Neurologist. Yes, there is such a thing as a remote brain surgeon!  A Nevada Hospital is looking for a full-time neurology physician.  Benefits include:  $500 signing bonus; W2 salary; medical, dental, vision insurance; enhanced 401k plan; continuing education allowance; professional dues and licensure allowance; generous vacation/paid time off; paid travel.  Amazing!

Getting paid to wear shirts. In this up and down economy Jason Sadler has started outsourcing wardrobe (namely shirts)! He has been wearing a different shirt everyday in 2009, taking multiple pictures throughout the day, blogging, tweeting, and facebooking all over the internet. You do the math $1, $2, $3…$365! He is making a killing from home!

Metal Music Blogger. Finally get paid to Rock, from home!  This is a great occasional writing gig for a metal music fan who is very knowledgeable about the genre and who (ideally) already attends concerts and festivals. Ever wanted to get paid to talk about music? Here’s your chance!

Hello Kitty Online Community Manager. This full time position is being offered to a knowledgeable and passionate Hello Kitty fan anywhere in the world! Offered by the gaming company, they are hiring an online community manager for all things Hello Kitty.

Magazine publisher, Hugh Hefner. So this list is obviously not in order. Working from the Playboy mansion, with the parties bunnies, cars, pools, animals, and everything else any Playboy could ever want is by far the best work from home job ever! In 1953, Hugh raised $8,000 from 45 investors to launch Playboy. Work clothes: robe!

Toishanese Interpreter. What is Toishanese you ask? Well it is a dialect of Cantonese mainly spoken in and around Taishan, a county-level city situated southwest of Guangzhou on the coast of Guangdong province. Don’t live in or around Taishan? Work from home! International interpretation services hire for tons of different languages, including Spanish, French, German, and some exotic languages like Toishanese too!

Virtual Juror. Did you like being on a jury but hated getting up early and driving to the courthouse? This is for you! Telecommuting Jurors review information, answer attorneys’ questions, and provide feedback on cases. Must be over 18 and a US citizen, but what a sweet gig!

So there you have it. If you’ve always wanted to quit, or just got laid off. There is a job for everyone, and your office can be your couch!

• 1054 – The Chinese, the Arabs and possibly Amerindians (the who?) observe a supernova near the star Tauri. It was bright enough to be seen during the day for several months.
  

• 1634 – The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France. It would later become Quebec.
  

  Coat of arms of Trois-Rivières

• 1636 – Roger Williams establishes the city of Providence, Rhode Island

• 1776 – The second continental congress adopts the United States Declaration of Independence
  

  Yeah, America!

• 1778 – Kaskaskia is captured by George Clark and his men during the Illinois campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The population of Kaskaskia as determined by the 2000 census was 9.
• 1802 – The United States Military Academy opens at West Point, New York
• 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is announced.
  
• 1817 – Construction begins on the Erie Canal at Rome, New York. It would take 15 years to complete the 360+ mile canal.
• 1827 – New York State abolishes slavery.
• 1837 – The world’s first long-distance railway, Grand Junction Railway between Birmingham and Liverpool is opened. Today it is part of the West Coast Main Line, a railway system between London and Scotland.
• 1840 – The first transatlantic crossing with a scheduled end (as opposed to simply “whenever you get there”) takes place aboard the Cunard Line’s RMS Britannia, a 700 ton wooden paddle steamer.
• 1845 – Henry David Thoreau embarks on his two year experiment in simple and solitary living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts.

Walden Pond

• Walt Whitman’s seminal work, Leaves of Grass, is published in Brooklyn.
  

  Walt Whitman in 1887. Check out that beard.

• 1862 – 10-year-old Alice Liddell is told a story by Lewis Carroll. The story would eventually become Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland when it would be published in November, 1865.
  

  Cover of the 1898 printing of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

• 1863 – After 47 days of fighting, the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi during the American Civil War ends. The town would not recognize Independence Day for almost eighty years following the battle.
• 1881 – The Tuskegee Institute opens in Tuskegee, Alabama
  

  The Tuskegee Institute in 1916

• 1886 – France offers the Statue of Liberty to the United States.
  

  As a lighthouse, the flames inside the statue's torch were the cause of death for hundreds of birds each night.

• 1892 - Western Samoa changes the location of the International Date Line such that the country recognizes 367 days per year.
• 1894 – Sanford B. Dole, relative of the pineapple magnate, proclaims the Republic of Hawaii.
• 1934 – The nuclear chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb is patented by Hungarian physicist, Leo Szilard, who would go on to later work on the Manhattan Project.
• 1939 – After being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig announces his retirement from baseball at Yankee Stadium. After a presentation by Babe Ruth, Gehrig addressed the crowd: –

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

–

“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

–

“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that’s the finest I know.

–

“So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

• 1946 – The Philippines attains full independence from the United States after 381 years of colonial rule.
• 1947 – The Indian Independence Bill is passed by the British House of Commons, leading to British India being split into today’s India and Pakistan.
• 1959 – The 49-star-flag is debuted in Philadelphia after Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. state.
  

  Congressmen celebrate Alaska's new statehood

• 1960 – Ten months after its admission as the 50th U.S. state on August 21st, 1959, the 50-star flag is debuted once again in Philadelphia.
• 1966 – The Freedom of Information Act is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• 1969 – The Zodiac Killer attacks his first two victims in Blue Rock Springs, California. One survives.
• 1976 – In 53 minutes, Israeli commandos rescue 102 hostages from a hijacked Air France flight from Israel to Paris who were being held in Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
• 1976 – On the other side of the globe, America celebrates its bicentennial.
  • Among other things, New Jersey offers a Bicentennial Lottery where the winner would receive $1,776 a week for 20 years ($1,847,040, all before taxes)
  • NASA paints an American flag and the official bicentennial logo on the side of its massive vehicle assembly building. Each star on the flag is six feet across, the blue background behind the stars is the size of a regulation basketball court, and each stripe is as wide as a road lane
    

    NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building in 1976. The bicentennial logo (the star on the right) wasn't replaced with the NASA logo until 1998.

• 1987 – World War II Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie is convicted of crimes against humanity.
• 1997 - NASA’s Pathfinder lands on Mars
  

  The surface of Mars upon Pathfinder's landing in 1997

• 2004 – The cornerstone is laid on the former World Trade Center site in New York City for One World Trade Center (no longer “Freedom Tower” — it’s official!)
  
• 2006 – North Korea fires six test missiles — four short-range, one medium-range, and one long-range, which is rumored to have failed mid-air above the Sea of Japan.
• 2009 – After 8 years of closure, the crown of the Statue of LIberty re-opens for guests.
  

“We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event… and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ before we sign off.”

• Launched a short-lived competitor to MTV in 1984, the Cable Music Channel, which lasted 33 days. The story behind CMC is actually pretty interesting and almost warrants its own post.

• Attempted to buy CBS, instead bought the MGM/United Artists for $1.5 billion just to sell parts of it back to others in an effort to reduce debt. Turner retained ownership of a gigantic film and television library, which now includes

  The Wizard of Oz
  A Christmas Story
  Gone With the Wind
  Tom & Jerry
  North by Northwest
  Gilligan’s Island
  2001: A Space Odyssey
  Looney Tunes

  … along with a significant chunk of the pre-1986 MGM/UA TV and film library, the RKO Radio Pictures Library, and the pre-1950 Warner Bros. film library.

• Used to own theatrical and television rights to Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
• Had to start an entire company (Turner Entertainment) to manage all of his film assets in 1986.
• Bought World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1988, later sold it to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).
• Launched the philanthropic Turner Foundation in 1990 which distributes grants for environmental and population-relatd work. As part of this, he created Captain Planet. That’s right. Ted Turner made Captain Planet.
• Created the United Nations Foundation in 1998 to manage his $1 billion donation to the UN’s causes. The one billionth dollar was donated by 2006.
• Served in the Coast Guard, receiving the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism (not to be confused with the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism).
• Is the recipient of 42 honorary degrees.
• Bought Hanna-Barbera Productions and acquired Castle Rock Entertainment (distributors of Seinfeld, among other things) and New Line Cinema in the early 1990s.
• In 2001, launched the Nuclear Threat Initiative to “close the growing and increasingly dangerous gap between the threat from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the global response.”
• Was Time’s Man of the Year in 1991 and Broadcasting & Cable (Magazine)’s Man of the Century in 1999. How an industry which has not existed for more than a century can have an industry publication that awards such a designation remains a mystery.

And now, the complete listing of his media properties (thanks, Wikipedia!)

TV

• CNN
• CNN HD
• HLN (CNN Headline News)
• CNN Airport Network
• CNN International
• CNN en Español
• CNN Chile
• CNN+ (Only in Spain)
• CNN IBN (Localized to India)
• n-tv (HLN Germany)
• CNN Turk (Localized to Turkey)
• truTV (formerly CourtTV)
• NBA TV
• TBS
• TBS HD
• TNT
• TNT HD
• TCM (Turner Classic Movies)
• WPCH-TV, Atlanta
• Cartoon Network
  • Cartoon Network Studios
  • Adult Swim
  • Williams Street
• Boomerang
• Boomerang UK (+ multiple localized European versions)
• Cartoonito (UK)
• Cartoon Network Too (UK)
• Fashion TV Latin America
• Infinito TV (Latin America only)
• Space (Latin America)
• Retro (Like TV Land, but for Latin America)
• China Educational Television Network (approx. 40% ownership)
• Nuts TV (UK-only, if Maxim had their own network, it would be this)
• Pogo (Cartoon Network for India)
• Boing (Cartoon Network for Italy)

Web Properties

• PGA.com & PGATour.com
• NASCAR.com
• GameTap
• CartoonNetwork.com
• AdultSwim.com
• CNNMoney.com
• CNN.com
• iReport.com
• TBS.com
• TNT.tv
• TruTV.com
• PlayON! Sports Network

It is surprising that the guy only has a net worth of about $2.3 billion.

When discussing the project with a number of my friends and colleagues, the first thing I typically hear back is, “Well, what is awesome?” The answer is simple: lots of things.

What you will find here is a collection of the most interesting people, events, products, and ideas. Some of them you perhaps will be familiar with, others not so much. Ultimately I would like you, the reader, to come away from the whole thing knowing about and appreciating the world just a bit more.

If you have suggestions or would like to help out, feel free to send an email to curator@whatisawesome.com.

Happy reading!

Ian