history of Basketball

Most sports develop over time out of games that people begin to play informally. Not so with basketball. Basketball history shows that it has the distinction of being an intentionally invented game. In 1891, James Naismith was assigned to create an indoor activity for students at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass. The students, who were training to be P.E. teachers, were understandably bored doing nothing but calisthenics and gymnastics during those long New England winters. They longed for action and competition.

Dr. Naismith combined elements of outdoor games like soccer and lacrosse with the concept of a game he’d played in childhood, Duck on a Rock. To win Duck on Rock, players threw stones to hit a target placed on top of a large boulder. A ball and an elevated goal—those are the simple ingredients of the sport that now has players and rabid fans in nearly every part of the world.

Basketball History at 1-0

Naismith’s class played the first game of basket ball (two words) using a soccer ball and two peach baskets nailed to a balcony railing ten feet above the floor. The class of 18 was divided into two teams of nine players.       The gym they played in was just 50 feet by 35 feet (modern courts are 94 feet x 54 feet). The final score of that first ever basketball game was 1-0. William Chase scored the lone goal from 25 feet—a half-court shot in that small gym. Now that’s the kind of fact that will someday help you win a basketball history sports trivia contest.

Naismith had just 13 rules for basket ball (see box), which he carefully typed on two pages. The game had to stop after each goal so the referee could climb a ladder and retrieve the ball from the basket. Fortunately, those early games were very low scoring affairs.

The Original 13 Rules of Basketball

As written by Dr. James Naismith

1. The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.
2. The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands (never with a fist).
3. A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to made for a man who catches the ball when running if he tries to stop.
4. The ball must be held by the hands. The arms or body must not be used for holding it.
5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, tipping, or striking in any way the person of an opponent shall be allowed; the first infringement of this rule y any player shall count as a foul, the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made, or if there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game, no substitute allowed.
6. A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violation of Rules 3, 4 and such as described in Rule 5.
7. If either side makes three consecutive fouls it shall count as a goal for the opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the mean time making a foul).
8. A goal shall be made when the ball is thrown or batted from the grounds into the base key and stays there, providing those defending the goal do not touch or disturb the goal. If the ball rests on the edges, and the opponent moves the basket, it shall count as a goal.
9. When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be thrown into the field of play by the person first touching it. He has a right to hold it unmolested for five seconds. In case of a dispute, the umpire shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower-in is allowed five seconds; if he holds it longer it shall go to the opponent. If any side persists in delaying the game, the umpire shall call a foul on the side.
10. The umpire shall be the judge of the men and shall note the fouls and notify the referee when three consecutive fouls have been made. He shall have power to disqualify men according to Rule 5.
11. The referee shall be judge of the ball and shall decide when the ball is in play, in bounds, to which side it belongs, and shall keep the account of the goals, with any other duties that are usually performed by the referee.
12. The time shall be two fifteen minute halves, with five minutes’ rest between.
13. The side making the most goals in the in that time shall be declared the winner. In the case of a draw, the game my, by agreement of the captains, be continued until another goal is made.

The Game Catches On

If you want a new game to catch on, teach it to a room full of future P.E. teachers who are getting ready to head home for Christmas break. Naismith’s students took basketball back to their hometown gyms. That original class included students from Canada and Japan as well as the United States and the game quickly spread. Just two months after the game was invented, teams from different YMCA’s met for the first competitive game. The Central YMCA and the Armory Hill YMCA played to 2-2 tie. Tuck that in your sports trivia file.

Women also got in on the action. Senda Bereson Abbott read about basketball in the newspaper and introduced it to women at Smith College. By 1894, Smith’s annual spring game between the freshman and the sophomores was attended by more than 1,000 women waving violet and yellow banners. The Sunday Boston Globe covered the game and reported that when the sophomores won 13-7, fans hoisted the captain on their        shoulders and celebrated in the streets of Northampton.
Five is Enough and Other Early Changes

Initially, there was no limit on the number of people who could play in a basketball game. Some historians report that more than 50 people at a time played in some early games. This made for some very rough basketball that looked a lot like a Rugby scrum. By 1900, it was agreed that five members per side was enough on the court at one time.

Jump balls were the most common play in the early years of basketball. The jump was used after every basket and often after the ball went out of bounds. Between all of the center jumps and having to retrieve the ball from the basket, the game was much slower than the modern version. In the 1930s, rule changes eliminated the jump ball after each basket. Fans everywhere cheered.

Early baskets had no backboards so forget about rebounding. Wooden backboards were added in 1896 to prevent fans in the balcony from interfering with the ball. And about the basket—it soon become clear that climbing a ladder after every goal was a huge hassle. Open rims eventually replaced baskets. Nets were added to slow the ball down and help officials determine if the ball had actually gone through the rim. Thus, the swish was born.

Because basketball was often played on dance floors and in social halls, wire cages were placed around the court to protect spectators who sat in chairs surrounding the court. (Think of how hockey boards surround a rink.) These wire cages caused numerous cuts and scrapes. Players rejoiced with the wire was replaced with rope netting. To this day, basketball players are still referred to as “cagers.”

Pro Basketball is Born

Even though Dr. Naismith had intended basketball to be a non-contact game of finesse rather than brute strength, early basketball games were very physical. In fact, some YMCAs determined the sport was too rough to be played in their facilities. This led to the start of pro basketball.

In 1896, a team in Trenton, New Jersey, couldn’t play at the local Y. They decided to rent a Masonic Hall for        a game, charge admission and to split whatever proceeds were left. Each player made $15. The captain of the winning team made $16. There were no salary caps that we know if in those days.

The first pro league was formed in formed in 1898. Many leagues came and went during the next 50 years. Players often played for more than one team in more than one league depending on who was paying the most money. This was the age of barnstorming—traveling around the country and being paid to play against local teams. 

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad March

Shortly after basketball was invented, colleges were quick to form teams and challenge nearby schools to games. Ivy League schools like Yale, Harvard, Cornell and Princeton formed some of the earliest college leagues. In 1937, a group of basketball writers in New York decided to stage a tournament and name a national collegiate basketball champion. The first National Invitation Tournament was held in Madison Square Garden in 1938. Temple became the first national champion. A group of coaches felt the national tournament should be more centralized. They started their own tournament in 1939. The NCAA took over this tournament started by the coaches and it eventually grew into what we know today as March Madness—one        of the major sporting events of the year in the United States.

 Basketball Goes to the Olympics

In 1904, Basketball was a demonstration sport at the Olympics in St. Louis. It would be another eight Olympics before basketball would become medal sport. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, 21 teams competed for the gold medal. The United States defeated Canada 19-8 in a championship game played outside on a muddy clay field. This was the beginning of US dominance in Olympic basketball.

An International Game

Basketball is truly an international game. In the early years, the game spread to the corners of the world through YMCAs and service men. The Fédération Internationale de Basketball Amateur (FIBA) was formed by eight nations in 1932. Today, FIBA oversees international competition involving 212 national basketball federations. FIBA estimates that 450 million people play basketball at some level.

A Game for the Ages
For more than century, men and women of all ages and nationalities have been playing basketball. The game has become a favorite of fans who feverishly follow their favorite college, pro and national teams. The game remains very close to the original version created by Dr. Naismith in 1891. Who would have imagined that the        simple idea of putting a ball through an elevated hoop would impact everything from shoe styles to the way we spend the month of March.

history of baseball

Today a multi-billion dollar industry, Baseball has come a long way from its crude and humble beginnings in the fields of 19th century America. More than a game, Baseball remains an inseparable part of the American heritage and an intrinsic part of our national psyche. For many of us, notions of team, fair play, and athletic excellence first occurred on a red clay diamond cut from a grassy field. Referred to as "America's Pastime" since 1856, Baseball today is played by men and women of all ages and skill levels all around the world. Despite its recurrent scandals and woes, Baseball remains synonymous with the best that America has to offer.

19th Century Baseball: The Beginning

Contrary to popular belief, Baseball was not invented by a single individual, but evolved from various European "bat and ball" games. Russia had a version of Baseball called Lapta, which dates back to the fourteenth century. It consisted of two teams (five to ten members) with a pitcher and batter. The ball would be thrown to the batter who would attempt to hit it with a short stick and then run to the opposite side and back before being hit by the ball.

Cricket and Rounders

England has played Cricket and Rounders for several centuries. The first recorded cricket match took place in Sussex, England in 1697. Cricket is played in a large open circular field and has two sides of eleven players that attempt to "put out" a "batsman" who tries to prevent a ball thrown by a "bowler" from knocking over "bails" placed on "wickets," or three upright sticks. If the batsman makes contact with the ball, he runs to the opposite side of the "pitch" and continues running back and forth until the ball is retrieved by the opposing team.
Rounders, which shares more technical similarities to Baseball, dates back to Tudor times in England. This game consisted of two teams, six to fifteen players, including a pitcher, batter, "bowling square," "hitting square" and four posts, similar to bases used in Baseball. Each player had to bat in each "inning" and the game lasted two innings. The pitcher tossed the ball to the batter who attempted to hit it. If contact was made the batter ran to the first post. Points were awarded depending on what post was reached by the batter and the manner in which the post was reached.

Town Ball

Germany played a game called Schlagball, which was similar to Rounders. The ball was tossed by the "bowler" to the "striker," who struck it with a club and attempted to complete the circuit of bases without being hit by the ball. Americans played a version of Rounders called "Town Ball," which dates back to the early 1800's. In this game, the first team to score one hundred "talleys" won the game. In 1858 the rules were  formalized as the "Rules of the Massachusetts Game of Town Ball."

“Base Ball”

Occasionally, early 19th century American newspapers would mention games listed as "Bass-Ball," "Base," "Base Ball," "Base-Ball," "Goal Ball" and "Town Ball." The first known printed record of a game that was slightly different from Rounders and resembled a game closer to Baseball, is from an 1829 book called The Boy's Own Book, in which the game is referred to as "Round Ball," "Base" and "Goal Ball." A crude field diagram was included with specific locations for four stones or stakes (bases), that were arranged in a diamond. The article described how to "make an out" as well as how to get "home." The word "party" was used to describe a team, and the team at bat was called the "in-party." Each party pitched to themselves, bases were run in a clockwise direction and players could be put out by swinging and missing three pitched balls or by being hit with the ball while moving between bases.

The Olympic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia

Perhaps the first town ball club to adopt a constitution was the Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia, founded in 1833. It was formed by combining two associations of Town Ball players. One of the Town Ball associations may have begun play in the spring of 1831, in Camden, NJ on Market Street. The original group included only four players, playing "Cat Ball," but eventually the number of players increased and the Saturday afternoon gathering usually included between fifteen to twenty players. With the increased interest the game changed to Town Ball and then to Base Ball. The other association called itself the Olympic Ball Club, favored Town Ball and played on Wednesdays. As they did not meet as regularly as the group in Camden, some of the members of the Olympic Ball Club began playing in Camden. Ultimately a match was proposed and played between the two associations. No record of this match exists, but the two groups did eventually combine into one and played on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The constitution was first published in 1838 and consisted of 15 Articles. Duties of the Board of Directors, Members, and Captains were described. Practice days and a fine structure were also outlined.
Canada claims the first recorded account of a baseball game, which occurred in Beechville, Ontario on June 4, 1838, described in a detailed letter written by Dr. Adam E. Ford, but not published until 38 years later on May 5, 1886, in a magazine called Sporting Life. In this letter, the game was described as having five bases or "byes," base lines twenty-one yards in length and the distance from the pitcher to the home bye was fifteen yards. Innings determined the length of the game as opposed to playing to a specific number of runs. Fairly and unfairly pitched balls were described and techniques mentioned for the pitcher to make it difficult for the "knocker" to hit the ball. The differences between "fair and" "no-hit" balls were described and each side was given three outs per inning.

The earliest known newspaper account of a Baseball game in the United States was published on September 11, 1845, in the New York Morning News, which announced a game that occurred the previous day. The first recorded Baseball game was played on October 6, 1845 at Elysian Fields, in Hoboken, New Jersey by fourteen members of the New York Knickerbockers Club. One team may have been captained by Alexander  Cartwright and the other by club president Duncan Curry. Curry's team won 11–8 in three innings. Between October 6 and November 18, 1845, the Knickerbockers may have played as many as fourteen more intra-squad games.

Cartwright and the Knickerbockers

Alexander Joy Cartwright (1820–1892) is often referred to as "The Father of Baseball" for his role in organizing a group of ballplayers whom he exercised with since 1842 into one of Baseball's first known teams, the New York Knickerbockers. On September 23, 1845, by virtue of its constitution and by-laws, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club was officially formed. Cartwright scribed twenty rules, which were published and became known as the "20 Original Rules of Baseball" or the "Knickerbocker Rules." The team's first elected officers were: Duncan Curry, President; William Wheaton, Vice President; and William Tucker, Secretary/Treasurer. Curry, Wheaton and Tucker comprised the Knickerbocker Committee on By-Laws and their names appeared on the signed by-laws document that contained the rules.
The new rules changed Baseball in a number of ways—further differentiating it from Town Ball—three strikes to a batter, three outs to an inning, tags and force-outs in lieu of hitting a runner with a thrown ball, and the addition of an umpire. The 1845 rules also established the idea of "fair" and "foul" territory. Previously, the batter could run the bases any time he hit the ball, as in cricket. The Knickerbocker version of the game became known as the "New York Game" distinguishing it from "Town Ball" and "The Massachusetts Game."
Early on the Knickerbockers moved from the Murray Hill section of Manhattan to Hoboken, New Jersey to play their games at Elysian Fields. What is often referred to as the first recorded game played under the Knickerbocker Rules (now believed to be yet another intra-squad game), took place on June 19, 1846, when the Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club (aka "the New York Nine") 23–1 in four innings. The winning team was comprised mainly of Knickerbocker players. Cartwright umpired the contest and enforced a six-cent fine, payable on the spot, for swearing.
A team called a “Picked Nine” or “The (blank) Nine,” most often referred to a team of players put together for that day or for a specific game. These players were not necessarily part of the same club.

Daniel "Doc" Adams

Daniel "Doc" Adams (1814–1899) was elected President of the Knickerbockers in 1846. Two years later he headed the Committee to Revise the Constitution and By-Laws with Cartwright serving under him. Cartwright left New York on March 1, 1849, for the California Gold Rush and eventually ended up in Hawaii.
Adams has been credited with "inventing" the 'short-fielder' or 'shortstop' position in 1849 or 1850. The position evolved because the baseballs used, handmade by Adams, were light and could not be thrown far. A non-base-tending player was needed to retrieve balls from the outfielders and return them to the pitcher.
Under Adams’ presidency (1846–1862), the Knickerbocker Club became the model upon which all early clubs were organized. So dominant was the Knickerbocker Club during the 1840's and 1850's, that they transformed Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey into the first great center of Baseball activity in the United States.

The First Base Ball Convention

Considered by some to be the true "Father of Baseball," "Doc" Adams was elected president of the first Base Ball Convention in 1857. He also headed the Committee on Rules and Regulations that year, which instituted the following rules: nine equal innings for a full game, five equal innings for a complete game, 30 yard distance between the four bases, the pitching distance should be 45 feet and he also stated that nine men should comprise a team.
With the rules better defined and with the success of the 1857 convention, the game became increasingly popular. Subsequent conventions attracted more teams. The Civil War caused membership to decrease but helped introduce the game to southern parts of the United States. The membership of the National Association of Base Ball Players increased to more than 300 members in 1867.

Doc Adams' Legacy

Adams was elected as Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Regulations during the March 1858 Base Ball Convention in which the National Association of Base Ball Players was formed. He resigned in 1862 and  two years later the bound rule which he fought since 1857 was abolished. He also resigned from the Knickerbockers in 1862 and played in his last base ball game in September 1875 in an "old-timers" match arranged by formed Knickerbocker James Whyte Davis. Adams died on January 3, 1899.
Under Adams' presidency (1846-1862), the Knickerbocker Club became the model upon which all early clubs were organized. So dominant was the Knickerbocker Club during the 1840's and 1850's, that they transformed Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey into the first great center of Baseball activity in the United States.

In 1934 an old and fragile baseball was discovered in the attic of a farmhouse in Fly Creek, NY, about three miles from Cooperstown. It was purchased for $5.00 by Stephan C. Clark, a Cooperstown, New York resident. He had gained considerable wealth due to his association with the Singer Sewing Machine Company and he had the original idea to display the ball along with other baseball items. The ball was believed to have once belonged to Abner Graves(!). It was therefore assumed that Doubleday himself must have at some time actually touched the "magic" ball, and it became known as the "Doubleday Baseball."
The building that Clark chose to house his collection is now the Cooperstown Village Offices. The exhibit was a tremendous success. He soon received the backing of the National and American League presidents, Ford Frick and William Harridge as well as the Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Clark began to receive numerous items as the news spread. Frick proposed that Cooperstown house the “Hall of Fame.” The first group was elected in January of 1936 and the Cooperstown, N.Y. building was dedicated on June 12, 1939, to mark “Baseball's (dubious) Centennial Year.”

history of Hockey

The history of hockey is almost as messy as some of the fights on the ice of pro hockey rinks. Some historians trace the game back to hurley, an Irish field game that was played year round with a ball and a stick. Other historians say the game derived from Lacrosse and other field games played by the Micmac Indians in Nova Scotia. Yet another school of thought says hockey developed in Northern Europe were field hockey was played on frozen lakes in the winter. This eventually developed into the English game of bandy.

Did you get all of that? Before we argue about who is correct and send the others to the penalty box, let’s just agree that hockey was probably influenced by several earlier stick and ball games. We’ll then pick up the history of the sport in the mid 19th Century.

O Canada
Canada is without argument the homeland of modern hockey. British soldiers stationed at Hallifax and Kingston played the first recorded hockey games in the mid 1850s. In the early 1870s students at Montreal’s McGill University drew up the first known set of ice hockey rules. These rules established the use of the puck rather than a ball and set the number of players per side at nine. The puck used by these early McGill players was square rather than round.

The first amateur hockey league was organized in Kingston, Ontario in 1880. During the next decade ice hockey quickly became popular in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and other Canadian cities. By the end of 1893, there were more than 100 hockey clubs in Montreal alone. About that same time, the first hockey games in the United States were played at Yale and John Hopkins Universities.

The Oldest Trophy in North American Sports
Ice hockey had become such a phenomenon in Canada that in 1893, the Governor General of Canada donated a permanent trophy to be presented to the best hockey team. The Governor General’s name was Lord Stanley of Preston and the silver bowl inlaid with gold that he donated became known as the Stanley Cup. The original cup cost $48.57 and is now mounted on a large base to allow room to inscribe the names of winning teams. Today, the trophy is insured for $75,000.

The Stanley Cup is the oldest prize that North American Athletes vie for. It has been awarded each year since 1893 with the exception of 1919 when the competition was stopped by an influenza outbreak among the Seattle Metropolitan. The Montreal Amateur Athletic Association team won the first two Stanley Cup competitions.

From Amateur Game to Professional Sport
The beginning of the 20th Century brought a new dimension to ice hockey—the professional player. The first professional league formed in 1904 in the United States. The Pro Hockey League was started in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and lasted three years. In 1909, the National Hockey Association was founded in Montreal. Beginning in 1912, professional teams were allowed to compete for the Stanley Cup.

Other pro leagues came in went in the years prior to World War I. The war disrupted hockey organizations and in 1917, a new professional league was formed with five Canadian teams:

The Montreal Wanderers
The Montreal Canadiens
The Ottawa Senators
The Quebec Bulldogs
The Toronto Arenas

The new league was christened the National Hockey League. The first US team to become part of the league was the Boston Bruins who joined in 1924. Today, the NHL has 30 teams from Canada and the United States.

Changes in the Game
Modern ice hockey has changed little from the original rules established in the 1870s. The biggest changes have been in the number of players and the development of equipment.

By the mid 1890s, the number of players on the ice for each team had dropped from nine to seven. This changed reportedly happened by accident. A team showed up two men short for a game at the Montreal Winter Carnival. The other team agreed to play with just seven men. The players found they preferred the smaller squads and the change soon became standard. When the NHA formed in 1909, it used six-man sides. The NHL adopted this number at its inception.

Netting was first added to hockey goals in the early 1900s to stop the puck and show that the puck had actually passed between the goal posts.

What’s the Well-Equipped Hockey Player Wearing this Season?
Today’s hockey players from the junior leagues to the NHL wear layers of protective padding from their shin guards to their helmets. Early hockey players wore very little padding. Goalies were, not surprisingly, the first players to wear pads. Goalies originally used cricket pads to protect their shins and knees. Other players began to wear shin pads and gloves to protect themselves from flailing sticks and flying pucks. Many players stuffed newspapers under their pads for extra protection.

Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens was the first goalie to wear anything to guard his face. In 1959, he wore a mask to cover a cheek that had been struck by a puck. The following season, Plante began wearing a facemask full time when he was in the net. Other goalies began wearing masks but it would be 14 years before all NFL goals protected their faces.



Helmets were not part of hockey gear until the 1970s. Before that time, only players with head injuries wore headgear. In 1979, the NHL began requiring that all players new to the league wear helmets. Players who were already in the league were allowed to play bare headed. The last NHL pro to play without a helmet was Craig MacTavish of the Edmonton Oilers who retired in 1997.



Not Just a North American Game
Ice Hockey is not just a North American Sport. In the early 1900s, leagues were playing hockey in Britain and parts of Europe. In 1910, Britain won the first European Ice Hockey Championships.



The 1920 Olympics in Antwerp Belgium became the first to include and ice hockey competition. Canada won the first four Olympic gold medals in the sport. In 1930, the first ice hockey world championships were played. The championships are now played every year except when the Olympics are held.

After World War II hockey took hold in the Soviet Union and the Russians became a force to reckon with on the ice. The Russians won their first Olympic ice hockey gold in 1956, just a decade after the game became an organized sport in their country.

Women in Ice Hockey
Women have been playing ice hockey nearly as long as men. The first recorded women’s hockey game was played in 1889 in Ottawa. Women’s hockey leagues thrived in Canada through the 1930s. After World War II, interest in the women’s game declined until the 1960s. In the 1980s, women’s hockey experienced a growth spurt.

The first women’s world championships were played in 1990. The National Collegiate Athletic Association added women’s hockey as a sanctioned sport in 1993 and women’s ice hockey made its Olympic debut in 1998. The US team won the first gold medal.

history of volleyball

The history of volleyball is closely linked to that of another popular court game. In fact, just eight miles and four years separate the historic development of volleyball and its cousin basketball.

A Game for the (Middle) Ages
In 1895, William G. Morgan was the education director as the Holyoke, Massachusetts, YMCA. Four years earlier, his colleague James Naismith had invented the game of basketball just down the road at the Springfield                                        YMCA. Naismith’s game was catching on quickly but there was a drawback. Not everyone could keep up with the fast pace of basketball—and that was even before the fast break was created. Morgan needed a game that could be enjoyed by middle-aged men.

Morgan conceived a court game he originally called mintonette. He chose the name because his new sport was related to badminton. Mintonette was played on a court divided by a six-foot, six-inch net. Teams volleyed the ball back and forth across the net until one team missed. The first competitive game of volleyball was played July 7, 1896.

Things They Are a Changing…Quickly
Changes were immediately made to Morgan’s game. One of the first changes was the name itself. Alfred Halstead is credited with renaming the sport with the descriptive words “volley ball.” (Can you imagine Karch Kiraly playing for a gold medal in Olympic beach mintonette?) The number of players on each team also was limited. Originally, a team was allowed to have as many players as it could fit into its half of a 50- by 25-foot court. The number of players was set at nine per side and later reduced to six. Rotating players to various positions on the court has been part of the game from the beginning.

The number of times a team could touch the ball before it went over the net was eventually established at three. The first rules allowed an unlimited number of hits. The earliest games in Morgan’s gym were played with the rubber bladder from inside a basketball. Spalding made the first official volleyball in 1896. By 1900, the standard shape and weight of the ball were almost identical to those used today.

The height of the net was raised to make play more challenging. Today, the net is just under eight feet for men’s competition (2.43 meters) and just over seven feet (2.24 meters) for women’s. Under the original rules of volleyball, a team had to score 21 points to win a game. In 1917, that number was reduced to 15.

Giving the Game Away
YMCA workers took the game from Holyoke to US missionary schools in Asia. The game became very popular in the East as was played in the Oriental Games as early as 1913. Volleyball also caught on in Russia. When regular international competition began in the 1950s, Russia was the dominant team. During the World War I, United States troops introduced volleyball in Europe.

You know a sport has really arrived when official governing bodies are established. For volleyball, this happened in 1928 when the United States Volleyball Association was formed. The organization later became USA Volleyball. The Fédération Internationale de Volley-ball (FIVB) was founded in 1947. In 1949, the first men’s world championship tournament took place in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Not Just for Middle-Aged Men
It quickly became apparent that volleyball had appeal far beyond the middle-aged men it was originally introduced to. Colleges and high schools began to adopt the sport for both men and women. Volleyball became the competitive fall sport for girls. The first US national volleyball championships for women were played in 1949, 54 years after women began competing in the game. The first international championships for                                      women were played in 1952 in Moscow. 

The NCAA added a women’s volleyball championship in 1981. USC won the first women’s collegiate title.

The first men’s NCAA volleyball championship was played in 1970. UCLA won six of the first seven men’s volleyball titles.  

From the Gym to the Sand
In the 1940s, another style of volleyball was developing up and down the California coast. Teams of two or four players would square off on sand volleyball courts. Young and old players would form impromptu competitions on the beach. Spectators would often gather to watch the volleyball matches. Before long, the best teams were traveling up and down the coast to play in beach volleyball tournaments. The first two-man volleyball tournament was held at State Beach, California in 1943. 

In 1965, The California Beach Volleyball Association was founded. It was responsible for standardizing the rules of the beach and for organizing official tournaments. By 1976, the very best players on the beach were competing for prize money as professionals. Male players formed the AVP, the Association of Volleyball Professionals, in 1983. Women beach volleyball players formed their own association in 1986.

When former college and Olympic indoor volleyball stars began playing on the beach the sport became even more popular. Beach volleyball spread from California to Florida and then to other states—even to some that don’t have beaches. In some areas, beach volleyball is played indoors in arenas filled with sand. By 1993, beach volleyball had become so popular in the United States, that tournaments were broadcast on national television.

In 1987, two-men beach volleyball teams competed in the first world championships. The first two-women’s world championships were played in 1993. Four-player beach teams became popular in the 1990s.

Volleyball Goes for the Gold
Today, men’s and women’s competition in both indoor and beach volleyball are part of the Olympic games. Indoor volleyball became an Olympic sport in 1964. The host team, Japan, won the women’s gold medal. In the first four women’s Olympic volleyball competitions, Japan and the Soviet Union met in the finals. The Soviets prevailed in 1968 and 1972. Japan won again in 1972.

In the men’s medal competition, the Soviet Union has been dominant. After winning gold at the first Olympic volleyball competition, the Soviet men won a medal in each of the next five Olympics they competed in—three golds, one silver and one bronze. The US men’s team won back-to-back gold medals in 1984 and 1988.

Beach Volleyball became on Olympic sport at the 1996 Atlanta games. The US, Brazil and Australia have been the teams to beat on Olympic sand.

A Game for the Best
Hardly anyone watching the fast, powerful sport of modern volleyball would recognize it as a game originally designed as a less-strenuous form of recreation for middle-aged men. Today, some of the world’s very best athletes are digging, setting and spiking the ball in gyms and on beaches throughout the world. 

Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was a celebrated Italian Renaissance architect, musician, inventor, engineer, sculptor and painter. He has been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" and as a universal genius. Leonardo is well known for his masterly paintings, such as The Last Supper and Mona Lisa. He is also known for his many inventions that were conceived well before their time but of which few were constructed in his lifetime. In addition, he helped advance the study of anatomy, astronomy, and civil engineering.

Life His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's biography Vite. Leonardo was born in Anchiano, near Vinci, Italy. He was an illegitimate child. His father Ser Piero da Vinci was a young lawyer and his mother, Caterina, was a peasant girl. It has been suggested that Caterina was a Middle Eastern slave owned by Piero, but the evidence is scant. This was before modern naming conventions developed in Europe. Therefore, his full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci". Leonardo himself simply signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo"). Most authorities therefore refer to his works as "Leonardos", not "da Vincis". Presumably he did not use his father's name because of his illegitimate status. Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence. He was a vegetarian throughout his life. He became an apprentice to painter Andrea del Verrocchio about 1466. Later, he became an independent painter in Florence. In 1476 he was anonymously accused of homosexual contact with a 17-year-old model, Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute. He was charged, along with three other young men, with homosexual conduct. However, he was acquitted because of lack of evidence. For a time Leonardo and the others were under the watchful eye of Florence's "Officers of the Night" — a kind of Renaissance vice squad. That Leonardo was homosexual is generally accepted. His longest-running relationship was with a beautiful delinquent Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, whom he nicknamed Salai (Little Devil), who entered his household at the age of 10. Leonardo supported Salai for twenty five years, and he left Salai half his vineyard in his will. From 1478 to 1499 Leonardo worked for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan and maintained his own workshop with apprentices there. Seventy tons of bronze that had been set aside for Leonardo's "Gran Cavallo" horse statue were cast into weapons for the Duke in an attempt save Milan from the French under Charles VIII in 1495 — see also Italian Wars. When the French returned under Louis XII in 1498, Milan fell without a fight, overthrowing Sforza. Leonardo stayed in Milan for a time, until one morning he found French archers using his life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. He left with his servant and assistant Salai (a.k.a. Gian Giacomo Caprotti) and his friend (and inventor of double-entry bookkeeping) Luca Pacioli for Mantua, moving on after 2 months for Venice, then moving again to Florence at the end of April 1500. In Florence he entered the services of Cesare Borgia (also called "Duca Valentino" and son of Pope Alexander VI) as a military architect and engineer. In 1506 he returned to Milan, now in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries drove out the French. In 1507 Leonardo met a 15 year old aristocrat of great personal beauty, Count Francesco Melzi. Melzi became his pupil, life companion, and heir. From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome, where painters like Raphael and Michelangelo were active at the time; he did not have much contact with these artists, however. In 1515 Francis I of France retook Milan, and Leonardo was commissioned to make a centrepiece (of a mechanical lion) for the peace talks in Bologna between the French king and Pope Leo X, where he must have first met the king. In 1516, he entered Francis' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé next to the king's residence at the Royal Chateau at Amboise, and receiving a generous pension. The king became a close friend. He died in Cloux, France in 1519. According to his wish, 60 beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Leonardo had a great number of friends, some of whom were: Fazio Cardano — mathematician, jurist Giovanni Francesco Melzi — painter, pupil Girolamo Melzi — Captain in Milanese militia Giovanni Francesco Rustici Cesare Borgia — warrior Niccolo Machiavelli — writer Andrea da Ferrara Franchinus Gaffurius — music theorist, composer Francesco Nani — Brother in the Franciscan Order in Brescia Iacomo Andrea — architect and author Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli — Franciscan father Galeazzo da Sanseverino — Commanded ducal army of Milan, singer Ginevra dei Benci Atalante Miglioretti — singer, artist, actor Tomasso Masini da Peretola a.k.a. Zoroastro — student of alchemy, occultist Benedetto Dei — writer Art Leonardo is well known for the masterful paintings attributed to him, such as Last Supper (Ultima Cena or Cenacolo, in Milan), painted in 1498, and the Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda, now at the Louvre in Paris), painted in 1503–1506. There is significant debate however, whether da Vinci himself painted the Mona Lisa, or whether it was primarily the work of his students. Only seventeen of his paintings, and none of his statues survive. Of these paintings, only Ginevra de' Benci is in the Western Hemisphere. Leonardo often planned grandiose paintings with many drawings and sketches, only to leave the projects unfinished. In 1481 he was commissioned to paint the altarpiece "The Adoration of the Magi". After extensive, ambitious plans and many drawings, the painting was left unfinished and Leonardo left for Milan. He there spent many years making plans and models for a monumental seven-metre (24-foot) high horse statue in bronze ("Gran Cavallo"), to be erected in Milan. Because of war with France, the project was never finished. Based on private initiative, a similar statue was completed according to some of his plans in 1999 in New York, given to Milan and erected there. The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland has a small bronze horse, thought to be the work of an apprentice from Leonardo's original design. Back in Florence, he was commissioned for a large public mural, the "Battle of Anghiari"; his rival Michelangelo was to                paint the opposite wall. After producing a fantastic variety of studies in preparation for the work, he left the city, with the mural unfinished due to technical difficulties. List of paintingsAnnunciation (1475-1480) Uffizi, Florence, Italy Ginevra de' Benci (~1475) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, U.S. The Benois Madonna (1478-1480) Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia The Virgin with Flowers (1478-1481) Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany Adoration of the Magi (1481) Uffizi, Florence, Italy Cecilia Gallerani with an Ermine (1488-90) Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland A Musician (~1490), Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy Madonna Litta (1490-91) The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia La Belle Ferronière (1495-1498) Louvre, Paris, France Last Supper (1498) Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy The Madonna of the Rocks (1483-86) Louvre, Paris, France The Madonna of the Rocks aka The Virgin of the Rocks (1508) National Gallery, London, England Leda and the Swan (1508) Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy Mona Lisa or La Gioconda Louvre, Paris, France The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (~1510) Louvre, Paris, France St. John the Baptist (~1514) Louvre, Paris, France Bacchus (1515) Louvre, Paris, France Science and engineering Perhaps even more impressive than his artistic work are his studies in science and engineering, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and science. He was left-handed and used mirror writing throughout his life. Explainable by fact that it is easier to pull a quill pen than to push it; by using mirror-writing, the left-handed writer is able to pull the pen from right to left. His approach to science was an observatory one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations. Throughout his life, he planned a grand encyclopedia based on detailed drawings of everything. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, Leonardo the scientist was mostly ignored by contemporary scholars. He participated in autopsies and produced many extremely detailed anatomical drawings, planning a comprehensive work of human and comparative anatomy. Around the year 1490, he produced a study in his sketchbook of the Canon of Proportions as described in recently rediscovered writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius. The study, called the Vitruvian Man, is one of his most well-known works.

Al Capone

Birth and early life
Alphonse Capone was born to Gabriele Capone (1865–1920) and his wife Teresina "T(h)eresa" Raiola (December 28, 1867–1952) in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, at the turn of the 20th century. Gabriele was a barber from Castellammare di Stabia, a village reportedly situated about fifteen miles south of Naples, Italy. Teresina was a seamstress and the daughter of Angelo Raiola from Angri, a town in the province of Salerno. The Capones immigrated to the United States in 1894.

The couple had seven sons and two daughters:
Vincenzo Capone (1892–October 1, 1952). Called James Vincenzo Capone upon entering the United States. He left the family in 1908 to join a circus operating in the Midwest. Served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I. Apparently changed his name to Richard Joseph Hart shortly after his discharge. He had a career as a law enforcement officer, served in the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and later became           Marshal in Homer, Nebraska.
Raffaele Capone (1894–November 22, 1974). Called Ralph upon entering the United States. Later joined his younger brother in Chicago.
Salvatore Capone (1895–April 1, 1924). Better known as Frank Capone, he was a representative of his brother in Cicero, Illinois. Killed by members of the local police reportedly for attempting to draw a gun while they approached him.
Alphonse Gabriel Capone (January 17, 1899–January 25, 1947).
Erminio Capone (1901–?). Called John or affectionately "Mimi." Served prison terms for minor offenses such as vagrancy. Changed his last name to "Martin." Reportedly still alive in 1994.
Umberto Capone (1906–June, 1980). Called Albert. Employee of the newspaper Cicero Tribune under the ownership of his brother Al. Changed his last name to Raiola in 1942.
Amedeo Capone (1908–January 31, 1967). Called Matthew. Tavern owner.
Rose Capone.
Mafalda Capone.
Alphonse's life of crime started early: as a teenager he joined two gangs, the Brooklyn Rippers and the Forty Thieves Juniors, and engaged in petty crime.
Capone quit high school at the age of 14 when he fought with a teacher and worked odd jobs around Brooklyn, including a candy store and a bowling alley. After his initial stint with small-time gangs, Capone joined the notorious Five Points Gang headed by Frankie Yale. It was at this time he began working as a bartender and bouncer at Yale's establishment, the seedy Harvard Inn. It was here, at the Harvard Inn, that Capone would engage in a knife fight with a thug named Frank Gallucio after Capone had made a bold move on Gallucio's sister. Gallucio had deeply slashed Capone's right cheek with a switchblade, earning him the nickname that he would bear for the rest of his life: "Scarface," a moniker he in fact had deeply detested. Capone had instead preferred the nickname "Snorky" which meant "well-dressed" in the slang of the 1920s.
In 1918 Capone married Mae Coughlin, an Irish girl, who gave him a son that year, Albert "Sonny" Francis Capone. The couple lived in Brooklyn for a year. In 1919 he lived in Amityville, Long Island, to be close to "Rum Row." Capone was still working for Frankie Yale and is thought to have committed at least two homicides, until being sent to Chicago in 1919. Yale sent his protégé to Chicago after Capone was involved in a fight with a rival gang. Yale's intention was for Capone to "cool off" there; little did he know that this would be the impetus for one of the most notorious crime careers in modern American history.

Capone in Chicago
The Capone family moved to a small, unassuming house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in a Chicago suburb that would serve as Al Capone's first headquarters. Initially, Capone took up grunt work with Johnny Torrio's outfit, but the elder Torrio immediately recognized Capone's talents and by 1922 Capone was Torrio's second in command, responsible for much of the gambling, alcohol, and prostitution rackets in the city of Chicago.
Severely injured in an assassination attempt in 1925, the shaken Torrio returned to Italy and gave the reins of the business to Capone. Capone was notorious during Prohibition for his control of the Chicago underworld and his bitter rivalries with gangsters such as Bugs Moran and Hymie Weiss. Raking in vast amounts of money from illegal gambling, prostitution and alcohol (some estimates were that between 1925 and 1930 Capone was making $100 million a year), the Chicago kingpin was largely immune to prosecution due to witness intimidation and the bribing of city officials, such as Chicago mayor William "Big Bill" Hale Thompson. Capone was reputed to have several other retreats and hideouts including French Lick, Indiana, Hot Springs, Arkansas and Johnson City, Tennessee.
In 1928, Capone bought a retreat on Palm Island, Florida. It was shortly after this purchase that he orchestrated seven of the most notorious gangland killings of the century, the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Although details of the massacre are still in dispute, and no person has ever been charged or prosecuted for the crime, the killings are generally linked to Capone and his henchmen, especially Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn, who is thought to have led the operation. By staging the massacre, Capone was trying to dispose of his arch-rival Bugs Moran, who controlled gang operations on the North Side of Chicago. Moran himself was late for the meeting and escaped otherwise certain death.
Throughout the 1920s, Capone himself was often the target of attempted murders.

Fall of Capone
Although Capone always did his business through front men and had no accounting records linking him to his earnings, new laws enacted in 1927 allowed the federal government to pursue Capone on tax evasion, their best chance of finally convicting him. He was harassed by Prohibition Bureau agent Eliot Ness and his hand picked team of incorruptible U.S. Treasury agents "The Untouchables" and IRS agent Frank Wilson, who was able to find receipts linking Capone to illegal gambling income and evasion of taxes on that income.

The trial and indictment occurred in 1931. Initially, Capone pleaded guilty to the charges, hoping to plea bargain. But, after the judge refused his lawyer's offers and Capone's associates failed to bribe or tamper with the jury, Al Capone was found guilty on five of twenty-three counts and sentenced to eleven years in a federal prison.
Capone was first sent to an Atlanta prison in 1932. However, the mobster was still able to control most of his interests from this facility, and he was ordered to be transferred to the infamous California island prison of Alcatraz in August of 1934. Here, Capone was strictly guarded and prohibited from any contact with the outside world. With the repeal of Prohibition and the arrest and confinement of its leader, the Capone empire soon began to wither. At Alcatraz, Capone went in with his cocky attitude. However, when he attempted to bribe guards, he was sent to the "hole", or solitary confinement. The same also stood for socializing, and eventually Capone's mental stability began to deteriorate. One example of his erratic behavior was that he would make his bed and then undo it, continuing this pattern for hours. Sometimes, Capone did not even want to leave his cell at all, crouching in a corner of his cell and talking to himself in gibberish. He began telling people that he was being haunted by the ghost of James Clark, a victim in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. It was apparent over time that Capone no longer posed any threat of resuming his previous gangster-related activities.

Death and Aftermath
Sometime in the mid-1930s, and at Alcatraz, Capone began showing signs of dementia, probably related to a case of untreated syphilis he contracted as a young man. He spent the last year of his sentence in the prison hospital, and was released late in 1939. After spending a year of residential treatment at a hospital in Baltimore, he retired to his estate in Miami, FL.
Capone was now a broken man. He no longer controlled any mafia interests. On January 21, 1947, Capone died of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, which is very harmful if not treated. In Capone's case, it resulted in Capone's death.

Popular culture
Al Capone was frowned upon for being the most notorious, and popular American gangster of the 20th century by many inhabitants of western countries, the subject of numerous articles, books, and movies. He has been portrayed in film by Nicholas Kokenes, Wallace Beery, Paul Muni, Barry Sullivan, Rod Steiger, Neville Brand, Jason Robards, Ben Gazzara and Robert De Niro. Capone and his era were highlighted in the 1959 television film The Untouchables and its feature film and television series remakes which has created the popular myth of the personal war between the crime lord and Eliot Ness; he was also featured as an off-screen character in the 2002 film, Road to Perdition, set during a similar time period as The Untouchables. Capone also featured in the comic book, Tintin in America, the only case of a real person appearing as a character in The Adventures of Tintin. Capone is also one of the main characters in Peter F. Hamilton's epic The Night's Dawn Trilogy novels.
Capone was also the subject of the mostly instrumental Prince Buster song Al Capone. He is also mentioned in another Buster song Too Hot, which went on to be covered by The Specials.

Amelia Earhart

Early Life
Amelia's grandfather was Alfred Otis, a former federal judge and a leading citizen in Atchison who reportedly was not satisfied with her father Edwin's own success as a lawyer, which is said to have contributed to the break up of her family. Some biographers have speculated that this history of disapproval and doubt followed Amelia throughout her childhood as a tomboy and into her adult flying career.
As a girl she is said to have spent long hours playing with her little sister Muriel (Pidge) along with climbing trees, “belly-slamming” her sled downhill and hunting rats with a rifle. At the age of ten (1907) in Des Moines, Iowa Amelia saw an airplane at the Iowa State Fair. She later described it as “...a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting.”
Amelia was twelve when her father Edwin, by then a railroad executive, was promoted and the family's finances improved. However it soon became apparent Edwin was an alcoholic. Five years later, in 1914, he was fired from The Rock Island Railroad. Amy Earhart took Amelia and Muriel to Chicago where they lived with friends. She sent the girls to private schools using money from a trust fund set up by her grandfather Alfred. Amelia graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1915, then went to Canada where she visited her sister at school. She received training as a nurse's aide and in November 1918 began work at Spadina Military Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. By 1919 Earhart had enrolled at Columbia University to study pre-med but quit a year later to be with her parents who had gotten together again in California. Later in Long Beach she and her father went to a stunt-flying exhibition and the next day she went on a ten minute flight.
Earhart had her first flying lesson at Kinner Field near Long Beach. Her teacher was Anita “Neta” Snook, a pioneer female aviator. Six months later Earhart purchased a yellow Kinner Airster biplane which she named "Canary." On 22 October 1922 she flew it to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a women's world record. On 15 May 1923 Earhart was the sixteenth woman to be issued a pilot's license by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI).

Aviation career and marriage to GP
High-altitude fliers made little money. Earhart sold Canary and bought a yellow Kissel roadster which she named "the Yellow Peril." Her parents divorced in 1924 and she drove her mother across the United States in the Yellow Peril to Boston, Massachusetts where in 1925 she took employment as a social worker. Earhart also became a member of the National Aeronautic Association's Boston chapter, through which she invested a small sum of money into airport construction and the sale of Kinner airplanes in the Boston area. She also wrote local newspaper columns on flying and as her local celebrity grew she helped market Kinner airplanes, promote flying and encourage women pilots. According to the Boston Globe she was “one of the best women pilots in the United States,” although this characterization has been somewhat disputed by aviation experts and experienced pilots in the decades since.
After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest, a wealthy American living in London, UK, expressed interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean. After deciding the trip was too dangerous to make herself, she offered to sponsor the project anyway, suggesting they find "another girl with the right image." While at work one afternoon in April 1928 Earhart got a phone call from a man who asked her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?" She interviewed with the project coordinators who included book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam and was asked to join pilot Wilmer Stultz and co-pilot/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, nominally as a passenger. The team left Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland in a Fokker F7 on 17 June 1928 and arrived at Burry Port, Wales, United Kingdom approximately 21 hours later. She piloted the plane for part of the journey and wrote in the flight log, "If anyone finds that wreck, know that the non-success was caused by my getting lost in a storm for an hour." When the crew returned to the States they were greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. Because of her physical resemblance to Lindbergh, whom the press had dubbed "Lucky Lindy", they sometimes called her "Lady Lindy."
Earhart later placed third at the Cleveland Women's Air Derby (nicknamed the "Powder Puff Derby" by Will Rogers). For a while she was engaged to Samuel Chapman, an attorney from Boston. Meanwhile Putnam took the chance of heavily promoting Earhart, which included publishing a book she authored, lecture tours and using pictures of her in mass market endorsements for products including luggage, cigarettes (she didn't smoke), pajamas and women's sportswear. The extensive time they spent together led to intimacy and after substantial hesitation on her part they were married on 7 February 1931. Earhart referred to the marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control", and appears to have requested an open marriage; in a recently-discovered premarital letter to Putnam, she wrote that "I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil [sic] code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly."[1],[2].
Later in 1931 she set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet (5613 m) in a Pitcairn PCA-2 autogyro, a forerunner of the helicopter.
On the morning of 20 May 1932, at the age of thirty-four, Earhart took off from Saint John, New Brunswick with the latest (dated) copy of a local newspaper. She stopped off in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in her single engine Lockheed Vega, intending to fly to Paris and duplicate Charles Lindbergh's solo flight. However strong north winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems forced her to land in a pasture near Londonderry,           Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. As the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover.
On 11 January 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Later that year she soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, New Jersey. She held several transcontinental speed records. Earhart joined the faculty of Purdue University in 1935 as counselor on careers for women, exploring new fields for young women to enter after graduation.

World Flight, 1937
In July 1936 she took delivery of a Lockheed 10E "Electra" financed by Purdue University and started planning a round-the-world flight. This would not be the first to circle the globe, but would be the longest at 29,000 miles (47,000 km) since it would follow a grueling equatorial route. Although the Electra was publicized as a "flying laboratory" little useful science was planned and the flight seems to have been arranged around Earhart's goal to circumnavigate the earth along with providing raw material and public attention for her next book. Through contacts in the Los Angeles aviation community Fred Noonan was eventually chosen           as navigator. He had vast experience in both marine (he was a licensed ship's captain) and flight navigation. Noonan had recently left Pan Am, where he established most of the company's seaplane routes across the Pacific. He hoped the resulting publicity would help him establish his own navigation school in Florida.
On 17 March 1937 they flew the first leg, Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. The flight resumed three days later but a tire blew on takeoff and Earhart ground-looped the plane. Severely damaged, the aircraft had to be shipped to California for repairs and the flight was called off. The second attempt would begin at Miami, this time flying east. They departed on 1 June and after numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia they arrived at Lae, New Guinea on June 29. About 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of the journey had been completed and the remaining 7,000 miles (11,000 km) would all be over the Pacific.
On 2 July 1937 at midnight GMT Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae. Their intended destination was Howland Island, a flat sliver of land 2000 meters long and 500 meters wide, 10 feet (3 m) high and 2556 miles (4113 km) away. Their last positive position report and sighting were over the Nukumanu Islands, about 800 miles (1,300 km) into the flight. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Itasca was on station at Howland,           assigned to communicate with Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E and guide her to the island once she arrived in the vicinity.
Through a series of misunderstandings or errors (the details of which are still controversial), the final approach to Howland using radio navigation was never accomplished, although vocal transmissions by Earhart indicated she and Noonan believed they had reached Howland's charted position, which was incorrect by about five nautical miles (9 km), over scattered clouds which are said to have cast hundreds of island-like shadows on the ocean. After several hours of frustrating attempts at two-way communications, contact was lost, although subsequent transmissions from the downed Electra may have been received by operators across the Pacific.
The United States government spent $4 million looking for Earhart. The air and sea search by the Navy and Coast Guard was the most costly and intensive in history at that time, but search and rescue techniques during that era were rudimentary and planning was influenced by individuals wary about how their roles in looking for an American hero might be reported by the press. Many researchers believe the plane ran out of fuel and Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea. However, one group (TIGHAR - The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) suggests they may have flown for two and a half hours along a standard line of position, which Earhart specified in her last transmission received at Howland, to Nikumaroro (then known as Gardner) Island in what is now Kiribati, landed there, and ultimately perished. TIGHAR's research has produced a range of documented, archaeological and anecdotal evidence (but no proof) supporting this theory.


Legacy
Amelia Earhart was a widely-known celebrity during her lifetime. Her shyly charismatic appeal, independence, persistence, coolness under pressure, courage and goal-oriented career along with the mysterious circumstances of her disappearance have driven her lasting fame in popular culture. Hundreds of books have been written about her life, which is often cited as a motivational tale, especially for girls. Earhart is generally regarded as a feminist icon who blazed a trail of achievement for generations of women who came after her.

Books by Earhart
Amelia Earhart was an accomplished and articulate writer who served as aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine from 1928 to 1930. She authored numerous magazine articles and essays, and published two books         based upon her experiences as a flyer during her lifetime:
20 Hrs., 40 Min. was her journal of her 1928 flight across the Atlantic as a passenger (making her the first woman to make such a journey).
The Fun of It was a memoir of her flying experiences, as well as an essay on women in aviation.
A third book credited to Earhart, Last Flight, was published following her disappearance and featured journal entries she made in the weeks prior to her final departure from New Guinea. Compiled by Putnam himself, historians have cast doubt upon how much of the book was actually Earhart's original work and how much had been embellished by Putnam.

Urban Legends
During the decades since her disappearance many rumours and urban legends have circulated (and often been published) about what might have happened to Earhart and Noonan. Some have claimed Earhart was captured in the South Pacific Mandate area by the Japanese and interned for a number of years before either perishing or being executed. Purported photographs of Earhart during her captivity have been identified as having been taken before her final flight. A fictional World War II era movie called Flight for Freedom starring Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray is often cited as the most likely source of a popular myth Earhart was a spy. Some researchers have noted the possibility that for wartime propaganda purposes, the US government may have tacitly encouraged (or was indifferent to) false rumours Earhart had been captured by the Japanese. An archaeological dig on Tinian in 2004 failed to turn up any bones at a location rumoured since         the close of World War II to be the aviators' grave.
Perhaps the strangest rumour was that Earhart had been forced to make propaganda radio broadcasts as one of the many women known as Tokyo Rose. Others have suggested Earhart later managed to return to America where she changed her name and lived out her life quietly, while still others blame her disappearance on Unidentified Flying Objects. There is no evidence to support any of these suggestions, which have all been dismissed by serious historians. (The aforementioned Star Trek episode was based upon the UFO myth.)

Charlie Chaplin

Early Life
Charlie first took to the stage when, aged 5, he performed in Music Hall in 1894, standing in for his mother. As a child, he was confined to a bed for weeks due to a serious illness, and, at night, his mother would sit at the window and act out what was going on outside. In 1900, aged 11, his brother helped get him the role of a comic cat in the pantomime Cinderella at the London Hippodrome. In 1903 he appeared in Jim, A Romance of Cockayne, followed by his first regular job, as the newspaper boy Billy in Sherlock Holmes, a part he played into 1906. This was followed by Casey's Court Circus variety show, and, the following year, he became a clown in Fred Karno's Fun Factory slapstick comedy company.

Move to America
According to immigration records, he arrived in the USA with the Karno troupe on October 2, 1912. In the Karno Company was Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who would later become known as Stan Laurel. Chaplin and Laurel wound up sharing a room in a boarding house. Stan Laurel returned to England but Chaplin remained in the USA. His act was seen by film producer Mack Sennett, who hired him for his studio, the Keystone Film         Company.
While Chaplin initially had difficulty adjusting to the Keystone style of film acting, he soon adapted and flourished in the medium. This was made possible in part by Chaplin developing his signature Tramp persona, and by eventually earning directorship and creative control over his films, which enabled him to become Keystone's top star and talent.
His salary history suggests how rapidly he became world famous, and the skill of his brother, Sydney, at being his business manager.
1914: Keystone, worked for $150 a week
1914-1915: Essanay Studios, of Chicago, Illinois, $1250 a week, plus $10,000 signing bonus
1916-1917: Mutual, $10,000 a week, plus $150,000 signing bonus
1917: First National, $1 million deal — the first actor ever to earn that sum. He also formed his own independent production company, the Charles Chaplin Film Corporation, which made him a very wealthy man.


Chaplin as Auteur
Chaplin built his own Hollywood studio in 1918, and assumed an unparalleled degree of artistic and financial independence over his productions. Using this independence, over the next 35 years he created a remarkable,           timeless body of work that remains entertaining and influential. These include comedy shorts (such as A Dog's Life (1918) and Pay Day (1922)), longer films (Shoulder Arms (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923)), and his great silent feature length films: The Kid (1921), A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), and The Circus (1928). After the arrival of sound films, he made City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936), essentially silent films scored with his own music and sound effects. His dialogue films made in Hollywood were The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and Limelight (1952).
Modern Times (1936), a silent movie, did feature some dialogue. It is actually his first movie where his own voice is heard. However, it is still, majorly and essentially, a silent film.
In 1919 he founded the United Artists film distribution company with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, and served on the board of UA until the early 1950's.
Although "talkies" became the dominant mode of moviemaking soon after they were introduced in 1927, Chaplin resisted making a talkie all through the 1930s. It is a tribute to Chaplin's versatility that he also has one film credit for choreography for the 1952 film Limelight, and one credit as a singer for the title music of the 1928 film The Circus. The best-known of several songs he composed are "Smile", famously covered by Nat King Cole, among others, and the theme from Limelight, which won a belated Oscar for best film score in 1973.

His first dialogue picture, The Great Dictator (1940) was an act of defiance against Adolf Hitler and fascism, filmed and released in the United States one year before it abandoned its policy of isolationism to enter World War II. Chaplin played a fascist dictator clearly modeled on Hitler (also with a certain physical likeness), as well as a Jewish barber cruelly persecuted by the Nazis. Hitler, who was a great fan of movies, is known to have seen the film twice (records were kept of movies ordered for his personal theater). After the war and the           uncovering of the Holocaust, Chaplin stated that he would not have been able to make such jokes about the Nazi regime had he known about the actual extent of the pogrom.


Chaplin's Politics
Chaplin's political sympathies always lay with the left. His politics seem tame by modern standards, but after the 1940's his views (in conjunction with his influence and fame) were seen by many as dangerously radical. His silent films made prior to the Great Depression did not contain overt political themes or messages, apart from the Tramp's plight in poverty. But his films made in the 1930's were more openly political. Modern Times (1936) depicts the dismal situation of workers and the poor in industrial society. The final dramatic speech in his 1940 film The Great Dictator, which was critical of patriotic nationalism, was highly controversial, as was his vocal public support for the opening of a second European front in 1942 to assist the Soviet Union in World War II. The critical view of capitalism in his 1947 black comedy Monsieur Verdoux was hugely controversial, with the film being protested at many US cities.
Although Chaplin had his major successes in the United States and was a resident from 1914 to 1952, he retained his British nationality. During the era of McCarthyism, Chaplin was accused of "un-American activities" as a suspected communist; and J. Edgar Hoover, who had instructed the FBI to keep extensive files on him, tried to end his United States residency. In 1952, Chaplin left the US for a trip to England; Hoover learned of it and negotiated with the INS to revoke his re-entry permit. Chaplin then decided to stay in Europe, and made his home in Vevey, Switzerland. He briefly returned to the United States in April 1972, with his wife to receive an Honorary Oscar. 
Chaplin: The Later Years
Chaplin won the honorary Oscar twice. When the first Oscars were awarded on May 16, 1929, the voting audit procedures that now exist had not yet been put into place, and the categories were still very fluid. Chaplin had originally been nominated for both Best Actor and and Best Comedy Directing for his movie The Circus, but his name was withdrawn and the Academy decided to give him a special award "for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus" instead. The other film to receive a special award that year was The Jazz Singer.
Chaplin's second honorary award came 44 years later in 1972, and was for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century". He came out of his exile and collected his award less than a month before the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Upon receiving the award, Chaplin received the longest standing ovation in Academy Award history, lasting a full five minutes from the delighted, enthralled star-studded studio audience.
Chaplin was also nominated without success for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay for The Great Dictator, and again for Best Original Screenplay for Monsieur Verdoux (1947).
In 1973, he received an Oscar for the Best Music in an Original Dramatic Score for the 1952 film Limelight, which co-starred Claire Bloom. The film also features a cameo with Buster Keaton, which was the first and last time the two great comedians ever appeared together. Because of Chaplin's difficulties with McCarthyism, the film did not open in Los Angeles when it was first produced. This criterion for nomination was not fulfilled until 1972.
His final films were A King in New York (1957) and A Countess From Hong Kong (1967), starring Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando.

Private life
Chaplin's professional successes were repeatedly overshadowed by his private life, particularly with regard to his politics and his pattern of relationship with young women. On October 23, 1918, the 28 year old Chaplin married the 16-year-old Mildred Harris. They had one child, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who died in infancy; they divorced in 1920. At 35, he became involved with 16-year-old Lita Grey during preparations for The Gold Rush. They married on November 26, 1924 after she became pregnant. They had two sons, the actors Charles Chaplin Jr. (1925-1968) and Sydney Earle Chaplin. Their extraordinarily bitter divorce in 1928 had Chaplin paying Grey a then-record-breaking $825,000 settlement. The stress of the sensational divorce, compounded by a tax dispute, allegedly turned his hair white. The publication of court records, which included many intimate details, led to a campaign against him. Chaplin and actress Paulette Goddard were involved in a romantic and professional relationship between 1932 and 1940, with Goddard living with Chaplin in his Beverly Hills home for most of this time. After the relationship ended, Chaplin made public statements that they had been secretly married in 1936, but in private he claimed they were in fact never officially married. In any case, their common-law marriage ended amicably in 1942, with Goddard being granted a divorce and settlement. Afterwards, Chaplin briefly dated actress Joan Barry, but ended it when she started harrassing him and displaying signs of severe mental illness. In May 1943, she filed a paternity suit against him. Blood tests proved Chaplin was not the father, but as blood tests were inadmissible evidence in court, he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21. Shortly thereafter, he met Oona O'Neill, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, and married her on June 16, 1943. He was 54; she was 17. This marriage was a long and happy one, with eight children. They had three sons Christopher Chaplin, Eugene Chaplin and Michael Chaplin and five daughters Geraldine Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Jane Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin and Annette-Emilie Chaplin.

In April 1972, Chaplin returned to America to accept an Honorary Academy Award. The presentation is remembered as one of the emotional highlights in all of Academy Award history. Chaplin's weeklong return visit to the US, his last, also included numerous honors in both New York and Los Angeles.
On March 4, 1975 he was knighted as a Knight of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. The honour was first proposed in 1956, but vetoed by the British Foreign Office on the grounds that he sympathized with the left and that it would damage British relations with the United States, at the height of the Cold War and with planning for the ill-fated invasion of Suez underway.
Chaplin died on Christmas Day, 1977 in Vevey, Switzerland, following a stroke, aged 88, and was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery in Corsier-Sur-Vevey, Vaud. On 1 March 1978, his body was stolen in an attempt to extort money from his family. The plot failed. The robbers were captured, and the body was recovered 11 weeks later near Lake Geneva. There is a statue of Chaplin in front of the alimentarium in Vevey to commemorate the last part of his life.
Amongst his many honours, Chaplin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1985 he was honoured with his image on a postage stamp of the United Kingdom and in 1994 he appeared on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
In 1992 a film was made about his life entitled Chaplin, directed by Oscar-winner Sir Richard Attenborough, and starring Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine Chaplin (Charlie's daughter, portraying Charlie's mother, her own grandmother), Sir Anthony Hopkins, Milla Jovovich, Moira Kelly, Kevin Kline, Diane Lane, Penelope Ann Miller, Paul Rhys, Marisa Tomei, Nancy Travis, and James Woods.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted among the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
All his life, Chaplin was known to be an avowed atheist. He had nothing but contempt for any form of religion. He once joked, "I would love to play the part of Jesus! I fit it perfectly because I am a comedian".

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.

During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.

In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.

In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.

After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.

Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He   gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.

Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.

history of Coca Cola

In May, 1886, Coca Cola was invented by Doctor John Pemberton a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia. John Pemberton concocted the Coca Cola formula in a three legged brass kettle in his backyard. The name was a suggestion given by John Pemberton's bookkeeper Frank Robinson.

Birth of Coca Cola

Being a bookkeeper, Frank Robinson also had excellent penmanship. It was he who first scripted "Coca Cola" into the flowing letters which has become the famous logo of today. The soft drink was first sold to the public at the soda fountain in Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta on May 8, 1886.
About nine servings of the soft drink were sold each day. Sales for that first year added up to a total of about $50. The funny thing was that it cost John Pemberton over $70 in expanses, so the first year of sales were a loss.
Until 1905, the soft drink, marketed as a tonic, contained extracts of cocaine as well as the caffeine-rich kola nut.

Asa Candler

In 1887, another Atlanta pharmacist and businessman, Asa Candler bought the formula for Coca Cola from inventor John Pemberton for $2,300. By the late 1890s, Coca Cola was one of America's most popular fountain drinks, largely due to Candler's aggressive marketing of the product. With Asa Candler, now at the helm, the Coca Cola Company increased syrup sales by over 4000% between 1890 and 1900. Advertising was an important factor in John Pemberton and Asa Candler's success and by the turn of the century, the drink was sold across the United States and Canada. Around the same time, the company began selling syrup to independent bottling companies licensed to sell the drink. Even today, the US soft drink industry is organized on this principle.

Death of the Soda Fountain - Rise of the Bottling Industry

Until the 1960s, both small town and big city dwellers enjoyed carbonated beverages at the local soda fountain or ice cream saloon. Often housed in the drug store, the soda fountain counter served as a meeting place for people of all ages. Often combined with lunch counters, the soda fountain declined in popularity as commercial ice cream, bottled soft drinks, and fast food restaurants became popular.

New Coke

On April 23, 1985, the trade secret "New Coke" formula was released. Today, products of the Coca Cola Company are consumed at the rate of more than one billion drinks per day.
In 1969, The Coca Cola Company and its advertising agency, McCann-Erickson, ended their popular "Things Go Better With Coke" campaign, replacing it with a campaign that centered on the slogan "It's the Real Thing." Beginning with a hit song, the new campaign featured what proved to be one of the most popular ads ever created.

I'd Like to Buy The World a Coke

The song "I'd Like to Buy The World a Coke" had its origins on January 18, 1971, in a fog. Bill Backer, the creative director on the Coca-Cola account for McCann-Erickson, was traveling to London to join two other  songwriters, Billy Davis and Roger Cook, to write and arrange several radio commercials for The Coca-Cola Company that would be recorded by the popular singing group the New Seekers. As the plane approached Great Britain, heavy fog at London's Heathrow Airport forced it to land instead at Shannon Airport, Ireland. The irate passengers were obliged to share rooms at the one hotel available in Shannon or to sleep at the airport. Tensions and tempers ran high. The next morning, as the passengers gathered in the airport coffee shop awaiting clearance to fly, Backer noticed that several who had been among the most irate were now laughing and sharing stories over bottles of Coke.

They Like It

In that moment, I began to see a bottle of Coca Cola as more than a drink. I began to see the familiar words, "Let's have a Coke," as a subtle way of saying, "Let's keep each other company for a little while." And I knew they were being said all over the world as I sat there in Ireland. So that was the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be - a liquid refresher - but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes. - Bill Backer as recalled in his book The Care and Feeding of Ideas (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1993)

A Song Is Born

Backer's flight never did reach London. Heathrow Airport was still fogged in, so the passengers were redirected to Liverpool and bussed to London, arriving around midnight. At his hotel, Backer immediately met  with Billy Davis and Roger Cook, finding that they had completed one song and were working on a second as they prepared to meet the New Seekers' musical arranger the next day. Backer told them he thought they should work through the night on an idea he had had: "I could see and hear a song that treated the whole world as if it were a person—a person the singer would like to help and get to know. I'm not sure how the lyric should start, but I know the last line." With that he pulled out the paper napkin on which he had scribbled the line, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company."

Lyrics - I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke

I'd like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love,
Grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves.
I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,
I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.
(Repeat the last two lines, and in the background)
It's the real thing, Coke is what the world wants today.

They Don't Like It

On February 12, 1971, "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" was shipped to radio stations throughout the United States. It promptly flopped. The Coca-Cola bottlers hated the ad and most refused to buy airtime for it. The few times the ad was played, the public paid no attention. Bill Backer's idea that Coke connected people appeared to be dead.
Backer persuaded McCann to convince Coca-Cola executives that the ad was still viable but needed a visual dimension. His approach succeeded: the company eventually approved more than $250,000 for filming, at the time one of the largest budgets ever devoted to a television commercial.

A Commercial Success

The television ad "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" was released first in Europe, where it garnered only a tepid response. It was then released in the U.S. in July, 1971, and the response was immediate and dramatic.  By November of that year, Coca-Cola and its bottlers had received more than a hundred thousand letters about the ad. At that time the demand for the song was so great that many people were calling radio stations and asking them to play the commercial. "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" has had a lasting connection with the viewing public. Advertising surveys consistently identify it as one of the best commercials of all time, and the sheet music continues to sell more than thirty years after the song was written.