December 24, 1950: The Cleveland Browns Make Their Point

The winning field goal, kicked by Groza, then wearing Number 50.

He would later switch to 76, which the Browns retired for him.

Note the snow on the field.

December 24, 1950, 75 years ago: The NFL Championship Game is held at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The weather was bitterly cold, but the action was hot.

In 1945, the Cleveland Rams had won the NFL Championship, but had low attendance. Team owner Dan Reeves (no relation to the later NFL coach of the same name) moved them to Los Angeles, where they became a runaway success at the box office, and on the field as well. In 1949, they won the NFL Western Division, and reached the NFL Championship Game. But, contrary to the image of sunny Southern California, a rainstorm hit the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and the Rams lost to the Philadelphia Eagles.

They played the 1950 season as if on a benzedrine kick, with the most potent offense the NFL has ever seen. The "Greatest Show On Turf" that the St. Louis version of the Rams had half a century later had noting on this bunch.

Alternating quarterbacks between Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin, their runners included former Army Heisman Trophy winner Glenn Davis, Verda Thomas Smith (known as V.T. or "Vitamin"), Dick Hoerner, early black star "Deacon" Dan Towler, and one of the earliest NFL players from a "historically black" school, Paul "Tank" Younger of Grambling State University in Louisiana. Waterfield and Van Brocklin could throw to any of them, and to receivers Tom Fears and Elroy Hirsch, who was so fast, he was nicknamed "Crazy Legs."

The Rams went 9-3, and one of the losses was a 56-20 embarrassment against the Eagles. The other 2 losses came against the Chicago Bears. But on October 22, 1950, the Rams answered this question: "What would happen if the best offense in NFL history played the worst defense in NFL history?" The Rams ended up scoring more points per game in a season than any other, and the Baltimore Colts ended up allowing more per game than any other. Result: Rams 70, Colts 27. To this day, it's still the 3rd-highest-scoring single-game performance in NFL history. In addition, they hung 65 point on the Detroit Lions, 51 and 45 on the Green Bay Packers, 45 and 43 on the New York Yanks (not "Yankees"), and 35 on the San Francisco 49ers.

But the Cleveland Browns could match them for firepower. After winning the All-America Football Conference in all 4 seasons of its existence, 1946 to 1949, the Browns were invited to join the NFL from it, as were the 49ers and the Colts. The opening game of the 1950 season was against the defending Champion Eagles, in Philadelphia, and the Browns embarrassed the allegedly superior league's top team, 35-10.

Head coach Paul Brown was an offensive genius, and he built a team to carry out that genius: Quarterback Otto Graham, running back Marion Motley, and ends Mac Speedie and Dante Lavelli were weapons that any team would be lucky to have. Blocking for them were guard Bill Willis and tackles Lou Groza and Mike McCormack. All of these men would join Brown in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Motley and Willis were the men who provided the premiering AAFC with its racial integration, as the Rams' Kenny Washington and Woody Strode had done for the NFL. Alas, by 1950, neither Washington nor Strode was still with the Rams, but Younger and Towler were.

The Browns went 10-2, their only losses to the New York Giants, by a total of 10 points. In addition to the 35 they scored on the Eagles, they scored 45 each on the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Washington Redskins, 34 each on the 49ers and the Chicago Cardinals, and 31 on the Colts.

The Rams and the Browns won their respective Divisions, and, as it was the Eastern Division Champion's turn to host the NFL Championship Game, they met in Cleveland on a frigid Christmas Eve on the shore of Lake Erie. It was the team that did make it in Cleveland vs. the one that didn't in spite of bringing the city a title. It was also the 1st game back in Cleveland for the Rams, as the NFL did not yet allow crossover games from one Division to the other, except in the Championship Game.

The Rams wasted no time: On their 1st play from scrimmage, Waterfield passed to Davis, and he went 82 yards for a 7-0 Ram lead. The Browns responded with their own touchdown, but the Rams came back with another, leading 14-7 at the end of the 1st quarter.

The Browns scored a touchdown in the 2nd quarter, but a high snap caused Groza, also the team's main kicker, to miss the extra point. Waterfield, also the Rams' main kicker, attempted a field goal as the half ran out, from only 15 yards, but the stiff wind blasting in off the lake stopped it, and it was 14-13 Los Angeles.

In the 3rd quarter, Graham threw a 39-yard touchdown pass to Lavelli, giving the Browns a 20-14 lead. But the Rams scored 2 touchdowns, and it was 28-20 Rams after 3 quarters. With 10 minutes to go, the Browns faced 3 4th-down conversion attempts, and made them all. Graham threw another touchdown pass, and it was 28-27 Rams.

With 1:49 left, the Browns got the ball on their own 31-yard line. Graham threw for 1st downs, and ran for 2 of them himself. With 28 seconds left, Groza was sent on to attempt a 16-yard field goal. It was perfect, and it was 30-28 Cleveland. The Rams had 1 more chance, but could do nothing with it. The Browns had won, in their 1st season in the League, and, by staying in the city, gave Cleveland its 1st pro football championship defenders since the 1924 Cleveland Bulldogs.

Paul Brown called it the best game he ever saw, and never changed his mind. NFL Commissioner Bert Bell, who had orchestrated the sort-of-merger between the NFL and the AAFC, called the Browns "the greatest team ever to play football." The Browns may have dominated an inferior league, but now, they had won the superior one. They had made their point.

But it is more than that: By being the winning coach, Paul Brown, having coached Ohio State in 1942, became 1st head coach ever to win both a college football National Championship and an NFL Championship. It would take until the Super Bowl era before that happened again: Jimmy Johnson, with 1987 Miami and the 1993 and 1994 Dallas Cowboys; Barry Switzer, 1974, 1975 and 1985 Oklahoma and the 1996 Cowboys; and Pete Carroll, 2003 and 2004 USC and the 2014 Seattle Seahawks.

In 1981, historian John Thorn left his comfort zone, baseball, and published Pro Football's 10 Greatest Games. He included this game.

The same teams faced each other again the following year. But in 1951, at the Coliseum, the Rams beat the Browns for Los Angeles' 1st major league sports championship. They would play each other again in 1955, with the Browns winning in L.A. It would be Graham's last game, as he retired. The Browns had been to the AAFC or NFL Championship Game every year for 10 straight years. After missing in 1956, they made it 11 out of 12 in 1957. They beat the Detroit Lions in 1954, but lost to them in 1952, '53 and '57.

The fact that the Browns', the Lions', and the Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals' titles came before the advent of the Super Bowl means that they get discounted: Even before the distance of time became what it is now, NFL fans have come to regard any title won before the Super Bowl, NFL or AFL, as not a "real" championship. This is unfair: A title is a title.

December 23, 1995: Snowballs at the Meadowlands

December 23, 1995, 30 years ago: The New York Giants close their season in ignominious fashion -- and the result is far from the worst of it.

They were playing the San Diego Chargers, at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands. It's important to note that the Giants have no rivalry with the Chargers. This was only the 7th time the 1925-established NFL mainstays and the 1960-established original AFL team had played each other in the regular season. The Giants had won at Yankee Stadium in 1971, at Shea Stadium in 1975, at Giants Stadium in 1986, and at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego in 1989. The Chargers had won at The Murph in 1980 and at Giants Stadium in 1983.

None of those games had been particularly contentious. Indeed, even this game had no incidents between the Giant players and the Charger players.

For the Giants, it was a bad season, by any measure. They started out 0-3, closed to within 3-5, fell to 3-9, got up to 5-9, and went into this game 5-10. The Chargers had started 4-7, but had won 4 straight, and had a chance to make the Playoffs if they beat the Giants and other games went their way.

There had been significant snowfall the day before, and only 50,243 fans, out of a possible 78,000+, showed up. While the seats at Giants Stadium had been cleared of snow, there was still a lot of it lying around, waiting for angry -- or, at least mischievous -- fans to turn them into snowballs. At least in the 1st half, they only threw them at each other, because they were pleased with the product on the field: The Giants went into the locker room up 17-3.

This score was understandable: There was snow all around, and the temperature was 34 degrees, 24 with the wind chill. The New York-based team was used to this kind of weather. The San Diego-based team was not.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Giants giving their fans a Merry Christmas: They ended up giving their fans a big lump of coal instead. The Chargers scored a touchdown, but it was still 17-10 Giants after 3 quarters.

By this point, the snowballs were flying from the stands, then onto the field. Bob Sheppard, who had been the Yankees' public address announcer since 1951 and the Giants' since 1956, put his best "Voice of God" to work on the crowd, telling them that the game could be forfeited if the barrage continued.

On the 1st play of the 4th quarter, referee Ron Blum called time-out. He went over to the Charger sideline to call up to the booth, and ask for a repeat of the threat. A fan threw a snowball in his direction. Except it wasn't a snowball: It was an iceball, much harder. And it didn't hit Blum: It hit Sid Brooks, the Chargers' equipment manager, right in the face, knocking him out.

The game should have been forfeited right there. Maybe it would have been, if Charger head coach Bobby Ross had spoken up at that moment. But he didn't, and it wasn't.

The Chargers completed their drive with a touchdown, and the game was tied. On their next drive, Junior Seau hit Giant quarterback Dave Brown, whose throw had been intended for the end zone. Instead, Shaun Gayle -- now with the Chargers, he had been an All-American sprinter in college and a member of the Chicago Bears' 1985-86 "Super Bowl Shuffle" team -- intercepted it, and returned it 99 yards for a touchdown. Well before he reached the end zone, fans sitting there began throwing snowballs at him. Many got as far as him, but none hit him.

The Giants fumbled on their next possession, and John Carney kicked a field goal for the final score: Chargers 27, Giants 17. It was one thing for the Giants to humiliate their fans, which had happened before. It was another thing for the fans to humiliate each other, and the players.

Giants management announced that any snowball-thrower who could be identified would be banned from the Meadowlands Sports Complex for life, even if that meant revoking his season ticket. Six such spectators were identified, including one who ended up on the back page of the New York Daily News. Giants management also bought a full-page ad in the next day's San Diego Union-Tribune -- the Sunday edition -- apologizing to the people of San Diego for the incident.

By a quirk in the NFL schedule, the New York Jets were scheduled to play at Giants Stadium the very next day. The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, operator of the stadium, went into overdrive to get all the snow removed from the stadium before kickoff. Given that the Jets were going in 3-12 under the already-much-maligned head coach Rich Kotite, a 2nd angry fanbase was possible. But the snow was cleared, there were no incidents, and the Jets lost to the New Orleans Saints, 12-0.

The Chargers did end up making the Playoffs. Since then, they've played the Giants 7 times. The Giants won in San Diego in 1998. The Chargers won in San Diego in 2005 and 2013, at the Meadowlands in 2009 and 2017; following their move back to Los Angeles, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California in 2022, 11 days ago; and the Giants won at the Meadowlands this past September 28.

None of those games had any incidents, either. Only the one on Christmas weekend 1995.

December 23, 1975: The Reserve Clause Is Killed

Peter Seitz

December 23, 1975, 50 years ago: The reserve clause is struck down, changing baseball forever.

The clause -- nothing Christmassy about this -- began in 1879, when the National League instituted it, allowing teams to reserve players for each season, unless a player opted out of his contract and did not play in the league for a year. This allowed the team owners to control salaries, since the players could not play one team owner off another and get higher bids for their salaries.

In 1890, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed. To some people in baseball, the reserve clause sounded like a violation of that act. In 1922, in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise, saying, in a 9-0 unanimous vote, baseball was an "amusement," therefore did not constitute "interstate commerce," and therefore antitrust laws did not to apply to it. That ruling has never been overturned by a later Supreme Court ruling.

So opponents of the reserve clause had to find another way to get it struck down. In 1969, the St. Louis Cardinals traded Curt Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies, and, having a home and a business in St. Louis, and believing Philadelphia to be a racist city, he didn't want to go. He contacted the Chairman of the Major League Baseball Players' Association, Marvin Miller, to see what could be done about it.

Curt Flood

Miller decided that the reserve clause was a legitimate basis for negotiation in collective bargaining between players and owners. The case of Flood v. Kuhn went to the Supreme Court in 1972, and the decision was 5-3 in favor of the owners.

Finally, Miller got the team owners to agree to impartial arbitration. What he needed was two players to challenge the clause, by playing the 1975 season without signing a contract. This was because Miller realized that the clause only reserved the player for one year. The owners had always interpreted it to mean the player was reserved until he was released: Even if traded, his new team assumed the reservation.

Marvin Miller

It had to be two players, so that it wouldn't look like one embittered player, as Flood, fairly or not, seemed to be. Both players turned out to be pitchers. Dave McNally had been traded from the Baltimore Orioles to the Montreal Expos, and had determined that 1975 would be his last season, as he planned to retire to his ranch in Montana. So he had nothing to lose.

Andy Messersmith had much to lose. Born on the Jersey Shore in Toms River, and raised in the Orange County suburbs of Los Angeles, the righthander was 29, and had gone 20-6 in helping the Los Angeles Dodgers win the National League Pennant in 1974. He was in position to make a great deal of money if he could put his skills up for bid. But Miller convinced him that striking the reserve clause down was more important. So he played the '75 season with the Dodgers, without a contract, turned 30, and went 19-14.

Andy Messersmith

In an interview with The Sporting News for the 10th Anniversary of the decision, Messersmith said, "It was less of an economic issue at the time than a fight for the right to have control over your own destiny. It was a matter of being tired of going in to negotiate a contract and hearing the owners say, 'OK, here's what you're getting. Tough luck.'"

The owners were terrified. There is one thing that a sports team owner values more than money, and that is control. If the clause were struck down, the owners would have to pay more in salaries, but, from their perspective, the bigger problem was that they would lose some measure of control over the players' fates. They could have compromised, but were too stubborn and set in their ways to do so.

So the decision went to arbitration. A three-man panel was chosen. Miller represented the players. John Gaherin, the chief negotiator of the MLB Player Relations Committee, argued on behalf of the team owners. Together, they found an arbitrator acceptable to both of them: Peter Seitz, a 67-year-old lawyer who had negotiated New York City's labor relations law a decade earlier.

On December 23, the ruling was handed down. Surprising no one, Miller sided with the players, and Gaherin sided with the owners. Seitz had the deciding vote, and he sided with the players, saying:

The grievances of Messersmith and McNally are sustained. There is no contractual bond between these players and the Los Angeles and the Montreal clubs, respectively. Absent such a contract, their clubs had no right or power, under the Basic Agreement, the Uniform Player Contract or the Major League Rules to reserve their services for their exclusive use for any period beyond the renewal year in the contracts which these players had heretofore signed with their clubs...

The leagues involved in these proceedings, without delay, shall take such steps as may be necessary to inform and instruct their member clubs that the provisions of Major League Rules 4-A(a) and 3(g) do not inhibit, prohibit or prevent such clubs from negotiating or dealing with respect to employment with the grievants in this case; also, that Messersmith shall be removed from the reserve list of the Los Angeles Club and McNally from the reserve or disqualified lists of the Montreal Club.

The next day, the owners fired Seitz as arbitrator. But that did nothing to change the official result of his decision: The reserve clause was mortally wounded. It wasn't quite dead, as the owners had the right to appeal. On February 4, 1976, the Seitz decision was upheld in a federal district court. On March 10, it was upheld in a federal appeals court.

Finally, rather than take the apparently inevitable beatdown from the U.S. Supreme Court, the owners decided to make a deal. On July 12, an agreement was reached on a 4-year labor deal, giving players with at least 6 years' play in the major leagues the right to free agency. (This would later be reduced to 5 years.) Finally, on August 2, 1976, the players voted on ratification, and the reserve clause was formally buried.

A few years later, Cardinals owner and Anheuser-Busch beer magnate Gussie Busch met with the man he had traded to unwittingly set all this in motion, Curt Flood. No owner had been more vehement than Busch that the reserve clause had to be maintained, or else baseball would be "destroyed." But Busch told Flood he was right, and the owners were wrong, and apologized to him.

Flood had sacrificed his career for Messersmith and all the players who came after him. Messersmith signed with the Atlanta Braves, for $1 million over 3 years. But he didn't pan out with them, due to injuries. He went 11-11 in 1976, and only 5-4 in 1977. He was traded to the Yankees for 1978, but made only 7 appearances, going 0-3.

The Yankees released him, and, with some irony, he signed as a free agent with the Dodgers. This was possible because their owner, Walter O'Malley, champion of the cheap, had died, and his son, Peter O'Malley, was one of the owners willing to pay big money if he thought it would bring big results. In Messersmith's case, it didn't: He made just 11 appearances, going 2-4, and was done at age 34.

Messersmith later coached at a community college in Northern California, while McNally worked on his ranch and ran a car dealership. Neither worked in professional baseball again.

Seitz died in 1983, Flood in 1997, McNally in 2002, Miller in 2012. As of December 23, 2025, Messersmith is still alive, age 80.

I'm Still Here

A replica Seattle Pilots jersey honoring Jim Bouton

Today, my age matched the uniform numbers of such luminaries as Lawrence Taylor, Chris Doleman, Pat Swilling, Len Hauss, Andre Tippett, Hardy Nickerson, Darryl Talley, Joe Schmidt, Lance Mehl, Ray Mansfield, Mark Buehrle... and Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four.

When he reached the major leagues with the 1962 Yankees, Bouton was given uniform Number 56, a very high number for the time. Later that season, clubhouse manager Pete Sheehy said he could now receive a smaller number, recommending 29. Jim said that he would rather keep 56, to remind him of just how difficult it is to stay in the major leagues. Except for his 1st game with the Houston Astros after being traded there from the Seattle Pilots in 1969, what turned out to be the Ball Four season, he never wore any number but 56.

When my grandmother turned 56, she said it bothered her, because she was now closer to 60 than she was to 50. She made it to 81.

Turning 56, or hitting any birthday, doesn't make me feel old. It makes me feel better about having survived so much. It's a confidence boost.

What does make me feel old is remembering how it felt so long waiting for the Devils to win the Stanley Cup in 1995 and the Yankees to win the World Series in 1996... and realizing those events were about 30 years ago! I've lived more since than before!

Friedrich Nietzsche said, "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Well, the things that have tried and failed to kill me really haven't made me stronger, they've only tended to piss me off. But they haven't killed me yet.

I've been through a lot. But I'm still here. And I'm ready to see what's next. Whether I'll like it is another matter. But I'm here to see it.

December 16, 1945: The Cleveland Rams' Championship Farewell

Number 24 is Jim Gillette, who scored the winning touchdown.

December 16, 1945, 80 years ago: The NFL Championship Game is played. The winning team... moves to another city.

You know how, when the Cleveland Browns announced during the 1995 season that they were moving, their fans had such a fit, and talked about how loyal they were? Well, at the time, they were averaging 66,772 fans per home game, which, given the capacity of Cleveland Municipal Stadium, was an average of about 14,000 empty seats.

The Cleveland Rams would have gladly taken that. Founded in 1936, they had hoped to use Municipal Stadium for their home games, but ticket demand was usually so low, instead, they played at 22,000-seat League Park, or the even smaller Shaw Stadium, a high school facility.

In 1945, Adam Walsh was named head coach. He was the center on Notre Dame's 1924 National Championship team, leading the line known as the Seven Mules, so named because they blocked for the backfield known as the Four Horsemen. He saw to it that they drafted UCLA quarterback Bob Waterfield.

Bob Waterfield. Teammate Fred Gehrke,

a graphic artist, invented the modern helmet logo

by painting rams' horns on the helmets in 1948.

And they went 9-1, their best season yet. They played all their home games at League Park, and averaged just 19,402 fans. Granted, a lot of would-be fans were still overseas, as the end of World War II did not mean that every serviceman went home at once. Still, their away games did better: A crowd of 46,219 saw them beat the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, 40,017 saw them beat the Detroit Lions at Briggs Stadium (later renamed Tiger Stadium), and 38,149 saw their only loss, to the Philadelphia Eagles at Shibe Park.

Since it was the Western Division Champion's turn to host the NFL Championship Game, Rams owner Dan Reeves -- no relation to the later coach of the same name -- booked Municipal Stadium for it, hoping for a big crowd. Certainly, he got the right opponent: The Eastern Division Champions were the Washington Redskins, with superstar quarterback Sammy Baugh, in their 5th Championship Game in the last 9 seasons. (They'd won in 1937 and 1942, and lost in 1940 and 1943.)

But the weather did not cooperate: At kickoff time, it was 8 degrees below zero, the coldest NFL Championship Game ever to that point. (That temperature has only been exceeded once, and that once with an asterisk: The 1967 NFL Championship Game, "The Ice Bowl," was not the World Championship Game.) As a result, in the football-mad State of Ohio, where Ohio State had played to 4 crowds of 69,000 or more that season, only 32,178 fans paid their way into the big stadium on the shore of Lake Erie.

From 1933 to 1973, the goalposts were on the goal line, not the end line. In the 1st quarter of this game, Baugh faded back from his own 5-yard line, into the end zone, and made a bad throw, which hit the goal post. Under the rule of the time, this was a safety for the Rams, who now led, 2-0. It would matter. 

Sammy Baugh

Each team scored a touchdown in the 2nd quarter. Baugh left the game due to bruised ribs, and Frank Filchock came into replace him. The backup to Slingin' Sammy was called Flingin' Frank, and he threw a 38-yard touchdown pass to Steve "Jack Rabbit" Bagarus. Waterfield threw a 37-yard touchdown pass to Jim Benton, and it was 9-7 Cleveland at the half.

In the 3rd quarter, Waterfield threw a 44-yard touchdown pass to Jim Gillette. However, Waterfield, also the Rams' placekicker, missed the extra point, and it was 15-7. Early in the 4th quarter, Filchock threw an 8-yard touchdown pass to Bob Seymour. Joe Aguirre kicked the extra point, and it was 15-14 in the Rams' favor.

Joe Aguirre

But Aguirre, nicknamed "Hot-Toe," blew 2 chances to win the title, missing 2 field goals in the 4th quarter. The 15-14 score held, and the difference wasn't just Aguirre's toe going cold, it was Baugh's end-zone goof.

Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, who had been the driving force behind several notable rule changes, led the NFL to change the rule for the 1946 season: A forward pass that strikes the goal post would now be ruled an incomplete pass. That rule held until the posts were moved back to the end line for the 1974 season, making such a play impossible: It would have required crossing the end line, which has always been a safety.

Reeves lost $64,000 owning the Rams in the 1945 season. And, with the war over, a new league was being formed, the All-America Football Conference. And they would have a Cleveland team, soon to be named the Browns. Reeves knew that it would be folly to stay in Cleveland.

So he went to the previously untapped market of Los Angeles, and moved the Rams there. Since football is only played once a week, teams taking trains to the West Coast and back was the same kind of problem it would have been for baseball teams before jet travel made it easier. Over a decade before baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers moved there, the Los Angeles Rams became the toast of the town, reaching 4 NFL Championship Games between 1949 and 1955, winning in 1951.

Ironically, Joe Aguirre also went west in 1946, kicking for the AAFC's Los Angeles Dons. They did well at the box office, but couldn't outdraw the Rams, and folded with the league. Aguirre went to the Canadian Football League, and was its leading scorer in 1950 and 1954. But he never won a title in any league.

The Redskins got old in a hurry. And Marshall's policy of refusing to sign black players held the team back in the 1950s. Marshall's eventually fatal illness and incapacity held the team back in the 1960s. It would be 27 years before the team reached another championship game, under any name.

December 16, 1775: Jane Austen Is Born

Men have Casablanca, women have Gone with the Wind.

Men have The Godfather, women have The Way We Were.

Men have Cheers, women have The Golden Girls.

Men have Seinfeld, women have Sex and the City.

And men have George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, while women have his contemporary, Jane Austen. And while Lord Byron was a great writer, and genuinely heroic in battle, in private life, as a mistress, Lady Caroline Lamb, put it, he was "mad, bad and dangerous to know." Austen was beyond reproach.

She was born on December 16, 1775 in Steventon, Hampshire, near the South Coast of England. Her relatives built a legend of "good quiet Aunt Jane," portraying her as a woman in a happy domestic situation, whose family was the mainstay of her life.

Modern biographers include details excised from the letters and family biographies, but the biographer Jan Fergus writes that the challenge is to keep the view balanced, not to present her languishing in periods of deep unhappiness as "an embittered, disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant family."

In 1783, when Jane was 7, she and her sister Cassandra bought caught typhus, and, in those pre-antibiotic days, Jane nearly died from it. After a brief stay at a boarding school in 1785, as a biographer put it, she "never again lived anywhere beyond the bounds of her immediate family environment."

As young as 7, she joined her siblings in local theatrical productions, inspiring her to start writing plays at 12. From 1787 to 1793, she wrote various works that have become known as her Juvenalia. These include a short novel titled Love and Friendship: At age 14, she was already mocking popular works that had come to be known as "novels of sensibility." The next year, she wrote 34 pages titled "The History of England." Though only high school age by modern American standards, Jane Austen already knew her stuff.

During the Christmas season of 1795, shortly after she turned 20, she met Thomas Langlois Lefroy, who was a few days younger. In letters, she referred to him as "my friend," and it is widely believed that he was the basis for the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. They parted after only a few weeks, after which she had already written in a letter, "The day will come on which I flirt my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be all over. My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea."

She last mentioned him in a letter -- a surviving one, anyway -- in 1798, and never married. Not that she didn't try, and was engaged once, but it seemed no man ever measured up to her first love. He went on to be elected to the British Parliament, and from 1852 to 1866, served as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

Even if you've never read Jane Austen, you're probably familiar with her work, written in Chawton, also in Hampshire, and mainly set in her own place and time: Regency England, in the period from the 1811 declaration that King George III was now mentally incompetent to reign, giving his son, the dissolute Prince of Wales, the responsibility of a monarch but not the respect of one, until 1820, when George III finally died after 60 years on the throne that included the loss of America but the defeat of Napoleon, and the Prince's accession as King George IV.

Her 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility has been adapted for a 1971 TV-movie, miniseries in 1981 and 2008, a 1995 Emma Thompson film, and a 2024 Hallmark Channel film with a mainly-black cast. The 2006 film Material Girls and the 2011 film From Prada to Nada set the story in present-day Los Angeles, the latter centered around Mexican-Americans.

Her best-known work, the 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, has been adapted for a 1938 movie for the BBC, a 1940 film with Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as "Mr. Darcy," a 1949 TV-movie, a 1952 miniseries, a 1957 Italian miniseries starring Virna Lisi, a 1958 miniseries (yet another that's believed to be lost), a 1967 miniseries, a 1980 miniseries, a 1995 miniseries with Jennifer Ehle that helped launch Colin Firth to stardom, and a 2005 film with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. Oddly, the 1938 British, 1949 British, 1952 British, 1958 British and 1966 Spanish versions are all considered to be lost.

The 2001 film Bridget Jones' Diary is considered to be a present-day version, with Renée Zellweger, and Firth again playing the Darcy equivalent. The 2003 film Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy was set among present-day Mormons in Utah. The 2004 film Bride and Prejudice moved the action to present-day India. The 2019 film Pride and Prejudice: Atlanta gave the story a present-day, mainly-black cast. The 2022 film Fire Island was another up-to-date adaptation, but this time, the characters were gay men at the famous "gay resort" island off the coast of New York's Long Island.

Mansfield Park was published in 1814. It has been filmed for TV miniseries in 1983 and 2007, and as a feature film in 1999. The early 20th Century Jewish-American comedienne Fania Borach may have named herself Fanny Brice in honor of Mansfield Park's heroine, Fanny Price. The 1990 film Metropolitan took the action to present-day New York.

Emma was published in 1815. It has been filmed in 1948 (lost), as a miniseries in 1960 and 1967, for TV in Spain in 1967 and Spain in 1972, a miniseries in 2009, and a feature film in 2020.

In 1995, Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone and set in a Beverly Hills high school, was a present-day version of Emma. Its success inspired a one-season ABC sitcom, with Rachel Blanchard taking over as Emma Woodhouse, and some supporting characters reprising their roles.

Also in 1996, there were competing versions: A feature film with Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma and Jeremy Northam as George Knightley, premiering on August 2; and a TV-movie first broadcast on Britain's ITV on November 24, and on America's A&E on February 16, 1997, with Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong. Both were well-received. In 2010, it was adapted in India as Aisha.

In 1799, Austen wrote Northanger Abbey, but it was not published during her lifetime. It has been adapted for Spanish TV in 1968, and British TV in 1997 and 2007 with Felicity Jones as Catherine Morland. The 1993 film Ruby in Paradise, starring Ashley Judd, is considered an adaptation.

In 2009, with Austen's work having long fallen into the public domain, and thus ripe for legal use, Seth Grahame-Smith parodied both Austen and the rise of apocalyptic fiction by publishing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, alternating the original text with new writing about the presence of zombies in Regency England. The absurdity of it all proved so popular, it inspired a film version in 2016, and a quickie companion novel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. In 1998, a spoof film was released, titled Jane Austen's Mafia! But the modern controllers of the Austen estate sued, and the film was retitled simply Mafia!

In early 1816, Austen began feeling ill. Speculation as to the nature of her illness include cancer, including Hodgkin's disease, and the adrenal deficiency Addison's disease. She wrote that it was rheumatism, and paid more attention to her work than to her health, but it might not have made a difference.

She finished The Elliots, and began a novel she had titled The Brothers. In this novel, she mocked hypochondriacs, but on March 18, 1817, she made a note in her diary that she could no longer write. On March 23, she wrote that she was turning "every wrong colour" and living "chiefly on the sofa."

In May, her sister Cassandra and her brother Henry, themselves renowned as an artist and a clergyman, respectively, brought her to their home in Winchester, also in Hampshire. She was in great pain, and her siblings later reported that she wished for death. It came on July 18, 1817, at the age of 41. Although her sibling had provided her with nieces and nephews, allowing the Austen genetic line to continue, Jane never married, and had no children. Her legacy is as an icon of authorship, perhaps the most beloved female novelist of all time.

In 1818, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published. In 1871, Lady Susan and the never-finished The Watsons were published. In 1925, The Brothers was finally published, under the title Sanditon.

In addition to the films mentioned above, Austen herself has been played by Anne Hathaway in the film Becoming Jane in 2007, and by Patsy Ferran in the miniseries Sanditon in 2023.

December 15, 1950: The Port Authority Bus Terminal Opens

December 15, 1950, 75 years ago: The Port Authority Bus Terminal opens at 625 8th Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets in Midtown Manhattan.

There were several bus terminals in Manhattan up until that point. The best-known one was at Pennsylvania Station, mentioned by Jack Kerouac in the 1947 section of his novel On the Road. Greyhound Lines continued to use that terminal until the original Penn Station was demolished in 1963. Only then did they move into Port Authority, finally consolidating all long-distance bus service into one complex.

The opening of the Lincoln Tunnel in 1937 brought increased road traffic into Midtown Manhattan, leading to the need for a new Midtown bus terminal, to handle both commuter and long-distance traffic. The original building occupies an entire block, from 8th to 9th Avenue, with entrances on both, and from 40th to 41st Streets.

It was named for its operator, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which also operates the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal; all the New Jersey-to-New York City road connections: The George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, the Bayonne Bridge, the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing; the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) rail system, connecting Manhattan with Jersey City, Hoboken and Newark; and 5 airports: John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia in Queens, Newark Liberty International and Teterboro in New Jersey, and Stewart International in Orange County, New York.

As early as 1965, "Port Authority" (nobody calls it by its full name) was seen as outgrowing its original building. But, as is so often the case in New York City, what was needed took a long time to put together and build. Finally, on May 15, 1981, the North Wing opened, between 41st and 42nd Streets, and going halfway down 42nd in the direction of 8th Avenue.

The Governors of the 2 States have their names on both dedication plaques: New York's Thomas E. Dewey (1950) and Hugh L. Carey (1981), and New Jersey's Alfred E. Driscoll (also the "father" of the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway) and Brendan T. Byrne.

By that point, the Terminal was much like the City itself: A horrible mess, loaded with dirt, poverty and crime. Homeless people were everywhere. Just walking through its retail space on the ground floor was enough to sicken some people. Going into its bathrooms meant risking your wallet, or even your life. My mother recalled seeing a naked woman using a bathroom sink to bathe herself.

The 1994 Crime Bill was the turning point. Within a couple of years, the Terminal was safe again. But no less annoying for commuters.

And you don't get just how big the place is until you finish a long day in the City, come out of the A/C/E Trains stop on the Subway, go up 2 flights of stairs just to get inside the Terminal itself on the ground floor at 42nd & 8th, and then cross over to 40th, walk all the way to the 9th Avenue side, and then take 3 flights of escalators to the top deck to Gate 417 to take Coach USA (formerly known as Suburban Transit) back to East Brunswick, and then have to wait on a long line, hoping there's at least 1 seat left out of the 49 on the bus, because you don't want to stand on line for another half-hour waiting for the next bus -- you might as well stand on the one you've got.

To paraphrase John Mellencamp, "I fight Port Authority, Port Authority always wins."

In December 2024, the Federal Transit Administration approved the New York City Planning Commission's plan to replace the terminal, to be built on the same site. On May 29, 2025, ground was broken for a temporary terminal on Dyer Avenue between 37th and 39th Streets. The new terminal is currently scheduled to open in 2032.

Twenty thirty-two. It's gonna be a hard 7 years for Greyhound riders, and for commuters to New Jersey and the west bank of the lower Hudson River.