The Maryland Terrapins mascot is NCAA Division I pixel art mascot #55 of 347. Maryland recently announced they will leave the ACC and join the Big Ten Conference on July 1, 2014. This is Big Ten mascot #13 of 14. (View reference images.)
Bill Nye – No. 542
Bill Nye is an American science educator, comedian, television host and mechanical engineer. He is best known as the host of the Disney/PBS children’s science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993-98) and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator. His professional entertainment career began with a local sketch comedy television show in Seattle. He was born on this day in 1955.
Note: Nye studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, where one of his professors was Carl Sagan. “Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” – Bill Nye
Joe DiMaggio – No. 541
Joe DiMaggio was a Major League Baseball (MLB) player who spent his entire 13-year career as the center fielder for the New York Yankees (1936-1942 and 1946-1951). He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak (May 15 to July 16, 1941), a record that still stands. DiMaggio was a three-time MVP winner and 13-time All-Star. During his 13 years with the Yankees, the club won 10 American League pennants and nine World Series championships. He was born yesterday in 1914.
Note: DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe eloped in 1954, but divorced less than a year later. In 1962, they were on the verge of remarriage when Monroe was found dead in her bedroom. Suicide by barbiturate overdose, or was she murdered?
Enver Pasha – No. 540
Ismail Enver Pasha was an Ottoman military officer and a leader of the Young Turk Revolution. He was the main leader of the Ottoman Empire in both Balkan Wars and World War I. Enver was considered the most powerful figure of the government of Ottoman Turkey or “the number one man in Istanbul.” He played a major role in the Armenian Genocide, in which over two million were killed during 1915-20. Enver was born on this day in 1881.
Note: Happy Thanksgiving! Be thankful you didn’t know this guy.
Stan Musial – No. 539
Stan Musial is a retired Major League Baseball (MLB) player who spent his entire 22-year career with the St. Louis Cardinals (1941-1963). He was a 24-time All-Star selection (tied with Willie Mays) and is widely considered one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. He compiled 3,630 hits and 475 home runs during his career. He was named the National League MVP three times and won three World Series. He was born on this day in 1920.
Ted Williams – No. 538
Ted Williams was a Major League Baseball (MLB) player who spent his entire 22-year career as the left fielder for the Boston Red Sox (1939-1942 and 1946-1960). Williams led the league in batting six times, won the American League MVP twice and won the Triple Crown twice. A 19-time All-Star, he had a career batting average of .344 with 521 home runs. Williams was the last player to bat over .400 in a single season (.406 in 1941).
Elizabeth Warren – No. 536
Elizabeth Warren is an American bankruptcy law expert, Harvard Law School professor, and the U.S. Senator-elect for the state of Massachusetts, having defeated incumbent Senator Scott Brown in the 2012 election last week. Her work as a national policy advocate led to the conception and establishment of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011. She is a frequent subject of media interviews regarding the American economy and middle-class personal finance.
I suspect Warren may be a leading Democratic presidential candidate in the 2016 election (though she may wait until the 2020 election because Hillary Clinton will surely be running in 2016). This feisty, good-hearted advocate for middle-class consumers won her Senate seat by defiantly campaigning against the big banks and lobbyists “who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs.”
Leeloo (The Fifth Element) – No. 535
Leeloo is the perfect, supreme being in The Fifth Element, a 1997 French science fiction film directed by Luc Besson. In the 23rd century, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a taxicab driver and retired military officer, teams up with Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) to defend the world from an evil presence that enters the galaxy every 5,000 years. They must overcome the evil Zorg and locate four ancient stones representing the four basic elements of earth, air, fire and water. Positioning the stones around the Fifth Element will create a legendary cosmic weapon. Leeloo’s ancient language and strange customs are entertaining.
Ken Kesey – No. 534
Ken Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), and counterculture figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. “I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie,” Kesey said. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) by Tom Wolfe tells the story of Kesey and his 1960s band of psychedelic drug-using Merry Pranksters. Kesey died of liver surgery complications on November 10, 2001.
At the time, it seemed ominous to me that the great Ken Kesey, an Oregon resident, died the weekend I moved to Oregon in 2001. As of today, I have lived in Oregon for exactly 11 years. I swear my presence didn’t kill him. Today is also the day that Heidi and I return home to Oregon after 40 days of backpacking and train-riding through 10 countries in Europe.
Marie Curie – No. 533
Marie Curie was a French-Polish physicist and chemist, famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to win in multiple sciences (1903 in Physics and 1911 in Chemistry). She studied at Warsaw’s clandestine Flying University before moving to Paris. Her achievements include a theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes and the discovery of polonium and radium. Curie was born on this day in 1867 and died in 1934 of aplastic anemia from years of exposure to radiation.
Note: After more than 100 years, all of Curie’s papers are still incredibly radioactive. Opening the lead-lined boxes that contain her manuscripts requires radiation gear.
V (for Vendetta) – No. 532
V for Vendetta is a 10-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious anarchist revolutionary who wears a Guy Fawkes mask and calls himself “V” works to destroy the totalitarian government. Warner Bros. released a film adaptation of V for Vendetta in 2006.
P.S. “Remember, remember the fifth of November.”
Dikembe Mutombo – No. 531
Dikembe Mutombo is a 7′ 2″ Congolese American and former NBA player. He played for six teams during his 18-year career (1991-2009), most notably the Denver Nuggets and the Atlanta Hawks. “Mt. Mutombo” is one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players of all time, winning the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times. He ranks second to Hakeem Olajuwon on the NBA’s career blocked shots list. Mutombo is a member of the Luba ethnic group and speaks nine languages. A well-known humanitarian, he started a foundation to improve living conditions in his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997.
This is 8-bit Mutombo in a “rainbow” Nuggets uniform (a style that lasted 11 years, from 1982-1993). Those uniforms remind me of the Atari 2600 version of Vanguard, a blocky, rainbow shooter that was originally released in 1982, the very same year as Denver’s rainbow jerseys—coincidence? Mutombo is character #5 in my ugly uniform series. The NBA’s 2012-13 regular season began on Tuesday, October 30, 2012.
Hiroshige – No. 537
Utagawa Hiroshige was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, and one of the last great artists in that tradition. Legend has it that Hiroshige determined to become a ukiyo-e artist when he saw the prints of his near-contemporary, Hokusai. As a low-ranked samurai, Hiroshige’s salary was insufficient for his needs and he initially used his artistic pursuits to supplement his income.
This 8-bit character is based on the posthumous memorial portrait of Hiroshige by Kunisada, 1858. I saw this portrait in person at the Hiroshige: L’art du voyage exhibition at the Pinacothèque de Paris last month, during our trip to Europe.