Is it Plymouth, Massachusetts? Jamestown, Virginia? New York City? What is the oldest European established city in the country? It’s St. Augustine, Florida. Founded by the Spanish under Admiral Pedro Menendez in 1565. 21 years before Roanoke, Virginia. 42 years before Santa Fe, New Mexico and Jamestown, Virginia. It was attacked and burned by the English. It was plundered by pirates. It was invaded by union troops in the civil war. But somehow this small city along the Atlantic survived.

And it was as a result of incidents in St. Augustine in the early 1960’s that civil rights laws were toughened. Only 6 black children were enrolled in what were designated as white schools, but their parents were fired from their jobs and their homes were burned. A black dentist and 3 NAACP leaders were beaten with fists, chains and clubs by the KKK. Charges against the KKK were dismissed, but the dentist was convicted of criminal assault after he tried to defend himself.

Supporters of the dentist demonstrated with a sit-in protest, and despite being spit at, beaten and insulted, they never retaliated and gained nationwide sympathy. And it was one of the reasons why civil rights laws were passed in 1964. It was on this date in 1565, St. Augustine was established.

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When he ran for governor of New York in 1939 he lost – and even though he was from Buffalo he lost badly in Western New York mainly because of what happened years before during prohibition. His name was William Donovan and he was the district attorney during prohibition. Pretty tough job in a heavy drinking town. Buffalo had a large German and Irish population back in the 20’s and they loved their beer. Because beer or any alcohol was illegal, speakeasies popped up all over the city. They were private little clubs you’d need a membership card to get in. It was estimated there were 8-thousand speakeasies all across Buffalo. One reporter called Buffalo the second largest center of prohibition evasion in the United States.

For some people it didn’t matter what it was they were drinking….if it had alcohol in it, it was good enough, but that was the problem with the speakeasies – some people were being poisoned, going blind or dying as a result. Mayor Francis Schwab campaigned heavily to repeal prohibition. But the mayor may have had other reasons. He was part owner of a brewery himself. And that’s where Donovan comes in. In a case that made national headlines, Donovan charged, prosecuted and won a conviction against the mayor for making and selling booze. But Donovan didn’t stop there. He led raids on some of the most high class speakeasies in the city, including the Saturn Club and the Country Club of Buffalo, rounding up some of the most prominent Buffalonians. The arrest list read like a who’s who of Buffalo’s business leaders. And it didn’t matter to Donovan that he was a member of those two clubs. He arrested, charged and prosecuted some of his closest friends and when he ran for governor years later they never forgot.

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His name was Vince. Born in Brooklyn in 1892. But from the time he was a young boy, he knew he didn’t want to live in the big city. So at the age of 16 he headed west and joined the circus. But when the U.S. entered World War One - he joined the Army and shipped out for France where his talent with a gun – something he learned in the circus, quickly got him promoted to first lieutenant.

And his skill with a gun was something Vince would use for the rest of his life. When the war was over, he hopped a train to Nebraska where he soon became a prohibition enforcement officer. He also helped to keep the peace in the frontier towns by arresting horse thieves and other criminals.

He became so famous as a tough lawman, the Secret Service even hired him as an extra bodyguard for President Calvin Coolidge whenever the president was on official trips out west.

Occasionally he would visit with two of his brothers, but warned them if their fourth brother, Al, living in Chicago ever came to Nebraska, he would arrest him and throw him in jail the minute he crossed the state line.

The only thing he shared in common with his brother was their last name – Capone. Strangely, Vince Capone - one of the most famous law enforcers of the Old West was the brother of one of America’s most notorious criminals – Al Capone.

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We were talking yesterday about the belly button – clinically known as the umbilicus – also known as the navel. It’s actually a scar left after the umbilical cord is removed from newborn babies. Belly buttons can be “innies” or “outies”. The cause of an “outie” protrusion is extra skin left from the umbilical cord. And because they’re scars, sometimes they’re a way to tell the difference between identical twins.

The position of the belly button on the body is pretty consistant in humans, located between the third and fourth vertebrae.

Ideally, the belly button should be at about 62 percent of your total height.

In Indian culture, the belly button has long been considered a graceful identifying mark of a woman, but for many years in western culture it was taboo. TV censors wouldn’t allow actress Barbara Eden to show her navel in the 1960’s comedy “I Dream of Jeanie” even though she was supposed to be a 2000-year old genie who lived in a bottle. She wore veils to hide her navel. But just a few years later on “Gilligan’s Island”– Mary Ann sometimes was shown with a bare navel.

Why is it called a belly button – really not much more than it kind of looks like a button on your belly.

Do how about some of the other slang terms for body parts? There’s the shnoz, chicklets or pearly whites, peepers, butt or fanny, boobs or melons, mitts, digits, unibrow, south paw, locks, noggin, ticker, guts, noodle, dogs.

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When it opened in 1883 it was called a marvel of engineering. The Brooklyn Bridge across the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn in New York City was one of the world’s first suspension bridges. And over the years millions of people have used it in cars, trains or just walking across it.

Washington Roebling was the chief engineer and it was destined to be the biggest achievement of his career. But he never got a chance to finish the job. He barely got it started. When they were setting the foundation of the bridge, 78 feet underwater, Roebling got decompression sickness – coming up to the surface too quickly. They didn’t know much about it then. But it left him paralyzed, partly blind, deaf and unable to talk. He couldn’t continue and because the job was so massive and so unique there was nobody willing to take on the job. Except for one. And this was somebody who knew almost nothing about construction or engineering. And really wasn’t very good at geometry or other math. But this one person was a big fan of Roebling’s work and committed to getting the job done. Even if it meant learning higher math and engineering on the fly.

It meant learning some of the most complicated construction methods ever attempted up to that point all the while kind of learning from Roebling himself. And if it wasn’t for this one person willing to take on the job we might not have the Brooklyn Bridge today.

Many of the assistant engineers and contractors depended on this person’s advice and was considered by many as the project’s Chief engineer. Turns out it was a woman who got the job done. The woman was Roebling’s very intelligent, talented and dedicated wife Emily.

And if you look at the plaque dedicating the bridge – you’ll find her name recognizing her role in creating one of the era's great engineering achievements.

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I don’t know how many times I heard when I was growing up that all that Pepsi I like to drink is gonna rot my teeth out. Turns out in comparison to other things that people drink, colas are pretty far down the list of beverages that can ruin your teeth. In terms of keeping your teeth healthy, water is among the best things you can drink. Black coffee and black tea may discolor your teeth, but it’s not unhealthy. Colas aren’t all that bad either. What are among the worst things you can drink? Sports and energy drinks and Gatorade are among the worst.

It’s all based on a study published in the journal General Denistry. Even though coffee and colas have acids in them, they’re not the types of acids that have a high likelihood of damaging teeth. Energy drinks and bottled lemonades though may erode 11 times more tooth enamel than colas. When tooth enamel erodes, it makes teeth more susceptible to decay and can cause tooth sensitivity, increased breakage and surface blemishes. They say if you enjoy sports drinks or bottled lemonade – they recommend finishing your drink quickly, rinsing your mouth with water and wait at least 30 minutes before you brush because the mild abrasives in toothpaste can wear away softened enamel.

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We’re not even sure how many different types of animals and plants there are on earth. Between one and a half to two million different species have been identified and cataloged, but scientists think there could be another eight million or more others not even discovered yet.

But scientists think in the next 25 to 30 years we could lose one fifth of the known species in the world. Depending on which estimates you care to believe – we’re losing one species an hour.

Here’s one I’m sure clay would have loved to have hunted – the largest deer that ever lived. The Irish deer – it’s been extinct for more than 7-thousand years. It lived in an area of northern Europe from Ireland all the way across to Russia. It stood 7 feet tall at the shoulders and had massive antlers – 12 feet wide from tip to tip weighing about 90 pounds. The antlers may have been one of the primary reasons they became extinct because they restricted movement of males thru forests.

Stellar’s sea cow disappeared in the late 1700’s – a completely defenseless animal – a lot like a manatee – but bigger. It grew to 26-feet long. Looked a little like a seal, but had two short forearms, a small head and a whale-like tale. No teeth – just two big gums. They were common in the North Pacific ocean from Japan to California. Hunting by humans is believed to have led to their extinction.

Another interesting animal that disappeared a little over a hundred years ago is the quagga. Half zebra – half horse. The size of a horse, but with stripes like a zebra on the front part of the body. The stripes faded in the mid-section and the hind quarters were plain brown. The last one died in captivity in 1883.

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In 1991, it was the first time Americans spent more money on salsa than ketchup and it’s remained that way ever since. Chile peppers were introduced into what is now New Mexico and Arizona by Mexican Capitan General Juan de Onante in the 16th century. All varieties of chile peppers are native to what is now Bolivia. Most animals avoided them because they were so hot, but birds ate them, because they can’t taste them, and as they flew, they spread the seeds all over Central and South America. Capsaicin is the chemical that makes them so hot and it’s not found in any other plant. It’s also the chemical used in pepper spray. One study revealed eating too many chiles can cause stomach cancer, but another study says chiles contain another chemical that reduces cancer risk in lab rats....so you decide.

The salsa sniffles....sweating and runny nose....the skin irritation from chopping chiles and burn they leave when exiting the body are some of the unpleasant effects of eating chiles.....but there are plenty of benefits.

An Oxford university study showed chiles can help burn calories. They’re low in fat, high in fiber and loaded with beta carotene and a half cup of chopped chile peppers offer more than twice the vitamin c of an orange. Capsacin is a natural antibiotic that slows down the growth of bacteria. The muscle cream Heet is made mostly of capsacin. Some other things that have been treated with capsacin include indigestion, acne, arthritis, cramps, herpes, low blood pressure, shingles, cuts and hemorrhoids.

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August is National Sandwich Month.

In 1762, John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, didn’t want to interrupt his card game so he came up with a way to eat a meal by putting roast beef between two slices of bread.

I bet you didn’t know that nearly 2.2 billion Oscar Mayer bologna sandwiches are eaten every year. That works out to more than six million a day or 69 every second.

By the time he graduates from high school, the average child eats 15-hundred peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

The largest sandwich ever made was a huge corned beef sandwich made by Wild Woody’s Chill and Grill in Roseville, Maryland. It weighed 5,440 pounds. More than two and a half tons.

Ever hear of an Elvis sandwich? White bread, butter, smooth peanut butter and bananas. 41 grams of fat. Elvis himself is said to once have eaten 12 of them.

The world’s most expensive sandwich? It’s probably one made by the Von Essen Hotels in England. It’s made with poulet de bresse.....a high quality French chicken known for their red crown, white feathers and blue feet, described as rich in flavor, fine tender flesh and clean flowing fat. Also on this sandwich is Iberico ham, white truffles, quail eggs, semi-dried Italian tomatoes, and 24 hour fermented sourdough bread. All that in a sandwich for only 197 dollars.

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Back in the mid 1800’s it was pretty routine for people to work 10 to 12 hour days. It was just the way it was. But a growing national call for a shorter work day led to the formation of the National Labor Union that called on Congress to officially trim the workday. Federal employees were the first to enjoy shorter days when Congress passed legislation in 1863, but it wasn’t until decades later that it became common in most American workplaces. The issue really hit the national stage when workers at the McCormick Reaper Manufacturing Company in Chicago went on strike over work hours. When the company hired replacement workers who tried to cross the picket lines, it led to a confrontation between police and workers leaving seven policemen and four workers dead in what became known as the Haymarket Riots.

For more than 30 years after that, workers who called for shorter work days were labeled radicals, but finally in 1923, the big breakthrough came when the Carnegie Steel Corporation granted shorter work hours to its employees. Eventually, President Franklin Roosevelt made the eight-hour workday an official part of his New Deal legislation. The eight-hour work day and 40-hour work week became law on this date in history.

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We were talking the other day about words that are often mispronounced, or misused. We do it all the time – and the words we all mispronounce sometimes become accepted pronunciations. For example – another term for attorney? Most people say loyer. The proper pronunciation is lawyer.

6-foot-4 describes clay’s height.....not his heighth.

How often do you hear people say irregardless? They’re adding unnecessary letters. It’s regardless.

What’s sometimes called your voice box is your larynx.....not your larnix.

I’ve heard people say they’re going to the libary........when they’re actually going to the library.

Here’s a tough one for a lot of people.....they ask for maynaise on their sandwich when they really want mayonnaise.

It’s a moot point.....not a mute point.

Here’s one president bush could never pronounce.......weapons of mass destruction include nuclear weapons.....not nooklir.

This word is spelled with a silent t.......o-f-t-e-n.......when people read the word...they tend to pronounce the t....but it’s actually ofen.

A word i sometimes stumble on is February. Not easy to say, so many dictionaries do accept Febuary without the first r.

Speaking of r’s....why do so many people say they’re going to warsh their clothes....or they’re going to Warshington. Where’d the r come from?

Fittingly....one of the most commonly misspelled words is misspelling.....two s’s and two l’s.....

And of one of the most often mispronounced words is pronunciation....it’s not pronounciation.....it’s pronunciation.

Some others that drive me nuts....aks me a question.

Exscape,

Excetera is etcetera,

Bob wire is barbed wire,

It’s not artic – it’s arctic.

It’s athletic – not athaletic.

The accepted American pronunciation of this word is different from the one Steve Tasker likes to use – the American pronunciation is ve-icle.

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How well do you know your dog? What do you really know about man’s best friend? First you know dogs have a keen sense of smell, but how keen? About a thousand times more sensitive than humans. But their eyesight isn’t as good. A human with normal eyesight can see clearly up to 75 feet. A dog can see the same detail only up to 25 feet. On the other hand dogs have better night vision. Dogs are able to see objects and detect motion in dim light better than humans.

Dogs have more sensitive hearing than humans. They can hear sounds at a greater distance than humans and can detect the direction from where the sound is coming. If you have a dog with ears that stick straight up and are pointed – he has better hearing than dogs that have flaps down over their ears. If you’ve ever seen your dog show what looks like fear during thunderstorms – it’s probably not fear at all. Thunderstorms have sound frequencies that can hurt dogs’ ears, so what’s happening is they’re reacting to the pain.

Dogs have a higher body temperature than humans. The average body temperature of a dog is between 101 and 103 degrees. The higher body temperature is why fleas are attracted to your dog more than they are to you.

Dogs only have sweat glands in their footpads. They don't really have very efficient cooling systems and that’s why they overheat in confined places like cars on hot days.

Dogs are pack animals and view their human owner as the leader of the pack.

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He really was one special baseball player. Lou Gehrig – the only child of German immigrants, his parents stressed education over sports, but he got a scholarship to Columbia University on a football scholarship and studied engineering. But he also played baseball at Columbia and was signed by the Yankees when he was spotted by a scout. He sat for nearly two seasons and according to legend he took first base when star Wally Pipp took himself out of the game because of a headache. Gehrig didn’t miss a game for the next 13 years. His streak began on June 1st, 1925 and it was on this date, August 17th, 1933 he broke baseball’s consecutive game streak. He was honored after the first inning when players from both teams surrounded him at first base and the American League president presented him a silver trophy.

It was an incredible streak of 1,308 straight games, but he wasn’t finished. He went on to play 2,130 games in a row, a record that would stand for over half a century.

Gehrig led the American League in RBIs five times and drove in at least 100 runs 13 years in a row. He led the AL in home runs three times, runs four times and in hitting once. In 1932, Gehrig became the first player to hit four home runs in a game. He helped the Yankees to six World Series titles.

But he was forced to retire because of an illness that doctors had a hard time trying to diagnose, an illness we commonly call Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 and died just two years later.

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His gun company was struggling and nearly out of business until he introduced a new design for a handgun. Up until then, most Americans headed out to the western frontier depended on short barreled, single shot pistols or knives for self protection. But Samuel Colt’s 44-caliber revolver virtually opened up the west. For the first time, a gun could be fired repeatedly with reasonable accuracy within 30 to 40 yards.

It had a revolving cylinder that carried five or six bullets, but what really set Colt’s gun apart was the spiral grooves in the inside of the barrel. It’s what makes the bullet spin as it’s fired and that’s why it’s so accurate. The U-S Army bought a thousand Colt revolvers in 1847 and liked them so much, they became a steady customer. Then between 1860 and 1870, Colt sold 170-thousand of his pocket revolvers and 98-thousand belt revolvers, mostly to civilians looking to protect themselves as they headed west.

By the way, Colt was just 15 years old when he came up with the idea for his revolver and only 22 years old when he got the patent.

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This is Elvis Week in Memphis with all kinds of events celebrating his life and career.

Some things about Elvis you might not know: he had an amazing memory. He’d hear songs on the radio and be able to sing them immediately. Country, pop, R & B - Elvis had a sponge for a brain when it came to lyrics.

He was very polite. He was always taught manners. His mother said there was no reason to treat people except with great respect and to always say “yessir” and “nosir”. But watch out when he was angry. Sam Phillips who owned sun records said he was slow to anger, but pound for pound he never knew anyone who was stronger. He said one time a guy who didn’t like his sideburns wouldn’t leave him alone and despite warnings kept challenging him. Elvis had him down on the concrete in no time flat.

Elvis’ gold suit really was made of gold. Colonel Tom Parker had it made for him for a 10-city tour in 1957. During one show, Elvis fell to his knees and left a pile of gold leaf on the stage. The colonel begged him not to do it again. Elvis loved his mother so much, at her funeral in 1958 he tried to jump into her grave. For days afterward he carried her nightgown around with him.

He made 31 movies in 13 years and hated almost every one of them.

Elvis could pick the hits, but couldn’t write his own songs. He was good at changing arrangements though and did on “Don’t Be Cruel” and “All Shook Up” and made them huge hits.

His popularity began to taper off in the mid 60’s, so he went to Vegas to begin a comeback that Elvis wasn’t sure would work. He hadn’t been on stage in 9 years, but on his opening night in 1968 not even halfway thru his opening medley – he got a standing ovation and Elvis was back.

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Uncanny – spooky - incredible. Those were some of the descriptions of the weather forecasts in Baltimore, Maryland back in 1930.

The Baltimore newspaper printed a forecast each day, but not the one from the National Weather Service. They had their own mystery source for predicting the weather and for months their forecast was right on nearly every day. It never seemed to miss, predicting rain, snow, sun, wind.

Remember, this was 1930, so weather forecasting was still in its infancy. Practically not much better than just reading the Farmer’s Almanac, which some people still believe is the best all-round weather predictor in the world. But the Baltimore newspaper had found a source that was more accurate than the National Weather Service or any of the local forecasters ever were. Day after day, week after week, the newspaper was right. Often the weather bureau and the newspaper agreed, but when they didn’t, it was the newspaper that always seemed to come out ahead. And it got to be a big deal in Baltimore. People started keeping track of who was right, the meteorologists or the newspaper’s private predictor. And to the embarrassment of the National Weather Service, the newspaper source proved to be right every time.

The newspaper wouldn’t reveal who their source was. They were asked many times, but refused. Several competing newspapers offered a cash reward to the person who cracked the case.

Until one day Miss Fanny Shields finally came forward and admitted it was Napoleon who was the source of all those forecasts. And he had been predicting the weather accurately for years. Napoleon - Miss Fanny’s cat.

The way Napoleon would lie on the floor was the key. For example, if Napoleon laid on the floor with his paws in front of him and he tucked his head between his paws - it meant it was gonna rain. Once during a long drought, the official forecast said it was going to stay dry, but Napoleon had his head between his paws, so Miss Fanny called the newspaper to tell them it was going to rain. It did rain, heavily, and from then on the newspaper used the cat’s forecasts.

When he died, the tombstone over his grave was inscribed "Napoleon the Weather Prophet 1917 - 1936". It was said that in all the six years that he made his predictions he never got it wrong.

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It’s called the Rickenback Frying Pan and it had a huge effect on not only country music, but jazz, blues and rock. It was a patent granted in 1937 and the Rickenback frying pan had nothing to do with food or anything in the kitchen. It was a device that transformed the guitar.

The problem with an acoustic guitar is that it gets lost when it’s surrounded by other instruments. Brass, woodwinds and other strings are just so much louder than an acoustic guitar. So how do you make it louder?

Inventor G.D. Beauchamp worked on the problem for five years. He was a partner in the Adolph Rickenback Instrument Company and he came up with an electromagnet placed at the base of the guitar strings that would pick up the vibrations of the strings, convert those vibrations into an electric current and then reproduce those vibrations thru an amplifier. Pretty similar to the way a phone works.

To satisfy the patent claims that this device was different from the way a phone works Beauchamp had to revise the wording a number of times, but finally it was on this date in 1937 the Rickenback Frying Pan was granted a patent.

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A grim date in history – it was on this date in 1945, the United States dropped a second atom bomb on Japan.

The first bomb dropped at Hiroshima was not enough to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the demand for unconditional surrender. Because of expected bad weather, plans to drop a second atom bomb was moved up from August 11th to the 9th and at 11:02 that morning from an altitude of 16-hundred-50 feet above the ship-building city of Nagasaki, the bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," exploded with the equivalent of 22,000 tons of TNT. The number of people killed is estimated at between 60,000 and 80,000. Japan was never able to give an accurate count because all the city records were incinerated. The man who headed up the Manhattan Project that produced the two bombs said a third bomb, if it was needed, could have been ready by August 17th, but it wasn’t needed. Japan’s War Council finally decided that "continuing the war would only result in the annihilation of the Japanese people....", so the Emperor of Japan gave his permission for unconditional surrender. It happened on this date in 1945.

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