So glad I remembered

I nearly forgot about today is the Mermaid Parade until I got on the F train and saw a car full of Mermaids and Mermen.



This year is the 36th annual Mermaid Parade on Coney Island, self described as the 'largest art parade in the nation.' The grand-marshals this year are, Queen Mermaid - Amanda Palmer, and her husband King Neptune - Neil Gaiman.

The parade begins at Surf Avenue and W 21st Street and travels along Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk to Steeplechase Plaza. It's a beautiful day today, if you can, why not catch the fun by the sea.


June 16, 1956 -
Gene Vincent (Capitol Record's answer to Elvis Presley) and the Bluecaps' (so named after Ike's golf cap) Be-Bop-A-Lula, was released on this date. 

  

Recorded in Nashville on May 4, 1956, this was released as the B-side of Vincent's first single, a provocative number called Woman Love. Radio stations in the United States wanted nothing to do with Woman Love, and the BBC banned it, so Capitol flipped the sides and put out Be-Bop-a-Lula as the A-side; for some reason the scandalous Woman Love was deemed inoffensive when relegated to a B-side.


June 16, 1960 - 
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opened in New York on this date.

 

When the cast and crew began work on the first day, they had to raise their right hands and promise not to divulge one word of the story. Alfred Hitchcock also withheld the ending part of the script from his cast until he needed to shoot it. 


June 16, 1984 -
Cyndi Lauper's song Time After Time topped the charts (her first no.1 hit) on this date.



Lauper came up with the title when she saw it in the magazine TV Guide. Time After Time was the name of a 1979 science fiction movie starring Malcolm McDowell as a man who invents a time machine. Rob Hyman said: "When she saw Time After Time, something clicked - she said, 'I think I have a title.'

Don't forget to tune into The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today 


Today in History:
June 16 1750 BC -
King Hammurabi died in Babylon on this date and was succeeded by his son Samsu-iluna.



I know you're saying to yourself, "Who cares?". Well, now you know.


June 16, 1556 -
Keep this in mind: Always read your Baedeker before traveling.

June 16, 1858 -
More than 1,000 Republican delegates met in the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse for the Republican State Convention. By late afternoon, they chose Abraham Lincoln as their candidate for the U.S. Senate, running against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.

Later that evening, Lincoln delivered this address to his Republican colleagues in the Hall of Representatives. The title comes a sentence from the speech's introduction, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," which paraphrases a statement by Jesus in the New Testament.



If only Lincoln had read his Scriptures a little more closely he would have uncovered the passage that had confused many biblical scholars, "Hey Abe, Don't go to Ford's Theatre on Good Friday."


June 16, 1890 -
British comedian Arthur Stanley Jefferson (Stan Laurel), was born on this date. He acted in 190 films (many of them with his partner Oliver Hardy) and was awarded a Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1961.



He died in 1965 from a heart attack. At Laurel's funeral, Buster Keaton said, "Chaplin wasn't the funniest, I wasn't the funniest, this man was the funniest."


June 16, 1904 -
Happy Bloomsday! 

Every June 16 (the date on which the novel is set,) the reader of Ulysses celebrate the day Leo Bloom takes his famous walk around Dublin. James Joyce fans mark the date each year, greeting one another joyously - Yes - yes - yes! they'll nervously titter. They'll think themselves very clever (at least they will, anyway.) 



They'll feel smart and proud and better than the rest of us (and you again can feel morally superior for knowing it), and now you know why.


June 16, 1948 -
In the first skyjacking of a commercial plane, three armed men stormed the cockpit of the Miss Macao, a passenger seaplane operated by Cathay Pacific airline.

When the pilot refuses to turn over the controls, he was shot dead and the plane crashes into the ocean. The only survivor among the 27 people on board was the leader of the terrorists.

Oops.


June 16, 1958 -
Imre Nagy, once prime minister of Hungary for all of ten days, was executed by the Soviet Union for attempting to withdraw his country from the Warsaw Pact on this date.



It is said that Nikita Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries."

That'll learn em.


June 16, 1959 -
While entertaining friends at his home, George Reeves (Ben Affleck), who played the title character in the original Superman TV series, went upstairs to his bedroom and committed suicide with a 9mm German Luger.

 

This has been hotly debated and it is now believe that the irate husband of a B movie actress Reeves was sleeping with, shot the actor in his home.


June 16, 1961 -
This may be a shock to some of you readers but some male ballet dancers engage in an active sodomy lifestyle. Rudolf Nureyev was a major buggerer, much to the consternation of both the Kirov management and the Russian political authorities. In the Kirov's first-ever appearance in Paris in 1961, Nureyev was an outstanding success, yet his defiance of company regulations about mingling with foreigners, provoked a command return to Moscow.

 

Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Kirov Ballet at Le Bourget Airport in France while he was on the verge of flying back to USSR on this date. Within five days, Nureyev embarked on a six-month season with the international Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, dancing the Prince and the Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty.


June 16, 1963 -
Valentina Tereshkova was the first female to travel outside the Earth's atmosphere. 



She traveled to space aboard the Soviet Union's Vostok 6.


June 16, 1976 -
15,000 schoolchildren took to the streets of Soweto to protest South Africa's adoption of bilingual instruction in the Afrikaans language.



The nonviolent march ended abruptly when police and soldiers opened fire on the crowd, killing 600 and igniting days of rioting throughout the region.


June 16, 1999 -
The founder of the United Kingdom's Monster Raving Loony Party, one Screaming Lord Sutch (real name David Edward Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow), was found hanged at his late mother's residence. Sutch was the longest lasting party leader in the UK at the time of his death, which was ruled a suicide.

 

One of the Loony Party planks was, all vegetables sold in supermarkets, should be clearly marked “Strictly for oral use only”



And so it goes. 


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