I hope you remembered

If you're in NYC,

I hope you voted yesterday - it's one of your only civic duties


It's Midsummer Day

throughout most of Europe.



It should not be confused with the Summer Solstice (or the Swedish horror film) except they're kind of celebrating the same thing,
 


(it's also the feast day of St. John the Baptist.)

Upon further thought, avoid all parties throw by Northern Europeans today


June 24, 1939 -
The Looney Tunes short, Scalp Trouble, directed by Bob Clampett and starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck was released on this date. This short is seldom seen on television due to it's outdated portrayal of Native Americans



Friz Freleng remade this short five years later as the color Merrie Melodies Slightly Daffy and reused some of the animation and gags.
 

June 24, 1944 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Hare Ribbin', directed by Bob Clampett and starring Bugs Bunny was released on this date.



The dog's observation of "beeeee-ohhhhh." references the long-running Lifebuoy soap radio ad that, to the sound of a foghorn, asked if you had "B.O."


June 24, 1950 -
The Looney Tunes short, All a Bir-r-r-d, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Sylvester and Tweety Bird was released on this date.



The name of the fictional railroad is the South Eastern and West, which is set to deliver Tweety to Pasadena, California.


June 24, 1958 -
Nina Simone released her debut album, Little Girl Blue, on this date.



The entire Little Girl Blue album was recorded in one 14-hour session.


June 24, 1961 -
The Looney Tunes short, A Scent of the Matterhorn, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Pepe LePew, was released on this date.



Pepe sings Tiptoe Through the Tulips, first published in 1929. It would gain new popularity a few years after this short, when entertainer Tiny Tin would perform it on the TV show Laugh In.


June 24, 1965 -
The western comedy, Cat Ballou, directed by Elliot Silverstein and starring Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Tom Nardini, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman, Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye, was released on this date.



Lee Marvin's larger-than-life personality and fondness for tipping back the bottle made the actor a raucous but irresistible presence on the set. "Working with Lee Marvin was an unbelievable experience," said Dwayne Hickman. "Never have I met such an outrageous personality. Lee loved to drink, and the more he drank, the more outrageous he became. He had a story about everything and everybody. He also had very definite theories on acting and a style that was all his own. Lee figured if a little bit was good, a lot would be so much better."


June 24, 1970 -
Mike Nichols' adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch 22, starring Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel in his acting debut, Jack Gilford, Charles Grodin, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Austin Pendleton, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, and Orson Welles, was released on this date .



While on a tirade in his office, Major Major (Bob Newhart) walks past a framed photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a continuous shot, he paces around his office, and when he passes the picture again, it is of Winston Churchill, as he makes one more round of his office and grabs the fake mustache out of his filing cabinet, the photo has changed to that of Joseph Stalin.



Since shooting took longer than planned, Art Garfunkel wasn't able to make it back to New York City in time to start creating harmonies for and recording the Simon & Garfunkel album Bridge Over Troubled Water. Angered by the delay, Paul Simon wrote the track The Only Living Boy in New York about the incident.


June 24, 1970 -
20th Century Fox, for some unknown reason, released Myra Breckinridge, starring Raquel Welch, John Huston, Mae West, Farrah Fawcett, Rex Reed, Roger Herren, Roger C. Carmel, and Tom Selleck (in his film debut), on this date. It's as bad as you think it might be but you must watch it.



It was not so much the box-office failure as the complete and utter critical savaging of this movie - a reception that could only be termed as "disastrous" - that wrecked the careers of Writer and Director Michael Sarne and Roger Herren. The critical and financial flop also seriously hurt Raquel Welch, who never achieved the true star status that had been predicted for her.


June 24, 1971 -
Robert Altman brilliant take of the Western, McCabe and Mrs Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (featuring songs by Leonard Cohen) premiered in NYC on this date.



During post-production on this film, Robert Altman was having a difficult time finding a proper musical score, until he attended a party where the album Songs of Leonard Cohen was playing and noticed that several songs from the album seemed to fit in with the overall mood and themes of the movie. Cohen, who had been a fan of Altman's previous film, Brewster McCloud, allowed him to use three songs from the album - The Stranger Song, Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady - although Altman was dismayed when Cohen later admitted that he didn't like the movie. A year later, Altman received a phone call from Cohen, who told him that he changed his mind after re-watching the movie with an audience and now loved it.


June 24, 1977 -
The supposed remake of the 1953 thriller, >Wages of Fear, The Sorcerer, directed by William Friedkin and starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou, was released on this date.



Besides internal on-set conflicts, William Friedkin said that approximately fifty people "had to leave the film for either injury or gangrene," as well as food poisoning and malaria. In The Friedkin Connection he added that "almost half the crew went into the hospital or had to be sent home." Friedkin himself lost fifty pounds and was stricken with malaria, which was diagnosed after the film's premiere.


June 24, 1983 -
Warner Bros. releases the sci-fi film Twilight Zone: The Movie, directed by Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller, and Steven Spielberg and starring Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, Scatman Crothers, Kathleen Quinlan, John Lithgow, and Burgess Meredith in U.S. theaters on this date. The film remakes three classic episodes of the original Twilight Zone television series and includes one original story.



As Vic Morrow was waiting to film what would turn out to be the scene that killed him, he said to a production assistant, "I must be out of my mind to be doing this. I should've asked for a stunt double. What can they do but kill me, right?!" While he was filming Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, he insisted on having a $1 million life insurance policy before he would shoot any scenes involving the helicopter in which he was due to ride. He was very insistent, and when asked why, Morrow replied "I have always had a premonition I was going to die in a helicopter crash!".


June 24, 1994 -
Weezer release the song Undone - The Sweater Song, from their debut album, Weezer (aka The Blue Album) on this date.



Rivers Cuomo told Rolling Stone: "I was trying to write a Velvet Underground-type song because I was super into them, and I came up with that guitar riff. I just picked up that acoustic guitar and the first thing I played was that riff. And it just feels so classic to me, even now when the band starts to play it, it just takes over the energy in the room and you're just transported into the world of Weezer. It wasn't until years after I wrote it that I realized it's almost a complete rip-off of 'Sanitarium' by Metallica. It just perfectly encapsulates Weezer to me - you're trying to be cool like Velvet Underground but your metal roots just pump through unconsciously."


June 24, 2005 –
National Geographic Films produced the Academy Award winning documentary, March of the Penguins, which was released on this date.



Morgan Freeman almost passed on narrating the film, having told his agent that he was tired of being typecast as a narrator and to stop sending him those offers. He was persuaded to take a look at this film and changed his mind.


Another episode of ACME's Little Known Animal Facts


Today In History:
June 24, 1374 -
Please titrate your ergot carefully, a little sexual frenzy is good and all, but ...

In a sudden outbreak of Dancing Mania (aka St. John's Dance), people in the streets of Aix-la-Chapelle, Prussia experience terrible hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.



Many of the sufferers are afflicted with frothing at the mouth, diabolical screaming, and sexual frenzy. The phenomenon lasts well into the month of July. Nowadays, ergot madness is suspected as being the ultimate cause of the disorder.



(Please refrain from mentioning raves.)


June 24, 1812 -
Napoleon, ever the French cuisine booster, wants to spread his enjoyment of meals with heavy cream sauces and decides to invade Russia (ultimately with mixed results.)



He has to wait 70 years before Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky decides to write an Overture about the entire incident.


June 24, 1880 -
The first performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, took place at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français on on this date. The song was originally commissioned by Lieutenant Governor of Quebec Théodore Robitaille for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony.



The original lyrics were in French; an English translation was published in 1906.



Calixa Lavallée composed the music, after which, words were written by the poet and judge Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. An English translation was published in 1906. Multiple English versions ensued, with Robert Stanley Weir's version in 1908 gaining the most popularity, eventually serving as the basis for the official lyrics enacted by Parliament.


June 24, 1947 -
Businessman pilot Kenneth Arnold encounters a formation of nine flying saucers near Mt. Ranier, Washington, exhibiting unusual movements and velocities of 1,700 mph.



No explanation is found for this first report of flying saucers in the recent era, but it does earn Mr. Arnold legions of skeptics and an eventual IRS tax audit.


June 24, 1948 -
Communist forces with 30 military divisions cut off all land and water routes between West Germany and West Berlin, prompting the United States to organize the massive Berlin Airlift. East Germany blockaded the city of West Berlin.



During the Berlin Airlift, American and British planes flew about 278,000 flights, delivering 2.3 million tons of food, coal and medical supplies. General Lucius Clay, the local American commander, ordered the air supply effort.


June 24, 1957 -
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, Roth v. United States, that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, though a dissenting opinion included with the ruling notes the issue of prior restraint renders this a terrible decision.



By 1973, another case, Miller v. California, a five-person majority agreed for the first time since Roth as to a test for determining constitutionally unprotected obscenity, superseding the Roth test. By the time Miller was considered in 1973, Justice Brennan had abandoned the Roth test and argued that all obscenity was constitutionally protected, unless distributed to minors or unwilling third-parties.



(Aren't you happy when important legal issues can be boiled down to animated cartoon presentations.)


June 24, 1967 -
Pope Paul VI published his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (priestly celibacy) on this date.

I would bet this is when things really came to a head with that whole 'inappropriate' touching situation in the church.


June 24, 1975 -
113 people were killed when an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 crashed while attempting to land during a thunderstorm at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on this date.



The crash was later attributed to a microburst, not experienced at the control tower because of a sea breeze front.



And so it goes.

Forgiveness means letting go of the past.

Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the spirit. - Madeleine L'Engle

Today is Let It Go Day - the day when you should put down all of the baggage that you have been carrying around from the past. Perhaps you can donate your old cares and woes to your favorite charity.


June 23, 1956 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Tugboat Granny, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Sylvester, Tweety Bird, and Granny, was released on this date.



Though her name appears in the title, Granny only appears in the opening scene.


June 23, 1965 -
One of Frank Sinatra's best performances on film, Von Ryan's Express, premiered on this date.



Frank Sinatra was desperate to have Richard Burton as his co-star. Sinatra was not aware, however, that the studio, 20th Century Fox, were in the middle of a bitter court case with Burton and his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, over the massive cost overruns on Cleopatra, and wouldn't even entertain the thought of hiring Burton. Sinatra had made plenty of overtures to Burton in the hope he would sign on, and he was furious that he had wasted his time and effort.


June 23, 1965 -
The lumbering Columbia Pictures bio pix, Genghis Khan directed by Henry Levin and starring Omar Sharif, James Mason, Stephen Boyd, Eli Wallach, Françoise Dorléac and Telly Savalas, opened on this date.



Stephen Boyd, Omar Sharif, and James Mason previously appeared in The Fall of the Roman Empire .


June 23, 1965 -
One of the classic Motown singles, Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, was released on this date.



Miracles members Smokey Robinson, Warren Moore, and Marv Tarplin wrote this song. Robinson penned the lyrics; Tarplin, The Miracles' guitarist, came up with the riff. Robinson recalled: "Tracks of My Tears' was actually started by Marv Tarplin, who is a young cat who plays guitar for our act. So he had this musical thing [sings melody], you know, and we worked around with it, and worked around, and it became 'Tracks of My Tears.'"


June 23, 1970 -
The MGM WWII film, Kelly's Heroes, directed by Brian G. Hutton and starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor, Donald Sutherland, Harry Dean Stanton, Gavin MacLeod, Karl-Otto Alberty and Stuart Margolin, opened on this date.



Yugoslavia was chosen as a location mostly because earnings from previous showings of movies there could not be taken out of the country, but could be used to fund the production. Another reason was that in 1969, it was one of the few countries whose Army was still equipped with operating World War II mechanized equipment, German and American. This simplified logistics tremendously.


June 23, 1976 -
The very silly parody of classic murder mysteries, Murder by Death, directed by Robert Moore, written by Neil Simon. and starring Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, and Estelle Winwood, opened on this date.



Peter Sellers reportedly played several practical jokes on cast and crew during filming, including once calling Neil Simon up and imitating co-star Alec Guinness and demanding a rewrite of a key scene in the middle of the night. Neither Guinness nor Simon were amused.


June 23, 1978-
The follow-up to the comedy Murder By Death, The Cheap Detective, directed by Robert Moore, written by Neil Simon, and starring Madeline Kahn, Louise Fletcher, Ann-Margret, Eileen Brennan, Stockard Channing, Marsha Mason, Sid Caesar, John Houseman, Dom DeLuise, Abe Vigoda, James Coco, Phil Silvers, Fernando Lamas, Nicol Williamson, Scatman Crothers, Vic Tayback and Paul Williams, opened on this date.



The movie was titled The Cheap Detective, according to screenwriter Neil Simon, "because the detective in those old films never got paid! Who paid Humphrey Bogart for finding all those crooks in The Maltese Falcon? He arrested Mary Astor and sent her and everyone else to jail. Who paid him? The character is always involved in danger not for the bucks but because it's his lifestyle."


June 23 1979 -
The rock group, the Knack released the ear worm, My Sharona on this date.



That's Sharona Alperin on the cover of the single holding the Get The Knack album. She posed for the art even though she and Doug Fieger weren't yet dating.


June 23, 1980 -
The unsuspecting American public got their first taste of Letterman when his morning talk show, The David Letterman Show, first aired on NBC TV on this date.



The David Letterman Show lasted nineteen weeks on the air . Letters poured into NBC condemning the cancellation. College kids hitched across the country with petitions to save him. A group of housewives from Long Island tried to block traffic in Manhattan in protest. The show won two Emmy Awards.


June 23, 1984 -
Duran Duran started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with The Reflex, the group's first US No.1, was taken from their third album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger.



Instead of staying on brand by shooting in an exotic locale, the music video was shot at a Duran Duran concert. Directed by Russell Mulcahy, it's a concert footage with a twist, using the giant screen above the stage to insert the kind of random images (silhouettes with chains) that were hallmarks of early MTV. There's also a digital effect to look like water coming out of the screen and dousing the audience. It looks crude today but was pretty advanced for 1984.


June 23, 1989 -
Tim Burton's dark and brooding retelling of Batman, was released on this date.



Michael Keaton was unable to hear while wearing the Batsuit. He said that his claustrophobia helped get him in the proper mood to play Batman. "It made me go inward and that's how I wanted the character to be anyway, to be withdrawn," he said.


June 23, 1994 -
Life may or may not be a box of chocolate but Forrest Gump premiered in Los Angeles, on this date.



The line, "My name is Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump," was ad libbed by Tom Hanks while filming the scene, and director Robert Zemeckis liked it so much that he decided to keep it in.


June 23, 2000 -
Aardman Animations and DreamWorks Studios released the stop-motion film, Chicken Run, directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park (of Wallace and Grommit fame) and featuring the voices of Julia Sawalha, Mel Gibson, Timothy Spall, and Miranda Richardson, on this date.



The characters' bodies were made of silicone with latex covering, while the heads and hands (or wings) were plasticene. All the chicken characters have collars and ruffles to hide the disparity between the modeling clay heads and wings and the latex-covered bodies.


Today's moment of Word of the Day


Today in History:
June 23, 1611 -
The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Hudson, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay; they are never heard from again.

So much for loyalty.


June 23, 1868 -
Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent (US patent #79,265) for an invention he called a "Type-Writer" on this date.

His typewriter included the QWERTY keyboard format still used today. Others had invented typewriter machines, but Sholes invented the only one that became a commercial success.


June 23, 1894 -
Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, briefly Edward VIII, King of England and later to be known as the Duke of Windsor (making him both brother and uncle to successive monarchs), who abdicated his throne to marry American divorcee (and possible transvestite) Wallis Simpson, was born on this date.



Sometimes, it's very complicated to be the king.


June 23, 1931 -
Pilot Wiley Post (in full possession of both his eyes at the time ) and navigator Harold Gatty took off from Roosevelt Field in New York, in the Winnie Mae, on this date, attempting to be the first to fly around the world in a single-engine plane.



The trip (which was 15,474 miles,) completed when the pair landed back at Roosevelt Field on July 1st, took a total of eight days, 15 hours and 51 minutes. Wiley later became the first pilot to fly around the world solo, beating the record he and Gatty originally set.


June 23, 1950 -
Northwest Airlines Flight 2501, a DC-4 propliner operating its daily transcontinental service between New York City and Seattle, crashed into Lake Michigan killing 58 people.



The wreckage has never been discovered and the accident was, at the time, the worst commercial airliner accident in American history.


June 23, 1953 –
Frank J. Zamboni was issued a patent (#2,642,679) for his ice resurfacer on this date. Mr Zamboni invented his Ice Resurfacing Machine in 1949.



The Olympic medal-winner Sonja Henie was one of his first customers.


June 23, 1972 -
(Mr. Nixon did not take his martinis bone dry and that led to his downfall)

President Richard Nixon and White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed a plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation. Revelation of the tape recording of this conversation sparked Nixon's resignation in 1974.



In the “smoking gun" tape Pres. Nixon told H.R. Haldeman, to tell top CIA officials that “the president believes this (in reference to Watergate) is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again." Nixon counseled Haldeman on how to use deception to thwart an FBI investigation on how Watergate was financed.

But then again, the president insisted that there are no tapes.


And on a personal note:

Happy Birthday David



And so it goes.

Sunshine is good for the soul

Today is the first full day of Summer





Bunkies, I'll think of all the summer days ahead and dream of all of you. But don't get creeped out, it won't be that kind of dream.


Today is the anniversary of the Cleveland, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969.





If that is too disturbing a holiday to commemorate, it's also National Chocolate Eclair Day.

While the eclair is a delicious dessert, their charms escape me. Maybe it's the fake vanilla pudding most bakeries use rather than Bavarian cream.


June 22, 1940 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Circus Today, directed by Tex Avery, was released on this date.



After circling the globe, the Human Cannonball has stickers from England, China, France, Italy, Hawaii, Asia, the Alps, and it appears there are two stamps from Bali.



June 22, 1946 -
The Merrie Melodies short Hollywood Daffy, starring Daffy Duck, was released on this date.



This is the first directorial work of Hawley Pratt for the series. Since Friz Freleng refused to work with it, Pratt probably served as the solo director of the cartoon. .


June 22, 1955 -
Disney's first film about dog breeding, The Lady and the Tramp, was released on this date.



Walt Disney originally didn't want to include the 'Bella Notte' spaghetti-eating scene, now one of the most iconic moments in the whole Disney canon.


June 07, 1957 -
The Looney Tunes short, Boston Quackie, directed by Bob Clamplett and starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck, was released on this date.



At the opening, the announcer says, "Friend to those who need no friends; enemy to those who have no enemies." This is a spoof of a line from the opening sequence of the TV series Boston Blackie: "Enemy to those who make him an enemy, friend to those who have no friends."


June 22, 1961 -
A great old-fashion thriller, The Guns of Navarone, directed by J. Lee Thompson, and starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, Richard Harris and James Darren, was released on this date.



During shooting, Gregory Peck and David Niven became close friends, bonding initially over Peck's ability to consume vast quantities of brandy, which the actors used to "stay warm" while filming in a cold studio tank, without muffing a line. Their families visited each other frequently in later years, and Peck would deliver the eulogy at Niven's funeral.


June 22, 1965 -
The first screenplay of Woody Allen that was produced, What's New Pussycat?, starring Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers (and co-starring Woody Allen) premiered in the US on this date.



Groucho Marx was to have played Dr. Fassbender when Warren Beatty was attached to the project.


June 22, 1966 -
Mike Nichol's first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis, opened on this date.



This became the first movie in Academy Awards and cinema history to be nominated for every Academy Award category in which it was eligible, including Best Adapted Screenplay (Ernest Lehman ), Director (Mike Nichols ), all of the acting categories (Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis ) and Picture of the Year (Ernest Lehman), since Cimarron in 1931.


June 22, 1971 -
Reprise Records released the fourth studio album by singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, Blue, on this date.



The album is considered Mitchell's most personal album, considering her situation and lifestyle choices at the time. She's always been an artist who allows her audience to live her life vicariously through her music, and in no case is that more evident than on this album.


June 22, 1968 -
This Guy's in Love with You by Herb Alpert topped the charts on this date.



Alpert sang this to his first wife in a 1968 TV special called The Beat of the Brass. The sequence was taped on the beach in Malibu. The song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the TV special, thousands of telephone calls to CBS asking about it convinced label owner Alpert to release it as a single two days after the show aired.


June 22, 1984 -
Another underdog story directed by John G. Avildsen, The Karate Kid, starring Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, and Elisabeth Shue, was released by Columbia Pictures on this date.



The yellow classic automobile that Daniel polishes in the famous "wax-on/wax-off" training scene, then later offered by Mr. Miyagi as Daniel's birthday gift, was actually given to Ralph Macchio by the producer, and he still owns it. The car is a 1948 Ford Super De Luxe.


June 22, 1984 -
The atmospheric black-comedy, The Pope of Greenwich Village, starring Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Daryl Hannah, and Geraldine Page, premiered on this date.



Michael Cimino was asked to direct this film, but didn't think it was a good fit for him. As a favor to the producers, who were on a deadline, he went to New York and did all the pre-production. When they were set to begin shooting, the producers again asked Cimino to direct, but considering the budget, he thought that they needed someone who could work faster than he was used to working. They hired Stuart Rosenberg.


June 22, 1993 -
Liz Phair released her debut album, Exile In Guyville, on this date. The indie rocker approached the project as a track-by-track response to The Rolling Stones' 1972 album, Exile On Main St.



Her candid perspective on sex and relationships earns her favor with critics and a growing fanbase and Guyville is hailed as one of the best albums of the decade.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
June 22, 1342 -
Bilbo Baggins returns to his home at Bag End, Shire Reckoning, after his 13 month absence, on this date.



After his return to his home he never spoke of [the ring] again to anyone, save Gandalf and Frodo; and no one else in the Shire knew of its existence, or so he believed.


June 22, 1633 -
The Holy Office in Rome strong-armed Galileo Galilei into recanting his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.



This was the second time he was forced to recant Earth orbits Sun by the Pope. Almost immediately, on October 31, 1992, the Vatican admitted it was wrong.


June 22, 1843 -
Mmmm....donuts.*drools*

It's a great day in the morning at the Simpson house - Donuts, as we know them, were purported invented on this date.



One of the most popular credits American seafarer Hanson Crockett Gregory, of Rockport, Maine, with inventing the donut's hole in 1847 while aboard a spice ship. He was just 16 years old at the time. Supposedly, his mother's fry-cakes were not cooked in the center, so he cut the centers out so they would no longer have undercooked centers. His claim to be the creator of the sweet deep-fried, ring-shaped cake treat has been hotly disputed, despite its wide acceptance in Maine, which was early adopter of the doughnut in the 19th century and has since gone on to conquer the world.


June 22, 1906 -
Billy Wilder was born on this date. Not surprisingly, Mr. Wilder would go on to produce Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, all of whom frolicked giddily on the beach in bikinis. Mr. Wilder, you see, was comfortable in his season.



Not like some people. Some people had to force it. Some people had to prove something. Some people were like Brian Wilson, who was born the day before Summer (June 20) in 1942, and subsequently became a "Beach Boy" and released an album called Endless Summer.


June 22, 1918 -
The worst circus train wreck in history occurred just outside Hammond, Indiana on this date. A seriously over-tired engineer, Alonzo Sargent, fell asleep at the throttle of a trainload of empty Pullman cars and slammed into the rear of the 26-car Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train.



I believe it is appropriate to quote Joan Crawford at this time



85 of the 400 performers and workers on board were killed. There were no reports on whether or not the crowd at the previous days performance was greater than the gawkers at the scene of the wreck.


June 22, 1940 -
Eight days after German forces overran Paris, France was forced to sign an armistice on this date; hilarity ensues.



Adolf Hitler forces the instrument of surrender to be signed in the very railcar in which the French inflicted the humiliating World War I Treaty of Versailles upon the Germans. (In a bizarre co-incidence, it was also the anniversary of Napoleon's second abdication in 1815.)


June 22, 1941 -
The German Army invaded Russia on this date, quickly destroying five Russian armies and one fourth of the Red air force. At completion of the war in 1945, nearly 27 million Soviets were dead.



Thus ended the German- Soviet "Peace and Friendship" Treaty.

(Let's not discuss Hitler for the rest of the week.)


June 22, 1949 -
According to a former president, one of the most over-rated actresses of her generation, Mary Louise Streep, was born on this date.



Her accumulation of 21 Oscar nominations (3 wins) was accomplished over a period of only 38 years. Bette Davis scored 10 nominations (2 wins) over 28 years (all leading roles). Katharine Hepburn garnered 12 nominations (4 wins) after a relatively lengthy 48 years (all leading roles).

Imagine if she applied herself, how far her career would go.


June 22, 1969 -
The patron saint of perpetual bachelors of a certain age, Judy Garland died of a barbiturate overdose in her London apartment, either by accident or suicide.




Folks, she did not do a header into the toilet and drown.


June 22, 1993 -
All lives have triumphs and tragedies, laughter and tears, and mine has been no different. What really matters is whether, after all of that, you remain strong and a comfort to your loved ones. I have tried to meet that test.



The patron saint of long suffering political wives and good Republican cloth coats, Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan Nixon died on this date.



And so it goes.