After a two year hiatus due to COVID, the 34th annual Fleet Week New York will start today and continue through May 31st, and the U.S. Navy says about 2,600 Sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen will be on hand to join in the "celebration of sea services."
(I will not play In The Navy, no sir.)
As the old jokes goes: Take care lady, the streets are full of seamen. Remember next week is Cipro week in NYC
Today is Towel Day. Remember a towel is "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have."
Towel Day is celebrated every May 25th as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. On this day, fans carry a towel with them to demonstrate their love for the books and the author, as referenced in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
(So keep that in mind with your intergalactic travels this summer)
So don't panic.
Let your Geek Pride Show!
The date was reportedly chosen to coincide with the first Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope, which was released on May 25, 1977. The day also marks Towel Day, which is celebrated by fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams. Fans carry a towel in his honor. Lastly, the day also marks The Glorious 25th of May, which fans of author Terry Pratchett's Discworld celebrate, often with a sprig of lilac.
May 25, 1934 -
The classic 30s detective film, based on the Dashiell Hammett novel, The Thin Man, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, premiered on this date.
W.S. Van Dyke often did not bother with cover shots if he felt the scene was right on the first take, reasoning that actors "lose their fire" if they have to do something over and over. It was a lot of pressure on the actors, who often had to learn new lines and business immediately before shooting without the luxury of retakes, but Myrna Loy credited much of the appeal of the film to Van Dyke's pacing and spontaneity.
May 25, 1953 -
Universal-International released their first 3-D feature film, It Came from Outer Space, directed by Jack Arnold (and based on a story written by Ray Bradbury,) starring Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, and Charles Drake in the US, on this date.
This was one of the few American movies from the 1950s to place its credits at the end rather than at the beginning.
May 25, 1966 -
Norman Jewison's Cold War comedy, The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming, premiered on this date.
Ordinary townspeople were used as extras in the film. They were so thrilled to be a part of production that the rushes were shown at the end of each day in a local theater. The townspeople went every night, bringing their entire families with them.
May 25, 1966 -
Robert Bresson's classic, Au Hasard Balthazar, starring Anne Wiazemsky, and François Lafarge, was released in France on this date.
In an interview, Bresson said he was inspired to make the story after reading a passage in Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot, in which the main character the Prince mentions his special fondness among animals for the lowly donkey.
May 25, 1977 -
In a time long ago and in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas began legally printing money with the release of the first Star Wars movie, which for reasons only know to George was titled - Stars Wars IV: A New Hope.
George realized that he did not have enough money so he released Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi on this date in 1983.
The point-of-view shots for the speeder bike sequence were achieved by having a camera operator with a Steadicam walk through the forest at normal speed with the camera filming at one frame per second. When the footage was played back at twenty-four frames per second, it gave the appearance of flying through the forest at high speeds.
May 25, 1979 -
Twentieth Century Fox released the science fiction film Alien, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto, and John Hurt, on this date.
It was conceptual artist Ron Cobb who came up with the idea that the Alien should bleed acid. This came about when Dan O'Bannon ran into a wall with the screenplay in how to handle the last half of the movie. He needed a good reason for why the crew members don't just shoot the thing and kill it but still not make it an indestructible monster that can't be killed. The acid blood was the idea that solved this problem.
May 25, 1999 -
The final episode of Home Improvement, The Long And Winding Road aired on ABC-TV on this date.
The name Binford in Binford Tools, the company that sponsors the Tool Time show, comes from a family's last name that one of the producers has befriended.
Another posting from the ACME Employment Agency
Today in History:
May 25, 1521 -
Charles V, a Holy Roman Emperor (Who was neither holy or a Roman - he was just a German King) issues the Diet of Worms edict (which neither comprised of non-arthropod invertebrates nor helps you lose weight,) on this date.
Martin Luther, German monk and all around killjoy, couldn't stomach this diet (as it declaring him an outlaw for not eating worms, banning his writings, and requiring his arrest) and goes off to start the Protestant Reformation.
May 25, 1793 -
The first Catholic priest, Father Stephen Theodore Badin, was ordained in the United States and sent on a mission in Kentucky, on this date.
May 25, 1803 -
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on this date. Emerson whose original profession, a Unitarian minister but secret calling was as, an amateur plumber, left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking.
Emerson became one of America's best known and best loved 19th century figures, writing such works as Trust Thyself and carry a self-threading snake and Bacchus on the chamber pot.
May 25, 1895 -
Lax laundry standards in Victorian England helped convict British playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons," to wit: buggering some rent boys. Some of the evident against Wilde was presented by a hotel housekeeper who stated that she had seen young men in Wilde’s bed and noticed that there were fecal stains on his bed sheets.
For his crime, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor in Reading jail. Perhaps, he should have taken up embezzlement instead.
May 25, 1925 -
John Scopes was indicted for violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, on this date, which prohibits the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in Tennessee public schools. Evolution was a theory put forth by Charles Darwin, whose boat was named "the Beagle." People objected to this theory, which put forth the proposition that mankind had evolved from life forms with hairy red asses.
This resulted in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Spencer Tracy gave a long monologue that changed everyone's minds even though it was so darn hot in the courtroom.
May 25, 1950 -
The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, the longest-continuous, underwater-vehicular tunnel (measuring 1.7 miles long between portals) in North America, opened in NYC, on this date.
A parade of dignitaries led by Mayor William O’Dwyer and Robert Moses, head of the newly created Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, traveled by motorcade through the tunnel where they were welcomed by a cheering crowd on the Manhattan side.
May 25, 1961 -
President John F. Kennedy proposed to Congress on this date, a goal for the U.S., "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."
The USSR had become the first country to send a man into space the month before, and Congress embraced Kennedy's plan.
May 25, 1996 -
The body of Bradley Nowell was discovered in his room at San Francisco's Ocean View Motel on this date.
Nowell, lead singer for radio trio Sublime, was killed by an accidental smack overdose.
Oops.
May 25, 2001 -
Erik Weihenmayer was the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on this date. He also completed the Seven Summits in September 2002. His story was covered in a Time article in June 2001 titled Blind Faith.
He is author of Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye can See, his autobiography.
And so it goes.
1 comment:
Bacchus on the chamber pot, indeed
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