Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 01/04/2008

1/4/1984:
Adrian Dantley ties Wilt Chamberlain's record of 28 made free throws in a game, scoring 46 points to lead the Utah Jazz over the Houston Rockets, 116-111, at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Dantley, one of the NBA's most prolific scorers on the low post draws foul after foul from the Rockets' overmatched defenders and is virtually perfect from the charity stripe. He converts 28 of 29 from the line to set a new single-game percentage mark (20 attempts or more) and equal Chamberlain's ledger from the night he scored 100 points in one game in 1962 and dropped in 28 of 32 free throws.

Birthdays:
Johnny Lujack b. 1925
Don Shula b. 1930
Floyd Patterson b. 1935
Kermit Alexander b. 1941
Garrison Hearst b. 1971

1/4/1986:
A National Basketball Association game between the Seattle SuperSonics and the Phoenix Suns was rained out.

"Phoenix beat Seattle 114-97 in the completion of a game that had been halted in the second quarter the night before in the first rainout in NBA history. Cause of the rainout: a hole in the roof of the Seattle Coliseum. When the water began collecting at one end of the fllor, fans started chanting "Half court. Half court." -James E. Reynolds January 20, 1986

Packers Fact:
As a rookie for the Raiders in 1998, cornerback Charles Woodson became the first rookie defensive back to start all 16 games for the club since safety Jack Tatum in 1971.


Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and soda. Tom Standage, technology editor for The Economist, sees the world through cola-colored glasses, arguing convincingly and colorfully that each of these drinks played a significant, even central, role in history. Standage begins with beer, which appears in the oldest written work in existence, the Gilgamesh epic of ancient Babylon, and works his way to cola, the flower of American mass marketing. Along the lines of Mark Kurlansky’s 1998 Cod and 2002 Salt, but not as determined to explain everything under only one rubric, Standage brings agriculture, politics, religion, and industry—to name only a few topics—into the grand sweep of his enthusiasm and erudition.

A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 6 GLASSES, by Tom Standage (Walker, 2005)