Approach her with caution

Today is the 44th annual Mermaid Parade on Coney Island, self described as the 'largest art parade in the nation.' The grand-marshals this year are, King Neptune - Jesse Malin, and Queen Mermaid - Rickie Lee Jones.

The event is meant, in part, to celebrate the beginning of summer so the Mermaid Parade typically takes place on a Saturday closest to the beginning of summer solstice in June.



The Parade starts at 1pm, rain or shine, on West 21st and Surf Avenue. It rolls east to West 10th Street, where the marchers and push-pull floats proceed to the Boardwalk and continue their march to Steeplechase Plaza, under the Parachute Jump. It's a beautiful day today, if you can, why not catch the fun by the sea.


Refugees don't make our country less safe. But xenophobia, fear and hate do....

Wars, droughts, and natural disasters drive people away from their homes and their lands. This is tragic, but the next step - where do they go next? - can compound the tragedy. This year is the 26th anniversary of World Refugee Day, sponsored by the United Nations Refugee Agency, which aims to raise global awareness of global responsibility for refugees.



It's difficult for a nation or other region that is struggling with unemployment or drought or other problems to take in large groups of people, no matter how great their need. It is a crime against humanity when a country criminalizes the struggle of those people and their search for a safer and better life.


Today is National Vanilla Milkshake Day. While their charms are lost upon me (I'm a chocolate milkshake, preferable made using mint chocolate chip ice cream, but that's another story,) vanilla milkshakes are the most popular flavor in the world.



An important fact to know is that the first known printed reference to a “milkshake” dates back to 1885. It contained one part whiskey, ‘for medicinal purposes’. A prescription your old pal the doctor would be happy to fill for you. Milkshakes got their name from being served in bars. If the customer enjoyed the specialty drink, he shook hands with the bartender. If not, the bartender wouldn’t get a tip.


June 20, 1941 -
Advertised as their farewell film (they went on to appear in two more,) The Big Store, starring the Marx Brothers and Margaret Dumont (in her final appearance in a Marx Bros. film) premiered on this date.



This film made MGM the modest profit of $33,000 according to studio records. But, it was the best-performing picture of the final three the Marx Brothers made at MGM.


June 20, 1942 -
It's Brian Wilson's birthday today, ushering in those lazy, hazy days of summer.







It's just a little sadder during the summer because Brian Wilson is no longer with us.


June 20, 1946 -
Rex Harrison's first American movie, Anna and the King Of Siam, with Irene Dunne, opened in theaters on this date.



While most of the Caucasian actors and actresses playing Asians in this movie wore dark make-up, Gale Sondergaard was allergic to the make-up being used. Instead, through several weeks of cautious sunbathing, she acquired a deep enough tan to compensate.


June, 20 1953 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Hare Trimmed, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, was released on this date.



Sam challenges Bugs to a traditional duel, complete with a glove slap. But Bugs then mentions the Marquis of Queensbury rules, which apply to boxing matches.


June 20, 1966 –
The Beatles released their ninth album issued on Capitol Records and twelfth American release overall, Yesterday and Today, with the amended cover, on this date.



The original release of the album Yesterday and Today by the Beatles, with the so-called “Butcher cover”, is one of the most widely recognized valuable albums in the world, and one that is known to many non collectors. Due to the negative reception, Capitol Records received from reviewers who received advance copies of the record, the original album cover art, the Beatles dressed in butcher smocks, surrounded by pieces of raw meat and plastic doll parts, was quickly replaced by one with a more modest design.


June 20, 1974 -
Forget about it Jake. It's Chinatown

The unforgettable film-noir classic, Chinatown, was released on this date.



At the time of filming, Jack Nicholson had just embarked on his longstanding relationship with Anjelica Huston. This made his scenes with her father, John Huston, rather uncomfortable, especially as the only time Anjelica was on set was the day they were filming the scene where Noah Cross interrogates Nicholson's character with "Mr. Gittes...do you sleep with my daughter?"


June 20, 1975 -
Steven Spielberg's thriller, Jaws, premiered on this date. Beach vacations were never the same again.



Though respected as an actor, Robert Shaw's trouble with alcohol was a frequent source of tension during filming. Roy Scheider described his co-star as "a perfect gentleman whenever he was sober. All he needed was one drink and then he turned into a competitive son-of-a-bitch." According to Carl Gottlieb's book "The Jaws Log," Shaw was having a drink between takes, at which one point he announced, "I wish I could quit drinking." Much to the surprise and horror of the crew, Richard Dreyfuss simply grabbed Shaw's glass and tossed it into the ocean. When it came time to shoot the infamous USS Indianapolis Scene, Shaw attempted to do the monologue while intoxicated as it called for the men to be drinking late at night. Nothing in the take could be used. A remorseful Shaw called Steven Spielberg late that night and asked if he could have another try. The next day of shooting, Shaw's electrifying performance was done in one take.


June 20, 1981 -
The mash-up single by Stars on 45 (known as Starsounds in Europe,) Stars On 45 Medley reached No. 1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.



The title on the US single was the names of the songs that make up the medley: "Intro Venus/Sugar Sugar/No Reply/I'll Be Back/Drive My Car/Do You Want to Know a Secret/We Can Work It Out/I Should Have Known Better/You're Going to Lose That Girl/Stars on 45." At 41 words, it was the longest title of any single to make the Hot 100. The long title was the result of song publishers insisting upon the inclusion of the songs' titles on the label of the record.


June 20, 1992 –
Mariah Carey's cover of the Jackson 5 classic I'll Be There, became her 6th US No.1 hit single on this date.



Recorded for her MTV Unplugged special, it's the first song from the MTV acoustic showcase to become a hit.


June 20, 1997 -
The rom-com classic, My Best Friend's Wedding, starring Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett premiered on this date.



Sarah Jessica Parker was originally offered the role of Julianne Potter, but she was not able to take the role because she was committed to HBO in order to play Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City.

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


Today in History:
June 20, 1756 -
In Calcutta, 146 British prisoners are placed in a 18 foot by 14 foot cell known as The Black Hole by a Bengali, Siraj-ud-daula, and held there until the following morning.



Of those imprisoned, only 23 survive. With things getting back to normal, a 250 sq ft apartment would start a huge bidding war in Manhattan.


June 20, 1793 -
Eli Whitney applied for a patent on his Cotton Gin on this date. More affordable than gin distilled from grain alcohol and juniper berries, Cotton Gin quickly became the drink of choice among America's rural poor.



This led to widespread outbreaks of Cotton Mouth and eventually caused the Civil War.


June 20, 1782 -

Congress adopts the Great Seal of the United States on this date.



Although several people on the committee were Masons, the Masonic institutions themselves deny that the Seal is Masonic; therefore, any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Of course.


June 20, 1791 -
King Louis XVI and his family attempted their escape from Paris to the royalist citadel of Montedy on this date.



They were captured the next day at Varennes-en-Argonne when they were recognized. It didn't go too well for them after this.


June 20, 1837 -
The 18-year old Princess Victoria ascended the British throne following the death of her uncle, King William IV, on this date.



Her reign as the Queen lasted 63 years and 7 months, which is the second longest of any British monarch, after her great-great-granddaughter, the late Queen Elizabeth II.


June 20, 1893 -
Lizzie Borden was found innocent of giving her stepmother and father 40 and 41 whacks, respectively.



Now that O.J.is out of prison, he promised to get cracking on this case as well as finding the actual killer of his ex-wife.


June 20, 1947 -
Bugsy Siegel (Warren Beatty) was shot to death at Virginia Hill's (Annette Bennings) mansion, on orders purportedly from Meyer Lansky.



The drive-by shooting never was solved and remains an open case.


June 20, 1967 -
The late great Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) had refused to serve in the U.S. military, stating that it went against his religious beliefs and his opposition to the Vietnam War. This led to his conviction of violating Selective Service laws on this date.



The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the conviction.


Before you go - I nearly forgot, the summer solstice begins tomorrow at 4:42 PM EDT.



I'm usually up by then and we'll discuss this in further detail tomorrow.



And so it goes.

Let's take it nice and easy

June 19 –
All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking - Friedrich Nietzsche



Today is known as World Sauntering Day, sometimes referred to as International Sautering Day. Created by W.T. Rabe in response to the jogging craze; it was his thought that the day would be a reminder to slow down.


June 19, 1865 -
Marching his troops into Galvaston, Texas, Union General Gordon Granger announced the emancipation of slaves on this date.





The day has become known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day.


If you find yourself lost, begin to make a martini. Soon, someone will arrive to show you how to make it differently - the British Army Officers Survival Manual



It may not make life's problems disappear, but it'll certainly reduce their size. - Frank Sinatra (or Dean Martin)

The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?

The elixir of quietude - E. B. White

Unlike an aperitif, which is soft and bitter and prepares your body for a meal, a Martini is a cocktail. A cocktail is a social anaesthetic. It marks the end of the work day by ensuring that you’ll be in no condition to return to work or to even discuss it coherently after drinking a few of them – it's not socially acceptable to walk out the office and shoot each other with a tranquilliser dart, so instead we have a Martini.

Who knew?







Today is National Martini Day! Once again, the world seems to have fallen in line and now celebrates our National Martini Day today as well. Well, why not celebrate now.



It's never too early for a martini, it just has to be GIN (preferably Bombay Sapphire) and bone dry (and for god sake, don't swallow the toothpick!)


June 19, 1937 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Streamlined Greta Green, directed by Friz Freleng, was released on this date.



Tex Avery would eventually rework this cartoon during his tenure at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1952 as One Cab's Family, which shares a similar plot but involving taxicabs instead of cars.


June 19, 1937 -
The Looney Tunes short, Porky's Building, directed by Frank Tashlin, and starring Porky Pig was released on this date.



The City Building Commissioner's name is Sandy C. Ment (Sandy Cement) - Sand and cement are basic materials used in commercial building construction.


June 19, 1941 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Aristo-cat, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Claude the Cat, and Hubie and Bertie, was released on this date.



The author of the first book Claude reads is F.E. Line, a play on the word feline.


June 19, 1954 -
The Tasmanian Devil, Taz, made his debut in the Looney Tunes cartoon, Devil May Hare, (also starring Bugs Bunny,) on this date.



This was the film that came up with the popular title motif "I Was a *insert noun here*." Numerous films, songs, and books have paid homage to this film through their titles alone.


June 19, 1957 -
The classic 50s teenage-horror film, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring Michael Landon, premiered on this date.



American International Pictures released this on a double bill with Invasion of the Saucer Men with the tag line "We DARE You To See The Most Amazing Pictures of Our Time!"


June 19, 1962 -
One of the great film-musicals from the 60s, The Music Man, starring Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Hermione Gingold, Ronny Howard, and Paul Ford, premiered on this date.



Meredith Willson made more income off The Beatles' version of his song Till There Was You than he did off the play and the movie combined.


June 19, 1963 -
Columbia Pictures' classic Ray Harryhausen fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts, directed by Don Chaffey and starring Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack, Gary Raymond, and Laurence Naismith, was released in the U.S. on this date.



While filming footage of the Argo off the coast of Italy, a replica of the Golden Hind sailed into view. The film Sir Francis Drake happened to be filming in the same location. Producer Charles H. Schneer shouted, "Get that ship out of here! You're in the wrong century!", dispelling any tensions that arose from both shots being lost.


June 19, 1965 -
The Four Tops' song I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) goes to #1 on the Billboard Charts, knocking off another Motown song: Back in My Arms Again by The Supremes. Both songs were written and produced by the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland.



The song was written by the wildly successful Motown team of Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Holland, who wrote most of The Supremes hits. The melody of this song is very similar to Where Did Our Love Go, which Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote for The Supremes. According to Lamont Dozier, the title came about because he couldn't help himself from working with the same tune.


June 19, 1976 –
The original emo boy, Eric Carmen's single Never Gonna’ Fall in Love Again went to the top of The Billboard Charts on this date.



Once again, Carmen uses (steals) a piece of classical music - this time, the melody line from Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 for this song. It comes from the Adagio movement.


June 19, 1976 -
HBO launched the series, Standing Room Only (SRO) with a taped special by Bette Midler on this date.



The original HBO presentation was shown "complete and uncut, minus any editing or interruption" (per the June 1976 HBO On Air guide), lasting nearly two-and-a-half hours. When it was shown on broadcast television later that year, it was shorn to 87 minutes. That truncated version was released on videocassette by Embassy Home Video in 1984. The special - a rare opportunity to see Midler in her first phase of stardom - has yet to be released in digital format.


June 19, 1978 -
It was on this day that we got the first appearance of Garfield the Cat in the comics section.

In cat years, it would make that lasagna eating fur ball - gets out calculator and do some figuring, ….. Dead.


Another unimportant moment in history


Today in History:
June 19, 1312 -
Piers Gaveston, close personal friend of King Edward II of England, was beheaded after he attempted to return to Edward's side, having been banished for being too close a personal friend, on this date.

After succession to king, Edward appointed Gaveston as Earl of Cornwall for no other reason than being his close personal friend.

And for his troubles, Edward II ended his days developing rectalgia - a serious pain in his ass.


June 19, 1623 —
Blaise Pascal was born in France on this date (which worked out extremely well for him, as he wanted to grow up to be French).



At the age of 17, he wrote a paper entitled Essay on Conic Sections, which quickly became the best-selling paper on conic sections in European history and eventually inspired the classic French noir film Death by Conic Section.

By the age of 18, Mr. Pascal had invented a calculator. Unfortunately, he could not invent the battery, so he turned to religion.



And he meant to get around to it right away, but in 1647 he ended up proving the existence of a vacuum. The famous French philosopher René Descartes visited Pascal, inspected his vacuum, and bemoaned its lack of attachable hoses. This caused an epistemological split that has endured to the present day.

("The more I see of men," Pascal observed at about this time, "the better I like my dog." This was a famous quotation and can be found on many greeting cards.)

In 1653, he discovered Pascal's Law of Pressure. A year later, he was involved in a carriage accident that reminded him he had turned to religion. He turned back to it.

He began work on his famous Pensées ("Blather") in 1656 and worked on it for three years. In the book, Pascal proved that if God didn't exist, then believing in Him wouldn't hurt, whereas if He did exist, not believing would hurt like Hell.

It has been observed that if Pascal was wrong, not reading his book wouldn't hurt, and if he was right, it wouldn't hurt either.



When he was 39, a malignant growth in his stomach spread to his brain, and he died horribly, proving that unbearable pain is unbearable pain, whatever you think of God or philosophy.


June 19, 1867 -
Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (Brian Aherne), unwitting stooge for Napoleon III (Claude Rains), was executed by firing squad on this date Although he bribed the seven riflemen to not shoot him in the head, one did anyway.



Bette Davis somehow figures into this as the Mad Empress Charlotta who just snapped when she returned to France to get help for her beleaguered husband. She lived in her private mad world for over 60 years, dying in the mid twenties of the next century.



So much for the privileges afforded royalty.


June 19, 1934 -
The Federal Communications Commission, perhaps the most wicked body of do-gooders ever to exist in the United States, was created.



These are the clowns that perfected the fine art of capricious and arbitrary.


June 19, 1945 –
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician and fallen from grace Nobel laureate was born on this date.


June 19, 1953 -
The day after the couple's 14th wedding anniversary, atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted at Sing-Sing Prison on this date, becoming the first civilians ever executed for espionage in American history. Five jolts of electricity were required to kill Ethel on this date. Ethel did not succumb immediately and was subjected to two more electrical charges before being pronounced dead. The chair was designed for a man of average size; and Ethel Rosenberg was a petite woman: this discrepancy resulted, it is claimed, in the electrodes fitting poorly and making poor electrical contact. Eyewitness testimony (as given by a newsreel report featured in The Atomic Cafe) describes smoke rising from her head.

That must have been a pretty sight.



While her husband Julius was on the Soviet payroll, according to recently released archives, is now clear that Ethel had no involvement in the espionage ring. For that matter, it is unclear how much Julius actually assisted the Soviet atomic bomb effort.



So much for American Justice.


June 19, 1982 -
Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriar's Bridge in London on this date. His death was initially ruled a suicide, though it was quite obviously murder; that assessment was later overturned. Calvi may have been killed because of his involvement in the laundering of drug money through the Vatican Bank.

This is part of the back story of Godfather III.



Roberto Calvi's life was insured for $10 million with Unione Italiana, and attempts by his family to obtain a payout resulted in litigation. Following the forensic report of 2002 which established that Calvi was murdered, the policy was finally paid out, although around half of the sum was paid to creditors of the Calvi family who had incurred considerable costs during their attempts to establish that Calvi had been murdered.

So much for Italian justice.



And so it goes.

Vinyl is the real deal

June 18, 1948 -
Goodbye to our old 78's



A CBS employee named Edward Wallerstein walked into a room at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York with Goddard Lieberson, the president of Columbia Records and publicly unveiled its new long-playing phonograph record, the 33 1/3, on this date.



Unlike the standard 10-inch 78 rpm record, which could play about 3 1/2 minutes on one side, the new “LP” could hold 15-plus minutes on one side of a 10-inch record and up to 25 minutes on one side of a 12-inch disc. Also, these new records were made of a vinyl compound rather than the easily breakable shellac of 78s. The larger discs were originally meant for classical music and the smaller for non-classical, but by 1955, the 10-inch LP had been superseded by the 12-inch version.

Once again,I ask you to ponder, but not too deeply, all the pleasure brought to you by that big 12".


June 18, 1956 -
The pilot episode for the quiz show To Tell the Truth premiered on CBS on this date. The series debuted on CBS on December 18, 1956.



The series outlasted most of the others of the period, especially after the 1958 quiz-show scandal, partly because every contestant was supposed to be untrustworthy.


June 18, 1959 -
Fred Zinnemann's quiet religious drama The Nun's Story, starring Audrey Hepburn, Colleen Dewhurst, Dean Jagger, Peggy Ashcroft, Peter Finch, and Edith Evans, premiered in NYC on this date.



The role of Sister Luke was suggested for Ingrid Bergman but Bergman herself said she was too old for the role and instead proposed Audrey Hepburn. This was one of Audrey Hepburn's favorite of her films. It was also one of her most financially successful.


June 07, 1941 -
The Looney Tunes short, Suppressed Duck, directed by Bob McKimson and starring Daffy Duck, was released on this date.



The short is notable as the final Looney Tunes cartoon where Daffy Duck has a completely solo role..


June 18, 1947 -
The romantic supernatural story, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and starring, Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, and George Saunders, was released on this date.



Gene Tierney's first approach to the character of Lucy Muir was playful, almost screwball. After a conference between Twentieth Century Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the first two days of shooting were re-done so that Tierney could give the character more depth. The change resulted in huge critical acclaim for the actress.


June 18, 1966 -
The Beach Boys release the single Wouldn't It Be Nice (with God Only Knows on the flip side of the 45), on this date. Brian Wilson wrote the song with contributions from vocalist Mike Love and lyricist Tony Asher. Asher wrote all of the lyrics except for the "Good night, my baby, sleep tight, my baby" lines at the end of the song, which were Love's contribution.



Mike Love sang the bridge; Brian Wilson did the verses. Love explained in the liner notes for the Pet Sounds boxed set that Brian Wilson made him do over 30 takes singing one background section of this song. Around the 20th take, Love started affectionately calling him "dog ears," as he could hear things other humans couldn't. "Brian must have been part canine because he was reaching for something intangible, imperceptible to most, and all but impossible to execute," wrote Love.


June 18, 1969 -
Sam Peckinpah's violent western elegy, The Wild Bunch, premiered on this date.



During a screening in New York, Sam Peckinpah invited Jay Cocks, of Time magazine, who brought his friend Martin Scorsese. They sat in an empty Warner Bros. screening room with only two other critics, Judith Crist and Rex Reed. That final scene knocked them out of their seats. Recalled Scorsese, "We were mesmerized by it; it was obviously a masterpiece. It was real filmmaking, using film in such a way that no other form could do it; it couldn't be done any other way. To see that in an American filmmaker was so exciting." Cocks remembered that he and Scorsese "literally turned to each other at the end and were stunned. We were looking at each other, shaking our heads, like we had just come out of a shared fever dream."


June 18, 1977 -
Fleetwood Mac's third single from their album Rumours, Dreams, hit the no. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Dreams sold more than one million copies and was the band's only No. 1 hit.



During the sessions for Rumours, everyone in the band was going through a breakup (Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham with each other, John and Christine McVie with each other, Mick Fleetwood with his wife Jenny Boyd) and doing a lot of drugs. They were able to work together, but most of the songwriting was on an individual basis. Stevie Nicks wrote this one in the studio next door where Sly Stone was recording. He had a big, semicircular bed and red velvet all over the walls - a great vibe for a song about romantic entanglements.


June 18, 1980 -
... Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers HAS been approved.

The Blues Brothers Movie, starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi premiered on this date. Ounce for ounce (other than Walt Disney's animated classic The Jungle Book,) the most amount of dope was smoked in film history during the production of a major Hollywood film.



During filming, Stephen Brown got separated from the vehicle caravan and drove the Bluesmobile 100 miles west on Interstate 80, to Spring Valley, Illinois. When he stopped at a gas station for directions, he was arrested by local police for no registration (the plate was a prop), and no valid driver's license. A telephone call was made to the production. The set director was more concerned with the return of the vehicle than with the return of his actor.


June 18, 2001 -
The first in seemingly hundreds of installations of The Fast and the Furious franchise, starring Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and Michelle Rodriguez premiered in the US, on this date.



Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and Eminem were all considered for the part of Brian O'Connor before Paul Walker was cast.


June 18, 2010 -
Pixar's very successful second sequel (and surprisingly, a deeply moving children's film,) Toy Story 3 premiered on this date.



Tom Hanks and Tim Allen insisted that they record their lines together, which they had previously done for one day during the making of the original Toy Story, but which is rarely done with animated films. They loved the chemistry their characters shared on-screen.


Another little known Monopoly Card


Today in History:
June 18, 1155 -
Pope Adrian IV crowned Frederick I (AKA Fred Barbarossa) Holy Roman Emperor at St Peter's Basilica in Rome on this date, to the acclamation of his German army.

The Romans populace not so much; finding Frederick neither Holy nor Roman (he was German after all) began to riot, resulting in the deaths of over 1,000 Romans and many more thousands injured. Years later, Adrian IV unfortunately died, choking on a fly in his wine. Frederick has a heart attack and died after falling into only hip deep water of a very cold lake. But what the hell do you care.


European history would have been dramatically different - if only for a higher-fiber diet.

One of the most decisive battles in European history was fought in Belgium on June 18, 1815, as a resurgent Napoleon Bonaparte launched his final military offensive against the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Marshal Blücher. Nearly 50,000 men were killed in the battle. Napoleon lost, in part, due to a case of inflamed hemorrhoids.



The battle was later commemorated by Swedish sensation ABBA in their 1970s hit Waterloo.



ABBA's interpretation of Waterloo’s significance has been controversial from the start, as it focuses less on the military and political implications of the battle than on the feelings of euphoria typically incited by hormonal rushes of erotic excitement.



On June 18, 1817, Waterloo Bridge was opened over the River Thames in London.

And if that weren’t enough, to commemorate the high-fiber diet of the Duke of Wellington, on June 18, 1822, the British government erected the first nude public statue since antiquity—an 18-foot bronze Achilles - in London’s Hyde Park, in his honor.

It caused such offense that women and small children were forbidden to amble through the park, and a fig leaf was eventually added.



All of this leads inexorably to the fact that ABBA performed Dancing Queen at a televised all-star gala on this date in 1976, held at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm on the eve of the wedding between Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Silvia Sommerlath. One imagines the Swedish King consumes plenty of muesli and yogurt, keeping him quite regular—and on the throne—for the past 52 years.

(This will all be on the test.)


June 18, 1900 -
The Empress Douairiere, Dowager of China orders all foreigners killed on this date. Among those meeting this fate are the foreign diplomats, their families, as well as hundreds of Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts.

She was apparently having a very bad day (perhaps she needed a higher fiber diet as well.)


June 18, 1913 -
Do you think I'm wandering around all day thinking, 'I must write a song called 'Three Coins In The Fountain'?' Only an idiot would do that.









Samuel Cohen (Sammy Cahn), one of American's foremost tunesmiths was born on this date. Over the course of his career, Cahn was nominated for 23 Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, an Emmy and a Grammy.


June 18, 1940 -
The "This was their finest hour" speech was delivered by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on this date.



It was given shortly after he took over as Prime Minister of Britain on May 10th, in the first year of World War II.


June 18, 1940 -
Across town, on the same day, Charles de Gaulle galvanized the Free French Forces in one of the most important speeches of the 20th century, on this date. Known as L’Appel du 18 Juin (The Appeal of 18 June), it is often considered to be the origin of the French Resistance movement during the German occupation in World War II.



De Gaulle spoke to the French people from a BBC studio in London one day after the fall of France. He fled to England as his shattered government brokered an armistice deal with the advancing Nazis. He obtained special permission from Winston Churchill to broadcast a message to his countrymen—and in his speech, de Gaulle declared that the war for France was not over yet. He reminded the French people that the British Empire and the U.S. would support them militarily and economically, and it rallied the country in support of the Resistance.


June 18, 1942 -
Sir James Paul McCartney, CH, MBE, singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, entrepreneur, record and film producer, poet, painter, and animal rights activist, was born on this date.



McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history." And now it appears that he has been reduced to playing nostalgia tours around the world.


June 18, 1952 -
I live my everyday life as a person, and I react to my photos from a certain distance. When I look at a photo, I detach myself and look at it as a product - not as me, Isabella.



Isabella Rossellini, one of Hollywood's' most intelligent and beautiful actresses was born on this date.


June 18, 1959 -
Based on his erratic behavior, the Governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, was committed to a state mental hospital.



Long responds by arranging for the hospital's director to be fired, and the new director proclaims him perfectly sane. (It is no secret that the man was completely nuts.)


June 18, 1967 -
Famed guitarist Jimi Hendrix burnt his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival on this date.



There had to be a better way to toast marshmallows.


June 18, 1971 -
The Nike "swoosh" logo was created in 1971 by a graphic design student Carolyn Davidson and was purchased by Blue Ribbon for $35.



The intention was to convey motion in its design. it was first used by Nike on this date. (She was later given around 500 shares in the company which are now estimated to be worth over a cool $1M.)


June 18, 1983 -
Almost 20 years to the day after the USSR sent Valentina Tereshkova into orbit, the United States sent its first woman astronaut into space. Sally Ride, an astrophysicist from Stanford University, and four other colleagues lifted off aboard the space shuttle Challenger.



During the six-day mission, Ride operated the robot's arm, which she had helped design. Ms. Ride dedicated her life to be an inspiration for young women wanting to enter the field of science


And on a personal note:

Happy Birthday John!



And so it goes.