NEWSPAPER GEMS

You may know that newspapers have headline writers.  Sometimes they get carried away with their imaginations.  For example --

Ted Ginn is a player for the San Francisco 49ers football team.  Sunday he returned a kickoff 102 yards for a touchdown, and then less than two minutes later he returned a punt 55 yards for a touchdown.  The headline in the morning paper read:

            GINN IS A TONIC

Serena Williams is a pro tennis player.  On Sunday she lost her finals match.  The headline, on the same page as Ted Ginn, read:

            SERENA IS NOT SERENE

Now the following is not in the headline category, but fits the bill as a gem:

There was an item in the paper the other day following the Yahoo! firing of CEO Carol Bartz.  It seems that AOL is interested in joining forces with Yahoo.  My immediate reaction was that was not the best idea in the world.  Then in the Sunday paper, tech industrial analyst Karsten Weide put it quite succinctly:  “Two turkeys don’t make an eagle.”


Fun --

THE INVENTORS OF THE AUTOMOBILE AIR CONDITIONER  (This is NOT a true story)



The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram, and Max, invented and developed the first automobile air-conditioner. On July 17, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97 degrees. The four brothers walked into old man Henry Ford's office and sweet-talked his secretary into telling him that four gentlemen were there with the most exciting innovation in the auto industry since the electric starter. 

Henry was curious and invited them into his office. They refused and instead asked that he come out to the parking lot to their car. They persuaded him to get into the car, which was about 130 degrees, turned on the air conditioner, and cooled the car off immediately. The old man got very excited and invited them back to the office, where he offered them $3 million for the patent. The brothers refused, saying they would settle for $2 million, but they wanted the recognition by having a label, 'The Goldberg Air-Conditioner,' on the dashboard of each car in which it was installed. 

Now old man Ford was more than just a little anti-Semitic, and there was no way he was going to put the Goldberg's name on two million Fords. They haggled back and forth for about two hours and finally agreed on $4 million and that just their first names would be shown. 

And so to this day, all Ford air conditioners show -- 
Lo, Norm, Hi, and Max -- on the controls.