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HOMES FOR RENT
Balfour Beatty Communities
Located on Grand Forks Air Force Base NOW LEASING TO THE FOLLOWING:
120 N. Wash. St. Grand Forks
701-775-8602
20% OFF BOARD GAMES &
• Active Military Members & Families • Single Airman & Families • National Guard / Air Force Reserve & Families • • No Security/Pet Deposit or Credit Check • •
Contact us today for more information at:
GrandForksFamilyHousing.com or Call: 844-334-1043
GRAPHIC NOVELS Expires 12-31-14
• Comics • Trading Cards • Warhammer • Board Games • RPGs • Dice • Gaming Rooms • Dungeons & Dragons
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MOMENTS IN TIME
• On Dec. 28, 1793, Thomas Paine is arrested in France for treason. Though the charges against him were never detailed, he had been tried in absentia on Dec. 26 and convicted. Before moving to France, Paine was an instrumental figure in the American Revolution as the author of Common Sense. • On Dec. 24, 1801, British inventor Richard Trevithick takes his friends for a test ride on his "Puffing Devil," or "Puffer," the first steam-powered passenger vehicle. The Puffer could be put to work in mines, on farms, in factories, on ships and in locomotives of all kinds. • On Dec. 27, 1831, British naturalist Charles Darwin sets out from Plymouth, England, aboard the HMS Beagle on a five-year surveying expedition of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans to gather knowledge of the flora, fauna and geology. This information proved invaluable in the development of his theory of evolution. • On Dec. 22, 1849, writer Fyodor Dostoevsky is led before a firing squad but receives a last-minute reprieve and is sent to a Siberian la-
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bor camp, where he worked for four years. In 1866, he published "Crime and Punishment." • On Dec. 25, 1941, "White Christmas," written by Irving Berlin, receives its world premiere on the NBC radio program, "The Kraft Music Hall." The song went on to become one of the most commercially successful singles of all time. • On Dec. 26, 1966, Jimi Hendrix writes the lyrics to "Purple Haze" -- the song that would give him his breakthrough hit in the United States. "Purple Haze" actually had relatively little commercial success as a single. It was Hendrix's legendary, guitarburning live performance at the Monterey Pop Festival that established him as a star. • On Dec. 23, 1982, the Missouri Department of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control inform residents of Times Beach, Missouri, that their town was contaminated when the chemical dioxin was sprayed on its unpaved roads, and that the town will have to be evacuated and demolished. In 1985, the city was officially unincorporated.
FAMOUS COUPLES (continued): • Twenty-five-year-old Elvis Presley was stationed in Germany in 1959, when he met the 14-year-old daughter of an Air Force officer at a party. Elvis and Priscilla Beaulieu had an eight-year courtship before finally marrying in 1967 in an eight-minute ceremony at Las Vegas’ Aladdin Hotel. He was 32, she was 21. Priscilla’s engagement ring was a 3.5-carat diamond surrounded by a row of smaller diamonds. The couple separated in 1972 and divorced in 1973. Ironically, their courtship lasted longer than the marriage. • You might not recognize the name “American Gothic,” but you’ve probably seen the image. It’s a 1930 oil painting of a farmer holding a pitchfork, standing alongside a woman in her apron in front of a farmhouse. Painter Grant Wood enlisted his sister Nan to model, while Wood’s dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby posed next to her. Although some folks think they represent husband and wife, Wood intended the couple as a father and his spinster daughter. While driving through Eldon, Iowa, Wood happened to see a little wood farmhouse called the Dibble House, and had a vision of the couple standing in front of it. The couple he painted were, in Wood’s words, “the kind of people I fancied should live in that house.” The painting was exhibited for the first time in Chicago’s Art Institute, where Wood earned a $300 prize and immediate fame. Although he is best known for “American Gothic,” Wood painted 27 other works, along with various murals, lithographs, ceramics, and other art.
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