The Man Who Lit the World

Today is Tesla Day - Inventor and electromechanical genius Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the 20th Century, was born to Serbian parents in what is now Croatia on July 10, 1856 .



Remember, if we could only harness the free floating electricity,



we could do away with the electric companies.


It's Teddy Bear Picnic Day, again. It's a day set aside for you to take a stroll in the woods with your favorite bears.

If you don't wish to spend quality tim with your bear today, perhaps you may want to celebrate Don't Step on A Bee Day, which is celebrated throughout the United Kingdom.



While it is important that one is aware that walking barefoot may increase the chances of a bee sting, the day aims to create consciousness about the conservation of bees and highlights the plight they face due to the destruction of their habitats.


July 10, 1916 -
Charlie Chaplin further develops his 'Tramp' character with the release of The Vagabond, on this date.



Look for this - Charlie loses his hat outside the bar, is seen inside wearing it, then picks it up where he lost it when he leaves. When he escapes from the gypsy, he is hatless at first, but the next shot shows the hat suddenly back in place.


July 10, 1942 -
Orson Welles’s butchered masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, was released by RKO Pictures on this date.



After a disastrous preview—which took place a week after the Pearl Harbor attack—it was clear to the executives at RKO that the film was too long, too dense, and too somber. Orson Welles, however, had decamped to Brazil, where he was in the midst of working on a film called It’s All True, which was never completed. Welles had been sent there under the auspices of Nelson Rockefeller, one of RKO’s chief shareholders, to make a film intended to boost U.S.–South American wartime relations. With Welles out of the way, however, the onus of recutting and trimming the film fell on editor Robert Wise.



Like El Dorado or Shangri-La, a work print of Welles’s version supposedly exists in a vault somewhere in Brazil—tantalizingly, just out of reach. TCM has sponsored an exhaustive search of a major Brazilian film vault.



But wait: all is not lost. A Welles superfan named Brian Rose—himself an accomplished filmmaker—has used animation and countless hours of painstaking research to recreate missing footage from The Magnificent Ambersons. Rose hopes eventually to share his version of The Magnificent Ambersons with other Orson Welles enthusiasts.



Edward Saatchi, CEO of Fable Studio, is going one step further. He is leading a noncommercial project that uses generative AI to reconstruct the lost 43 minutes of The Magnificent Ambersons. Using surviving scripts, stills, and live-action doubles, Saatchi’s team aims to recreate the footage originally cut and destroyed by RKO in 1942.


July 10, 1947 -
One of Jules Dassin's post-war film-noir classics, Brute Force, starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, and Charles Bickford, premiered in Los Angeles on this date.



The second of three films that Burt Lancaster made for Mark Hellinger, the writer-producer who discovered the former acrobat and turned him into a movie star. The first of these was The Killers and the three-picture contract was completed with Criss Cross, a film Hellinger never lived to see, as he died before production began. His widow insisted that Lancaster honor the contract he had with her husband.


July 10, 1948 -
The Looney Tunes short, The Shell Shocked Egg, directed by Bob McKimson, was released on this date.



The unnamed rooster in this cartoon has the exact same figure and shape as Foghorn Leghorn, created two years earlier in 1946. The only difference between the two are the colors of their feathers. This rooster has two shades of brown, while the feathers of Foghorn Leghorn are solid white, except his tail and head. Both roosters are very tall.


July 10, 1954 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Oily American, directed by Bob McKimson, was released on this date. This short is seldom shown on American television due to American Indian stereotypes.



The butler is a based on, character actor, Arthur Treacher, who was known throughout his life for playing butlers in film.


July 10, 1966 -
The follow-up to the Japanese science fiction television series produced by Tsuburaya Productions, Ultra Q, Ultraman, premiered in Japan on this date. (I have seen it listed as having first aired one week later July 17, 1966. Who knows, I wasn't there.)



The sequences of Ultraman battling monsters were so expensive to film, that the producers needed a way to limit the scenes to only a few minutes for each episode. The solution was to give the character the weakness that he can not survive in his true self for more than roughly three minutes before he runs out of energy. This is marked with his warning chest light, called the Colortimer, which begins to blink with increasing speed as his energy runs out.


July 10, 1967 –
The Monkees released the single, written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Pleasant Valley Sunday, on this date.



While studio musicians were brought in to play on many songs for The Monkees, the band did play on this one - for the most part. Peter Tork played piano and Mike Nesmith played the famous opening guitar riff.


July 10, 1972 -
Harry Nilsson's eighth album, Son of Schmilsson was released on this date.



It featured George Harrison under the name George Harrysong and Ringo Starr, listed as Richie Snare, on some of the tracks. Peter Frampton also played guitar on most of the album.


July 10, 1976 -
Starland Vocal Band's song about afternoon nooky – Afternoon Delights topping the Billboard Pop charts on this date.



Despite having only this one hit, the Starland Vocal Band were given their own summer replacement TV series on CBS called The Starland Vocal Band in 1977. An unknown comic named David Letterman appeared on the show.


July 10, 1978 –
World News Tonight with anchors Frank Reynolds, Peter Jennings and Max Robinson (the first black anchor on a network newscast in the US) premiered on ABC TV on this date.



The program has been anchored at various times by a number of other presenters since its debut in 1948. It also has used various titles, including ABC Evening News from 1970 to 1978, World News Tonight from 1978 to 2006, World News from 2006 to 2009, and ABC World News from 2009 to 2014. Since 2014 the program has been called ABC World News Tonight.


July 10, 1981 -
John Carpenter sci-fi thriller, Escape from New York, starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton, premiered in the US, on this date.



John Carpenter originally wrote the film between 1974 and 1976 as a reaction to the Watergate scandal, but no studio wanted to make it because it was deemed to be too dark and too violent. That all changed after the success of his film, Halloween.


July 10, 1985 -
The third offering in the Mad Max series, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner (and directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie) premiered in the US on this date.



The film was originally not a Mad Max film, but a post-apocalyptic Lord of the Flies film about a tribe of children who are found by an adult. It became the third Mad Max film when George Miller was suggested that Max is the man who finds the children.


July 10, 1987 –
The animated film, The Brave Little Toaster, directed by Jerry Rees and voiced by Deanna Oliver, Timothy E. Day, Jon Lovitz, Tim Stack, Thurl Ravenscroft, Wayne Kaatz, Phil Hartman, Joe Ranft, and Jonathan Benair, was released on this date.



In a 2010 interview at Cal State, Northridge, Deanna Oliver revealed that at her son's deployment ceremony to Afghanistan, some of the soldiers who were fans of the film had brought their toasters with them for her to autograph.


July 10, 2003 -
PBS' Soundstage returned to TV on this date, with a performance from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.



The series had not aired in over 18 years when it ran from 1974 to 1985.


Another unimportant moment in history


Today in History:
July 10, 1553 –
Lady Jane Grey, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, ill-advisedly took the throne of England, upon the death of Edward VI, on this date.



Hopefully she didn't buy any green bananas. She wasn't going to be in the position to see them ripen.


July 10, 1559 -
Heed the prophecies of Nostradamus!

Henry II of France had a splitting headache today. Henry was having a friendly joust with the captain of the Scottish Guards, Gabriel de Lorges de Montgomery, when he was momentarily blinded by the visor on the captain's helmet.



The captain's lance was somehow broken and Henry II was pierced through the eye socket and temple on June 30 (Ouch!). The King writhed in agony until he died from his wounds on this date. Nostradamus wrote a poem about a lion and a cage and somehow that tripe predicted Henry II's death.


July 10, 1871 -
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself..



Marcel Proust, French novelist, tea enthusiast and master procrastinator was born on this date.


July 10, 1938 -
Aviator Howard Hughes (you know his C.V.) made a record flight around the world on this date, completing the trip in just 91 hours, breaking the previous record by more than four days.



Taking off from New York City in a Lockheed Super Electra he continued to Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Anchorage, Minneapolis, ending back at New York City.


July 10, 1939 -
My high-school a cappella teacher would embarrass me in front of the choir. 'Mavis, you're in the basement. Mavis, you're singing with the boys.' I said, 'Mr. Finch, my voice isn't soprano. I can't sing up there with the girls.' So I just got out of the choir..



Happy Birthday to the gospel and blues singer Mavis Staples born in Chicago on this date. She started singing with her family’s band The Staple Singers as a young girl, and her deep-throated voice catapulted the group to the top of the charts eight times between 1971 and 1975, with songs like I’ll Take You There, Let’s Do It Again, and Respect Yourself.


July 10, 1954 -
I'm always uneasy with messages. I think if there is a message, it's about taking control of your life. Not becoming a victim. Be true to yourself. In essence it's about love in the drug culture.



Neil Tennant, musician, singer and songwriter and the other half of the electronic dance music duo Pet Shop Boys, was born on this date.


July 10, 1958 –
The first parking meter was installed in London, England, on this date in 1958—along with the second through the 625th. It took nearly two dozen years for the parking meter to make its way across the Atlantic: the first American parking meter had been installed in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935.

It was invented by Oklahoma City’s Carl C. Magee, the head of that city’s chamber of commerce, as part of an effort to free up more parking spaces for daytime shoppers. Downtown spaces had typically been taken by office workers, who left their cars parked on the street all day, making it difficult for shoppers to find open spots and thereby causing incalculable pain and suffering. (Double-parking was not invented until 1963.)



I, personally, consider the parking meter one of the great instruments of totalitarian control, and cannot understand how conspiracy theorists who lose sleep over Roswell, the Masons, and black-hawk helicopters can walk blithely past dozens of parking meters every day.



Current estimates (“wild guesses”) suggest that there are now more than five million of these coercive devil machines deployed across the United States. They absorb millions of dollars in small change every day and generate still more ill-gotten revenue by means of fines levied against persons who refuse to kneel before them.



I urge my readers to recall the words of Alexander Hamilton, who observed in the Federalist Papers that “no people are free who must pay for municipal parking.”

Coincidentally, the first concrete-paved street was built 133 years ago today in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

Paved streets are good. I have no problem with paved streets—unless they’re lined with parking meters.


July 10, 1958 -
My most powerful memory was hearing Earl Scruggs on 'The Beverly Hillbillies' as a 5 or 6 year old. That sound just blew me away, shook my head up.




Béla Fleck, American banjo player extraordinaire and songwriter was born on this date.


July 10, 1962 –
Launched by NASA aboard a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Telstar, was launched into orbit, becoming the world's first communications satellite, on this date.



Telstar 1 was placed in low Earth orbit and circled the planet every two and a half hours, only in the right position to beam transmissions between Europe and the U.S. for 20 minutes each orbit. This is in contrast to contemporary communications satellites, which fly in geosynchronous orbit, staying above one spot on the Earth.


July 10, 1985 -
Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was blown up by in Auckland Harbor, killing a photographer, Fernando Pereira, on this date.


After the New Zealand government determines that French secret agents were responsible, the French Defense Minister Pierre Lacoste, resigned and agents, Captain Dominique Prieur and Commander Alain Mafart, were jailed.


July 10, 1989 -
Mel Blanc, whose career spanned over 60 years doing voice over work for many Warner Brothers characters died on this date.




Shortly before his death, executives of Time Warner (owners of Warner Brothers) asked him if there was anything, literally anything, that they could give him to thank him for his life's body of work. He asked for--and received - a Ford Edsel.


Nope

No thank you (I don't even appreciate the effort.)



And so it goes.

Keep cool, and you command everything

July 9 1938 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Love and Curses, directed by Ben Hardawayand Carl Dalton, was released on this date.



It is the earliest known Merrie Melodies short in the 1937–38 season to update the closing "That's all Folks!" sequence.


July 9, 1955 -
Bill Haley & His Comets' single Rock Around the Clock became the first rock and roll recording to hit the top of Billboard’s Pop charts on this date, staying at No.1 for eight weeks. It became one of the biggest selling singles of all time.



In 1956, Bill Haley and the Comets starred as themselves in a low-budget movie called Rock Around The Clock, where they performed nine songs. The film was far from scandalous, but was targeted to teenagers and caused a stir among theater owners who feared bad behavior. Possibly spurred on by these reports, there were incidents of dancing in aisles and other breaches in etiquette that helped fuel the perception among many adults that rock music would lead to mayhem in America's youth.


July 09, 1955 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Shuffle Off to Buffalo, directed by Friz Freleng, and starring Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck, and Yosemite Sam, was released on this date.



This is the first of only four Warner Bros. cartoons in which Bugs Bunny is pitted against all three of his main antagonists, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck.


July 9, 1966 -
The Beatles song Paperback Writer, topped the charts on this date.



The B-side to this single was John Lennon's Rain. Paul and John would always compete for the A-side of The Beatles singles.


July 9, 1968 -
The folk-rock band The Seekers' official farewell concert, The BBC Farewell Spectacular, premiered on this date, drawing 10 million viewers.



The special was shot in color but for some reason the BBC wiped their color copies of the concert and now only black and white recordings exist.


July 9, 1982 -
Buena Vista Pictures releases the sci-fi film Tron, directed by Steven Lisberger and starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Barnard Hughes, in the U.S. on this date.



Many Disney animators refused to work on this movie because they feared that computers would put them out of business. In fact, 22 years later Disney closed its hand-drawn animation studio in favor of CGI animation. Hand-drawn animation was ultimately resumed at Disney at the behest of new creative director John Lasseter, also head of Pixar- ironically a computer animation company.


July 9, 1983 -
The Police song Every Breath You Take topped the charts on this date.



This is one of the most misinterpreted songs ever. It is about an obsessive stalker, but it sounds like a love song. Some people even used it as their wedding song.


July 9, 1995 -
The Grateful Dead, who had been performing for 30 years, gave their last performance on this day, when they performed at Soldier Field in Chicago. During their 30 years, they performed more than 2,300 live concerts.



The lead guitarist and backbone of the band, Jerry Garcia, died one month after the final show.


July 9, 1999 -
Universal Pictures finally shined a light on the world of pastriality when American Pie, starring Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Eugene Levy, and Shannon Elizabeth was released in the US on this date.



Eugene Levy was told he could improvise much of the dialogue for his character, including the part when flipping through the pornographic magazines with Jim, forcing a noticeably muffled laugh from Jason Biggs with the "giant orgy" line.


July 9, 2001 -
The mockumentary The Office, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and starring Ricky Gervais and Martin Freeman premiered on BBC Two, on this date.



The series started as a small, home-made video by Stephen Merchant when he was trying to get a job at the BBC. He came up with the idea for making a documentary style format as it would be easier for him to film. He and his colleague Ricky Gervais came up with the series idea and used a local university to film it. Upon seeing the short video the BBC requested that they make a series out of it. Many of the jokes from this original film are recycled during the proper series for example, David Brent's opening speech about making employees' dreams come true.


July 9, 2010 -
The world was introduced to the Minions, when Universal Pictures released Despicable Me, voiced by Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig, Miranda Cosgrove, Will Arnett, and Julie Andrews, on this date.



Originally, the minions were supposed to be more like henchmen (human-like), but the studio didn't have the money for that, so they redesigned them to be short.


Another little known Monopoly card.


Today in History:
July 9, 1776 -
New York finally got around to ratifying the Declaration of Independence on this date, making it the 13th colony to do so. The document was read aloud to Gen. George Washington's troops stationed in New York City.

Later that night, American troops destroyed a bronze-lead statue of Great Britain's King George III that stood at the foot of Broadway on the Bowling Green. Most of the statue pieces were sent to Connecticut where munitions makers turned them into 42,000 bullets.


On the Fourth of July in 1850, President Zachary Taylor snacked on cherries and milk while attending a ceremony at the Washington Monument. It was a hot day, and the heat made him sick.

He got sicker and sicker and died on July 9.

He remains the only U.S. president to have died from indigestion (with the possible exception of Warren G Harding, who may or may not have been poisoned by his wife - which could be considered death by extreme indigestion - but that's another story.)



His last words were, "I regret nothing, but I am sorry to leave my friends."

I firmly believe he actually regretted eating the cherries-and-milk that caused his fatal indigestion, but I'm not going to quibble with a man's dying words. He was succeeded by Millard Fillmore, possibly one of the worst president. Although Fillmore did oversee the installation of indoor plumbing in the White House, which made extreme indigestion a tad more comfortable there.


July 9, 1918 -
Two passenger trains crossing the Dutchman's Curve in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, collided at speeds of 50 to 60 miles per hour killing 101 people and leaving 171 injured, on this date.



The great wreck of 1918 is still considered the worst rail disaster in US history.


July 9, 1926 -
Mathilde Krim, geneticist, founder of the AIDS foundation, was born on this date.



Just want to remind you bunkies that one of America's most famous women doctors was in the Israeli military.


July 9, 1933 -
I was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the youngest, even though now I am almost the oldest person I know.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.



Oliver Sacks, neurologist, was born on this date.


July 9, 1945 -
... dirty money always brings sorrow and sadness and misery and disgrace. Said by a man who never took a bribe.



During a newspaper strike, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the daily comic strips aloud on WNYC radio on this date.

Co-incidentally or not, yesterday was the 102nd anniversary of WNYC, which began as an AM radio station, 570 AM.


July 9, 1956 -
America's favorite actor, Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born on this date.



Let's hope someday Tom finds himself and succeeds in a career.


July 9, 1958 -
A tsunami wave struck Lituya Bay in southeast Alaska on this date. The tsunami wave was 1,719 feet high - taller than the Empire State Building (1,470 feet tall). It was caused by an earthquake and descriptions by witnesses as moving at 600 miles per hour. It was later determined that this was the largest wave to ever strike land in history.



The wave destroyed 6-foot trees and stripped the shore down to bedrock. It killed two people when it sank their boat, while two other boats rode it out with all passengers surviving.


July 9, 1960 -
Seven-year-old Roger Woodward, who was wearing a life jacket, survived a 162-foot plunge over Niagara Falls after a boating accident, on this date. He became the first person to go over the Falls by accident and live.



Woodward, who later developed a love of boating, became a certified diver, even joined the Navy, suffered only a slight concussion, scrapes and bruises. His first word when rescued in Ontario by the tour boat at the bottom was reportedly, “Gosh”.


July 9, 1962 -
Pop-art pioneer Andy Warhol's 'Campbell's Soup Cans' exhibition opened at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles on this date.



The main exhibit consisted of 32 paintings of cans of every variety of Campbell's Soup. Great bar bet - The red and white label on a Campbell's Soup can comes from the colors of the Cornell University football team.


July 9, 1964 -
My number one thing to work on is not being reactive - but appropriateness doesn't come easily to me sometimes.



Courtney Michelle Love, rock musician and actress, was born on this date.


July 9, 1982 -
Michael Fagan, dressed in jeans and a dirty t-shirt, and bleeding from a fresh cut on his hand, walks into the private bedroom of Queen Elizabeth II while she was asleep and her personal guard out walking her dogs. Fagan had scaled the wall surrounding Buckingham Palace and gained entry without triggering any alarms. The two carried on a 12-minute conversation, while the intruder holds a jagged broken ashtray, before somebody finally apprehended him.



Who knew that the Queen could carry on a 12 minute conversation with one of her subjects?


July 9, 2005 -
Danny Way, a daredevil skateboarder, rolled down a large ramp and jumped across the Great Wall of China on this date.



He was the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid.


Before you go - As you well may know, while cash is the gift that shows you care, (highly-rated Muni Bonds are also acceptable) -

cards like this are absolutely not:

The anniversary of my 39th birthday is in just three days. The correlation between these two statements is for you to make.



And so it goes.

Just letting you know

You have 4 shopping days until my birthday -

Cash is always the gift that shows you care.


July 8, 1932 -
W.C. Fields' very funny political satire, Million Dollar Legs, opened on this date.



Writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz was inspired to write this film by the wild events of the 1928 Olympic games held in Amsterdam, particularly by an Albanian pole-vaulter who took to the field wearing a pair of goatskin shorts.


July 8, 1932 -
Tod Browning's groundbreaking shockfest Freaks, featuring genuine carnival sideshow performers, premieres at the Rialto theater in New York on this date.



Cast member Olga Roderick, the bearded lady, later denounced the film and regretted her involvement in it. Although Roderick was the most vocal in her dislike of the movie, many of the cast members expressed their disdain. Only Johnny Eck seems to have praised the film throughout his life.


July 08, 1933 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Shuffle Off to Buffalo, directed by Rudolf Isingand Hugh Harman, was released on this date.



In the sequence with the Jewish baby, the message received by the old man is in Yiddish, and says ">Saturday, May 19th. Send me five children. Mrs. Ginzburg." The dialogue between the baby and the old man is also in Yiddish; the baby asks the old man, "How are you doing? [Vus machst du]," to which the old man replies, "I'm getting by [Ich mach laybn]." Before sending the baby off, the old man stamps the baby's diaper "Kosher".


July 8, 1950 -
The Looney Tunes short, 8 Ball Bunny, dircted by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny, was released on this date.



8 Ball Bunny has a double connection to Humphrey Bogart: 1) Bogart's character from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre shows up three times in caricature, begging money from Bugs. 2) Bugs sings a song in calypso style summarizing the plot up to that point. This exact song formula was used a year later for the Bogart and Bacall radio series, BOLD VENTURE, after the commercial break.


July 8, 1964 -
Probably Jerry Lewis' most self-reflexive film about film making, The Patsy, premiered on this date. (This was Peter Lorre's last film; he died four days after completing his role. Lorre hated the experience and death must have seems a welcome release.)



This is the only Jerry Lewis solo film that mentions Dean Martin by name. Ed Sullivan includes Martin & Lewis in a list of famous acts that made their debuts on his show.


July 8, 1966 -
Universal Studios released Frankenstein Conquers the World (Furankenshutain tai chitei kaijû Baragon - Frankenstein vs. Baragon) directed by Ishiro Honda and starring Nick Adams, Tadao Takashima and Kumi Mizuno, to U.S. theaters on this date.



The film's story came from an unused 1962 screenplay titled King Kong vs. Frankenstein, written by King Kong special effects technician Willis H. O'Brien. In the story, Dr. Frankenstein's grandson created a 20 ft. monster from the remains of animals, and that monster ended up fighting Kong. The story never got past the screenplay, thought concept art depicting Kong and the Frankenstein monster exist.


July 8, 1988 –
A single from Sade's third studio album Stronger Than Pride, Paradise went to no.1 on the Billboard R&B charts, on this date.



The song became her most successful on the U.S. charts


July 7, 1989 -
The second single from their album The Raw & the Cooked, Good Thing by the Fine Young Cannibals, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart on this date.



Fine Young Cannibals rose from the ashes of the UK band The Beat. Sometimes called "The English Beat" to distinguish them from the US Paul Collins' band, The Beat had a number of UK Singles hits including a cover of Smokey Robinson's Tears Of A Clown, Mirror in the Bathroom, and Too Nice To Talk To. When the band broke up in 1983, guitarists David Steele and Andy Cox went on to form FYC with a new vocalist, Roland Gift, whom they carefully chose after eight months of listening to cassettes.


July 8, 2010 -
Christopher Nolan's thought provoking sci-fi thriller, Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine, premiered in London, on this date.



During production, details of this movie's plot were kept secret. Christopher Nolan, who wrote the script, cryptically described it as a contemporary science fiction action thriller "set within the architecture of the mind."


July 8, 2011 -
A documentary about the early careers of James Taylor and Carole King, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Troubadours: the Rise of the Singer-Songwriter aired on BBC4 on this date.



Taylor and King’s first performance at the Troubadour was in November 1970. Thirty-seven years later, in November 2007, the two longtime friends, joined by members of their renowned original band – featuring guitarist Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar, bassist Lee Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel – returned for a three-night, six-show run to celebrate the club’s 50th anniversary.


Another epsiode of ACME's Little Known Animal Facts.


Today in History:
July 8, 1115 -
Peter the Hermit died on this date. Peter is notable for his invention of The Crusades and never bathing. He whipped up support for the first Crusade as an attempt to dislodge the Seljuk Turks from Jerusalem: over three hundred thousand Christians perished in less than a year, during which they destroyed hundreds of villages throughout Europe and Asia Minor and killed tens of thousands of European Jews and fellow Christians on their way to a holy land they never reached.



As a result of this astonishing success, the Crusades were serialized and ran for several centuries.


July 8, 1497 -
King Emmanuel I of Portugal sent navigator Vasco da Gama out to discover a trade route into the Indian Ocean. Da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon on this date. Vasco da Gama departs Portugal in search of a sea route to India.



Remarkably, ten months later Da Gama and his crew arrived in Calicut in India, becoming the first to sail the passage from Europe to India round Africa - actually reaching his destination rather than 'discovering' some tourist spot in the Caribbean. As reward, the Portuguese king confers on him the title of Admiral of the Indian Ocean.


July 8, 1776 -
In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rang out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon on this date.



The bell had the inscription: proclaim liberty throughout all the land onto all the inhabitants thereof.



An interesting aside - On July 8, 1835, the Liberty Bell cracked (again) while being tolled during the funeral procession for Chief Justice John Marshall. It was never rung again.


July 8, 1800 -
The first smallpox vaccine was administered on this date in the U.S. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (no relation to Price) of Massachusetts introduced Edward Jenner's method of vaccination of cowpox serum to his five-year-old son Daniel and a household servant.

Neither ever contracted smallpox and the vaccination was determined to have been an udder success.


July 8, 1822 -
The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a month shy of his 30th birthday, along with two others, died on this date, when his boat went down in a sudden storm off the coast of the Gulf of Spezia.

It was ten days before the bodies were found, and by then Shelley was identifiable only by the clothes he wore, and the book of Keats’ poems he had in his pocket. His face and hands had been completely eaten away.

Maybe I shouldn't have shared that part of the story.


July 8, 1856 -
The crank-operated machine gun (US patent #15,315) was patented on this date by C.E. Barnes of Lowell, Massachusetts, and the revolving gun turret was invented exactly six years later by Theodore Timby.

Both inventions enabled mankind to kill itself off with unprecedented ease and efficiency, thereby launching the modern era.


July 8th was a Sunday in 1881, so when a hot young man entered Edward Berner's drugstore in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and ordered an ice-cream soda, his request was denied. Ice-cream sodas could not be served on the Sabbath owing to the ancient Mosaic injunction against them.

The hot young man pleaded his case so eloquently, however, that Berner felt sympathetic and came up with a compromise: he plopped a scoop of ice-cream into a dish and poured the chocolate-flavored syrup directly over it.



This religious dodge quickly became popular and came to be known as the Ice Cream Sundae. (The spelling was later changed to conceal the heretical origins of the dish. And whatever you do, don't repeat this story in Ithaca, NY.)



Since that glorious day, hundreds of millions of Americans have consigned themselves to Hell.


July 8, 1896 -
Should this come up in conversation:
The overwhelming issue in the 1896 presidential election was one of economics — the U.S. government promised to pay the holder of one dollar bill one dollar in gold. Democrats, farmers and westerners demanded that the government redeem paper money in silver as well, while Republicans and easterners protested that this policy would destroy the economy.



William Jennings Bryan propelled himself to presidential candidacy when he stood before the Democratic Convention and made his famous “Cross of Gold" speech, on this date.

So now you know.


July 8, 1958 -
The center of the Hollywood Universe was born today in 1958.



Remember even you are only a few degrees away from Kevin Bacon.


July 8, 1969 -
The U.S. Patent Office issued a patent for the game Twister. (Yes smartpants, the game came out in 1966 but the patent wasn't issued until this date.)

Remember kids, if you are going to play nude Crisco Twister - always use protection.


July 8, 1976 -
Former President Richard M. Nixon was disbarred by the New York Bar Association. Nixon attempted to resign voluntarily, as he had from the California and U.S. Supreme Court bars, but New York refused to accept his resignation unless he acknowledged that he had obstructed justice during the Watergate coverup.

Bad, Nixon, Bad.


July 8, 1999 -
The last electric chair execution in Florida took place, when Allen Lee Davis ordered his last meal and walked his last mile on this date. His execution drew particular attention because his nose bled during the botched execution and he was burned on his leg, groin and head.

The US Supreme Court ruled death by electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment in 2008, ending the practice, which by then was only used in Nebraska.

(If you sick puppies want to - there are photos on the intraweb of Mr. Davis after his less than professional execution - you have to search them out yourselves. There's only so much of crap I'll look at - Geez.)


As I mentioned at the start of this posting, cash is always the gift that shows you care. This however, is not -

Does anyone think this is funny?



And so it goes.