This is likely of importance to very few people but it is something I think about every day. I am a fan of Australian rules football.
It is my favorite sport. My fellow Americans are largely unaware that
Australian rules football exists. It is neither American "grid iron"
football, soccer, or rugby. It is a unique "code" of football. It is
hugely popular in Australia where the sport has been played since the
1850s.
In
2013 my wife and I had a wonderful trip to Japan and Australia. Our
youngest son and family were stationed in Japan in the U.S. Air Force
for three years. We visited them for six days, then spent six days in
Australia, then four more days in Japan before returning to the U.S.
While in Australia, we attended all five Australian Football League games held in Melbourne, Victoria,
during the first weekend of August. Of the ten teams playing in
Melbourne that round, nine of them are teams I like or at least respect.
Those were among the happiest days of my life.
On Friday we took the guided tour of the Melbourne Cricket Ground
(the MCG), an outdoor stadium that seats one hundred thousand people.
Aussie rules football is played during Winter and cricket during Summer,
so stadiums like this nationwide are in use year round. Friday evening
we saw the North Melbourne Kangaroos beat the Geelong Cats at the Docklands, a stadium with a retractable roof that seats 55,000 people. The coaches of both teams were twins!
On Saturday afternoon we saw the Richmond Tigers beat the Hawthorn Hawks at the MCG. Saturday evening we saw the Fremantle Dockers beat the Carlton Blues, again at the Docklands. The Dockers would play their first Grand Final (the Super Bowl equivalent) later that year.
See highlights of Carlton V Frementle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIyOLFEI-5I
On Sunday, back to the Docklands again, we saw the Sydney Swans (that year's champions, which Aussies call "Premieres") beat the Western (Melbourne) Bulldogs. Then a quick commuter train ride to the MCG again to see the Collingwood Magpies (my favorite team) beat the Essendon Bombers for the second time that year, mostly under the lights after sunset.
See highlights of Collingwood Magpies V Essendon Bombers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21zFG10ajDw
That week, the Hawthorn Hawks were number one on the ladder, and the Geelong Cats
were number two. In spite of the fact that both teams lost, they
retained their ladder positions. The Grand Final that year, played in
late September, pitted the Hawthorn Hawks versus the Fremantle Dockers. It would be the first of three in a row Grand Final wins for Hawthorn (2013, 2014, & 2015).
The graphs seen here are screenshots from < www.australianfootball.com
>, a superb website, perhaps the best online resource that documents
the games of Australian rules football played in its home country.
Here, one can see which team members played at each game and how well
they performed. Click on individual charts to enlarge.
On Sunday, June 1, 2008, a fire erupted at the tape vault at Universal Studios in Hollywood. Universal's record division was on its way to becoming the largest record label in the U.S. Universal was already a huge and storied record company dating back to 78rpm records, released under brand names Decca, Coral, Brunswick, Vocalion, Kapp, Uni, & MCA. Add to that the numerous labels that Universal had acquired like Chess and ABC (ABC itself had acquired several great vintage r&b labels before leaving the record business in 1979, all of which was acquired by Universal.). News of the fire in 2008 was brief, short on detail, and quickly removed from the news cycle. 
In 2019, eleven years after the fire, the New York Times Magazine published a heartbreaking article about what was thought to have been destroyed. To record collections and fans of vintage rock 'n' roll and rhythm 'n' blues, the initial news in 2008 and the Times article was nearly as shocking as the bombing of Japan in World War 2. 
On August 9, 2023, a website called Tracking Angle posted a video on YouTube nearly one hour and forty-five minutes in length of a tour of Universal Record's tape vault near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The startling point made in this video and the accompanying article is that the warehouse that caught fire was in the process of being emptied and its contents being transferred to Pittsburgh. Further, the author asserts that among those master tapes lost in the fire, first generation copies of many were safely stored by Universal Music at facilities elsewhere, such as Germany. Earlier reports suggested there were no duplicates anywhere, which I doubted, considering how many reissues and compilation albums by vintage artists are released in the European countries and Great Britain. 
So, if you are interested in this process of reissuing vintage recordings on CDs and records (physical formats), I am sharing links to the video and relevant articles.
