For those new to this series, the premise of this is simple.  I just use the Random Article link on Wikipedia (happy 10th anniversary!) and see if anything good comes up.  More often than not, nothing does.  Here we go!

• American actress Louan Gideon, whose most notable work was on the Nickelodeon series The Secret World of Alex Mack, has had a host of other memorable roles such as Woman, Grieving Woman, Saleswoman, and Hostess.  But I remember her best from the Seinfeld episode “The Millennium”, when she played the speed-dial obsessed stepmother Mrs Hamilton.
• The Stock Exchange Luncheon Club was a members-only dining club situated on the seventh floor of the New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan.  It opened in 1898 and closed in 2006.  They admitted their first African-American member, Joseph L. Searles III, in 1970.  Searles sat alone at his own table.  I’m guessing they made him bus his own dishes.
• Guests at Universal Studios Florida could see the set of the Swamp Thing television show until 1994, when the set was demolished a year after the show’s cancellation.  The set property became the home of Back to the Future III locomotive display until 1998, when that was replaced by the current occupant, Men in Black: Alien Attack.
• In Hawaiian mythology, Kāne is considered the highest of the four major deities, along with Kanaloa, Kū, and Lono. He represented the god of procreation and was worshipped as ancestor of chiefs and commoners.  No human sacrifice or laborious ritual was needed in the worship of Kāne, which is probably a good thing.  Seems odd to worship a procreation god by throwing all the good virgins into volcanoes.


NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERDS!

• PC-Write, a word processing program, was developed by former Microsoft employee Bob Wallace in 1983.  Wallace, who was Microsoft’s ninth-ever employee (middle of top row in picture), did not sell his software outright.  Rather, he requested donations for it.  He dubbed this distribution method, which had been tried only a few times previously, “shareware.”
• The Tit Berrypecker (Oreocharis arfaki) is a species of bird in the Paramythiidae family.  It is also one of the most hilarious and fake-sounding bird names ever.
• Corcovado is the name of the mountain in Brazil that sits underneath the famous Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue.  It’s also the name of a song by famed Bossa Nova composer Antônio Carlos Jobim, which appears on the excellent Jobim/Frank Sinatra album released in 1967.
• Cincinnati, Ohio derives its name from the Society of the Cincinnati, itself named for the famed Roman politician and aristocrat Cincinnatus.  Cincinnatus was named dictator of Rome in the 5th century B.C. during a military crisis, and voluntarily relinquished his power.  For this and other deeds he is regarded as one of the heroes of early Rome.
• John Henry Pruitt (1896 – 1918) is one of only 19 people to receive two Congressional Medals of Honor.  They were from the Army and the Marines, for the same action in World War I.  Pruitt was killed in action on his 22nd birthday.

Related articles

• Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Celebrates 10 Years of Wikipedia (informationweek.com)