Histortweet Week in Review - W/E December 19, 2009

[SFX: CHURCHBELL] Greetings, History Lovers! 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 weeks ending December 19, 2009:

[SFX: SOUND827]World: DATELINE The Netherlands, December 14, 1287 - St. Lucia's flood carves out new seascape; creates Zuiderzee, claims >50,000 lives: http://bit.ly/7Y53vF
The Back-Story: [SFX:Here Comes the Flood] The day after St. Lucia day, storms in the Northern Netherlands overwhelmed a dike, resulting in the fifth largest flood of recorded history. Between 50 and 80,000 people died in the resulting flood that rewrote the geography of the Netherlands and created the Zuiderzee, or Southern Sea from what had been a mere shallow, inland lake.[SFX: Waiting for the end of the world; A Whole New World]

[SFX: SOUND827]Sports: DATELINE Massachusetts, December 15, 1891 - Naismith's vision for hoops: thirteen rules, 9-man teams, peach baskets: : http://bit.ly/xulfQ

The Back-Story: [SFX: Come on Feel the Noise; Basketball Jones; Give me the ball] James Naismith was the physical education teacher at Springfield College, a YMCA training school. The students, confined to the indoors in the cold, New England winters, grew rowdy and short-tempered. The head of phys ed at the school, Dr. Luther Gulick, gave Naismith the task of developing a game that could be played indoors, to provide athletic distraction, wouldn’t take up too much room, and would rely on skill, not only on strength. Naismith came up with 13 rules for a sport played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets for goals. Within a few years, the YMCA introduced the sport to many nations and, shortly before he died, he was flown to Berlin to watch as the game was introduced at the Berlin Olympics.[SFX: I’ll try something new]

[SFX: SOUND827]: Entertainment: DATELINE Japan, December 16 1997 - Episode of kids' cartoon induces seizures in hundreds of Japanese children: http://bit.ly/J5VQg

The Back-Story: [SFX: Shock Treatment; TV Party]The Pokemon series, derived from the from the Nintendo game, follows Ash Ketchum, a Pokemon master in training, and his group of friends as they travel through the world of Pokemon. In the 38th episode, broadcast only in Japan, Ash and his friends go inside a malfunctioning Poke ball to find out what’s wrong. A scene with a thunderbolt attack was animated with extremely intense strobe flashes, for about four seconds, in fullscreen. At this point, viewers experienced blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. A few had seizures and convulsions, or lost consciousness. The number of people affected by the by the incident was unprecedented, and the Pokemon Shock episode was included in the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures Caused by a Television Show.[SFX: I Want to Be Sedated]

[SFX: SOUND827] This week’s birthdays:[SFX: In the Club]

December 13: Entertainer Dick Van Dyke
December 14: Mystic Nostradamus
December 15: Industrialist J. Paul Getty
December 16: Composer Ludwig van Beethoven
December 17: Conductor Arthur Fiedler
December 18: Actress and pin-up girl Betty Grable
And December 19: Conservatonist Richard Leakey

[SFX:GENERIC1MOTION]Thank you for joining us for This Tweet in History, the Week in review. Be sure to follow us on Twitter.com/histortweet, and check our archives at histortweet.blogspot.com.