Books @50: Dr. Seuss Warned Us in 1971, But We Didn't Listen to the Lorax

Call it fate or an unfortunate coincidence that Dr. Seuss' The Lorax celebrates its 50th anniversary the same week the United Nations releases an urgent report on the dire consequences of human-induced climate change. The conflict between the industrious, polluting Once-ler and the feisty Lorax, who "speaks for the trees," feels more prescient than ever.

"Once-ler!" he cried with a cruffulous croak.
"Once-ler! You're making such smogulous smoke!
My poor Swomee-Swans...why, they can't sing a note!
No one can sing who has smog in his throat.

"He wanted a book that captured the effects of pollution on ecosystems and I would say it was really ahead of its time," says anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Nathaniel Dominy, who teaches at Dartmouth.

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The Very First Super Bowl Was Blacked Out on Local TV

Fifty-five years ago, fans across the United States had the choice of two networks to watch the first Super Bowl. A giant exception was in the host city of Los Angeles, where fans didn’t even have one network to tune into. Back then, the National Football League blacked out every game in the local market, convinced that televising the game locally would cause fans to watch on TV rather than pay for tickets. The league refused to make an exception for the Super Bowl, which debuted on Jan. 15, 1967. In fact, the first six Super Bowls — which rotated among the warm-weather cities of Los Angeles, Miami and New Orleans — would be blacked out locally. Super Bowl I — officially called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game — pitted the American Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs against the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers, just months after the two leagues had announced a merger. The game fell far short of a sellout at cavernous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, even with the bla

50 Years Ago, the Electric Company Makes Its Debut

When The Electric Company debuted in October 1971, television hadn't seen anything quite like it. Psychedelic graphics, wildly creative animation, mod outfits, over-the-top characters and sketch comedy all functioned to serve the same goal: teaching kids to read. Brought to you by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) — the same producers behind Sesame Street , which debuted in 1969 — The Electric Company won two Emmys, aired on more than 250 public TV stations and became a teaching tool in thousands of classrooms nationwide. To keep reading this article, click here.

Films @60: The Pro-Life Arguments of The Guns of Navarone

The Guns of Navarone is the epic adventure of six Allied saboteurs dispatched to knock out two large caliber German guns positioned within a natural rock fortress on the fictional Greek island of Navarone. The mission is undertaken so that British warships can safely pass the island to rescue British troops stranded on a neighboring island, Kheros (also fictional). The movie, based on the Alistair MacLean’s 1957 novel of the same name, premiered 60 years ago April 27. Starring Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker, Irene Papas, James Darren and David Niven, Guns was among the most successful of a popular genre of films set in the Second World War that included Bridge Over the River Kwai . While almost everybody thinks of Guns as a war movie, closer inspection reveals that the movie proposes a relatively sophisticated but usually overlooked argument supporting a culture of life. To keep reading this article, click here.

Talking ‘Bout My Generation: The Baby Boom Experience

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