Laughter is the closest distance between two people.

Today is International Moment of Laughter Day. Unlike many of the 'holidays' that litter the internet, we know who created this one. The unofficial holiday, created by motivational speaker Izzy Gesell, encourages people to forget the stresses of daily life and give into the healing and relaxing power of laughter.



It's always difficult to slip monkeys into conversations, especialy in french.


April 14, 1883 -
Leo Delibes' opera Lakme, premiered in Paris on this date.



The main reason you've probably even know this opera is because of the duet, Viens and Mallika sing, Les Liens en Fleurs (The Flower Duet) in Act I has become widely used in ads, as well as in films (I'll stop now.)



That anyone knows an opera from the late 19th Century is amazing.


April 14, 1934 -
The Merrie Melodies short Beauty and the Beast, directed by Friz Freleng, debuted on this date.



This is the first Merrie Melodies cartoon to be directed by Friz Freleng by himself, as his previous solo directed cartoons from Warner Bros. were only Looney Tunes cartoons.


April 14, 1934 -
The Looney Tunes short Buddy's Garage, directed by Earl Duvall, starring Buddy, debuted on this date.



This cartoon was Earl Duvall's last cartoon with the studio. He was fired due to a drunken argument with Leon Schlesinger, so he was replaced with Jack King.


April 14, 1945 -
Tex Avery retooled his Warner Brothers cartoon, Dangerous Dan McFoo, and remade it for MGM as The Shooting of Dan McGoo. It was released on this date.



This is probably the better version, but what do I know.


April 14, 1951 -
The Looney Tunes short The Fair Haired Hare, directed by Friz Freleng, starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, debuted on this date.



This was the first Bugs Bunny cartoon written by Warren Foster for Friz Freleng's unit. He has transferred from Robert McKimson's unit


April 14th, 1956 -
The first professional quality videotape machine was introduced by Ampex at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago. Magnetic videotape recording had been introduced early in the 1950s, but were considered unfeasible to replace kinescopes for broadcasting.



The machine was first used in a coast-to-coast network TV broadcast in the November 30, 1956  broadcast of Douglas Edwards and the News on CBS. For the next 20 years, quad videotape became the standard for the television industry.


April 14, 1956 -
The Looney Tunes short Mixed Master, directed by Robert McKimson, debuted on this date.



The dog in the title card bears no resemblance to either of the dogs in the short.


April 14, 1967 -
The Bee Gees released their single in England, New York Mining Disaster 1941, on this date.



The Gibb brothers wrote the song when they were sitting in the dark on some studio stairs at Polydor Records imagining they were stuck in a mine accident. There was no such event, and the lyrics are totally fictional.


April 14, 1969 -
During the live broadcast of the 41st annual Academy Awards Ceremony, the first Oscar ceremony to be televised worldwide, it was announced Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied for Best Actress Oscar on this date.



Both Streisand and Hepburn received 3,030 votes each; it was the first exact tie in a principal Oscar category. It has been noted that had Streisand not (presumably) cast her ballot for herself, Hepburn would have won the Oscar. By one vote.


April 14, 1969 -
The bizarre 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV special starring The Pre-fab four, The Monkees, aired on NBC TV, on this date.



This special is notable as the Monkees' final performance as a quartet until 1986, as Peter Tork left the group at the end of the special's production.


April 14, 1972 -
The first animated film to receive an X rating, Fritz the Cat, directed by Ralph Bakshi in his directorial debut, was released in the US on this date. In spite of its rating, the film went on to gross over $90 million worldwide, making it one of the highest grossing independent animated films of all time.



According to Ralph Bakshi, two of the animators didn't work on the film for long. The first just wanted to draw dirty pictures, had no animation experience, and were fired for it. The second had animation experience, but couldn't bring themselves to tell their family what they did for a living, and quit.


April 14, 1989 -
Cameron Crowe's comedy Say Anything..., starring John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, and that boom box, went into general release in the US on this date.



Producer James L. Brooks said the movie was inspired when Brooks saw a man walking with his daughter, and wondered what would happen if the father committed a crime.


April 14, 1989 -
Tom Petty first solo album Full Moon Fever, was released on this date.



The album features contributions from members of the Heartbreakers alongside his Traveling Wilburys' bandmates Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison.


April 14, 1989 -
The British group Fine Young Cannibals had their first hit when the song She Drives Me Crazy hit #1 on the charts on this date.



After Barry Levinson heard the music the Fine Young Cannibals provided for Jonathan Demme's Something Wild, he asked them for some songs for a movie he was directing called Tin Men. Levinson wanted fresh music that would still convey the vibe of the '60s-era Baltimore portrayed in the film.


April 14, 2006 -
The bio-pix film about the 1950s pinup and bondage model Bettie Page, The Notorious Bettie Page, directed by Mary Harron and starring Gretchen Mol was released in the US, on this date.



A good friend of Bettie's, Hugh Hefner held a private screening of this movie for Bettie Page and a small group of friends. Bettie reportedly liked the movie and remarked that Gretchen Mol was much prettier than she was. Her only complaint was the film's title, saying "I was NEVER notorious!"


April 14, 2017 -
Harry Styles's debut single Sign of the Times, knocked Ed Sheeran's Shape Of You 13-week run off the top of the UK charts, on this date. The former One Direction star achieved his first No.1 as a solo artist with this release - the first from his self-titled debut album. (Harry is quite popular in our house.)



Styles premiered the single, the first song to be heard from his debut solo album, on April 7, 2017 during the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast show. "It's the song I'm most proud of writing, I think," Styles told the host Nick Grimshaw, adding, "I wrote most of the album in Jamaica, I was in Jamaica for two months. I just wanted to not be distracted… I really liked being away from everything."


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
April 14, 73 -
With the 10th Roman Legion about to breach the gates of their mountaintop fortress, 960 Sicarii Jews committed mass suicide at Masada on this date. According to Josephus, the radical cult selected ten swordsmen by lottery to perform the killing.



The society changes its name to the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1784.


April 14, 1828 -
Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language on this date. He was a man who'd grown up in America at a time when Americans from different states could barely understand each other, because they spoke with such different accents and even different languages.



The society changes its name to the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1784.


April 14, 1828 -
Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language on this date. He was a man who'd grown up in America at a time when Americans from different states could barely understand each other, because they spoke with such different accents and even different languages.



Americans in Vermont spoke French, New Yorkers spoke Dutch, and the settlers in Pennsylvania spoke German. All these different languages were influencing American English, and there were no standards of spelling or meaning.

Please note: Once Upon a Time — or maybe twice — there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland. Eighty thousand leagues beneath the sea it lay. ...Or "lie"; I'm still not too sure.


April 14, 1865 -
So, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

On the evening of Good Friday, just after 10 p.m., President Abraham Lincoln received a cranial gunshot wound from well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, while attending a performance of the play, Our America Cousin at the Ford Theatre on this date. Booth shouted out “sic semper tyrannis” (thus always to tyrants), Virginia’s state motto, after shooting Pres. Lincoln. He leaped to the stage, breaking his left leg on impact, and escaped through a side door.



Lincoln died the following day, primarily from ill-advised attempts to extract the bullet lodged in his brain.


On April 14, 1894, a public Kinetoscope parlor was opened by the Holland Bros. in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street - the first commercial motion picture house. The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill.





The ten films that comprise the first commercial movie program: Barber Shop, Bertoldi (mouth support) Ena Bertoldi (a British vaudeville contortionist), Bertoldi (table contortion), Blacksmiths, Roosters (some manner of cock fight), Highland Dance, Horse Shoeing, Sandow (Eugen Sandow, a German strongman), Trapeze, and Wrestling. As historian Charles Musser described, a "profound transformation of American life and performance culture" had begun.

They were sure to have plenty of kleenex on hand.


April 14,1910 -
President William Howard Taft began a sports tradition by feebly throwing out the first pitch on baseball’s Opening Day, on this date.



Taft threw to Washington Senator pitcher Walter Johnson, who went on to hurl a shutout win, allowing the Philadelphia Phillies just one hit and ending the day with a 3-0 victory for Washington. (There is no truth to the rumor that Dr. Fauci was the president's pitching coach.)


April 14, 1912 - 11:40 pm.
Mr and Mrs Sturges are arguing about whether or not Mrs Sturges will return to Europe with her husband after the boat docks in New York. In the heat of the moment, Julia Sturges reveals to her husband Richard, that Norman, their son is not his but but rather the result of a one-night stand after one of their many bitter arguments

Meanwhile in another part of the ship, Jack and Rose witness the horrific events of the evening after Jack had sketched Rose in the nude, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean, an engagement present from Cal (afterwards, they entered William Carter's Renault and engage in sexual congress) ...but that's another story.



The Unsinkable Titantic struck an iceberg, causing damage to six of her 16 'water tight' compartments. (Lat. 41° 46' N. and Long. 50° 14' W.)



Originally, a lifeboat drill was scheduled to take place on board the Titanic on earlier on this date. However, for an unknown reason, Captain Smith canceled the drill. Many believe that had the drill taken place, more lives could have been saved.


April 14, 1924 -
Form follows function - Louis Henry Sullivan



Louis Henri Sullivan, America's greatest 19th and early 20th Century architect died on this date. His autobiography was entitled The Autobiography of an Idea.


April 14, 1941 -
Julie Frances Christie, famous beauty and renown actress and Peter Edward "Pete" Rose, Sr. (Charlie Hustle) were born on this date.





Unfortunately, unless things change, one of them has a better chance of getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame than the other.



And so it goes.