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December 6 is the feast of Saint Nicholas of Myra, later of Bari. Though known more commonly in modern times for his connection with “Santa Claus”, Saint Nicholas was considered a great saint in his day and numerous anecdotes relating to his acts of holiness, courage and generosity have come down to us from antiquity. Here is an excerpt from an anonymous history from the 4th century AD entitled, Praxis de Stratelatis (Act of the Generals). In it, we see Saint Nicholas doing what he does best: using his authority as bishop to rescue the innocent and speak the truth...

John Legend and Kelly Clarkson just dropped the updated version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” The two "Voice" coaches collaborated to create a modernized version of the Christmas classic — fully of reworked lines in light of the original’s growingly controversial lyrics. In the original tune, which has been covered by many artists since its debut, a female sings: "I really can’t stay,” to which a man responds: "But baby, it’s cold outside.” In another part of a song, a woman is heard singing lines like "Say what's in this drink?", "The answer is no" and "I've gotta get home."

Conqueror of Dacia. Subduer of Parthia. The Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianus — or Trajan as he is known to history — died on August 8 in the year AD 117. By most measures, Trajan was a superior emperor. In his satirical work The Caesars, written in AD 361, the emperor Julian the Apostate puts these words into the mouth of Trajan in defense of his reign and exploits before the gods: "O Zeus and ye other gods, when I took over the empire it was in a sort of lethargy and much disordered by the tyranny that had long...

Legendary blues great born Albert Nelson this date in Indianola, MS. Listen to his recording of the Englishman - German - and Jew Blues, performed with Albert Brooks here.

Soul singer Gladys Knight, who will be singing the national anthem at this year’s Super Bowl in Atlanta, seemed to criticize Colin Kaepernick in a statement published by Variety on Friday.

Stan Lee, the man who co-created Marvel Comics, has died ... Stan's daughter tells TMZ. We're told an ambulance rushed to Lee's Hollywood Hills home early Monday morning and he was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We're told that's where he died. Lee had suffered several illnesses over the last year or so -- he had a bout of pneumonia and vision issues. Stan started Marvel with Jack Kirby in 1961 with The Fantastic Four. He went on to create Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man and The Avengers. Stan made cameo appearances in all of the...

He joined the Motown house band, the Funk Brothers, in 1968 and later played on one of the Temptations’ most iconic singles, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” which incorporates long, flickering funk riffs, bluesy excursions and pointillistic solos. The shimmery, lingering guitar part after the line “it was the third of September” is a perfect demonstration of the wah wah pedal effect. Ragin went on to appear on both Marvin Gaye’s sensual masterpieces, Let’s Get It On and I Want You, Quincy Jones’ most successful solo LP, Body Heat, Rose Royce’s breakout album, Car Wash, Smokey Robinson’s criminally underappreciated Love...

John Legend is not interested in Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s dining experience. While leaving a Beverly Hills restaurant with his wife Chrissy Teigen on Wednesday night, John Legend was asked by a TMZ reporter if he believed Real Housewives of Atlanta star Claudia Jordan had gone too far when she fat-shamed White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, saying she’s “not missing any meals, she’ll be all right.” “Ask me ‘Should we be reuniting 2,000 kids with their families?’” Legend replied, referring to the thousands of immigrant children torn from their families under the current administration’s family-separation policy. “Yes, we should.”...

People magazine reported at the time that Abernathy also recalled Rev. King knocking another woman "across the bed." But Gumbel says "print the legend."

On Sunday (03Sep17) TMZ.com editors reported that Legend had placed an advertisement with Los Angeles agency Casting Networks inviting extras who are white and overweight to audition for roles as pro-Trump protesters in a new promo. However, on Monday, John, 38, denied the casting call came from his camp, writing on Twitter, "There's a casting call out there claiming to represent me looking for 'out of shape' Trump supporters. This didn't come from me or my team" He did reiterate his opposition to America's controversial 71-year-old leader though, adding, "still (sic) think Trump is awful and whoever voted for him...

Singer John Legend has reportedly put out a casting call for “preferably out of shape” actors to play supporters of President Trump in a new music video. According to TMZ, the casting call was posted on Los Angeles’s Casting Networks website and uses a photograph of several people wearing Trump shirts as an example. The report notes that the call for actors portraying Trump supporters is the only listing with a specific body type. Legend has criticized Trump in the past and was also an outspoken backer of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

TrevorLoudon: National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster: A legend or a lie?(language warning)Fresh on the heels of a successful offensive in Mosul, Iraq, the Iraqi military is now poised to Operation Restoring Rights. His reputation as a brilliant military strategist rests largely on the results of that one battle. Given the widespread support for McMaster in the media and Washington establishment, it is ironic that current reporting largely fails to mention this battle or McMaster’s central role in it. McMaster’s widely-hyped strategic acumen has been called into question by high-level military sources with personal knowledge of his conduct in the...

Thousands of Italians emigrated to Scotland in the 20th Century, but it seems that 400 years earlier a group of Scots may have settled in a village in the Italian Alps. So local legend has it… And there are plenty of signs to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it's true. High up in the mountains of northern Italy, just a few kilometres from the Swiss border, the people of the tiny village of Gurro speak a strange dialect, incomprehensible even to the other villages in the same valley. They have peculiar surnames, and the women's traditional costume features a patterned...

A letter from a reader asks, "Is the myth about Billy the Kid killing 21 men true or not?" The legends says he killed one man for each of year of his life. He also wants to know when and where he was born because he's read a couple of different versions. First, let's take on when and where William Henry Bonney, also known as "Billy the Kid," was born. To my knowledge, people can guess all they want but no one has proof of when or where he was born. That's the bottom line on that. The Authentic...

Breaking News.

1. ...Scalia (nicknamed "Nino") was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton... 2. After graduating from Harvard Scalia worked for a law firm in Cleveland... 3. In 1977 Scalia resumed his academic career at...the University of Chicago Law School (1977–82)... 4. Scalia was the first Italian American to serve on the Supreme Court... 5. Scalia was known for his wit and humor.... 6. Scalia subscribed to a judicial philosophy known as "originalism." ...the Constitution should be interpreted in terms of what it meant to those who ratified the Constitution in 1788, and is often contrasted with the Constitution as a...

In Search of the First Rocket Manby Paul Gilster on January 27, 2016 If you're interested enough in space to be reading this site, you've probably run into the name of Wan Hu. He's the subject of a tale that may well be spurious, but it's certainly lively. It seems that some time around the year 1500 AD, Wan Hu took his fascination with rocketry to the logical limit by building a chair equipped with 47 gunpowder rockets. Lit by 47 attendants, the combined rockets took Wan Hu somewhere, but just where is unknown, as he is said to have...

The first time Dave Sweet went surfing, in 1945, he was 16 and his wooden board weighed more than he did. A decade later, he was launching a revolution that would turn those bulky boards into relics. Sweet, who played a pioneering role in introducing the foam surfboard that transformed the sport and helped propel it into the mainstream, died of renal failure May 18 at the Veterans Affairs West Los Angeles Medical Center, said his son, Greg Sweet. He was 86. The development and marketing of the foam surfboard has often been credited to Orange County surf entrepreneurs Hobie...

Sasquatch cited in mine hearings Most people consider the sasquatch a legendary creature, but the mythical bush man of northern B.C. received its fair share of attention at environmental review hearings into the proposed New Prosperity gold and copper mine. While most of the attention focused on more tangible creatures like trout, salmon and grizzly bears, members of First Nations community have repeatedly brought up the sasquatch during community hearings over the past three weeks. In most cases, the aboriginal speakers talked about the ape-like man in the context of legend, but others treated sasquatches as something the Canadian Environmental...

Two inescapable flaws mar the Clinton economic legend. One is conveniently papered over; the other conveniently forgotten. Even so, a flawed legend is better than the economic reality President Obama’s policies have produced, so it is no surprise the sitting President has outsourced his economic messaging to the former President.The first flaw, described here and here, is that President Clinton raised taxes and the economy boomed. The flaw in the narrative is it ignores the passage of time—four years, to be exact. The timeline matters. Clinton raised taxes in 1993 just as the economy was set to take off from...