Please DON'T smoke em if you got em

World No Tobacco Day is observed around the world every year on May 31. The member states of the World Health Organization created World No Tobacco Day in 1987. It draws global attention to the tobacco epidemic and to the preventable death and disease it causes.





It aims to reduce the 3.5 million yearly deaths from tobacco related health problems. Since 1988 the WHO has presented one or more World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) Awards to organizations or individuals who have made exceptional contributions to reducing tobacco consumption.


May 31, 1958 -
The Looney Tunes short, Now Hare This, directed by Bob McKimson, starring Bugs Bunny, debuted on this date.



The Big Bad Wolf and his nephew would later appear in False Hare the final Bugs Bunny short from the original theatrical era.


May 31, 1975 -
The first single from the Isley Brothers hit album, The Heat Is On, Fight the Power, was released on this date. (The song is notable for the use of the word bullshit, which is usually censored during radio airplay.)



Often thought of as a song about the black experience, Fight The Power is more of a general statement on rising above the powers that be. The youngest Isley Brother, Marvin, explained in a 1976 interview with Blues & Soul: "We don't close ourselves away like some entertainers do – we listen to the radio, read the newspapers and generally get into what's happening out there in an attempt to reflect the world as it is. With The Heat Is On, we wanted to be as funky as possible musically, and yet for the lyrics to say something unusual. 'Fight The Power'? Well, we decided not to be passive, to take a stand. And we met hardly any resistance because that power could be anything – we all have our different conceptions of what it is to each of us. And just letting it out – about the bullshit that does go down – is something that everyone wants to do."


May 31, 1976 -
Tom Waits begins a two-week stint performing at Ronnie Scott's Club in Soho, London, England, run by Pete King, on this date.



The experience inspired Waits to write The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)(An Evening with Pete King). Waits recorded this song, along with the rest of the album, Small Change, a month after this stint was complete.


May 31, 1976 -
Ten years after it appeared on The Beatles' Revolver album, Capitol Records issues Got To Get You Into My Life as a single on this date.



A British rock group called Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers released this song as a single around the same time it appeared on The Beatles Revolver album. Bennett & The Rebel Rousers were an opening act for The Beatles on their European tour in early 1966; since there were no plans to release Got To Get You Into My Life as a single, Paul McCartney encouraged them to record it and produced the session. Earth, Wind & Fire recorded a funky new version for the 1978 movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Beatles producer George Martin was in charge of the music, and the soundtrack was a success, but the movie, which starred Peter Frampton, The Bee Gees and Aerosmith, was a huge flop. Earth, Wind & Fire's version of this hit #9 in the US.


May 31, 1980 -
Casablanca Records released the Lipps Inc./ Steven Greenberg song, Funkytown, on this date.



Lipps Inc. (pronounced "Lip Synch") was formed especially for this song. The vocals were by Cynthia Johnson, who was Miss Black Minnesota 1976. The group continued to record until 1985 with a changing lineup, but they failed to see the success they'd had with their first hit.


May 31, 1983 -
After a break in which David Byrne and Jerry Harrison release solo albums and Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth form Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads return with their fifth album, Speaking In Tongues.



It contains their biggest hit, Burning Down The House. Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz and bass player Tina Weymouth, married since 1977, are big fans of funk. When they went to a P-Funk show at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the crowd started chanting, "Burn down the house, burn down the house" (this is before The Roof Is on Fire), which gave Frantz the idea for the title.


The first Seinfeld episode (referred to as episode #2 The Stakeout) created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld premiered on Thursday, May 31, 1990 on NBC-TV. The show often described as "about nothing" was not an immediate success.



After the pilot was shown, on July 5, 1989, a pickup by the NBC network did not seem likely and the show was actually offered to Fox, which declined to pick it up. However, Rick Ludwin, head of late night and special events for NBC, diverted money from his budget, and the next four episodes were filmed.

I wonder what ever happened to those guys?


May 31, 1992 -
The last episode of the original series, Night Court: The 1992 Boat Show aired on NBC-TV, on this date.



This episode was actually aired out of order. The two parter, Opportunity Knocks, which aired before this episode, was the finale of the series. This episode never aired on its original air date and was held over to the end of the season confusingly airing after the series finale.


May 31, 1999 -
The VH1 documentary series Behind the Music began airing nightly with their premiere episode The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Behind the Music.



Anthony Kiedis and Flea (bass guitar) first met when they were both 15 and attending high school together. (20 years after the program, the band is still going strong.)


Another selection from the discount bin at ACME's Record Shoppe today


Today in History:
May 31, 455 -
Petronius Maximus, emperor for less than three month, was having an extremely bad day. News reached Rome that Vandals were planning on sacking Rome (besides vigorous bouts of sodomy; sacking was the favorite pastime for Vandals.) The level headed Petronius attempted to organize an orderly evacuation of the Senate and his cronies. Panic, unfortunately set in and Petronius Maximus was completely abandoned by his bodyguard and entourage and was left to fend for himself.



As he rode out of the city on his own, he was set upon by an angry mob who stoned him to death. His body was mutilated and flung into the Tiber.

Sometimes, it isn't every worth getting out of bed, even if you're the ruler of all the known world.


May 31, 1678 -
The lovely young Lady Godiva, aged 17, rode naked on horseback through Coventry, England, to protest the high tax rate established by her own husband, Earl Leofric of Mercia. Her protest worked and he lowered taxes.



While I can't say whether or not the MAGA crowd strongly endorse this type of civil disobedience, I'd like to remind the ladies out there that taxes are pretty damn high just about everywhere these days.


May 31, 1819 -
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.







A great New Yorker and even greater poet, Walt Whitman was born on this date.


May 31, 1859 -
The iconic clock in the clock tower attached to the Palace at Westminister first began to keep time on this date.



The name Big Ben is often used to describe the tower or the clock but it's actually is the name of the carillon inside. The tower itself was formally known as St. Stephen’s Tower until 2012, when it was renamed Elizabeth Tower on the occasion of Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrating 60 years on the British throne. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, the work which had been scheduled to end at the end of this year, now stretches into 2022.


May 30, 1879 -
The Gilmore's Garden in New York City is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and opens to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.

Originally it was a railroad passenger depot located at East 26th Street and Madison Avenue, the New York and Harlem Railroad, before they would move in 1871. Then, with tented roof, it would become P.T. Barnum's Great Roman Hippodrome. In 1876, the theatre became Gilmore's Garden, after Patrick Gilmore, a band leader. The building under his name housed flower shows, pedestrian marathons, the first Westminster Kennel Club Show in 1877, beauty contests, and concerts. Owned by the Vanderbilt family, William renamed it Madison Square Garden in 1879, continuing to present a variety of shows; boxing, track and field, and Barnum back with the elephant Jumbo. The first building had a capacity of ten thousand and was open-air.


May 31, 1889 -
Relentless rain and inadequate maintenance causes the South Fork Dam to fail, unleashing a 35-foot-high wall of water on Johnstown, Pennsylvania.



The wall of flood water grew at times to 60 feet high, tearing downhill at 40 miles per hour, leveling everything in its path and killing 2,209 people.


May 31, 1895 -
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, patented corn flakes on this date. The good doctor believed in a vegetarian diet and a regimen of exercise. The good doctor also believed in proper elimination. At his sanitarium, Kellogg made sure that the bowel of each and every patient was plied with water, from above and below. His favorite device was an enema machine that could run 15 gallons of cold water through an unfortunate bowel in a matter of seconds.



Every water enema was followed by a pint of yogurt — half was eaten, the other half was administered by enema “thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service”. The yogurt served to replace the intestinal flora of the bowel, creating what Kellogg claimed was a squeaky clean intestine.



Bet you'll never look at a carton of yogurt the same way again.


May 31, 1902 -
The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed on this date, canceling the Bore War for lack of interest.

(The Bore War should not be confused with the Boar War, which was much more exciting on account of tusks.)


May 21, 1921 -
Following an accusation of improper conduct between Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner and Sarah Page, a white elevator operator, hundreds of white people gather and start to form what looks like a lynch mob which ends with the traditionally black district of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma being burnt to the ground with many black citizens choose or were forced to relocate after the riot which ended on June 1st 1921 after the National Guard troops from Oklahoma City declare martial law.



As many as 10,000 white men and boys attacked the black community and 35 blocks of the black business district were burned with participation by police officers and a local unit of the National Guard. Some 200-300 people were believed to have been killed. In 2000 the Tulsa Race Riot Commission recommended that reparations be paid to survivors of the riots and their descendants.


May 31, 1957 -
The House for Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) convicts the playwright Arthur Miller of contempt of Congress, on this date.

He had refused to answer two questions at a hearing before the committee:

1. "Can you tell us who were there when you walked into the room?"
2. "Was Arnaud D'Usseau chairman of the meeting of the Communist party writers which took place in 1947 at which you were in attendance?"

Although he testified frankly about his own relationships with persons of Communist bent or membership, he said that his conscience had forbidden him to tell about others.


May 31, 1963 -
Nun Nu Thanh Quang, a Buddhist monk, immolated himself on this date at the Dieu de Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam.

That has got to hurt.


May 31, 1969 -
The National Legume Collective negotiated intensely all through the early part of 1969 with John Lennon and his new wife, Yoko Ono to record their new promotional song, Give Peas a Chance. The agreement ends abruptly when the organization actually heard Ms. Ono's voice.



John Lennon and Yoko Ono then decide not to waste the experience and record Give Peace a Chance, the first single recorded by a solo Beatle, from their hotel bed (not as a political statement as some have argued but because of the bloated feeling from eating a non-stop diet of peas for the past five months).


May 31, 1996 -
Timothy Leary died quietly in his sleep on this date, thereby failing his intended mission of killing himself live on the Internet.



On a brighter note, a longstanding Moody Blues prophecy was fulfilled.


Before you go - I would be remiss if I didn't remember to wish one of our bunkies a very Happy Birthday!

Hope you've enjoyed your Birthday Jim



And so it goes.

You would be forgiven if you were slightly confused

Today is Mint Julip Day - the Kentucky Derby would seem like a perfectly fine day to honor this drink. Perhaps gamblers finally sobered up after their losses that day and decided to celebrate the beverage. The American word 'julep' can be traced to French julep, which comes from the Arabic julab, which is from the Persian julab, meaning 'rose water.' The drink as we know it today is an American invention. Maybe you need one after having to follow along.



Famous writers drank mint juleps and wrote them into their works. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway partook of the libations, and they are mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, and Hunter S. Thompson's The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. The classic mint julep as made in Kentucky, starts with a chilled silver mug or goblet filled with crushed ice. Dissolve 1 lump of sugar in a little water, fill mug with bourbon, add the dissolved sugar and stir well. Place 4 or 5 sprigs of fresh mint down into the ice. Whatever the reason, make yourself a tall frosty one and celebrate the start of the summer season.


May 30, 1936 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Bingo Crosbyana, directed by Friz Freleng, debuted on this date.



The short prompted a lawsuit from Bing Crosby against Warner Bros. for having a cowardly character in the cartoon based on his voice and image.


May 30, 1939 -
John Ford's bio pix of President Abraham Lincoln, Young Mr. Lincoln starring Henry Fonda, Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver, and Arleen Whelan, premiered in Springfield, Illinois on this date.



Henry Fonda originally turned down the role of Lincoln, saying he didn't think he could play such a great man. He changed his mind after John Ford asked him to do a screen test in full makeup. After viewing himself as Lincoln in the test footage, Fonda liked what he saw, and accepted the part. He later told an interviewer, "I felt as if I were portraying Christ himself on film."


May 30, 1939 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Naughty but Mice, directed by Chuck Jones, starring Sniffles, debuted on this date.



The short was the first appearance of Sniffles.


May 30, 1956 -
RKO Radio Pictures released Fritz Lang's late period film-noir classic, While The City Sleeps, starring Dana Andrews, Vincent Price and Ida Lupino (with whom you don't fuck with) premiered on this date.



According to Film Noir historian Eddie Mueller in the commentary for Where the Sidewalk Ends, Dana Andrews was drunk during the entire production of this movie. (It was already established, by Andrews himself, that he was an alcoholic during the 1950s.) Ironically, his character is drunk throughout half the film.


May 30, 1957 -
Another earlier version of Brokeback Mountain, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, directed by John Sturges and starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, premiered on this date



Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster had worked together in I Walk Alone, and often saw each other at various Hollywood functions. But, as Douglas recounted in his autobiography, The Ragman's Son, they didn't become friends until this movie, which lead to some pretty loose-and-easy moments on the set. For instance, they couldn't focus during a scene in which an unarmed Lancaster is surrounded by several men in a saloon, only to be rescued by Douglas, who steals another man's gun and tosses it to Lancaster. "We go out on the porch", Douglas wrote, "and Burt says to me, 'Thanks, Doc'. I was supposed to say, 'Forget it.' When I came to 'Forget it', the ridiculousness of the scene, our great bravery, our machismo, made us howl. We did the scene over and over. It just made us laugh harder." They were finally laughing so much, an angry John Sturges had to send them home for the day.


May 30th, 1963 -
A classic drive-in movie from Roger Corman, The Terror, starring Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, and Sandra Knight, premiered on this date.



Roger Corman shot the bulk of the film in four days, but the second-unit work was filmed over a nine month period by five directors, Francis Ford Coppola, Dennis Jakob, Monte Hellman, Jack Nicholson, and Jack Hill.


May 30, 1964 -
The Beatles first single, of their own material, Love Me Do, (the B side was P.S., I Love You,) released in England in 1962, hit # 1 on the Billboard 100 in the US on this date.



The Beatles recorded versions of this song with three different drummers. At their first Parlophone audition in June 1962, Pete Best was still their drummer. When they recorded it on September 4, Ringo was their drummer, but when George Martin decided it would be the single, he had them record it again a week later.



At this session, he used a session drummer named Andy White and stuck Ringo with the tambourine. The version with Ringo drumming was released as the single, but the version released on the album had Andy White's drumming. Ringo didn't pitch a fit when he got bumped at the session, but was very upset and felt real insecure, especially since The Beatles had just fired a drummer.


May 30, 1973 -
George Harrison's second post-Beatles album (his fourth solo album,) Living In The Material World was released on this date.



The album reaches No. 1 on the Billboard charts and the single Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth), off the album, also hits the top spot. Publishing royalties from that song and others on the album go to Harrison's Material World Charitable Foundation.


May 30, 1980 -
Peter Gabriel released his third solo studio album, which is self-titled, on this date. It features the songs, Games Without Frontiers, Biko, and I Don’t Remember.



The album is sometimes referred to as Melt, owing to its cover photograph by Hipgnosis. Some music streaming services refer to it as Peter Gabriel 3: Melt.


May 30, 2003 -
The Academy Awarding Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures film, Finding Nemo, voiced by Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, and Willem Dafoe, premiered on this date.



Andrew Stanton pitched his idea and story to Pixar head John Lasseter in an hour-long session, using elaborate visual aids and character voices. At the end of it, an exhausted Stanton asked Lasseter what he thought, to which Lasseter replied, "You had me at 'fish.'"

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


Today in History:
May 30, 1431 -
Convicted of heresy by the English (see May 23), 19-year-old Joan of Arc got an extreme hot foot as her punishment in Rouen, France, on this date.



Pope Benedict XV canonized her in 1920.


May 30, 1593 -
Noted English dramatist, spy and buggerer (a famed pastime of English and Irish playwrights), Christopher Marlowe was either:



a: murdered in a tavern brawl on this date, or,
b: faked his death and assumed a new identity as William Shakespeare, noted English dramatist, spy and buggerer.


May 30, 1806 -
Andrew Jackson couldn't wait to marry his wife, Rachel Donelson Robards.

He was so impatient that he had married her before she could obtain a legal divorce from her first husband, Captain Lewis Robards - so technically she was a bigamist and an adulteress. His political opponents made much of this fact. Dueling over a horse racing wager and his wife's honor, the future President took a bullet in the chest from fellow lawyer Charles Dickinson on this date in 1806.



The slug shatters two ribs and buries itself near his heart. Then it was Jackson's turn to fire; his shot managed to sever an artery, technically breaking the rules of the duel. Dickinson died a few hours later, the only man Jackson ever killed in any of his 103 duels.

The bullet that struck Jackson was so close to his heart that it could never be safely removed. Jackson had been wounded so frequently in duels over his wife's honor that it was said he "rattled like a bag of marbles". At times he would cough up blood, and he experienced considerable pain from his wounds for the rest of his life.

I suppose that's what love was like in the 19th Century.


May 30, 1842 –
The semi-annual event, Kill the Queen Day takes place, on this date, when John Francis fails in an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill in London with Prince Albert. This was actually Francis’s second attempt; the day before, he had pulled out his pistol but had either lost courage or his gun had misfired; he slipped away.

John Francis, 19 at the time, was the only one of Victoria’s assailants to be found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. His sentence was, however, commuted to transportation for life. He lived the rest of his 63 years in Australia, marrying and fathering ten children. He died in 1885. Many of his descendants live on.


On May 30, 1889, the world’s first bra was (allegedly) invented.



Breasts are an essential feature among mammals, allowing mothers to nurture their young during protracted infancies. No infancy is longer than that of the human species - particularly that of the American male, which often lasts until death.



Breasts, of course, are not just mobile diners for infants. On humans, at least, they also have significant recreational value. Nothing else quite matches the nutrition, entertainment, and sheer jiggle value of the human breast (though Jell-O™ comes close).



Naturally, men couldn’t leave something with the power, appeal, and nutritive value of breasts entirely in the hands of women - literally or metaphorically. From the very dawn of human history, therefore, breasts have been in men’s hands.



In 2500 BC, the Minoan women of Crete were said to have worn special garments that lifted their breasts completely out of their clothing. (Like another popular story of ancient Minos, this is believed to be half bull.) By the rise of the Hellenic (Greek) and Roman civilizations, however, women were binding their breasts tightly to reduce their busts. This style persisted until 476 AD, which historians rightly call the Fall of Rome.

As history progressed, the popularity of breasts rose and fell - heaved and plunged, lifted and separated. Each new culture found its own way of exalting or obscuring the breast. By the nineteenth century in Europe, breasts were being pressed together and thrust upward by whalebone-fortified corsets. The strain was unbearable. Something had to give.

On May 30, 1889, the world’s first bra was invented. Or so the story goes - I've lost all track of where I first found that date. However, I do know that corset maker Herminie Cadolle invented the Bien-être (meaning "well-being") in 1889, a garment that supported the breasts from the shoulders down instead of squeezing them up from below. A revolution, indeed.

Marie Tucek patented the first “breast supporter” in 1893 - a design featuring separate pockets for the breasts, with shoulder straps and hook-and-eye closures. Yes, the very first over-the-shoulder boulder holder.



New York socialite Mary Jacob Phelps invented a modern bra in 1914 (with two handkerchiefs, some ribbon, and a bit of cord) to accommodate a sheer evening gown. Ms. Phelps sold her invention, which she called the brassiere, to the Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for $1,500 in 1914.

The US War Industries Board encouraged the assimilation of the bra in 1917 by encouraging women to stop buying corsets, thereby freeing up nearly 60 million pounds of the metal used in them. (That was a lot of girded loins.) During the 1920s, a Russian immigrant by the name of Ida Rosenthal founded Maidenform with her husband William. The Rosenthals grouped breasts into cup sizes and developed bras for women of every age.



From then on, the bra was here to stay - lifting, separating, supporting, and (in some cases) liberating breasts across the globe. So, you see, Bunkies, it doesn’t really matter what happened on May 30, 1889. It only matters that I’ve gotten you to read the word breast about twenty times in the last several paragraphs.

Now you know.


May 30, 1896 -
The first car accident in the United States happened in New York City on this date.

Henry Wells from Springfield, Massachusetts was out joy riding his Duryea Motor Wagon, careening along the streets at 18 mph, when he collided with with a bicycle ridden by Evylyn Thomas, New York native. She was brought to Manhattan Hospital with a broken leg.


May 30, 1906 -
Chocolate tycoon Milton Hersey opened Hersheypark which he built as a leisure park for his employees, on this date.



Over the years, a Merry-go-Round and boat rides on the creek that ran through the park were added, but It wasn’t until 1923 that the first roller coaster was built, The Wild Cat. Over the next 70 years, nine roller coasters were added, a water park, themed areas, a zoo, and other attractions.


May 30, 1908 -

Melvin Jerome Blanc, the prolific American voice actor, performing on radio, in television commercials, and most famously, in hundreds of cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera during the Golden Age of American animation, was born on this date.





He is often regarded as one of the most gifted and influential persons in his field, providing the definitive voices for iconic characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Barney Rubble among hundreds of others. His talents earned him the nickname, The Man of a Thousand Voices. When he died he had "That's All Folks" inscribed on his tombstone.


May 30, 1922 -
The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on this date.



The Memorial walls feature a typo. The north wall of the monument building features an inscription of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, a speech originally delivered in March 1865 at the tail end of the Civil War. Lincoln’s memorable incantation, “With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured,” concludes the first paragraph of the inscription, though with a minor error: The word “FUTURE” is misspelled as “EUTURE,” a blunder that remains visible despite attempts to correct it.


May 30, 1966 -
Surveyor 1, the first US spacecraft to land on an extraterrestrial body (the Moon), was launched from Cape Canaveral, on this date.



The hovercraft successful soft landed in the Ocean of Storms on the Moon on June 2, 1966. Surveyor 1 transmitted 11,237 still photos of the lunar surface to the Earth by using a television camera and a sophisticated radio-telemetry system.


May 30, 1971 -
The US space probe Mariner 9, the first satellite to orbit Mars, was launched on this date.



Over the years, it will send more than 7,000 pictures of the planet back to Earth.The images revealed what appear to be ancient dry riverbeds on the surface, suggesting the presence of water on Mars at some point in the past. Mariner 9 photographed the entire surface of Mars.


May 30, 1989 -
Chinese students erected a giant statue called "The Goddess of Democracy" in Tiananmen Square on this date.

The statue was put up as part of the ongoing student protests in Tiananmen Square, and was brought down by tanks just five days later.

(Once again, I'm not winning any fans in China.)



And so it goes.

Hope you got to see it last night

If you didn't get a chance to catch the sunset last night, don't worry -

Manhattanhenge happens again tonight at 8:13 pm EDT, (It might be cloudy though,) and then again on July 11 and 12.


May 29, 1936 -
Fritz Lang's crime thriller, Fury, starring Sylvia Sidney and Spencer Tracy, opened on this date.



Fritz Lang was the first filmmaker to use newsreel footage as a courtroom device in a motion picture, and may have done so before it was used in an actual court case.


May 29, 1942 -
The movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney, premiered at a war-bonds benefit in New York on this date.



Joan Leslie portrays Mary Cohan, aging from 18 to 57 throughout proceedings. Leslie turned 17 during the production of the film. The fact that she was still attending school during production caused numerous delays.



May 29, 1954 -
During the first 3-D craze of the 50s, Alfred Hitchcock releases his masterpiece, Dial 'M' for Murder, on this date.



Warner Bros. insisted on shooting the movie in 3-D, although the craze was fading and Alfred Hitchcock was sure the movie would be released flat. Hitchcock wanted the first shot to be that of a close-up of a finger dialing the letter M on a rotary dial telephone, but the 3-D camera would not be able to focus such a close-up correctly. Hitchcock ordered a giant finger made from wood with a proportionally large dial built in order to achieve the effect.


May 29, 1957 -
Try to follow along - On November 3, 1954, Japan released Gojira (Godzilla), the greatest fever dream and anti nuclear proliferation film ever made. On April 26, 1956, an American version of the film, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, was released. It had 40 minutes of the original excised (mostly the content dealing with World War II or the anti-nuclear message,) and had 20 minutes of the masterful deadpan stylings of Raymond Burr.



The American version did so well that Kaiju O Gojira (Godzilla, King of the Monsters) was released in Japan with Japanese subtitles on this date and did very well.


May 29, 1961 -
Ricky Nelson's song, Travelin' Man hits No. 1 on the Billboard Charts on this date.



Depending on the criteria, Travelin' Man could be the song with the very first music video. Ozzie Nelson realized that whenever he had Ricky sing on their show The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, Ricky's record sales shot up the next day, so Ozzie tried to work it into the plot whenever Ricky had a new record out. As Ricky became popular and the demand for his songs was overwhelming, Ozzie realized that working his singing into the plot was going to be impossible, so Ozzie filmed Ricky singing Travelin' Man, superimposed some travelogue scenes over the film and tacked it onto a show episode at the end. Viola! The music video was born.


May 29, 1961 -
Daniel Petrie's film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's stage play, A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, John Fiedler, and Ivan Dixon premiered in NYC, on this date.



The play was originally brought to Sidney Poitier's attention by an old friend, Philip Rose, who would also produce the movie. The play was inspired by playwright Lorraine Hansberry's family's purchase of a house in an all-white Chicago neighborhood. (The community's reaction resulted in Hansberry vs. Lee, one of the most important housing cases to ever reach the Supreme Court.) Poitier was overwhelmed by the power of the material and was happy to play in it. It's been said that A Raisin In The Sun would never have been done if Poitier had not agreed to appear in it.


May 29, 1965 -
The Beach Boys single Help Me Rhonda became the No. 1 hit on the Billboard charts, making it their second chart-topping single, on this date.



Daryl Dragon, The Captain from The Captain & Tennille, played organ on this. As was the case with many of Brian Wilson's productions, he also used some of the top Los Angeles session players on the track, including Glen Campbell on guitar, Hal Blaine on drums, and Carol Kaye on bass.


May 29, 1969 -
Crosby, Stills & Nash release their eponymous debut album, on the Atlantic Records label, on this date.



The album had two Top 40 singles, Marrakesh Express and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, which peaked respectively at No. 28 the week of August 23, 1969, and at No. 21 the week of December 6, 1969, on the US Billboard Hot 100.


May 29, 1984 -
Tina Turner's big comeback album, (her fifth solo studio album,) Private Dancer, was released by Capital Records on this date.



It became a worldwide commercial success, earning multi-platinum certifications, and remains her best-selling album in North America


May 29, 1988 -
The story of Jan Scruggs' effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, To Heal A Nation, aired on NBC TV, on this date.



Although the role is credited as "Senator Bob Mathias," the character portrayed by Laurence Luckinbill was actually a Republican member of the US House of Representatives representing California for four terms, from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1975, and never ran (nor was he appointed) for the office of either California State Senator or United States Senator from California (or any other state). The role should have been credited as either Congressman Bob Mathias or Representative Bob Mathias.


May 29, 1995 –
Pink Floyd released their third live album, a 2-CD album, Pulse, in the U.K., on this date.



Pink Floyd toured in support of their recent album, The Division Bell, for eight months between March and October 1994. The album was the live, double CD document of that tour.


Another unimportant moment in history


Today in History:
May 29, 1453 -
Constantinople was taken by Ottoman Turks on this date, after a fifty day siege led by Sultan Mehmet II. The city defense of 10,000 men was no match for a force of 100,000 armed with heavy artillery.



It is the final gasp of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Why is this important, you may well ask - it really isn't (this event is considered the end of the Middle Ages) but then again, neither is most of history.


Patrick Henry was born on May 29, 1736. Mr Henry was an American patriot best known for never having been able to make up his mind. Asked the simplest question, Mr Henry found himself befuddled for days. It therefore came as no surprise to anyone who knew him when, given the choice between liberty and death, he famously pronounced that either would be welcome.



History records his vow at St. John's Church in March of 1775 as "Give me liberty or give me death!" Eyewitnesses and other contemporaries claim he actually said, "Liberty, death, whatever, let's just wrap this puppy up."


May 29, 1913 —
Imagine, if you will, that you live in Paris and that, after a hard day of not working and drinking heavily (it's what most of the idle rich did in Paris at the time, in between bouts of sodomy, while they waited around for Marcel Proust to finish writing that damn book he was working on — but that's another story), you were dragged to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Tonight, the Ballets Russes was going to perform a new ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), with the international star Nijinsky serving as choreographer. You might have been expecting a brief snooze, but what you got instead was a full-out boxing match (not unlike an evening at Madison Square Garden).



The complex music and violent dance steps depicting fertility rites first drew catcalls and whistles from the crowd, and loud arguments erupted in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work. These were soon followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. The unrest in the audience eventually degenerated into a riot. The Paris police arrived by intermission, but they restored only limited order. Chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance, and Igor Stravinsky (the composer) himself was so upset by its reception that he fled the theater mid-scene, reportedly in tears. Fellow composer Camille Saint-Saëns famously stormed out of the première (though Stravinsky later said, “I do not know who invented the story that he was present at, but soon walked out of, the premiere”), allegedly infuriated over the misuse of the bassoon in the ballet's opening bars.



I hate when they misuse the bassoon.

Stravinsky ran backstage, where Sergei Diaghilev was turning the lights on and off in an attempt to calm the audience, much like some kind of proto-DJ. Nijinsky stood on a chair, leaned out far enough that Stravinsky had to grab his coattails, and shouted numbers to the dancers, who couldn't hear the orchestra (this was especially challenging because Russian numbers become gloriously polysyllabic above ten — such as eighteen: vosemnadtsat). All of this could have been choreographed itself. It's a marvel the show continued at all.



Although Nijinsky and Stravinsky were despondent, Diaghilev (the ballet's impresario) commented that the scandal was “just what I wanted.” The music and choreography were considered barbaric and sexual, and are often noted as the primary causes of the riot, but many political and social tensions surrounding the premiere contributed to the backlash as well. The Rite of Spring eventually became a cornerstone of 20th-century music. It influenced generations of composers, filmmakers, and choreographers. What premiered as pandemonium now stands as a cultural revolution.



It was quite an evening.


In the early morning hours of May 29, 1914, the Canadian Pacific ocean liner Empress of Ireland was cruising the St. Lawrence, headed for Liverpool. Traveling the opposite way was the Norwegian collier Storstad, weighed down by a full load of coal.



The British passenger ship collided with a Norwegian freighter and sank, taking 1,012 passengers and crewmen with her, within fourteen minutes. At the time, it was considered one of the worst disasters in maritime history.


John F. Kennedy was born 106 years ago today in 1917, and is best remembered for telling Berliners "I am a jelly-filled donut" speech, delivered in Berlin (either that or "I am a small brimmed hat, usually worn in early spring" or "I like cheese"), an axiom that many Americans found problematic in the face of increasing cold war tensions, imminent nuclear war, an escalating presence in Vietnam, the troubled state of race relations, and the ubiquitous threat of poisonous snakes.



Mr. Kennedy should not be faulted for his mangling of the phrase, he was a pill-popping, philanderer (engaging in sexual congress with Hollywood starlets, two and three at a time) in constant pain from Addison's disease and shouldn't have been expected to stay on point in a foreign language with so many other things on his mind.



Born on the same day but several centuries earlier (in 1630), England's King Charles II was best known for the saying, "Give me back my throne."


May 29, 1953 –
Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday.



Following his ascent of Everest, Sir Hillary devoted much of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded. Through his efforts many schools and hospitals were built in this remote region of Nepal.


May 29, 1997 -
Singer songwriter Jeff Buckley disappeared after talking a swim in the Mississippi River, on this date. He was in Memphis recording his sophomore album at the time.



His body would be recovered on June 4, after being spotted by a passenger on a tourist riverboat.



And so it goes.