Jackie Robinson’s $36 Million Contract

Jackie Robinson shakes Branch Rickey's hand after signing his 1948 contract. February 12, 1948 New York City, New York, USA
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey after signing contract.

Jackie Robinson signed his original contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. His rookie salary was $5,000 – the equivalent of $55,000 today. (The minimum major-league salary in 2016 is $507,500.)

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Texas Panhandle Attractions

cadillacimage64Route 66 traverses the city of Amarillo, mid-panhandle Texas, about halfway between Albuquerque and Oklahoma City. For motorists getting their kicks on the Mother Road, a mandatory stop is the Cadillac Ranch. A few miles west of the city, ten Cadillacs, vintages 1949 to 1963, are half-buried at an angle, in line, nose down, tail fins pointed skyward.

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Transgender and Sanitation

Rubina is using the hanging toilet everyday in molar slum. Rubina has lived here for last three years. Before that she was in village. Her husband got a job in Dhaka so they moved into the slum. The toilet they are currently using is a shared hanging toilet. It is situated 20 metres from their home. Once, in middle of the night, she went to the toilet and someone knocked the toilet door so harshly as if they were going to break the door. She got very scared and nearly fainted by the incident. Since then, she is too scared to use the toilet after 9pm.I’m so glad to live in an affluent country where we can have controversy and outrage about who is using which public rest room. And where state legislatures controlled by purported small-government politicians can pass laws prohibiting local governments from legislating certain things. Poorer countries have concerns about toilets more basic than the gender of the person using one.

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Literally Decimated & Other Malapropisms: Post-Mother’s-Day Thoughts

E. B. White & friend
E. B. White & friend

Language is a living, ever-evolving organism. The meanings and uses of words change over time. If a word is misused enough over a long-enough period of time, it becomes part of the accepted language.

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The Old Way?

MorsePresidential candidate Donald Trump expressed outrage at the method used by Colorado Republicans to choose delegates to the party’s convention in Cleveland this summer. “Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting,” Republican presidential front-runner railed. “It’s a crooked system. It’s a system that’s rigged. And we’re going to go back to the old way; it’s called, you vote and you win.”

Except that wasn’t the old way…

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