Philadelphia Eagles Santa Claus Incident
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Philadelphia Eagles Santa Claus Incident
The Philadelphia Eagles Santa Claus incident also referred to as The Santa Claus Game, was an American football game in the 1968 season of the National Football League between the visiting Minnesota Vikings and the Philadelphia Eagles. The incident occurred on December 15, 1968, in week 14, at the time the final week of the NFL season, with the struggling Eagles sitting at 2–11 on the season. Tied 7–7 at halftime, the team brought out Santa Claus as part of the halftime Christmas parade, but Eagles fans upset by the poor season pelted him with snowballs. The affair has gone down in NFL and sports lore as a representation of the passion, but also the outrageous behavior, of Philadelphia sports fans. Background The Eagles entered their final game of the 1968 season with a 2–11 record. According to Pro Football Hall of Fame sportswriter Ray Didinger, the 1968 Eagles team was at the time the franchise's worst year. However, fans were especially frustrated because while the E ...
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1968 Minnesota Vikings Season
The 1968 NFL season, 1968 season was the Minnesota Vikings' eighth in the National Football League. Under head coach Bud Grant, the Vikings won the NFC North, NFL Central division title with an 8–6 record, and qualified for the postseason for the first time in franchise history. This was the first of four consecutive division titles for the Vikings. The Vikings' first trip to the playoffs saw them suffer a 24–14 loss in the Western Conference Championship Game to the eventual NFL champion and Super Bowl III, Super Bowl runner-up Baltimore Colts at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium (Baltimore), Memorial Stadium. In the Playoff Bowl two weeks later, they again lost to the Dallas Cowboys 17–13. Offseason 1968 Draft : The 1968 New York Giants season, New York Giants traded their 1st-round selection (1st overall), 1967 Minnesota Vikings season#1967 Draft, 1967 1st-round selection (2nd overall), 1967 Minnesota Vikings season#1967 Draft, 1967 2nd-round selection (28th overall), and ...
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Ray Didinger
Ray Didinger (born September 18, 1946 in Philadelphia) is an American retired sportswriter, radio personality, sports commentator author and screenwriter. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of the Writer's Honor Roll. Early life Born to Raymond and Marie Didinger, and raised in Folsom, Pennsylvania, Didinger graduated from St. James High School in 1964. He received a B.S. in Communications from Temple University in 1968. His nickname was Nauga, after the animated character used in commercials for Naugahyde. Didinger spent four years doing sports radio for WRTI, a public radio station owned by Temple, and served as the station's Sports Director. Career Author In 1990, Didinger wrote ''The Super Bowl: Celebrating a Quarter-Century of America's Greatest Game''. He co-authored ''Football America: Celebrating Our National Passion'' along with Don Shula in 1996 and co-wrote ''The Eagles Encyclopedia'' with Robert S. Lyons in 2005. Didinger also co-wrote ''The Ulti ...
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Reindeer
Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 subspecies. A 2022 revision of the genus elevated five of the subspecies to species (see Taxonomy below). They have a circumpolar distribution and are native to the Arctic, sub-Arctic, tundra, boreal forest, and mountainous regions of northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. Reindeer occur in both migratory and sedentary populations, and their herd sizes vary greatly in different regions. The tundra subspecies are adapted for extreme cold, and some are adapted for long-distance migration. Reindeer vary greatly in size and color from the smallest species, the Svalbard reindeer (''R. t. platyrhynchus''), to the largest subspecies, Osborn's caribou (''R. t. osborni''). Although reindeer are quite numerous, some species and subspecies are in d ...
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Christmas Elf
In English-speaking cultures, a Christmas elf is a diminutive elf that lives with Santa Claus at the North Pole and acts as his helper. Christmas elves are usually depicted as green- or red-clad, with large, pointy ears and wearing pointy hats. They are most often depicted as humanoids, but sometimes as furry mammals with tails. Santa's elves are often said to make the toys in Santa's workshop and take care of his reindeer, among other tasks. They were first introduced in literature by Louisa May Alcott in 1856. Santa is much older, emerging in U.S. folklore in the early 17th century from St. Nicholas with attributes of various European Christmas traditions, especially from English Father Christmas and Dutch Sinterklaas. The association of Christmas presents with elves has precedents in the first half of the 19th century with the Scandinavian nisse or tomte, and St Nicholas himself is called an elf in ''A Visit from St. Nicholas'' (1823). Origin The origins of the elf are sa ...
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Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders
The Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders are the cheerleading squad of the Philadelphia Eagles, who plays in the NFL. The squad features 38 women. The squad debuted in 1948 as the Eaglettes, and became the Liberty Belles in the 1970s, and became the Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders in the 1980s. In April, the squad holds annual auditions at the Kimmel Center, with the final auditions being aired on PhiladelphiaEagles.com. The squad, was unique in that it released a swimsuit calendar, but the Eagles Cheerleaders have also released it on Android, as well as iOS for $1.99. Today, the Eagles Cheerleaders releases a booklet about the squad. The squad's director, Barbara Zaun, was a titleholder for Miss USA and Miss America, and also coordinated the Eagles Cheerleaders for Super Bowl XXXIX, the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, as well as various photo shoots. The squad also makes off-field appearances. The squad has also made an appearance at the 2012 Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama. Notable ...
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Here Comes Santa Claus
"Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)" is a popular Christmas song written and originally performed by Gene Autry, with music composed by Oakley Haldeman. Autry's original recording (in which he pronounces Santa Claus as "Santy Claus") was a top-10 hit on the pop and country charts; the song would go on to be covered many times in the subsequent decades. History Autry got the idea for the song after riding his horse in the 1946 Santa Claus Lane Parade (now the Hollywood Christmas Parade) in Los Angeles, during which crowds of spectators chanted, ''"Here comes Santa Claus"''. This inspired him to write a song that Haldeman set to music. Autry's lyrics combined two veins of the Christmas tradition, the mythology of Santa Claus and the Christian origin of the holiday (most explicitly in its mention of the nativity promise of "peace on Earth" to those who "follow the light"). A demo recording was made by singer/guitarist Johnny Bond, whose recording made use of ic ...
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NBC Sports
NBC Sports is an American programming division of the broadcast network NBC, owned and operated by NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal and subsidiary of Comcast. The division is responsible for sports broadcasts on the network, and its dedicated national sports cable channels. Formerly operating as "a service of NBC News", it broadcasts a diverse array of sports events, including Major League Baseball, the French Open, the Premier League, the IndyCar Series, NASCAR, the National Football League (NFL), Notre Dame Fighting Irish football, Notre Dame Fighting Irish college football, the Olympic Games, professional golf,the Tour de France and Thoroughbred racing, among others. Other programming from outside producers – such as coverage of the Ironman Triathlon – is also presented on the network through NBC Sports. With Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011, its own cable sports networks were aligned with NBC Sports into a part of the division known as the NBC Spo ...
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NBC Sports Philadelphia
NBC Sports Philadelphia is an American regional sports network owned by the NBC Sports Group unit of NBCUniversal, which in turn is owned by locally based cable television provider Comcast (and owns a controlling 75% interest), and the Philadelphia Phillies (which owns the remaining 25%). It is the flagship owned-and-operated outlet of NBC Sports Regional Networks. The channel broadcasts regional coverage of professional sports teams in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, as well as college sports events and original sports-related news, discussion and entertainment programming. NBC Sports Philadelphia is available on cable and fiber optic television providers throughout southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey and most of Delaware, as well as IPTV providers in those areas as well as throughout the entire state of Pennsylvania. The network maintains main studios and offices located inside the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia's South Philadelphia district; it also opera ...
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Snopes
''Snopes'' , formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a Fact checking, fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and Debunker, debunking urban legends and similar stories in Culture of the United States, American popular culture. History 1990s In 1994, David and Barbara Mikkelson created an urban folklore web site that would become ''Snopes.com''. ''Snopes'' was an early online encyclopedia focused on urban legends, which mainly presented search results of user discussions. The site grew to encompass a wide range of subjects and became a resource to which Internet users began submitting pictures and stories of questionable veracity. According to the Mikkelsons, ''Snopes'' predated the search engine concept of fact-checking via search results. David Mikkelson had originally adopted the username "Snopes" (the name o ...
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AstroTurf
AstroTurf is an American subsidiary of SportGroup that produces artificial turf for playing surfaces in sports. The original AstroTurf product was a short-pile synthetic turf invented in 1965 by Monsanto. Since the early 2000s, AstroTurf has marketed taller pile systems that use infill materials to better replicate natural turf. In 2016, AstroTurf became a subsidiary of German-based SportGroup, a family of sports surfacing companies, which itself is owned by the investment firm Equistone Partners Europe. History The original AstroTurf brand product was invented by James M. Faria and Robert T. Wright at Monsanto. The original, experimental installation was inside the Waughhtel-Howe Field House at the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island in 1964. It was patented in 1965 and originally sold under the name "ChemGrass." It was rebranded as AstroTurf by a company employee named John A. Wortmann after its first well-publicized use at the Houston Astrodome stadium in 1 ...
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Jerry Wolman
Jerry Wolman (February 14, 1927 – August 6, 2013) was an American developer in Washington, D.C. and owned the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League in the 1960s. Early years Wolman was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the son of a grocer. He worked in the family business into his high school years, when his father had a stroke. Not graduating, Wolman joined the Merchant Marines, returned home, and moved to Washington, D.C. In the 1950s, he began his own construction company, building apartment units and offices. Sports owner In late 1963, 36-year-old Wolman bought the Eagles franchise for $5,505,000 from the "Happy Hundred," a group of investors that owned the team from 1949–1963, and became the youngest owner in the league. He also owned Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia, the ballpark of the Phillies through 1970. Wolman was also one of the founding owners, briefly in 1967, of the expansion Philadelphia Flyers of t ...
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1969 Philadelphia Eagles Season
This year is notable for Apollo 11's first landing on the moon. Events January * January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco. * January 5 **Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to London's Gatwick Airport, killing 50 of the 62 people on board and two of the home's occupants. * January 14 – An explosion aboard the aircraft carrier USS ''Enterprise'' near Hawaii kills 27 and injures 314. * January 19 – End of the siege of the University of Tokyo, marking the beginning of the end for the 1968–69 Japanese university protests. * January 20 – Richard Nixon is sworn in as the 37th President of the United States. * January 22 – An assassination attempt is carried out on Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev by deserter Viktor Ilyin. One person is killed, several are injured. Brezhnev escaped unharmed. * January 27 ** Fourteen men, 9 of them Jews, are executed in Baghdad for spying for Israel. ** Reveren ...
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