Info to start your week off with

Wombats are the only known animals in the world that produce distinctly cube-shaped poop.



Wombats pass cubes so the droppings don't roll away from the rock ledges and logs they use to mark their territory.

So now you know


September 14, 1940 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Malibu Beach Party, directed by Friz Freleng, was released on this date.



This cartoon seldom airs on American television due to the Rochester caricature being featured prominently.


September 14, 1946 -
The Looney Tunes short, Racketeer Rabbit, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny, was released on this date.



Although this cartoon features caricatures of Edward G. Robinson (Rocky) and Peter Lorre (Hugo) as a gangster pair, the real actors never appeared together on screen.


September 14, 1957 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Zoom and Bored, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, was released on this date.



At the end of the film, Wile E. Coyote is exhausted and the Road Runner gets an opportunity to finish him off. The bird instead shows him mercy, and explains in writing "I just don't have the heart". This is a rare occasion where the focus is on the Road Runner's characterization, instead of Wile's.


September 14, 1958 -
H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man starring Tim Turner, Lisa Daniely, Deborah Watling, Ernest Clark, Bruce Seton, Honor Blackman, Joan Hickson, Leslie Phillips, and Oliver Reed premiered on this date.



As a publicity gimmick, the actor playing the Invisible Man himself was never credited, either on-screen or in TVTimes, but Johnny Scripps played Brady without the bandages, i.e. apparently headless but otherwise dressed. Being a little person, he was able to see through the buttonholes in Brady's coat. Tim Turner provided Brady's voice, also without on-screen credit, using a transatlantic accent in order to help ITC sell the series to the United States.


September 14, 1964 -
The Irwin Allen sci-fi series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, starring Gypsy (from MST3K's) love god, Richard Basehart, premiered on the ABC-TV on this date.



The props used in this show, (such as the computers and guns) also were used in Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel , Land of the Giants, and Batman.


September 14, 1965 -
The end of the Civil War was near ...

F-Troop premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



Many viewers thought that because "Old Charlie" the town drunk would usually be thrown through the saloon doors (or window), bounce off a support post, fall face forward over the hitching rail, spin around and land on his face or back that he was actually a young stuntman in "old man" make-up. In reality, "Charlie" was ace stuntman Harvey Parry, who at that time was 65 years old and had been a stuntman for almost 45 years.


September 14, 1965 -
One of the more bizarre sitcoms, My Mother the Car starring Jerry Van Dyke and Ann Sothern (as the car), premiered on this date.



Jerry Van Dyke agreed to star on the series after turning down the lead role on Gilligan's Island and an offer to join the cast of The Andy Griffith Show.


September 14, 1967 -
Raymond Burr cruised the San Francisco streets with his muscular bodyguard when Ironside premiered on this date (there is no word on whether or not he or any of the cast members were wearing his eponymously named nipple rouge during the shoot.)



Steven Bochco, who would later became one of the most successful television producers of the 1980s and 1990s, worked on the series very early in his career. He had been hired by executive producer Frank Price at the start of the first season to write a few extra minutes worth of scenes in the first six episodes, which were too short. After looking at these episodes, Bochco asked Price if it was really necessary for him to do this for all six because he didn't think the show would last that long. According to Bochco, Price was not happy with the remark, and this was the start of a strained relationship between the two of them that continued when Price was in charge of Universal Television and Bochco was a writer there.


September 14, 1968 -
Yes kids, years before Riverdale, there was The Archies - The Archie Show, based on the comic book series, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



The success of this animated series with its musical numbers drew the attention of Hanna-Barbera Productions. Through the early 1970s, many of their series would have young characters with a rock band. As in this series, the musical sequences gave them the opportunity to use cycle animation. The cycle animation could be varied by simply re-shooting the cels over different backgrounds.


September 14, 1972 -
America went up Walton's Mountain to visit with The Waltons on CBS-TV for the first time on this date.



The "goodnight" routine at the end of each show was an actual activity in creator Earl Hamner, Jr.s home when he was a child. He said the activity would go on until his father finally told them to be quiet.


September 14, 1973 -
The short lived comedy series based of the classic Tracy/ Hepburn movie of the same name, Adam's Rib, starring Ken Howard and Blythe Danner aired on ABC TV on this date.



Ken Howard and Blythe Danner had previously played a husband and wife, Thomas and Martha Jefferson, in the movie 1776.


September 14, 1974 -
Eric Clapton's cover of the Bob Marley song, I Shot The Sheriff, went to the top of the Billboard Charts on this date.



It is Clapton's only top #1 hit, either as a solo artist or with one of his bands (Cream, The Yardbirds, Derek & the Dominos...)


September 14, 1978 -
The TV show that helped launch Robin Williams career, Mork & Mindy, premiered on this date.



Many of the gags seen on the show were on-the-spot improvisations by Robin Williams, and later by Williams and Jonathan Winters. The improvisations proved to be so effective and popular that the series' writers soon included specific sections in the scripts where Williams was allowed to perform freely, marked as "Robin goes off here." If you pay attention to Pam Dawber, you can often see her having difficulty not laughing at the ad-libs.


September 14, 1984 –
Bette Midler & Dan Aykroyd hosted the first VMAs (Video Music Awards) on MTV, on this date.



You may not know that at one time, MTV was a 24-hour music video channel.



Madonna had her career-defining performance at the first VMAs when she sang Like A Virgin.


September 14, 1985 -
Everybody started hanging out on the lanai when NBC premiered The Golden Girls on this date.



The actresses consumed over 100 cheesecakes during the show's seven-year run. Bakeries from around the USA would send in cheesecakes for them. Bea Arthur hated cheesecake in real life.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
September 14, 1752 –
The British Empire finally adopted the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2), on this date.

The changes affected festivals, saint’s days and birthdays, including that of Samuel Johnson, as well as the dates of payments of wages, rents and interest, contracts for delivery of goods, military discharges and prison releases.

So now you know.


September 14, 1814 -
Francis Scott Key had composed the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner after witnessing the massive British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812, on this date. Key, an American lawyer and social worker, watches the siege while under detainment on a British ship, and pens the famous words after observing that the US flag over Fort McHenry had survived the 1,800-bomb assault.



The lyrics were alter adopted to the British tune To Anacreon in Heaven, which had also served as Irish drinking song and a number of other songs. The Star-Spangled Banner was officially recognized as the national anthem in 1931.



The 40 feet long flag had been made by Baltimore widow Mary Young Pickersgill and her 13-year-old daughter just a month before the attack. In 1907 the flag was donated to the Smithsonian.


September 14 1849 -
Ivan Pavlov was born on this date.



Pavlov was a Russian scientist who discovered that dogs drooled whenever bells were rung. Only after his death were his ideas discredited by a group of Swedish scientists who determined that dogs also drooled when a nice juicy steak was dangled in front of them.



In the decades since, science has repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that dogs will sometimes drool and sometimes not drool and a cat may or not be dead in a box, but who knows.


September 14, 1812 -
Napoleon's army invaded the city of Moscow, on this date. He began the invasion of Russia in June of that year, hoping to continue his "One Europe, One Cuisine" Tour. The Russian forces kept retreating, burning the farmland as they went so the French wouldn't be able to draw provisions from the land.



The troops were exhausted and hungry by the time they reached Moscow on this day, in 1812. The gates of the city were left wide open. And as the French came through, they noticed that all over the city small fires had begun. The Russians had set fire to their own city. By that night, the fires were out of control.



Napoleon watched the burning of the city from inside the Kremlin, and barely escaped the city alive. The retreat began across the snow - covered plains, one of the great disasters of military history. Thousands of troops died from starvation and hypothermia. Of the nearly half million French soldiers who had set out in June on the invasion, fewer than 20,000 staggered back across the border in December.


September 14, 1901 -
President William McKinley succumbs to his gunshot wound, on this date - the third American president to be assassinated. He had won a landslide victory in the election of 1900. He had gone on a tour of the country, a victory tour, which he ended in Buffalo, New York, where the Pan-American Exposition was being held near Niagara Falls.



McKinley was shaking hands with a long line of people on September 6, when a 28-year-old anarchist from Cleveland named Leon Czolgosz came up to shake his hand. Czolgosz's right hand was wrapped in a handkerchief which concealed a gun. He shot the president twice, hitting him in the abdomen. At first it seemed as though the wound was minor and that McKinley would recover, but he died on this day in 1901. He died, historians believe, because he needed an infusion of fluids and nutrients, and the IV had not been invented yet.



It didn't help matters that Teddy Roosevelt kept peeking into his hospital room, shouting, "Is he dead yet? Am I president yet? Bully, bully!!!"


September 14, 1927 -
Kids, remember what Gertrude Stein said, "affectations can be dangerous and Alice, where the hell is my hash pipe?"



Legendary dancer Isadora Duncan was killed in Nice, France when her long silk scarf got tangled in the rear wheel of the convertible she's riding in on this date. Her neck was broken and an artery severed. Some accounts have her thrown against the pavement and dragged for 100 feet. The freak accident occurred in full view of a number of friends.



Strange but true fact - the mother of famed 40s comedy director Preston Sturges, who was known for her friendship with Isadora Duncan, gave her the very scarf that led to Duncan's freakish death.


September 14, 1936 -
Surgeons Walter Freeman and James W. Watts performed America's first prefrontal lobotomy on a depressed, 63-year-old Kansas woman in Washington, D.C. They successfully create a lethargic dullard, and the duo hails the result for years to come as a medical triumph, despite the fact that two of their next twenty lobotomy subjects end as fatalities.



Here's a easy way you can remember this, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."


September 14, 1938 -
Graf Zeppelin II, world's largest airship, (LZ 130) was the sister ship of the Hindenburg (LZ 129). Her design and construction were nearly identical to her predecessor: at 804 feet in length, these two ships remain the largest flying craft in history. By the time the Graf Zeppelin was completed, it was one of the largest flying craft in history. The ship was christened and made her first flight on this date.



The Graf Zeppelin ultimately flew a total of thirty missions, many for the Luftwaffe. She touched down on her last flight at 9:38 p.m. on August 20, 1939, ending the age of rigid airships.


September 14, 1952 -
As time goes by and you're getting older and stuff like that - getting older sucks. You know, I hear all this crap about, 'Oh, you can age with dignity.' Really?.



Philip Andre Mickey Rourke, actor, boxer, and small dog fancier, was born on this date.


September 14, 1954 -
The Totskoye nuclear exercise was a military exercise, involving an aerial detonation of a 40 kt RDS-4 nuclear bomb, undertaken by the Soviet Army to explore defensive and offensive warfare during nuclear war. The stated goal of the operation was military training for breaking through heavily fortified defensive lines of a military opponent using nuclear weapons.



An army of 45,000 soldiers, under the command of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, marched through the area around the hypocenter soon after the nuclear blast. Thousands who are believed to have sought help in local hospitals would later be surprised to find that their medical cards, containing their histories of sickness, had disappeared from the regional hospital. The epicenter of the detonation is marked with a memorial.


September 14th, 1959 -
The satellite Luna II, thirty-six hours after its launch, crash landed on the Moon, east of the Sea of Serenity, on this date.



Luna II became the first man made object to reach the Moon, ratcheding the space race between the worlds two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union.


September 14, 1982 -
Grace Kelly, American-born princess of Monaco, died after a high speed car crash the previous day. She and daughter Princess Stephanie were badly injured when their British Rover 3500 plunged into a ravine, tumbling 45 feet.



In the official version of events, Grace suffered a mild stroke while driving; however, although rumors persist that 17-year-old Princess Stephanie was actually behind the wheel. There is no truth to the rumor that she was engaging in an unnatural act with club-footed Portuguese ballroom dancer with a speech impediment, a three legged farm animal and a water-based lubricant.

So dammit, please stop printing these lies.


Before you go - This may or may not be meaningful to you, but -

There are 102 days until Christmas.

The midterm elections are in 50 days



And so it goes

Here comes the freedom man

On this date in 1989, this day officially became knowm as Uncle Sam Day.



The day commemorates Sam Wilson, born on September 13, 1766, (a meatpacker from New York,) the man behind the iconic image and fascinating nickname for the United States government.


September 13, 1941 -
The Merrie Melodies short, All This and Rabbit Stew, directed by Tex Avery Davis, and starring Bugs Bunny, was released on this date.



The cartoon is one of the infamous "Censored 11" by United Artists (and currently Warner Bros.) since 1968, due to its caricature of a blackface African-American hunter. This is the only Bugs Bunny cartoon to be in the "Censored 11".


September 13, 1965 -
The Beatles released the single Yesterday in the US on this date (Act Naturally was on the B side.)



This was the first Beatles song to capture a mass adult market. Most of their fans were young people to this point, but this song gave the band a great deal of credibility among the older crowd. It also became one of their "Muzak" classics, as companies recorded instrumental versions as soothing background noise for shopping centers and elevators. Another Beatles song that lived on in this form is Here Comes The Sun.


September 13, 1965 -
Ben Gazzara's series about a wealthy, successful lawyer, Paul Bryan, who quits his practice after learning he has a terminal illness, Run for Your Life, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Some sources claim that Ben Gazzara's character suffered from leukemia. However, in a 1998 interview conducted by television book writer Ed Robinson, Executive Producer Roy Huggins indicated that the affliction from which Paul Bryan suffered was never mentioned on the program and does not exist.


September 13, 1969 -
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! made its CBS network debut on this date.



Shaggy is the only character (apart from Scooby himself) to be in every incarnation of the series.


September 13, 1972 -
The sitcom, The Paul Lynde Show, starring Paul Lynde, Elizabeth Allen, Jane Actman, and Pamelyn Ferdin, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



Elizabeth Allen visited Washington, D.C., during a tour to promote the series. When told that the local ABC affiliate, WMAL-TV Channel 7 (now WJLA-TV), aired the series on weekend afternoons rather than in its scheduled prime time slot, she exclaimed rhetorically "How do they expect us to get good ratings?!" The series only lasted one season.


September 13, 1972 -
The very dark comedy cult classic, The Ruling Class, directed by Peter Medak, and starring Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sim, William Mervyn, Coral Browne, Harry Andrews, Carolyn Seymour, James Villiers and Arthur Lowe, opened in New York City, on this date.



Alastair Sim apparently cast himself in the role as the Bishop. He called up his friend Peter O'Toole and told him, out of the blue, of course he'd help him by taking the part. No one was about to turn down the offer of such a great character actor, no matter how eccentric.


September 13, 1974 -
The science fiction/ horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



Darren McGavin is often incorrectly considered to be, and listed in many official references guides, as the show's Executive Producer. In fact, he never held the position, although he unofficially assumed many of the duties. This put him at odds with Paul Playdon and then Cy Chermak, the official producers appointed by Universal.


September 13, 1974 -
The first regularly scheduled episode of The Rockford Files, starring James Garner, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Co-writer/co-producer David Chase would go on afterwards to create another famous series, The Sopranos . As a little tribute to this series, a scene in a first season episode of The Sopranos is set in a retirement home where the residents are watching television. Though the picture can't be seen, the theme music for The Rockford Files can be heard.


September 13, 1977 -
The nighttime parody of daytime soap operas, Soap, starring Jimmy Baio, Rebecca Balding, Roscoe Lee Browne, John Byner, Diana Canova, Billy Crystal, Cathryn Damon, Nancy Dolman, Robert Guillaume, and Katherine Helmond premiered on ABC TV, on this date.



Soap was actually the working title for the show, while the producers tried to come up with a better name, and was used all through pre-production. No better name was ever decided upon, so Soap became the formal title when the show went into production.


September 13, 1979 -
A spin-off of the series Soap, Benson, starring Robert Guillaume, James Noble, Inga Swenson, and Missy Gold premiered on ABC TV, on this date.



The series was on the air seven years, longer than the show from which it was spun off, Soap, which lasted four years.


September 13, 1980 -
The musical variety show, Solid Gold, featuring Dionne Warwick and the Solid Gold dancers, premiered in syndication on this date.



Rumor has it that Wayland Flowers, whose scene-stealing puppet, Madame, was a recurring guest, was so high on cocaine that he frequently had to be carried on and off the set. Theme composer/musical director Michael K. Miller disagreed, "I was at all the tapings of Solid Gold (and a lot of the Madame's Place tapings too) and I never once witnessed him as being anything other than fully focused and healthy."


September 13, 1986 –
Wang Chung released the single Everybody Have Fun Tonight, on this date



The video was one of the many memorable Godley & Creme productions of the '80s; some of their other videos include Rockit by Herbie Hancock and Only Time Will Tell by Asia. The team was always trying new techniques in an effort to create something eye-catching and different. For Everybody Have Fun Tonight they got their hands on a Grass Valley switcher with a piece of software that could cut back and forth between sources at two-frame intervals. They shot the footage first, then ran it through the switcher to achieve the effect.


September 13, 1986 -
CBS allowed a strange, pale man, in an ill-fitting suit to come into their viewers homes (to scream really loud) when Pee-Wee's Playhouse premiered on this date.



Throughout the entire series run, the closing credits have never credited Paul Reubens as Peewee Herman, but instead would display the other cast & guest stars first and then would display "and Peewee Herman as Himself".


September 13, 1993 -
Coco, a Simpson TV writer, was snatched from obscurity to replace David Letterman on the newly rebranded Late Night with Conan O'Brien on NBC-TV on this date.



According to O'Brien, the show was cancelled during the first season, but NBC realized that they had nothing to replace it. NBC renewed the show a few weeks at a time.


September 13, 1996 -
The family comedy based on the stand-up routines of Ray Romano, Everybody Loves Raymond, starring Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton, Brad Garrett, Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



Throughout the series when Ray comes home he calls Debra a different nickname. All of these were improvised by Ray Romano. Sometimes he would have to come up with as many as fifteen names depending on how many takes were required.


September 13, 2000 -
Cameron Crowe's autobiographic film, Almost Famous, was released on this date.



Stillwater's songs were written by Peter Frampton (who also had a small part in the film), Cameron Crowe, and his ex-wife Nancy Wilson of the rock band Heart. The music acknowledgments credit Russell Hammond and Stillwater as if they were real authors and performers.


Another record from the discount bin at The ACME Record Shoppe


Today in History:
September 13, 1848 -
A 13-pound tamping iron is blown through the head of railroad construction foreman Phineas P. Gage, entering beneath the left cheekbone and exiting the top of his head. The metal bar landed 30 yards away, taking with it much of his left frontal lobe.



Gage never loses consciousness, even while the doctors examine his wound. Two months later, he was well enough to return home and resume an active life of work and travel.



The steel rod, along with a cast of Gage's head, and his skull, are now on display at Harvard Medical School's Warren Anatomical Museum.


September 13, 1899 -
Henry M. Bliss was coming home from work today and never came back. Mr. Bliss was enjoying his ride home near Central Park and 74th Street, when he stepped out of a streetcar and into the street and was struck by a taxicab. Bliss was rushed to a hospital but died from his injuries the next morning.

The cab driver Arthur Smith was arrested and charged with manslaughter. The charges were dropped after it was determined that Bliss’ death was unintentional. Bliss became the first pedestrian to be killed by an automobile in the United States.

On September 13, 1999, a hundred years to the day, Citystreets unveiled a historical marker at the site of the first "American Pedestrian Fatality".


September 13, 1916 -
Give the people what they want ....

Mary the circus elephant was publicly executed in the Erwin, Tennessee rail-yard, after killing a drifter named Walter "Red" Eldridge the previous day.



The five-ton animal was hanged from a derrick car in front of 3,000 onlookers, and left hanging for half an hour.

(Please bunkies, I am not encouraging the execution of any animal, especially mammals weighing over five tons.)


September 13, 1916 -
Roald Dahl was born on this date in Llandaff, South Wales.



He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing. Every so often, a plain gray cardboard box was issued to each child, filled with eleven chocolate bars. It was the children's task to rate the candy, and Dahl took his job very seriously. About one of the sample candy bars, he wrote, "Too subtle for the common palate." He later said that the experience got him thinking about candy as something manufactured in a factory, and he spent a lot of time imagining what a candy factory might be like.



Today, he's best known for his children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and for the fact he ran off with his children's nanny after his wife, the actress Patricia Neal, recovered from a stroke. But even more interesting, a recently published biography of Dahl, purports that he was a spy for the British government during World War II, paid to sleep with wealthy U. S. women to gain information for the British government.

And you thought only 007 had a way with women.


September 13, 1940 -
The German Luftwaffe directly targeted Buckingham Palace during 'the Blitz' and dropped a bomb into the palace courtyard and detonated on impact on this date. The force of the explosion blew out all the inside windows of the palace.



No one was seriously hurt and had the unintended effect of bonding the Royal Family with the people of England, as the Windsors did not evacuate London.



Queen Elizabeth (the queen's mother) narrowly averted serious injury.



When asked about the incident said, "I am glad we have been bombed….it makes me feel like I can look the [heavily bombed] East End in the face."


September 13, 1948 -
Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was elected to the U.S. Senate, on this date, becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.



A moderate Republican, she was among the first to criticize the tactics of Joseph McCarthy in her 1950 speech, "Declaration of Conscience". Smith was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1964 election; she was the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party's convention.


September 13, 1956 -
IBM introduced the worlds first production hard disk the "IBM 305", on this date, which stored five megabytes of data.



To put this in perspective a modern USB drive stores 2 gig or more (400 times more than the first hard drive just 50 years ago) and fits on a keychain , the first IBM weighed over a ton and needed a fork lift to move it.


September 13, 2001 -
While the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were still smoldering, President Bush asked Congress for powers to wage war, following the 9/11 attack, against an unidentified enemy.

Bush called the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington "the first war of the 21st century" as his administration labeled fugitive Osama bin Laden a prime suspect.



And so it goes

Lassie would stare at a hole in the ground and make you feel guilty for not owning a rope.

September 12, 1954 -
What girl - Jeff's trapped in a mine; fell into a well; considering early withdrawal of his principle from an IRA; worried about the outcome of the 2024 presidential election ...

Lassie (or Jeff's Collie - how many of you remember Jeff's Collie) premiered on on CBS-TV on this date.



Although it has been the subject of many spoofs and misquotes, the one situation that Timmy never needed saving from in the entire history of the show was falling down a well.


September 12, 1955 -
Another of Orson Welles' great Shakespearean films, Othello, finally opened in New York City on this date.



The movie was shot over three years and production was stopped twice, mainly because Welles ran out of money. He then starred in the films The Third Man and Prince of Foxes. When he made The Black Rose, Orson Welles insisted that the coat his character wore be lined with mink, even though the lining would never be visible in the finished film. The producers acquiesced to this demand. When the shoot was over, the coat disappeared. In Othello, Orson Welles can be seen wearing the same coat, complete with mink lining.


September 12, 1958 -
The ultimate drive-in movie, The Blob, premiered on this date. (Great bar bet - the movie's theme song was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David (Hal David's brother))



The actual Blob, a mixture of red dye and silicone, has never dried out and is still kept in the original five-gallon pail in which it was shipped to the production company in 1958 from Union Carbide. It was put on display over the years as a part of the annual Blobfest, held over a three-day period each summer in Phoenixville, PA, which provided a number of the shooting locales for the film. In addition to displaying the Blob and miniatures used in the shooting, the event features a reenactment of the famous scene in which panicked theatergoers rush to exit the town's still-functioning Colonial Theater, as well as several showings of the film.


September 12, 1959 -
That's why we call it Bonanza...Bonanza...Bonanza...

Bonanza, the first US television series to be broadcast in color, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Most viewers have only heard the famous theme song by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans played as an instrumental. The theme song actually had lyrics and there is footage of the lead actors singing those lyrics. Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon sang a lyric version of this famous instrumental theme for the pilot, but it never aired.



Johnny Cash recorded his own version of the theme song.


September 12, 1961 -
The Looney Tunes short, Prince Violent, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, was released on this date.



Sam, ostensibly a Viking, has an elephant aide for some inexplicable reason.


September 12, 1966 -
CBS-TV premiered Family Affair on this date.



The show almost moved to ABC following its cancellation, but the idea was nixed because that network already had a show with a similar theme, The Brady Bunch.



(come on you want to sing it: Buffy, Buffy come back to me ...)


September 12, 1966 -
NBC television premiered The Monkees, a sitcom about four guys in a rock band on this date.



When the TV series was about to be renewed for a third season, The Monkees wanted to change it from a half-hour sitcom to an hour-long variety show where they would introduce new artists. However, NBC gave the group an ultimatum: stick with the format as it was or be cancelled. They stuck to their guns and, as a result, the series was cancelled after two seasons on the air.


September 12, 1970 -
Long tails and and ears for hats...

Josie and the Pussycats premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



Hanna-Barbera wanted to change Valerie to a Caucasian even though she was already established as African-American in the Archie comics, so they wanted to fire Patrice Holloway who had been cast as Valerie's singing voice. But Danny Janssen, who was producing the real-life group's Capitol album, refused to fire Holloway and Hanna-Barbera relented.


September 12, 1972 -
Another spin-off from the All In The Family Series, Maude premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



Maude was Norman Lear's favorite show from his own production company.


September 12, 1972 -
The animated series Wait Till Your Father Gets Home (a spin-off from a segment on Love American Style,) voiced by Tom Bosley, Joan Gerber, Jack Burns, David Hayward, Kristina Holland, and Jackie Haley premiered ABC-TV on this date



There was a live action version of the pilot filmed prior to the animated version for CBS. The live action version would have starred Van Johnson as a version of the "Harry Boyle" character.


September 12, 1972 -
The comedy series, Temperature Rising, starring James Whitmore, Cleavon Little, David Baily, Joan Van Ark, Reva Rose, and Nancy Fox, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



Produced by William Asher, of The Patty Duke Show and Betwitched fame, this series is unique in that it was aired in three different formats and cast line-ups during it's network run.


September 12, 1978 -
The show James L. Brooks and friends created after the Mary Tylet Moore series ended, Taxi, starring Judd Hirsch, Jeff Conaway, Marilu Henner, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, and Andy Kaufman premiered on this date.



Andy Kaufman had invented the persona for his character in his comedy act prior to working on the show, including the famous line "tank-you-veddy-much". It was the show's writers that came up with the name of Latka Gravas. Kaufman created Latka's language, which he taught to Carol Kane for her role as Simka, by inviting her to dinner, and refusing to let her speak English.


September 12, 1986 -
Captain EO, starring Michael Jackson and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, made its gala premiere at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA and at Disney's Epcot Center in Orlando, FL on this date.



At a cost of about one million dollars per minute of film, this was, minute for minute, the most expensive motion picture of all time.

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


Today in History -
September 12, 490 B.C. –
It looked like it was going to be a pretty bleak day for Western Civilization. The Greeks, who were not yet Ancient or Classical, were facing a massive invasion by the Persians. Persia was not yet part of the Axis of Evil, but was pretty nasty just the same. They had more soldiers than the Greeks, better cavalry, and better weapons. (They did not have ouzo, moussaka, or the mastery of sodomy, however; it may have been envy of those quintessentially Greek achievements that drove them to invade.)

The general in charge of the Greeks was the Athenian Miltiades, also known as Uncle Milti.

In addition to his own Athenians, he had been given Plataean soldiers and the promised support of the Spartans. It was the first time the various city-states had prepared to fight together against a common enemy.

Despite his strong defensive position, entrenched in the hilly terrain around Marathon, Uncle Milti was afraid that the superior numbers of the Persians would allow them to fight through the Greek defenses and destroy Western Civilization. In order to prevent this, he launched an offensive.

It caught the Persians off guard, driving them off the land, into their ships, and back toward Persia.



This was the Battle of Marathon, at which Western Civilization was saved for the first time – ensuring a future for diet cola, fat-free potato chips, and pay-per-view sports. (The Battle of Marathon is not related to the Marathon Bar or Marathon Man, but neither of them could have come about without it.)

Here is a special note to the strange people who run marathons. After winning the battle, a runner named Pheidippides was supposedly sent back to Athens to announce the victory.

Racing about 25 miles to get back to Athens, Pheidippides delivered the momentous message Niki! (Victory!), then promptly collapsed and died, thereby setting a precedent for dramatic conclusions to the marathon – and the first sports-product endorsement.

The modern Olympic Games introduced a marathon race of 40,000 meters, or 24.85 miles. The winner was Spiridon Louis, a Greek postal worker from the village of Marousi and a veteran of several long military marches. His time was 2 hours, 58 minutes, 50 seconds for the 40-kilometer distance – an average pace of 7:11 minutes per mile.



At the 1908 Olympic Games in London, the marathon distance was changed to 26 miles to cover the ground from Windsor Castle to White City Stadium, with 385 yards added so the race could finish in front of King Edward VII's royal box. After 16 years of extremely heated discussion, this 26.2-mile distance was established at the 1924 Olympics in Paris as the official marathon distance.



Remember all this the next time you run a race.


September 12, 1609 -
The explorer Henry Hudson sailed up the river which eventually came to be called the Hudson River, on this date. He was on an expedition for the Dutch East India Company, trying to find a passage to Asia - the Northwest Passage. This was back when Europeans believed that North America was a rather small land mass, and if they could just find a way through it, they could get to the Asian markets. The Dutch were not great masterminds it appears.



Henry Hudson sailed up the river, anchoring his ship at what is now West 42nd Street and the Hudson River (which was curiously named after him.) He was hoping to get tickets to see Six or at least Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes before it closed. When he discovered that he was at least 350 years too earlier and that the only tickets available were the all - Native American version of Strange Interludes, he immediately got back on his boat and went up as far as the site of modern day Albany, turned around, and went back to Amsterdam.


September 12, 1683 -
Friar Marco d'Aviano, sent by Pope Innocent XI to unite the outnumbered Christian troops in the besieged city of Vienna, spurred them to victory on this date. The Turks left behind sacks of coffee which the Christians found too bitter, so they sweetened it with honey and milk and named the drink cappuccino after the Capuchin order of monks to which d'Aviano belonged.



An Austrian baker created a crescent-shaped roll, the Kipfel, to celebrate the victory. Empress Marie Antoinette later took it to France where it became the croissant.


September 12, 1878 -
On this date, a magnificent phallic symbol was erected on the bank of the Thames. Despite its name, it doesn’t really have anything to do with Cleopatra.



The obelisk has a twin in New York's Central Park, also named Cleopatra's Needle.



It has nothing to do with Cleopatra, either.



There’s another in Paris, though it isn’t the twin of either London’s or New York’s (which would have made it a triplet). And yes—you guessed it—it also has nothing to do with Cleopatra.


September 12, 1940 -
The Lascaux Caves in France, with their prehistoric wall paintings, were discovered outside Montignac, France, in the Dordogne region by four teenagers who stumble upon the ancient artwork (15,000 to 17,000 years old) after following their dog down a narrow entrance into a cavern, on this date.



There are more than 600 paintings and 1,500 engravings in the cave. The paintings consisting mostly of animal representations (horses), are among the finest examples of art from the Paleolithic period. It was opened to the public at one point, but closed in 1963 because the paintings were fading due to the artificial light used to illuminate the cave.


September 12, 1959 -
While Americans were home watching Bonanza on this date, the Soviet Union launched Lunik II toward the Moon aboard a Luna 8K72 carrier rocket. It was the first man-made object to reach the Moon from Earth.



It was the Soviet's second attempt to launch a rocket to the moon and the first successful attempt when it landed two days later. It's data-collecting mission lasted 33.5 hours.


September 12, 1977 -
The body of Stephen Biko was discovered on the floor of a jail cell in Pretoria on this date. The South African civil rights activist had been beaten and tortured six days earlier, during an interrogation in Port Elizabeth.



Police officials claim that Biko probably suffered the fatal injuries when he "fell out of bed."


September 12, 1993 –
Over a period of time, if you have a successful show, then you have a devoted audience. I feel you owe something to them. That goes for everybody - writers, camera operators, actors, studio executives, etc. Sadly, I've realized it's a responsibility that very few people live up to.



Famous Godzilla, Perry Mason and Ironside actor and Nipple Rouge entrepreneur Raymond Burr died after a battle with liver cancer on this date.


September 12, 1994 -
After a night of boozing and smoking crack, Frank Corder stole a Cessna P150 and crashed it into the south lawn of the White House on this date.

I used to say that there was no truth to the rumor that Newt Gingrich bought Frank the boozes and the crack but now after all that occurred after January 6th, I'm not so sure.



And so it goes