It aims to reduce the 3.5 million yearly deaths from tobacco related health problems. Since 1988 the WHO has presented one or more World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) Awards to organizations or individuals who have made exceptional contributions to reducing tobacco consumption.
May 31, 1975 -
The first single from the Isley Brothers hit album, The Heat Is On, Fight the Power, was released on this date. (The song is notable for the use of the word bullshit, which is usually censored during radio airplay.)
Often thought of as a song about the black experience, Fight The Power is more of a general statement on rising above the powers that be. The youngest Isley Brother, Marvin, explained in a 1976 interview with Blues & Soul: "We don't close ourselves away like some entertainers do – we listen to the radio, read the newspapers and generally get into what's happening out there in an attempt to reflect the world as it is. With The Heat Is On, we wanted to be as funky as possible musically, and yet for the lyrics to say something unusual. 'Fight The Power'? Well, we decided not to be passive, to take a stand. And we met hardly any resistance because that power could be anything – we all have our different conceptions of what it is to each of us. And just letting it out – about the bullshit that does go down – is something that everyone wants to do."
May 31, 1976 -
Tom Waits begins a two-week stint performing at Ronnie Scott's Club in Soho, London, England, run by Pete King, on this date.
The experience inspired Waits to write The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)(An Evening with Pete King). Waits recorded this song, along with the rest of the album, Small Change, a month after this stint was complete.
May 31, 1976 -
Ten years after it appeared on The Beatles' Revolver album, Capitol Records issues Got To Get You Into My Life as a single on this date.
A British rock group called Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers released this song as a single around the same time it appeared on The Beatles Revolver album. Bennett & The Rebel Rousers were an opening act for The Beatles on their European tour in early 1966; since there were no plans to release Got To Get You Into My Life as a single, Paul McCartney encouraged them to record it and produced the session. Earth, Wind & Fire recorded a funky new version for the 1978 movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Beatles producer George Martin was in charge of the music, and the soundtrack was a success, but the movie, which starred Peter Frampton, The Bee Gees and Aerosmith, was a huge flop. Earth, Wind & Fire's version of this hit #9 in the US.
May 31, 1980 -
Casablanca Records released the Lipps Inc./ Steven Greenberg song, Funkytown, on this date.
Lipps Inc. (pronounced "Lip Synch") was formed especially for this song. The vocals were by Cynthia Johnson, who was Miss Black Minnesota 1976. The group continued to record until 1985 with a changing lineup, but they failed to see the success they'd had with their first hit.
May 31, 1983 -
After a break in which David Byrne and Jerry Harrison release solo albums and Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth form Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads return with their fifth album, Speaking In Tongues.
It contains their biggest hit, Burning Down The House. Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz and bass player Tina Weymouth, married since 1977, are big fans of funk. When they went to a P-Funk show at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the crowd started chanting, "Burn down the house, burn down the house" (this is before The Roof Is on Fire), which gave Frantz the idea for the title.
The first Seinfeld episode (referred to as episode #2 The Stakeout) created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld premiered on Thursday, May 31, 1990 on NBC-TV. The show often described as "about nothing" was not an immediate success.
After the pilot was shown, on July 5, 1989, a pickup by the NBC network did not seem likely and the show was actually offered to Fox, which declined to pick it up. However, Rick Ludwin, head of late night and special events for NBC, diverted money from his budget, and the next four episodes were filmed.
I wonder what ever happened to those guys?
May 31, 1992 -
The last episode of the original series, Night Court: The 1992 Boat Show aired on NBC-TV, on this date.
This episode was actually aired out of order. The two parter, Opportunity Knocks, which aired before this episode, was the finale of the series. This episode never aired on its original air date and was held over to the end of the season confusingly airing after the series finale.
May 31, 1999 -
The VH1 documentary series Behind the Music began airing nightly with their premiere episode The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Behind the Music.
Anthony Kiedis and Flea (bass guitar) first met when they were both 15 and attending high school together. (20 years after the program, the band is still going strong.)
Another job posting from The ACME Employment Agency
Today in History:
May 31, 455 -
Petronius Maximus, emperor for less than three month, was having an extremely bad day. News reached Rome that Vandals were planning on sacking Rome (besides vigorous bouts of sodomy; sacking was the favorite pastime for Vandals.) The level headed Petronius attempted to organize an orderly evacuation of the Senate and his cronies. Panic, unfortunately set in and Petronius Maximus was completely abandoned by his bodyguard and entourage and was left to fend for himself.
As he rode out of the city on his own, he was set upon by an angry mob who stoned him to death. His body was mutilated and flung into the Tiber.
Sometimes, it isn't every worth getting out of bed, even if you're the ruler of all the known world.
May 31, 1678 -
The lovely young Lady Godiva, aged 17, rode naked on horseback through Coventry, England, to protest the high tax rate established by her own husband, Earl Leofric of Mercia. Her protest worked and he lowered taxes.
While I can't say whether or not the MAGA crowd strongly endorse this type of civil disobedience, I'd like to remind the ladies out there that taxes are pretty damn high just about everywhere these days.
May 31, 1819 -
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.
A great New Yorker and even greater poet, Walt Whitman was born on this date.
May 31, 1859 -
The iconic clock in the clock tower attached to the Palace at Westminister first began to keep time on this date.
The name Big Ben is often used to describe the tower or the clock but it's actually is the name of the carillon inside. The tower itself was formally known as St. Stephen’s Tower until 2012, when it was renamed Elizabeth Tower on the occasion of Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrating 60 years on the British throne. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, the work which had been scheduled to end at the end of this year, now stretches into 2022.
May 30, 1879 -
The Gilmore's Garden in New York City is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and opens to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.
May 31, 1889 -
Relentless rain and inadequate maintenance causes the South Fork Dam to fail, unleashing a 35-foot-high wall of water on Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
The wall of flood water grew at times to 60 feet high, tearing downhill at 40 miles per hour, leveling everything in its path and killing 2,209 people.
May 31, 1895 -
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, patented corn flakes on this date. The good doctor believed in a vegetarian diet and a regimen of exercise. The good doctor also believed in proper elimination. At his sanitarium, Kellogg made sure that the bowel of each and every patient was plied with water, from above and below. His favorite device was an enema machine that could run 15 gallons of cold water through an unfortunate bowel in a matter of seconds.
Every water enema was followed by a pint of yogurt — half was eaten, the other half was administered by enema “thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service”. The yogurt served to replace the intestinal flora of the bowel, creating what Kellogg claimed was a squeaky clean intestine.
Bet you'll never look at a carton of yogurt the same way again.
May 31, 1902 -
The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on this date, canceling the Bore War for lack of interest.
May 21, 1921 -
Following an accusation of improper conduct between Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner and Sarah Page, a white elevator operator, hundreds of white people gather and start to form what looks like a lynch mob which ends with the traditionally black district of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma being burnt to the ground with many black citizens choose or were forced to relocate after the riot which ended on June 1st 1921 after the National Guard troops from Oklahoma City declare martial law.
As many as 10,000 white men and boys attacked the black community and 35 blocks of the black business district were burned with participation by police officers and a local unit of the National Guard. Some 200-300 people were believed to have been killed. In 2000 the Tulsa Race Riot Commission recommended that reparations be paid to survivors of the riots and their descendants.
May 31, 1957 -
The House for Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convicts the playwright Arthur Miller of contempt of Congress, on this date.
1. "Can you tell us who were there when you walked into the room?"
2. "Was Arnaud D'Usseau chairman of the meeting of the Communist party writers which took place in 1947 at which you were in attendance?"
Although he testified frankly about his own relationships with persons of Communist bent or membership, he said that his conscience had forbidden him to tell about others.
May 31, 1963 -
Nun Nu Thanh Quang, a Buddhist monk, immolated himself on this date at the Dieu de Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam.
May 31, 1969 -
The National Legume Collective negotiated intensely all through the early part of 1969 with John Lennon and his new wife, Yoko Ono to record their new promotional song, Give Peas a Chance. The agreement ends abruptly when the organization actually heard Ms. Ono's voice.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono then decide not to waste the experience and record Give Peace a Chance, the first single recorded by a solo Beatle, from their hotel bed (not as a political statement as some have argued but because of the bloated feeling from eating a non-stop diet of peas for the past five months).
May 31, 1996 -
Timothy Leary died quietly in his sleep on this date, thereby failing his intended mission of killing himself live on the Internet.
On a brighter note, a longstanding Moody Blues prophecy was fulfilled.
Before you go - I would be remiss if I didn't remember to wish one of our bunkies a very Happy Birthday!
And so it goes.
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