All posts tagged: bonanza

Wife of ‘Bonanza’ Star Dan Blocker Was 93

Wife of ‘Bonanza’ Star Dan Blocker Was 93

Published by Daniella Wilson

Dolphia Blocker, the wife of late Bonanza star Dan Blocker, died April 19 of a stroke in a hospital near her longtime home in Santa Barbara, her elder son, producer David Blocker, told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 93. She first met her future husband when both were attending Sul Ross State Teacher’s College in Alpine, Texas. The college sweethearts were married in September 1952 after he returned from a stint in the U.S. Army in the Korean War, during which he received a Purple Heart. Dan was an elementary school teacher in New Mexico when he moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting in late 1956 or early 1957 with Dolphia and their three young kids, twin girls Danna and Debbie (born in 1953) and David (born in 1955). The couple’s second son, Dirk, was born in Hollywood soon after they arrived. All four children would take karate lessons from Chuck Norris. On NBC’s Bonanza, the extremely likable Blocker portrayed the gentle giant Hoss Cartwright on more than 400 episodes over 13 seasons, from …

After hours of airtime in the Olympic spotlight, it’s a curling bonanza in America : NPR

After hours of airtime in the Olympic spotlight, it’s a curling bonanza in America : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Ted Hallock delivers a rock during a curling game at the Potomac Curling Club in Laurel, Md. Curling clubs often see a boost in interest following the Winter Olympics. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption toggle caption Claire Harbage/NPR After weeks of anticipation, Stacy Bishop packed her suitcase, wrangled her 6-year-old son and headed to the airport. Nine hours later she and her family arrived in Italy, ready to watch the Winter Olympics. Their event of choice: curling. Bishop is the media director of the Potomac Curling Club in Laurel, Md., and she built her entire vacation schedule around watching the curling pros in action on the ice. “We made some signs that hopefully people will think are funny if they see them on TV,” Bishop said the week before she left for Milan. “They say ‘the triple’s there’ and ‘peel the guard’ — things that curlers would find funny and nobody else. My 6-year-old has a flag that he will be waving that just says ‘sweep’.” Curling was the only sport to air every day of …

Huge fossil bonanza preserves 512-million-year-old ecosystem

Huge fossil bonanza preserves 512-million-year-old ecosystem

Published by skeptic

An artist’s illustration of life in Earth’s oceans at the time of the Huayuan biota Dinghua Yang An extraordinary 512-million-year-old fossil site has been discovered in southern China, preserving in vivid detail almost an entire ecosystem from a time shortly after Earth’s first mass extinction event. The fossils date from the Cambrian period, which began 541 million years ago. The early Cambrian saw an explosion of diversity in animal life which gave rise to most of the major groups alive today. But this flourishing came to a halt with the Sinsk event around 513.5 million years ago, when oxygen levels in the ocean fell, killing off several groups of animals. Han Zeng at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China and his colleagues began finding fossils at a quarry in the mountainous region of Huayuan County in Hunan Province in 2021. So far, they have analysed 8681 fossils from 153 species, nearly 60 per cent of which are new to science. The team has christened this ancient ecosystem the Huayuan biota and say …