England's Two Olympic Games

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>


England will host not one, but two Games of Olympic significance this year.


The official games will be held from July 27 to August 12 -- but the Wenlock
Olympian Society will hold their annual Games from July 8 to 22.


Wenlock (population 2600) is a small town in Shropshire, not far from the Welsh border. It held its first Games in October 1850. They were a mixture of athletics and also traditional country sports such as quoits, football and cricket.


Those early Games sometimes included a ' fun' event; once a wheelbarrow race, another year an old women's race for a pound of tea.


Pageantry was an important element from the outset. A band led the procession of flag bearers, competitors and officials as they marched through the decorated streets of the town to the racecourse. In later years the Games were held at the Windmill Field, and more recently at the Gaskell Recreation Ground.


From the beginning some events were open to all-comers. In the much expanded 1851 Games, for example, according to a newspaper report, a man named Poyner of Albrighton won three events, Badger of Wolverhampton came second in the 'half-mile foot race', while Mainwaring of Birmingham won the 'leaping in distance' event.


Later, competitors came from as far away as London in the south and Liverpool in the north.


William Penny Brookes, who was born in Wenlock, was the founding father of the Wenlock Olympian Society's Games. In 1859 he sent £10 to Greece, to be presented to the winner of an event in the revived Olympian Games in Athens.


Those Games were funded by the wealthy Albania-born Evangelis Zappas.  He was of Greek-ethnic  origins, and spent most of his life in Romania. The Zappas Olympis were part of a 'National Industry' exhibition. The Greek Committee decided to award the Wenlock prize to the winner of the 'Long' or 'Sevenfold' race.


In 1865, with Hulley of Liverpool and Ravenstein of the German Gymnastic Club in London, Brookes established the National Olympian Association (NOA) based in Liverpool. The aim was to provide a sports association for amateur athletes. 


Their first festival, held the following year at the Crystal Palace, London, was a great success and attracted more than 10,000 spectators.


The volunteer members of the Wenlock Olympian Society past and present have maintained and preserved Brookes’ ideals.


It was his dream to see the ancient Games revived, open to the world’s athletes. He inspired Baron Coubertin, a young French aristocrat, to set up the International Olympic Committee, but sadly Brookes died just four months before the first open Games, held in April, 1896.


He was born, lived and died in the little market town of Much Wenlock.
He was a doctor, surgeon and magistrate for the borough for more than 40 years. 


In 1850, he established the Wenlock Olympian Society and its Games. It was Brookes’ dream to see Olympics based on the Ancient Games revived, open to the world’s athletes but with competitors exercising chivalry and ‘fair play’.


For Queen Victoria's jubilee, in 1877, Brookes requested an Olympian prize from Greece for that special year. In response to this petition, Greece's King George sent a suitably inscribed silver cup which was presented at the National Olympian Games held in Shrewsbury. That brought Brookes into contact with the Greek Charge d'Affaire in London.


The Greek newspaper Clio, in June 1881, reported that "Dr Brookes, this enthusiastic philhellene is endeavouring to organise an International Olympian Festival, to be held in Athens ….".


Sadly the Greek nation was still in a time of change and despite both Gennadius's and Brookes's enthusiasm, the Greek government politely declined.


In 1889, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the organiser of an International Congress on Physical Education, appealed for information through the English newspapers. Brookes responded. 


The Baron was so impressed that at the old doctor's invitation, he visited Much Wenlock in October 1890. A meeting of the Wenlock Olympian Games was arranged in his honour.


At that time the two men discussed their similar ambitions and further, Brookes, then aged 81, shared with the young 27- year -old de Coubertin his dream of an Olympic revival, aninternational Games to be staged in Athens. 


On his return to France de Coubertin gave a glowing account of his stay in Much Wenlock and referred to his host's efforts to revive the Olympics.

He wrote in his article for the December issue of La Revue Athletique-
" If the Olympic Games that Modern Greece has not yet been able to revive still survives today, it is due, not to a Greek, but to Dr W P Brookes".


Their respect was mutual. Coubertin referred to the doctor as " my oldest friend." Although  Brookes was listed as an honoury member of the 1894 Congress, he was unable to attend because of ill health.


Regrettably he died just four months before the realisation of his life long ambition; to launch the first International Olympic Games held in Athens in 1896, and so did not see his dream come to fruition.


Brookes has not , until recent years, been given his due recognition of his contribution to the re-birth of the modern Olympic Games.


The Zappas's Games, as referred to earlier, open to subjects of the Greek nation, continued to function intermittently with varying degrees of success right up until the revived International Olympic Games in 1896.


Wenlock Olympian Society (WOS) maintains the original ideals of William Penny Brookes. The Olympian Society Committee comprises approximately 20 members

WOS’s Chairman, Simon Macvicar said, “The society is delighted that Brookes’ place in Olympic history has been acknowledged. Not only has the Olympic mascot been named Wenlock, but the Olympic flame will be passing through the towns of the old Wenlock Borough.   The old doctor would have been astonished and delighted”.

WOS's Vice President, Jonathan Edwards, triple jump Olympic Gold medallist and World Record Holder is also part of the London 2012 organising team.


The announcement of the Torch Run’s route has caused nationwide celebrations, no more so than in Much Wenlock. The flame will arrive there on May 30 and the Wenlock Olympian Games will open with the marathon and the equestrian events, on July 8.


Five days after the Olympian Games end, the 2012 Olympics will begin.


Video, London Olympic Games mascots Wenlock and Mandeville:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUpXSfrL9X8&feature=related

Dr Penny Brookes: http://www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk/history/wpb/index.shtml

English: "The Trickiest Language You Ever Did See"

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>



English spelling is guaranteed to confuse even those of us who have spoken the language all our lives. Sometimes, when we find our mother tongue difficult to understand, we say "it sounds like double Dutch."


A Dutch school teacher and author, Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité (1870-1946), returned the compliment when he wrote a long poem, De Chaos, first published in Amsterdam as an appendix to the fourth edition of his schoolbook Drop Your Foreign Accent, engelsche uitspraakoefeningen (Haarlem: H D Tjeenk Willink & Zoon, 1920).


In an article entitled The Classic Concordance of Cacographic Chaos, published by the Simplified Spelling Society in 1994, Chris Upward, of Birmingham, England, a vice-president of the Society, wrote: 


"A feat of composition, a mammoth catalogue of about 800 of the most notorious irregularities of traditional English orthography, skillfully versified (if with a few awkward lines) into couplets with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes."


Upward's scholarly review, and a complete version of The Chaos, are displayed on the English 
Spelling Society website. Here are the opening lines:


Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.


A poem frequently quoted on the Internet is The English Lesson. Strangely, no-one seems to know the name of the genius who composed it. Here it is:


The English Lesson
We'll begin with box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn't the plural of pan be pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
But I give a boot...would a pair be beet?
If one is a tooth, and a whole set is teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be beeth?
If the singular is this, and the plural is these,
Why shouldn't the plural of kiss be kese?
Then one may be that, and three be those,
Yet the plural of hat would never be hose.
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim.
So our English, I think you will agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.
I take it you already know
of tough, and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
on hiccough, through, slough and though.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it's said like bed, not bead!
For goodness sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose --
Just look them up -- and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I've hardly made a start.
A dreadful language: Why, man alive,
I'd learned to talk when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.


[An alternative version quotes the final couplet as:
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.]


The puzzle of English pronunciation is admirably described in this final couplet of the first stanza of The English Lesson:
So our English, I think you will agree
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.


Audio of the poem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqxoWYDZg30&feature=related

English Spelling Society: http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j17/caos.php

Crossword Puzzle's Dual Solutions

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>



Crossword puzzles, the world's most popular word game, are older than you may think.The first example appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica.


It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled "Per passare il tempo" ("To pass the time"). Airoldi's puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares, but it included horizontal and vertical clues.


Arthur Wynne, the English-born New York journalist who invented the crossword puzzle in its present form in 1913, would be astonished to see how computers are being used to generate today's cryptic crosswords, and amazed at the way in which addicts are challenged to solve crosswords on the Internet. A few websites even offer cash prizes.


Wynne's invention attracts millions of devotees, and has boosted the sales of newspapers, magazines, dictionaries, notepads, pencils, and erasers for for almost a century.


Wynne had the job of creating puzzles for the New York World's eight-page Fun section when the editor asked him to invent a new word game.


He recalled a puzzle from his childhood called Magic Squares, in which a given group of words had to be arranged so their letters would read the same way across and down. He designed a larger and more complex grid, and provided a clue for each word.


The New York World published Wynne's first Word-cross puzzle on December 21, 1913 as one of the Fun section's "mental exercises." It was diamond-shaped, with easy clues. It was an instant winner, soon adopted by other newspapers.


Wynne experimented with different shapes, including a circle, before settling on the rectangle. The word-cross became known as a cross-word, and as with many hyphenated words, the hyphen was eventually dropped.


By 1923, crosswords were being published in most of the leading American newspapers, and the craze soon reached England. Before long, almost all the dailies in the United States and Britain had a crossword feature of some kind.


Crossword fever swept both nations. The puzzles were so popular in the 1920s that songs were written about them, with such titles as Cross Word Puzzle Blues, Cross Word Mamma You Puzzle Me (But Papa's Gonna Figure You Out), Since Ma's Gone Crazy Over Cross Word Puzzles, and Cross Words Between Sweetie and Me (with ukulele accompaniment).


Surprisingly,The New York Times was the only American major daily newspaper to refuse to include such puzzles (it had also shunned comic strips). However, in 1924 its editor wrote: "All ages, both sexes, highbrows and lowbrows, at all times and in all places, even in restaurants and in subways, pore over the diagrams."


Eighteen years later, the New York Times' Sunday edition printed its first crossword, and in September 1950 the puzzle became a daily feature as well. Since then, the New York Times has become "the standard of excellence in American puzzling."


Today, crosswords are found in almost every country using the Roman alphabet, and in many languages. They are regarded as both a pastime and an interesting means of improving the vocabulary.


Crossword clues make use of spelling puns, spoken puns, and accidental letter sequences in words and phrases, so anyone able to solve a crossword puzzle in a second language can certainly claim fluency.


In the 1992 US presidential election campaign, Will Shortz, who was then and at 61 still is crossword editor of the New York Times, visited the then candidate Bill Clinton's Manhattan hotel room, with a specially-constructed puzzle.


They chatted for a few minutes about crosswords when Clinton noticed the puzzle, clicked on his watch timer and started solving the puzzle. However, he was soon disturbed by an urgent phone call.


"So he clicks off his watch timer and goes over to the telephone," Shortz recalld later, "and he's talking animatedly and a few minutes into the call I hear his timer click on again and I look over and, in astonishment, I see, while he's talking on the phone, he's continuing to solve the puzzle."


When Clinton finished the call, Shortz checked the puzzle for accuracy. "It was absolutely perfect and he had finished it in six minutes and 54 seconds," said Shortz. "Whatever else you can say about Bill Clinton, he's a very talented crossword solver."


One of the most controversial puzzles appeared in the New York Times on the presidential election day in 1996. The clue to the middle answer across the grid was "Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper".


The answer appeared to be CLINTON ELECTED. Because of intentional ambiguity in the crossing clues, however, the answer could also have been BOB DOLE ELECTED. Either answer fitted. For example, the crossing clue Black Halloween animal could have been either BAT or CAT, with the C for CLINTON or the B the start of BOB DOLE.


Shortz said: "It was the most amazing crossword I've ever seen. As soon as it appeared, my telephone started ringing. Most people said 'How dare you presume that Clinton will win!' And the people who filled in BOB DOLE thought we'd made a whopper of a mistake!"


Shortz wrote the Riddler's puzzles for the 1995 film Batman Forever. He is the only man in the world to have a degree in enigmatology. He designed the course himself at Indiana University in the early 1970s.


In London, the first Times Crossword Championship took place in 1970, attracting 20,000 entries. It was won by Roy Dean, a diplomat. Eight years later, in America, 161 contestants competed in the first annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut. 


The 35th will be held in New York from March 16 to 18, 2012. Solvers tackle eight original crosswords created and edited specially for this event. Scoring is based on accuracy and speed. Prizes are awarded in more than 20 categories, including a $5,000 grand prize. Evening games, guest speakers, "and a wine and cheese reception allow solvers to meet each other in a relaxed and entertaining atmosphere."


Finally, here's a great piece of crossword trivia: the world's largest crossword was published in 1982 by Robert Turcot of Quebec, Canada. It offered 12,489 clues across and 13,125 down. A few determined cruciverbalists are still trying to fill in its 82,951 squares.


Video. What the hell is 14 down? 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBJdU7mxrEY
Online crossword: http://www.youplay.com/games/play/41/148083

Places named A, B, D, E, I, O, Q, U, Y.

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>



Everyone knows a city that's usually called LA, but there are scads of places around the world with even shorter names.


Incidentally, Los Angeles is really an abbreviation of its full name: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula (The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the River Porciuncula).


Here's a list of places with single-letter names:


Å, a village in Andøy municipality, Nordland, Norway
Å, a village in Moskenes municipality, Nordland, Norway
Å, a village in Meldal municipality, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway
Å, a village in Åfjord municipality, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway
Å, a village in Ibestad municipality, Troms, Norway
Å, a village in Lavangen municipality, Troms, Norway
Å, a village in Tranøy municipality, Troms, Norway
Å, a place in Funen, Denmark.
Å, a village in Norrköping municipality, Östergötland, Sweden
B, a village in central Ohio, United States
D, a river in Oregon, United States
Ά, an ecologic hippie community in Buenos Aires, Argentina
E, a mountain in Hokkaidō, Japan
E, a river in the Highlands of Scotland
I, a town in Shandong Sheng, Dongshan county of Fujian province, China
O, several farms in Norway
Ô, a castle near Mortrée, France
O, a river in Devon, England
Ö, a village in Sweden.
Ø, a hill in Jutland, Denmark.
Q, a village in Massachusetts, United States
U, a place in Panama
Ú, a place in Madagascar
Y, a settlement in Alaska, United States
Y, a commune in the department of Somme, France


And here's a story about just one of those places, a tiny village in France, not far from Paris, that's called Y (its 86 inhabitants pronounce it as E, and call themselves Ypsiloniens or Ypsiloniennes).


Y is near the township of Ham ans Athies in the department of Somme, in Picardy. In World War I (1914-18), the Somme, on the Western Front, was a bloody battefield, where more than a million British, French and German troops were killed in two horrific encounters.


Famous German flying ace Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) mentioned Y in his book Der Rote Kampfflieger, published in 1917. An English language version was published in 1918 as The Red Battle Flyer, and today he's remembered as the Red Baron.


"We went on a shooting expedition on the twentieth of April," he wrote. "We came home very late and lost Schäfer on the way. Of course everyone hoped that he would come to land before dark. It struck nine, it struck ten, but no Schäfer was visible.


"His benzine could not last so long. Consequently, he had landed somewhere, for no one was willing to admit that he had been shot down. No one dared to mention the possibility. Still, everyone was afraid for him.


"The ubiquitous telephone was set in motion in order to find out whether a flying man had come down anywhere. Nobody could give us information. No Division and no Brigade had seen anything of him. We felt very uncomfortable. At last we went to bed. All of us were perfectly convinced that he would turn up in the end.


"At two o'clock, after midnight, I was suddenly awakened. The telephone orderly, beaming with pleasure, reported to me: 'Schäfer is in the Village of Y, and would like to be fetched home.'"


Pictures of A and Y: http://www.fun-with-words.com/shortest_place_names.html

Pilots Warned: Beware Helium Sharks!

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>



Sharks are dangerous in the sea, but they're even more dangerous in the air.
The pilot of a passenger jet, thought to be an Air New Zealand flight, was on his descent to Christchurch International Airport on Boxing Day when he radioed ground control with an unlikely sighting -- a shark flying at several thousand feet above the sea.


The fish out of water was identified as a remote-controlled, helium-filled shark that had no doubt been a Christmas present to a youngster the previous day.


A spokeswoman for air traffic control company Airways, Monica Davis, said a pilot had reported the shark and its location about nine kilometres from the airport.


New Zealand Air Line Pilots' Association president Glen Kenny said a helium-filled shark would not pose a serious risk if it was sucked into an aircraft engine.


"The engine probably wouldn't stop, but it would do a bit of damage," he said."Helium is an inert gas, so there's no issue in that regard. The biggest hazard would be startling the pilot."


Wayward party balloons had been an air-safety issue overseas, especially in the United States, Kenny said.


He had heard about the shark incident and had some experience with the toy, having bought his daughter the 91-centimetre clownfish version for Christmas.


The Air Swimmer sharks are 1.4m-long helium-filled balloons directed by a remote control.
They were "extremely popular" Christmas gifts, said the New Zealand online retailer The Warehouse, and reports of their escapes started almost as soon as presents were unwrapped.


One customer, Kim Clarke, said her inflatable fish did not even make it to gift-giving.
"I went to get it filled, got it to the car, made it home - but as I got [it] out of the car, it was very windy. I tried holding on but [it] was gone," Ms Clarke said.


Hamilton resident Brian Thompson lost his shark on Christmas Day, before his grandchildren had had a chance to play with it.


He inflated it in secret during the morning - but it floated through the kitchen and lounge, up a flight of stairs and across a bedroom before leaving through the bedroom's external door.


"They're cunning characters, these sharks," Mr Thompson said.


The four-foot (1.44-metre) long Air Swimmer toy has a radio receiver attached to its underside and can be operated by remote control over a range of 15metres. Each has a small battery which can last for two weeks.


The toy's Californian designer-developer, William Mark Corporation, warns that the shark is for "strictly indoor use only". But sharks can't read!

1. Air Swimmers Remote Controlled Flying Shark And Clown Fish ...
   ► 1:49► 1:49	www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRG4xfJcLF416 Feb 2011 - 2 min - Uploaded by CoolThingsCom you gotta love these flying sharks, I got mine from flyingsharks.co.uk and I also got my helium there too. I know ...

2. Helium Shark Air Ship - YouTube
   ► 1:25► 1:25	www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nl3_muPW-M6 Jun 2009 - 1 min - Uploaded by jamipoeppel This Air Ship does not work so I am setting it free. Call me if it lands in your yard. Joe.

3. Helium Sharks & Mutant Stunts - YouTube
   ► 2:59► 2:59	www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sjNC928hfo14 Oct 2011 - 3 min - Uploaded by Mindslinger For Channel 12 in Durham Kris reviews Air Swimmers, the helium-filled R/C shark & clown fish, plus gets a ...

Where in the world is The Boomerang newspaper?

From ERIC SHACKLE, in Sydney, Australia.<ericshackle*bigpond.com>



"The Boomerang" is a flourishing daily newspaper founded in 1891 and still going strong.
But it has few, if any, Australians among its 5000 readers. That's because it's published in
the US town of Laramie, Wyoming.


Edgar Wilson Nye, better known as Bill Nye and later ranked as one of the major American humorists of his time, founded and edited The Laramie Boomerang.


Along with Buffalo Bill, Nye was a contemporary of Mark Twain, and for several years was the most famous comic writer in the US. He started going on speaking tours, but his comedy "turned to dust."


What inspired him to call his paper The Boomerang? He named it in memory of a mule he owned which often tried to follow him into bars, only to be shooed away and then return "like a boomerang."


To this day, The Boomerang has a cartoon sketch of Nye's mule as its emblem. Nye was even portrayed on a cigar band.


In 1881 Nye dedicated his book, The Tale of a meek-Eyed Mule and Some Other Literary Gems, to the mule:

To My Mule Boomerang,
Whose bright smile haunts me still, and whose low, mellow notes are ever sounding in my ears to whom I owe all that I am as a great man, and whose presence has inspired me ever and anon thoughout the years that are gone

Bill Nye founded the Boomerang in Laramie City in 1881. He edited the newspaper for a company and published it in the loft over a livery stable. ‘That’s why they called it a stock company,’ he said. “A sign at the foot of the stairs leading to the loft directed visitors to the newspaper by saying, ‘Twist the gray mule’s tail and take the elevator.’ 

“Nye named the paper the Boomerang; a name also held by his mule, because, Nye said, ‘I never know where he is going to strike.’

"Bill Nye and Clara Frances Smith were married March 7, 1887, in Laramie. Mrs. Nye remembered the entrance of another unexpected member of the family. “This funny little creature appeared on the streets of Laramie from no one knows where,” she wrote in later years. 

“It ambled up to Edgar and, rubbing its nose against his sleeve, brayed earnestly in his ear. From that time on, the arrival was known as Bill Nye’s mule, Boomerang.” 

Initial efforts to drive the creature off were unsuccessful, thus resulting in the name. The animal was a companion whenever Bill went fishing or to work his claim west of town. 

Nye wrote about their close relationship in one of his books. When local Republicans decided they needed a new political organ in Laramie, they backed the establishment of a newspaper and hired Nye to head the outfit. 

Nye accepted, named the sheet after his beloved mule and moved the shop into the upstairs room of a livery stable at Third and Garfield. He was given $3,000 by his backers to set up the paper and spent $1,800 of it on a “lemon squeezer” hand press and materials, and the rest for operating costs.

The late Ernest H. Linford (a former Boomerang editor, editorial writer for the Salt Lake Tribune and University of Wyoming professor of journalism) compiled much of the history of the Boomerang for its Centennial anniversary publication in 1981. The following overview is taken from his writings: 

“The Laramie Boomerang boasts several editor-owners who were prominent in journalism — notably Bill Nye, founder of the Boomerang. 


“The old Laramie Republican, which shared the masthead and flag of (the Boomerang) for more than 30 years, had prominent ‘alumni’ too, but they were fewer in number because of the long continuity of publication under the same staff. 

“Bill Nye’s essays and lectures, some of them written for the Boomerang, have appeared in scores of anthologies. But few of the editorials of William E. Chaplin, who established the Laramie Republican in 1890, nearly 10 years after the Boomerang was born, are found outside the bound volumes of the paper he founded. Yet Mr. Chaplin ran a far more prosperous paper with considerable influence in the community and state.

“The Boomerang began as a Republican organ — most newspapers drew their lifeblood from the major political parties in those days — and Mr. Chaplin, a native of Omaha, worked for Bill Nye for a time as back shop foreman. Chaplin and political associates established the Republican in 1890, partly because of dissatisfaction with the political consistency of the Boomerang. … 

"Mr. Chaplin was a strong Republican political force in Wyoming during his lifetime in the state. He was secretary of state for a single term (1920-24) and prior to that was register of the U.S. land office at Cheyenne nearly 18 years (1888-1915) … Mr. Chaplin did not exactly keep his nose in the type font during his editorial and printing career, … (and) much credit for the Republican’s success must go to his two partners, Frank Spafford and James Mathison, both printers in the main.

“ … One of the many owners of editors of the Laramie Boomerang during the early part of its existence was James L. Kilgallen. … He attained prominence as a reported for the Hearst Headline Service after advancing through several positions with that organization. … 

“The Kilgallens came to Laramie from Denver in 1913 and stayed only two years or so. (Their daughter, Dorothy Kilgallen, achieved prominence as a writer for the New York Journal-American and for her participation in the ‘What’s My Line?’ television show prior to her death in 1965.)

Another newspaper called The Boomerang was published in Brisbane, Australia, from 1890-1892. Founded and edited by William Lane, de facto editor of The Courier, it was"a live newspaper, racy, of the soil, in which pro-worker themes and lurid racism were brought to a fever-pitch."



Lane was a feature writer ("Tohunga") from 1900 for the New Zealand Herald (Auckland), as an ultra-conservative and pro-Empire columnist. He had strong racial antipathy toward East Asians, and during World War I he developed extreme anti-German sentiments. 


He was the NZ Herald's editor from 1913 until his death on August 26, 1917. He lost one son, Charles, at a cricket match in Cosme in Paraguay, and another, Donald, on the first day of the Gallipoli landings (April 25,1915).

Laramie Boomerang website: http://www.laramieboomerang.com/

Bill Nye's humor:  http://www.authorama.com/remarks-1.html