Lifestyle

Christopher Brian Bridges (aka Ludacris) is a famous rap artist who has a 2017 song titled Vitamin D. One of the lines in his lyrics is “You missing so many key nutrients in your life”.

The worldwide gaming market is a multi-billion dollar industry. Statista reports that revenue from video games was estimated at almost $347 billion US in 2022, and the mobile gaming market generated an estimated $248 billion US of that total. While digital games like “Call of Duty” and “The Legend of Zelda” series are commonplace today, that wasn’t always the case. Video games are a relatively recent invention. The American Physics Society says that in October 1958, physicist William Higinbotham, who was part of the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Instrumentation group, invented what is believed to be the first video game. His game mimicked tennis play and was called “Tennis for Two.” Higinbotham was not a game designer by trade; he specialized in nuclear arms control. Higinbotham never patented his creation, and it was bought by Sanders Associates. Sanders Associates received the first patent for a video game in 1964. That was eventually bought by the gaming company Magnavox, which began producing video game systems in the early 1970s. The company’s Magnavox Odyssey console was the first ever video game system, says The Computer Museum of America. The Museum of Play cites “Pong” from Atari as the first video game to garner wide attention. Pong arrived in 1972 and first appeared in arcade machines. The home version was introduced in 1975. Much like Higinbotham’s “Tennis for Two” years earlier, Pong was a simple tennis-like game.

Songwriters Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for the Best Original Song in 1986. Take My Breath Away was written for the movie Top Gun and was sung by the group Berlin.

Sometimes as we age, we look back at our younger years. In 1985, Bruce Springsteen released his song Glory Days, which talked about looking back. He recorded 21 studio albums and was affectionately known as “the Boss”. Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.

The fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk was believed to originate in the 1700s. The story tells the tale of young Jack trading his family cow for magic beans. After planting the beans, he climbed the beanstalk and came face to face with the giant. Jack was able to get away by chopping down the beanstalk.

In 1937, artist Joe Grant pitched an idea to Walt Disney about making a movie inspired by his English Springer Spaniel named Lady. His plot would be based on how the family dog may receive less attention when a new baby was in the house. The plot and the movie struggled through many iterations at Disney before being released as Lady and the Tramp on June 22, 1955. This movie has an iconic scene where Lady and Tramp share a plate of spaghetti and end up kissing at the end of the same noodle.