Friday, April 28, 2023

Safety is not a gadget but a state of mind.

Today is International Workers' Memorial Day. The day is a day set aside to remember all of those people who have been injured or killed on the job.



Each year, more than two million women and men die as a result of work-related accidents and diseases. So don't be a Jimmy.


Today is also Arbor Day. The holiday is celebrated on the last Friday of April  -

The first Arbor Day took place on April 10, 1872 in Nebraska. It was the brainchild of Julius Sterling Morton (1832-1902), a Nebraska journalist and politician originally from Michigan.  Throughout his long and productive career, Morton worked to improve agricultural techniques in his adopted state and throughout the United States when he served as President Grover Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture.



But unless you plan on hugging or planting a tree, what do you care?


April 28, 1939 -
Cecil B. DeMille brought the Western into a new realm when Union Pacific, premiered in Omaha, Nebraska on this date.



Robert Preston, who appeared in several Cecil B. DeMille productions, not only disliked the director personally but felt he was inept at directing actors. The scene where Preston, Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea are trapped in the boxcar took two weeks to film and, according to Preston, DeMille had nothing but "Action," "Cut," and "Print" to say to the actors. He didn't seem to care about scenes that did not include action or spectacle. When Preston became a bigger star, he turned down offers to appear in other DeMille films and avoided any relationship or contact with him.


April 28, 1965 -
Barbra Streisand's first television special, My Name is Barbra, premiered on CBS-TV, on this date.



The audience segments were filmed in a small TV studio in New York City just down the street from where Barbra Streisand was performing in Funny Girl. The audience consisted of about 200 members of Streisand's fan club.


April 28, 1975
Former Beatle Ringo Starr appeared NBC-TV’s The Smothers Brothers Show performing his No No Song with hosts Tom and Dick Smothers, on this date.



Later that evening, Tom Snyder interviewed ex-Beatle John Lennon on The Tomorrow Show on April 8, 1975. The show was broadcast on this date



At the time, no one knew then that John Lennon would be taking an extended hiatus from public life, taking time to raise his son and live a less public life. The interview Lennon gave Tom Snyder in 1975 revealed he had tremendous humility and an affecting sense of humor.


April 28, 1978 -
John A. Alonzo's film about a radio station with a motley collection of DJs, FM, starring Michael Brandon, Eileen Brennan, Alex Karras, Cleavon Little, Martin Mull and Cassie Yates went into general release in the US on this date. The film is often believed to be the inspiration for the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, but in fact the pilot for that sitcom was filmed before this film's release.



The theme song from the movie, Steely Dan's FM (No Static at All) won engineers Al Schmitt and Roger Nichols the 1979 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording.


April 28, 1979 -
The first of their four chart-toppers, Blondie's Heart Of Glass hits #1 in the U.S. on this date.



According to Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 Songs, Harry and Stein wrote the song in their dingy New York apartment and keyboardist Jimmy Destri provided the synthesizer hook. The result brought punk and disco together on the dance floor. Said Destri, "Chris always wanted to do disco. We used to do 'Heart Of Glass' to upset people."


April 28, 1985 -
The first single from Bryan Ferry's album Boys and Girls, Slave To Love, was released on this date.



The album, Boys and Girls, featured many brilliant guitarists, including Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bryan Adams' guitarist Keith Scott.


April 28, 1994 -
29 years ago the Fox network aired the 100th episode of The Simpsons - Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song, on this date. I wonder what ever happened to that series?



When this episode first aired, stars appeared during the commercial breaks to celebrate the 100th episode.

Luke Perry: (referring to his animated appearance) You know, I've been shot out of a lot of cannons, but there's nothing like the first time. Congratulations to the show on their 100th episode.
Leonard Nimoy: To everyone in the sleepy town of Springfield...may you live long and prosper.
Kelsey Grammer: Hello, Kelsey Grammer here. Felicitations to the people who bring The Simpsons to life. May you make 100 more.


April 28, 2009 -
A TV commercial for the UK car insurance company, Swiftcover featuring Iggy Pop was ruled as misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority. In the ad, Iggy was seen exclaiming that he had an insurance policy with Swiftcover but the company did not cover musicians at the time of the ad being shown.



Swiftcover had since started to offer policies to musicians, and Mr Osterberg, Jr. has continued to increase his retirement fund, I mean, endorse the company ever since.


April 28, 2011 -
Universal Pictures mega-hit comedy Bridesmaids, starring Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph. Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd, Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas, Michael Hitchcock, Jon Hamm, and Jill Clayburgh, premiered in the US on this date. (This film is my daughters' favorite comedy.)



The cast spent about two weeks improvising with each other, a lot of which was incorporated into the movie.


April 28, 2012
The Gotye song (featuring Kimbra), Somebody That I Used to Know hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart on this date.



The song features New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra, who won her country's Critics' Choice awards in 2011; the award is intended to recognize and nurture up-coming talent. Gotye didn't begin writing this song as a duet, but after he finished the first verse, he realized he had nowhere to go with the character he was writing about, and needed to introduce another voice.


Another unimportant moment in history.


Today in History:
April 28, 1789 -
In the middle of the South Pacific, the crew of the HMS Bounty, led by either Clark Gable, Marlon Brando or Mel Gibson mutinied, setting Charles Laughton, Trevor Howard or Anthony Hopkins and 18 other crewmen adrift in an open boat, so they can hang out with topless Tahitian teens.



Sometimes history is very confusing.


April 28, 1881 -
Billy the Kid escaped from a New Mexico jail, killing jailer Bob Ollinger and a fellow prisoner in the process. Billy survived for another three months before Pat Garrett finally killed him.

Somehow Bob Dylan, Paul Newman, Dracula and Jane Russell's Howard Hughes engineered bosom are involved in this story



Once again, history is exceedingly confusing.


April 28, 1910 -
In England, Claude Grahame-White became the first person to pilot a plane at night on this date.

The landmark flight came during the 1910 London to Manchester air race.


April 28, 1941 -
... I was always taught that you don't think you are anything special 'cause there's always someone who is more special than you. Just be the best you that you can be..





Ann-Margret Olsson, actress, singer and dancer, was born on this date.


April 28, 1945 -
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisan fighters and executed (castrated and hung upside down on a meat hook - well, Mussolini had his junk removed - Clara, well, she just got hung.)



Just because you can get the trains to run on time does not mean that the voters love you (it should be a motto every politician has tattooed to their ass.) One of our bunkies had a relative who was involved in his arrest.


April 28, 1947 -
Sailing from Peru on the balsa-raft Kon Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl began his six-man, 101-day expedition across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.



Heyerdahl's expeditions were spectacular and caught the public imagination. Although much of his work remains unaccepted within the scientific community, Heyerdahl increased public interest in ancient history and anthropology.


April 28, 1967 -
Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the army because of religious reasons on this date, and was stripped of his boxing titles and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for draft evasion.



The conviction was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court


April 28, 2001 -
Millionaire Dennis Tito, cut a $20 million check to Russia, (proving there is such a thing as 'stupid money',) and became the world's first space tourist, flying aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. For his money, he spent a week aboard the International Space Station (ISS).



Tito, and his wife Akiko, have both recently made a deal to travel on a one-week journey aboard SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, along with up to 10 other paying passengers, to the moon. Apparently he has made a lot more stupid money in the intervening years.



And so it goes.

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