Columbus Day originated as a celebration of Italian-American heritage and was first held in San Francisco in 1869. The first state-wide celebration was held in Colorado in 1907. Franklin Delano Roosevelt pronounced Columbus Day in 1937, a celebration of the “promise which Columbus’s discovery gave to the world.” Since 1971, it has been celebrated on the second Monday in October. The date on which Columbus arrived in the Americas is also celebrated as the Dia de la Raza (Day of the Race) in Latin America and some Latino communities in the USA. However, it is a controversial holiday in some countries and has been re-named in others. A growing number of people in the US are pushing to change the date into a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day.
And for all of this has nothing to do with the fact that it's Canadian Thanksgiving.
Today is also Hug a Drummer Day.
Without drummers, we would soon notice how different and even weak music can be, so hail a day to celebrate such percussionists!
With your newsfeed jam packed with other, more heady news, some may not remember that we are celebrating cephalopods this week - today we also celebrate Squid Day/Cuttlefish Day.
Calamari could loom large in your day today - celebrate responsibly.
October 10, 1941 -
The last movie W C Fields starred in, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, premiered on this date.
This film marks the second attempt (after You Can't Cheat an Honest Man) by W. C. Fields to get the Madame Gorgeous plot line into a film. She was supposed to be either his wife (in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man) or his sister (here) and would die in a fall during a high-wire circus act. The plant for her death, in which Fields warns Gorgeous (Anne Nagel) about the risk involved in doing the act as stunt double for a star in a circus film, remains in the film but the actual death does not because once again Universal's executives insisted that such a tragic scene did not belong in a comedy.
October 10, 1953 -
The wonderful Stan Freberg topped the charts on this date with his record, St. George and the Dragonet.
The B side was another Dragnet spoof, Little Blue Riding Hood, based on the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood.
October 10, 1956 -
George Steven's sprawling epic, Giant, premiered in NYC on this date.
When Rock Hudson was cast, producer and director George Stevens asked him who he preferred as his leading lady, Grace Kelly or Elizabeth Taylor. Hudson picked Taylor, who was cast and ended up becoming life-long friends with Hudson.
October 10, 1957 -
Guy Williams galloped across TV screens as the masked hero, when Zorro, debuted on ABC-TV on this date.
Although Zorro was the most popular show in its Thursday evening slot, the series was pulled in 1959 due to legal wrangling between the Disney Studios and the ABC network. Disney tried to keep the character before the audience by shooting four one-hour episodes for another anthology series, but by the time the lawsuit was settled, the studio had decided the public had lost interest in the character and the series was cancelled.
October 10, 1958 -
The private-eye series 77 Sunset Strip starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.
The ownership battle over the rights to this show was the reason that Roy Huggins left Warner Bros. He'd created the concept behind the series, and Stuart Bailey was his creation, but the pilot episode was released theatrically, and had not been written by Huggins at all. It was a Warner Bros. property because the actual writer had been working for hire and had no legal claim to it, and so legal ownership of the show belonged to them.
October 10, 1961 -
Elia Kazan's bittersweet romance, Splendor in the Grass, starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, premiered on this date.
Right before shooting was set to begin, Pat Hingle suffered devastating injuries when he accidentally fell 54 feet down an elevator shaft in his apartment building. It would take Hingle over a year to fully recover from the accident. In the meantime, however, he decided to go ahead and do the film - he would simply incorporate his limp into the character. "I broke everything," Hingle said later. "I landed upright, so I broke hips and knees and ankles and ribs, and that sort of thing. That lurching walk that Ace Stamper has - that was as good as I could walk."
October 10, 1962 -
The British Broadcasting Company banned Monster Mash -- the Halloween-themed novelty tune by Bobby "Boris" Pickett -- for being "offensive."
The BBC felt the song was offensive (but never specifies precisely why) and banned it from the airwaves until 1973. It was re-released in 1973 and the song rose to #3 in the charts in the UK. By this time, Boris Pickett was driving a cab in New York City to earn a living.
October 10, 1964 -
The Shangri-Las released their operatic hit, Leader of the Pack, on this date.
This was written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry and producer Shadow Morton. Morton was looking for a follow-up to the first Shangri-Las' hit, Remember (Walking in the Sand). He had a motorcycle and was part of a motorcycle gang in his youth, so he, Greenwich and Barry decided to use that as the theme. Together, they came up with the rather dramatic story, being sure to name the characters in the lyric (Betty and Johnny) so the listener could form an attachment. A hallmark of the song is the spoken dialogue that sets up the story.
Later in 1964, The Detergents recorded a parody of this song called Leader Of The Laundromat.
October 10, 1968 -
One of the silliest movies Jane Fonda (or anyone else, for that matter) ever made, Barbarella, landed in US theatres on this date.
Lobby card stills and set photographs survive, showing footage of a seduction scene between Barbarella and the Black Queen on a bed. However, this footage has never appeared in any print of the movie.
October 10, 1969 -
King Crimson releases their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, considered by many to be the first progressive rock album.
An Atlantic Records ad at the time of the album's release claimed it featured the heaviest riffs on record since Mahler's 8th Symphony. "I know it had to cost ten thousand pounds to make," The Who's Pete Townshend was quoted as saying. "I can't tell if it's worth it."
Word of the Day
Today in History:
October 10, 1780 -
Over 48 hours, a slow-moving hurricane decimates Barbados, killing 4,326 (however according to the island's governor, "fortunately few people of consequence were among the number").
October 10, 1813 -
It's Joe Green's birthday today.
Verdi was so beloved in Italy that while he lay dying in the Grand Hotel in Milan, the horses in town had their hooves covered in cloth, so the noise would not disturb him.
October 10, 1886 -
Pierre Lorillard's family were wealthy tobacco magnates who owned country property in Tuxedo Park, just outside of New York City. At a formal ball, held at the Tuxedo Club in October 1886, the young Lorillard wore a new style of formal wear for men that he designed himself.
He named his tailless black jacket the tuxedo after Tuxedo Park. The tuxedo caught on and became fashionable as formal wear for men.
October 10, 1910 -
You think "The Skull and Bones" Society rule this country. Several of the readers and I (and well as George Stephanopoulos) are members of the fraternity, Tau Epsilon Phi. (It still causes me a great deal of grief to think that Rick Santorium and I share a common fraternity.)
But don't ask about our secret handshake or whose pinball machine we had in the basement.
October 10, 1911 -
Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel was the distiller and the founder of the Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey company. He was known as an impatient man; he wouldn't wait for anything.
One day, coming to work early, he was unable to open his safe, having trouble remembering the combination. In frustration he kicked it, injuring his toe. The toe became infected and he died of blood poisoning on this day.
October 10, 1911 -
The Chinese revolution began in Hankow, on this date.
The revolution spread rapidly, resulting in the abdication of six-year-old Henry Pu-Yi, the Academy Award-winning "Last Emperor" of China.
October 10, 1913 -
Two years later on this date, President Woodrow Wilson was bored and puttering around the White House. He started fiddling around with things on his desk and pressed a button.
Why the China Revolution and the completion of the Panama Canal are connected is anybody's guess?
October 10, 1957 -
A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield) north of Liverpool, England, spread radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk.
At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were subsequently linked to the accident. The event, known as the Windscale fire, was considered the world's worst nuclear accident until the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. (Then both were dwarfed by the Russian Chernobyl disaster in 1986.) PM Harold Macmillan ordered the disaster hushed up.
October 10, 1964 -
NBC-TV aired the opening ceremonies of the XVIII Olympiad in Tokyo on this date. The 1964 Summer Games were the first Olympics held in Asia, and the first time South Africa was barred from taking part due to its apartheid system in sports
It was the first live color TV program to be transmitted to the U.S. by satellite. (And ok smartpants, the games were help in October to avoid the mid summer heat of Japan and the typhoon season in September.)
October 10, 1967 -
The Outer Space Treaty, formally known as the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, signed on January 27, 1967 by more than sixty nations, went into effect on this date.
The treaty prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space and forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet.
October 10, 1973 -
Low life, bribe-happy Vice President Spiro T. Agnew finally resigned, after pleading Nolo contendere to federal income tax evasion on this date.
It should be noted that humorist Dave Barry points out that one can rearrange the letters in "Spiro Agnew" to spell "Grow A Penis."
October 10, 1985 -
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. .
As to all, cheap wine hawkers, voice-over whores and movie legends, death comes for Orson Welles, whose remarkably innovative Citizen Kane was named the best American-made picture of all time in a 1998 American Film Institute poll, from a heart attack at the age of 70, on this date.
Yul Brynner, Russian-born, Academy Award-winning Broadway and Hollywood actor died on October 10, 1985 (the same day as Orson Welles, his co-star in The Battle of Neretva) in New York City. The cause of death was lung cancer brought on by smoking. Throughout his life, Brynner was always seen with a cigarette in his hand. In January 1985, nine months before his death, he gave an interview on Good Morning America, expressing his desire to make an anti-smoking commercial.
If only he listened to himself.
And so it goes
1 comment:
Quafftide, indeed
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