Bageled

Or

Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be

(My first solicitation of my own whoop-whoop)
Two typical American stories - the success of immigrants through hard work and the ruin of a good local product by going national - came and went together in the life and death of Murray Lender, the leader of a family business that went from one bagel bakery in New Haven, Connecticut to a national brand of frozen bagels. Outside of a short stint in college and the Army, Lender worked for the family business his whole life, even after the company was bought out by Kraft. Lender made bagels, or “Jewish English muffins,” as he liked to call them, a common sight in even the most goyish household. That his creations are also as flat as the average English muffin and taste like the box the muffins came in didn’t seem to bother sales, which increased by double digits from the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s.

Red Bull Gives You Wings... and a Halo

Club kids and airplane racers the world over mourned the loss of Chaleo Yoovidhya, the Thai inventor of Red Bull. Born sometime between 1922 and 1932 (record keeping not being that important in rural Thailand), Yoovidhya worked on the family duck farm until, as a young man, he moved to Bangkok to work in his brother’s drugstore. He would eventually open his own pharmaceutical company, whose main product became a non-carbonated drink with a mix of sugar, caffeine, taurine and B vitamins that gave a kick valued by students, truckers, and anyone who just wanted to feel jumpy and exhausted at the same time. An Austrian toothpaste salesman would discover the drink and convince Yoovidhya to form a company with him to sell the drink abroad. It changed a bit in the process - the addition of bubbles, for example - but its popularity resulted in Yoovidhya becoming a mutli-billionaire. And like another multi-billionaire, Howard Hughes, Yoovidhya would become a recluse in his later years, not giving an interview in the 30 years before his death (though unlike Hughes, it does not seem that Yoovidhya kept his nail clippings or urine).

You Don’t Know Pope from Shenouda

Or

Copt Out

His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, the 117th Pope of Alexandria, the Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy Apostolic See of Saint Mark the Evangelist of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and head of the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, has died at the age of 88. Formerly Nazeer Gayed and Father Antonios the Syrian, Pope Shenouda led one of the world’s oldest religions, one of the original four Apostolic Sees of Christianity, for more than 40 years. He expanded the reach of the church, appointing the first bishops of North American dioceses, which today total more than 200 parishes in the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as the first bishops of Australia and South America. While as adamant as any about the superiority of Christianity, he was notable for favoring dialogue with all sects of Christendom, while also reaching out to Muslims. He did think that the Jews could suck it, earning exile from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for protesting his efforts to normalize relations with Israel in order to avoid getting smacked around again and losing the Pyramids. But then he started his Pope-ing as a controversial selection because Canon 15 of the Council of Nicea prohibits translation of bishops from one See to another, and any time you run afoul of 1400-year old church doctrines, you know you’ve stepped in it.

Gone in the Treblinka of an Eye

John Demjanjuk, either a cold-blooded mass murderer or the unluckiest man in history, has died at the age of 91. Demjanjuk claimed to have been born Ivan, been drafted by the Soviet Army, been wounded and imprisoned by the Germans, then changed his name to John when he emigrated to Cleveland. Which was exactly what the U.S. Justice Department, the Nation of Israel and a German court thought. Except in between being born Ivan and emigrating to Cleveland, they said that he added a nickname – “the Terrible” – and murdered thousands of Jews at the concentration camps in Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibor. He was deported to Israel, where witnesses and a 40-year old ID card that bore a striking resemblance to him led to his conviction and sentencing to being hanged, but his conviction was overturned when new evidence pointed to another Ukrainian. His citizenship was reinstated because prosecutors had withheld information during the trial, then revoked again when new allegations arose in Germany that led to a second conviction based on another S.S. ID card alleged to be his, testimony of relatives of victims killed at the Sobibor camp and a flurry of legal vagaries. His pleas of innocence were tainted when he made a very public display of being slack-jawed and immobile with a vacant stare in a wheelchair when being taken to Germany for the trial, only to have prosecutors show surveillance footage of him walking unaided while alert and engaged in conversation. Figuring that the second time was the charm, in 2009 the Simon Wiesenthal Center named him the most wanted war criminal on its list. His son claimed that under German law, convictions are not official until all appeals are completed, meaning that his death had vindicated him. Well played Ivan.