Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 1/8/2011

1/8/1969:
During the fifth race at Tropical Park in south Florida, an alligator crawls onto the track, forcing several horses to jump over him as they round the clubhouse turn. Favorite Hans II wins the race despite being one of those who had to break stride to avoid the intruder.

Birthdays:
Walker Cooper b. 1915
Bruce Sutter b. 1953
Dwight Clark b. 1957
Jason Giambi b. 1971
Mike Cameron b. 1973

Packers Fact:
Two Packers shared the NFC lead with 7 interceptions in 2008: Safety Nick Collins and cornerback Charles Woodson.

ON HIGHS, ECUMENICAL

---

Temple Sinai and First Plymouth Congregational Church are having a joint at 8 a.m.

from a story in the Denver (Colorado) Post— in which the crucial word “service” was omitted

“We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.”

—DAG HAMMARSKJÖlD, Swedish statesman

OF CALIPHS AND KINGS

New York University professor David Lewis shows how the Muslims, who forged a world for themselves out of the decay of the Roman and Persian empires, repeatedly challenged the Christians of Europe, pushing at their homelands’ borders and receiving aggressive resistance in return. The Muslims created Al Andalus, Islamic Spain; Charlemagne created a cohesive Christian Europe; and even today the world lives with the consequences. Lewis is a prodigious scholar, and his book is compelling not only for its story but because of the need of the present to understand the past.

GOD’S CRUCIBLE: ISLAM AND THE MAKING OF EUROPE, 570–1215, by David Lewis (W. W. Norton, 2008)