There’s an old tradition among Italian singers: they won’t go on stage unless they see a bent nail. Don’t ask. A certain Italian tenor saw a bent nail on February 17, 1972 (one of many planted surreptitiously by stagehands at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House), and it proved to be quite an omen. Although he had an international reputation, he was the new kid on the block here, making his first appearance in the United States. The production was Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, and Luciano Pavarotti sang the role of the peasant Tonio opposite Joan Sutherland. He brought down the house with his mastery of the amazing aria “Ah, mes amis” with its nine successive top Cs. His performance was one for the history books. At the opera’s conclusion, he received a record 17 curtain calls.
He would go on to do much, much more. Pavarotti’s 43-year career included 15 Grammy nominations, five wins and two Guinness world records. He would set another record for curtain calls in a 1988 Berlin production of L’elisir d’amore –165 curtain calls, lasting 67 minutes. His 1990 Three Tenors concert with José Carreras and Plácido Domingo sold 10.5 million albums, the most for a classical recording.
Another Kid, Another Block
Mickey Dugan, a bald, snaggle-toothed kid with a silly grin who always wore an over-sized yellow hand-me-down nightshirt, was right at home in the 19th century New York slum known as Hogan’s Alley, and beginning on February 17, 1895, became right at home in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.
In the neighborhood filled with quirky characters that was home to R. F. Outcalt’s comic strip, Mickey, also know as the Yellow Kid was the quirkiest. The Hogan’s Alley comic strip gradually became a full-page Sunday color cartoon with the Kid as its main character. He spoke in a muddled slang that was practically his own language, and everything he said was printed on his nightshirt as though he were a walking billboard.
It may have been a cartoon, but Outcault’s comic strip aimed its humor and social commentary squarely at an adult audience. It has been described as a turn-of-the-century theater of the city, in which a group of mischievous ragamuffins act out the class and racial tensions of the their urban environment.
As the Kid’s popularity grew, the strip’s presence actually increased paper sales for the World, and led to all sorts of merchandising from dolls to playing cards to cigarettes. It also earned Outcault the appellation ‘father of the comic strip.’
When You Wish Upon a Book
The Sears & Roebuck catalog may have become the Magilla Gorilla of mail order, but Aaron Montgomery Ward, born on February 17, 1844, beat 
Mr. Sears and Mr. Roebuck to the punch by 18 years — and there was only one of him. As a young traveling salesman, Ward saw firsthand how rural folk were being poorly served by small town general merchandisers. Couldn’t they have some of the same opportunities to buy lots of stuff as their big 
city counterparts? Of course they could, Ward answered, and in 1872, the mail-order catalog was born.
That first catalog was a one-page price list featuring 163 items. By 1874, it had grown to 32 bound pages; by 1895, over 600 pages with thousands of items. Dubbed the Wish Book, it was a magnificent thing, 
fully illustrated with woodcuts and drawings, hawking anything you could possibly want — tools, jewelry, millinery, musical instruments, furniture, bathtubs and buggies. Cradle to grave.
Wretched Richard's Almanac 