August 2009

Lost Last Month

Reading Rainbow, the beloved PBS children's show, ending its 26-year run. Senator Edward Kennedy, 77. The national dish of Scotland, after a food historian claims haggis (sheep's heart and lungs chopped up with spices and oatmeal, stuffed into a sheep's stomach and boiled) was actually invented by the English in 1616. The nightmare of detention in North Korea, when Bill Clinton arrives in Pyongyang to bring home American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Mona Lisa's smile, turned upside down after a Russian woman throws a teacup at her portrait in the Louvre, an act for which she is quickly arrested. £21,000, spent by an unknown Brit for a rare signed copy of Mein Kampf. The despair over the loss of rare Buddhist treasures, buried during Mongolia's Communist purge and recently uncovered in the Gobi Desert. Closure for the families of those killed in Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, when convicted bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi is released from a Scottish prison to return home to Libya to die of cancer. A little more freedom in Venezuela after 34 private radio stations are ordered to close. A little more freedom in Iran after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is officially sworn in as president for a second term.