On a Virginia hillside rising above the Potomac River and overlooking Washington, D.C., stands Arlington House. The 19th-century mansion seems out of place amid the more than 250,000 military grave sites that stretch out around it. Yet, when construction began in 1802, the estate was not intended to be a national cemetery. The mansion, which was intended as a living memorial to George Washington, was owned and constructed by the first president's adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, son of John Parke Custis who himself was a child of Martha Washington by her first marriage and a ward of George Washington. Arlington won out as a name over Mount Washington, which is what George Washington Parke Custis first intended calling the 1,100-acre tract of land that he had inherited at the death of his father when he was 3. Arlington won out because it was the name of the Custis family ancestral estate in the Virginia tidewater area.
The property was confiscated by the federal government when property taxes levied against Arlington estate were not paid in person by Mrs. Lee. The property was offered for public sale Jan. 11, 1864, and was purchased by a tax commissioner for "government use, for war, military, charitable and educational purposes." Arlington National Cemetery was established by Brig. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, who commanded the garrison at Arlington House, appropriated the grounds June 15, 1864, for use as a military cemetery. His intention was to render the house uninhabitable should the Lee family ever attempt to return. A stone and masonry burial vault in the rose garden, 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep, and containing the remains of 1,800 Bull Run casualties, was among the first monuments to Union dead erected under Meigs' orders. The federal government dedicated a model community for freed slaves, Freedman's Village, near the current Memorial Amphitheater, on Dec. 4, 1863. More than 1,100 freed slaves were given land by the government, where they farmed and lived during and after the Civil War. Neither Robert E. Lee, nor his wife, as title holder, ever attempted to publicly recover control of Arlington House. They were buried at Washington University (later renamed Washington and Lee University) where Lee had served as president. The couple never returned to the home George Washington Parke Custis had built and treasured. After Gen. Lee's death in 1870, George Washington Custis Lee brought an action for ejectment in the Circuit Court of Alexandria (today Arlington) County, Va. Custis Lee, as eldest son of Gen. and Mrs. Lee, claimed that the land had been illegally confiscated and that, according to his grandfather's will, he was the legal owner. In December 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, returned the property to Custis Lee, stating that it had been confiscated without due process. On March 3, 1883, the Congress purchased the property from Lee for $150,000. It became a military reservation, and Freedman's Village, but not the graves, was removed. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/historical_information/arlington_house.html

From Private Sector, a novel by Brian Haig
chatter between a pair of overly jocular anchors
wouldn't know a tort from a tortilla
An old lawyer's stunt is when you maintain control by asking questions.

Q: I heard Ohio had something to do with the first traffic light.
A: The first electric traffic light was set up at Euclid Avenue and 105th Street, Cleveland, sometime in August 1914. (The dates vary by source.) It had red and green lights, and a buzzer. www.usacitiesonline.com.
Q: Why, in playing golf, do you yell "Four!" instead of "Five!"?
A: It's "Fore!," not "Four!" But we'll play along. There's no agreement on its origin anyway.
"The Shorter Oxford Dictionary records its first use in 1878 as a warning cry to people in front of a golf stroke and, like most people, believes it is an abbreviation of the word 'before.' There is an earlier reference in 1857 in a glossary of golfing terms," says "Scottish Golf History." Golfers once employed "'forecaddies' to stand where the ball might land and reduce the number of lost balls, as is done in tournaments today," according to the source. "In 1875, Robert Clark mentions that Andrew Dickson performed this role for the Duke of York in 1681 and describes it as 'what is now commonly called a fore-caddie.' It is probable that golfers called to their 'forecaddie,' who would always be some distance ahead, to draw attention to the fact the ball was coming and, in time, this was shortened to 'Fore!' "The almost contemporaneous appearance of the terms caddie, fore-caddie and 'fore!' supports this theory..." Scottish Golf History
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Jan/JU/ar_JU_011011.asp?d=011011,2011,Jan,10&c=c_13

Author John Grisham has explained how libraries played a major role in the selling of his first book, A Time to Kill (1989). Of his second work, The Firm (1991), Grisham said, "Most of the encouragement came from two groups – independent booksellers and librarians.” Grisham will take on his role as Honorary Chair of National Library Week (NLW) to be observed from April 10-16, 2011, has as its theme "Create your own story @ your library®" http://www.examiner.com/mystery-series-in-national/ala-conference-speaker-john-grisham-to-be-2011-honorary-chair-of-national-library-week

The 83rd Annual Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011. The ceremony will again take place at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.

The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS t is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film. The performers of a song are not credited with the Academy Award unless they contributed either to music, lyrics or both in their own right. The original requirement was only that the nominated song appear in a motion picture during the previous year. This rule was changed after the 1941 Academy Awards, when "The Last Time I Saw Paris", from the film Lady Be Good, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, won. Kern was upset that his song won because it had been published and recorded before it was used in the movie. The song was actually written in 1940, after the Germans occupied Paris at the start of World War II. It was recorded by Kate Smith and peaked at number 8 on the best seller list before it was used in the film Lady Be Good. Kern got the Academy to change the rule so that only songs that are "original and written specifically for the film" are eligible to win. See list of winners and nominees at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Original_Song

See Academy Awards winners and nominees for best original score at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Original_Score Look under "Superlatives" to find the composer with the most awards (9).

Made in Ohio Get an inside look at how Wilson makes the Official NFL Game Ball at our factory in Ada, Ohio. As the official football supplier for the NFL since 1941, Wilson workers at the Ada factory construct thousands of NFL Game Balls annually by hand from genuine leather hides. Located approximately 80 miles northwest of Columbus, Ohio, the factory employs only 150 workers whose average tenure exceeds 20 years. http://www.wilson.com/wilson/football/video.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198673974607&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302756199
Gaston Glock, has managed to dominate not just the American handgun market, but America's gun consciousness. Before Glock arrived on the scene in the mid-1980s, the U.S. was a revolver culture, a place where most handguns fired five or six shots at a measured pace, then needed to be reloaded one bullet at a time. With its large ammunition capacity, quick reloading, light trigger pull, and utter reliability, the Glock was hugely innovative—and an instant hit with police and civilians alike. Headquartered in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, the company says it now commands 65 percent of the American law enforcement market, including the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. I also controls a healthy share of the overall $1 billion U.S. handgun market, according to analysis of production and excise tax data. For decades until the early 1980s, Gaston Glock ran a radiator plant in suburban Vienna. On the side, he manufactured window fittings and bayonets in his garage, using a secondhand Russian metal press. Now 81 and living reclusively at a lakeside resort in southern Austria, Glock got his start in guns by listening closely to the customer. In 1980 the Austrian army was looking for a new sidearm to replace the antiquated Walther P-38. Steyr, Austria's premier arms maker since the mid-1880s, offered a clunky update that tended to misfire. Glock, though he had no firearm expertise, saw an opportunity. He studied the best pistols available and consulted with leading European firearm experts. "We sit together and made the plan and drawing," he recalled in a March 1998 legal deposition in the U.S. "It was like a pistol in the future." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_04/b4212052185280.htm