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The Daily Dose/December 10, 2016
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
BACK TO THE FUTURE: It is not always possible to mark the end of an era as it is happening. Sometimes the perspective of a few years is needed.
So who knows if the Mount Union era – after a record 12 national titles – in NCAA Division III football is over. They lost to a fine Mary Hardin-Baylor team in the national semifinals this past Saturday, and this Friday’s Amos Alonzo-Stagg Bowl – the NCAA Division III national championship game – will be the first since 2004 that hasn’t featured the Purple Raiders.
Dry, Technical Matter: It will also the first time since 2004 that Mount Union, UW-Whitewater or St Thomas is not playing in the national championship game, as the Crusaders will take UW-Oshkosh Friday night.
The Losses Keep Mounting: Not only will the Raiders not win the national title this year, they didn’t even win the Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) title, which they had done for the past 700 seasons. John Carroll won the OAC, after defeating Mount Union in the season finale and Mount Union finished 2016 12-2.
Survival Of The Fittest: Others in Division III meeting the challenge was bound to happen. Teams adjust. A good example of this was Olympic basketball.
USA! USA! In 1992 the Olympic basketball tournament was opened to players who made a living in the National Basketball Association and the United States named the score. They also won the gold medal at Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000, but the gap was narrowing and Argentina won the gold medal in Athens in 2004, with the United States coming in third of all things
True, the US has won every succeeding Olympic gold medal, but American victory in the Olympics and the world championships is no longer a foregone conclusion.
Dry, Technical Matter/Some Places Have Interns For This: 2016 marks the first time since 1997 Mount Union has lost two games in a season. It also marked the first time Mount Union had lost two games in a three-week span since 1988, when they lost games on September 24 and October 8.
Déjà Vu All Over Again: We’ve actually been through this before. In 1999, after three consecutive national championships, Mount Union lost to Rowan in the national semifinals. The loss snapped Mount Union’s 54-game winning streak, then the longest winning streak in the history of NCAA football.
Inspired by that loss, the Purple Raiders then went on to break that record with a 55-game winning streak. Only the loss to Rowan prevented a 110-game win streak.
MORE USA! USA! The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution – known as the Bill of Rights – is ratified on this date in 1791 when it was ratified by the Virginia General Assembly. They had been submitted by Congress to the several states in September, 1789.
More Hot Constitutional Amendment Action: The Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution is certified by the National Archives on this date in 1933. The amendment had been ratified on December 5, when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. It repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and ended Prohibition in the United States.
FunFact: Prohibition actually ended with Utah’s ratification. All the National Archives did on this date was certify that it had received the required number of authenticated ratification documents.
Frankly My Dear…: Gone With the Wind, long an icon of American film, premiers on this date in 1939 in Atlanta. It took in about $390 million, about $3.4 billion in today’s dollars, making it the highest-grossing film ever, when adjusted for inflation.
Heil Hangman: Nazi Adolph Eichmann is sentenced to death by an Israeli court on this date in 1961, a couple of days after being found guilty of assorted war crimes.
Justice was swift in Israel then. His appeals were quickly dismissed and his clemency petition was rejected and Eichmann was executed the following June. Eichmann had been captured in Argentina by Israeli agents in May, 1960, kidnapping him while he walked home from work.
FunFact: Both the CIA and their West German equivalent had known where Eichmann was living for a couple of years before the Israelis found out.
1965: A Space Odyssey: Two space capsules rendezvous in space for the first time on this date in 1965 when Gemini 6A hooks up with Gemini 7.
More From The Space Exploration Desk: Venera 7, launched by the Soviet Union the previous August, becomes the first spacecraft to land on another planet on this date in 1970, when it landed on Venus.
Typical of the Soviet space program, mistake followed triumph, as Venera 7 experienced a faster descent than planned, probably due to a malfunctioning parachute. It is believed the craft fell on its side after landing, severely limiting the data it sent.
Dry, Technical Matter: Among the things Venera 7 was able to discover was that the Venetian atmosphere was 97 percent carbon dioxide and it surface temperature was 8876 degrees F.
Thought For The Day: Basic human nature never changed; the collective human text demonstrated that incontrovertibly.. – Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: There wasn’t a Trivia feature last time, silly!
Today’s Stumper: Which state rejected the 21st Amendment to the Constitution?
