"Big Apple" & recent Wikipedia change

bapopik at AOL.COM bapopik at AOL.COM
Sat Jul 22 22:40:20 UTC 2006


This is another reason that I don't like the Wikipedia (besides giving out scholarship for free).
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It appears that someone changed the "Big Apple" entry. The "Big Apple" origin is now "the result of the name jazz musicians gave in the 1940s." The definitive 1920s horseracing evidence is "another, less plausible explanation."
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People can change your work with crud overnight, at any time. You have to be alive and on 24-hour alert. I don't have time to change Wikipedia right now; BTW, some of the links don't work.
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(WIKIPEDIA)
The "Big Apple" is a nickname or alternate toponym for New York City. Its popularity since the 1970s is due to a promotional campaign by the New York Convention and Visitor's Bureau. Its earlier origins are the result of the name jazz musicians gave in the 1940's to the section of 52nd Street between 5th and 7th Avenues, which they called the Apple. If a jazz musician had reached the big time, he played in clubs on the Apple or Swing Street.
Another, less plausible, explanation, cited by the New-York Historical Society and others is that it was first popularized by John Fitz Gerald, who first used it in his horse racing column in the New York Morning Telegraph in 1921, then further explaining its origins in his February 18, 1924 column. Fitz Gerald credited African-American stable-hands working at horseracing tracks in New Orleans:
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