Koch Willing to Bet Dixie Dance Story Is Applesauce

--New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch wasted no time getting to the core of the dispute with Mayor T. Patton Adams of Columbia, S.C. Koch responded to a Monday New York Times article on Columbia’s claim that it originated the nickname “Big Apple,” which New York City claims is home-grown, with a wager. Koch has bet a New York-style pizza; Adams is offering 10 pounds of mustard-based barbecue to settle the controversy. Big Apple, Koch said, was musicians’ slang that came from jazz circles in Harlem. Columbia’s Adams claims the name came from the Big Apple dance performed 50 years ago at a nightclub of the same name in his city. “We’re not disputing the story about the Big Apple dance. Does it link up with the nickname? We’re not sure,” Koch spokesman Larry Simonberg said. Adams said he has lots of documentation, such as newspaper and magazine articles, photographs and oral histories of those who lived during the Great Depression era--including blacks who played and danced at the Columbia night club and their white counterparts who took the dance to New York’s Roxy Theatre.

--Upton Sinclair’s novel, “The Jungle,” which dealt with the squalid conditions in the Chicago stockyards eight decades ago, will be published in its original, uncut version by St. Lukes Press of Memphis, Tenn., in October. Sinclair cut his manuscript by a third for the 1906 Doubleday, Page edition to make the book more marketable, according to Gene DeGruson, a professor and curator of rare books at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. DeGruson said he pieced together the original novel from papers found in 1980 in a Girard, Kan., farmhouse. “The Jungle” had been serialized in the Appeal to Reason, a weekly socialist newspaper published in Girard. After Doubleday published the book, meat sales slumped and President Theodore Roosevelt ordered an investigation that led to the first Pure Food and Drug Act.

--Strong winds prevented a 71-year-old retired U.S. teacher from recapturing the title of the oldest person to swim the English Channel. Ashby Harper of Albuquerque was nearly halfway to France when he stopped the swim. He held the title from 1982 until last year, when he lost it to Australian Cliff Batt, who was 68 when he completed the crossing. “I do not plan to have another attempt. At least not this year,” Harper said.