Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 1/15/2011

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday
1/15/1997:
Chicago Bulls forward Dennis Rodman stumbles into TV cameraman Eugene Amos on the sideline and proceeds to kick him in the groin during a 112-102 win over the Timberwolves in Minneapolis. Rodman receives an 11-game suspension, the second-longest in NBA history as of this date.

Birthdays:
Bobby Grich b. 1949
Randy White b. 1953
Delino DeShields b. 1969
Mary Pierce b. 1975
Drew Brees b. 1979

Packers Fact:
The Packers retired uniform No. 15 in honor of quarterback Bart Starr (1956-1971).

ON STRAIGHT ANSWERS

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Tech support: What’s on your monitor now, ma’am?

Customer: A teddy bear my boyfriend bought for me in the supermarket.

actual call to a computer tech-support line (thanks to Shaye Marie Sauers)

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”

—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., clergyman and civil rights activist

HE HAD A DREAM

Martin Luther King had a prepared text for the speech he delivered on August 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C. But about two thirds of the way through, he laid aside his script and began the extemporaneous remarks that began “I have a dream.” These words stirred a nation and went on to become one of the best-known speeches in American history. Eric J. Sundquist, a professor of literature at UCLA, has written a book about the speech, its background, its inspiration, its consequences.

“He gives us drama and emotion, a powerful sense of history combined with illuminating scholarship.”—The New York Times

KING’S DREAM: THE LEGACY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING’S “I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH, by Eric J. Sundquist (Yale University Press, 2009)