AARP was initially started as a means to sell insurance to senior citizens.  Leonard Davis, an insurance salesman, put in $50,000 to establish AARP so he could expand his customer base from the NRTA.  To help insurance sales, members were not required to be retired (as in the NRTA).  Colonial Penn Insurance was started for the sole purpose of selling insurance through AARP.  Until a "60 minutes" expose, they were the most profitable insurance company for senior citizens.  They were replaced by Prudential after the scandal.  In the 1980s, businessman Leonard Davis was the man behind AARP.  The image that was projected was that of an advocacy group, but it was found that the sole purpose was to sell insurance to this target group.  In the 1990s, AARP was investigated by Congress over its tax-exempt status.  There was not enough evidence to change the status.  AARP is a 502(c)(4) corporation.  Donations are not tax-exempt, since the group lobbies the government.  http://www.ehow.com/facts_4879795_history-aarp.html

The Harvard Five was a group of architects that settled in New Canaan, Connecticut in the 1940s:  John M. Johansen, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, Philip Johnson and Eliot Noyes.  Marcel Breuer was an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, while Gores, Johansen, Johnson and Noyes were students there.  They were all influenced by Walter Gropius, a leader in the Bauhaus movement and the head of the architecture program at Harvard.    The small town of New Canaan is nationally recognized for its many examples of modern architecture.  Approximately 100 modern homes were built in town, including Johnson's Glass House and the Landis Gores House, and about 20 have been torn down.  Four are now listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places:  the Landis Gores House, the Richard and Geraldine Hodgson House, the Philip Johnson Glass House, and the Noyes House.   http://www.enotes.com/topic/Harvard_Five 

Odds bodkins  (God's body)

The phrase sounds entirely suited to Tudor yokels and is a stock in trade of any author wishing for a shortcut to convey a sense of 'Olde Engylande'.   A bodkin is a small tool for piecing holes in leather etc.  This term borrows the early bodikin version of that word, not for its meaning but just because of the alliteration with body, to make a euphemistic version of the oath God's body.  This would otherwise have been unacceptable to a pious audience.  That is, odds bodkins is a minced oath.

Shakespeare ignored the impropriety in Henry IV Part II, 1597:
First Carrier:  God's body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved. 
Perhaps he was rebuked for that.  In any event by 1600, when he wrote Hamlet, he had gone halfway towards the euphemistic version:
POLONIUS:  My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET:  God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?
The first to use 'odds bodkins' in something approaching the current spelling was Henry Fielding, in Don Quixote in England, 1734:  "Odsbodlikins... you have a strange sort of a taste."
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/262450.html

Pronunciation of Ohio places

Bellefontaine (behl FOWN tuhn)

Conneaut (KAHN ee awt)

Geauga (Gee AW gah) or (JAW gah)

Gnadenhutten (ji NAY dun huh tehn)

Gratiot (GRAY shot)

Versailles (ver SALES)

Wooster (WUSS tur)  See others at:  http://scrippsjschool.org/pronunciation/#V

Q:   Do we run the U.S. military cemeteries on foreign soil?  Where are they?
A:  Yes.  They are U.S. soil forever.  The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 24 cemeteries overseas.  They contain 30,921 American dead from World War I, 93,238 dead from World War II, and 750 dead from the Mexican War.   There are 11 cemeteries in France, three in Belgium, two each in Great Britain and Italy, and one each in Luxembourg, the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Tunisia.  Also, there are 6,177 American veterans and others interred in American cemeteries in Mexico City, and Corozal, Panama.  The largest of the 24, with 17,202 dead, is the Manila American Cemetery.  The smallest, with 368 dead, is the Flanders Field American Cemetery in Waregem, Belgium.  The cemeteries were given free of charge or taxation.  Burial is limited by international agreements to members of the U.S. armed forces who died overseas during war, and to American civilians, Red Cross workers, and entertainers serving with the military.  Unlike national cemeteries domestically, all American cemeteries overseas are closed to new burials, except for the remains of those lost during the world wars that may be found on battlefields.   All dead found since 1945 have been returned home. -- American Battle Monuments Commission. 
Q:  So, why were the remains of some war dead brought home and others interred overseas?
A:  Following the two world wars, the Department of War asked next-of-kin of those buried overseas whether they wanted remains returned home to a national or private cemetery, or buried in an American cemetery in the region where the death occurred.  Overseas interments are permanent.  Remains are not repatriated. -- American Battle Monuments Commission.
Q:  What's the record rainfall for a hurricane/typhoon/cyclone?
A:  Over 10 days in January 1980, Cyclone Hyacinthe dumped 223.5 inches of rain, or more than 18.6 feet, on Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar. -- Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.  http://www.thecourier.com/Issues/2012/May/21/ar_news_052112_story4.asp?d=052112_story4,2012,May,21&c=n

Most everyone is familiar with the enigmatic stone heads of Easter Island, the massive carved rocks that sit on stone platforms on the coast and lie scattered across the landscape.  The heads, called moai, and a small native population are virtually all that is left of the Polynesian civilization that once flourished on the island.  The once-lush forests that covered the 63-square-mile island, known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui, have all been lost and the fertile soil that once supported a vital farming community has been blown away by tradewinds.  Something else has been left behind:  two great mysteries.  How did the islanders manage to transfer the massive heads, some weighing as much as 80 tons, from the quarries to the shore, and what happened to the forests?  This month's National Geographic magazine examines the two competing theories for each of those questions.  UCLA anthropologist Jared Diamond famously detailed what the called the "ecocide" of Rapa Nui in his 2005 book "Collapse."  When Polynesians first settled the island about AD 800, they had the misfortune to select one that was dry, cool and remote -- and thus poorly fertilized by windblown dust or volcanic ash.  They chopped down forests to provide wood for construction and for moving the moai, and the trees didn't return.  The denuded landscape allowed winds to blow off the topsoil, and fertility fell sharply.  When the natives no longer had wood for building fishing canoes, they killed and ate all the birds.  Before the Dutch arrived at the island on Easter Sunday in 1722, the population had descended into cannibalism and barbarity.  Diamond called it "the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by over-exploiting its own resources."  But archaeologists Carl Lipo of Cal State Long Beach and Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii have a different take on the events based on more recent research.  They agree that the island was an ecological disaster, but argue that the inhabitants share a smaller portion of the blame.  Their research indicates that the Polynesian settlers did not arrive at Rapa Nui until about AD 1200, which would not leave nearly enough time to devastate the forests solely by slashing and burning.  Unfortunately, the settlers brought Polynesian rats with them.  The first inhabitants dined on the rats, but the animals had no other natural predators and overran the island.  Buried nuts from the extinct Easter Island palms show distinctive teethmarks from the rats.  They probably also ate birds' eggs.  With the rats eating the palm nuts, the trees could not be reseeded naturally, Lipo and Hunt argue in their recent book, "The Statues That Walked," and the forests disappeared.  Thomas H. Maugh II  http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-stoneheads-easter-island-20120620,0,6247582.story?track=rss

A Founding Father, a federal bailout and the press were at the center of the only documented congressional insider trading case in U.S. history.  It was 1789, and state-backed revolutionary war bonds had become virtually worthless. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton moved in to shore up the investments.  Before word spread, members of Congress secretly scooped up thousands of the bonds from unsuspecting farmers and war veterans, paying pennies on the dollar.  What followed set the stage for how Congress would respond to public outrage over such conflicts of interest for the next 200 years.  In response to the scandal, lawmakers prohibited Hamilton and future Treasury secretaries from buying or selling government bonds while in office.  But members of Congress did not extend the ban to themselves, a pattern that persists to this day.   In its ethics rules, Congress presents a twofold argument for why it creates different rules for itself than it does for federal judges and the executive branch officials.  First, Congress views itself as a “citizen legislature.”  As such, lawmakers think their investment portfolios should mirror those of their constituents:  The farm belt is best represented by farmers, who should serve on agriculture committees.  Oil-rich states are best represented by oilmen, who should serve on energy committees.  The second argument for the disparate rules is that members of Congress are elected officials, while other federal workers are not.  If voters think a lawmaker is too deeply conflicted, they can vote him or her out of office.  Read more at:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congressional-rules-on-trading-had-their-start-in-1789/2012/06/23/gJQA1OvVyV_story.html