ONG's "Six Degrees of Separation" Challenge

My buddy Dirt Digger @ Obsessive Neurotic Gardener threw down the eccentric challenge gauntlet.

You remember the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon', don't you? "This actor was in a movie with this actor, who was in a movie with this actor,....who was in 'Footloose' with Kevin Bacon." You get six tries, before you have to end up with Mr. Bacon. This is just like that. ONG had the very quirky idea of doing 'Six Degrees of Separation' starting with his favourite sports team and with something to do with gardening as the end result.

So I am accepting the challenge, and using his template.

As with his post, a lot of the facts I'm writing about were sourced from The Bible of Wikipedia. Because I'm smart, but not that smart. But the facts were checked from other pages as well...and they're not word for word. Put that disclaimer in your pipe and smoke it :)

1st Degree
__________

My favourite sports team? The Edmonton Oilers.



Totally sucked last year. Worst team in the league. But I love 'em...they're m'Boys!



Fun Facts:

~Became an NHL team in 1979

~Oilers won the Stanley Cup on five occasions: 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990.

~My brother Kevin was on his way to becoming an NHL player in the 80's. Unfortunately he was injured and couldn't continue his career. He was briefly on the Oilers roster in 1986, during the Gretzky era.

2nd Degree
__________

Wayne Gretzky. The Great One.



Fun Facts:

~Captain of the Edmonton Oilers, until he was (allegedly) involuntarily traded to the LA Kings in 1988. This was EXTREMELY unpopular in my city, and the owner at the time, Peter Pocklington, was infamously vilified for doing it. Gretzky was our hockey royalty. No joke. But some say he wanted to go because his new wife was from LA.

~His $1M wedding to actress Janet Jones in 1988 was televised nationally in Canada. St Joseph's Basilica, the church he was married at in Edmonton, was right across the street from my dad's apartment building. I still remember watching them come out of the church from my dad's balcony, and I was only 7 years old!

~The band Goldfinger has a song entitled "Wayne Gretzky". Hilarious. It's about a heterosexual man's love for a sports legend. Listen to it, it's less than 2 minutes long. :)


~His famous number '99' jersey was retired league-wide when he retired in....1999. No one else can ever wear that number, on any team.


3rd Degree
__________

The number 99 is the atomic number for Einsteinium on the Periodic Table of Elements.



Slightly Boring Facts:

~It is a metallic synthetic element, does not occur naturally.

~Has no known uses other than for scientific research...fun for bored scientists...

"Hey guys! I just totally made an element out of plutonium! Just for shits and giggles! Check it out!!"




4th Degree
__________

Albert Einstein.



Fun (and some slightly disturbing)Facts:

~Einstein had major speech difficulties as a kid

~Einstein cheated on his first wife (who was also a scientist) through most of their marriage, finally divorcing her and marrying his mistress. It was reported that he paid his first wife off with the money he won with the Nobel Prize, but that's disputed in some circles.

~Einstein's brain was removed without his family's permission after his death, by Dr. Thomas Stolz Harvey, so the doctor could study it. He was fired from Princeton Hospital for this.

~Einstein was really into civil rights. He was even a member of the NAACP at Princeton. Einstein called racism 'America's worst disease' in 1946.

~ U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inspired to join the nuclear arms race very quickly because of a letter written to him by Einstein urging him that he had better get on the ball. Einstein had emigrated from Germany to the US in 1933, as a result of the trepidation he felt towards the new chancellor to Austria, Adolf Hitler.

5th Degree
__________

The movie "Young Einstein".



One of my favourite movies of all time.

Quick synopsis:

Yahoo Serious (an Australian actor known for slapstick comedy) plays an alternate universe Albert Einstein. Albert's the son of Tasmanian apple farmers. Much to his parents' chagrin, he wants to be a physicist instead of an apple farmer.

Albert accidentally comes up with E=mc2 when attempting to split a beer atom in his dad's home brew shed, thus creating foamy beer (and blowing up his dad's shed in the process). His sets off for the Australian mainland patent office to patent his equation. They won't patent it unless he has an invention, so he creates the first electromagnetic guitar and inadvertantly comes up with rock and roll.

A devious enterpreneur steals his formula to make the largest bubbled beer producing machine in the world...but accidentally creates the atomic bomb instead. He doesn't realize this, and is showing it off at a large gala for scientists in Paris. Once he gets it started, he realizes what he's done. Albert knows he must diffuse this giant atomic bomb with his electromagnetic guitar, through the scientific power of rock and roll.

Effing weird, eh? I love it!!




6th Degree
__________

Apples.



Fun Facts:

~7,500 varieties of apples are grown throughout the world.

~The science of apple growing is called pomology.

~The apple tree originated in an area between the Caspian and the Black Sea.

~Apples are a member of the rose family

~In 1730, the first apple nursery in the US was opened in Flushing, New York

~It takes about 36 apples to create one gallon of apple cider


What's my favourite thing about apples?



Magner's Irish Cider, baby.

That's my 6 degrees!!!


And if you find yourself saying...



...go ask Mr. Digger (not to be confused with Mr. Diggler, I don't know him well enough for that). He came up with the idea.