Although I'm sure that Werner Thomas, the creator of the original Chicken Dance music ( Der Ententanz (The Duck Dance)) never had Beyoncé's dancing in mind
May 14, 1925 -
On this fine spring day, a middle-aged London society matron goes out to buy flowers for a party. Meanwhile, across town, a shell-shocked World War I veteran is grappling with severe PTSD and planning his tragic exit from a world that refuses to understand him. Just your average Thursday, really. Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking novel Mrs. Dalloway hit the shelves on this date.
What Mrs. Dalloway actually delivers is a deep, stream-of-consciousness journey through the minds of its characters, all within the span of a single day. Readers are taken on an emotional rollercoaster of neuroses, repressed desires, class anxiety, mental illness, and existential dread—with bonus appearances by Big Ben and cucumber sandwiches. Woolf’s fluid, impressionistic style broke with literary tradition, diving headfirst into themes that were, for the 1920s, about as taboo as wearing pants to high tea. Homosexuality? Check. Feminism? Absolutely. The psychological toll of war? Front and center. All woven seamlessly into a narrative where not all that much happens - and yet everything happens.
May 14, 1938 -
Michael Curtiz' technicolor swashbuckler, The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains, premiered in the U.S. on this date.
The film was so successful that a sequel was commissioned. However, the US government wanted to restrict the amount of money invested in film-making at that point in anticipation of joining World War II, so it was delayed. By 1945, when the war was over, the project was scrapped because Olivia de Havilland and Claude Rains were no longer employed at Warner Bros.
May 14, 1951 -
The seminal It's Time For Ernie, debuts on NBC on this date.
Show like as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Uncle Floyd Show, Saturday Night Live, The David Letterman Show and even Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street were influenced by Kovacs and his television work.
TV has never been quite the same since.
May 14, 1973 -
François Truffaut's masterpiece about film-making, Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine), starring Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud premieres at the Cannes Film Festive, on this date.
The English title refers to a technique for filming night scenes in broad daylight, achieved by either lowering the lens aperture or through the use of filters. The French call it the "American night". Ferrand uses this literal translation when talking about the car crash shooting, but Julie cannot understand what he means ("What is American night?").
May 14, 1989 -
We say goodby to the Keaton family when NBC TV aired the last episode of Family Ties, Alex doesn't Live Here Anymore on this date.
The show was a long-time staple of NBC's "Must See TV" Thursday night line-up. After season five, the show moved from Thursday night following The Cosby Show to Sunday night. The show dropped from second place in the ratings to number seventeen due to the move. The ratings declined even further in season seven, and the show was cancelled.
May 14, 1989 -
Moonlighting, one of the better "boy/girl detective show" aired it's last episode on ABC on this date.
Even after the series had long since 'jumped the shark', Bruce Willis' toup was a thing to behold.
May 14, 1998 -
The final episode of Seinfeld aired on this date.
Jerry Seinfeld holds both the record for the "most money refused" according to the Guinness Book of World Records by refusing an offer to continue the show for $5 million per episode, and another record for the Highest Ever Annual Earnings For A TV Actor, while the show itself held the record for the Highest Television Advertising Rates until 2004, when the final episode of Friends aired.
Not too shabby for a show about nothing.
Another episode of ACME's Little Known Animal Facts
Today in History:
May 14, 964 -
Give me that old time religion.
Pope John XII died of injuries inflicted eight days prior by a jealous husband who caught him in flagrante delicto with his wife.
The 26-year-old pontiff (yes, I know he is often shown as a bald, and sometimes, with white hair and a beard. Apparently he was known as a 'great' fornicator and like make a randy young man, he didn't have time to sit around for a caricature,) had received a blow to the temple, causing immediate paralysis. Critics had accused John of converting the Lateran Palace into a whorehouse.
On this day in 1796, Edward Jenner performed what is widely considered the first successful smallpox inoculation. The method? Jenner scraped a bit of pus—yes, pus—from a blister on a milkmaid infected with cowpox and rubbed it into a small cut on the arm of an unsuspecting (and very likely confused) 8-year-old boy named James Phipps.
(Brief aside: How much do you trust your child’s doctor? Imagine this conversation — “Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Phipps. Little Jimmy looks great. Lungs are clear, no fevers, textbook eight-year-old. Oh, and before you go — I’m going to slice his arm open and rub cow sore juice into the wound. No need to panic, it’s for science.”)
To Jenner’s eternal credit - and Jimmy’s unintentional bravery - it worked. The boy developed a mild fever, recovered quickly, and showed immunity to smallpox. Thus began the long, winding road to modern immunization, all thanks to a combination of bovine biology and bold 18th-century guesswork. But wait! This marvel of medicine came just four days after Napoleon kicked the Austrians around at the Battle of Lodi on May 10, 1796. Coincidence? Probably. But let’s not get picky with our historical drama..
And if you like eerie coincidences, try this timeline on for size:
May 10, 1774: King Louis XV dies… of smallpox.
May 14, 1610: Henry IV (his grandfather) is assassinated.
May 14, 1643: Louis XIII (his dad) dies.
Clearly, French kings should have avoided May altogether.
After Louis XV’s death, his grandson Louis XVI took the throne - famously married to Marie Antoinette, who reportedly told the poor to eat cake (which, in fairness, they could not afford to do even sarcastically). This tone-deaf ruling class behavior led directly to La Révolution, which kicked off on La Quatorze Juillet - French for “The Fourth of July,” if you ask someone who wants to sound cultured while being deeply wrong.
Cue the Rain of Terror, then the Rise of Napoleon, then the Battle of Lodi, and suddenly we’re back to Edward Jenner and his revolutionary use of cow-goo science. Hey, it’s not technically a full circle, but it is the kind of spiraling chaos history excels at — especially when everyone keeps dying on May 14.
May 14, 1878 -
Robert A. Chesebrough begins selling Vaseline (registered trademark for petroleum jelly (U.S. Patent 127,568.)
May 14th, 1932 -
New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, organized a day-long Beer rally known as the "We Want Beer Parade." Nearly 100,000 people showed up in support of repeal and the legalization of beer.
On the very same day the city of Detroit held a similar even of there own, in which some 40,000 people attended.
May 14, 1936 -
Walden Robert Cassotto, singer, actor, Bronx Science grad, was born in NYC on this date.
Bobby Darin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.
May 14, 1943 -
At approximately 4:10 a.m., Australia’s AHS Centaur, a hospital ship, was sunk without warning after it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.
Of the 332 medical personnel and civilian crew aboard, only 64 survived.
It's Israel's 77th anniversary today (Israel became a nation at midnight May 14th, in 1948, upon the termination of the British mandate.)
Once again, let us hope that the current situation in Israel will end peacefully and very soon.
May 14, 1973 -
The last Saturn V rocket was launched on this date, carrying Skylab One, the first manned space station. At the time, it was the largest payload launched into space by any nation.
During the following nine months, three successive teams of astronauts would crew Skylab. The space station would fall back into the Earth’s atmosphere in July 1979, accidentally scattering debris across Western Australia (luckily no one was injured.)
May 14, 1998 -
The world lost one of its smoothest voices and sharpest suits: Francis Albert Sinatra, better known as Ol’ Blue Eyes, bowed out at the age of 82. If you believe in poetic exits, perhaps the last voice he heard really was his own, crooning from a record player, whispering, “May you live to be 100, and may the last voice you hear be mine.” From Hoboken bars to Las Vegas stages, from Oscar-winning performances to allegedly "acquaintances, and what have you", Sinatra’s life was a masterclass in swagger. He wasn’t just a singer, he was a symbol of an era. Suave, volatile, loyal, mysterious, magnetic and with just enough mafia-adjacent intrigue to keep things spicy.
The Chairman of the Board once said, “What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can.” Which is one way to describe an existence filled with top-shelf bourbon, sold-out concerts, a few FBI files, Ava Gardner, and four marriages. A model citizen? Not quite. A cultural icon? Undeniably.
Frank Sinatra didn’t just sing songs, he inhabited them. He didn’t just perform, he commanded. And when he died on this date, of a heart attack, the world fell a little quieter. Though, somewhere, in some smoky lounge in the great beyond, you can imagine him raising a glass and saying, “Regrets, I’ve had a few—but then again, too few to mention."
And so it goes.
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