Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival

Today is National Buffalo Soldiers Day. The holiday celebrating the contributions of some of the earliest African-American troops in the United States military.



The U.S. Congress recognizes the contributions of the more than 180,000 black Americans who fought to preserve the Union during the Civil War, by passing legislation known as the Army Organization Act, establishing six regular Army regiments of black enlisted soldiers. Of those six units, the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments become two of the most highly decorated units in American military history.


Today is also Milk Chocolate Day. American eat on average 12 lbs of chocolate per year; The Swiss on the other hand eat a little more than 26 lbs a year (that works out to about 450 bars of chocolate.)



If you don't continually gorge on chocolate, the terrorist have won.



(Psst, I've mentioned this before - it is a conspiracy organized by a large Mid Western Syndicate of Big Sugar corporations and dentists.)


July 28, 1932 -
The first film to feature the theme of Zombie-ism, White Zombie starring Béla Lugosi premiered in NYC on this date.



The film was thought lost until its rediscovery in the 1960s. A court battle was fought between film distributor Frank Storace and the estate of Stanley Krellberg, the copyright owner of the film. Storace had wished to produce a restored version but the estate refused him access to original footage in their possession. Storace gave up the court battle and did not win his access to his original footage.


July 28, 1945 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Wagon Heels, directed by Bob Clampett and starring Porky Pig, was released on this date



Because of its wildly stereotypical depiction of the Native American, it is seldom shown on television nowadays.


July 28, 1948 -
Bud and Lou's biggest box-office success, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, opened on this date, (this was one of my favorite childhood films.)



The scene in which Wilbur (Lou Costello) is unknowingly sitting on the lap of Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange) required multiple takes. The scene allowed Costello to improvise wildly, which caused Strange to constantly break up laughing during the takes.


July 28, 1951 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Leghorn Swoggled, directed by Bob McKimson and starring Foghorn Leghorn, Henery Hawk and the Barnyard Dawg, was released on this date



The last-released Robert McKimson short that Warren Foster wrote; starting with His Hare Raising Tale, he would transfer to Friz Freleng's unit, while McKimson would get Tedd Pierce, who previously wrote for both Freleng and Chuck Jones.


July 28, 1954 -
The Elia Kazan classic, On the Waterfront, premiered in New York on this date.



Shortly after the film's debut in 1954, the AFL-CIO expelled the East Coast longshoremen's union because it was still run by the mob.


July 28, 1957 -
Jerry Lee Lewis appeared of TV for the first time when he performed on the Steve Allen Show on this date.



Only a year earlier, Allen humiliated Elvis by making him appear in a tuxedo, singing Hound Dog to a dog, in an attempt to desexuallize Elvis' performance, Well, Jerry Lee Lewis gives a performance far more threatening than anything Elvis ever did live on television, just by the way he kicks that stool.


July 28, 1973 -
Bill Graham produced the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen Rock Festival at the Watkins Glen International Raceway, that featured the Allman Brothers, the Band, and the Grateful Dead.







Many rock critics claim the event was the largest gathering of people in the history of the United States. 150,000 tickets were sold for $10 each, but for all the other people it was a free concert. The concert was estimated to have drawn some 650,000 people. The crowd was so huge that a large part of the audience was not able to see the stage.


July 28, 1973 -
Grand Funk Railroad releases their biggest hit We're An American Band on this date.



Grand Funk was one of the best-selling bands of the '70s, and this was their biggest hit.Critics were often very harsh, especially Rolling Stone magazine, but they had a huge fan base and got lots of radio play.


July 28, 1988 -
The second film in the autobiographical series (Trilogy, The Long Day Closes,) from the phenomenal Terence Davies, Distant Voices, Still Lives opened in the US on this date. Please find time to watch this film.



Pete Poslethwaite found it hard to believe that Terence Davies' father (on whom his character was based) could have been so violent and cruel to his family. It wasn't until Davies asked his sister to tell him about being beaten in the cellar with a broomstick by their father (which is depicted in the film) that he accepted it was true.


July 28 1993 -
The 20th Century Fox comedy, >Robin Hood: Men in Tights, directed by Mel Brooks, and starring Cary Elwes, Richard Lewis, Roger Rees, Amy Yasbeck, Dave Chappelle (in his film debut), Isaac Hayes, and Tracey Ullman, was released on this date.



Cary Elwes based his performance in The Princess Bride on Errol Flynn's portrayal of Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Fittingly, it was his performance in The Princess Bride that brought Elwes to Mel Brooks' attention.


July 28 1995 -
The independent coming-of-age drama, Kids, directed by Larry Clark, and starring Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce, Chloë Sevigny, and Rosario Dawson, was released on this date.


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The film received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA (no one under 18 admitted). Clark appealed the rating, and lost. The MPAA recommend that Clark not cut the film because they felt it would lose some of its impact.


July 28, 2007 -
Plain White T's single, Hey There Delilah goes to No. 1 on the Billboard Chart, on this date, two years after it was first released.



The "Delilah" refered to in the song is the runner Delilah DiCrescenzo, who lead singer Tom Higgenson was trying to impress with a song.


Today's moment of Zen.


Today in History:
July 28, 1540 -
King Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard on this date.



To celebrate his nuptials, Henry had his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, executed.



It must have been some reception.


July 28, 1586, (the date is sometimes noted as December 3.) -
Sir Thomas Herriot introduced Colombian potatoes to England. Before this date, potatoes were merely glimpsed from afar, shyly smiling but never saying hello.

Over fifty years earlier, the Spanish had been the first to discover potatoes. The mathematician, astronomer and translator had just returned from Sir Walter Raleigh’s English colony on Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina, where he had made detailed studies of the wildlife.


July 28, 1794 -
Maximilien "The Incorruptible" Robespierre who had dominated the Committee of Public Safety during the 'Reign of Terror,' was having an extremely bad day. The day before, crustaceous mobs led by lobsters throughout France, drove around Paris, protesting of his dictatorial ways and staged the Coupe of Thermidor, relieving him of his power.



Maximilien Robespierre was then relieved of his head and guillotined for having ravaged the French meteorological cycle with his nefarious Rain of Terror on this date.


July 28, 1835 -
King Louis Philippe of France survived an assassination attempt by Giuseppe Maria Fieschi, who rigged 25 guns together and fired them all with the pull of a single trigger, killing approximately 18 people but not his intended target

Fieschi was wounded in the attack and the King spared no expense in tending to the other victims of his trigger happy would be assassin. Once Fieschi was deemed medically fit, he was tried, condemned to death and was guillotined on February 19, 1836.

Perhaps he should have spent more time on the practice range.


July 28, 1841 -
James Boulard and Henry Mallin pull the decomposed body of a young woman from the Hudson River near Hoboken, New Jersey. Mary Cecilia Rogers, who worked at a popular cigar store, was initially thought to have been killed in the course of a brutal gang rape, but ultimately it seems more likely that she died from a botched abortion.

Years later, novelist Edgar Allen Poe adapts the sensational news story about 'The Beautiful Cigar Girl' into the short story The Mystery of Marie Roget.


July 28, 1914 -
One month after the recent assassination of the Archduck Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, on this date.



World War One was underway. In just four years, it would claim 8.5 million lives and leave 21.2 million wounded, and lay the groundwork for an eventual rematch.

Sometimes family feuds just get out of hand.


July 28, 1932 -
(More things your teacher never told you ...)
Federal troops under the order of President Hoover forcibly dispersed the "Bonus Army" of (17,000 World War I veterans) who had gathered in Washington, D.C. on June 17th to demand money they weren't scheduled to receive until 1945.



The troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur and Major George S. Patton are ordered to charge into the veterans and were sent to destroy the temporary shacks in the Bonus Army's camps in Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats forcing the marchers out. By the end of the day hundreds of veterans were injured, and several were killed.


July 28, 1945 -
A US Army B-25 bomber crashes into the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors. An engine plunges down an elevator shaft, sparking a fire in the basement. Eleven people in the building were killed, in addition to the three man bomber crew. Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a plunge of 75 stories inside an elevator, which still stands as the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall recorded. (Kids, please, do not try this at home.)



And as of this morning, from my vantage point, I can see that it's still standing.


July 28, 1957 -
A C-124 Globemaster II cargo plane of the US Air Force left Dover AFB in Delaware, carrying three nuclear weapons jettisoned its precious cargo into the Atlantic, somewhere east of Delaware and New Jersey, on this date. The bombs were never recovered.



Remember every time you go to a beach off the Jersey Shore, a 200 foot radioactive mutant Blue Crab is lurking somewhere, beneath the waves.



And so it goes.

Say, you wouldn't be that scwewy wabbit, would you?

July 27, 1940 -
Bugs Bunny made his debut in a cartoon called A Wild Hare, on this day. Warner Brothers' writers and animators set out to make a rabbit who would be the epitome of cool. They modeled bugs on Groucho Marx with a carrot instead of a cigar. Mel Blanc gave him a Brooklyn accent.



This cartoon is considered the first to feature both Bugs' and Elmer's catchphrases - "What's Up, Doc?" and "Be vewy quiet...I'm hunting wabbits" respectively.



As of January 2013, he has appeared in more films than any other cartoon character - more than 175 films.


July 27, 1949 -
Mighty Joe Young, an RKO Radio Picture made by the same creative team responsible for King Kong, premiered in New York City on this date, (in fact, when Joe smashes through the facade during the nightclub riot, the first scream you hear is that of Fay Wray, stock audio from the original King Kong.)



Second-unit director David Sharpe recalled an incident that happened on the nightclub set: "We were shooting some action stuff . . . which featured lions, tigers, elephants, and apes in cages around the table area. We had trained lions to run from one side of the set to the other. One of them broke loose, jumped onto the top of his cage and grabbed the trainer by the throat. I was in the camera cage. I pushed the iron door open, raced across the set and punched the lion in the face. I guess I shocked him so badly he let go, turned tail and ran into his cage."

(I've mentioned this before, I'm no longer going to direct you to Terry Moore's photo spread in Playboy. You go on ahead and find it yourself.)


July 27, 1958 -
The gothic thriller, Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton, (his only directorial feature,) and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Evelyn Varden, and Peter Graves, opened on this date. The film opened to negative reviews. It is now considered one of the greatest films ever made.



While the poor critical reviews are often cited as the reason Charles Laughton never directed another feature, Laughton himself said that he much preferred directing in the theatre. There, you could constantly change and amend the production--adding lines, changing lighting and sets--but with film once it was done it could never be changed.


July 27, 1968 –
Cass Elliot releases her first solo single, Dream a Little Dream of Me following the break up of The Mamas and Papas.



This song was written in 1931 and became a popular standard in depression-era America. Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt composed the music and Gus Kahn wrote the lyrics. When she was 15, Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas met Fabian Andre. Years later, when Phillips heard that Andre died in a fall in an elevator shaft, she remembered meeting him and this song came up. They decided to record it with "Mama" Cass Elliot on lead vocals, and it became her signature song, and she performed it with The Mamas & The Papas and as a solo artist until her death in 1974.


July 27, 1968 –
The Who releases their single Magic Bus in the U.S. on this date. The song has become one of the band's most popular songs and had been a concert staple.



The song has been released in various renditions. The eight-minute version that appears on Live at Leeds, with Daltrey wailing on harmonica, may be the wildest. Martin Scorsese made it a high point of the soundtrack for Ray Liotta’s coked-up driving scene in Goodfellas.


July 27, 1978 -
National Lampoon's Animal House, the grandfather of all gross-out comedies, premiered in New York City on this date. (Toga party, anyone?)



After firing the crew hairdresser (who wanted extra time off), John Landis took the core Delta actors to a local barber shop and asked the barber if he could do early 1960s-style haircuts. The man looked at the pictures and said it would be easy. He did all of the actors' haircuts, one after another.


July 27, 1983 -
Little Tommy's break out film, Risky Business, opened on this date. This film is not, as usually noted, an above average teenage sex comedy but the precursor to 'Greed is Good' mantra that sunk this country for years to come.



The sunglasses Joel wears are the Ray-Ban Wayfarer model. Annual sales of Wayfarers were languishing as of 1983 but skyrocketed 2,000 percent after the movie's release. This film and The Blues Brothers have contributed to the popularity of the Wayfarers since.


July 27, 1984 -
Warner Bros. gift to an unsuspecting world, Purple Rain, starring Prince, premiered on this date.



A few days before the premiere, Prince had a nightmare that Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert despised the film, with Ebert ripping the film apart. He said, "I dreamed those two guys on the TV were reviewing the movie and that fat guy was tearing me up!" Siskel and Ebert both loved the film in their reviews.



(you may put your arms down now, dab your eyes, and resume your day.)


July 27, 1985 -
Paul Young hits #1 with the single, Everytime You Go Away, a cover of a Hall & Oates song released in 1980. It's the only Hall & Oates cover ever to make the Top 40.



Young's success with the song didn't produce any sour grapes for Daryl Hall, who credited him with tapping into the commercial potential he failed to see the first time around. Hall told Music Connection: "I never thought of it any other way than the way it was 'til Paul Young did it ... I was just doin' a kind of gospel/soul song; that was all I had in mind for it. I was really surprised to hear the production they did because it kept the elements but commercialized it - made it sound like a pop record."


July 27, 1985 -
The Eurythmics' song There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) went to No.1 on the UK singles chart on this date, the duo's only UK No.1 single.



The song features Stevie Wonder, who provides the harmonica solo. Wonder worked on this own schedule, so when Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart went to Los Angeles to record the song, they weren't sure if or when he would show up. "It was getting very late and we were getting pessimistic whether he'd even turn up at all," Lennox recalled in Q magazine. "Finally he showed up, and he was really an adorable person. He had these braids on his hair with beautiful gold beads, and when he plays he shakes his head so the beads make a loud noise. But his assistant, who takes care of him, took out this beanbag thing and gently tied Stevie's hair into it so it didn't make a sound down the mikes. The man is a supreme musician, worth waiting for."


July 27, 2007 -
20 Century Fox finally go around to releasing the film version of the very long running series, The Simpsons, The Simpsons Movie, featuring the voices of the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, and Harry Shearer, on this date.



In total, The Simpsons Movie took nine years to complete. This is because Fox greenlit the project back in 1997 but in the years up until release, they had to get the voice cast to sign deals, which they didn't do up until 2001. Producing a final script also took several years because almost 160 different versions were written before choosing the final one as plots were continuously being repurposed for the television episodes.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
July 27, 1586 -
Sir Walter Raleigh and some of his men returned to England and disembarked at Plymouth smoking tobacco from pipes, which caused a sensation, on this date.



William Camden, a contemporary witness, reports that "These men who were thus brought back were the first that I know of that brought into England that Indian plant which they call Tabacca and Nicotia, or Tobacco" Tobacco in the Elizabethan age was known as "sotweed."

President Johnson celebrated this momentous date in history by signed the 1965 Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act on this date (in 1965); it required cigarette makers to print health warnings on all cigarette packages about the effects of smoking.


July 27, 1890 -
At the Chateau d'Auvers, Vincent van Gogh presses a revolver to his chest and pulls the trigger.(Or did he?) Somehow the bullet misses the vital organs, and the painter manages to stumble over to a friend's house.



The following night, Van Gogh died of an infection in the arms of his brother Theo.


July 27, 1922 -
Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.



Norman Milton Lear television writer and film and television producer was born on this date.


July 27, 1931 -
A swarm of grasshoppers destroyed thousands of acres of crops in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota on this date



Bunkies, remember when I told you not to search for images concerning Ed Gein yesterday, maybe you don't want to watch the videos below.



The corn fields were totally destroyed, without a stalk left standing.


July 27, 1953 -
The armistice that ended the Korean War was signed on this date. It was a war that began in June 1950 when North Korea invaded the south. Almost 35,000 Americans were killed in the conflict, more than 5,000 captured or went missing. A corporal in the 1st Marine Division named Anthony Ebron said, "Those last few days were pretty bloody. Each time we thought the war was over we'd go out and fight again. The day it ended we shot off so much artillery that the ground shook. Then, that night, the noise just stopped. We knew it was over."



Harry Truman said that if he had signed the same armistice, the Republicans would have drawn and quartered him, but Dwight D. Eisenhower had run for president on the platform that he would end the war, and when he was elected, that's what he did.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to inform the North Koreans that they, in fact, signed the armistice, because technically, they are still at war with someone, possibly us.


July 27, 1980 -
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran, died of lymphatic cancer in Cairo on this date.

Maybe we can borrow Mr. Peabody's Wayback machine and send the former Shah somewhere else for his surgery other than New York–Weill Cornell Medical Hospital.


July 27, 1996 -
During a celebration for the Atlanta Olympics, security guard Richard Jewell notices a suspicious green knapsack in Centennial Park. He immediately alerts police and helps to clear people from the area shortly before the pipe bomb explodes. For his trouble, Jewell becomes the FBI's preliminary suspect and news organizations ran wild with the story.



Because he didn't do it, numerous media outlets end up paying him large undisclosed settlements. Eric Rudolph was later charged with the bombing. He was arrested May 31, 2003. Rudolph later pleaded guilty to the bombing.



And so it goes.

Life is short, break the rules

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.. — Abraham Lincoln (I wonder how that worked out for him?)

For some reason, today is All or Nothing Day. All or Nothing Day is a time to take risks and live on the edge.



Live like today is your last day on earth and let your inner daredevil shine, especially if you are looking to become a Darwin Award winner.


July 26, 1951 -
Walt Disney's 13th animated feature, Alice in Wonderland, premiered in the UK and New York City on this date.





Continuing the pattern of film versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland not being commercially successful, this movie was a huge box office failure. However, it did become something of a cult film during the 1960s, where it was viewed as a "head film". Several years later it became the Disney studio's most requested 16mm film rental title for colleges and private individuals. In 1974, the studio took note of this fact, withdrew the rental prints, and reissued the film nationally themselves


July 26, 1952 -
The Merrie Melodies cartoon, Oily Hare, directed by Bob McKimson and starring Bugs Bunny, was released on this date



The comically stretched limo is modeled after a 1952 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special.


July 26, 1958 -
The Looney Tunes short, Dog Tales, directed by Bob McKimson, was released on this date.



Victor Barky (the Great Dane pianist) is a play on Victor Borge - perhaps as no surprise, one of Borge's nicknames was 'The Great Dane'.


July 26, 1969 -
Johnny Cash released the single, A Boy Named Sue, on this date.



Johnny Cash performed this song in the East Room of the White House on April 17, 1970 when he and his wife were invited by President Richard Nixon. Nixon's staff had requested the song along with Okie From Muskogee and a song by Guy Drake called Welfare Cadillac, but Cash refused to perform those songs, saying he didn't have arrangements ready.


July 26, 1979 –
The Clash releases their first U.S. single, I Fought the Law on this date.



This was written by Sonny Curtis, who was a member of The Crickets (Buddy Holly's group). The Crickets recorded it shortly after Buddy Holly's death in 1959 and released it on their 1960 album In Style With The Crickets. If Holly had lived, there's a good chance it would have been a huge hit for The Crickets.


July 26, 1980 -
The Rolling Stones started a seven week run at No.1 (the group's eighth US No.1,) on the US album chart with Emotional Rescue, on this date.



Mick Jagger sang much of this in a falsetto, which was the thing to do with disco songs. The Bee Gees did the same thing, but unlike The Stones, were never able to get back the fans they lost to disco.


July 26, 1985 -
The award-winning drama, The Kiss of the Spider Woman, directed by Héctor Babenco, based on the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, and starring William Hurt, Raul Julia, Sônia Braga, José Lewgoy, Milton Gonçalves, and Denise Dumont, was released on this date.



During rehearsals, the two actors had trouble finding the chemistry they needed for their scenes together. To better understand what each needed from the other's role, William Hurt suggested they try an experiment where they would switch roles, with Hurt as Valentin and Raul Julia as Molina. The role-switching rehearsal went so well that Hurt initially suggested to director Hector Babenco that they should switch parts for the film as well. Obviously, the switch did not occur, but Hurt states that it was a very useful experiment in helping them more fully understand their own characters.


July 26, 1986 -
Peter Gabriel's song Sledgehammer went to No.1 on the US singles chart, No.4 hit in the UK, on this date.



The wildly innovative video was directed by Stephen R. Johnson and featured stop-motion claymation techniques. The video has won a number of awards, including a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, and Best British Video at the 1987 Brit Awards.


July 26, 1991 -
One of Mel Brooks non-film parody movies, Life Stinks, starring Mel, Leslie Ann Warren, Howard Morris, and Jeffrey Tambor premiered on this date. (This was one of my father-in-law's favorite movies.)



The film screened out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 playing at a "surprise screening". France, being the home of great existential and phenomenological writers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, contributed to this movie screening there, the film being an "existential comedy".


July 26, 2006 –
The directorial debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine, starring Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, went into limited release on this date.



All of the girls acting as participants in the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant, except Abigail Breslin, were veterans of real beauty pageants. They wore the same costumes, including hair and makeup, and performed the same talent routines as they had in their real-life pageants.


July 26, 2015 -
In a field just outside of Cesena, Italy, 1000 musicians and singers play Foo Fighters Learn to Fly simultaneously with the dream of attracting the band to play a show in their city for the first time in nearly 20 years.





On November 3, 2015, the Foo Fighters performed a 27-song set for the for the Rockin’ 1000, starting with Learn to Fly.


Another album from the dicount bin at The ACME Record Shoppe today


Today in History:
July 26, 1753 O.S. (August 6, 1753 N.S.) -
Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, German physicist, died of electrocution in St. Petersburg, Russia on this date. He was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, when he heard thunder. The Professor ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the experiment was underway, a supposed ball lightning appeared and collided with Richmann's head leaving him dead in a red spot. His shoes were blown open, parts of his clothes singed, the engraver knocked out; the door frame of the room was split, and the door itself torn off its hinges.

Beside not telling him that hemlock was poison, his mother did not sit Little Georg upon her knee and tell him about the evils of electricity. He was apparently the first person in history to die while conducting electrical experiments.


July 26, 1775 -
The Continental Congress established a postal system for the colonies with Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general in Philadelphia on this date.

Franklin also established the standardized method of charging for mail delivery based on weight and distance. Ben would be very bothered indeed by what's going on at the Post Office nowadays.


July 26, 1826 -
Schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll was hanged in Valencia, Spain after uttering his last words: "I die reconciled to God and to man," on this date. He was the last person executed by the Spanish Inquisition.

Gee, I guess at that point everybody should have expected the Spanish Inquisition. (I promise I won't mention the Inquisition for a while.)


July 26, 1895 -
Presidents are made, not born. That’s a good thing to remember. It’s silly to think that Presidents are born, because very few people are 35 years old at birth, and those who are won’t admit it.



Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen, the brilliant comedian and actor, and better half of the Burns and Allen team was born on this date.


July 26, 1921 -
Excelsior, you fathead!



Jean Parker "Shep" Shepherd Jr., American raconteur, radio and TV personality, writer and actor, was born on this date.


July 26, 1934 -
Winsor McCay, an American cartoonist and animator, died on this date. A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades.



His two best-known creations are the newspaper comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran from 1905 to 1914, and the animated cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur, which he created in 1914.


July 26, 1943 -
Michael Philip Jagger, Golden Globe and Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, occasional film producer and actor, was born on this date.



Ponder this: Deveraux Octavian Basil Jagger, Mick's eighth child (who is almost ten years old) is the grand uncle to his half sister Jade Jagger Fillary's first granddaughter, Ezra Key, who is 12 (although it is impolite to tell a lady's age.)


July 26, 1947 -
President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The act forbade the CIA from operating within the US.

With the NSA surveillance program, that's not quite working out at the moment, is it?


July 26, 1956 -
A little more than 11 hours after colliding with the Swedish liner Stockholm, the Italian liner Andrea Doria, carrying 1,134 passengers and 572 crew, sank off New England coast.



46 people on the Andrea Doria and 5 crew members of the Stockholm died as a result of the crash. The SS Ile de France had been near the collision site and was able to assist in the rescue of many of the passengers of the Andrea Doria. Within four years, the Ile de France was used as a floating prop for the nautical disaster film, The Last Voyage, which had some plot similarities to the disaster involving the Italian liner SS Andrea Doria.


July 26, 1956 -
The Suez Crisis begins when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the British and French-owned Suez Canal hoping to charge tolls that would pay for construction of of the Aswan dam on the Nile. Israel, followed by the UK and France, invades Egypt in October of that year. Political pressure from the U.S., the USSR and the UN leads to the withdrawal of the invading nations by 1957.



The Suez Conflict fundamentally altered the regional balance of power. It was a military defeat for Egypt, but Nasser's status grew in the Arab world as the defender of Arab nationalism. Israel withdrew from Egyptian territory gained in the fighting but regained access to the Straits of Tiran, while the United Nations adopted a larger role maintaining a peacekeeping force in the Sinai. Britain and France lost influence in the region and suffered humiliation after the withdrawal of their troops from the Canal Zone.


July 26, 1959 -
There was a partial nuclear reactor meltdown at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, on this date. Little known outside of the area, the nuclear accident released far more radiation that the Three Mile Island accident.



A report in 2006 said it may have caused hundreds of cases of cancer in the community, and that chemicals threatened to contaminate ground and water.


July 26, 1984 -
Serial killer, cannibal and flesh suit wearer Ed Gein died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute, a home for the criminally insane on this date.

Gein inspired the films Psycho and Silence of the Lambs. Bunkies, I warn you every year - DON'T go looking for any of the true crime scene photos attached to Mr. Gein's name unless you'd like the truly grizzly.


July 26, 1991 -

Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) was arrested in Florida, for exposing himself at the South Trail XXX Cinema on this date.

For several years following the incident, Reubens lost his children's television show and product endorsements.



And so it goes.