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.

The only vegetables most people eat are lettuce on a burger.

It's Eat Your Vegetables Day

Another voice heard from



So eat them up, or not. (My kids are too old for me to worry about this anymore.)


June 16, 1939 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Hobo Gadget Band, directed by Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton, debuted on this date.



When the lead hobo partakes in his "Soda Fizz" (or as he calls it, "Sodium Acetylsalicylate"), he states "Listen to it fizz"; which was an early catch-phrase for the Alka-Seltzer brand in the 1930s.


June 16, 1944 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Slightly Daffy, directed by Friz Freleng, starring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck debuted on this date.



Similarly to the short Scalp Trouble, this cartoon is seldom shown on television nowadays due to its stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans.


June 17, 1950 -
The Disassociated Press sent a reporter to get Bug Bunny's life story in What's Up Doc?. This Looney Tunes short was directed by Bob McKimson and released on this date.



Bugs and Elmer perform the What's Up Doc? title song. This is the first cartoon in which its lyrics are heard.


June 17, 1964 -
The British war drama, Zulu, directed by Cy Endfield and starring Michael Caine (in his first major role), Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Nigel Green, Paul Daneman, Glynn Edwards, Ivor Emmanuel, Patrick Magee, and Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi (playing his great-grandfather, Zulu King Cetshwayo kaMpande,) opened on this date.



Cy Endfield wanted a camera crane that was lightweight when disassembled, so it could be packed and transported through the African bush. Ken Eddy designed the first Filmair Giraffe camera crane for the job, starting the world's best-known camera crane company. This key piece of gear is still used in the film industry.


June 17, 1968 -
Ohio Express' Yummy Yummy Yummy (I've got love in my tummy) went gold on this date.



Joey Levine, who was the lead singer of the Ohio Express, wrote this with Arthur Resnick, who also wrote Under The Boardwalk and Good Lovin'. Levine worked for Buddah Records under the direction of Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz, who used studio musicians to back up Levine on this song.


June 17, 1970 -
The cult classic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (co-written by Roger Ebert - yes that Roger Ebert,) directed by Russ Meyers and starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, David Gurian, and Edy Williams, opened on this date.



Budgeted at a modest $900,000 (approximately $4.5 million in 2005 dollars), the film grossed ten times the amount in the US market, qualifying it as a hit for the beleaguered 20th Century-Fox. Though tame by modern standards, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was slapped with an "X" rating, and there was much negative publicity generated by the fact a major studio had allowed a "pornographer", Russ Meyer (labeled "King Leer" by the mainstream press at the time) to make a Hollywood film under its aegis


June 17, 1971 -
Carole King's album Tapestry goes to No. 1 on US album charts and stays there for 15 weeks



Tapestry was a groundbreaking album, which helped popularize the singer/songwriter genre. It stayed on the American album charts for over six years, selling over 24 million copies worldwide. Until 1976, it was the largest-selling album ever, and until March 29, 1980 when Dark Side of the Moon marked its 303rd week on the Billboard album charts, it had the longest stay on the Billboard Top 200. Tapestry won 1971 Grammys for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance.


June 17, 1976 -
Mel Brooks' very silly send up of Silent Films, Silent Movie, starring Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Bernadette Peters and Sid Caesar opened in the US on this date.



The movie features the first onscreen pairing of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, who dance a tango together. The couple were married from 1964 until Bancroft's death in 2005. Aside from an uncredited cameo as a congregation member in Blazing Saddles, Bancroft had not previously appeared in any of her husband's films. They later starred together in To Be or Not to Be, and Bancroft starred in The Elephant Man and 84 Charing Cross Road, which were produced by Brooks.


June 17, 1976 -
Blondie released their debut single X Offender on this date. Written by Gary Valentine and Debbie Harry, the title of the song was originally 'Sex Offender', written about an 18-year-old boy being arrested for having sex with his younger girlfriend.



It's a song about a prostitute, but far less well known than Call Me. In this scenario, she is arrested, but she and the cop know that he wants her. The song ends with the line, "And when I get out, there's no doubt, I'll be sex offensive to you."


June 17, 1987 -
A late Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, Full Metal Jacket, starring Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood, and Arliss Howard was released on this date.



One of the scenes cut from the movie was a scene that showed a group of Marines playing soccer. The scene was cut because a shot revealed they were not using a soccer ball, but a human head.


June 17, 2006 -
Shakira's single Hips Don't Lie, featuring Wyclef Jean, reaches the No. #1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100, on this date.



The title Hips Don't Lie comes from Shakira's in-studio mantra about how her band members need to watch her hips to determine where a song they're working on needs to go - if they're not moving, something is wrong. "I would tell them, 'Listen, hips don't lie. If they're not moving, this isn't working. If they shake, we're in good shape.'"


Another episode of ACME's Little Known Animal Facts


Today in History:
June 17, 1775 -
American forces were defeated by the British at Breed's Hill, near Boston, in the Battle of Bunker Hill, after famously withholding their fire until they could see the whites of their enemies' eyes.



This battle should not be confused with that of Bunker Hill, fought on Breed's Hill, during which the Americans shot like hell at anything that moved.


June 17, 1797 -
Agha Muhammad Khan, Shah of Persia (who was also a eunuch, but that's another story) ordered his servants to bring him a melon cut into slices. He finished half, ordered the other half to be put away and vowed to his servants, that if even one slice of the melon was missing in the morning, all three servants would be beheaded by him.

Later on that night one of the servants forgot and ate a slice. The servants then killed Agha Muhammad Khan with the dagger because they were afraid he would kill them in the morning.

There's a lesson here somewhere -
a.) Treat your staff better?
b.) Purchase more fruit for dessert?
c.) Dare to eat the peach?


The Statue of Liberty, France's gift to the United States marking the Centennial of the American Declaration of Independence arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885 on board the French frigate Isere (only nine years after the gift was offered.)



To prepare for transit, the Statue was reduced to 350 individual pieces and packed in 214 crates. (The right arm and the torch, which were completed earlier, had been exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and thereafter at Madison Square Park in New York City.)


June 17, 1928 -
Amelia Earhart became the first woman to make a transatlantic flight, when she took off from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m on this date.



Amelia Earhart was the passenger (and keeper of the flight log,) in a plane named Friendship with co-pilots Wilmer "Bill" Stultz and Louis "Slim" Gordon. The plane landed 20 hours and 40 minutes later, at Woolston in Southampton, England, with just a small amount of fuel left.


June 17, 1933 -
Four FBI agents and the fugitive they were transporting, Frank Nash, were killed in a shootout with gangsters who were trying to free Nash, at the Union Square Station in Kansas City on this date. (Please be sure to visit the Pierpont Steak House when you find yourself at the Union Square Station in Kansas City.)



After being pardoned twice for murder and burglary, Frank Nash was arrested and convicted again for assault and was serving a 25-year sentence when he escaped in 1930. The FBI had just recaptured Nash after his three-year run when they were all gunned down.

Killing the person you are trying to free defeats the whole purpose.


June 17, 1939 -
In Versailles, Eugene Weidmann becomes the last person to be publicly guillotined.



The "hysterical behavior" by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions.

A few people can ruin it for everybody.


June 17, 1947 -
Pan Am inaugurated the first round-the-world passenger service when the Lockheed Constellation 'Clipper America' with 21 passengers, 9 crew members and 400 pounds of food, departed from LaGuardia Airport in New York bound for San Francisco, the long way around.



The trip covered more than 20,000 miles in 13 days, with 92 hours 43 minutes of flight time, landing in 17 cities and 10 countries.


June 17, 1963 -
The US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 to strike down rules requiring the recitation of the Lord's Prayer or reading of Biblical verses in public schools.



We've been godless heathens ever since.


June 17, 1967 -
China tested its first hydrogen bomb, a U-235 implosion fission device named “596,” over the Lop Nur Testing Grounds.



It was China’s first full-scale implosion weapon test, and its sixth nuclear test within thirty-two months, a record for the shortest development period of any nation’s nuclear weapons program.

(Remember that the next time you try to short tip the Chinese delivery guy.)


June 17, 1972 -
Perhaps the former President might be interested in the following - Five men broke into the Democratic Party National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington, DC on this date. They had hoped to bug the offices but were arrested before they could release any insects.



President Richard Nixon would later describe the incident as a "third rate burglary." Their arrests ultimately led to President Nixon's resignation in 1974.

(Nixon's resignation prior to 1974 was attributed to simple melancholia.)


June 17, 1994 -
Convicted memorabilia thug O.J. Simpson failed to turn himself in to the LAPD at a prearranged time and was later spotted in a white Ford Bronco on a Los Angeles expressway on this date. After a low-speed pursuit through the freeways and streets of Brentwood, O.J. was finally arrested live on television in the driveway of his mansion.



According to one of the defense attorneys who served on O.J.'s "Dream Team," Simpson tried to kill himself in the car, but the gun "misfired". The Juice allegedly told him: "I pulled the trigger and it didn't go off."

That would have saved everyone a boatload of trouble.




And so it goes.