Back in the saddle again

July 23, 1950 -
The Singing Cowboy Gene Autry's series The Gene Autry Show, co-starring Pat Buttram, sponsored by Wrigley's Doublemint Gum, premiered on CBS-TV, on this date.



Two-thirds of the way through the first season's production, Pat Buttram was severely injured in an explosion and was hospitalized for several months. In order to complete the production run, his sidekick role was filled in the remaining episodes by Chill Wills, Fuzzy Knight and Alan Hale Jr.. Wills and Knight wore the same costume as Buttram so that long shots of stock footage could be easily used, but there was no disguising Hale's bulk - he wore his own distinctive clothing.


July 23, 1938 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Cinderella Meets Fella, directed by Tex Avery, and starring Elmer Fudd, was released on this date.



After moving to MGM, Avery made a more famous Cinderella parody entitled Swing Shift Cinderella.


July 23, 1949 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Bad Ol' Putty Tat, directed by Friz Freleng, and starring Syvester and Tweety Bird, was released on this date.



The two badminton players in this cartoon are caricatures of screenwriters Michael Maltese (the short, fat one) and Tedd Pierce (the tall, thin one).


July 23, 1955 -
Chuck Berry's first single, Maybellene was released on this date.



Chess Records gave the disc jockey Alan Freed a co-writing credit on this song (and also some cash) in exchange for playing it on the radio. Deals like this led to the Payola scandals, which led to rules prohibiting record companies from paying DJs to play their songs. Marshall Chess, the son of Chess founder Leonard Chess, recalled to The Independent newspaper May 27, 2008: "He [Freed] played the hell out of Chuck's first record, 'Maybellene', because of that. My father says he made the deal, and by the time he got to Pittsburgh, which was half a day's drive away, my uncle back at home was screaming, 'What's happening? We're getting all these calls for thousands of records!'"


July 23, 1962 –
Telstar relayed the first publicly transmitted, live, trans-Atlantic television program, featuring CBS’s Walter Cronkite and NBC’s Chet Huntley in New York, and the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby in Brussels.



The first broadcast was intended to have been remarks by President John F. Kennedy, but the signal was acquired before the president was ready, so the lead-in time was filled with a short segment of a televised game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Although no longer functional, Telstar remains in orbit.


July 23, 1966 -
Frank Sinatra's song Strangers in the Night, hits the top of the charts on this date.



This was a big comeback song for Sinatra, becoming his first #1 pop hit in 11 years. His previous chart-topper was Learnin' The Blues in 1955.


July 23, 1979 –
Electric Light Orchestra dedicated the release, on this date, of the single Don’t Bring Me Down from their album Discovery to Skylab which had crashed back to Earth on July 11, 1979. (The song is the first ELO song without any strings.)



Don't Bring Me Down became the biggest hit ELO ever had on their own in the U.S., topped only by a collaborative single with Olivia Newton-John on Xanadu, from the 1980 movie of the same name.


July 23, 1982 -
Warner Bros. released George Roy Hill's adaptation of John Irving's novel, The World According to Garp, starring Robin Williams, Mary Beth Hurt, Glenn Close, and John Lithgow, on this date.



Glenn Close plays Robin Williams's mother, yet she is only four years older than him. Similarly, Close and actress Mary Beth Hurt played women from successive generations yet in real life they are only one year apart in age.


July 23, 1983 -
The Police kicked off the North American leg of their 107-date Synchronicity world tour at Comiskey Park (now rebuilt as U.S. Cellular Field) in Chicago, on this date. Co-incidentially, their fifth and last album, Synchronicity, hits #1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.



The album gained its title from Carl Gustav Jung’s book Synchronicity. The word by definition means unconnected events that have a causal connection. That definition really informs the overall concept of the album with each song being so individual yet each song fit like a puzzle piece that once connected created a total picture.


July 23, 1984 -
The Cars released the song Drive from their Heartbeat City album on this date. The song goes on to become The Cars' highest charting single where it peaked at No.3 on the US chart.



The video was directed by a 23-year-old Timothy Hutton, who had won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the movie Ordinary People. Hutton aspired to direct, so when Ric Ocasek of The Cars suggested he do it, Hutton jumped at the chance. Hutton cast the Czechoslovakian model Paulina Porizkova as the female lead in the clip. Auditioning for the role was the first time she met Ocasek, whom she married in 1989.


July 23, 1987 -
Columbia Pictures released the biopix about Richie Valens, La Bamba, starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto, and Elizabeth Peña, on this date.



This movie is often thought of alongside The Buddy Holly Story, but La Bamba is far more accurate. For example, in the Buddy Holly Story they imply that the bus had broken down, when in fact it was the heater that had broken down. However, Buddy Holly's main reason for chartering a plane was primarily because he had run out of clean laundry and wanted time to get to a laundromat before the following evening's show.


July 22, 1993 -
John Singleton's drama, Poetic Justice, starring Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur, opens in US theatres on this date.



In one scene, Justice (Janet Jackson) is listening to the Stevie Wonder song Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer. Sixteen years later, Wonder performed that song at the memorial for Janet's brother, Michael.


July 23, 1996 -
Fiona Apple released her debut album, Tidal, on this date.



Fiona Apple typically works by writing songs that are extensions of her journals, baring her soul for all to hear in a process that can be years in the making. The song Criminal was atypical for her process: she claims she wrote the song in just 45 minutes to prove she could, and to give her record label (Work, a division of Sony) the hit song they were after. The album itself went on to sell over 3 million copies in America.


Another little known ACME's Monopoly card


Today in History:
July 23, 776BC -
A very large number of sweaty, muscular men poured into Greece, shaved their entire bodies, oiled themselves up and ran naked through the streets on this date (and it wasn't even Greek Pride Day.)



The first Olympic Games opened in Olympia on this date.


July 23, 1848 -
Protesting slavery as well as the U.S. involvement in the Mexican War, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his $1 poll tax and was arrested on this date in history. That night, a relative came by and paid Thoreau's poll tax.

When he was told he could leave, Thoreau objected and was threatened with force to remove him. His written account of the experience is later read by Leo Tolstoi, Marcel Proust, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis and William Butler Yeats and it persuaded them to advocate civil disobedience.


July 23, 1885 –



One of the most famous residents of West 122nd Street and Riverside Drive made a most fateful decision on this date.

He decided to give up the ghost.

In 1881, Ulysses S. Grant - American general, the eighteenth President of the United States, and a famous horseback-riding drunk - purchased a house in New York City and placed almost all of his financial assets into an investment banking partnership with Ferdinand Ward. The arrangement was suggested by Grant's son Buck (Ulysses Jr.), who was having success on Wall Street.

Very wrong move.

Ward swindled Grant (and other investors whom Grant had encouraged) in 1884, bankrupted the company - Grant & Ward - and fled. Ward had perfected the large-scale investment swindle decades before Charles Ponzi gave the scheme its name.

Grant learned around the same time that he was suffering from throat cancer. He and his family were left destitute; at the time, retired U.S. Presidents did not receive pensions, and Grant had forfeited his military pension when he became President. He first wrote several articles about his Civil War campaigns for The Century Magazine, which were warmly received. Mark Twain then offered Grant a generous contract for the publication of his memoirs, including 75 percent of the book's sales as royalties.



Terminally ill, Grant finished the book just a few days before his death. The memoirs sold more than 300,000 copies, earning the Grant family more than $450,000. Twain promoted the book as "the most remarkable work of its kind since the Commentaries of Julius Caesar," and Grant's memoirs have also been praised by writers such as Matthew Arnold and Gertrude Stein as among the finest ever written..

Ulysses S. Grant died at 8:06 a.m. on Thursday, July 23, 1885, at the age of 63, in Mount McGregor, Saratoga County, New York. His last word was reportedly a request: "Water." (I'd like to believe it was actually, "Sir, cut my bourbon with water.").

Grant's funeral was one of the greatest outpourings of public grief in history. A massive funeral procession marched through New York City from City Hall to Riverside Park. It included 60,000 marchers, stretched seven miles, and took up to five hours to pass. Well over one million spectators witnessed the procession.



Numerous dignitaries attended, including President Grover Cleveland, his Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court, the two living ex-presidents (Hayes and Arthur), virtually the entire Congress, and almost every prominent surviving figure from the Civil War.

Civil War veterans from both North and South took part, reflecting the high esteem in which Grant was held throughout a reunified country. General Winfield S. Hancock led the procession, and Grant's pallbearers included former comrades - General William T. Sherman, General Philip H. Sheridan, and Admiral David D. Porter - as well as former Confederates - Generals Joseph E. Johnston and Simon B. Buckner.



Completed in 1897, Grant's Tomb is the second-largest mausoleum in North America (President Garfield's Memorial is the first).


July 23, 1886 -
New York saloonkeeper Steve Brodie claimed to have made a daredevil plunge from the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River on this date.



However, having the perfect new New York spirit, few historians believe the jump actually occurred


July 23, 1904 –
At the turn of the last century, ice cream men were a breed apart. It was hard work making ice cream, and the rewards were few.

"You don't choose ice cream," they said. "Ice cream chooses you."

Well, Charles E. Menches was an ice cream man. They say it ran in his veins. (They say, forget the autopsy: you don't need actual ice cream in your blood to have it in your veins.)

Charles E. Menches had always known he'd be an ice cream man. Everyone had known. While other boys in St. Louis played stickball or jacks, little Chuckie experimented with different creams and salts. While other boys dreamed of becoming doctors or lawyers, little Chuckie dreamed of exotic flavor combinations like cinnamon-onion swirl and artichoke-pistachio.

Charles E. Menches' passion for ice cream was infectious. He made his brother Frank an ice cream man. They began traveling to fairs and special events across the Midwest, selling ice cream from a tent. (Apparently, they also had a thing for hamburgers - the brothers also lay claim to having introduced the hamburger to the American public. But that's another story...)

They did what all ice cream men did: they scooped their ice cream into bowls and sold it to their customers. People loved ice cream back then, just as they love it today. And why not? It was ice cream.



One sweltering day at the St. Louis World's Fair - July 23, 1904, to be precise - Charles E. Menches and his brother Frank sold so much ice cream that they ran out of dishes.

An ordinary ice cream man might have folded up his tent and taken the rest of the day off. But not Charles E. Menches. Charles E. Menches knew the code of the ice cream man. More than that - he lived it.

The people of St. Louis would not be denied their ice cream. Not if Charles E. Menches had anything to say about it.

The tent beside Charles and Frank's ice cream stand belonged to Ernest A. Hamwi, a Syrian pastry maker who sold sweet wafer pastries called zalabia. (Ernest A. Hamwi was what Syrians would call a zalabia man, but they wouldn't say he had zalabia in his veins. Syrians would never talk such tripe.)

In a moment of brilliant inspiration, Charles E. Menches bought all of Ernest A. Hamwi's zalabia and rolled them into cones. He then began selling his ice cream in sweet wafer cones instead of dishes.

The ice cream cone was born.



(Sure, Italo Marchiony had received U.S. Patent No. 746971 for the ice cream cone seven months earlier in New York.

But Italo Marchiony had never been an ice cream man.)

Anyway, it beats the old system of cramming your mouth with as much ice cream as you could hold before suffocating.


July 23, 1966 -
The "longest suicide in Hollywood" finally came to a sad on this date, with the death of Montgomery Clift of a heart attack brought on by his severe drug and alcohol addictions.



After his near-fatal car accident in 1956, (in which, Elizabeth Taylor saved the actor from choking to death by removing two teeth lodged in his throat) Montgomery Clift stumbled through life in a haze of pain and professional disappointments. Clift still managed to turn in some amazing performances during this period



(Monty got a raw deal indeed.)

He is now the most famous 'resident' of Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park Brooklyn.


July 23, 1984 –
Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign when she surrendered her crown after (previously shot) nude photos of her appeared in Penthouse magazine.



Ms. Williams rebounded from the Miss America scandal and has gone on to a successful career as an actress and recording artist. And if you think I'm going to link to the photos in question, more fool you, bunkies.



And so it goes.

It is kisstomary to cuss the bride

Today is Spooner's Day, honoring Reverend William Archibald Spooner, a 19th Century British clergyman, who was born on this date in 1844. Spoonerisms are usually a two-word phrase in which the first letters (and occasionally the initial vowels) of the words are reversed.



Reverend Spooner was adept at the art of the oopsy linguae, or misspeak. As a result, certain verbal miscues have been tagged Spoonerisms.


July 20, 1944 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Hare Force, directed by Friz Freleng, and starring Bugs Bunny was released on this date.



Both Bugs and Sylvester the Dog hum/sing snippets of As Time Goes By which featured prominently in the 1944 Best Picture Oscar-winning Casablanca.


July 21, 1950 -
The Looney Tunes short, t's Hummer Time, directed by Robert McKimson, and starring Foghorn Leghorn, was released on this date.



The sign "DON'T BE HALF SAFE" refers to Arrid deodorant. During the 1940s and 1950s, its famous slogan was "Don't be half-safe-use Arrid to be sure", which gave rise to "Half-Safe," the name of the amphibious vehicle which Ben Carlin used to circumnavigate the world.


July 22, 1959 -
Either considered the worst or greatest film ever made, Ed Wood Jr's sci-fi classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, starring Bela Lugosi, Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson, Vampira and narrated by Criswell, opened in the US on this date.



Bela Lugosi appears in footage shot just before his death, but with no script in mind. Edward D. Wood Jr. wrote the script to accommodate all the footage shot in a cemetery and outside Tor Johnson's house in the new production. Lugosi was doubled by Tom Mason, Wood's wife's chiropractor, who was significantly taller than Lugosi, and played the part with a cape covering his face.


July 22, 1963 -
The Beach Boys released the single Surfer Girl, (the b-side is Little Deuce Coupe,) 0n this date. The single was the first Beach Boys record to have Brian Wilson officially credited as the producer.



Brian Wilson's girlfriend when he wrote this song was Judy Bowles, who was with him before he formed the band. It's not clear if she directly inspired this song (Wilson has given conflicting answers), but he did write another song about her around this time called Judy, which was not released until it was issued on a collection of outtakes in 1991.


July 22, 1964 -
One of Hitchcock's most underrated (and sexually twisted) films, Marnie premiered on this date.



To film real horses riding without having to work outdoors, Alfred Hitchcock came up with the idea of running the horses on a gigantic treadmill. Crew members objected to the idea, because it was considered highly unsafe, and because they simply didn't think it would work. Still, Hitchcock wanted to at least try it, and when they did, it worked without a problem. Originally, a harness was attached to Tippi Hedren during these shots for safety reasons, but it was removed when it was found to impede shooting.


July 22, 1967 -
The Toho Studio released King Kong Escapes (Kingu Kongu no gyakushû,) directed by Ishiro Honda in Japan on this date. (Despite the master villain being named Dr. Who, this film has no connection to Doctor Who.)



Two costumes of King Kong were made. The arms of the first costume were very long, so Haruo Nakajima's hands did not reach those of the costume. He had to grasp onto sticks that were attached to the hands of the costume. He wore a second costume with shorter arms whenever they were shooting footage of King Kong battling other monsters. Like with Toho's previous Kong costume, Nakajima was sewn shut inside the suit.


July 22, 1977 -
Stiff Records released Elvis Costello's debut studio album, My Aim Is True, produced by Nick Lowe, on this date in the UK.



Elvis Costello quit his day job at Elizabeth Arden on July 5, 1977. I guess he'd made a living since then.


July 22, 1983 –
20th Century Fox jumped on the strange new bandwagon of Dad's taking care of their kids when the film, Mr. Mom, starring Michael Keaton, Teri Garr, Martin Mull, Ann Jillian, and Christopher Lloyd went into a limited release on this date.



Michael Keaton turned down Splash to do this movie. Ron Howard was asked to direct, but he turned it down in order to make Splash.


Another episode of ACME's Little Known Animal Facts


Today in History:
July 22, 1587 -
Roanoke, the colony founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, might have gone missing on this date.



Recent development point to the fact that the inhabitants of Roanoke didn't go missing, they appear to have originated the joke that after certain people left, everyone else moved and didn't leave a forwarding address.


July 22, 1893-
Katharine Lee Bates wrote the poem America the Beautiful after admiring the view from the top of Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs, Colorado, on this date. While the lyrics were written by Bates, its music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey. The two never met. The poem was first published in the Fourth of July 1895 edition of the church periodical, The Congregationalist. At that time, the poem was first entitled America.



Samuel A. Ward had initially composed the song's melody in 1882 to accompany lyrics to Materna, basis of the hymn, O Mother dear, Jerusalem, though the hymn was not first published until 1892. The combination of Ward's melody and Bates's poem was finally known as America the Beautiful in 1910.


July 22, 1916 -
In San Francisco, on this date, some 50,000 people marched in a Preparedness Day parade (the largest parade ever held in the city), supporting the US intervention in World War I. The event was sponsored by business leaders and opposed by labor. A bomb went off on Market St. during the parade and 10 people were killed and 40 injured. The bomb was presumed to be set by a professed anarchist.



Labor leader Tom Mooney and his assistant, Warren K. Billings were arrested, convicted of the bombing, and sentenced to death. In 1918 Mooney's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, the same as Billings' when a commission established by President Wilson found no clear evidence connecting the two to the crime. By 1939, evidence of perjury and false testimony at the trial had become overwhelming. California Governor Culbert Olson pardoned both men. The identity of the bomber will probably never be known.


July 22, 1933 -
Wiley Post (who possessed his flying license signed by Orville Wright) took off from Floyd Bennett Field in New York City and traveled 15,596 miles over a period of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes and became the first person to fly solo around the world on this date.



Post landed back at Floyd Bennett Field in New York, completing the first round-the-world solo flight. His return was greeted by some 50,000 people.


July 22, 1934 -
John Dillinger was shot dead outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, on this date in history. And one of the most bizarre urban legends was born.



According to the rumor, J. Edgar Hoover — pug-ugly head of the FBI and notorious transvestite — rushed to Chicago to see the corpse of Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1, for himself. Dillinger was a ladies’ man and was reported to be very specially endowed.

Hoover, after viewing the nude lifeless body of Dillinger in the morgue, orders Dillinger's member to be removed and preserved as a 'specimen' for his private files.

Rumors of Hoover's trophy dogged him for the rest of his life. He even took the extraordinary step, sometime in the late ’60s, of declaring that he "did not now nor ever have Dillinger's privates in a jar." His comments were not taken seriously, as he was reportedly wearing a size 28 Dior outfit with matching handbag (and Raymond Burr Nipple Rouge) at the time.

The Smithsonian Institution is still flooded with requests annually to view this special exhibition.


July 22, 1951 -
It's the first episode of Dogs In Space -

Two Russian dogs, Dezik and Tsygan, were the first canines to make a sub-orbital flight in history on this date.



The Russian space program used dogs quite often to determine whether a particular space mission would be safe for humans. Little know fact: the real reason Nikita Khrushchev slammed his shoe on the desk in the UN - Khrushchev had just been passed a note about a ten year investigation of Tsygan's over-familiarity with his shoe.


July 22, 1962 -
The NASA Mariner 1 spacecraft, which had been intended to become the first U.S. probe to explore the planet Venus, began flying erratically roughly four minutes after launch, goes off course, and is destroyed to prevent it from impacting a populated area, on this date.



Later investigations will reveal that the guidance instructions transmitted from the ground failed to reach the rocket due to an antenna malfunction, leaving the onboard computer in control.


July 22, 1973 –
One of the main destructive forces within our family has been these runaway egos. I think if you look at any show business family, that struggle exists.







Rufus Wainwright, American-Canadian singer-songwriter, son of Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, was born on this date.


July 22, 1975 -
Stanley Forman took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo Fire Escape Collapse on this date.

The photograph, which is part of a series, shows 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones falling from the collapsed fire escape of a burning apartment building on Marlborough Street in Boston. It spurred action to improve the safety of fire escapes across the United States.


At the time of his death on this date in 1982, King Sobhuza II was the longest-reigning monarch in the world. His death also established him as the most recently-deceased monarch in the world. Today he is on a long list of continuously dead rulers.

Sobhuza began his career as Paramount Chief of the Swazi in 1921, but was not recognized as king by Great Britain, which ran the nation as a protectorate, until 1967. (The forgetful Brits have a long history of failing to recognize kings, perhaps owing to the difficulty of seeing clearly in the London fog.)



The Brits wrote a Constitution before they left, but Sobhuza did not discover it until 1973, at which point he discarded it on the grounds of its being British. Five years later he implemented a better Constitution that, surprisingly enough, left all political power in his own hands.

He died in 1982. The Constitution declared that he should be succeeded by one of his children, which seemed simple at first but was complicated by the revelation of his having had over 600 children.



(Apparently he had time on his hands for more than political power.) It took four years to find the right son, and King Mswati III has reigned ever since.


July 22, 1982 -
It's a happy 44th anniversary for over 2000 couples who were married by Rev. Moon in Madison Square Garden on this date in NYC.

As far as I can find out, nearly 75% of the couples are still married (although, perhaps not to each other.)


July 22, 2013 -
Talk about having a bad hair day - Beyonce soldiered through a concert in Montreal, Canada after her hair got tangled in the blades of a fan. She was performing Halo from an audience pit when the incident happened.



She continued to sing her encore while security guards tried to extract her from the fan, which was mounted on the edge of the stage.


July 22, 1992 –
What you have inside is much more beautiful than what's on the outside!





Selena Gomez, American singer and actress, was born on this date. My daughters love her



And so it goes.

Count the memories, not the calories.

It's National Junk Food Day. (What did I say yesterday about lollipops being involved in a huge conspiracy!)



It doesn't really matter what you eat - at some point, you'll be dead.


July 21, 1943 -
Twentieth Century Fox's musical spectacular, Stormy Weather, starring Lena Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, Fats Waller, Fayard Nicholas, Harold Nicholas, Ada Brown, and Dooley Wilson, premiered in the US on this date.



Two musical numbers were deleted from the release print: Good-for-Nothin' Joe (music by Rube Bloom, lyrics by Ted Koehler), sung by Lena Horne, who already was identified with this torch song via her 1941 Victor recording as the vocalist with Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra; and Alfred the Moocher, a parody by Cab Calloway of his trademark Minnie the Moocher (music and lyrics by Calloway, Irving Mills and Clarence Gaskill). The Alfred being spoofed likely is renowned film composer and music director Alfred Newman.


July 21, 1956 -
The Looney Tunes short, Barbary-Coast Bunny, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Bugs Bunny, was released on this date.



This is one of a few cartoons where Bugs Bunny does not munch a carrot.


July 21, 1962 -
The Looney Tunes short, The Slick Chick, directed by Robert McKimson, and starring Foghorn Leghorn, was released on this date.



Mr. Cackle mentions Dennis the Menace when comparing the destructive Junior with that character in one scene, referencing the comic strip character of the same name by Hank Ketcham and the 1959 live-action television series it inspired.


July 21, 1965 -
The Warner Bros. horrow film, I Saw What You Did, directed by William Castle, and starring Joan Crawford, John Ireland, and Leif Erickson, was released on this date.



Joan Crawford was approached for this film one month after she left Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, due to an "ailment" that prevented her from working (which is believed to have actually been sick of working with her arch enemy Bette Davis). Therefore, William Castle requested that Crawford's doctors sign a statement attesting that she was completely well before giving her the role.


July 21, 1971 -
Carole King's single from the Tapestry album, It's Too Late, hits #1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.



In the You're So Vain vein, this song was rumored to be about James Taylor, who was good friends with King and played on the Tapestry album. In early 1971, Taylor and King toured together with King the opening act. Many people tended to think that this song was about a short romance between the two. King never confirmed these rumors, and Taylor later dated and married Carly Simon.


July 21, 1977 -
Despite protests, The Sex Pistols made their first appearance on the UK music show Top Of The Pops where they lip-synched to their third single, Pretty Vacant (which was released three weeks prior); The performance helped push the song up the charts to No.7.



The Sex Pistols would probably not have been invited if the BBC had realized the title is to be interpreted as "pretty va-cunt." The Pistols had already seen their debut single, God Save The Queen, banned by the BBC as well as by independent UK radio. Their debut album was also banned, and in December 1976, they caused a furor by swearing overtly on an independent television news program, egged on by interviewer Bill Grundy.


July 21, 1979 –
Robert Palmer released a cover version of the Moon Martin song, Bad Case Of Loving You, on this date.



Known by most as "Doctor, Doctor," this is one of many songs in the blues/rock tradition that compares the singers' love to a medical condition. Apparently, Palmer got hooked on whatever the doctor prescribed, as by 1985 he was Addicted To Love.


July 21, 1989 -
Orion Pictures' comedy UHF, (written by and) starring Weird Al Yankovic, David Bowe, Fran Drescher, Victoria Jackson, Kevin McCarthy, Michael Richards, Gedde Watanabe, Kevin McCarthy, Anthony Geary, Emo Philips and Trinidad Silva premiered in US theatres on this date. The soundtrack features many of Yankovic's signature song parodies, as well as a few of his original songs.



Real fish were attached to the "Wheel of Fish." They were bought at a local fish market early one morning. The set designer began attaching them to the wheel around 6 am, making sure the wheel spun smoothly. Filming started at 4:30 pm, on a hot summer day, in a building that wasn't air-conditioned, filled with hot studio lights and over 100 extras.


July 21, 1990 -
Roger Waters staged an over-sized version of Pink Floyd's The Wall near the Berlin Wall, on this date, to celebrate the actual wall's fall several months earlier.



Shot on Potsdamer Platz, the no man's land between East and West Germany, the producers didn't know if the area would be filled with mines - no one did. Before setting up, they did a sweep of the area and found a slew of munitions and a previously unknown Nazi S.S. bunker, the very same as Hitler had lived his last days in as seen in the movie Downfall.


July 21, 2014 -
Marvel Studios and Disney Studios megahit, Guardians of the Galaxy (now known as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1,) starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper and a boatload of other people, premiered in Los Angeles on this date.



Chris Pratt apparently stole his Star-Lord costume from the set, for the sole purpose of having it available so he could show up in costume to visit sick children in the hospital, who might want to meet Star-Lord.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
July 21, 365 -
It was not a good day in Ole Alexandria:



It was not a good day in Ole Alexandria


July 21, 1730 -
Holland established the death penalty for acts of sodomy on this date.

I've often said, this is what comes from trolls and the lack of proper lubricant.


July 21, 1897-
On the former site of the Millbank Penitentiary, London's Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) was officially opened in London by the future Edward VII, then Prince of Wales on this date.



The art gallery was partially paid for by Henry Tate’s sugar fortune, to house the art collection he donated to the National Gallery several years earlier.


July 21, 1899 -
Ernest Hemingway was born on this date. He was young at the time of his birth. It was fine to be young.

He drove an ambulance in World War I. It wasn’t called World War I then. It was just called the war. It was one of those times when people shot at each other. When people were shooting at each other, they didn’t have time to worry about what to call it. It was only afterward that they needed to call it something.

"What should we call that time when we were shooting at each other?"

"Let's call it the Great War."

"Good."

It was a good ambulance. It was long with a red and white sign. It had flashing lights and a siren that went "wee-ooo, wee-ooo." He liked that.



After the war he lived in Paris. A lot of Americans lived in Paris after the war, but only a few of them had ever driven an ambulance. In the 30s he went to Spain. He was a journalist. They were having a war.

They called it the Spanish Civil War. It was started by an Evil Stooge named General Franco on July 18, 1936. It was a test drive to see whether or not they should have World War II. They had fascists and socialists and anarchists. They even drank sangria. People shot at each other.



(General Franco finally gave up power on July 19, 1974, because he was sick. Maybe he had always been sick. It’s sometimes hard to understand sickness. Maybe we’re not meant to understand it.)

Later Hemingway lived in Cuba. He liked to fish. He liked to drink. He thought all men should fish. He wrote stories about fishing. Finally he blew his brains out at his home in Idaho. It was July 2, 1961.

He had written a lot of books, but now he was dead.


July 21, 1918 -
The German submarine, U-156, attacked Orleans, Massachusetts, hitting the Perth Amboy, a 120-foot steel tugboat and four barges and striking the beach with shells. The five vessels carried a total of 32 people, including four women and five children.



Miraculously, although several people were injured, no one was killed, This was the only time the continental United States was shelled during World War I.


July 21, 1919 -
The Wingfoot Air Express (owned by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company) caught fire and crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, 13 people were killed. This was the worst Airship disaster in the USA until the Zeppelin Airship, Hindenburg crashed in 1937.



Of the 13 who died: one was a crew member, two were passengers whilst the remaining 10 were bank employees in the building below.


July 21, 1924 -
Mainly, I thought of Barney as a kid. You can always look into the faces of kids and see what they're thinking, if they're happy or sad. That's what I tried to do with Barney..



Jesse Donald Knotts, actor, comedian and master Mick Jagger impersonator was born on this date.


July 21, 1925 -
The so-called "Monkey Trial" ended in Dayton, Tenn., with John T. Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.



Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100. The conviction was later overturned on the technicality that the judge had set the fine rather than the jury.


July 21, 1951 -
I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.



Robin McLaurim Williams, actor and comedian, was born on this date (or was it 1952.)


July 21, 1969 -
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin blast off from the Moon after twenty-one and a half hours on the surface and return to the command module piloted by Michael Collins on this date.



The lunar module’s lower section, left behind, has a plaque mounted upon it, reading, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”



While all of the world is celebrating the success of the Apollo 11 mission; a little remembered incident also occurred 54 years ago this week, the Soviets nearly landed an unmanned vehicle on the Moon first, Luna 15.

The five-ton Soviet station (Luna 15 was launched on Sunday, July 13) approached the Moon on July 17 - three days before the now-airborne Apollo 11 - and entered near-lunar orbit. But then, the unforeseen happened. For some reason, the spacecraft became stuck in orbit, allowing Apollo 11 to sneak past.



As the first men on the Moon prepared to launch from the lunar surface, astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Manchester heard commands being sent up to Luna 15 from Moscow. The Soviet spacecraft was beginning its 52nd orbit and preparing to descend towards the surface … it wasn’t until this moment the English astronomers realized the craft was designed to land. They tracked the spacecraft in real time as it sped towards the surface, listened as it gained speed and finally crashed right into Mare Crisium, the Sea of Crises, about two hours before Armstrong and Aldrin we set to leave the lunar surface.



“I say, this has really been drama of the highest order,” remarked one Jodrell Bank astronomer when it was all over.“I say, this has really been drama of the highest order,” remarked one Jodrell Bank astronomer when it was all over.


July 21, 1972 -
In Milwaukee, George Carlin was arrested for obscenity and disorderly conduct for performing his "Seven Dirty Words" routine on a Summerfest stage in Milwaukee. (Tits is still the funniest.)



He was released after posting $150 bail.


July 21, 2011 –
NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on this date.



After 135 flights in 30 years, the space shuttles were now history. NASA estimated with the landing of the Atlantis' flight over, the five shuttle orbiters would together have traveled 537,114,016 miles in orbit. Three hundred and thirty-five astronauts have flown on them; 14 died when the shuttles Columbia and Challenger were lost.


July 21, 2023 -
To me, life is a gift, and it's a blessing to just be alive. And each person should learn what a gift it is to be alive no matter how tough things get.







Anthony Dominick Benedetto, the last great saloon singer died on this date



And so it goes.