Kokomo ( /ˈkoʊkəmoʊ/) is the county seat of Howard County, Indiana, United States, Kokomo is Indiana's 12th largest city. It is the principal city of the Kokomo, Indiana Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Howard and Tipton counties. On January 1, 2012, Kokomo successfully annexed 11,000 people in outlying areas including Alto and Indian Heights. Kokomo's population was 46,113 at the 2000 census. With the 2012 annexation, Kokomo's population increased to around 57,000 people.

Kokomo was named after a Miami Indian referred to as a chief, but later found to be local legend Ma-Ko-Ko-Mo, which is sometimes spelled as "Koh-Koh-Mah" or "Kokomoko". His name translates to Black Walnut. There was a trading post for commerce between Native Americans and European-Americans here in the early 19th century. David Foster founded the first trading post in Howard County. In 1844, Foster donated 40 acres (160,000 m²) of his land to create a county seat in Kokomo, which was a log courthouse, for use in the community. It was incorporated as a city in 1865.

Indiana (ⁱ/ɪndiˈænə/) is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the midwestern and Great Lakes regions of North America. Indiana is the 38th largest by area and the 15th most populous of the 50 United States. Indiana is the least extensive state in the continental US west of the Appalachian Mountains. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis, the second largest of any state capital and largest state capital east of the Mississippi River.

Before it became a territory, varying cultures of indigenous peoples and historic Native Americans inhabited Indiana for thousands of years. Angel Mounds State Historic Site, one of the best preserved ancient earthwork mound sites in the United States, can be found in Southwestern Indiana near Evansville. Residents of Indiana are known as Hoosiers. The etymology of the word is disputed, but the leading theory as advanced by the Indiana Historical Bureau and the Indiana Historical Society has "Hoosier" originating from the upland South region of the U.S. as a derogatory slang term for a rough countryman, a country bumpkin.

Vaughn Wilton Monroe (October 7, 1911 – May 21, 1973) was an American baritone singer, trumpeter and big band leader and actor, most popular in the 1940s and 1950s. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording and radio.

Monroe was born in Akron, Ohio on October 7, 1911. He graduated from Jeannette High School in Pennsylvania in 1929 where he was senior class president and voted "most likely to succeed." After graduation, he attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he was an active member of the Sigma Nu fraternity. Monroe attended New England Conservatory for one semester in 1935, studying voice with Clarence B. Shirley.

He formed his first orchestra in Boston in 1940 and became its principal vocalist. He began recording for Victor's low-priced Bluebird label. That same year, Monroe built The Meadows, a restaurant and nightclub on Route 9 in Framingham, Massachusetts, west of Boston. He hosted the Camel Caravan radio program from there starting in 1946. It burned to the ground in December 1980.

Keith Theodore Olbermann ( /ˈoʊlbərmən/; born January 27, 1959) is an American political commentator and writer. Most recently, he was the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of the Current TV weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, until March 30, 2012, a program he hosted with the same title and a similar format on MSNBC from March 2003 to January 2011.

During his time at MSNBC, Olbermann established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining note for his pointed criticism of mainly right-leaning politicians and public figures such as Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly,President George W. Bush and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain. Though he has been described as a "liberal", he has resisted being labelled politically, stating "I'm not a liberal. I'm an American".

Olbermann spent the first twenty years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times. He co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997. From 1998 to 2001, he was a producer and anchor for Fox Sports Net and a host of Major League Baseball on Fox.

Michael Phillip "Mike" Seidel is an American meteorologist who has worked at The Weather Channel since March 1992. He is noted for his field reporting from breaking weather including severe weather, hurricanes and snowstorms.

Seidel's interest in weather started at the age of six when he began measuring snowfall in his hometown of Salisbury, Maryland. While he was in the eighth grade in school, Seidel installed a weather station on the roof of his house. He worked for four local radio stations during his high school and college years, including WJDY-AM in Salisbury, WDMV-AM in Pocomoke City and WKHI-FM in Ocean City (all three in Maryland), as well as WSUX-FM in Seaford, Delaware. After graduating from Wicomico Senior High School, Seidel attended Salisbury State College and earned a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in mathematics, in 1979. He also majored in geography.

Immediately after his graduation, Seidel began his television career with WMDT-TV in Salisbury. Seidel also entered graduate school, and he earned his Master's degree in Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. Seidel wrote his master's thesis under the direction of Gregory S. Forbes, now The Weather Channel's expert on severe weather. During his graduate studies, Seidel appeared on Weather World on the Pennsylvania Public Television Network.