Jeff Bezos is going to figure out how to monetize this

It’s possible for two lucid dreamers to communicate mid-dream.



Inter-brain neural synchronisation has been observed between people who are both asleep.


Today is National Toasted Marshmallow Day

It doesn't make any sense why this isn't celebrated on August 10th, National S'mores Day


August 30, 1935 (It could have been on the 29th, I don't know, I wasn't there.) -
RKO released the fourth Astaire and Rogers, Irving Berlin tune filled musical, Top Hat, in New York, on this date.



Fred Astaire supervised every other aspect of the development of a dance number from orchestration through final shooting and editing. He was particularly adamant about how a number should be filmed. He disliked interrupting the flow of the dance with unusual camera angles, cuts to the face or feet of the dancer, or reaction shots of people watching.


August 30, 1941 -
The Looney Tunes short, The Henpecked Duck, directed by Bob Clampett and starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, was released on this date.



In addition to being as daffy as his name, Daffy also breaks the fourth wall, which would be one one of his signature moves.


August 30, 1941 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Snow Time for Comedy, directed by Chuck Jones, was released on this date.



A rare short for the studio with no dialogue


August 30, 1952 -
The Looney Tunes short, A Bird in a Guilty Cage, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Tweety Bird and Sylvester the Cat, was released on this date.



One of the few times Tweety is actually shown flying, if only for a brief moment.


August 30, 1959 -
Bobby Darin's jazzy interpretation of Mack The Knife began its 26-week stay on the pop-singles charts.



The original German version of this song is called Theme from The Threepenny Opera, or Moritat, which is the German word for Murder Ballad. The lyrics have been translated in various ways on different versions, but the most popular translation was by the lyricist Marc Blitzstein for the 1954 off-Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera, which ran until 1961 and played in Greenwich Village, New York.


August 30, 1965 -
Bob Dylan's sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited was released on this date. It was his first album to feature other rock musicians backing him on the album.



The Highway 61 Revisited album marks not only a milestone in Dylan's career, but a turbulent time for the culture surrounding him. Before releasing this album, Dylan played the notorious Newport Folk Festival, which is famous for all the wrong reasons (the crowd there was upset because Dylan was only going to play for 15 minutes), and afterwards was the Forest Hills concert, which is less-well known but had a much more turbulent crowd doing a lot more booing for reasons that weren't clear to anyone.


August 30, 1967 -
John Boorman's crime drama thriller, Point Blank, premiered on this date.



When James Sikking auditioned for the role of the assassin, John Boorman rejected him and told him that his face was too nice for a killer. For the next week, though, Boorman would look out his office window at MGM and see Sikking standing outside, partially concealed by a bush or a column, just watching him menacingly. The director eventually walked out and offered him the part.


August 30, 1968 -
Apple Records released its first single, Hey Jude by The Beatles on this date.



This was the Beatles longest single, running 7:11, and at the time was the longest song ever released as a single. It was the first long song to get a lot of airplay, as radio stations still preferred short ones so they could play more of them. When this became a hit, stations learned that listeners would stick around if they liked the song, which paved the way for long songs like American Pie and Layla. Disc jockeys were the real winners here, as they could finally take a reasonable bathroom break.


August 30, 1968 -
Columbia Records released the sixth studio album of The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, on this date.



The first major album widely recognized as country rock, it represented a turning point for the 1970s country rock movement, which influenced the outlaw country and new traditionalist movements.


August 30, 1975 -
KC & The Sunshine Band's single Get Down Tonight reached No. 1 on the Billboard Charts (the first of five chart-toppers for the group,) on this date.



Written and produced by Harry Wayne (KC) Casey and his writing partner (and bass player) Richard Finch. Casey and Finch would sneak into nightclubs in the Miami area and get a taste of that culture, which influenced their sound. The song features a distinctive introduction, in which a recorded guitar solo is rendered at double speed over a normal-speed guitar line in the background. After observing someone else slowing down a tape machine, Richard Finch had the idea of using this technique to create the guitar riff, as a way of adding to the song something "that really keeps the buzz, that really keeps the excitement going all the way through without being too artificial sounding." Finch states that he was "always doing weird science" in those days, referring to his various experiments with sound.


August 30, 1986 -
Steve Winwood single, Higher Love went to No. 1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.



Winwood played many of the instruments on Back In The High Life and wrote the music for the songs, but for this and many other songs on the album, Will Jennings wrote the lyrics. Jennings is a very successful songwriter who also collaborated with Winwood on the albums Arc Of A Diver and Talking Back To The Night, and went on to write My Heart Will Go On with James Horner for the movie Titanic.


August 30, 1993 -
Moving himself and his gang of cohorts from NBC-TV, The Late Show with David Letterman premiered on CBS-TV, on this date.



NBC claimed "intellectual property rights" on many of Letterman's famous running gags and characters from his original show. As a result, the character of Larry Bud Melman was retired (though the actor remained with the show and appeared under his real name), and such traditions as "Viewer Mail", "Stupid Pet Tricks", and the "Top 10 List" were simply renamed. This controversy was the subject of much ridicule during the 1993-94 TV season, mostly from Letterman himself.


August 30, 2018 -
Yorgos Lanthimos' black comedy The Favourite, starring Olivia Coleman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone premieres at the Venice Film Festival on this date.



All of the actors rehearsed together for three weeks. They played a variety of improvisation games, worked with a choreographer, and were given free rein to look foolish in front of each other, so there would be no inhibitions on set.


Another album from the discount bin at The ACME Record Shoppe


Today in History:
August 30, 1780 -
General "Eggs" Benedict Arnold secretly puts into motion a plot to surrender the West Point fort to the British army during the American Revolution. The measure of Arnold's treachery was made worse by the fact that he was considered by many to be the best general and most accomplished leader in the Continental Army.



In fact, without Arnold's earlier contributions to the American cause, the American Revolution might well have been lost; notwithstanding, his name, like those of several other prominent traitors throughout history, has become a byword for treason and a brunch staple.


August 30, 1859 -
At the University of Göttingen, PhD candidate Albert Niemann isolates the alkaloid C17H21NO4 from leaves of the plant Erythroxylum coca.

Niemann names his white, powdery discovery Cocaine and observes firsthand its peculiarly strong anesthetic effect: "it benumbs the nerves of the tongue, depriving it of feeling and taste."



Oh, that's what cocaine does. Now I know.


August 30, 1918 -
Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin should have been having a great day on this date. Six weeks earlier, Lenin had the previous tenant of Kremlin, Tsar Nicholas II, permanently taken off the lease. After speaking at a factory in Moscow, Lenin was shot twice by Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Social Revolutionary party. Lenin narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but was severely wounded.



As Lenin was a 'godless' communist, he did not turn the other cheek. The assassination attempt set off a wave of reprisals by the Bolsheviks against the Social Revolutionaries and other political opponents. Thousands were executed as Russia fell deeper into civil war.


August 30, 1930 -
Warren Edward Buffett often called the "Sage of Omaha", "Oracle of Omaha", or "Omaha Steak", American investor, businessperson and philanthropist is born on this date. Buffett has amassed an enormous fortune from astute investments managed through the holding company Berkshire Hathaway, of which he is the largest shareholder and CEO.



With an estimated current net worth of around $149 billion (please note, these figures are from earlier this year - and his wealth appears to have continued climbing), he was ranked by Forbes as the ninth-richest person in the world as of this past March. He fell behind Elon Musk (net worth: $839 billion, nearly doubling his fortune from last year), Larry Page, who leapt into second place (net worth: $257 billion), Sergey Brin (net worth: $237 billion), Jeff Bezos (net worth: $224 billion), and Mark Zuckerberg who slipped to fifth place (net worth: $222 billion).

I, on the other hand, did not make a blip on the list.


August 30, 1963 -
Almost a year after the world barely averted World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin went live, on this date.



The system consists of two teletype machines, with a full-time communications link routed through London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki.


August 30, 1967 -
Thurgood Marshall, the lawyer who was best known for arguing the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court, became the first black US Supreme Court Justice.



The US Senate voted 69 to 11 to appoint Marshall (20 senators did not vote.) He served on the Court from 1967 to 1991.


August 30, 1983 -
The first black astronaut, Guion S. Bluford Jr., a US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, flew on the third mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger.



Bluford had entered the US Astronaut program in 1979; this was his first mission. This was also the first mission to launch and land at night.


August 30, 1984 -
Originally scheduled to lift off in June, Discovery (STS-41-D), the twelfth space shuttle mission, launched on this date. The Discovery carried six crew members to space: Commander Henry Hartsfield, Pilot Michael Coats, Mission Specialists Judith Resnick, Steven Hawley, Richard Mullane and Payload Specialist Charles Walker.



During the mission, three communications satellites were deployed. The shuttle safely completed it's mission on September 5, 1984.



And so it goes

We are dealing with an interesting issue

(Hello bunkies - woke up this morning to an unexpected legal issue with this blog. We will contine to post as long as we are able.)

The Merrie Melodies short, At Your Service Madame, directed by Friz Freleng, was released on this date.



Although they're seated at a conventional dining table, the pig family is daintily eating from troughs.


August 29, 1953 -
Warner Brothers introduced Speedy Gonzalez in the cartoon Cat-Tails for Two on this date.



While this is the first cartoon featuring the character Speedy Gonzales, his depiction here is vastly different from the character he would later become. It wasn't until his second appearance, Speedy Gonzales (two years later,) that he was re-designed as the character we know him as today.


August 29, 1959 -
The Looney Tunes short, Here Today, Gone Tamale, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Speedy Gonzalez and Sylvester the Cat, was released on this date.



The guillotine gag is recycled from Stork Naked; both cartoons were directed by Friz Freleng.


August 29, 1962 -
The United Artists remake of the 1937 boxing film, Kid Galahad, this time starring Elvis and co-starring Lola Albright, Gig Young, Charles Bronson, and Ed Asner (in his first screen appearance,) went into general release on this date.



Dolores Fuller who wrote the song I Got Lucky for Elvis had been the girlfriend of Edward D. Wood Jr. a decade earlier and had acted in several of his productions. She wrote songs for several Elvis movies.


August 29, 1964 -
Roy Orbison’s single, (Oh,) Pretty Woman, was released on this date.



Orbison and his wife Claudette had recently reconciled after some tough times, but as this song was climbing the charts, Roy found out she had been cheating on him and filed for divorce. In 1966, they remarried, but two months later Claudette was killed when the motorcycle she was riding was hit by a truck. Orbison faced tragedy again when his two oldest sons died in a fire at his home in 1968. He was on tour at the time.


August 29, 1964 -
Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins opened in general release on this date. This is first movie I ever saw (but not on this date.)





Walt Disney cast Julie Andrews for the lead after seeing her in Camelot on Broadway. When she mentioned she was pregnant, he offered to wait until she had her baby to start filming and offered her then-husband, Tony Walton, the job of designing costumes and some sets for this movie. Disney also gave the couple a personally escorted tour of Disneyland and the studio to help them make up their minds. Disney liked Andrews in Camelot so much that after he saw her performance he had the animators of One Hundred and One Dalmatians draw the character of Anita to resemble her.


August 29, 1967 -
ABC's television ratings soared through the roof as David Janssen and Barry Morse starred in the final episode of The Fugitive on this date.



This was the first series to feature a "final episode" in which all the plot lines were resolved, and all questions answered.


August 29, 1981 -
ELO's album, Time, went to No. 1 on the U.K. charts on this date. It was their second album to do so.



There is a backward message on the Time album. Actually, it's on the interlude between Twilight and Yours Truly, 2095, but on the Time CD it's attached to Twilight from [3:22] to [3:36]. It's simply a backwards run verse from 21st Century Man: "Though you ride on the wheels of tomorrow, you still wander the fields of your sorrow". This trick is repeated at the end of 21st Century Man, just before Hold On Tight.


August 29, 1986 -
BBC1-TV aired a Paul McCartney special, McCartney for the first time, on this date.



Originally conceived as a long-form promotional piece for the Wings album, Press to Play, the BBC staffer (Richard Skinner) persuades Paul McCartney to talk about much more, including one of the more in-depth interviews about Wings.


August 29, 1986 -
George Harrison's production company, HandMade Films' romantic comedy, Shanghai Surprise, starring newlyweds Madonna and Sean Penn, was released on this date.



Apparently, after principal photography wrapped, executive producer George Harrison allegedly said of the movie's two lead stars Madonna and Sean Penn: "Penn is a pain in the ass . . . [while] she has to realize that you can be a fabulous person and be humble as well".


August 29, 1994 –
The battling Gallagher Brothers, Liam and Noel, released their debut album Definitely Maybe, as Oasis, on this date.



Noel Gallagher started writing the song Live Forever, (which went on to become once of the bands most popular songs,) when he was a roadie for The Inspiral Carpets. It helped convince his brother Liam to let him join his band, Oasis.


Don't forget to tune in to The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today


Today in History:
August 29, 29/30AD (The date is a best guess, and the subject of much debate. Once again, Romans were too busy with their orgies and draining lead-lined wine goblets to accurately document events of the day.)

John the Baptist (cousin of the itinerant carpenter of Nazareth) received a severe haircut from King Herod, because his teenage step-daughter, Salome (the Miley Cyrus of her day,) couldn't keep her shorts on while dancing.



Children are always such a handful.


August 29, 1533 -
Atahualpa, the last Incan Emperor, discovered on this date, that the European exploration of the new world was not going to go well for the indigenous people. Francisco Pizarro, one in a long line of Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Andes, with a bible in one hand and a sword in the other. Atahualpa was quickly captured by the Spanish and held for ransom. After paying an immense ransom for his release (a room, 22 ft by 17 ft by 8 ft high, once filled with gold and twice with silver within two months), Pizarro decided it was better to kill his hostage and keep the random.



Atahualpa was condemned to be burnt at the stake - which was anathematic since the Inca believed that the soul would not be able to go on to the afterlife if the body were burned. Atahualpa offered and paid an additional random to be ritualistically garroted after a proper Christian baptism, which occurred on this date in 1533, (several sites place his death on July 26, 1533 and his burial was on this date, but dead is dead.)


More on Political Philosophy ...
Jean Baptiste Colbert was born on August 29, 1619.

Colbert was the finance minister to King Louis XIV of France. His own Political Philosophy consisted of a big pile of money. This was a very effective politics, and therefore deemed insufficiently philosophical, which is why you tend to hear more about Locke and Hegel.

Another important political philosopher was born this week: John Locke was born on August 29, 1632. Mr. Locke was a political philosopher, and many of his ideas found their way into the American Constitution.



He is best known for his essay concerning human understanding, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which remains famous to this day as the shortest essay ever written.


August 29, 1896 -
Here is one of those bright dividing lines: if you know what Chop Suey is - you're old. If you've tasted Chop Suey - you're really old.



The Chinese-American dish Chop Suey was invented in New York City by the chef to visiting Chinese Ambassador Li Hung-chang on this date.


August 29, 1915 -
Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish three-time Academy Award, two-time Emmy Award, and Tony Award - winner was born (and died in 1982) on this date.



Many of her shorter male co-stars, such as Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains, had to wear lifts to avoid looking small next to her 5' 10" stature.


August 29, 1920 -
Charles Christopher "Bird" Parker, jazz saxophonist and composer was born on this date.



Along with trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie, he created the sporadic rhythms known as "be bop" in the 1950s.


August 29, 1949 -
The Soviet Union joined the nuclear club on this date when they detonated a nuclear weapon, code-named First Lightning (Pervaya Molniya) at a test site in Kazakhstan. American experts were shocked and dismayed because they had thought the Soviets were still years away from having a workable bomb.



The resultant fear helped trigger an arms race that would see the Americans and Soviets stockpile approximately 32,000 and 45,000 nuclear devices.


August 29, 1958 -
Michael Joseph Jackson, the self-crowned King of Pop was born on this date.



He has achieved the dubious distinction of being in the number one position on Forbes magazine's list of "Top-Earning Dead Celebrities", six years in a row.

Last year was not bad for the King of Pop's income, Jackson's posthumous earnings were $115 million dollars. His large wealth is partly due to the Broadway musical MJ: The Musical, which brought in $85 million in the past 12 months. Elvis Presley, Jackson's former father-in-law, was the second biggest earner on the list, earning $100 million.


August 29, 1966 -
The Beatles performed their last concert before paying fans at in San Francisco's Candlestick Park on this date.



The performance marked the end of a four-year period dominated by touring and concerts including nearly 60 U.S. appearances and over 1400 internationally.


August 29, 1991 -
After a vote in the Soviet Union's parliament, the Supreme Soviet dissolved the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on this date.

The move brought an end to one of the world's largest communist governments.


August 29, 2005 -
Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. The death toll eventually reached at least 1,600. An estimated 300 Louisiana residents died out of state; some 230 people perished in Mississippi. Property damage estimates were in the hundreds of billions of dollars.



The name Katrina was officially retired on April 6, 2006 by the World Meteorological Organization at the request of the U.S. government. The name will never again be used for another North Atlantic hurricane.




And so it goes

Did someone call me Schnorrer?

August 28, 1930 -
... That's a fine letter, Jamison, that's an epic. That's dandy. Now, I want you to make two carbon copies of that letter and throw the original away. And when you get through with that, throw the carbon copies away. Just send a stamp, airmail, that's all. You may go, Jamison. I may go too. ...

The Marx Brothers second outing at Paramount, Animal Crackers, opened on this date.



In 1957, Paramount forgot to renew the soundtrack rights which reverted back to the authors of the play. (The studio did renew the picture rights, though.) As a result, the film could not legally be seen in the USA until 1974, when Universal, which had since purchased Paramount's film library, was persuaded by fan requests to re-release it.


August 28, 1937 -
The Looney Tunes short, Get Rich Quick Porky, directed by Bob Clampett and starring Porky Pig, was released on this date.



This is the final theatrical appearance of Gabby Goat.


August 28, 1946 -
Universal's film-noir classic version of Ernest Hemingway's story, The Killers, premiered in NYC on this date.



Burt Lancaster was the third choice for the part of The Swede, and was signed only after actors Wayne Morris and Sonny Tufts proved unavailable. Lancaster was an ex-circus acrobat from Union City, NJ. When producer Mark Hellinger saw the first rushes of Lancaster's performance in a private screening room, he was so pleased that he yelled "So help me, may all my actors be acrobats!"


August 28, 1951 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Cheese Chasers, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Hubie and Bertie, and Claude Cat, was released on this date.



This is the final Hubie and Bertie short


August 28, 1951 -
Paramount's second film version based on Theodore Dreiser's novel, An American Tragedy, A Place in the Sun, opened in NYC on this date.



Although this movie was released in 1951, it was shot in 1949. Paramount Pictures already had released its blockbuster Sunset Blvd. when this movie wrapped. The studio did not want what was sure to be another blockbuster in this movie competing for Oscars with Sunset Blvd., so it waited until 1951 to release this movie. This actually pleased producer and director George Stevens, as he would use the extra time to edit this movie.


August 23, 1954 -
The Looney Tunes short, Yankee Doodle Bugs, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny, was released on this date.



Bugs has a nephew here, Clyde. In cartoons and films of the time, the censors demanded marriage of a character before there could be children. Having a niece or nephew appear, however, was a clever way to show the main character's parenting skills without requiring matrimony. Popeye and Olive Oyl, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Barney Bear also had such occasional sidekicks.


August 28, 1968 -
Simon & Garfunkel's fourth studio album, Bookends, went to No. 1 on the U.K. Billboard charts on this date.



At the 1969 Grammy ceremony, Simon & Garfunkel won the Record of the Year and Best Contemporary-Pop Performance by a Vocal Duo or Group awards for Mrs. Robinson.


August 28, 1978 -
The pilot episode for the short lived series Flying High, (think The Love Boat in the sky,) starring Kathryn Witt, Connie Sellecca, Pat Klous, and Howard Platt premiered on this date.



Flying High was canceled after 15 epsiodes -the final three episodes never had a chance to air.


August 28, 1978 -
Released by Warner Bros. and produced by Brian Eno, Devo's debut album , Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo was released, on this date.



The album was met with mixed reviews at the time, but today is viewed as one of the most significant albums of the Post-Punk and New Wave genres. In fact, a number of musical luminaries were interested in producing the band's debut, including Iggy Pop and even David Bowie (who at the time described them as "the band of the future").


August 28, 1998 -
Pearl Jam's video for the song Do The Evolution, premiered on MTV on this date.



The video, which is animated by Todd McFarlane, was the first video Pearl Jam released since their Jeremy clip in 1992. The band felt that videos detracted from the music, but also hated the process of making them. Since they didn't appear in this video, it was much easier for them


August 28, 1998 -
The Warner Bros. Frankie Lymon biopic Why Do Fools Fall In Love starring Larenz Tate, Halle Berry and Vivica A. Fox premiered on this date in US theatres.



When Tina Andrews wrote the original script, the part of Frankie Lymon was first offered to Michael Jackson.


August 28, 2001 -
Weezer released Island in the Sun, the second single from Weezer (aka The Green Album) on this date.



This is the most-licensed track in the Weezer catalog. Frontman Rivers Cuomo told Billboard magazine: "The funny thing is, the song wasn't a real radio hit. I can only speculate that it's because the song has a cleaner guitar sound, which makes it easier for a more mainstream audience."


Another unimportant moment in history.


Today in History:
August 28, 476 A.D. -
Today is believed to be the date when the Western Roman Empire, which had lasted for almost 500 years, came to an end as Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by a barbarian. (Well, his father, Orestes, the real power behind the throne, was executed on this date - he, Augustulus, relinquished the throne on September 4, 476 and disappeared into obscurity.)

Historians have been theorizing about the causes of the fall of Rome ever since. Edward Gibbon's book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) put forward the idea that the Christian Church was to blame. After Christianity became the official religion of the empire, the best and the brightest leaders became leaders of the church rather than leaders of the government or the military. Another theory is that the aqueducts, which carried the water supply, were lined with lead, and so the Romans slowly went crazy. Some geologists believe that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius released so much ash into the air that it ruined Roman agriculture and weakened the empire. One of the more recent theories is that the Roman army had been infiltrated by the barbarians themselves.



But whatever the cause, the fall of Rome actually wasn't the catastrophic event most people think it was. So-called barbarian rulers kept most of the basic laws in place, Latin remained the official language of government, everyone remained Christian and orgies continued but in private.


August 28, 1837 -
Pharmacists John Lea and William Perrins began commercially manufacturing Worcestershire Sauce on this date, based on an Indian recipe brought to them by Lord Marcus Sandys -- an ex-governor of Bengal.



If they told you the recipe (it contains anchovies), they'd have to kill you.


August 28, 1845 -
Scientific American, founded by Rufus M. Porter, was published for the first time as a four-page weekly newspaper, on this date.

It is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States.


August 28, 1883 -
The first controlled flight in a "Gull" glider was made by John J. Montgomery at Wheeler Hill, California.



The craft weight 38 pounds and sailed a distance of 603 feet at an altitude of about fifteen feet at Otay Mesa near San Diego, Ca.


August 28, 1898 -
Pharmacist Caleb Davis Bradham created a beverage, he believed would aid in digestion and boost energy, calling it "Brad's Drink," on this date.



He later renamed it Pepsi-Cola, after "pepsin" and the kola nut used to flavor the drink.

And unfortunately, made with no cocaine.


August 28, 1907 -
Two teenagers, Jim Casey and Claude Ryan decide to start the American Messenger Company in Seattle, on this date. The company's name was later changed to the United Parcel Service.

And finally they are going to put air conditioning in their trucks.


August 28, 1922 -
The first radio commercial aired on WEAF in New York City (WEAF stood for Water, Earth, Air and Fire.)

It was a 10-minute advertisement for the Queensboro Realty Co., which had paid $100.  Programming must have really stunk if people listened to a 10 minute commercial.


August 28, 1938 -
Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen’s wooden partner ) received the first degree given to a ventriloquist’s dummy on this date.

The honorary degree, “Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback,” was presented on radio by Ralph Dennis, the dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University. I wrote my dissertation on, "The illusionary construct of time - it really is 5pm somewhere in the world." And I earned my degree without someone's hand up my ass.


August 28, 1955 –
A 14-year-old  black teenager from Chicago, Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi, for ‘flirting’ with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Eyewitnesses linked Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and half-brother J.W. Milam to the murder. Bryant and Milam were indicted soon thereafter. Both were acquitted by an all-white jury. Bryant and Milan later confessed to the killing in a magazine interview.



Before her death in 2017, Carolyn Bryant admitted she lied when she testified in 1955 that Emmett Till touched her.


August 28, 1963 -
During a 200,000-person civil rights rally in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech," 61 years ago today.



The speech, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.



Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary and other performer lent their voices to the proceeding that day as well.


August 28, 1964 -
The Beatles met Bob Dylan for the first time at The Delmonico Hotel, following their show at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium, on this date.



After being introduced by a mutual friend, writer Al Aronowitz, the band offered their guests drinks, but Dylan and Aronowitz expressed interest in smoking weed instead. This marked the Fab Four’s first taste of marijuana – an experience that would prove to be transformative in their career.


August 28, 1982 -
Two young people got married on this date.

Happy Anniversary Mary.


August 28, 1996 -
Unfortunately for others, the fairy tale has a very unhappy ending,

The former Prince of Wales Charles, now King, and Diana, Princess of Wales, were divorced on this date.

One year later, almost to the day, Diana would have a very nasty accident in a Paris underpass.



And so it goes