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Under a gray sky and the threat of rain, the pageantry of the opening ceremonies of the XI Olympic Games took place on August 1, 1936 in the Olympiastadion in Berlin. With a crowd of 100,000 hailing Adolph Hitler and the 5,000 athletes from forty-nine nations, the most political sporting event of the twentieth century began. Over the next two weeks, the Summer Games transcended the spirit of Olympic competition between amateur athletes and nations. The Games pitted the dark forces of Nazism and their fervent nationalism and ideology of racial superiority against the democracies of modern western civilization.
During the First World War, Australia sent thousands of horses known as Walers overseas. Originally bred in New South Wales, the Walers were used by the Australian Imperial Force and mounted units of the British and Indian armies. Walers saw service in Europe, India, and the Middle East. Of 136,000 Walers sent abroad by Australia, only one, a horse named Sandy, returned home.
Saddlers’ Hall is the home of the Worshipful Company of Saddlers, a trade and professional association based in the City of London, whose antecedents are thought to have first existed in the eleventh century. In the summer of 1892, the Hall, which for centuries existed on the same site in Cheapside a few yards from St. Paul’s Cathedral, was the venue for a remarkable exhibition on the history of saddlery.
On a hot and humid early evening at Belmont Park, Big Brown's bid for horse racing immortality ended. In a stunning turn of events, jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled up Big Brown when he saw that his horse could not catch Da' Tara, who went on to win by 5 1/4 lengths over Denis of Cork. Big Brown finished last, ending his quest to become the twelfth horse in history to win the Triple Crown.
Jerome Park, the premier thoroughbred race course in New York City after the Civil War, and the American Jockey Club held the first day of its summer meeting on Wednesday, June 19, 1867. The correspondent for the New York Times described the day as “gloriously beautiful, the attendance numerous and select, the fields of horses large and of the highest class, and the racing close and exciting.” Of interest on that splendid afternoon in the Bronx was the second race, “The Belmont Stakes” - named after the prominent New York banker financier August Belmont - that was held for the first time.
Big Brown delivered again. The big bay thoroughbred won the 133rd Preakness Stakes, the second jewel of Triple Crown, at Pimlico Race Course by 5 1/4 lengths and continued his domination over all challengers. Big Brown's triumph extended his unbeaten streak to five straight.
Building E of the Stakes Barn at Pimlico Race Course is a dark green building with a white tin roof. On a rainy and dreary afternoon, one day before the Preakness Stakes, known as the second jewel of the Triple Crown, Big Brown munches on a bale of hay in stall 34. A groom arrives and gently brushes the horse's dark mane, as the NBC Sports television camera people ask the assistant trainer for permission to film the bay colt. Shortly, thereafter, a walker takes Big Brown out of the stall for his twice daily exercise around the interior of the stall area. Two other horses join the exercise parade. The television crew films Big Brown when he has made a complete circumference of the walk area.
As the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs approached on May 3, questions had lingered for weeks about Big Brown. Was it possible for the undefeated bay Thoroughbred to become the first horse since Regret in 1915 to win the Derby in only his fourth start? Could he win from post position no. 20, a feat that was only done once before in 1929? How would he fare in a large and crowded field against tough competition the likes of Colonel John and Pyro? Would his bad feet hold up?
The American author, humorist, and columnist Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb (1876–1944) was once asked to describe the Kentucky Derby. Cobb described the “emerald velvet” track at Churchill Downs, how pretty girls turned “the grandstand into a brocaded terrace of beauty and color such as the hanging gardens of Babylon never equaled,” and how the horses were “each a vision of courage and heart and speed.” Cobb went on and on. He finally ended by writing, “ . . . but what’s the use. Until you go to Kentucky and with your own eyes behold the Derby, you ain’t never been nowhere and you ain’t never seen nothin’.”
Seventy years ago, one of the greatest triumphs by an American horse in the twentieth century took place on foreign soil. The date was March 25, 1938. The place was Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, England. The horse was a small-sized chestnut stallion named Battleship, the son of the legendary racehorse Man o' War. The event was the 100th Grand National, the toughest steeplechase in the world for horse and rider.
Two Parts
At 9:30 a.m. on Friday, June 5, 1896, the Special from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania bearing Governor Daniel H. Hastings and his party arrived at Gettysburg. As the train steamed into town, a governor's salute was fired west of the city by Light Battery C, Third United States Artillery. After disembarking at the railroad station, the entourage was driven by horse carriage to the Gettysburg battlefield. After arriving at the historic site, Governor Hastings joined other dignitaries in preparation of the unveiling and dedication of a monument to Major-General George Gordon Meade, the Commander of the Army of the Potomac, who had died more than twenty years earlier.
As Duke Ellington, the brilliant jazz composer and band leader, wandered through the Wildenstein Gallery on East 64th Street in New York City in March 1968, he marveled at the superb French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art exhibition titled "Degas's Racing World." On display were one hundred and thirty paintings, drawings, and bronzes of horses, jockeys, and people at the race track.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II rode sidesaddle down the Mall from Buckingham Palace to the Horse Guards Parade, where a ceremony known as the Trooping of the Colour took place on June 5, 1952. Marked by military color and pageantry, the three-hundred-year-old tradition was held each year by British and Commonwealth infantry regiments to honor the birthday of the reigning King or Queen. As the Colonel in Chief of the Scots Guards, the twenty-six year-old Queen wore the blue ribbon of the Garter over her scarlet tunic, dark blue skirt , and a black tricorne hat with a tall white plume affixed to the left side. She sat atop a gleaming chestnut gelding named Winston.
The legend of Marengo, a light-colored Arab stallion, began after the Battle of Aboukir in Egypt in 1799. Thought to be descended from the well-known El Naseri stud, the stallion was shipped to France to be trained as a charger, a cavalry horse trained for battle, for Napoleon Bonaparte. The horse from Egypt met Napoleon's personal preferences. French historian Agathon Jean Franзois Fain (1778 - 1837) wrote: "The horses which the Emperor [Napoleon] usually rode were Arabians; of small size, greyish-white, good tempered, gentle gallopers, and easy amblers."
Two Parts
Seventeen-year-old Richard Stone Reeves was among the crowd of 30,000 applauding War Admiral's triumph in the Belmont Stakes (and Triple Crown championship) at New York's Belmont Park on Saturday, June 5, 1937. Transfixed by the beauty of the Thoroughbreds and the color and excitement of the sport on that clear, warm 80-degree afternoon, the young man decided to become an equine artist. Unbeknownst at the time, Richard Stone Reeves would go on to become America's greatest painter of champion racehorses.
Art is the supreme achievement of man's talents and passion in bringing the beauty and majesty of the horse to life. Epitomizing the splendor and magnificence of the horse are the works of such famous equine painters and sculptors as George Stubbs, Edgar Degas (more commonly associated with ballet dancers than race horses), Frederic Remington, Sir Alfred J. Munnings, and Richard Stone Reeves.
Ask a horse racing fan what is the oldest Derby in America, and the answer will undoubtedly be the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs. Research would show that answer to be wrong. Some 11 years before the Kentucky Derby's inaugural in May 1875, the Jersey Derby was run during the Civil War in June 1864 in Paterson, New Jersey. The race in Paterson gave The Garden State the distinction of having the oldest Derby in the United States.
Beryl Markham's life was one of adventure. She was a pioneer aviator - the first woman to be given a commercial license in Africa and the first person to make a solo journey over the Atlantic Ocean from east (England) to west (Nova Scotia) in 1936 - and a highly successful horse trainer, who won the prestigious Kenya Derby eight times. Markham was also the author of a beautifully penned memoir, West with the Night (1942) that included some of the finest stories ever written about horses.
Santa Fe was gray and cold with intermittent rain. Adjacent to a fast moving creek in an open pasture, Confederate horsemen of the 5th Texas Mounted Volunteers formed three lines, four abreast. With pistols waving in the air, the Texans advanced towards the blue-clad Union infantrymen, who were kneeling in close formation. Pipers and drummers played in the rear. Suddenly, a sharp, loud volley of rifle fire rang out from the Federal infantrymen, and the air was filled with smoke. Through the smoky haze that floated skyward, the Texans fired their pistols and retreated with their horses.
They appeared like apparitions from the past; a vision so unexpected and startling that it will always remain an unforgettable memory. It occurred on a beautiful sunny and crisp fall day on the historic battlefield at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Adams County, Pennsylvania.

While in New Mexico in October, I picked up a copy of the The Santa Fe New Mexican. The headline read: "Horse dies, rider hurt in movie mishap." The article by Natalie Storey reported that the mishap took place on the set of a Western being filmed, the 3:10 to Yuma starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, in Diablo Canyon west of Santa Fe.
Antoine-Louis Barye's sculptures were often experimental and controversial. As the leading animal sculptor or animalier of the 19th century, Barye's artworks ran the breath of subjects from game animals and mythological creatures to animal combat scenes and equestrian statues. His work impressed many and inspired others: Auguste Rodin was an early pupil and was an inspiration to Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne.
In a world of high-technology and sophisticated forensics, the announcement of the newest weapon in the arsenal of the New York Police Department (NYPD) to combat crime came as a surprise, as the readers of The New York Times learned last April. On the Times  front page, an article titled "Police Turn to the Stable for Crime Fighting Clout" told how the NYPD's 85 mounted patrols were successfully used in combating crime in tough neighborhoods such as central Brooklyn, patrolling Times Square late at night, and leading search-and-rescue operations in brush alongside rivers and wooded areas.
Two Parts
After the United States and Peru each finished with 34 Ѕ faults at the 1941 National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden for the International Low Score Competition Challenge Trophy, a jump-off took place on the evening of November 7. It was decided that two horses of each team should jump separately. The pair with the lowest score would be declared the winner. With the 10,000 spectators on the edge of their seats, the first American jumper, Captain Franklin F. Wing Jr., one of the best riders of his era, trotted into the arena on a brown gelding with a white blaze named Democrat.
Forever etched in the memories of those that watched the funeral of President John F. Kennedy on television in November 1963 were the heart-wrenching scenes of those sorrowful days. There were the images of the grieving young widow Jacqueline, her small children John Jr. and Caroline, the crowds lining the procession route, and a handsome jet black horse with a white star, which was the "caparisoned" or riderless horse that walked behind the coffin bearing the slain President. The horse was named Black Jack.
Ronald Reagan was a prolific letter writer. It is estimated that he wrote more than 10,000 letters in his life, corresponding with a wide array of people from the famous to ordinary citizens, as well as friends and neighbors. As one reads many of the personal hand-written letters that have been uncovered and published from the archives of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, the reader is impressed with his eloquent writing style and, more importantly, reminded of those qualities that made him special as a person-his charm, humor, warm regard for people, and love of life.
Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner who shattered his right hind leg in the Preakness Stakes, reminded racing fans that the path to the Triple Crown and immortality is a combination of both luck and talent. To see the truth in that maxim, one has only to look back 60 years to 1946 at the most unlikely Thoroughbred to win the Triple Crown. The Thoroughbred's name was Assault.
There was a chill wind with bursts of rain at the Grand National. On that eventful day 50 years ago, March 24, 1956, one of the great unexplained mysteries of horse racing took place at Aintree Racecourse. Ironically, the jockey who was at the center of the mysterious affair was Dick Francis, who would later become the grand master of British mystery writing.

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Sir Winston Spencer Churchill left such a large record, so much of it crafted by himself, that even the best scholars fail to get their arms around him. And there are so many fascinating side issues to distract us! Take for example his passion and genuine love of animals.
Edward R. Murrow was appointed Chief European correspondent for the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1937. Based on eyewitness reports beginning with Hitler's seizure of Austria in 1938, Murrow's daily radio broadcasts to America were heard by millions. A pensive and intelligent man who sought out and reported the truth, he was also an extremely courageous man, obtaining permission from the British Air Ministry to broadcast the German bombings from London's rooftops and flying on more than 25 combat missions over Germany. In a distinguished journalistic career that covered both radio and television over four decades, Murrow made more than 5,000 broadcasts.
Remembrance and Beyond was the theme of the First Annual International Day of Commemoration to honor the memories of the victims of the Holocaust held at the United Nations on January 27, 2006 - the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, their children, and grandchildren that came together in the General Assembly Hall on that sunny and chilly day in New York, it was a solemn gathering and a historic event.
On leave from Harvard University to work on his honors thesis, John F. Kennedy spent most of 1939 in London. When Hitler invaded Poland in September and England and France declared war, Jack Kennedy, his parents Joseph and Rose, brother Joe, and sister Kathleen were seated in the gallery at Parliament, where they intently listened to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and others including Winston S. Churchill, explain the British Government's decision to go to war. "Churchill's speech," Kennedy historian Robert Dallek wrote, "giving evidence of the powerful oratory that would later inspire the nation in the darkest hours of the war, left an indelible impression on Jack."

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Seventy-five years ago the road to the 1933 Preakness Stakes began with one of the most controversial finishes in the history of the Kentucky Derby. On May 6, 1933, in the last three-sixteenths at Churchill Downs, jockeys Don Meade on Brokers Tip and Herb Fisher on Head Play slashed, pulled, and tugged each other violently, as both horses galloped toward the finish line. After Brokers Tip and Head Play crossed the wire, Fisher stood in his stirrups and slashed Meade with his whip.
At the 1940 National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden, Miss Jacqueline Bouvier on her chestnut mare Danseuse competed against the nation's best young equestrians in the finals of the A.S.P.C.A (American Society for Prevention of Cruelty of Animals) Alfred Maclay Trophy for Horsemanship and the A.S.P.C.A. Good Hands Cup.
Baltimore's weather was ideal on Saturday, May 14, 1932 for the running of the 57th Preakness Stakes. Mathias L. Daiger, secretary of the Maryland Jockey Club, estimated that 40,000 people, a record for Pimlico Race Course at that time, turned out on that lovely spring day 75 years ago. Among the crowd was a large gathering of dignitaries, including the Vice President of the United States, Charles Curtis, Maryland Governor Albert C. Ritchie, Baltimore Mayor Howard Jackson, and a score of Senators and Representatives from Washington, D.C.
On May 7, 1945, the day before Germany surrendered and the war in Europe ended, General George S. Patton, Jr. and Robert Patterson, the Undersecretary of War, drove to Schloss Arco in nearby St. Martin im Innkreiss in Upper Austria to see the white Lipizzaner stallions of the famous Spanische Hofreitschule, or Spanish Riding School.
Bred, owned and raced by A.C Bostwick of New York, Mate was one of an exceptionally fine crop of Thoroughbreds foaled in 1928. So extraordinary was that yield that John Hervey, the distinguished horse racing historian, wrote there were none to equal them since the annus mirabilis of 1886, when the likes of Tremont, Hanover, Kingston, Firenze, and King came onto the American racing scene. For in addition to Mate, Bostwick's handsome golden chestnut, other exceptional foals of 1928 included Harry Payne Whitney's Equipoise, George D. Widener's Jamestown, Mrs. Payne Whitney's Twenty Grand, and Mrs. M. P. Allen's Vander Pool to name only some.
As one of the greatest equine artists of all times, Sir Alfred J. Munnings' paintings of thoroughbreds, horse fairs, huntsmen and hounds, and jockeys in silks on horseback are widely admired for their elegance, vibrant colors, contrast of sunlight and shadow, and sense of movement and expectancy. Also renowned for his English landscapes, Munnings depicted scenes of flowers, rivers, hills and colorfully costumed gypsies that roamed the countryside in horse-drawn caravans. As an accomplished artist, he also sculptured and composed ballads and verse.
War Admiral ridden by jockey Charley Kurtsinger won the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown at Belmont Park in New York on Saturday, June 5, 1937. In an electrifying performance, the chestnut colt ran the mile and a half course over a fast track at 2:28 3/5, which equaled the American record and broke the track record at Belmont Park established by his sire Man o' War in 1920. War Admiral's feat was even more remarkable because of the courage he displayed: the Thoroughbred had accidentally torn his heel in the starting gate, and it bled during the entire race.
Ordered by General Jonathan M. Wainwright to occupy a strategic coastal village on Luzon Island and hold it until American and Filipino troops arrived, Lt. Edwin P. Ramsey set out with two-horse-mounted columns of the 26th Cavalry (Philippine Scouts) on January 16, 1942. Riding his powerful charger, Bryn Awryn, a chestnut gelding with a small white blaze on his forehead, Lt. Ramsey and his cavalry troopers rode into Morong, where they fought advancing Japanese infantrymen.
With Baltimore in the midst of a heat wave, the Preakness Stakes was run at Pimlico on Saturday, May 9, 1930. That year the Maryland classic was the first leg of the Triple Crown, which consisted of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. Almost 52,000 racing fans came out to Pimlico that day under sunny skies. Among the notables at the racecourse were the Vice President of the United States, Charles Curtis; U.S. Senator Millard Tydings; Governor Albert C. Ritchie of Maryland, and Mayor William Broening of Baltimore.
Winston Churchill took a respite from politics on Saturday, May 14, 1951. On that day, Princess Elizabeth invited the eminent statesman to a luncheon at Hurst Park before the running of the Winston Churchill Stakes, a race run at a distance of just over one mile. Churchill's thoroughbred, a five-year old grey named Colonist II, was one of the runners. Also running was His Majesty King George VI's black filly, Above Board, and five other challengers - Cantarello II, Fast Fox, Selskar Abbot, Star Spangled Banner, and Tourette.
In 1939, Bold Venture, the winner of the 1936 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, was added to Texas' famous King Ranch's breeding program. Four years later, he produced King Ranch's greatest champion: Assault, the first and only Texas-bred thoroughbred to win the Triple Crown (1946). In 1947, the King Ranch crop included another foal by Bold Venture. He was a chestnut with a white blaze born to Verguenza, (by Chicaro). By late 1948, the colt was one of three considered by the stable to have racing potential; the other two were Air Lift and Beau Max. Air Lift, a full brother to Assault, was rated first; Beau Max was also rated highly. However, the handlers of the colt were unsure about the chestnut colt. "He looked like he might be a good horse, or that he might not. We couldn't make up our minds. So we called him Middleground," Kleberg explained.
At the 1940 National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden, Miss Jacqueline Bouvier on her chestnut mare Danseuse competed against the nation's best young equestrians in the finals of the A.S.P.C.A (American Society for Prevention of Cruelty of Animals) Alfred Maclay Trophy for Horsemanship and the A.S.P.C.A. Good Hands Cup.
Just off the second floor entrance to the Museum of Metropolitan Art's magnificent collection of "Nineteenth Century European Painting and Sculpture" in New York is a corridor that leads to the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Gallery. Hanging on the wall on the left hand side of the well-lit corridor, adjacent to Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier's painting Friedland, 1807, is a mammoth oil canvas - approximately 8 x 16 1/2 Ѕ ft. (244.5 x 506.7 cm) - titled The Horse Fair. The painting is dated 1853-55 and signed by the French animal painter Rosa Bonheur, a remarkable woman and the most famous female artist of the nineteenth century.
Each horse has a story and a gentle chestnut-colored Haflinger mare named XOXO, which is pronounced zozo and stands for hugs and kisses, is no exception. Her story began a few years back at the notorious New Holland, Pennsylvania sales auction, where on a Monday morning, the Haflinger, and some other two hundred and fifty emaciated, neglected, and unwanted horses, was sold. Of that number, approximately sixty to one hundred were usually bought by so called "Killer Buyers," who transported them to slaughterhouses in the United States and Canada, where they were killed and sent abroad for human consumption.
Walking through the metal gate for the first time at the entrance of Days End Farm Horse Rescue in Lisbon, Maryland, I saw the newest arrivals grazing in the small paddocks, an area that adjoined the white and dark green outside stalls of the main barn. They were some of the 50 or so abused, neglected, and unwanted horses living on the farm that had been impounded by the state's animal control bureau.
Never forgetting that children wanted action, conflict, and suspense, Marguerite Henry's stories have delighted generations of children. Spanning a long and illustrious career as a writer - she lived until the age of 95 - Henry wrote more than sixty books. Many of her works won major honors and awards in the field of children's literature, including Justin Morgan Had a Horse; Misty of Chincoteague; King of the Wind; Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague; Brighty of the Grand Canyon; Black Gold; Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West; Gaudenzia: Pride of the Palio and San Domingo: The Medicine Hat Stallion.
While frolicking in a meadow on the famous King Ranch in South Texas in 1943, a thoroughbred weanling named Assault stepped on a sharp object, which went through the frog and out of the wall of the hoof of his right forefoot. For the rest of his life the chestnut-colored colt walked or trotted with a limp. Remarkably, however, the horse ran a perfect gallop.
For some years, William Woodward, Sr., owner of the historic Belair Stud in Maryland and Chairman of the Jockey Club, harbored a dream. Woodward dreamt of sending one of his American thoroughbreds to England and challenging the nation's best horses in the English classics, most notably the Ascot Gold Cup at 2 1/2 miles. By 1935, Woodward thought he owned the perfect horse to race on the other side of the Atlantic: a large golden chestnut colt with a white blaze named Omaha.
Sadly, it ended where it began. Black Gold, the first race horse to win four derbies in one year (1924) - the Louisiana, Kentucky, Ohio State and Chicago Derbies and whose record stood for more than half a century - ran for the final time on January 18, 1928 at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, where five years earlier he had won at first asking. While racing down the stretch in the one-mile Salome Purse, Black Gold broke his left foreleg just above the ankle. The next day he was buried in the infield.
Traveling in two horse-mounted columns on January 16, 1942, Lt. Ed Ramsey set out with a troop of the 26th Cavalry of the Philippine Scouts on Luzon Island. Ramsey was ordered by General Jonathan Wainwright to occupy a strategic coastal village and hold it until American and Filipino troops arrived. Riding his powerful charger, Bryn Awryn, a chestnut gelding with a small white blaze on his forehead, Lt. Ramsey and his cavalry troopers rode into Morong, where they met and fought advancing Japanese infantry troops. Historians would later record the engagement as the last horse-mounted cavalry charge in United States military history.
Wearing Belair Stud's silks, a white blouse with red polka-dots and scarlet colored cap, jockey Earl Sande paraded Gallant Fox to the post at five o'clock. Both rider and horse received a warm applause from the spectators. Gallant Fox was a handsome dark bay horse distinguished by a blaze down his face, a black mane and tail, shadings of black low on the legs, and white coronets. The field of eleven lined up at the starting post at 5:02 p.m. for the Preakness Stakes. For the first time in a major American race, a mechanical starting gate was used.

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Despite being one of the most public people and warmly regarded entertainers of her era, Ivie Anderson, Duke Ellington's greatest vocalist, guarded her personal privacy. From the time that Ivie joined the Ellington Orchestra in Chicago 1931, her early life, particularly her family origins, have been shrouded in mystery. Today, some eighty years after Ellington and Anderson began their association, information about her in standard jazz references, as well as other biographical sources, is sketchy and often at odds. Most accounts have Ivie Anderson born in Gilroy, California on July 10, 1905. Others have her born in 1904. Others show her born in Oklahoma. No information is known about her family.
As the Duke Ellington Orchestra introduces the haunting melody to Stormy Weather in the 1933 film Bundle of Blues, the camera slowly moves to a draped-covered door. The band's vocalist Ivie Anderson appears from behind it. She is tall and slim. Her hair is short, and she is wearing a full-length white dress with short sleeves. The blackness of her skin is an effective counterpoint to the whiteness of her outfit. In a demure manner, she slowly walks to the front of the stage. Ivie glances at the orchestra momentarily and then turns to the camera. She begins to sing the evocative lines from the Koehler and Arlen tune Stormy Weather.
Vocalist Margaret Tynes performed the musical interlude at the Freedom Fund Dinner on November 22, 1957 in the grand ballroom at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City. Accompanied by composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn, Ms. Tynes sang a selection from Duke Ellington's recent work, "A Drum Is a Woman." Sitting at the dais was Ellington himself, who was honored that evening for his efforts to eliminate discrimination and segregation. Branch Rickey, the former general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was seated besides Ellington. Rickey was honored for his efforts to integrate major league baseball. Jackie Robinson, the dinner fund's chairman and the first African-American to break baseball's color barrier, was also at the dais.
As the Duke Ellington Orchestra introduces the haunting melody to Stormy Weather in the 1933 film Bundles of Blue, the camera slowly moves to a draped-covered door. The band's vocalist Ivie Anderson appears from behind it. She is tall and slim. Her hair is short, and she is wearing a full-length white dress with short sleeves. The blackness of her skin is an effective counterpoint to the whiteness of her outfit. In a demure manner, she slowly walks to the front of the stage. Ivie glances at the orchestra momentarily and then turns to the camera. She begins to sing the evocative lines from the Koehler and Arlen tune Stormy Weather.
The final recording session was taped in Hollywood on Frank Sinatra's 52nd birthday, December 12, 1967. When Sinatra entered the studio, the Ellington Orchestra was already there. Duke was seated at his Steinway & Sons piano arranging his six-pack of Cokes, cigarettes, ashtray, tissues, and other sundries. Harry Carney, Russell Procope, Johnny Hodges, and Paul Gonsalves were readying their saxophones. Jimmy Hamilton was unpacking his clarinet. Sam Woodyard was checking his drums and cymbals. Lawrence Brown, the trombonist, and trumpeters Cootie Williams and Cat Anderson were inspecting their pieces and arranging their music stands.
As Duke Ellington wandered through the Wildenstein Gallery on East 64th Street in New York in March 1968, he marveled at the superb French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art exhibition titled "Degas's Racing World." On display were 130 paintings, drawings, and bronzes of horses, jockeys, and people at the race track. Highlighting the Wildenstein show were 90 art works of Edgar Degas. (Although famous for his paintings of ballet dancers, Degas had a long time interest in horses and horse racing. During his career, the famous artist made at least 45 paintings, 20 pastels, 250 drawings, and 17 sculptures of horses and riders.) Besides Degas's art, the exhibition also displayed 40 works by eleven other French artists such as Boudin, Gйricault, Forain, Toulouse-Latrec, Dufy, and Bonnard.

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Compassion, Thy Name is Anna
I have been writing a little book, its special aim being to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses. From Anna Sewell's Diary.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Rita in Calcasieu Parish in southwest Louisiana, the pilot aboard the American Humane Association (AHA) helicopter saw two trapped horses standing in water in a roofless barn. The pilot immediately placed an emergency rescue call to the AHA field station at Lake Charles. Allan Schwartz, co-founder of Days End Farm Horse Rescue in Lisbon, Maryland, and other volunteers responded without delay.