FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Seinfeld (/ˈsaɪnfɛld/; SYNE-feld) is an American sitcom television series created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. It aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, over nine seasons and 180 episodes. It stars Seinfeld as a fictionalized version of himself and focuses on his personal life with three of his friends: best friend George Costanza (Jason Alexander), former girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his neighbor from across the hall, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). It is set mostly in an apartment building in Manhattan‘s Upper West Side in New York City. It has been described as “a show about nothing”, often focusing on the minutiae of daily life.

As a rising comedian in the late 1980s, Jerry Seinfeld was presented with an opportunity to create a show with NBC. He asked Larry David, a fellow comedian and friend, to help create a premise for a sitcom. The series was produced by West-Shapiro Productions and Castle Rock Entertainment, and distributed by Columbia Pictures Television. It was largely written by David and Seinfeld, with script writers who included Larry Charles, Peter Mehlman, Gregg Kavet, Carol Leifer, David Mandel, Jeff Schaffer, Steve Koren, Jennifer Crittenden, Tom Gammill, Max Pross, Dan O’Keefe, Charlie Rubin, Marjorie Gross, Alec Berg, Elaine Pope, and Spike Feresten. A favorite among critics, the series led the Nielsen ratings in seasons six and nine, and finished among the top two (with NBC’s ER) every year from 1994 to 1998. Only two other shows, I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show, have finished their runs at the top of the ratings.

Seinfeld is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms of all time. It has been ranked among television’s best shows in publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and TV Guide. Its most renowned episodes include “The Chinese Restaurant“, “The Soup Nazi“, “The Parking Garage“, “The Marine Biologist“, and “The Contest“. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America voted it the No. 2 Best-Written TV Series of All Time (second to The Sopranos). E! named it the “Number 1 reason the ’90s ruled”, and quotes from numerous episodes have become catchphrases in American popular culture.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

I am an actuary. Often people ask me about the origin of the word. Do you have an answer?According to the dictionary, an actuary is a statistician who computes insurance risks and premiums. It comes from the Latin actuarius, “secretary of accounts,” and acta, “records.”

Advice of the Day

Add salt to the water under a double boiler; it will make the water boil faster.

Home Hint of the Day

Duct tape is a fibered tape known for its strength, durability and water resistance. It’s a quick fix for everything from leaky canoes to ripped seat covers to damaged pipes to broken furniture.

Word of the Day

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane ScaleThe Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based on a hurricane’s intensity. It is used to estimate a hurricane’s potential impact on coastal areas, including property damage and flooding. Wind speed, measured using a 1-minute average, is the determining factor in the scale.
Category 1: wind speeds 74-95 mph
Category 2: wind speeds 96-110 mph
Category 3: wind speeds 111-130 mph
Category 4: wind speeds 131-155 mph
Category 5: wind speeds over 155 mph

Puzzle of the Day

Why did the spider buy a car?Because he wanted to take it out for a spin!

Born

• Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (physicist) – 1686
• Bobby Darin (singer) – 1936
• George Lucas (filmmaker) – 1944
• David Byrne (musician) – 1952
• Cate Blanchett (actress) – 1969
• Amber Tamblyn (actress) – 1983
• Rob Gronkowski (football player) – 1989
• Miranda Cosgrove (actress) – 1993

Died

• Henry John Heinz (founder of the H. J. Heinz Company) – 1919
• Billie Burke (actress) – 1970
• William Lear (inventor) – 1978
• Rita Hayworth (actress) – 1987
• Harry Blackstone Jr. (magician) – 1997
• Frank Sinatra (singer & actor) – 1998
• Robert Stack (actor) – 2003
• Anna Lee (actress whose career in films and television spanned nearly 70 years) – 2004
• Stanley Kunitz (United States poet laureate 2000-01, Pulitzer Prize winner) – 2006
• B. B. King (blues legend) – 2015
• Tim Conway (comedian & actor) – 2019
• Grumpy Cat (feline celebrity with a grumpy expression) – 2019

Events

• Jamestown, Virginia, became the first permanent British settlement in North America– 1607
• At four years old, Louis XIV became King of France– 1643
• Lewis and Clark’s expedition left St. Louis for the West. The Corps of Discovery, as it was later to be called, originally included approximately 45 people.– 1804
• 34 cavalry disembarked at Indianola, Texas– 1856
• Copyright registered for J. Phillip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever” march”– 1897
• The Sparrow and the Hawk, a serial for kids, was broadcast for the first time over CBS radio– 1945
• President Eisenhower broke ground for the Lincoln Center– 1959
• First manned U.S. space station launched– 1973
• The final episode of Seinfeld aired– 1998
• Statue honoring the women athletes of the All-American Professional Baseball League installed at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York– 2006
• Racehorse Winning Brew ran 43.97 mph– 2008
• Racehorse Winning Brew ran a quarter mile in 20.57 seconds at the Penn National Race Course in Grantville, Pennsylvania– 2008

Weather

• Ten degrees below zero F at Climax, Colorado– 1896
• The fourth-longest dry spell in Texas ended with 0.01 inch of rain in Brownsville– 1984

COURTESY www.almanac.com