Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 2/19/2011

2/19/2002:
Pushing teammate Jill Bakken to victory in the inaugural women's bobsled competition in Salt Lake City, Vonettea Flowers becomes the first African American to win gold in a Winter Oly7mpics event. Among the most decorated track stars at the University of Alabama, Vonetta had aimed for the 2000 Summer Games but instead became the number one brake woman in American bobsledding.

Birthday:
Eddie Arcaro b. 1915
Paul Krause b. 1942
Dave Stewart b. 1957
Roger Goodell b. 1959
Hana Mandlikova b. 1962

Packers Fact:
Offensive lineman Daryn Colledge and Jason Spitz were on the field for every Packers' offensive snap in 2008.

“Man is one of the toughest of animated creatures. Only the anthrax bacillus can stand so unfavorable an environment for so long a time.”

—H. L. MENCKEN, American humorist and writer

ON CLASS, INDEED!

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Now Juantorena opens his legs—and really shows his class.

sportscaster David Coleman, covering a track-and-field event at the Olympics

EVOLUTION OF THE CULTURE WAR

Karl Giberson has been there and has earned the credentials that qualify him to address one of America’s most divisive issues. He was raised a fundamentalist committed to the tenets of creationism. But while earning his Ph.D. in physics, he came to understand the science behind Darwin’s theory of evolution and gradually abandoned the claims of the creationists. He did not stop being a Christian, however, and in Saving Darwin he explains why not, meanwhile giving us a history of the controversy and the “culture war” in which we as a nation are engaged.

SAVING DARWIN: HOW TO BE A CHRISTIAN AND BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION, by Karl Giberson (HarperOne, 2008)