Remember, if we could only harness the free floating electricity,
we could do away with the electric companies.
It's Teddy Bear Picnic Day, again. It's a day set aside for you to take a stroll in the woods with your favorite bears.
While it is important that one is aware that walking barefoot may increase the chances of a bee sting, the day aims to create consciousness about the conservation of bees and highlights the plight they face due to the destruction of their habitats.
July 10, 1916 -
Charlie Chaplin further develops his 'Tramp' character with the release of The Vagabond, on this date.
Look for this - Charlie loses his hat outside the bar, is seen inside wearing it, then picks it up where he lost it when he leaves. When he escapes from the gypsy, he is hatless at first, but the next shot shows the hat suddenly back in place.
July 10, 1942 -
Orson Welles' butchered masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, was released by RKO Pictures, on this date.
After a disastrous preview (which occurred a week after the Pearl Harbor attack,) it was clear to the execs at RKO that the film was too long, too dense and too somber. Orson Welles, however, had decamped to Brazil, where he was in the midst of working on a film called It's All True (which was never completed). Welles had been shipped out there under the auspices of Nelson Rockefeller, one of the chief shareholders in RKO, to make a film boosting US-South American wartime relations. With him out of the way, however, the onus of re-cutting and trimming the film fell on editor Robert Wise.
Like El Dorado or Shangri-La, a work print of Welles' version supposedly exists in a vault somewhere in Brazil, tantalizingly, just out of reach. TCM is still sponsoring an exhaustive search through a major Brazilian film vault.
But wait, all is not lost, a Welles superfan named Brian Rose — himself an accomplished filmmaker — has used animation and countless hours of painstaking research to recreate missing footage from The Magnificent Ambersons. Rose hopes to eventually share his version of The Magnificent Ambersons with other Orson Welles enthusiasts.
July 10, 1947 -
One of Jules Dassin's post-war film-noir classics, Brute Force, starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, and Charles Bickford, premiered in Los Angeles on this date.
The second of three films that Burt Lancaster made for Mark Hellinger, the writer-producer who discovered the former acrobat and turned him into a movie star. The first of these was The Killers and the three-picture contract was completed with Criss Cross, a film Hellinger never lived to see, as he died before production began. His widow insisted that Lancaster honor the contract he had with her husband.
July 10, 1966 -
The follow-up to the Japanese science fiction television series produced by Tsuburaya Productions, Ultra Q, Ultraman, premiered in Japan on this date. (I have seen it listed as having first aired one week later July 17, 1966. Who knows, I wasn't there.)
The sequences of Ultraman battling monsters were so expensive to film, that the producers needed a way to limit the scenes to only a few minutes for each episode. The solution was to give the character the weakness that he can not survive in his true self for more than roughly three minutes before he runs out of energy. This is marked with his warning chest light, called the Colortimer, which begins to blink with increasing speed as his energy runs out.
July 10, 1972 -
Harry Nilsson's eighth album, Son of Schmilsson was released on this date.
It featured George Harrison under the name George Harrysong and Ringo Starr, listed as Richie Snare, on some of the tracks. Peter Frampton also played guitar on most of the album.
July 10, 1976 -
Starland Vocal Band's song about afternoon nooky – Afternoon Delights topping the Billboard Pop charts on this date.
Despite having only this one hit, the Starland Vocal Band were given their own summer replacement TV series on CBS called The Starland Vocal Band in 1977. An unknown comic named David Letterman appeared on the show.
July 10, 1978 –
World News Tonight with anchors Frank Reynolds, Peter Jennings and Max Robinson (the first black anchor on a network newscast in the US) premiered on ABC TV on this date.
The program has been anchored at various times by a number of other presenters since its debut in 1948. It also has used various titles, including ABC Evening News from 1970 to 1978, World News Tonight from 1978 to 2006, World News from 2006 to 2009, and ABC World News from 2009 to 2014. Since 2014 the program has been called ABC World News Tonight.
July 10, 1981 -
John Carpenter sci-fi thriller, Escape from New York, starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton, premiered in the US, on this date.
John Carpenter originally wrote the film between 1974 and 1976 as a reaction to the Watergate scandal, but no studio wanted to make it because it was deemed to be too dark and too violent. That all changed after the success of his film, Halloween.
July 10, 1985 -
The third offering in the Mad Max series, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner (and directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie) premiered in the US on this date.
The film was originally not a Mad Max film, but a post-apocalyptic Lord of the Flies film about a tribe of children who are found by an adult. It became the third Mad Max film when George Miller was suggested that Max is the man who finds the children.
July 10, 2003 -
PBS' Soundstage returned to TV on this date, with a performance from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
The series had not aired in over 18 years when it ran from 1974 to 1985.
Today in History:
July 10, 1553 –
Lady Jane Grey, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, ill-advisedly took the throne of England, upon the death of Edward VI, on this date.
Hopefully she didn't buy any green bananas. She wasn't going to be in the position to see them ripen.
July 10, 1559 -
Heed the prophecies of Nostradamus!
The captain's lance was somehow broken and Henry II was pierced through the eye socket and temple on June 30 (Ouch!). The King writhed in agony until he died from his wounds on this date. Nostradamus wrote a poem about a lion and a cage and somehow that tripe predicted Henry II's death.
July 10, 1871 -
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
Marcel Proust, French novelist, tea enthusiast and master procrastinator was born on this date.
July 10, 1938 -
Aviator Howard Hughes (you know his C.V.) made a record flight around the world on this date, completing the trip in just 91 hours, breaking the previous record by more than four days.
Taking off from New York City in a Lockheed Super Electra he continued to Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Anchorage, Minneapolis, ending back at New York City.
I've been doing this since 1960. When we met Dr. King in church, my father told us if he can preach it, we can sing it. We've been singing the message-songs ever since. Every year people tell me, "Mavis, my goodness, when are you going to retire?" I'm almost eighty years old. But I'm not ready to retire. This is what God wants me to do. My voice is as strong as ever.
Happy Birthday to the gospel and blues singer Mavis Staples born in Chicago on this date. She started singing with her family’s band The Staple Singers as a young girl, and her deep-throated voice catapulted the group to the top of the charts eight times between 1971 and 1975, with songs like I’ll Take You There, Let’s Do It Again, and Respect Yourself.
July 10, 1954 -
I'm always uneasy with messages. I think if there is a message, it's about taking control of your life. Not becoming a victim. Be true to yourself. In essence it's about love in the drug culture.
Neil Tennant, musician, singer and songwriter and the other half of the electronic dance music duo Pet Shop Boys, was born on this date.
July 10, 1958 -
I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.
Béla Fleck, American banjo player extraordinaire and songwriter was born on this date.
July 10, 1958 -
The first parking meter was installed in London, England on this date in 1958, along with the second through 625th. It took nearly two dozen years for the parking meter to travel across the Atlantic: the first American parking meter had been installed in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935.
I, personally, considers the parking meter one of the great instruments of totalitarian control, and cannot understand how conspiracy theorists who lose sleep over Roswell, the Masons, and black hawk helicopters can walk blithely past dozens of parking meters every day.
Current estimates ("wild guesses") suggest there are now more than five million of these coercive devil machines deployed across the United States. They absorb millions of dollars in small change every day, and generate still more ill-gotten revenue by means of fines levied against persons who refuse to kneel before them.
I urge my readers to recall the words of Alexander Hamilton, who observed in the Federalist Papers that "no people are free who must pay for municipal parking."
The first concrete-paved street was built 131 years ago today in Bellefontaine, Ohio.
July 10, 1962 –
Launched by NASA aboard a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Telstar, was launched into orbit, becoming the world's first communications satellite, on this date.
Telstar 1 was placed in low Earth orbit and circled the planet every two and a half hours, only in the right position to beam transmissions between Europe and the U.S. for 20 minutes each orbit. This is in contrast to contemporary communications satellites, which fly in geosynchronous orbit, staying above one spot on the Earth.
July 10, 1985 -
Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was blown up by in Auckland Harbor, killing a photographer, Fernando Pereira, on this date.
After the New Zealand government determines that French secret agents were responsible, the French Defense Minister Pierre Lacoste, resigned and agents, Captain Dominique Prieur and Commander Alain Mafart, were jailed.
July 10, 1989 -
Mel Blanc, whose career spanned over 60 years doing voice over work for many Warner Brothers characters died on this date.
Shortly before his death, executives of Time Warner (owners of Warner Brothers) asked him if there was anything, literally anything, that they could give him to thank him for his life's body of work. He asked for--and received - a Ford Edsel.
And so it goes.
2 comments:
In high school, my friends discovered that the rounded ends of the handles on the cafeteria spoons could be jammed into parking meter coin slots and the meter would credit time. We'd fan out downtown and give folks free parking for the afternoon. It took city officials a month or so to figure it out -- they made the school get different silverware. Briefly, we were urban heroes.
For a brief moment, I thought you were going to say that you and your friends were making homemade shivs in the school lunchroom
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