21 seconds rule

Across almost all large mammals weighing over 3 kilograms (about 6.5 to 7 pounds) - from cats and dogs to humans and elephants - empty a full bladder in approximately 21 seconds It is also known as the Law of Urination.



Larger animals have longer, wider urethras, and gravity speeds up the flow.

You know you're going to time yourself.


October 13, 1934 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Miller's Daughter, directed by Friz Freleng was released on this date.


(sorry for the poor condition of this clip)

Caricatures of The Three Stooges appear as the Three Wise Monkeys (See No Evil / Speak No Evil / Hear No Evil) statue and join in the musical number.


October 13, 1947 -
Kids, back when the earth cooled and formed a hard crust, there was a very popular TV series featuring two puppets and a very polite lady that ad-libbed the entire show - Junior Jamboree - a version which ultimately became Kukla, Fran and Ollie premiered on this date.

(this is not the premiere episode, but it is from 1949!)

One episode of the show was broadcast in color in fall 1949, in Washington, D.C., as a demonstration to the FCC of RCA's line-sequential color TV system. The same episode was performed live a second time the same afternoon, for network broadcast in black and white, but using the experimental color cameras.


October 13, 1950 -
Joseph L. Mankiewicz's brilliantly caustic valentine to Broadway, All About Eve premiered in NYC on this date.



Margo Channing's famous cocktail dress was an Edith Head creation. To Head's horror, just as they were about to go film the cocktail party, she found that the dress didn't quite fit Bette Davis in the shoulders. There was no time to fix the dress, but fortunately Davis hit on the bright idea of simply slipping the dress off her shoulders.


October 13, 1955 - The Merrie Melodies short, Yankee Dood It , directed by Friz Freleng was released on this date.



In the late 40s through the 50s, the CIA led a top secret campaign, called Militant Liberty that encouraged studios to insert the theme of freedom into Hollywood movies. Alfred P. Sloan (think about the name and it will come to you) the recently retired head of of General Motors from 1923 to 1946, was recruited to head the cause. Sloan hired George Stewart Benson, president of Harding College to produce a series of cartoons to promote anti-Communist, pro-free enterprise themes.

At least three other Warner Bros. cartoons during the period, Make Mine Freedom,Heir Conditioned, and By Word of Mouse, were probably produced under this program. And the famous Duck and Cover as well as Disney's Our Friend the Atom have the fingerprints of the program all over them. (We don't even have time to discuss the CIA's involvement with the live action studios during the time.)


October 13, 1957 -
CBS-TV broadcasts The Edsel Show, a one-hour live special starring Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong, designed to promote the new, ill-fated Ford automobile, on this date.



It is the first and currently the oldest surviving show on videotape. It was aired live on this date in prime time, and simultaneously taped and filmed in kinescope for the sole purpose of broadcasting for the three-hour time delay on the West Coast.


October 13, 1966 -
The sixth episode of Star Trek, Mudd’s Women premiered on this date. In it, The Enterprise picks up a traveling con man, Harry Mudd, and his “beautiful” female cargo; the females seem to have a strange effect on the male crew.



This is the first episode in which the Enterprise's power source is named, however, they are called simply "lithium crystals", and not "dilithium" as was done in all later episodes of this and all later incarnations of Star Trek.


October 13, 1973 -
Terrence Malick directorial debut, Badlands starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek premiered at the New York Film Festival on this date.



The film's plot and lead characters are based on Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate. In 1958, they embarked on a murder spree that horrified the country.


October 13, 1978 -
Queen released their double A sided single Fat Bottomed Girls/ Bicycle Race on this date.





The songs ran together on the album, and were often played that way by radio stations. The year before, Queen released We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions as a double A-side. They are still usually played together by radio stations. Each song has a reference to the other in the lyrics: in Bicycle Race, a lyric runs: Fat bottomed girls, they'll be riding today, so look out for those beauties, oh yeah. In Fat Bottomed Girls the closing call shouts get on your bikes and ride!, linking the two songs together.


October 13, 1979 -
The Police's second album Reggatta De Blanc started a four-week run at No.1 in the UK on this date.



The first three Police albums, Outlandos d'Amour, Reggatta de Blanc, and Zenyatta Mondatta, were named by their manager, Miles Copeland (Police drummer Stewart Copeland's brother), using words he made up. Reggatta de Blanc is the only one that is also the name of a song. In Copeland's language, it translates to "White Reggae," indicating the reggae rhythms the band was using. The fourth and fifth Police albums got away from this naming convention and were titled by Sting: Ghost in the Machine and Synchronicity.


October 13, 1984 -
Stevie Wonder's song I Just Called To Say I Love You gets to the No. 1 slot on the Billboard chart on this date. It goes on to become his best-selling single worldwide.



This was featured in the movie The Woman In Red, starring Kelly LeBrock as the woman and Gene Wilder as the married man mesmerized by her. Stevie wrote most of the soundtrack for the movie; he got the gig after Dionne Warwick, who was the "song coordinator" on the film, suggested him to the producers.


October 13, 1989 -
One of Woody Allen’s more serious films, Crimes and Misdemeanors, starring Martin Landau, Claire Bloom, Anjelica Huston and Alan Alda, premiered on this date.



Woody Allen has said of this film: "Crimes And Misdemeanors is about people who don't see. They don't see themselves as others see them. They don't see the right and wrong situations. And that was a strong metaphor in the movie".


October 13, 2000 -
Universal Pictures' Stephen Daldry comedy-drama, Billy Elliot, starring Jamie Bell, Gary Lewis, and Julie Waters, went into limited release in the US, on this date.



Jamie Bell was going through puberty at the time of filming. Some of his dialogue had to be post-synched as his voice had broken. And the opening scene in which he jumps up and down on a bed to T. Rex's Cosmic Dancer was shot over a lengthy period of time. For the latter takes, Bell had acquired hair on his legs and had to have them shaved.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
October 13, 54 -
Roman Emperor Claudius I (Derek Jacobi) consumes a favorite mushroom dish prepared by his fourth wife, Agrippina. What he does not know is that the meal is laced with the toxin of the Amanita phalloides mushroom. Feeling ill the next morning, Claudius summons his personal physician. Unfortunately, the doctor happened to be a co-conspirator in the scheme, administering a colocynth enema which killed Claudius instantly.



So remember kids - avoid all doctor prescribed poisoned enemas.


October 13, 1066 -
King Harold II was not having a really good day. William of Normandy (who was so important as not to need a last name, just an address) gave him the opportunity to relinquish his crown, and therefore England. Harold refused, which was not a good choice for him. The next day William took it by force at the Battle of Hastings, causing Harold’s demise.

Somehow this led to Friday the 13th being unlucky for everyone else, who is not a monarch of an island nation.


Ocotober 13, 1492 -
Psst, bunkies, remember today is really the day that Columbus' ships really landed in the Bahamas.



So remember kids - avoid all doctor prescribed poisoned enemas.


October 13, 1660 -
Major General Thomas Harrison, a leading member of the republican regime and signatory to Charles I’s death warrant, discovered that karma is a bitch today.

He was found guilty of regicide and was hanged, drawn and quartered by the Restoration government on this date; a spectacle witnessed by Samuel Pepys who recorded him ‘looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition’.


October 13, 1792 -

It was on this day in Washington D.C. that the cornerstone was laid for the presidential residence, now known as the White House. The Frenchman, Pierre L'Enfant, who designed Washington, D.C. wanted the residence to look like the palace of Versailles. George Washington thought that was a little too fancy, so he got an Irish architect named James Hoban to reduce the design to one-fifth of its original size. Washington, once again in his Masonic sexual frenzy, laid the cornerstone and supervised the construction. John Adams was the first president to call it home.



People nicknamed it the White House from the very beginning. There was a coat of whitewash brushed on the sandstone to protect it against winter. Thomas Jefferson was the one who installed flushing toilets. Andrew Jackson got the first shower. Martin Van Buren brought in central heating. Rutherford B. Hayes introduced the telephone. Benjamin Harrison had it wired for electricity. President Truman brought in the first TV set.


October 13, 1812 -
Sir Isaac Brock, British Army Officer who fought with famous chief Tecumseh, died in Canada during the War of 1812, on this date. He became know as the Savior of Upper Canada. He and his aide-de camp, Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell (who also died at the same battle, were buried with great military ceremony near Fort George on October 16. Thus began his zombie-like entombment (he was buried four times!)



Canada decided to built a war memorial to General Brock in 1814, so they got around to re-interring Brock and his pal Macdonell in 1824. In 1840, somehow an Irish-Canadian named Benjamin Lett, angry with the British, blew up Brock's monument. In a lightening speed response by Canadian officials, plans were drawn up to build a second memorial to Brock and Macdonell (I'm sure Macdonell was sorry he ever went to work for Brock.) Their unrested corpses were moved to a third burial site in Queenston village, near the site of their demise.



October 13, 1853 marks the fourth and final burial for these men. About fifteen thousand attended the event, some of whom were veterans of the War of 1812. The structure was inaugurated on October 13, 1859!


October 13, 1884 -
With worldwide travel becoming more common, an international time standard was in high demand. At the behest of the International Meridian Conference and the urging of President Chester A. Arthur, the longitudinal Universal Time meridian was established on this date.

The International Meridian Conference established the meridian as the local time at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in England.


October 13, 1914 -
Garrett Morgan invented and patented a gas mask, (U.S. patent 1,113,675) consisting of a canvas hood placed over the head on this date. A double tube extended from the hood and merged into a single tube at the back. The open end held a sponge soaked with water to filter out smoke and to cool incoming air.



On July 25, 1916, Morgan made national news for using the gas mask to recover several men trapped after an explosion at a new waterworks tunnel beneath Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio. After the rescue, Morgan's company received requests from fire departments around the country who wished to purchase the new masks. The Morgan gas mask was later refined for use by U.S. Army during World War I.


October 13, 1959 -
Olive Marie Osmond, actress, singer, doll designer, Nutrisystem junkie and Osmonds family survivor, was born on this date.



Hey let's all cut Marie a break, she's had to carry Donnie's sorry ass her whole life. (I'll say once again - Marie, you do you.)


October 13, 1968 -
Melvin, what are you going to do with that gun!





Bea Benaderet, radio and television actress and voice actress, died on this day.


October 13, 1969 -
The USSR launched a third spacecraft, Soyuz 8, in as many days, on this date. Soyuz 8 was part of a joint mission with Soyuz 6 and Soyuz 7 that saw three Soyuz spacecraft in orbit together at the same time, carrying a total of seven cosmonauts. The crew consisted of commander Vladimir Shatalov and flight engineer Aleksei Yeliseyev, whose mission was to dock with Soyuz 7 and transfer crew.



The main goal was to get Soyuz 8 rendezvoused with Soyuz 7 (transferring at least one cosmonaut by a spacewalk) and to have taken spectacular motion pictures of the Soyuz 7 - Soyuz 8 docking from Soyuz 6. Unfortunately, due to a failure in the electronics on all three spacecrafts, no rendezvous was able to be carried out.


October 13, 1972 -

Due to poor visibility, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying the Montevideo Old Christians Rugby Club, crashed high in the Chilean Andes. Of the 45 people aboard the flight, only 27 survived the crash and just 16 made it to their rescue 72 days later.



How did they do it? Cannibalism. According to one survivor, "the slight browning of the flesh gave it an immeasurably better flavor, softer than beef but with much the same taste."

So there you go - it doesn't taste just like chicken.


October 13, 1988 -
A report published in the journal Nature declared the Turin Shroud to be a 13th century fake. Although carbon-14 testing places the shroud's fabrication somewhere between 1260 and 1390 AD, true believers spend much of the next several years attempting to explain away the radiocarbon test results.



And yet, a British art historian in 2010, re-opened the whole can of worms again by suggesting that the shroud is in fact the actual burial cloth of a man who underwent a similar execution, much like Christ, around 33 AD.


October 13, 2010 -
33 Chilean miners were trapped deep underground for a record 69 days made the 17-minute journey to the surface, one by one, after surviving the best they could until the international team of rescuers were able to drill a passage and provide an escape pod, on this date.



The world was glued to their television screens for two months as engineers worked to devise a plan, and NASA provided the pod that would lift them to the surface. Never had anyone been rescued from such a depth—more than a third of a mile (622-meters) underground.



And so it goes

Rewarding people who miss their mark

Happy Columbus Never Met An Indigenous Person He Didn't Kill or Enslave Day! I can't even imagine how many more indigenous persons Columbus may have murdered if he didn't have the day off.



Columbus Day originated as a celebration of Italian-American heritage and was first held in San Francisco in 1869. The first state-wide celebration was held in Colorado in 1907. Franklin Delano Roosevelt pronounced Columbus Day in 1937, a celebration of the “promise which Columbus’s discovery gave to the world.” Since 1971, it has been celebrated on the second Monday in October. The date on which Columbus arrived in the Americas is also celebrated as the Dia de la Raza (Day of the Race) in Latin America and some Latino communities in the USA. However, it is a controversial holiday in some countries and has been re-named in others. A growing number of people in the US are pushing to change the date into a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day.



And all of this has nothing to do with the fact that it's Canadian Thanksgiving.


Today is the last day of International Cephalopod Awareness Days, and we are celebrating International Fossil Day (according to the folks at the National Park Service, they prefer to celebrate National Fossil Day on the second Wednesday in October and given that they are part of the government, they have any reason to be capricious or arbitrary.)



But today is (or should be) Fossil Day, celebrating all the incredible suckers that have gone extinct.


October 12, 1940 -
The Looney Tunes short, Prehistoric Porky, directed by Bob Clampett and starring Porky Pig, was released on this date.



The "magazine for cavemen" that Porky gets in the mail has a number of Warner Bros. employees' names on the cover.


October 12, 1940 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Holiday Highlights, directed by Tex Avery, was released on this date.



The joke about Thanksgiving being on different dates for Democrats and Republicans is lost on most people today, but before 1939 Thanksgiving was not a fixed date, it relied on a Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation each year.


October 12, 1950 -
One of the first comedy series to make the successful transition from radio to television The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



George Burns is regarded as being the first entertainer to step out of character and "break the fourth wall" by directly addressing the television audience. On many occasions, Burns stated he had been inspired by Thornton Wilder's 1938 play Our Town.


October 12, 1957 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Touché and Go, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Pepe Le Pew, was released on this date.



Pepe breaks the fourth wall in his usual suave, Gallic manner.


October 12, 1966 -
Sammy Davis, Jr. makes a cameo appearance on the ABC-TV series Batman - The Clock King's Crazy Crimes,



during one of their legendary Batclimbs, on this date.


October 12, 1968
The second studio album by Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, reached number one on the charts for eight nonconsecutive weeks on this date.



It was their last album with Janis Joplin as lead singer before she started a solo career.


October 12, 1969 -
An almost forgotten film, The Madwoman of Chaillot, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katherine Hepburn and an all-star cast, opened in the U.S. on this date.



The only one of Katharine Hepburn's four films during the 1960s (including Long Day's Journey Into Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Lion in Winter) for which she wasn't Oscar-nominated.


October 12, 1972 -
Motown Productions and Paramount Pictures released the Sidney J. Furie, Billie Holiday bio-pix, Lady Sings The Blues, starring Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, and Scatman Crothers, on this date.



Dorothy Dandridge was to star in the role of Billie Holiday in an earlier proposed film version of the singer's autobiography but died before the film was made.


October 12, 1993 -
Touchstone Pictures releases the stop-motion animated feature film The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton, on this date.



In 2001, Walt Disney Pictures began to consider producing a sequel, but rather than using stop motion, Disney wanted to use computer animation. Tim Burton convinced Disney to drop the idea. "I was always very protective of [Nightmare] not to do sequels or things of that kind," Burton explained. "You know, 'Jack visits Thanksgiving world' or other kinds of things just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it."


October 12, 1994 -
The MTV Unplugged series premiered on this date, the much anticipated Robert Plant and Jimmy Page reunion, Unledded, to promote their stir album No Quarter which would be released two days later on October 14, 1994.



The reunion led to a tour in 1995 and a studio album, Walking Into Clarksdale, in 1998.


October 12, 1996 –
Though they've refused to release it on video for 27 years, largely due to dissatisfaction over their own performance, The Rolling Stones finally release their landmark 1968 all-star BBC television special, The Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus, on this date.



This is Brian Jones's last live performance with The Rolling Stones. He was kicked out of the band a few months after the show was filmed in June of 1969 and died a short time later.


October 12, 2007 -
The follow-up to Cate Blanchett's successful 1998 bio-pix Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, also starring Geoffrey Rush, and Clive Owen, opened in the U.S., on this date.



To save money, only one ship replica was built. It was Raleigh's English vessel on one side and a Spanish galleon on the other. When filming wide shots of the deck, smoke was used to cover up any separation in design.


October 12, 2008 -
The Fox Searchlight Pictures distributed Darren Aronofsky's film, The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke (in an intensely incredible performance,) and Maresi Tomei, closed the New York Film Festival on this date.



The first scene of Randy working the deli counter was improvised. When real customers kept walking up to the counter during filming, Darren Aronofsky told Mickey Rourke to take their orders while the camera would continue rolling. Also improvised were all of the backstage locker room scenes.


October 12, 2013 –
At 16, New Zealander Lorde (Ella Yelich-O'Connor) became the youngest solo artist to write and record a Billboard No. #1 hit when Royals took that position on this date.



Yelich-O'Connor was discovered when her now manager, Scott Maclachlan, saw a video of her performing at a Belmont Intermediate School talent show when she was 12.



Lorde inspiration for writing the song came from listening to the Kanye West and Jay-Z project Watch the Throne, as well as Lana Del Rey's debut album, Born To Die. "What really got me," she told The Observer, "is this ridiculous, unrelatable, unattainable opulence that runs throughout. Lana Del Rey is always singing about being in the Hamptons or driving her Bugatti Veyron or whatever, and at the time, me and my friends were at some house party worrying how to get home because we couldn't afford a cab. This is our reality!" (laughs). "If I write songs about anything else then I'm not writing anything that's real."


Word of the Day


Today in History:
October 12, 1492 -
Christopher Columbus, not the brightest bulb in the explorers club, reached America, making his first landing in the New World on one of the Bahamas Islands.



Columbus believed he had reached India.



It was discovered that Columbus' ships really landed on the 13th of October, 1492, he was persuaded by Dutch sailor Piet de Stuini (or DeStynie) to change it to the 12th in the logs because he said that the number 13 might frighten sailors and future investors away. An Italian study group called the Colombiani detected this change.


October 12, 1609 -
The children's nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice was published in London on this date.



The Three Blind Mice are thought to refer to a trio of Protestant bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Radley, and The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who were all burnt at the stake during Bloody Mary’s reign. This is reportedly the earliest known secular song published.


October 12, 1810 -

The first Oktoberfest began on this date as a festival celebrating the marriage of Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen and Prince Louis of Bavaria (later King Ludwig I) in Munich, Germany.



The festival was such a success, the locals decided to hold it annually. (a great little known fact - Albert Einstein, once worked as an electrician and helped to set up one of the beer tents in 1896.)


October 12, 1915 -

British nurse Edith Cavell, was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels for helping Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I. The night before her execution she told the Anglican chaplain, Rev. Gahan, who had been allowed to see her, 'Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.' These words are inscribed on her statue in St. Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square in London.



Her final words to the German pastor were recorded as 'Ask Mr. Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.'

Pretty tough cookie.


October 12, 1960 -
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe during a dispute on this date.



This resulted in the popular stereotype of the Soviet Dictator who pounds his desk with his shoe.

In fact, many Soviet Dictators did not pound their desks with their shoes. They had their deputies do it for them.


October 12, 1960 -
The assassination of Japanese politician Inejiro Asanuma was accidentally broadcast live during a televised debate on this date.



Asanuma was attacked with a sword by 17-year old a right-wing ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi. While awaiting trial, Yamaguchi hanged himself, a few weeks later. Yamaguchi became a hero and a martyr to the Japanese far-right, and commemorations in his honor continue to this day.


October 12, 1964 -
The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 with astronauts Boris Yegorov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Vladamir Komarov on board (the first space flight to carry more than one crewman into orbit.)



This was also the first mission flown without ejection seats, an escape tower, or even spacesuits (which in itself was a first).


October 12, 1969 -
The Soyuz 7 spacecraft was launched on this date. The main goals of this mission in the official version was to test spacecraft systems and designs, maneuvering of the space craft with respect to Soyuz 6, which had launched a day earlier.



When it achieves orbit, it marks the first time in history that five people are in space at the same time (the three astronauts aboard Soyuz 7 and the two aboard Soyuz 6.)

Wait for it, there's more to this story.


October 12, 1970 -
During his court martial for the My Lai Massacre, Lt. William Calley testified that Cpt. Ernest Medina had ordered that anybody they couldn't move would be "wasted."

Which is why Calley said he and his men killed 350 Vietnamese, including more than 100 civilian men, women, and children.


October 12, 1973 -
U.S. President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford for the vice presidency, under the 25th Amendment, to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two days earlier.

As I've mentioned before, Ford was on the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination. When Nixon resigned, Ford became president. One of his first acts was to pardon Richard Nixon.

I'm not saying that there is a connection but it gives you pause.


October 12, 1997 -
Folk singer John Denver died when the small plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay on the California coast.



Divers later recover most of the body, but not the head. Denver was ultimately identified by his fingerprints.

Perhaps you really didn't want to know that part.


October 12, 2000 -
In the port of Aden in Yemen, a large bomb, carried by two suicide terrorists on a rubber raft, caused heavy damage to the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 39.



This event was the deadliest attack against a U.S. Naval vessel since 1987.



And so it goes

Let's celebrate what lurks beneath

Continuing our salute to International Cephalopod Awareness Days, celebrated October 8th through the 12th - Today is Myths and Legends Day.







We here at ACME salute all the fantastical cephalopods of movies, literature and legend.


It's World Egg Day!



So yes, let's all celebrate the incredible edible egg



Egg prices are lower than they were compared to the high prices earlier this year, (You're welcome.) I have spoken to the Egg Board about that situation.


I nearly forgot that the second Sunday in October is designated as Father–Daughters Day today, as opposed to (just) Daughters Day. Once again UN negotiators were called in, and after several tense meetings with some not so high priced ACME lawyers, we was able to use the following photo as long as UN observers were also present

I am allowed to say that two people in this photograph were my legitimate tax deductions at one point.


October 11, 1941 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Bug Parade, directed by Tex Avery, was released on this date.



This was the last Warner Bros. cartoon that Tex Avery finished before he left for Paramount to work on the short-lived Speaking of Animals shorts. He later moved to the MGM cartoon studio.


October 11, 1944 -
The romantic noir classic, Laura, starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price, premiered in NYC on this date.



Clifton Webb had to deal with the shock of seeing himself on-screen after a long absence from Hollywood. Watching the first batch of rushes that included his first scene in the tub when he meets McPherson, Webb nearly had a heart attack: "When I saw myself sitting in the bathtub looking very much like Mohandas K. Gandhi. I felt I might vomit. After it was over, Dana (Andrews) saved my life with a big swig of bourbon. The first shock of seeing myself had a strange effect on me, psychologically, as it made me realize for the first time that I was no longer a dashing young juvenile, which I must have fancied myself being through the years in the theatre."


October 11, 1958 -
Spencer Tracy was virtually the whole movie in The Old Man and the Sea, which opened in U.S. theaters on this date.



Ernest Hemingway was initially involved in the production, although the extent of his participation after selling his book's film rights to Warner Bros. was to go marlin fishing off the coast of Peru to try to find a fish suitable for use in the film. In the end, the producers used a rubber marlin and stock footage of marlin fishing in which Hemingway didn't participate. After seeing the film, Hemingway expressed his disappointment, remarking that Spencer Tracy looked less like a Cuban peasant fisherman than the rich actor he was. Nevertheless, Tracy earned an Oscar nomination for the role.


October 11, 1958 -
The Looney Tunes short, Hook, Line and Stinker, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, was released on this date.



Coyote subtly breaks the fourth wall here as he's pouring the bird seed. Silently, of course.


October 11, 1962 -
We all got to follow the wacky adventures of the crew of PT-73 when McHale's Navy set sail for the first time on this date on ABC-TV.



Ensign Charles Parker (Tim Conway) often mentioned that he was from Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Conway grew up in Chagrin Falls in real-life.


October 11, 1963 -
CBS aired the classic The Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, starring William Shatner on this date.



Writer Richard Matheson said he was mostly pleased with Twilight Zone's version of his short story - except for the gremlin. He'd conceived it as a dark, creepy and nearly-invisible humanoid figure. "But this thing," he complained, "looked more like a panda bear."


October 11, 1965 –
The excellent, though nearly forgotten Cold War drama, The Bedford Incident, directed by James B. Harris, and starring Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Eric Portman, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam, Wally Cox, and Donald Sutherland, opened in the US on this date.



The U.S. Department of Defense withheld full cooperation in making the picture after negative portrayals of the U.S. military in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Seven Days in May. These pictures strained the Pentagon's relations with Hollywood filmmakers. However, according to a contemporary article in the Los Angeles Times, James B. Harris and screenwriter James Poe were able to visit a U.S. Navy destroyer based at Norfolk, Virginia for pre-production research in late 1963.


October 11, 1975 -
The long running (some say too long running) comedy variety show started at 11:30 PM, on this date, with George Carlin as its host. It was called NBC's Saturday Night, because ABC featured a program at the same time titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. After ABC canceled the Cosell program in 1976, the NBC program changed its name to Saturday Night Live on March 26, 1977.





Besides George Carlin being the guest host, the musical guests included Janis Ian, performing At Seventeen and In the Winter, and Billy Preston, performing Nothing from Nothing and Fancy Lady.


October 11, 1981 -
The surprise art-house hit, My Dinner With Andre, starring Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory (sitting around, eating and talking,) premiered on this date.



In the movie Wally and Andre specifically mention electric blankets as one of the negative examples of technology in the modern world. As it turned out, because of the overly cold set they had to work on, many of the cast and crew resorted to using them to stay warm.


October 11, 1986 -
Janet Jackson's single, When I Think of You goes to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100, on this date, making her and Michael the first siblings to land #1 solo singles on the chart.



Jackson was just 20 years old when this was released, but she had already put out two albums, including her self-titled debut in 1982.


October 11, 2003 -
Justin Timberlake made his first of five appearance as host on Saturday Night Live, doing double-duty as host and musical guest, on this date.



Timberlake has appeared seven times as a musical guest over the years. During the Punk'd Barely Legal sketch, Justin Timberlake wears the same 'Jesus is my Homeboy' T-Shirt worn a week earlier by Jack Black in The Wade Robson Project sketch.


October 11, 2006 -
One of the funniest shows about TV (other than Mary Tyler Moore) 30 Rock, starring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and Tracy Morgan, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Alec Baldwin loved Jack's wardrobe so much that he purchased the suits at the end of the series. According to costume designer Tom Broecker, Baldwin "wrote a big check to NBC" so he could take the clothes home when the show ended.


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


Today in History:
October 11, 1884 -
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, was born in New York City on this date.



She was the first wife of a president to hold her own news conference at the White House, in 1933. She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 until 1952. During her time at the United Nations, she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


October 11, 1890 -
Founded in Washington D.C. on this date, the Daughters of the American Revolution has chapters around the world and in all 50 US states. They work to promote US patriotism and preserve history as well as raise money for educational scholarships.



All members have a traceable ancestry lineage to someone who actively worked to achieve US independence. Since the mid-1980s, the DAR has supported a project to identify the names of African Americans, Native Americans, and individuals of mixed race who were patriots of the American Revolution.


October 11, 1899 -
The Bores of South Africa declared war on Great Britain in the hopes of generating interest, on this date.



(The war should not be confused with the Boar War, which had been canceled on account of the loss of tusks.)


October 11, 1910 -
Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane on this date. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey at Kinloch Field (Lambert-St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri in a plane built by the Wright Brothers.



He was having such a good time, he became the first US President to be repeatedly clubbed like a baby seal to get him out of the plane.

Bully!


October 11, 1919 -
Britain's Handley Page Transport became the first airline to serve in-flight meals when it offered lunch boxes on its London-to-Paris flight on this date.



The meals, consisting of a sandwich, fruits and chocolate, were sold at 3 shillings each. (British Airways has some of those first meals still available for purchase.)


October 11, 1939 -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt receives the Einstein-Szilárd letter, in which notable physicists warn Roosevelt of the possibility of Nazi Germany conducting research on nuclear fission in an attempt to create an atomic bomb. They urge Roosevelt to launch a similar research program before it’s too late.



The letter was written by Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner, but it will receive considerable national attention because it was also signed by renowned scientist and media icon Albert Einstein. The letter will arguably become the genesis of the Manhattan Project, and it will later become legendary when it’s revealed by scientist Linus Pauling that, by the end of his life, signing this letter had become one of Einstein’s greatest regrets.


October 11, 1952 -
Referee Francis DeReus halted the college football match between Wesleyan and Dubuque because of the profanity spewing from Dubuque's coach, Kenneth "Moco" Mercer. DeReus tossed coach and team from the game, and called the game because of profanity. The final score was Iowa Wesleyan 1, Dubuque 0. History does not record which vulgarities were involved.

Wanna guess?


October 11, 1961 -
Leonard 'Chico' Marx, the oldest of the Marx Brothers, died on this date. Chico was a compulsive womanizer and had a lifelong gambling habit. His addiction cost him millions of dollars by his own account. His brother, Gummo Marx, in an interview years after Chico's death, said, "Chico's favorite people were actors who gambled, producers who gambled, and women who screwed."



For a while in the 1930s and 1940s Chico led a big band. Singer Mel Torme began his professional career singing with the Chico Marx Orchestra (Desi Arnaz also toured with that band.)



Chico's lifelong gambling addiction compelled him to continue in show business long after his brothers had retired in comfort from their Hollywood income, and in the early 40s, he found himself playing in the same small, cheap halls he had begun his career in 30 years previously.



It was rumored that when Bugsy Siegal was shot, one of the items found on his person was a check from Chico, payment of a gambling debt from a poker game.


October 11, 1968 -
NASA launched Apollo 7, the first successful manned mission in the Apollo lunar-landing program on this date. The launch was performed with very little fanfare, as it was the first American space mission since three astronauts died in a fire aboard Apollo 1.



The mission, however, does mark the first live television transmission from a spacecraft in orbit.


October 11, 1975 -
William Jefferson (Blythe III) Clinton and Hillary Diane Rodham were married in Fayetteville, Arkansas 47 years ago, on this date.



The past is another country: they absolutely did things differently there.


October 11, 1976 -
After the death of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Mao's widow Jiang Qing and three others, dubbed the "Gang of Four," were arrested and charged with plotting a coup, on this date.

After the death of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Mao's widow Jiang Qing and three others, dubbed the "Gang of Four," were arrested and charged with plotting a coup, on this date. Their first album, Entertainment! was released two years later.



After their re-education, eventually, so were they.


October 11, 1978 -
Former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) stabbed girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb) to death in room 100 of New York's Chelsea Hotel on this date. Because Sid remembered nothing about the crime, theories include robbery and an abortive suicide pact. Vicious died of an ugly heroin overdose shortly before his trial.



Folks, there are no pretty heroin overdoses.


October 11, 1984 -
Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space on this date. During her three-hour extra-vehicular activity (EVA), Sullivan tested NASA's Orbital Refueling System (ORS) to determine the feasibility of fueling satellites in orbit.



Sullivan was joined aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger by Sally Ride, the first American woman to reach outer space. Mission STS-41-G was the first space flight with two women astronauts.


October 11, 1991 -
One of the comedian Redd Foxx and the cast of The Royal Family were in the midst of practicing. “They were rehearsing on the set and clowning around, and Redd was sort of breaking people up when he collapsed,” said Rachel McCallister, a spokesperson for the show, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “They all thought he was joking around at first, and then they called the paramedics.”signature running gags involved faking a heart attack by putting his hand on his chest and saying "It's the big one, I'm coming to join ya honey/Elizabeth" (referring to his late wife).



So when he had a real heart attack on the set of his television show on this date, his castmates thought he was trying to be funny. It proved to be fatal and Foxx died later the same day.


October 11, 2008 -
Luc Costermans, of Belgium, wanted to prove something on this date. So he borrowed a Lamborghini Gallardo that was outfitted with some special equipment. (I don't have any friends that would loan me their Lamborghinis.)



Driving with Guillaume Roman, Costermans drove 192 miles per hour on an airstrip in France, breaking the previous record of 178.5 miles per hour, which had been set three years before.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Costermans was blind and apparently Roman was crazy.



And so it goes