Now I've Heard Everything

Sam Huff was such a force in the National Football League in the 1950s and ’60s that CBS television produced a special called “The Violent World of Sam Huff.” 

One of the first middle linebackers in the NFL, Huff was one of the game’s toughest competitors, first for the New York Giants, later for the Washington Redskins.

Huff played in six NFL Championship Games and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982.

In 1981, at the age of 16, Andrea Jaeger was ranked number two in the world among professional women tennis players. 

But at age 19, a shoulder injury ended her five-year pro career. 

Within two years, however, Jaeger launched her second career as an advocate for children with life-threatening illnesses.  

On July 20th, 1969, Buzz Aldrin was 39 years old, as he and Neil Armstrong became the first two human beings ever to set foor on the surface of the moon.

Fifty-one years sounds like a long time, but to those of us who remember watching it unfold live on TV, it's almost like it was yesterday.

To untold millions of people all over the world, Buzz Aldrin, to this day, remains a larger-than-life hero. That's why, when I met him in 2000, I was more than just a bit starstruck.

An icon of the American civil rights movement has died.  Congressman John Lewis was 80 when he passed away this weekend.

Here is a repost of an episode of Now I've Heard Everything that I first posted last February.

You could say that Richard Branson's success in business has always been about disruption. 

He disrupted air travel, he risrupted the music business, he disrupted retail -- all through the Virgin Group, which he founded in the 1970s.

I met him in fall 1998.  He had just written a memoir called "Losing My Virginity."

Hot air balloons, or lighter-than-air craft, have been around for centuries. But it wasn't until March 1999 that humans were able to circumnavigate the entire world in a single hot air balloon flight. 

The two guys who did it were British balloonist Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist. 

They co-piloted a massive balloon called Breitling Orbiter 3,  which launched March 1st,1999 from Switzerland and landed in Egypt 19 days and 27-thousand-900 miles laer.

In the 1980s movies like The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, WarGames, and Short Circuit made Ally Sheedy a star. She was a prominent member of the so-called Brat Pack.

I met her in 1991 when, at age 28, she had just published a collection of her poetry. Many of the poems in her book dated back to her teenage years. But as she remionded me, it's not like she was new to writing, or publishing.

Glamour, glitz, sex, power, drugs, and money.  All were staples of novels by Jackie Collins.

At the same time her sister Joan was making her name as an actress, Jackie Collins honed her craft as the author of novels in the tradition of Jacqueline Susann or Mickey Spillane.

And she was really, really good at it. She wrote 32 novels, all of which became New York Times Best Sellers. Her books have sold over 500 million copies worldwide. And many have been made into movies or TV series.

We lost a true American comedy genius last week.  

Carl Reiner was 98 when he passed away.  

I first met Carl Reiner  in 1993, and again in 1995, when he published a sequel to his iconic 1950s novel "Enter Laughing."

If Donald Trump thinks he's getting a rough time from the journalist who cover him at the White House, he's never met Sam Donaldson. 

From 1977 to 1989 -- the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan years -- Donaldson was was Chief White House correspondent for ABC News.  

During those twelve years, Donaldson proved to be a relentless, aggressive reporter, never letting the president get away with a vague, evasive, or unsatisfactory answer to a question.