But today is (or should be) Fossil Day, celebrating all the incredible suckers that have gone extinct.
October 12, 1950 -
One of the first comedy series to make the successful transition from radio to television The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
George Burns is regarded as being the first entertainer to step out of character and "break the fourth wall" by directly addressing the television audience. On many occasions, Burns stated he had been inspired by Thornton Wilder's 1938 play Our Town.
October 12, 1966 -
Sammy Davis, Jr. makes a cameo appearance on the ABC-TV series Batman - The Clock King's Crazy Crimes,
during one of their legendary Batclimbs, on this date.
October 12, 1968
The second studio album by Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, reached number one on the charts for eight nonconsecutive weeks on this date.
It was their last album with Janis Joplin as lead singer before she started a solo career.
October 12, 1969 -
An almost forgotten film, The Madwoman of Chaillot, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katherine Hepburn and an all-star cast, opened in the U.S. on this date.
The Place de Chaillot set, still standing at Studio la Victorine, was reused by François Truffaut as the set on which Meet Pamela, the film-within-a-film in Day for Night, was being shot.
October 12, 1972 -
Motown Productions and Paramount Pictures released the Sidney J. Furie, Billie Holiday bio-pix, Lady Sings The Blues, starring Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, and Scatman Crothers, on this date.
Dorothy Dandridge was to star in the role of Billie Holiday in an earlier proposed film version of the singer's autobiography but died before the film was made.
October 12, 1993 -
Touchstone Pictures releases the stop-motion animated feature film The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton, on this date.
Two items were invented to facilitate the filming of the movie: One was a "light alarm" which would warn the animators if any of the stage lights failed to come on. The other was a system that enabled a puppeteer to seamlessly switch to a replacement puppet if a puppet broke during a shot. Prior to this, either situation, a light failing to come on or a puppet breaking would destroy a shot.
October 12, 1994 -
The MTV Unplugged series premiered on this date, the much anticipated Robert Plant and Jimmy Page reunion, Unledded, to promote their stir album No Quarter which would be released two days later on October 14, 1994.
The reunion led to a tour in 1995 and a studio album, Walking Into Clarksdale, in 1998.
October 12, 1996 –
Though they've refused to release it on video for 27 years, largely due to dissatisfaction over their own performance, The Rolling Stones finally release their landmark 1968 all-star BBC television special, The Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus, on this date.
This is Brian Jones's last live performance with The Rolling Stones. He was kicked out of the band a few months after the show was filmed in June of 1969 and died a short time later.
October 12, 2007 -
The follow-up to Cate Blanchett's successful 1998 bio-pix Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, also starring Geoffrey Rush, and Clive Owen, opened in the U.S., on this date.
To save money, only one ship replica was built. It was Raleigh's English vessel on one side and a Spanish galleon on the other. When filming wide shots of the deck, smoke was used to cover up any separation in design.
October 12, 2008 -
The Fox Searchlight Pictures distributed Darren Aronofsky's film, The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke (in an intensely incredible performance,) and Maresi Tomei, closed the New York Film Festival on this date.
The first scene of Randy working the deli counter was improvised. When real customers kept walking up to the counter during filming, Darren Aronofsky told Mickey Rourke to take their orders while the camera would continue rolling. Also improvised were all of the backstage locker room scenes.
October 12, 2013 –
At 16, New Zealander Lorde (Ella Yelich-O'Connor) became the youngest solo artist to write and record a Billboard No. #1 hit when Royals took that position on this date.
Yelich-O'Connor was discovered when her now manager, Scott Maclachlan, saw a video of her performing at a Belmont Intermediate School talent show when she was 12.
Lorde inspiration for writing the song came from listening to the Kanye West and Jay-Z project Watch the Throne, as well as Lana Del Rey's debut album, Born To Die. "What really got me," she told The Observer, "is this ridiculous, unrelatable, unattainable opulence that runs throughout. Lana Del Rey is always singing about being in the Hamptons or driving her Bugatti Veyron or whatever, and at the time, me and my friends were at some house party worrying how to get home because we couldn't afford a cab. This is our reality!" (laughs). "If I write songs about anything else then I'm not writing anything that's real."
Today in History:
October 12, 1492 -
Christopher Columbus, not the brightest bulb in the explorers club, reached America, making his first landing in the New World on one of the Bahamas Islands.
Columbus believed he had reached India.
It was discovered that Columbus' ships really landed on the 13th of October, 1492, he was persuaded by Dutch sailor Piet de Stuini (or DeStynie) to change it to the 12th in the logs because he said that the number 13 might frighten sailors and future investors away. An Italian study group called the Colombiani detected this change.
October 12, 1609 -
The children's nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice was published in London on this date.
This is reportedly the earliest known secular song published.
October 12, 1810 -
The festival was such a success, the locals decided to hold it annually. (a great little known fact - Albert Einstein, once worked as an electrician and helped to set up one of the beer tents in 1896.)
October 12, 1915 -
Her final words to the German pastor were recorded as 'Ask Mr. Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.'
Pretty tough cookie.
October 12, 1960 -
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe during a dispute on this date.
This resulted in the popular stereotype of the Soviet Dictator who pounds his desk with his shoe.
In fact, many Soviet Dictators did not pound their desks with their shoes. They had their deputies do it for them.
October 12, 1960 -
The assassination of Japanese politician Inejiro Asanuma was accidentally broadcast live during a televised debate on this date.
Asanuma was attacked with a sword by 17-year old a right-wing ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi. While awaiting trial, Yamaguchi hanged himself, a few weeks later. Yamaguchi became a hero and a martyr to the Japanese far-right, and commemorations in his honor continue to this day.
October 12, 1964 -
The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 with astronauts Boris Yegorov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Vladamir Komarov on board (the first space flight to carry more than one crewman into orbit.)
This was also the first mission flown without ejection seats, an escape tower, or even spacesuits (which in itself was a first).
October 12, 1969 -
The Soyuz 7 spacecraft was launched on this date. The main goals of this mission in the official version was to test spacecraft systems and designs, maneuvering of the space craft with respect to Soyuz 6, which had launched a day earlier.
When it achieves orbit, it marks the first time in history that five people are in space at the same time (the three astronauts aboard Soyuz 7 and the two aboard Soyuz 6.)
Wait for it, there's more to this story.
October 12, 1970 -
During his court martial for the My Lai Massacre, Lt. William Calley testified that Cpt. Ernest Medina had ordered that anybody they couldn't move would be "wasted."
October 12, 1973 -
U.S. President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford for the vice presidency, under the 25th Amendment, to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two days earlier.
I'm not saying that there is a connection but it gives you pause.
October 12, 1997 -
Folk singer John Denver died when the small plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay on the California coast.
Divers later recover most of the body, but not the head. Denver was ultimately identified by his fingerprints.
Perhaps you really didn't want to know that part.
October 12, 2000 -
In the port of Aden in Yemen, a large bomb, carried by two suicide terrorists on a rubber raft, caused heavy damage to the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 39.
This event was the deadliest attack against a U.S. Naval vessel since 1987.
And so it goes
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