Claudio Del Vecchio: The Man Who Brought Back the Golden Fleece

Soon after buying Brooks Brothers in late 2001, Claudio Del Vecchio took a trip to the warehouse that keeps the company’s archives. When a business has been around since 1818, you wind up with a lot of history—especially when you’re talking about the retailer that sold Abraham Lincoln the overcoat he wore to Ford’s Theatre, F.D.R.

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Kevin Clash: The Man Behind Sesame Street’s Elmo

Kevin Clash is an Emmy-award-winning performer and producer with dozens of TV and film credits to his name, but he’s far better known as a furry red monster. Clash is the puppeteer and the voice behind Elmo, one of the most popular characters on the seminal children’s television show Sesame Street, which this week marks its 40th anniversary with a series of special episodes and a two-disc DVD set, Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days

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Mississippi River Flood Concerns Hurt Memphis Tourism

While television reporters delight in doing stand-ups while wading through water, the truth is, only a tiny percentage of the city of Memphis has been affected by flooding. But with images of the swollen Mississippi River driving tourists away from Beale Street, the city’s famed party strip is dry and far too sober

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Language: Spanglish Spoken Here

In Manhattan a first-grader greets her visiting grandparents, happily exclaiming, “Come here, sientate!” Her bemused grandfather, who does not speak Spanish, nevertheless knows she is asking him to sit down. A Miami personnel officer understands what a job applicant means when he says, “Quiero un part time.” Nor do drivers miss a beat reading a billboard alongside a Los Angeles street advertising CERVEZA — SIX-PACK! This free-form blend of Spanish and English, known as Spanglish, is common linguistic currency wherever concentrations of Hispanic Americans are found in the U.S

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Visiting Chernobyl 25 Years Later: Lessons for Fukushima

The 18.5-mile radius around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is known officially as the “zone of alienation.” Abandoned cars, tractors, buildings and homes litter the landscape and are slowly being devoured by trees and shrubs. A classroom bulletin board not far from the central Lenin Street in the town where the plant workers used to live reads, “No return

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Reagan’s Daughter Patti Remembers Father: Grace Under Fire

Several years into my father’s journey down the narrowing road of Alzheimer’s, when he was still going out for walks, I looped my arm through his one afternoon and walked with him along a leafy street near my parents’ home. A few people recognized him, waved and called out, “Hello, Mr.

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