Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams caused a minor flap last weekend when he extended two boisterous middle fingers to the Buffalo Bills’ sideline. But he's hardly the first sports owner to get himself (or herself) in trouble.]]> Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams caused a minor flap last weekend when he extended two boisterous middle fingers to the Buffalo Bills’ sideline. While some fans might think an 86-year-old man firing the bird with both barrels is amusing, the NFL didn’t share in the chuckle; instead, the league fined Adams $250,000. Adams is hardly the first sports owner to find himself in a dicey situation, though. Sure, you know about the transgressions of the George Steinbrenners and Al Davises of the world, but check out these other out-of-control sports owners:

1. John Spano, New York Islanders

If you’re going to buy a sports franchise, it helps to have the money to pay for it. It’s by no means a prerequisite, though, as John Spano demonstrated when he bought the New York Islanders in 1996. Spano claimed to run a 6,000-employee leasing company and have a net worth of $230 million.

However, it quickly became apparent that Spano didn’t actually have the cash he claimed. His deal to buy the Islanders had included an $80 million payment to pick up the team’s cable rights, but his checks kept bouncing (or he’d send a $1,000 check instead of a $17 million one). A subsequent investigation revealed that Spano was really only worth roughly $2 million, and his company only had 22 employees, not 6,000. Spano’s payments for the $80 million TV deal ended up totaling around $26,000.

Eventually, Spano was charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, and forgery, with many of the charges stemming from his brief ownership of the Islanders. In 2000, he was sentenced to 71 months in prison. After he was released on parole in 2004, Spano quickly worked his way back into jail by perpetrating another loan fraud.

2. Ernie Paragallo, Race Horse Owner

His name isn’t as familiar as some of the others on this list, but thoroughbred race horse owner and breeder Paragallo found himself in seriously hot water earlier this year. New York state police raided Paragallo’s Climax, NY, horse farm in April and charged the owner with 22 counts of torturing or injuring animals and failing to provide them with enough food. Paragallo, who burst onto the national racing scene in 1996 as the owner of Kentucky Derby favorite Unbridled’s Song, received a grand jury indictment for an additional 13 cruelty charges in August.

3. Cornel Penescu, FC Arges

Don’t tell us you don’t follow Romanian soccer. Last May, Penescu, the owner of the Romanian soccer team FC Arges, was arrested on charges of attempting to bribe officials to rig matches in Arges’ favor. According to Romania’s anti-corruption authorities, Penescu filled four referees’ pockets to the tune of $165,000. In return, the refs were to make sure Arges kept picking up victories. If convicted, Penescu faces up to 15 years in prison.

Oddly, this sort of thing might not be all that uncommon in Romanian soccer. An earlier corruption investigation centered on the owner of another team, FC Steaua, offering 1.7 million euros to a team if they would beat Steaua’s main rival. Although officials never got the charges to stick, a Steaua exec was detained on game day while carrying a suitcase stuffed with—you guessed it—1.7 million euros.

4. Marge Schott, Cincinnati Reds

Among the late Cincinnati Reds owner’s more colorful controversies: owning a Nazi armband and claiming Hitler was “good at the beginning, but he just went too far,” using racial slurs when referring to her own players, giving her St. Bernard free reign over the Reds’ ballpark, and expressing disappointment when Opening Day was postponed following the on-field death of umpire John McSherry. Classy lady.

5. William Del Biaggio, Nashville Predators

You’d think people would have learned about trying to buy an NHL team with ill-gotten funds from the cautionary tale of John Spano. William “Boots” Del Biaggio apparently didn’t, though. The Silicon Valley financier forged a series of financial documents in order to convince several banks and two NHL owners to give him around $110 million in loans. Del Biaggio then used this cash to buy a stake in the Nashville Predators.

As it turned out, though, the stock holdings that Del Biaggio had used as collateral for his loans weren’t really his. Instead he’d just acquired other, richer peoples’ account statements and doctored them to include his name. Prosecutors weren’t so amused when they uncovered the scam. They forced Del Biaggio into bankruptcy, including the liquidation of his stake in the Predators, and charged him with forging financial documents. In September, Del Biaggio received his sentence: eight years in prison and an order to pay $67 million in restitution. The lesson here: think twice before making nine-figure loans to guys named “Boots.”

6. Jerry Buss, Los Angeles Lakers

The longtime Los Angeles Lakers owner ran afoul of the law in May 2007 when he drove his gold Mercedes station wagon the wrong way down a Carlsbad, CA, street. When the California Highway Patrol pulled Buss over, they learned the 74-year-old owner was quite drunk and quickly arrested Buss for driving under the influence. Buss issued a statement that said, “Although I was driving only a short distance, it was a bad decision and I was wrong to do it.”

NBA Commissioner David Stern wasn’t totally placated by Buss’ apology, though. He suspended Buss for the first two games of the 2007-2008 season and fined the owner $25,000. Additionally, Buss’ criminal conviction carried a $1,900 fine, five years’ probation, and enrollment in a first-time offenders’ program.

7. Peter Pocklington, Edmonton Oilers

The former owner of the Edmonton Oilers took a few liberties with the Stanley Cup. When the Oilers won their first Cup in 1984, Pocklington had his father’s name engraved on the trophy. The NHL dealt with the problem by striking over the elder Pocklington’s name with a line of “X”s. In early 2009, authorities in California arrested Pocklington on bankruptcy fraud charges. NHL coaching legend Glen Sather posted Pocklington’s $1 million bond.
* * * * *
And here’s the video of Bud Adams in action:

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Ever wonder what it takes to get your name permanently affixed to a dish? Here are nine foods named after people, including Margherita pizza, Graham crackers, and nachos (yes, nachos).]]> Ever wonder what it takes to get your name permanently affixed to a dish? It doesn’t hurt to invent a new delicacy that people just can’t stop eating, but for some people it’s just been a matter of being in the right place at the right time—and complimenting the chef on a job well done. Here are nine foods named after people, including Margherita pizza, Graham crackers, and nachos (yes, nachos).

1. Chicken a la King

While some stories trace the savior of leftover chicken’s roots back to London’s Claridge Hotel or the famed restaurant Delmonico’s, one particular tale is widely accepted. As the story goes, a chef named George Greenwald ran the restaurant at the ritzy Brighton Beach Hotel in Brooklyn around the turn of the 20th century. Greenwald liked to experiment in the kitchen, and one night he turned out a special chicken dish for the owners of the hotel. The proprietor and his wife adored the dish and encouraged Greenwald to add it to his menu. Greenwald was so delighted that his boss liked his new creation that he named it after the hotelier: E. Clark King.

2. Graham crackers

Sylvester Graham would not have gotten along very well with James Salisbury. Graham, a 19th-century diet proponent, felt that people should ingest mostly fruits, vegetables, and whole grains while avoiding meats and any sort of spice. The upside of all of this bland food sounds a bit curious to the modern reader: Graham thought his diet would keep his patients from having impure thoughts. Cleaner thoughts would lead to less masturbation, which would in turn help stave off blindness, pulmonary problems, and a whole host of other potential pitfalls that stemmed from moral corruption. Graham invented the cracker that bears his name as one of the staples of this anti-self-abuse diet.

3. Salisbury Steak

James Salisbury was a 19th-century American doctor with a rather kooky set of beliefs. According to Salisbury, fruits, vegetables, and starches were the absolute worst thing a person could eat, as they would produce toxins as our bodies digested them. The solution? A diet heavy on lean meats. To help his diet cause, Salisbury invented the Salisbury steak, which he recommended patients eat three times a day and wash down with a glass of hot water to aid digestion. Apparently the only people paying attention to the doctor’s orders were elementary school lunch ladies.

4. Cobb salad

Here’s a debate so fiery that even Curb Your Enthusiasm has tackled it. Although there are numerous origin stories for this main-course salad, it seems that most people generally agree the concoction bears the name of Robert Cobb, the former proprietor of Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant.

There are a number of stories about how Cobb actually invented the salad, though. The one most frequently repeated is that in 1937, a hungry Cobb went to his restaurant’s kitchen for a midnight snack and ended up improvising a delicious salad with what he found in the fridge. His buddy Sid Grauman, the owner of the landmark Grauman’s Chinese Theater, was with Cobb on the night he got the munchies, and started ordering “Cobb’s salads” when he came in to eat at the Brown Derby.

5. Beef Stroganoff

The creamy beef dish supposedly takes its name from Count Pavel Stroganov, a 19th-century Russian statesman and military leader who commanded a division in the Napoleonic Wars. Stroganov’s family was one of Russia’s most wealthy and influential, so he certainly had the clout to get a namesake dish. It’s not totally clear, though, at what point the dish sprang into existence. Some sources credit an 1890 culinary competition—which seems unlikely because Count Pavel was long dead at that point—but the beef dish is mentioned in written records at least as far back as the 1860s.

6. Nachos

Yep, there really was a guy named Nacho. In 1943 Ignacio Anaya—better known by his nickname “Nacho”—was working at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico, just over the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. As the story goes, there were a lot of American servicemen stationed at Fort Duncan near Eagle Pass, and one evening a large group of soldiers’ wives came into Nacho’s restaurant as he was closing down.

Nacho didn’t want to turn the women away with empty stomachs, but he was too low on provisions to make a full dinner. So he improvised. Nacho Anaya supposedly cut up a bunch of tortillas, sprinkled them with cheddar and jalapenos and popped them in the oven. The women were so delighted with the nachos especiales that the snack quickly spread throughout Texas.

7. Fettucine Alfredo

The Italian favorite has been around for centuries, but it supposedly took on its current form around 1914 when Alfredo di Lelio upped the amount of butter in the recipe in an attempt to find something his pregnant wife would enjoy eating. Di Lelio realized that his buttery cheese sauce was extraordinarily tasty, so he started serving it to tourists at his Rome restaurant and named the dish after himself.

8. Margherita pizza

This deliciously simple pizza is named after Margherita of Savoy, who was Queen consort of Italy from 1878 until 1900 during the reign of her husband, King Umberto I. In 1889, Umberto and Margherita took a vacation to Naples and visited renowned pizza chef Raffaele Esposito, who cooked the royal couple three special pizzas. Margherita particularly enjoyed one that had used mozzarella, tomato, and basil to mimic the colors the Italian flag, so Esposito named the dish in her honor.

9. Bananas Foster

In 1951, Richard Foster had a tough job. He was the chairman of a New Orleans crime commission that was trying to clean up the French Quarter, and he also ran his own business, the Foster Awning Company. When Foster was hungry, he would often head in to his friend Owen Brennan’s restaurant, Brennan’s, and happily wolf down whatever chef Paul Blange was making. When Chef Blange invented a new dessert of flaming bananas, he named it after his owner’s buddy and frequent customer.

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Here are five things you might not know about the man who brought us so many happy little trees.]]>
Bob Ross’ patient teaching and “wet on wet” painting techniques helped introduce thousands of amateur painters to the art world. The “serious” art establishment might not have had much time for Ross—and the contempt was mutual—but even now, 14 years after his death, Ross’ iconic show The Joy of Painting still enjoys a large following in syndication. Let’s take a look at five things you might not know about the man who brought us so many happy little trees.

1. He Was a Military Man

Ross’ quiet voice and gentle demeanor made him the perfect host for The Joy of Painting, but those traits might have kept him from being the perfect soldier. Before Ross became a TV painter, he spent 20 years in the United States Air Force and retired with the rank of master sergeant. In fact, an early assignment to Alaska helped expose the Florida native to the snowy mountains and evergreens that would become staples of his art.

Viewers might find it surprising that the serene Ross was an Air Force sergeant, and it sounds like the painter thought it was a little odd himself. He later told the Orlando Sentinel, “I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work. The job requires you to be a mean, tough person. And I was fed up with it.”

When Ross retired from the Air Force, he allegedly vowed never to scream again, a plan that seems to have worked perfectly.

2. He Worked for Free

The Joy of Painting ran new seasons on PBS from 1983 to 1994, so even at public broadcasting rates the show must have made Ross quite a bit of loot, right? Not quite. Ross actually did the series for free; his income came from Bob Ross Inc. Ross’ company sold art supplies and how-to videotapes, taught classes, and even had a troupe of traveling art instructors who roamed the world teaching painting. It’s tough to think of a better advertisement for these products than Ross’ show.

How did Ross find the time to tape all of those shows for free? He could record a season almost as fast as he could paint. Ross could bang out an entire 13-episode season of The Joy of Painting in just over two days, which freed him up to get back to teaching lessons.

3. He Didn’t Sell His Paintings

Despite being all prolific and popular, Ross didn’t show his paintings in galleries or sell any of them. In a 1991 interview with the New York Times, Ross claimed he’d made over 30,000 paintings since he was an 18-year-old stationed in Alaska with the Air Force. When Ross died of lymphoma in 1995, most of his paintings either ended up in the hands of charity or PBS.

That’s not to say there aren’t any Ross paintings floating around, though. While he generally didn’t sell his canvasses, Ross did sell some souvenir gold pans during his stint in Alaska. At the time, the amateur artist got $25 a pop for a gold pan with an Alaskan scene painted in the bottom.

4. He Had a Dr. Doolittle Streak

Before he ever picked up a paintbrush, Ross was an animal lover. During his childhood in Florida, he once shocked his mother by trying to nurse a wounded alligator back to health in the family’s bathtub. Throughout his adult life, he maintained his soft spot for animals; his Florida home usually housed any number of critters that Ross was trying to help rehabilitate. At various times he played host to birds with broken wings, orphaned baby squirrels, and an epileptic squirrel that lived in his empty Jacuzzi.

Ross liked animals so much that he would tape squirrels in his backyard. During the early 1990s, Ross had hoped to develop a new non-painting show that would introduce children to a variety of new wildlife.

5. He Didn’t Love the ‘Fro

It’s hard to think of Bob Ross and not immediately key in on the giant bushy mushroom cloud of hair that exploded off of his head, and Ross knew it. Unfortunately, he also supposedly hated the haircut. Ross had an uncanny knack for marketing, though, so he knew that trimming his locks down to a more conservative ‘do would probably undercut part of his business. Ross decided to stick with his trademark look and even had his permed visage emblazoned on every tube of Bob Ross Inc. art supplies.

‘5 Things You Didn’t Know About…’ appears every Friday. Read the previous installments here.

Who is Paul Langerhans, and how did his islets wind up in your pancreas? Let’s take a look at a few scientists and their anatomical namesakes.]]>
Who is Paul Langerhans, and how did his islets wind up in your pancreas? Good question. Although lots of body parts take their names from Greek or Latin, more than a few are named after people. How well do you know the folks whose names are all over your body? Let’s take a look at a few of these scientists and their anatomical namesakes.

1. Canals of Schlemm

Schlemm’s canals are tiny channels in the eye that move aqueous humor, the watery fluid that resides between the lens and the cornea. The canals are named after 19th-century German anatomist Friedrich Schlemm, a University of Berlin professor who also discovered corneal nerves.

An interesting story about Schlemm: according to recent historical research, when Schlemm was a 21-year-old medical student he teamed with a classmate to disinter a recently deceased woman with Rickett’s. Schlemm and his buddy took the corpse back to their lab to study how the disease had affected the woman’s bones, but they were eventually caught and had to spend four weeks in jail for the grave robbery.

2. Fallopian tubes

As anyone who’s passed a sex ed class might remember, Fallopian tubes are the thin tubes that lead from the ovaries to the uterus in female mammals. They’re named after 16th-century Italian anatomist Gabriele Falloppio, who also went by the Latin name Falloppius. Although Falloppio focused on the head in most of his own research, he also did some work with the reproductive tract.

In addition to discovering and describing the tubes that bear his name, he also studied syphilis and gets credit for sponsoring what may have been the first clinical trial of condoms around 1546. Falloppio’s contraceptives were made of chemically treated linen that wearers tied on with a ribbon; he wrote that they helped decrease the rate of syphilis transmission.

3. Islets of Langerhans

No, it’s not a tiny archipelago off the coast of Newfoundland. The islets of Langerhans are actually the parts of the pancreas that contain endocrine cells. Although they only make up 1 to 2% of the pancreas’ mass, they have a lot of important functions, like secreting insulin. The islets are named after Paul Langerhans, a precocious 19th-century German pathologist. Langerhans made his breakthrough discovery at the age of 22 when he described “islands of clear cells” in the pancreas.

4. Langerhans cells

We weren’t kidding when we called him precocious. When he was just 21, Langerhans also discovered and described Langerhans cells, a subset of skin cells concerned with immune responses. Although he mistakenly hypothesized that the cells had something to do with the nervous system, Langerhans was the first to isolate them, so they bear his name.

5. Organ of Corti

The tiny organ in mammals’ inner ear that contains the hair cells that make hearing possible is named after Italian anatomist Alfonso Giacomo Gaspare Corti, who discovered it in an 1851.

6. Cowper’s glands

These small exocrine glands—also known as bulbourethral glands—are located at the base of the penis and help optimize conditions for sperm in the urethra during sexual arousal. The Cowper’s glands are named after William Cowper, a 17th-and-18th-century British anatomist who made an early description of the glands.

Don’t think for a second that an anatomist in Cowper’s time had a boring life, either. In 1698, he published the watershed text The Anatomy of the Humane Bodies, which featured dozens of painstaking illustrated plates and quickly turned Cowper into a superstar anatomist. The only problem was that the plates weren’t really Cowper’s; he had lifted them from an earlier commercial flop by Dutch physician Govard Bidloo and written new copy to go with them. Unfortunately for Bidloo, Cowper didn’t acknowledge his Dutch counterpart’s contributions, and a bitter feud ensued that lasted for the rest of Cowper’s life.

7. Bartholin’s glands

Women may not have Cowper’s glands, but they do have the homologous Bartholin’s glands. These two glands lubricate the vagina in much the same way the Cowper’s glands prepare the urethra for sexual activity. Their name comes from Danish anatomist Caspar Bartholin the Younger, who was active in the 17th and 18th centuries and first described the glands.

Discoveries like this must have come naturally to Bartholin. His grandfather, Caspar Bartholin the Elder, published the first description of the olfactory nerve, and his father, Thomas, wrote the first comprehensive study of the human lymphatic system. His uncle Rasmus also has a body part named after him: the major sublingual duct, part of the sublingual salivary glands, is known as the duct of Bartholin.

8, 9 & 10. Bowman’s capsule, membrane & glands

Bowman’s capsules are cup-shaped structures around the glomerulus of each nephron in a kidney. The capsule helps filter out waste and excess water. Bowman’s capsules are named after 19th-century English anatomist and ophthalmologist Sir William Bowman, who identified the structures in 1842 when he was 25 years old.
Not content to rest on his laurels after making one major discovery, Bowman pressed on with his work, and Bowman’s membrane—a smooth, thin layer of the eye—also bears his name. Bowman’s glands, a set of olfactory glands, are named for him, too. People in high places took notice of Bowman’s prodigious research output; Queen Victoria created him a baronetcy in 1884.

11. Eustachian tubes

Everyone’s familiar with “popping your ears” to equalize pressure after a flight, but fliers aren’t actually popping anything. Instead, they’re opening their Eustachian tubes to equalize the pressure between their ears and the atmosphere. These tubes, which also help drain mucus away from the middle ear, are named after 16th-century Italian scientist Bartolomeo Eustachi, also known as Eustachius.

Eustachi discovered all sorts of new information about the structure of the ear, and today he’s known as one of the fathers of human anatomy. But he didn’t get too much credit in his day. In 1552, Eustachi completed the text Anatomical Engravings, which showed an ahead-of-its-time understanding of the human body. Eustachi didn’t dare publish his work, though, for fear of excommunication from the Catholic Church. The manuscript hung around for decades, and eventually reached publication in 1714, when it became a bestseller and illuminated just how much progress Eustachi made.

Did we miss any of your favorites from anatomy class? The crypts of Henle? Nodes of Ranvier?

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Flying a flag at half-staff has become a well-recognized symbol of national grieving, but where did this tradition originate, and how does the decision to lower the flag work? ]]> On Friday, President Obama ordered that all U.S flags should be flown at half-staff until Veterans’ Day to honor the victims of the Fort Hood massacre. Flying a flag at half-staff has become a well-recognized symbol of national grieving, but where did this tradition originate, and how does the decision to lower the flag work?

How did the tradition of flying the flag at half-staff get started?
It’s tough to say, but the oldest commonly accepted reference to a half-staff flag dates back to 1612, when the captain of the British ship Heart’s Ease died on a journey to Canada. When the ship returned to London, it was flying its flag at half-mast to honor the departed captain.

Why would these sailors lower their flag to honor their departed captain?
According to one line of scholarly thinking, by lowering the Union Jack, the sailors were making room for the invisible flag of Death. This explanation jibes with the British tradition of flying a “half-staff” flag exactly one flag’s width lower than its normal position to underscore that Death’s flag is flapping above it.

How long is the flag flown at half-staff in the United States?
It depends on whom the nation is mourning. Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 7 of the United States Code outlines strict guidelines for how long the flag is flown at half-staff following the deaths of various members of the government.

The death of a current or former president lowers the flag for 30 days, while the current vice president, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Speaker of the House receive 10 days of half-staff flying following their deaths.

Flags fly at half-staff from the day of death until the date of interment for cabinet secretaries, Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, former vice presidents, and the governors of states. The death of a current member of Congress lowers the flag to half-staff on the day of death and following day.

Does the President have any leeway when he’s making these orders?
Yes, the President can make an executive order lowering the flag to half-mast to honor the passing of other important figures or tragic events. For example, President George W. Bush ordered the flags flown at half-staff until the interment of Pope John Paul II.

With national tragedies, the length of time seems to be a bit more arbitrary. Following the September 11th attacks, Bush ordered the flag be flown at half-staff until September 16, 2001. The Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunamis in 2004 prompted flags to be flown at half-staff from a Monday through the end of the following Friday.

What days is the flag always flown at half-staff?
The flag always flies on half-staff on Patriot Day (September 11 of each year), Peace Officers Memorial Day (May 15), and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (December 7). On Memorial Day, the flag flies at half-staff until noon, at which point it is raised to the top of the staff.

What if I can’t fly my flag at half-staff?
Some flags, like the ones commonly seen in school classrooms or on houses, are fixed in a certain position on their poles. How does one handle the sticky situation of a flag that physically can’t be flown at half-staff? The United States Code doesn’t cover this conundrum, but the American Legion advocates adding a black ribbon to the top of the flag’s pole to indicate mourning.

Can anyone other than the President order flags to be flown at half-staff?
Sure. Governors of states, territories, and possessions have the authority under the federal flag code to order a half-staffing, as does the Mayor of Washington, D.C.

It’s not uncommon for a local mayor to order a half-staffing following the death of some prominent citizen, and occasionally businesses will half-staff their flags to honor the passing of a member of the company. Technically, these sorts of half-staffings aren’t covered by the federal flag code. There’s no penalty for breaking the federal flag code, though, so it’s generally no big deal if a local leader wants to honor a prominent citizen in this way.

How does one raise a flag to half-staff?
Surprisingly, not just by raising it halfway up the flagpole. To properly fly a flag at half-staff in mourning, one quickly raises the flag to the peak of the pole before slowly lowering it back down to the half-staff position.

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