What's In a Name?

The first NASCAR race of the year, the Daytona 500, will be starting here shortly and I'm pumped for another season. I just wish we would get to racing and forget the Digger cartoons and the music. I just watched a New Zealander, Keith Urban, who is supposed to be a country singer. I didn't realize that was country music, it has evidently changed since my old Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings days of listening to country music. Keith Urban sounds more like an urbanized country music. Keith and I share the same first name, but I doubt little else. He can sing...and I can't, and he's married to Nicole Kidman...and I'm not. Consequently, Keith Urban gets the Keith Medal and not Keith Sims.

There really is a Keith Medal, believe it or not, but it has nothing to do with country music, Tom Cruise's ex-wife or Ol Simmons. The Keith Medal is given by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the national academy of Scotland. This prize is awarded for new discoveries in mathematics or earth sciences. I know, you're asking where did the medal get its' name? It was started in 1827 after the Royal Society received a monetary gift from its' first treasurer, Alexander Keith. I just looked this all up and thought it was interesting so I passed it along to you. So if you ever hear of the Keith Medal, now you know without any reservations that it has nothing to do with me.

Who in the heck is Alexander Keith? Besides being the first treasurer of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Mr. Keith was a brewer. Not just a home brewer, but the brewer of Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale and the founder of the oldest working brewery in North America. This old brewery is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Alexander Keith was twice elected Mayor of Halifax.

While I'm talking about these Keiths, I need to mention one more. This fellow was the nephew of the great brewer and his name was Alexander "Sandy" Keith Jr. Sandy was probably more famous than his uncle, but not as well liked and history paints an awful dark picture of this renowned Keith.

Although Sandy's early life provided little of historical note, he became an agent for the Confederacy during the Civil War, which began his life as a notorious criminal and terrorist. As a secret agent for the Confederacy, Sandy spent much time coordinating blockade running operations and acting as a courier. During the war, Sandy became involved with a Dr. Luke Blackburn on an operation that may have been the first act of biological warfare in the United States. Dr. Blackburn was certain that he could pass along Yellow Fever by sending clothes and linens contaminated by Yellow Fever patients and with the help of Sandy Keith he had crates of this fabric shipped to northern cities. It wasn't learned until later that Yellow Fever was transmitted via mosquitoes. Unfortunately for the two, their knowledge of how to spread Yellow Fever was somewhat lacking and this nefarious deed was a failure. Some of you might have recognized the name of Dr. Luke Blackburn, strangely, he was later elected Governor of Kentucky.

Sandy Keith, toward the end of the Civil War, swindled some of his colleagues out of a million dollars and fled from Canada. After holing up in New York and St. Louis for awhile, Sandy became "William King Thomas" and moved to Germany. He lived quite well with a wife and four kids for several years, but his elegant lifestyle began to deplete his financial reserves. Sandy soon developed a scheme to blow up ship going passenger liners and get rich by collecting insurance. During his first attempt in 1875, the dynamite bomb, which he had loaded into a wooden barrel, was dropped by porters on the dock at Bremerhaven and a tremendous explosion occurred that killed 80 people.

Just a bit of history about us Keiths, and now it's time for the race. Boogity, boogity, boogity.