Michael Rosenwald

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Michael Rosenwald

In March 1983, a public relations official at Boston University asked Joseph Boskin, a scholar of humor in the history department, whether he knew anything about the origin of April Fools’ Day. Answering facetiously -- but apparently not facetiously enough, Dr. Boskin later recalled -- he replied that he had been researching the subject for many years. The university, to his surprise, issued a news release touting him as an authority on the subject.

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Michael Rosenwald

To oblige an eager reporter, he invented a story about the holiday's origin. He didn't realize it would turn out to be his "Andy Warhol moment." In March of 1983, a public relations official at Boston University asked Joseph Boskin, a scholar of humor in the history department, whether he knew anything about the origin of April Fools' Day.

2 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Michael Rosenwald

He took a down-to-earth approach to sexually transmitted infections, a subject no one wanted to discuss, arriving at novel methods of treatment and prevention. King K. Holmes, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington who almost single-handedly legitimized the study of sexually transmitted infections, turning a neglected, stigmatized subject into a major field of medical research, died on March 9 at his home in Seattle. He was 87.

2 weeks ago | post-gazette.com | Michael Rosenwald

Joe DePugh, the Little League teammate of Bruce Springsteen who inspired the rocker’s hit song “Glory Days,” a rousing, bittersweet anthem to their hardscrabble childhoods in Freehold, N.J., where time passed by “in the wink of a young girl’s eye,” died March 28 in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 75. The cause of death, in a hospice facility, was metastatic prostate cancer, his brother Paul DePugh said.

3 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Michael Rosenwald

Joseph Francis DePugh was born on Aug. 8, 1949, in Yonkers N.Y., the eldest of five boys. His father, Joseph, was frequently absent. His mother, Joan (Campbell) DePugh, a typist and clerk for the state of New Jersey, died of cancer in 1969. "We didn't have much, but, like Bruce, we had enough," Paul DePugh said in an interview. "We always had a roof over our heads.