People bring their decorated lanterns to the display stage for the competition. Some lanterns might take more than a month to completely decorate.
Fireworks still play an important part of Lantern Festival celebrations.
Today is National Sweater Day in the United States and given how cold it is outside today, IT IS the best day to wear a sweater, striped of not.
The first Thurday in February is the best day to wear a sweater for our neighbor to the North. It was National Sweater Day in Canada on February 2.
Since 2010, WWF has encouraged more than a million Canadians to show their support for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by turning down their thermostats by the same amount (or more) and wearing their favorite sweaters to stay warm.
February 4, 1961 –
United Artists' film The Misfits, directed by John Huston, (written by Arthur Miller,) and starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, went into general release on this date.
A doctor was on call 24 hours a day for both Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift during the filming because both were experiencing health problems with alcohol and medical stimulants. Ironically, Clark Gable died of a heart attack right after production ended. Marilyn Monroe blamed herself for Clark Gable's death. However it should be noted that Gable was already in poor health when filming began. He had been a chain smoker since his mid-teens, and until recently he had been a heavy drinker. Twice over the past decade he had suffered severe chest pains which could have been heart attacks.
February 4, 1966 -
The Rolling Stones released 19th Nervous Breakdown, on this date. It goes on to reach No.2 on both the US and UK charts.
The lyrics are an attack on spoiled brats who are given everything and are still unhappy. Jagger took pains to explain that the song was not autobiographical. Regarding the lyrical inspiration, he said, "Things that are happening around me - everyday life as I see it. People say I'm always singing about pills and breakdowns, therefore I must be an addict – this is ridiculous. Some people are so narrow-minded they won't admit to themselves that this really does happen to other people besides pop stars."
February 4, 1970 -
Twentieth Century Fox's film Patton, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, (written by Francis Ford Coppola,) and starring George C. Scott premieres in New York on this date.
The movie begins without showing the 20th Century-Fox logo, or any other indication that the film is starting. At military bases across the US theater owners reported that soldiers in the audience would often stand up and snap to attention when they heard the movie's opening line ("Ten-hut!"), assuming it to be a real call to attention.
February 4, 1977 -
American Bandstand 25th Anniversary Special airing in primetime on ABC-TV on this date.
(Sorry for the quality of the video)
The show features one of the first "all-star jams," as Chuck Berry is joined by Greg Allman, Junior Walker, The Pointer Sisters, Charlie Daniels and several others on a performance of Roll Over Beethoven.
February 4, 1977 -
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album was released 46 years ago on this date - it's hard to believe.
Many of the songs on the album show a darker side in the lyrics. It's asking you to move on, leave the singer alone. Fleetwood Mac was experiencing the shatter of all of their emotional ties with not one, not two, but three break-ups! That was the divorce of the McVies, Buckingham and Stevie Nicks breaking up, and Fleetwood going through a divorce from his wife.
This was another album my sister and I wore the needle on the record player out on.
February 4, 1979 -
Co-Ed Fever, one of the three series that attempted to capitalize on the success of the motion picture National Lampoon's Animal House, (the others were ABC's Delta House and NBC's Brothers and Sisters,) had a special preview on CBS-TV on this date.
The show had such poor ratings that it was cancelled before it's scheduled premiere date of February 19. The show has been ranked no. 32 on TV Guide's 50 Worst Shows of All Time.
February 4, 1984 –
British group Culture Club second song released off their second album, Colour by Numbers, Karma Chameleon reach No. #1 on the Billboard charts on this date.
Songwriting in Culture Club was mostly a group effort, with Boy George writing the lyrics. Many of his words were inspired by his relationship with the group's drummer, Jon Moss, with whom he had an affair during the height of the group's fame. George admitted that their first single Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? was about Moss, and their difficult lover-professional relationship was the inspiration for the line, "You're my lover, not my rival" in Karma Chameleon. The relationship was hidden to the public and Jon never admitted it during the '80s, so in a way Boy George was communicating with him through their songs.
February 4, 2007 -
Prince performed at Super Bowl XLI, in the pouring rain and giving what is arguably the greatest Halftime show performance on this date.
February 2, 2012 -
Adele becomes the first female British artist to have three #1 songs from the same album top the Billboard Hot 100 chart when Set Fire to the Rain hits the top spot, following Rolling In The Deep and Someone Like You from the album 21.
Many of the songs on 21 are about the heartbreaking ending of Adele's first real relationship. She told MTV News in an interview to plug the album's release: "It broke my heart when I wrote this record, so the fact that people are taking it to their hearts is like the best way to recover. 'Cause I'm still not fully recovered. It's going to take me 10 years to recover, I think, from the way I feel about my last relationship. It was the biggest deal in my entire life to date. He made me totally hungry. He was older, he was successful in his own right, whereas my boyfriends before were my age and not really doing much. And he got me interested in film and literature and food and wine and traveling and politics and history, and those were things I was never, ever interested in. I was interested in going clubbing and getting drunk."
Today in History:
February 4, 1861 -
State delegates met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a Confederate government on this date.
Do you think Hallmark has a card commemorating this event?
February 4, 1889 -
Harry Longabaugh was released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, The Sundance Kid on this date.
February 4, 1902 -
Isolationist, racist, neo-nazi and early environmentalist Charles Lindbergh, first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, was born on this date.
Kind of complicated guy, don't you think.
February 4, 1912 -
Franz Reichelt (alias The Flying Tailor) designed an overcoat to fly or float its wearer gently to the ground like the modern parachute. To demonstrate his invention he made a jump of 60 meters from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower, at that time the tallest man-made structure in the world.
The parachute failed and Reichelt fell to his death. The jump was recorded by the cameras of the gathered press. Winner of the 1912 Darwin Award.
February 4, 1913 -
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in..
Rosa Lee Parks, civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama and helped started the Civil Rights Movement, was born on this date.
February 4, 1918 -
Nobody fucks with Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino, actress, director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers was born on this date.
February 4, 1948 -
Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper), rocker and avid golfer, turns 75 today.
Yes, we're all not worthy.
February 4, 1972 -
Senator Strom Thurmond sent a secret memo, on this date, to William Timmons (in his capacity as an aide to Richard Nixon) and United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell, with an attached file from the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, urging that British musician John Lennon (then living in New York City) be deported from the United States as an undesirable alien, due to Lennon's political views and activism.
The document claimed that Lennon's influence on young people could affect Nixon's chances of re-election, and suggested that terminating Lennon's visa might be "a strategy counter-measure".
February 4, 1974 -
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun, and bought it.
Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19 years old, was kidnapped in Berkeley, California, by the Symbionese Liberation Army on this date.
February 4, 1983 -
Karen Carpenter died of anorexia nervosa on this date. She frequently took laxatives and induced vomiting to prevent weight gain.
At the time of her death she was pencil thin. Lead graphite thin.
February 4, 1987 -
Pianist/jewelry wearer Wladziu Valentino died in Palm Springs, California due to complications from AIDS on this date.
Nobody ever suspected the man was gay.
February 4, 1998 -
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates was assaulted with a direct hit by a fluffy cream pie during a three-pronged attack in Brussels. He was in Belgium attending meetings with industry and government leaders.
Rumor is that the attack was engineered by Noel Godin, infamous for his other pie throwings at government officials.
February 4, 1999 -
In NYC, plainclothes police officers fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo, a Bronx street peddler and immigrant from Guinea, who was unarmed in front of his Bronx home. Police were searching for a rapist and Daillo was killed with 19 gunshot wounds.
Officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy were later indicted (but ultimately cleared) for 2nd degree murder.
February 4, 2004 -
Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student, launched "The facebook", as it was originally known, on this date; the name taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshmen, profiling students and staff.
Within five years of its founding, Facebook had more than 500 million users. And if you think I'm going to say anything more, you're nuts.
On February 4, 2008, at 00:00 GMT, NASA transmitted the Beatles song Across The Universe in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light years from Earth. The transmission was made using a 70m antenna in the DSN's Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex, located outside of Madrid, Spain. It was done with an "X band" transmitter, radiating into the antenna at 18 kW. (This may be on the test.)
In case our overlords on Nibiru are Radiohead fans, here's a tune for them
Should our alien overlords come from Planet X, hopefully David Bowie will plead our case, now that he is back home.
And so it goes
No comments:
Post a Comment