uranium for the war effort.”
She explains that peak employment here at the factory came in 1948, when over 3,000 workers created pottery in the building that still stands today. Since then, however, American industrial domination has vanished thanks to automation, bad trade deals and lack of investment.
Today there are 370 employees here, in one of the last major American pottery factories.
The people who work here are often second-, third- and fourth-generation craftsmen and artisans who hail from here in Newell and from across the river in East Liverpool, while others live in suburban Pittsburgh, Steubenville and Wheeling. To a person, they all expressed deep pride in their craftsmanship — and concern that what they do will soon be a lost skill.
Springer said he tries to encourage young people to take an interest, “but it’s sad to say, I haven’t had much luck.”
The prolonged staffing issues cause by the pandemic, along with their inability to keep up with inexpensive imports, forced the family in late 2020 to sell their East Liverpool-based Hall China, which made Homer Laughlin and Hall China food service items. Everything is now made under the Fiesta Tableware Company marquee.
To say Fiestaware — old, new and rare — has a cult following would be an understatement. Their tent sales, held several times a year, attract collectors, bargain hunters, fine restaurant owners as well as diner operators from around the world, all sifting through bins stacked with slightly imperfect dishware in dozens of hues.
At the last tent sale I attended — I have been collecting since finding four original green saucers in one of my late grandmother’s boxes of china — I met a Latino restaurateur from Chicago, a diner owner from South Carolina and a collector from England all filling carts with dishware. There are also annual Fiestaware conventions, scores of Fiestaware Facebook fan and collector pages, as well as several non-profits dedicated to the collection and purchase of old, new and rare Fiestaware pieces.
Ms. Bricker said with the exception of the years 1973 through 1985, Fiestaware has been made continuously since 1936. In that time, they have made nearly 600 million pieces, including 3 million last year alone. And Rhead’s original designs haven’t changed: Fiestaware remains immediately identifiable by its Art Deco styling and concentric rings.
One shopper leaving the factory store explained that she had spent the day at local antique stores looking for vintage pieces, then came here for the new Jade. “Here is what I love about Fiestaware: When you find it in the wild, you are holding a piece of American history, and you wonder who used it before you; when you come here, you are buying something made in your own backyard, and you hope that ability never goes away,” she said. “It’s a real national treasure.”
North Side native Salena Zito is a national political reporter for The Washington Examiner, a New York Post columnist and co-author of “The Great Revolt”:
Maybe Kolbeinn Butter Penis is aboard. / Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Visits: 4
Vikings are the focus of countless movies, TV shows, video games, sports teams, and comic books today—but that doesn’t mean we always get them right. From the myths surrounding their horned helmets to their not-so-fiery burial customs, here are some common misconceptions about Vikings, adapted from an episode of Misconceptions on YouTube.
1. Misconception: Vikings Wore Horned Helmets.
In 1876, German theatergoers were abuzz about a hot new ticket in town. Titled Der Ring des Nibelungen, or The Ring of the Nibelung, Richard Wagner’s musical drama played out over an astounding 15 hours and portrayed Norse and German legends all vying for a magical ring that could grant them untold power. To make his characters look especially formidable, costume designer Carl Emil Doepler made sure they were wearing horned helmets.
Though the image of Vikings plundering and pillaging while wearing horned helmets has permeated popular fiction ever since, the historical record doesn’t quite line up with it. Viking helmets were typically made of iron or leather, and it’s possible some Vikings went without one altogether, since helmets were an expensive item at the time. In fact, archaeologists have uncovered only one authentic Viking helmet, and it was made of iron and sans horns, which some historians and battle experts believe would have had absolutely no combat benefit whatsoever.
So where did Doepler get the idea for horned helmets from? There were earlier illustrations of Vikings in helmets that were occasionally horned (but more often winged). There were also Norse and Germanic priests who wore horned helmets for ceremonial purposes. This was centuries before Vikings turned up, though. Some historians argue that there is some evidence of ritualistic horned helmets in the Viking Age, but if they existed, they would have been decorative horns that priests wore—not something intended for combat.
Composer Richard Wagner apparently wasn’t pleased with the wardrobe choices; he didn’t want his opera to be mired in cheap tropes or grandiose costumes. Wagner’s wife, Cosima, was also irritated, saying that Doepler’s wardrobe smacked of “provincial tastelessness.”
The look wound up taking hold when Der Ring des Nibelungen went on tour through Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other artists were then inspired by the direction of the musical and began using horned Viking helmets in their own depictions, including in children’s books. Pretty soon, it was standard Viking dress code.
2. Misconception: All Vikings Had Scary Nicknames.
Leif Erikson. Not as scary of a nickname. / Hulton Archive/Getty Images
When tales of Viking action spread throughout Europe, they were sometimes accompanied by ferocious-sounding nicknames like Ásgeirr the Terror of the Norwegians and Hlif the Castrator of Horses. This may have been a handy way to refer to Vikings with reputations for being hardcore at a time when actual surnames were in short supply. If you wanted to separate yourself from others with the same name, you needed a nickname. But plenty of them also had less intimidating labels.
Take, for instance, Ǫlver the Friend of Children. Sweet, right? Actually, Ǫlver got his name because he refused to murder children. Then there was Hálfdan the Generous and the Stingy with Food, who was said to pay his men very generously, but apparently didn’t feed them, leading to this contradictory nickname. Ragnarr Hairy Breeches was said to have donned furry pants when he fought a dragon.
Other unfortunate-but-real Viking names include Ulf the Squint-Eyed, Eirik Ale-Lover, Eystein Foul-Fart, Skagi the Ruler of Shit, and Kolbeinn Butter Penis. While the historical record is vague on how these names came to be, the truth is never going to be as good as whatever it is you’re thinking right now.
3. Misconception: Vikings Had Viking Funerals.
When someone like Kolbeinn Butter Penis died, it would only be fitting that they were laid to rest with dignity. And if you know anything about Vikings from pop culture, you know that meant setting them on fire and pushing them out to sea.
But as cool as that visual may be, it’s not exactly accurate. Vikings had funerals similar to pretty much everyone else. When one of them died, they were often buried in the ground. Archaeologists in Norway uncovered one such burial site in 2019, where at least 20 burial mounds were discovered.
The lead archaeologist on the site, Raymond Sauvage of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told Atlas Obscura that:
“We have no evidence for waterborne Viking funeral pyres in Scandinavia. I honestly do not know where this conception derives from, and it should be regarded as a modern myth. Normal burial practice was that people were buried on land, in burial mounds.”
The flaming ship myth may have come from a combination of two real Viking death practices. Vikings did sometimes entomb their dead in their ships, although the vessels remained on land where they were buried. And they did sometimes have funeral pyres. At some point in the historical record, someone may have combined these two scenarios and imagined that Vikings set ships ablaze before sending them out to sea with their dead still on board.
4. Misconception: Vikings Were Experienced and Trained Combat Soldiers.
Spears and arrows were most cost-effective than swords. / Spencer Arnold Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
While it’s true Vikings were violent, they weren’t necessarily the most experienced or talented warriors of their day. In fact, they were mostly normal people who decided plundering would be a great side hustle in the gig economy of Europe.
Historians believe Vikings were made up mostly of farmers, fishermen, and even peasants, rather than burly Conan the Barbarian types. Considering that the coastal villages they attacked probably didn’t put up much resistance, one could be a Viking and not even have to fight all that much. This leads to another common misconception—that Vikings were always swinging swords around. Like helmets, swords were expensive. A day of fighting was more likely to include spears, axes, long knives, or a bow and arrow.
You can blame this fierce warrior rep on the one squad of Vikings that actually fit the bill. Known as berserkers, these particular Vikings worshipped Odin, the god of war and death, and took Odin’s interests to heart. Some berserkers were said to have fought so fiercely that it was as though they had entered a kind of trance. If they were waiting around too long for a fight to start, it was said they might start killing each other.
5. Misconception: Vikings Were Dirty, Smelly, and Gross.
Most depictions of Vikings would have you believe that they were constantly caked in mud, blood, and other miscellaneous funk. Don’t fall for it. Archaeologists have unearthed a significant amount of personal grooming products over the years that belonged to Vikings, including tweezers, combs, toothpicks, and ear cleaners.
Vikings were also known to have bathed at least once a week, which was a staggeringly hygienic schedule for 11th-century Europe. In fact, Vikings put so much attention on bathing that Saturday was devoted to it. They called it Laugardagur, or bathing day. They even had soap made from animal fat.
Hygiene was only one aspect of their routine. Vikings put time and effort into styling their hair and sometimes even dyed it using lye. Their beards were neatly trimmed, and they were also known to wear eyeliner. All of this preening was said to make Vikings a rather attractive prospect to women in villages they raided, as other men of the era were somewhat reluctant to bathe.
6. Misconception: There Were No Viking Women.
An illustration of Lathgertha, legendary Danish Viking shieldmaiden. / Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Considering the times, Vikings actually had a fairly progressive approach to gender roles. Women could own property, challenge any kind of marriage arrangement, and even request a divorce if things weren’t working out at home. To do so, at least as one story tells it, they’d have to ask witnesses to come over, stand near her bed, and watch as she declared a separation.
In addition to having a relatively high degree of independence, Viking women were also known to pick up a weapon and bash some heads on occasion. The historical record of a battle in 971 CE says that women had fought and died alongside the men. A woman who donned armor was known as a “shieldmaiden.” According to legend, over 300 shieldmaidens fought in the Battle of Brávellir in the 8th century and successfully kept their enemies at bay.
According to History, one of the most notable shieldmaidens was a warrior named Lathgertha who so impressed a famous Viking named Ragnar Lothbrok—he of the Hairy Breeches—that he became smitten and asked for her hand in marriage.
