Fashion rules!

September 15, 1922 -
According to fashion arbiters from days gone by - you should not be wearing your straw hats any longer this season -

In the early 20th Century, tradition held that a man switch from straw hats to felt ones on September 15th. If he wore “the taboo headgear” after that date, hooligans were free to smash it to bits.



In 1922, a group of men and boy, 1,000 strong from the Five Points neighborhood sparked a bizarre riot that shook New York City from the Battery to the Bronx, as they prowled the city, beating men, who refused to remove their straw hats.



And whatever you do, don't mention The Susquehanna Hat Company.


September 15, 1949 -
The Lone Ranger, the masked hero rode onto the fledgling ABC network for the first time on this date



In the early 1950s, the show was so popular that ABC briefly repeated it late on Friday nights for those who missed the Thursday night broadcast.



Oh, Lenny Bruce had something to say on the subject


September 15, 1945 -
The Looney Tunes short, The Bashful Buzzard, directed by Bob Clampett and starring Beaky Buzzard, was released on this date.



The premise of this cartoon is very similar to Beaky Buzzard's debut cartoon Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid with Bugs Bunny, and the opening scene of this cartoon is nearly identical to that in the earlier film.


September 15, 1957 -
Bachelor Father, starring John Forsythe, Noreen Corcoran and Sammee Tong, premiered on CBS-TV on this date. It has the destinction of being the only primetime series ever to run in consecutive years on the three major television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC).



Despite his character's accent on the show, Sammee Tong (who played Peter, the Chinese houseboy) was actually born in the United States, and graduated from Stanford University.


September 15, 1965 -
This was an incredibly busy day in TV History:

Danger Will Robinson, danger. Dr. Smith is attempting to inappropriately stimulate your young pulsating bulbous nether region!

The Robinson Family gets Lost in Space for the first time on CBS-TV on this date.


(go to video's setting and play back at 1.25x)

Irwin Allen pitched his idea for the series to CBS programmer James Aubrey, who immediately snapped it up. A few weeks later Gene Roddenberry pitched his idea for Star Trek: The Original Series to Aubrey, who turned him down. He felt that this show was the more commercial of the two.


The Big Valley premiered on this date.



Victoria (Barbara Stanwyck) is the only Barkley who was never shot throughout the run of the series. Heath (Lee Majors) was shot the most, while Nick (Peter Breck) was shot twice in the same episode.


American started really liking Sally Fields when Gidget premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



The show was the TV debut for Sally Field. She auditioned for the role on a lark and was astonished when they offered her the part.


Green Acres premiered on this date.



Pat Buttram based his portrayal of Mr. Haney on Tom Parker-- aka "Col. Tom Parker", Elvis Presley's manager--whom he met a decade or so earlier when Parker was a carnival barker.


And last, but not least, the first American television drama to feature an African-American actor in a lead role, I Spy, starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Bill Cosby's character, Alexander Scott, was originally intended to be an older mentor to Robert Culp's trainee agent, Kelly Robinson. Executive producer Sheldon Leonard cast Cosby in the role after seeing one of his routines (Scott was originally intended to be a Caucasian). Due to this casting change, the writers thought an occasional reference to Cosby's race would be a necessity, given the tumult of the times.


September 15, 1967 -
The Star Trek episode Amok Time aired on this date. In the episode, Kirk and Spock are pitted in a fight to the death against each other by Spock’s wife-to-be when Spock suffers his first pon farr (the Vulcan time of mating).



The episode is the first in which Spock uses either the phrase “live long and prosper” and makes the “Vulcan salute” gesture for the first time.


September 15, 1969 -
The gentle comedy based on the humor of James Thurber, My World ... and Welcome to It, starring William Windom, Lisa Gerritsen, Joan Hotchkis, Harold J. Stone, and Henry Morgan, premiered on CBS TV on this date.



Prior to working on this series, William Windom and Lisa Gerritsen appeared as father and daughter on the series Lancer.


September 15, 1971 -
Just one more thing...

The first episode of the Columbo series, Murder By The Book, directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Bochco, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Peter Falk frequently added in unscripted improvisations such as asking for a pencil, searching for something in his pockets, asking a character to repeat something, rambling about irrelevant trivialities, or adding in a line about Mrs. Columbo. Falk did this to frustrate and annoy his fellow actor (usually the suspect) and generate a genuine "get to the point" moment.


September 15, 1976 -
The musical comedy film, Bugsy Malone, directed by Alan Parker (in his feature film directorial debut), and starring Jodie Foster, Scott Baio, and John Cassisi, went into general release in the US, on this date.



Alan Parker admitted to having an ambivalent attitude to the film and for years did not include it in any biography/filmography of his work. However, over the years his attitude changed and he came to be very proud of it.


September 15, 1979 -
The eighth and final studio album by Led Zeppelin, In Through the Out Door, was No 1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.



When they were recording this album, Jimmy Page and John Bonham were spending a lot of time together and would usually show up at the studio very late and work through the night.


September 15, 1983 -
Chrysalis Records released Huey Lewis and the News' third album, Sports, on this date.



Huey Lewis & the News had lots of goofy fun in their videos, which was exactly what MTV was looking for. They would often star Lewis as a normal guy surrounded by lunatics played by his bandmates.


September 15, 1986 –
Los Angeles law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak first opened their doors to television viewer when LA Law premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Stephen Bochco had wanted Kiel Martin to play the role of Arnie Becker, having worked with Martin on Hill Street Blues where Martin had played Det. J.D. LaRue and knowing that Martin's mix of acting skill and personal issues (he had battled alcoholism for a long time and successfully dealt with his addiction to stay in the Det. LaRue role) would be a great fit for a character with Arnie's mix of success and demons. Unfortunately, Martin has serious health problems that meant he was unable to do the role, so Bochco cast Corbin Bernsen instead.


Today's moment of Zen.


Today in History:
September 15, 1776 -
The British, led by General Howe, occupied Manhattan, capturing Kip's Bay, on this date.

Outraged by the rents, discouraged by the lack of parking and homesick for bubble and squeak and spotted dick, however, they left shortly afterwards, leaving only drunken journalists behind.


September 15, 1830 -
British MP William Huskisson was chatting amiably with the Duke of Wellington at the grand opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, when all at once the right honorable gentleman distinguished himself for posterity by becoming the first human being in history to be run over by a train.

Apparently, Mr. Huskisson's number was up.



(The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, is remembered for his Beef.)


September 15, 1864 -
Thirty-four years later, on this date, another hardy British soul, the explorer John Speke, distinguished himself by becoming the first European to see Africa's Lake Victoria, and then accidentally killing himself while hunting partridges.

(conveniently, the day before he was to debate his finding with his famous exploration partner, Richard Burton (the man who invented sex) - no, not that Richard Burton, the other one, the famous self circumciser, and translator of 1001 Arabian Nights, The Perfumed Garden, and the Kama Sutra.)


September 15, 1885 -
Goodbye Jumbo.



Circus showman P.T. Barnum's prize elephant Jumbo was struck dead by a freight train in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. It took 150 men to haul the carcass up an embankment, from whence it is taken to a taxidermist.



The stuffed Jumbo became a featured attraction in Barnum's circus.

Afterwards, P.T. Barnum was an early trustee and benefactor of Tufts and he donated the stuffed hide of Jumbo to the university. On April 14, 1975, Barnum Hall and the beloved elephant were consumed in an electrical fire. Some of his ashes were recovered in a peanut butter jar that has remained in the athletics director’s office where students continue to rub it for good luck.


September 15, 1890 -
It's the birthday of Agatha Christie (Vanessa Redgrave), born in Devon, England. She was a Red Cross nurse during World War I. She started reading detective novels because she found they took her mind off her troubles (her husband couldn't help sleeping with other women) and soon after, started writing her own.



Her big breakthrough book was her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which came out in 1926. It was the same year in which Christie had a fight with her husband, fled her own home, and was missing for ten days. There was a nationwide search. It was on the front pages of all the papers. And when she finally turned up, she was famous and all of her books were best-sellers.


September 15, 1928 -
Scottish bacteriologist and noted slob Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered that the mold penicillin had an antibiotic effect, on this date. Had he cleaned his laboratory every night and put all his things away like a good little boy, he never would have discovered penicillin, and half of us would be dead right now.



As I am deathly allergic to penicillin, his discovery has done little for me but I pass this along to you all.


September 15, 1954 -
In front of thousands of spectating New Yorkers at 51st and Lexington, Marilyn Monroe performed the now-famous skirt blowing scene during filming for The Seven Year Itch. The event basically boils down to a publicity stunt, as the whole thing was reshot later on a Hollywood soundstage.



Unfortunately, this event is the final straw in the Monroe - Dimaggio marriage and it soon comes undone.


September 15, 1963 -
In Birmingham, Alabama, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash and Robert Chambliss planted 15 dynamite sticks in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church, below the women's restroom. When the dynamite exploded, four little girls in the bathroom and were killed (Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley); more than 20 other parishioners also were injured.



Chambliss was later tried and convicted of murder; he was sentenced to life in prison in 1977. Two of his accomplices also were later sentenced to life in prison (Herman Cash died in 1994 without having been charged.)


September 15, 1972 -

Indictments were brought against the seven Watergate burglars: James McCord, Frank Sturgis, Bernard L. Barker, Eugenio R. Martinez, Virgilio R. Gonzales, E. Howard Hunt (noted spy, novelist and possible Kennedy assassin, rumored to have been the man on the grassy knoll) and G. Gordon Liddy (noted rat connoisseur), on this date.


September 15, 2008 -
18 years ago, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy (the largest so far in the United States) on this date and is seen as the beginning of the global financial crisis (The Great Recession.)



I'm not sure what the correct anniversary gift should be - but once again, may I suggest, just find a banker or hedge fund manager and take a sock full of nickels to his groin (repeatedly.)



And so it goes

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