Tweet Week In Review - Video Podcast

Greetings, Mr. & Ms. Internet! Welcome to This Tweet in History, the Week In Review, podcasting to you on tape delay from our North American Studios.

Here are your top stories for the week ending July 11, 2009:

DATELINE Alaska, July 9, 1958: Cowabunga! Alaska catches wave worlds biggest:
The Back-Story:
It was a megatsunami, as a 7.9 magnitude earthquake along Alaska’s Fairweather Fault resulted in a wave of epic proportions. A megatsunami is defined as a wave reaching more than 328 feet (or 100 meters), and this megatsunami, in Lituya Bay, reached 1,720 feet, almost as high as the Sears Tower or New York’s now-destroyed One World Trade Center. An eyewitness reported tumbling out of his bunk and observing a glacier, six miles distant, that had risen several hundred feet and was jumping and shaking like crazy as big chnks of ice fell from the face down in the water. The glacier dropped, and a uge wall of water raced toward him. “After that,” he reports, “I was too busy to tell what else was happening there.”

DATELINE Wimbledon, July 5, 1975: Call it Ashe Saturday as AA is first AA to win in mens at Wimbledon:
The Back-Story:
.It was the brash defending champion vs. the gentlemanly underdog on Wimbledon’s famed Centre Court. Underdog Arthur Ashe, though, had the feeling that he couldn’t lose, having developed a strategy of finesse, rather than trying to match champ Connors shot for shot. Ashe jumped out to an early two-set advantage, then held off a resurgent Connors to win in 4 sets, becoming the first African American male to win at Wimbledon.

Things that make you go HUH?: DATELINE Paris, July 5, 1946 Two pieces better than one; too much skin better than no Bikini Atoll:
The Back-Story:
It was scandalous! Although there had been two-piece bathing suits before, none was so daring as to expose the wearer’s navel. No respectable model would wear designer Louis Reard’s scandalous creation, and, in the end, he hired an exotic dancer from a local nightspot to show it off. Despite the seeming prefix, “Bi,” as in “two,” (which inspired the name “monokini” for topless bathing suits, many years later), the name was actually taken from the Bikini Atoll, where, days before the introduction of the bikini swimsuit, the fourth atomic bomb was detonated.

This week’s birthdays:
July 5: Surrealist author Jean Cocteau
July 6: Religious icon, Dalai Lama
July 7: Sci Fi author Robert Heinlein
July 8: Chef Wolfgang Puck
July 9: Physicist Nicola Tesla
July 10 Tennis great Arthur Ashe
And July 11: Octomom Nadya Suleman

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