Random notes: May 14, 2013.

Dr. Joyce Brothers. NYT. LAT. I think my older readers are aware of this bit of trivia, but I insert it here for the benefit of the younger set:

Milton Brothers’s residency paid $50 a month. Joyce Brothers, who had a steel-trap memory, decided to supplement their income by appearing on a quiz show. She settled on “The $64,000 Question,” produced in New York and broadcast on CBS. On the show, contestants answered a string of increasingly difficult questions in fields of their choosing.

Dr. Brothers quickly saw that the show prized incongruous matches of contestant and subject: the straight-backed Marine officer who was an expert on gastronomy; the cobbler who knew all about opera. What she decided, would be more improbable than a petite psychologist who was a pundit of pugilism?

She embarked on weeks of intensive study, a process little different, she later said, from preparing to write a doctoral dissertation. She made her first appearance on the show in late 1955, returning week after week until she had won the top prize, $64,000 — only the second person, and the first woman, to do so. She later won the same amount, also for boxing knowledge, on a spinoff show, “The $64,000 Challenge.”

I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find the specific question Dr. Brothers answered for “The $64,000 Question”. The NYT has the answer, I think (the writing in that last paragraph is a bit fuzzy).

In other news, the HouChron reports that the Dallas Police Department is giving the “police commendation award” to retired detective Jim Leavelle. Why does this matter? Well, you probably know who Jim Leavelle is, but not by name:

That’s Leavelle in the hat handcuffed to Oswald.

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