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JUNE 24, 2009 A Free Paper of Trivia, Humor, Puzzles, and More ISSUE #30

INSIDE

Photo: MS
By Kane Casolari
So long from Gist Weekly
This is the final issue of
editor Kane Casolari
Editorial . . . . . . . . . P AG E 3 Gist Weekly. This week,
take a look at some
Where was the first indoor more-famous endings
hockey game played? from television, mov-
International Info . . . . . P AGE 4 ies, and other media..
Which event that
happened 35 years ago
this week forever changed
the way we buy things?
This Week in History . . . . . PAGE 5
• Let It Be was the
final studio album
released by the
Beatles. It was re-
This week, Gist Weekly rides off into the sunset
• Several television series have
Final
corded before their second-to-last

Which famous magician
album, Abbey Road, but its release
would be 75 this week?
was pushed back due to various
Birthdays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PAGE 5
reasons, including changing from
Which president was born what was once intended to be a
on the Fourth of July? live album to a studio album, re-
By the Numbers. . . . . . . . . PAGE 6
mixing and polishing perform-
ances, and timing it to come out
And more including:
Crossword—PAGE 2 around the time of the documen-
Trivia Quiz—PAGE 3 tary film Let It Be. The album was
Cectic comic strip—PAGE 5 also renamed from its working
Sudoku—PAGE 6 title Get Back and the final cover • The last of the original trilogy of
art was changed from an image
mirroring that of the Beatles’ first
album, Please Please Me, to four
separate images, one of each
Beatle.
• The 2 ½ hour 1983 series finale
of the television show M*A*S*H,
titled “Goodbye, Farewell And
Amen,” is—as of this writing—
the most-watched episode of any • The fairy tales that people tell
American TV series ever. It fa-
mously ends with Captain Hawk-
eye Pierce leaving in a helicopter
and seeing the message left by
Captai n B. J. Hun ni cutt:
“Goodbye” spelled out in rocks
Like what you see on the ground.
in an ad but don’t
know where in the
world that Thank you for reading
advertiser is? Visit
Issue!
aired what was meant to be a se-
ries finale before being unexpect-
edly renewed for one or more
seasons. Examples include Cap-
tain Kangaroo, Charmed, King of the
Hill, and Roseanne. Other shows
were cancelled once and then
brought back years later due to
fan demand, including Doctor
Who, Family Guy, and Futurama.
Star Wars films, Return of the Jedi,
ends with a celebration by the
teddy bear-like Ewoks singing a
song titled “Ewok Celebration,”
also known to fans as “Yub
Nub.” The song was replaced by
a different one (“Victory Celebra-
tion”) in the 1997 re-release of
the Star Wars films.
children today often end with
“...and they all lived happily ever
after.” They weren’t always that
cheery. In fact, one version of the
Your source for
story of Little Red Riding Hood
ends with the title character being
FREE books!
eaten by the Big Bad Wolf.
“This site is amazing. I love the
fact that I can exchange all of the
books that I have read (and will
probably never read again) for
new books. I am an avid reader
and have saved so much money
with this site. You guys have done

GistWeekly.com/map Gist Weekly! I hope you a fantastic job and I will

recommend this site to everyone
that I know.”
to see a map of all have enjoyed it. Alexandra D.—Worcester, MA

recent local
Kane Casolari Swap your used books for
advertisers. Gist Weekly editor/publisher FREE with club members!

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Page 2 Gist Weekly JUNE 24, 2009

Word Search The End

All Is Said and Done Final

Call It a Day Finale

Cease Finish

Cessation History

Closed Over

Completed Stop

Conclusion Terminated

Curtains The End

Done Through

Fat Lady Sings Wrap Up

While information in Gist Weekly is collected from sources MAZE

judged to be reliable, the accuracy of all information cannot Find your way from the upper-left corner to the lower-right
be guaranteed. Gist Media is not responsible for the content
or accuracy of advertisements. Advertisements are the
property of their respective companies and/or creators. The
Gist Weekly name and logo are property of Gist Media. Any
other trademarks used are the property of their respective
owners. All images not otherwise indicated are in the public
domain. For image credits, WC: Wikimedia Commons; MS:
Microsoft Corp., used under license; PD: public domain; CC By
#: C re ati ve C ommon s Attrib ution License
(creativecommons.org/licenses/by/#, where # is the
number next to “CC By”).
Any text and puzzles created by Gist Media and not
otherwise indicated as being in the public domain or
created/copyrighted by a third party were created by Kane
Casolari and are released under the Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 License. For more information, visit
g i s tw e e kl y. co m/l i ce n s e o r
creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/3.0.

CROSSWORD 37. Babbled 10. Cineplex feature

38. Metal 11. Bundle
40. Toothed wheels 12. Remedy
42. Tiered shelves 13. Suffix with fabric
43. Unit of capacity 21. Furry Star Wars creature*
45. Draw off liquid gradually 23. Super server
47. Comrade 25. Cut
48. Former French colony of North 26. Guy
America 27. Kind of acid
50. Fortify 28. Calf catcher
52. Fix firmly 29. Prepared to drive, with “up”
54. Frozen water 31. Not appropriate
55. Eyelash cosmetic 32. Pertaining to a particular place
58. Shoddy 33. Slender part of the leg
62. ___-Seltzer 36. Small drink of liquor
63. Mohawk River city 39. Consecrate
65. Highest point 41. Hissing
66. Buttonhole 44. Terza ___ (Italian verse form)
67. Last name of 1A* 46. Salt
68. Buffalo’s lake 49. Sudden
69. Jekyll’s alter ego 51. Fermented soybean cake
70. E. C. Bentley detective 53. Fast finisher?
71. Bonanza brother 55. Hawkeye Pierce’s series*
56. Supporter
ACROSS 18. Lecterns DOWN 57. Slip
1. Former Argentine President and 19. Height: Prefix 1. Return of the ___* 58. Image
husband of the country’s first 20. Piled up 2. ___ Bator, Mongolia 59. Air (prefix)
female president (first name)* 22. Dollar 3. Magician’s opening 60. Raised platform
5. Acquired pattern of behavior 24. Nocturnal bird 4. Cheesy snacks 61. Supplements
10. Humane org. 25. Rough cabin 5. ___ Cassidy* 64. Wrath
14. Exile isle 26. Indeed 6. On the top
15. Alamogordo’s county 30. Cloud of interstellar gas 7. Used for resting
16. Seagoing: abbr. 34. Inventor Whitney 8. Inhabitants of Ireland *Starred clues have answers that can be
17. Jeanne ___ 35. Injured, in a way found elsewhere in this issue
9. Unanimously Solutions to all puzzles are on page 6
ISSUE #30
TRIVIA QUIZ
Each question below relates to the
topic of a feature in this issue of
Gist Weekly, but is not answered in
it. Answers are on page 6.
1. The End (Page 1): In Norse
mythology, what is the name of
the end of the world in a battle
between rival factions of gods?
2. International Info: Canada
(Page 4): In Canada, what does
RCMP stand for?
3. This Week’s Celebrity Birth-
days (Page 5): Which 2008-
2009 ABC television series fea-
tured multiple appearances by
George Michael and had every
episode of its first season named
after one of his songs?
4. Historical Birthdays This
Week (Page 5): The role of
Major T. J. “King” Kong—Slim
Pickens’ role in Dr. Strangelove—
was originally planned to be
played by what actor, who had
three other roles in the film?
5. By the Numbers: 30 (Page 6):
Which famous actor belongs to
a band called 30 Odd Foot of
Grunts?
Community Events
Oglesby Library to Hold Book Sale
The Oglesby Public Library will be holding its annual book sale on Saturday,
June 27 in front of the library from 9am to 3pm. The sale includes donated
paperback and hardcover books as well as DVD and VHS movies. Prices are
low and the proceeds help support the library.
www.GistWeekly.com
Editorial: The End of Gist Weekly
By Gist Weekly editor Kane Casolari
If you are a regular reader of Gist
Weekly, you probably already know by
now that this is its last issue. Rather
than rehash the reasons for going out •
of business (discussed in previous
editorials), I’d like to take this space
to thank readers for their support
while this publication lasted and to let
you know a few things you might not
have known about Gist Weekly:
• I thought that “gist”—as in “to
get the gist of something”—was a
fairly common word, but judging
by people’s pronunciation of it, I •
must have been wrong. For the
record, the “G” is pronounced
like the one in “giraffe,” not
“goat,” and it rhymes with “list,”
not “heist.” (Now that I write
that, I realize that “The Gist List”
• “International Info” and “Fifty
would have been a good name for
a top-ten-style feature.)
• Running this paper was my first
fulltime job and my first job after
graduating from college just over
a year ago (May of 2008).
• I was Gist Weekly’s only employee.
Another company did the print-
ing, but I wrote, edited, designed, •
and delivered each paper, sold
(and often designed) ads, created
and maintained the website, and
designed my business cards and
the shirts that I wore on ad sales
trips and deliveries.
The only content in the paper I
didn’t create were most of the
images (including some of the
ads, the majority of the public •
service announcements, and the
comic strip Cectic), many of which
I got from free sources such as
Flickr and the Wikimedia Com-
mons under a Creative Commons
license.
• Speaking of “Ask Kane,” appar-
I originally planned to start Gist
Weekly in a bigger town. I even
considered moving out of state to
Madison, Wisconsin. Then I real-
ized that I could only afford to
move or start the paper, not both.
State Fun Facts” alternated, with
the former appearing in even-
numbered issues and the latter in
odd ones. The countries and
states were chosen randomly by
computer except in a few in-
stances, such as covering Mexico
in the Cinco de Mayo issue.
The colored bar on page one
(containing the date and issue
number) rotated among three col-
Page 3
ors: blue, red, and green (in that
order) to make it a little easier to
distinguish one week’s issue from
the previous week’s. Coinciden-
tally, the St. Patrick’s Day and
Earth Day issues both had green
bars without altering the rotation.
The “miscellaneous” features—
such as “Ask Kane,” editorials,
and “Best of the ‘Net” did not
have a set rotation. I wrote more
or less whichever I felt like in a
given week.
ently not many of you had ques-
tions to be answered. Every ques-
tion I got was from someone I
knew personally. A few times, I
even thought up questions on my
own that I wanted to answer and
printed the questions under pseu-
donyms related to the topic. For
example, in issue #28 there was a
question about whether Rolling
Stone magazine, the Rolling
Stones, or Bob Dylan’s “Like a
Rolling Stone” came first. (For
those who missed it, it was the
Rolling Stones.) I had wondered
about that question, so I put it in
Gist Weekly under the name
“Robert Z.”—for Robert Zim-
merman, Bob Dylan’s birth name.
Page 4 Gist Weekly JUNE 24, 2009

• The name Canada comes from •
the Iroquoian word Kanata, which
means “village.”
• Today, Canada is far from a vil-
lage. Its roughly 3.9 million
square miles make it the second-
largest country in the world by
area, behind only Russia (about
6.6 million
square
miles).
• Canada’s
population
is about
33.7 mil- Canada’ flag
lion, mak-
ing it 36th in the world. Its large
area and medium-sized popula-
tion give it a low population den-
sity—only about 8.3 people per
square mile, making it 227 in the
th
world out of 238 ranked coun-
• Like many other former British
tries and territories.
• A slang term for Canadians is
“canuck.” The origin of the word
is unclear, thought it seems to
have come into existence around
1835.
• English and French are the offi-
cial languages of Canada. About
68% of Canadians speak English
but not French, 13% speak • Ice hockey is Canada’s national
French but not English, and
roughly 18% speak both.
• About 85% of French-speaking
Canadians live in the province of
Quebec.
Canada has the third-highest Hu-
man Development Index (HDI)
in the world at 0.967, with Ice-
land and Norway barely beating
it—both have HDIs of 0.968 as
of the 2008 rankings. The HDI is
a measure used by the United Na-
tions Development Program to
measuring
its level of
devel op-
ment using
such meas-
ures as the
standard of
living, life
expectancy,
land iteracy rate of a country. The
U.S. lags behind Canada some-
what, ranking 15th in the world
with an HDI of 0.950 out of a
theoretical maximum of 1.
colonies, including Australia and
New Zealand, Canada recognizes
the monarch of the United King-
dom—currently Queen Elizabeth
II—as its own monarch, though
with a mostly symbolic role. The
Prime Minister of the Canadian
Parliament is the head of govern-
ment in Canada.
pastime. Its six largest cities all
have National Hockey League
(NHL) teams. Montreal’s Victoria
Skating Rink was the site of the
first organized indoor hockey
game in 1875.

MATCH UP
Match the lyrics about “the end” to the
songs they come from.
(Answers on page 8.)

“And in the end

The love you take “In the End” (Linkin Park)
Is equal to the love you make”

“And now, the end is near…” “The End” (The Beatles)

“But in the end

“The End” (The Doors)
It doesn’t even matter”

“This is the end

“My Way” (Frank Sinatra)
My only friend, the end”
ISSUE #30
This Week in History
• June 24, 1949: Hopalong
Cassidy becomes the first
Western series on television.
The series, starring actor
William Boyd in the title
role, airs on NBC.
• June 25, 1876: The Battle of
Little Bighorn, also called
the Battle of Greasy Grass
Creek, begins. The conflict
between the 7th Cavalry
Regiment of the U.S. Army
and a combined group of
Lakota and Northern Chey-
enne lasts until the follow-
ing day. It results in a vic-
tory for the Northern Chey-
enne and Lakota, led by Sit-
ting Bull. Over 300 are
killed in the battle, including
the leader of the 7th Cavalry,
George Armstrong Custer,
leading to the battle’s nick-
Sitting Bull, one of the leaders of the Lakota in the
nam e, “Custer’s Last
Stand.”
• June 26, 1974: A product is sold
using a Universal Product Code
(UPC) for the first time. The item
is a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy
Fruit chewing gum sold at
Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy,
• June 29, 1974: Isabel Perón, vice
Ohio. The pack of gum is now on
display at the Smithsonian Mu-
•
seum in Washington, DC.
June 27, 1954: A nuclear power
plant opens in Obninsk, a city in
the Soviet Union about 63 miles
southwest of Moscow. The plant
is the first in the world to use nu-
• June 30, 1859: French acrobat
clear power for large-scale elec-
tricity production.
• June 28, 1914: Serbian nationalist
Cectic by Rudis Muiznieks
www.GistWeekly.com
Battle of Little Big Horn
Gavrilo Princip assassinates Aus-
tria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in
Sarajevo. The assassination sets in
motion the events that lead to
World War I.
president to and third wife of Ar-
gentine President Juan Perón, is
appointed as interim president
due to her husband’s ill health.
Juan Perón dies two days later,
and Isabel becomes the first fe-
male President of Argentina.
Charles Blondin crosses Niagara
Falls on a 1,100-foot-long, 160-
foot-high tightrope.
Page 5
This Week’s
Celebrity
Birthdays
Musician Jeff Beck (The Yardbirds) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 24, 1944
Singer-songwriter George Michael (“Faith,” “Careless Whisper” [with
Wham!]) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 25, 1963
New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter . . . . . . . . . June 26, 1974
Comic book writer and artist Dan Jurgens (Booster Gold, Superman) . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 27, 1959
Former Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Mark
Grace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 28, 1964
Actor Gary Busey (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Under Siege) . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 29, 1944
Singer and actress Fantasia Barrino, winner of the third season of American
Idol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 30, 1984
Clipart: MS
Historic
Birthdays This
Week
Author Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s Dictionary, “An Occurrence at Owl
Creek Bridge”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 24, 1842
Writer George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 25, 1903
Elvis Presley’s manager “Colonel” Tom Parker . . . . . June 26, 1909
Author and political activist Helen Keller . . . . . . . . . . June 27, 1880
Actor Pat Morita (The Karate Kid, Happy Days) . . . . . June 28, 1932
Actor Slim Pickens (Dr. Strangelove, Blazing Saddles) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 29, 1919
Magician Harry Blackstone Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June 30, 1934
Did you Know?
Elvis Presley’s manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, never actually
served as a colonel in the U.S. Army or any other branch of any
military. Jimmie Davis—then the governor of Louisiana—gave
Parker the honorary title (in the Louisiana State Militia) in 1948
for his work on Davis’s gubernatorial campaign.
“Armchair Epistemology”
From www.cectic.com, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Page 6
By the Numbers: 30
• The first two rounds of the televi-
sion game show Jeopardy!— called
“Jeopardy!” and “Double Jeop-
ardy!”—each have a maximum of
30 answers and questions. Both
rounds have six categories of five
answers apiece, though there is
not always time to get through all
of them.
• Wisconsin became the 30th U.S.
state on May 29, 1848.
• The Thirty Years’ War was a se-
ries of conflicts fought mainly in
Germany from 1618-1648. Most •
of the countries of Europe were
involved in the war. It started
mainly as a conflict between
Catholics and Protestants, but
disputes between countries also
playing a significant role and led
to predominantly Catholic France
joining the side mostly Protestant
side against the Holy Roman Em-
pire and its Catholic allies.
• One requirement to become a •
U.S. Senator is that the candidate
must be at least 30 years old.
• The 30th President of the United
States was Calvin Coolidge, who •
served from President Warren G.
Harding’s death in 1923 until
1929. Coolidge’s inauguration was
the first to be broadcast on radio.
President Coolidge was the only
president to have his face on an
official U.S. government-issued
coin during his lifetime: a half-
dollar commemorating the U.S.’s
sesquicentennial in 1926. He was
Number Games
SUDOKU
Place a number in each empty box
so that every row, column, and 9-
box square contains each of the
numbers from one to nine.
Difficulty:



Gist Weekly JUNE 24, 2009
also the only president born on
the Fourth of July (in 1872). Game and Quiz Answers
• The Dow Jones Industrial Aver-
—WORD SEARCH—
age—commonly shorted to “The
Dow”—tracks the performance Solution
of 30 of the biggest publicly-held
companies in the United States.
• The 30th wedding anniversary is
traditionally called the pearl anni-
versary.
• An official NBA basketball has a
diameter of 29.5 to 30 inches.
The traditional indicator used by
journalists to mark the end of a
story is “–30–.” The origin of the
t e l e g r a p hi c s h o r t h a n d i s
uncertain, though one suggestion
—MAZE—
is that one X marked the end of a
Solution
sentence, XX signaled the end of
a paragraph, and XXX the end of
a story. Since XXX is the Roman
numeral for 30, “–30–” may have
replaced “XXX” over time.
The final episode of the HBO
series The Wire was named
“–30–” after the journalistic
shorthand. —CROSSWORD PUZZLE—
Solution
The Beatles, more commonly called
The White Album was a double
album containing 30 tracks
released by the Beatles in 1968.
• The Angels retired pitcher Nolan
Ryan’s #30 in 1992. Ryan wore
—NONOGRAM— —SUDOKU—
the #34 jersey for most of his
Solution Solution
career, and that number was
retired by the Texas Rangers and
Houston Astros.
NONOGRAM
—MATCH UP—
Answers
“And in the end
The love you take —TRIVIA QUIZ—
Is equal to the love you
make”— “The End” (The Answers
Beatles) 1. Ragnarök
2. Royal Canadian Mounted
“And now, the end is near…”
— “My Way” (Frank Sinatra) P oli c e , ni c k nam e d
Use logic to determine which boxes to fill “Mounties”
in and which to leave white. The num-
“But in the end 3. Eli Stone
bers above each column and next to each It doesn’t even matter”—
row indicate unbroken sets of filled-in “In the End” (Linkin Park) 4. Peter Sellers
boxes: i.e., “5 2” means that sets of 5 and 5. Russell Crowe
2 black boxes appear in it, in that order, “This is the end
with at least one white box in between. My only friend, the end”
Fill in a box only when you are sure it — “The End” (The Doors)
must be black. You may want to mark
known white boxes with Xs or dots.