Chalk your poem onto the sidewalk (or a blackboard), leave one on a subway seat, pin one onto your local grocery store board. Or just carry one in your pocket.
October 2, 1955 -
Revenge, the very first story on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents show premieres on this date.
The sponsors, who had great influence regarding the presentation of the show, insisted that for the episodes ending with the perpetrator "getting away with a crime," Alfred Hitchcock provide a statement in his closing monologue that would assure audiences that justice was served.
October 2, 1957 -
The World War II drama The Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean, and starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa, premiered in Britain, on this date.
During shooting, Alec Guinness continued to have doubts about his performance, and the direction he was getting from David Lean. To put Guinness at ease, Lean decided to show him a rough cut of certain sequences. One night, Lean ran over an hour's worth of footage for Guinness, with his wife and son also attending. During the screening, nothing was said. At the end, the Guinness family thanked Lean and promptly walked out, leaving Lean without a clue as to what to think of their reaction (or lack of). Later that night, Lean received a visit from Guinness, who told him that he and his family had decided that Nicholson was the best thing that Guinness had ever done.
October 2, 1959 -
...a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind....
The first episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone, Where is Everybody?, premiered on this date
Rod Serling thought he had come up with the term "The Twilight Zone" on his own (he liked the sound of it), but after the show aired, he found out that it is an actual term used by U.S. Air Force pilots when crossing the day and night sides above the world.
October 2, 1961 -
The medical drama Ben Casey, starring Vince Edwards and Sam Jaffe, premiered on ABC-TV, on this date.
According to director Mark Rydell, Vince Edwards had a gambling problem. Edwards demanded to film all of his scenes first, so that he could leave the set and go to a racetrack. According to Harry Landers, Edwards also constantly asked the cast and crew for money with which to gamble and leave the set for hours at a time.
October 2, 1971 -
The first episode of the weekly series, Soul Train, premiered, on this date.
It featured Gladys Knight and the Pips, Eddie Kendricks, The Honeycone and Bobby Hutton.
October 2, 1970 -
Pink Floyd released their fifth studio album, Atom Heart Mother, in the UK, on this date. It was their first No. 1 album.
While the album was a commercial success - both Roger Waters and David Gilmour have expressed their dislike of the album. A rare thing that they can both agree upon.
October 2, 1971 -
Rod Stewart's album Every Picture Tells A Story goes No. 1 on the Billboard Album charts on this date. The singles Maggie May and Reason to Believe hits No. 1 on the Billboard singles charts on this date as well -
Maggie May was the first big hit of the rock era to feature a mandolin, which was mostly heard in folk music. Stewart first used the instrument on Mandolin Wind, which was one of the first songs he recorded for the album. He liked the results, so he used it on Maggie as well.
October 2, 1976 -
Every night I have the strangest dreams ...
John Belushi came out on stage with Joe Cocker while he was performing on Saturday Night Live on this date.
October 2, 1977 -
20th Century Fox released the multi award winning drama, Julia, based on a chapter from Lillian Hellman's 1973 autobiographical book Pentimento, and starring Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Rosemary Murphy, Maximilian Schell, and Meryl Streep (in her film debut), on this date. (Apparently Lillian made the whole story up.)
During the casting process, both Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave's names were mentioned as possible stars for the film. The producers initially vetoed both actresses on the advice of the publicity department, fearing that the absolute worst option would be to cast Fonda and Redgrave, both of whom were known for their outspoken political beliefs, in a film together. In the end, of course, both actresses were cast and the film went on to great critical and box office success.
October 2, 1982 -
John Cougar's (John Mellencamp) single Jack And Diane, a little ditty about two American kids growin' up in the heartland, becomes his first and only #1 hit in America, on this date.
Mellencamp spent a long time crafting this song in an effort to make it a hit. This was part of his plan to become so successful he could ignore critics and tell his record company to stick it. But first, he had to make some concessions, like changing his name. His manager named him "Johnny Cougar," and he went along with it, scoring an Australian hit with I Need A Lover in 1978. A year later, he altered his moniker to "John Cougar," which is how he was billed on the American Fool album. The first single, Hurts So Good became a huge hit and got him on MTV, and when Jack & Diane followed, it accomplished his mission of autonomy through hits.
October 2, 1983 -
(Trigger warning - major earworm ahead.)
Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler's single Total Eclipse Of The Heart was No. 1 on the Billboard Charts, on this date. The song, which was Tyler's biggest hit of her career, made her the only Welsh artist to score a U.S. No. 1 hit.
The song was written and produced by Jim Steinman, and had sales in excess of 6 million copies. Steinman wrote all of Meat Loaf's hits, including Paradise By The Dashboard Light, Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad, had offered this song, along with Making Love Out Of Nothing At All, to Meat Loaf for his 1983 album >Midnight At The Lost And Found. For financial reasons, Meat's record company wanted him to write his own songs for the album, so Total Eclipse went to Tyler and Making Love Out Of Nothing At All went to Air Supply.
October 2, 1985 -
... All the donuts around here have names that sound like prostitutes.
Island Records released Tom Waits' phenomenal eighth studio album (wherein he found his truest voice,) Raindogs, on this date (It's also been reported that it was release on September 30. Whichever day it was released, it's still a damn fine album.)
October 2, 1994 -
In response to new, stringent censorship laws that were being put in place at the time, The Simpsons episode Itchy and Scratchy Land, was released on the Fox network on this date.
Fox had tried to prevent the inclusion of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons in the show, prompting the writers to make the episode as violent as possible.
October 2, 1995 -
Creation Records released the Oasis single, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, on this date. The song led to the band's worldwide success. (I hope things go well for Neil and Liam who are about to embark on a reunion tour.)
This song is about someone who is addicted to methamphetamines or cocaine, and how you really don't have a great chance of a good future when you are addicted. The basic point of the song is that these users need "wake up" and realize that they are ruining their lives and their futures.
October 2, 2001 -
In the long line of medical series, Scrubs, starring Zach Braff, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.
It was Zach Braff who suggested using the song Superman by Lazlo Bane as the show's theme after listening to the lyrics and finding them in mood with the pilot.
Today in History:
October 2, 1872 -
It's Phileas Fogg Wager Day. This unofficial holiday celebrates one of the most famous wagers that set out one of the world's most famous adventure in motion.
Three of the past century's finest comedians were born on October 2:
Groucho Marx (1890),
Bud Abbott (1895),
and Mahatma Gandhi (1869).
Groucho and Abbott were funny enough, but they pale beside the towering comic greatness of Gandhi. "When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, " he once quipped: "but in the end they always fall. Think of it - always."
That a humorist capable of such scathing sarcastic wit should have sullied himself with politics is regrettable, but not much worse than Jesus having gotten into religion.
It should also be remembered that for most of Gandhi's life the Indian subcontinent was occupied by the British, and that for the first few formative decades of his existence the British were ruled by a queen who was famously unamused. Gandhi went to extraordinary lengths to amuse Queen Victoria. It was only decades after her death that his genius came to full flower, however, and one can only hope she was amused posthumously.
(Eventually the British realized they didn't get Gandhi's jokes and withdrew from India to develop Monty Python.)
October 2, 1925 -
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed Stooky Bill on this date. (“Stooky” being slang for someone who moves woodenly and a colloquial term for the plaster cast used to immobilize bone fractures.)
Almost immediately, Logie Baird wanted to test his invention on a living, breathing human being. Baird went downstairs and grabbed an office bot, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to see what a human face would look like, and Taynton became the first person to be televised.
October 2, 1935 -
The Hayden Planetarium in New York, (the fourth planetarium in the U.S.,) opened on this date.
In the words of Charles Hayden, the planetarium’s mission is to give the public “a more lively and sincere appreciation of the magnitude of the universe… and for the wonderful things which are daily occurring in the universe.” Hayden believes that everyone should have the experience of feeling the “immensity of the sky and one’s own littleness.”
October 2, 1950 -
The comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles Schulz, debuted in nine newspapers with the characters of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Patty and Sherman. It is still the most-read comic strip in the world.
October 2, 1968 -
10 days before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, police officers and military troops opened fire on a peaceful student protest of the government occupation at the National Polytechnic Institute, on this date. Initially, the government tried to claim the students began shooting first, but this later was proved false.
Hundreds of protesters, many of whom were women and children, were killed, in what has became known as the Tlatelolco massacre. The Olympics, shamefully continued as planned, as the violence wasn't targeted at the games.
October 2, 1985 -
I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own misfortune has had some positive worth.
Rock Hudson died at his home in Beverly Hills, California after a battle with AIDS on this date.
October 2, 2017 -
Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer Tom Petty died at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, on this date.
During his career, he sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
Before you go - OMG, I nearly forgot, Rosh Hashanah begins this evening, so we here at ACME are wishing our friends L’shanah Tovah.
As you hear the shofar this evening, remember to start writing 5785 on your checks. Also, I hope your sins are not so numerous that you really couldn't cast them upon the water.
And so it goes
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