It’s hard to explain, but when a man’s within sight of sailing it’s as though he’s already gone, and the distance between him and those he’s leaving behind widens by the moment.
– Petty Officer Edgar “Taff” Evans in Beryl Bainbridge’s Birthday Boys

And he gave me the best entry I think I’ve had and the shortest. He said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the chairman of the board: BB King!’ Everybody stood up, everybody. You could hear a pin drop. I ain’t never had this happen to me before ever in life. They all stood up and then started to applaud. But man, that got to me so much I just couldn’t stand it. I just stood there and started crying. Do you know, out of my forty-five minutes of playing I had about three or four standing ovations. And when I got ready to leave they stood up again. And that was the beginning of playing to different crowd of people. In that night, instead of about 90 percent black we had about 95 percent white – first time ever. And that was a feeling I don’t know how to describe but I wish I could.

November 1973, the first day John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd met each other.

Belushi: “This is a nice record. What is it?”
Aykroyd: “A local blues band, The Downchild Blues Band.”
Belushi: “Blues, huh? I don’t listen to too much blues.”
Brief silence.
Aykroyd: “John, you’re from Chicago.”

A school library without this book is incomplete. It should be part of the education of every English or American boy. — Boys who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once.
— Arthur Ransome on Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World in 1947.

I agree.

By the end of it, a number of arrests were made, some people were treated for serious injuries, and many, many straw hats were broken.

A photo gallery of Al Capone.

Bridges, cityscape, street life, and gangsters, including Lucky Luciano. Notice the link to the database of the city’s Department of Records, which contains 870,000 photos.

4-year old Beatrix discovers “real TV”:

“Did it break?”, she asks.
“No. It’s just a commercial.”
“What’s a commercial?”, she asks.

This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access.
– Tim Berners-Lee, August 20th, 1991

Check out the figure for music sales over time.