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During the First world War, most of Canada's young able-bodied males enlisted in the military. As a result the quality of men's hockey dropped dramatically. For a short time, women's pro hockey took center stage--and Albertine Lapensee briefly and mysteriously became a superstar.
Nicknamed 'the Miracle Maid,' the 26-year-old Lapensee played for her hometown Cornwall (Ontario) Victorias. Her hockey debut came in January 1916 against Ottawa; she scored five of the six goals in Cornwall's victory. Immediately after her debut game, Ottawa players complained that she was really a man. Suspicions and accusations dogged her the rest of her brief career.
A week after her debut, Lapensee scored four goals in an 8-0 shutout against the Montreal Westerns before a crowd of about 3,000 fans. At one point the Montreal players yanked off Lapensee's toque to see how long her hair was. (She had braids that fell past her shoulders.)
The continuous rumors about Lapensee's gender prompted her hometown newspaper, the Cornwall Standard, to vouch for her. Miss Lapensee, it said, '...played more with her brothers and other boys than with her girlfriends, and this accounts for the masculine style of play she has developed.' Furthermore, 'Scores of people in East Cornwall have known her since her infancy.'
Albertine played on, indifferent to the rumours, and the fans didn't seem to mind too much either, as large crowds came to watch her play. In one game she scored 15 goals. When the Victorias agreed to play against the Ottawa Alerts, the Vics' manager had to guarantee Lapensee's appearance by contract. She even behaved like her male counterparts off the ice. She once refused to play until she had been paid, which nearly caused a riot.
Although scoring records for the time are incomplete, they indicate Albertine scored about 80 percent of Cornwall's goals in the 1916-1917 season. The next season, Lapensee led her team to an undefeated season.
Then, after two spectacular seasons, Albertine Lapensee vanished. There is no record of her playing hockey again--at least as Albertine Lapensee. Family legend says she went to New York in 1918 and had a sex change operation. She/he supposedly married and settled down to run a gas station near Cornwall under the name of Albert Smyth. There are no known photos of Lapensee. Her story is not widely known--not even in Canada.
Tags:
hockey
Albertine
Lapensee
controversy
gender
Added: 24th June 2011
Views: 2669
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Posted By: Lava1964 |
 
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From 1916 through 1952 the United States and Canada experienced horrible outbreaks of polio every few years. At one point, one out of every 5000 children was diagnosed with the dreaded disease. Polio is a virus which can be contracted through contacting bodily fluids from someone already infected. Early symptoms might include headaches and a runny nose. However, once the virus moves to the central nervous system, it can cause paralysis and even death. Sneezing and coughing accelerate the spread of polio. Therefore there was justifiable panic in communities when outbreaks occurred. Public gathering places would be declared off limits. (Swimming pools were typically the first places to be closed.) Municipal parks would be eerily vacant. Researchers later determined, somewhat ironically, that young children were most susceptible to polio because most North American births in the 20th century occurred in the sterile environs of hospitals. These newborns did not naturally come in contact with small amounts of the disease as did their ancestors who were born at home. Accordingly, their immune systems did not develop sufficient resistance to the virus. Researchers Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin worked separately to find a cure. Both believed that by exposing children to minute traces of the virus through immunizations their immune systems would build up a lifetime immunity to polio. Salk favored vaccine containing the dead polio virus while Sabin favored live-virus vaccine. In 1954, two years after the terrible 1952 outbreak, more than 1.83 million children volunteered to be "polio pioneers" and serve as guinea pigs for Salk's virus. As a reward for their bravery, each was given a lollipop, plus a button and certificate acknowledging participation in the program. None of the volunteers contracted polio.
Tags:
polio
research
vaccine
volunteers
Added: 13th May 2012
Views: 2189
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Posted By: Lava1964 |
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Frank Cady, 96, a character actor who played Hooterville general store proprietor Sam Drucker on the TV sitcoms "Green Acres" and "Petticoat Junction," died Friday in his home in Wilsonville, Ore., said his daughter, Catherine Turk. No specific cause was given.
Like Mr. Haney, Eb Dawson, Hank Kimball and Arnold the Pig, Cady's Sam Drucker was a supporting cast member on "Green Acres" to lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas and his socialite wife, Lisa, played by Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, who had ditched the high life in New York City for the charms of a farm in Hooterville.
Tags:
Frank
Cady,
Hooterville,
Sam
Drucker,
Green
Acres,
Petticoat
Junction,
Added: 11th June 2012
Views: 2272
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Posted By: Old Fart |
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According to Wikipedia: No one in Alpert's band was actually Hispanic. Alpert used to tell his audiences that his group consisted of "Four lasagnas, two bagels, and an American cheese":
Tags:
Herb
Albert
Tijuana
Brass
Latino
Lonely
Bull
60s
music
1960s
Added: 8th April 2013
Views: 1765
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Posted By: Cliffy |
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Canadian Tire is a huge chain of stores in Canada that sells automotive products, household items, sports equipment, gardening supplies...you name it. This 1984 commercial became very well known. The message is simple: Buy your hockey equipment at Canadian Tire and you'll rise from the last kid chosen at a pickup game to a superstar. (Funny note: For a while it was not uncommon for NHL fans at games in Canadian cities to chant "Albert! Albert!" when the home team was playing poorly.)
Tags:
commercial
Canadian
Tire
Albert
Added: 5th July 2013
Views: 1398
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Posted By: Lava1964 |
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It is barely known today, but in 1927 the public was fascinated with the Snyder-Judd murder case. It was unsurpassed in media coverage until the 1936 trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the Lindbergh baby's kidnapping and murder. In 1925, Ruth Snyder, an unhappy housewife from Queens Village in New York City, began an affair with Henry Judd Gray, a married corset salesman. Stuck in a loveless marriage, Snyder began to plan the murder of her husband, Albert, enlisting the help of her new lover, though he appeared to be very reluctant. (Ruth's distaste for her husband apparently began two days after their marriage when he insisted on hanging a picture of his late fiancée, Jessie Guishard, on the wall of their first home. He also named his boat after her!) Ruth Snyder persuaded her husband to purchase an insurance policy that paid double indemnity if an unexpected act of violence killed him.
According to Judd Gray, Ruth had earlier made at least seven attempts to kill her husband, all of which he survived. The culprits were not exactly criminal masterminds. On March 20, 1927, the couple garrotted Albert Snyder in his bed and stuffed his nose full of chloroform-soaked rags, then clumsily staged his death as part of a burglary. Detectives at the scene noted that the burglar left little evidence of breaking into the house. The behavior of Mrs. Snyder was wholly inconsistent with her story of a terrorized wife witnessing her husband being killed. Police quickly found the property Ruth claimed had been stolen hidden under the mattress of her own bed. A breakthrough came when a detective found a paper with the letters "J.G." on it. (It was a memento Albert Snyder had kept from former love Jessie Guishard.) They asked Ruth about it. Flustered, Ruth's mind immediately turned to her own lover, whose initials were also "J.G.," and asked the detective what "Judd Gray had to do with this." It was the first time Gray had been mentioned, and the police were instantly suspicious.
Gray was located in Syracuse, NY. He claimed he had been there all night, but eventually it turned out a friend of his had created an alibi, setting up Gray's room at a hotel. Gray proved far more forthcoming than Ruth about his actions. He was arrested because his railroad ticket stub was found in his hotel wastebasket!
Furthermore, Gray had escaped the murder scene by taking a taxi from Manhattan to Long Island. The cabbie easily remembered Gray because he had only tipped the driver a nickel on a $3.50 fare. He was charged with first-degree murder along with Ruth Snyder.
Snyder and Gray blamed each other for plotting the murder. Both were convicted and died in Sing Sing prison's electric chair on January 12, 1928. Snyder was the first woman executed in New York state since 1899. This photo, illegally snapped by a New York Daily News photographer with a hidden camera, was taken at the moment when Snyder was jolted by the electric charge. The Snyder-Judd murder case inspired at least one play and two Hollywood movies: The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity.
Tags:
murder
Snyder-Judd
case
Added: 26th November 2013
Views: 2160
Rating: 
Posted By: Lava1964 |
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