The First Time News Was Fit To Print, XIII

Every Monday, mental_floss ventures into the The New York Times archives to find first mentions worth mentioning. Got a suggestions for next week's installment? Leave it in the comments.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

April 13, 1975

Bodybuilding: Is it Sport? Art?"You don't really see a muscle as a part of you, in a way. You see it as a thing. You look at it as a thing and you say, well, this thing has to be built a little longer, the bicep has to be longer, or the tricep has to be thicker here in the elbow area. And you look at it and it doesn't even seem to belong ot you. Like a sculpture. Then, after looking at it, a sculptor goes in with this thing and works a little bit, and you do, maybe then some extra forced reps to get this lower part out. You form it. Just like sculpture." * * * * * "It's like you have a little BMW "“ you want to race the hell out of this car because you know it's just going 110. But if you see guys driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, they slide around at 60 on the freeway because they know if they press on that accelerator they are going to go 170. These things are the same in every field." "“ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Taxicab

April 9, 1899

The Taxicabs One taxicab company, in spite of all the popular clamor for cheaper fares, has raised its rates, so that a ride of two miles, if the meter works properly and the chauffeur is honest, will cost $1.30. We fear it will turn out to be like advertised hotel rates, $1.30 "and up." The chauffeur's fee is still to be considered. * * * * * It would be better for the companies to practice economies; to secure honest chauffeurs, to guard against taximeter errors; than to raise the rate of fares. We have all been dreaming of the establishment of a cheap cab system. We still have nothing cheaper than a livery stable horse coupe.

Keep reading for hippies, Nude Beer, 'American as apple pie,' the Colorado Rockies and more.

Hippies

April 23, 1961

Hippies And BeatsThe Magic of Their Singing [by Bernard Wolfe] is a short, complex presentation of a new breed of American personality, lobotomized by hipsterism. For this hipster-type every second counts (for what?) The cut of one's jib and the position of the vent in the J. Press jacket are crucial. So are the complicated conversations with condensed meanings and sensual adventures that require new labels. * * * * * Using a style compounded of puns, inside jokes, cabalistic and mythical allusions, neo-Joycean syllogisms, dialectic, monologue and duologue, some lovely surrealism, and powerful barrel-chested "straight" polemical writing on love, lust, work, politics and the semantics of violence, Wolfe's new book details a week-end in the lives of a group of hippies and beats in Connecticut and New York City.

evite

December 27, 1999

Madison Avenue Plays The Millennium For Laughs The second millennium is ending not with a bang or a whimper but with a sales pitch. Madison Avenue has embraced millennial marketing with the fervor of a zealot -- albeit one who has banished apocalyptic intimations in favor of the world view articulated by Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman: "What, me worry?" * * * * * Those preparing for the worst on New Year's Day are deemed, well, a couple zeroes shy of a millennial milestone. A commercial for McDonald's, for instance, shows a man eagerly stockpiling supplies in his storm cellar -- not water and canned goods, but french fries and ketchup. * * * * * Similarly, an ad for Evite.com, a World Wide Web site offering invitations via e-mail, declares, "This New Year's Eve, make sure you invite some friends over to clutch in terror when the world ends.'"

Nude Beer

October 30, 1988

New Beer Makes A Pitch For The Upscale Market Seven years ago Nude Beer was made for Golden Beverage by New Jersey's only contract brewery, the Eastern Brewing Corporation in Hammonton. John F. Vasallo Jr., director of the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, said the division called a halt to sales in New Jersey because it was deemed inappropriate to have a label that could be rubbed off to reveal a nude woman. Now that Lion has the contract, Nude Beer is distributed in 14 states that have no such restrictions.

'Emerging Voting Bloc'

June 21, 1983

Stay Home, Rising Star In any case, it's not difficult to understand why political writers have been drawn to Mario Cuomo. He embodies that rare combination of an old-fashioned liberal who has traditional, conservative family values "“ calling for compassion for the needy and afflicted while inveighing against a lack of discipline in American life. He is an articulate, sometimes inspirational orator whose speeches are written mostly by himself. Also, on a national ticket he could bring with him a large and emerging voting bloc "“ Italian-Americans. * * * * * And last - though not to be overlooked - is the fact that his political strategist is a man he wooed from his job as Senator Moynihan's top aide, Timothy Russert, whose lines to the Washington tastemakers are strong.

Colorado Rockies (NHL team)

September 1, 1976

Rockies Name Wilson As Coach The Colorado Rockies, based in Denver, the newest franchise in the National Hockey League, named Johnny Wilson as head coach yesterday. [Note: The Colorado Rockies moved to New Jersey and became the Devils in 1982. Other names considered: Americans, Blades, Coastals, Colonials, Generals, Gulls, Jaguars, Meadowlanders, Meadowlarks and Patriots.]

Colorado Rockies (baseball team)

June 11, 1991

Coors And Partners Give Baseball To Wild WestA franchise here will give major league baseball a new time zone, a convenient stopover between the Midwest and the West Coast, and a stake in the nation's great Wild West. Indeed, promoters of a Denver franchise talk of a regional team that will cultivate loyalties from Kansas to Utah, Wyoming to New Mexico. If baseball executives had any doubt about the intentions here, the chimes at City Hall played "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," during the executives' evaluation visit in March. And schoolchildren were arranged in the shape of a baseball as the helicopter for the franchise committee flew over. * * * * * Newspapers here have conducted polls on a favored name for a new team. The clear favorite is the Denver Bears, the former name of the minor league team here, now called the Zephyrs. But promoters say that could cause trademark problems and confusion with the Chicago Bears football team. Among the names the promoters favor: the Colorado Rockies.

'American as Apple Pie'

July 22, 1928

Mrs. Hoover, Too, Has Served The Nation Mrs. Hoover was not only a good but an inveterate home-maker. She created abiding places one after the other in Peking, Tientsin, Tong Shan "“ where she was the only resident white woman "“ in Tokio, Leningrad, or St. Petersburg, as it was then; in Kalgorli and Broken Hill, Australia; in romantic Mandalay, and between times in less exotic places such as London and Paris. All were, as one guest put it, "as American as apple pie or corn pone," and through them all ran the motif of the eventual rest home...Mrs. Hoover finally built in 1921 at Palo Alto, overlooking the campus of Stanford.

Previously on The First Time News Was Fit To Print:

"¢ Volume I: Barack Obama, Jon Stewart, iPod
"¢ Volume II: Hillary Clinton, Starbucks, McDonald's
"¢ Volume III: JFK, Microwave Oven, the Internet
"¢ Volume IV: Larry David, Drudge Report, Digital Camera
"¢ Volume V: Walkman, Osama bin Laden, Iowa Caucuses
"¢ Volume VI: Times Square, Marijuana, Googling
"¢ Volume VII: Lance Armstrong, Aerosmith, Gatorade
"¢ Volume VIII: Bob Dylan, New York Jets, War on Terror
"¢ Volume IX: Hedge Fund, White Collar Crime, John Updike
"¢ Volume X: E-mail, Bruce Springsteen, George Steinbrenner
"¢ Volume XI: RFK, the Olsen Twins, Digg
"¢ Volume XII: Jerry Seinfeld, Lee Harvey Oswald, Don Mattingly

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