Rewarding people who miss their mark

Happy Columbus Never Met An Indigenous Person He Didn't Kill or Enslave Day! I can't even imagine how many more indigenous persons Columbus may have murdered if he didn't have the day off.



Columbus Day originated as a celebration of Italian-American heritage and was first held in San Francisco in 1869. The first state-wide celebration was held in Colorado in 1907. Franklin Delano Roosevelt pronounced Columbus Day in 1937, a celebration of the “promise which Columbus’s discovery gave to the world.” Since 1971, it has been celebrated on the second Monday in October. The date on which Columbus arrived in the Americas is also celebrated as the Dia de la Raza (Day of the Race) in Latin America and some Latino communities in the USA. However, it is a controversial holiday in some countries and has been re-named in others. A growing number of people in the US are pushing to change the date into a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day.



And all of this has nothing to do with the fact that it's Canadian Thanksgiving.


Today is the last day of International Cephalopod Awareness Days, and we are celebrating International Fossil Day (according to the folks at the National Park Service, they prefer to celebrate National Fossil Day on the second Wednesday in October and given that they are part of the government, they have any reason to be capricious or arbitrary.)



But today is (or should be) Fossil Day, celebrating all the incredible suckers that have gone extinct.


October 12, 1940 -
The Looney Tunes short, Prehistoric Porky, directed by Bob Clampett and starring Porky Pig, was released on this date.



The "magazine for cavemen" that Porky gets in the mail has a number of Warner Bros. employees' names on the cover.


October 12, 1940 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Holiday Highlights, directed by Tex Avery, was released on this date.



The joke about Thanksgiving being on different dates for Democrats and Republicans is lost on most people today, but before 1939 Thanksgiving was not a fixed date, it relied on a Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation each year.


October 12, 1950 -
One of the first comedy series to make the successful transition from radio to television The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



George Burns is regarded as being the first entertainer to step out of character and "break the fourth wall" by directly addressing the television audience. On many occasions, Burns stated he had been inspired by Thornton Wilder's 1938 play Our Town.


October 12, 1957 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Touché and Go, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Pepe Le Pew, was released on this date.



Pepe breaks the fourth wall in his usual suave, Gallic manner.


October 12, 1966 -
Sammy Davis, Jr. makes a cameo appearance on the ABC-TV series Batman - The Clock King's Crazy Crimes,



during one of their legendary Batclimbs, on this date.


October 12, 1968
The second studio album by Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, reached number one on the charts for eight nonconsecutive weeks on this date.



It was their last album with Janis Joplin as lead singer before she started a solo career.


October 12, 1969 -
An almost forgotten film, The Madwoman of Chaillot, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katherine Hepburn and an all-star cast, opened in the U.S. on this date.



The only one of Katharine Hepburn's four films during the 1960s (including Long Day's Journey Into Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Lion in Winter) for which she wasn't Oscar-nominated.


October 12, 1972 -
Motown Productions and Paramount Pictures released the Sidney J. Furie, Billie Holiday bio-pix, Lady Sings The Blues, starring Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, and Scatman Crothers, on this date.



Dorothy Dandridge was to star in the role of Billie Holiday in an earlier proposed film version of the singer's autobiography but died before the film was made.


October 12, 1993 -
Touchstone Pictures releases the stop-motion animated feature film The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton, on this date.



In 2001, Walt Disney Pictures began to consider producing a sequel, but rather than using stop motion, Disney wanted to use computer animation. Tim Burton convinced Disney to drop the idea. "I was always very protective of [Nightmare] not to do sequels or things of that kind," Burton explained. "You know, 'Jack visits Thanksgiving world' or other kinds of things just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it."


October 12, 1994 -
The MTV Unplugged series premiered on this date, the much anticipated Robert Plant and Jimmy Page reunion, Unledded, to promote their stir album No Quarter which would be released two days later on October 14, 1994.



The reunion led to a tour in 1995 and a studio album, Walking Into Clarksdale, in 1998.


October 12, 1996 –
Though they've refused to release it on video for 27 years, largely due to dissatisfaction over their own performance, The Rolling Stones finally release their landmark 1968 all-star BBC television special, The Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus, on this date.



This is Brian Jones's last live performance with The Rolling Stones. He was kicked out of the band a few months after the show was filmed in June of 1969 and died a short time later.


October 12, 2007 -
The follow-up to Cate Blanchett's successful 1998 bio-pix Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, also starring Geoffrey Rush, and Clive Owen, opened in the U.S., on this date.



To save money, only one ship replica was built. It was Raleigh's English vessel on one side and a Spanish galleon on the other. When filming wide shots of the deck, smoke was used to cover up any separation in design.


October 12, 2008 -
The Fox Searchlight Pictures distributed Darren Aronofsky's film, The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke (in an intensely incredible performance,) and Maresi Tomei, closed the New York Film Festival on this date.



The first scene of Randy working the deli counter was improvised. When real customers kept walking up to the counter during filming, Darren Aronofsky told Mickey Rourke to take their orders while the camera would continue rolling. Also improvised were all of the backstage locker room scenes.


October 12, 2013 –
At 16, New Zealander Lorde (Ella Yelich-O'Connor) became the youngest solo artist to write and record a Billboard No. #1 hit when Royals took that position on this date.



Yelich-O'Connor was discovered when her now manager, Scott Maclachlan, saw a video of her performing at a Belmont Intermediate School talent show when she was 12.



Lorde inspiration for writing the song came from listening to the Kanye West and Jay-Z project Watch the Throne, as well as Lana Del Rey's debut album, Born To Die. "What really got me," she told The Observer, "is this ridiculous, unrelatable, unattainable opulence that runs throughout. Lana Del Rey is always singing about being in the Hamptons or driving her Bugatti Veyron or whatever, and at the time, me and my friends were at some house party worrying how to get home because we couldn't afford a cab. This is our reality!" (laughs). "If I write songs about anything else then I'm not writing anything that's real."


Word of the Day


Today in History:
October 12, 1492 -
Christopher Columbus, not the brightest bulb in the explorers club, reached America, making his first landing in the New World on one of the Bahamas Islands.



Columbus believed he had reached India.



It was discovered that Columbus' ships really landed on the 13th of October, 1492, he was persuaded by Dutch sailor Piet de Stuini (or DeStynie) to change it to the 12th in the logs because he said that the number 13 might frighten sailors and future investors away. An Italian study group called the Colombiani detected this change.


October 12, 1609 -
The children's nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice was published in London on this date.



The Three Blind Mice are thought to refer to a trio of Protestant bishops Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Radley, and The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who were all burnt at the stake during Bloody Mary’s reign. This is reportedly the earliest known secular song published.


October 12, 1810 -

The first Oktoberfest began on this date as a festival celebrating the marriage of Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen and Prince Louis of Bavaria (later King Ludwig I) in Munich, Germany.



The festival was such a success, the locals decided to hold it annually. (a great little known fact - Albert Einstein, once worked as an electrician and helped to set up one of the beer tents in 1896.)


October 12, 1915 -

British nurse Edith Cavell, was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels for helping Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I. The night before her execution she told the Anglican chaplain, Rev. Gahan, who had been allowed to see her, 'Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.' These words are inscribed on her statue in St. Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square in London.



Her final words to the German pastor were recorded as 'Ask Mr. Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.'

Pretty tough cookie.


October 12, 1960 -
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe during a dispute on this date.



This resulted in the popular stereotype of the Soviet Dictator who pounds his desk with his shoe.

In fact, many Soviet Dictators did not pound their desks with their shoes. They had their deputies do it for them.


October 12, 1960 -
The assassination of Japanese politician Inejiro Asanuma was accidentally broadcast live during a televised debate on this date.



Asanuma was attacked with a sword by 17-year old a right-wing ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi. While awaiting trial, Yamaguchi hanged himself, a few weeks later. Yamaguchi became a hero and a martyr to the Japanese far-right, and commemorations in his honor continue to this day.


October 12, 1964 -
The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 with astronauts Boris Yegorov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Vladamir Komarov on board (the first space flight to carry more than one crewman into orbit.)



This was also the first mission flown without ejection seats, an escape tower, or even spacesuits (which in itself was a first).


October 12, 1969 -
The Soyuz 7 spacecraft was launched on this date. The main goals of this mission in the official version was to test spacecraft systems and designs, maneuvering of the space craft with respect to Soyuz 6, which had launched a day earlier.



When it achieves orbit, it marks the first time in history that five people are in space at the same time (the three astronauts aboard Soyuz 7 and the two aboard Soyuz 6.)

Wait for it, there's more to this story.


October 12, 1970 -
During his court martial for the My Lai Massacre, Lt. William Calley testified that Cpt. Ernest Medina had ordered that anybody they couldn't move would be "wasted."

Which is why Calley said he and his men killed 350 Vietnamese, including more than 100 civilian men, women, and children.


October 12, 1973 -
U.S. President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford for the vice presidency, under the 25th Amendment, to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two days earlier.

As I've mentioned before, Ford was on the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination. When Nixon resigned, Ford became president. One of his first acts was to pardon Richard Nixon.

I'm not saying that there is a connection but it gives you pause.


October 12, 1997 -
Folk singer John Denver died when the small plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay on the California coast.



Divers later recover most of the body, but not the head. Denver was ultimately identified by his fingerprints.

Perhaps you really didn't want to know that part.


October 12, 2000 -
In the port of Aden in Yemen, a large bomb, carried by two suicide terrorists on a rubber raft, caused heavy damage to the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 39.



This event was the deadliest attack against a U.S. Naval vessel since 1987.



And so it goes

Let's celebrate what lurks beneath

Continuing our salute to International Cephalopod Awareness Days, celebrated October 8th through the 12th - Today is Myths and Legends Day.







We here at ACME salute all the fantastical cephalopods of movies, literature and legend.


It's World Egg Day!



So yes, let's all celebrate the incredible edible egg



Egg prices are lower than they were compared to the high prices earlier this year, (You're welcome.) I have spoken to the Egg Board about that situation.


I nearly forgot that the second Sunday in October is designated as Father–Daughters Day today, as opposed to (just) Daughters Day. Once again UN negotiators were called in, and after several tense meetings with some not so high priced ACME lawyers, we was able to use the following photo as long as UN observers were also present

I am allowed to say that two people in this photograph were my legitimate tax deductions at one point.


October 11, 1941 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Bug Parade, directed by Tex Avery, was released on this date.



This was the last Warner Bros. cartoon that Tex Avery finished before he left for Paramount to work on the short-lived Speaking of Animals shorts. He later moved to the MGM cartoon studio.


October 11, 1944 -
The romantic noir classic, Laura, starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price, premiered in NYC on this date.



Clifton Webb had to deal with the shock of seeing himself on-screen after a long absence from Hollywood. Watching the first batch of rushes that included his first scene in the tub when he meets McPherson, Webb nearly had a heart attack: "When I saw myself sitting in the bathtub looking very much like Mohandas K. Gandhi. I felt I might vomit. After it was over, Dana (Andrews) saved my life with a big swig of bourbon. The first shock of seeing myself had a strange effect on me, psychologically, as it made me realize for the first time that I was no longer a dashing young juvenile, which I must have fancied myself being through the years in the theatre."


October 11, 1958 -
Spencer Tracy was virtually the whole movie in The Old Man and the Sea, which opened in U.S. theaters on this date.



Ernest Hemingway was initially involved in the production, although the extent of his participation after selling his book's film rights to Warner Bros. was to go marlin fishing off the coast of Peru to try to find a fish suitable for use in the film. In the end, the producers used a rubber marlin and stock footage of marlin fishing in which Hemingway didn't participate. After seeing the film, Hemingway expressed his disappointment, remarking that Spencer Tracy looked less like a Cuban peasant fisherman than the rich actor he was. Nevertheless, Tracy earned an Oscar nomination for the role.


October 11, 1958 -
The Looney Tunes short, Hook, Line and Stinker, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, was released on this date.



Coyote subtly breaks the fourth wall here as he's pouring the bird seed. Silently, of course.


October 11, 1962 -
We all got to follow the wacky adventures of the crew of PT-73 when McHale's Navy set sail for the first time on this date on ABC-TV.



Ensign Charles Parker (Tim Conway) often mentioned that he was from Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Conway grew up in Chagrin Falls in real-life.


October 11, 1963 -
CBS aired the classic The Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, starring William Shatner on this date.



Writer Richard Matheson said he was mostly pleased with Twilight Zone's version of his short story - except for the gremlin. He'd conceived it as a dark, creepy and nearly-invisible humanoid figure. "But this thing," he complained, "looked more like a panda bear."


October 11, 1965 –
The excellent, though nearly forgotten Cold War drama, The Bedford Incident, directed by James B. Harris, and starring Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Eric Portman, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam, Wally Cox, and Donald Sutherland, opened in the US on this date.



The U.S. Department of Defense withheld full cooperation in making the picture after negative portrayals of the U.S. military in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Seven Days in May. These pictures strained the Pentagon's relations with Hollywood filmmakers. However, according to a contemporary article in the Los Angeles Times, James B. Harris and screenwriter James Poe were able to visit a U.S. Navy destroyer based at Norfolk, Virginia for pre-production research in late 1963.


October 11, 1975 -
The long running (some say too long running) comedy variety show started at 11:30 PM, on this date, with George Carlin as its host. It was called NBC's Saturday Night, because ABC featured a program at the same time titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. After ABC canceled the Cosell program in 1976, the NBC program changed its name to Saturday Night Live on March 26, 1977.





Besides George Carlin being the guest host, the musical guests included Janis Ian, performing At Seventeen and In the Winter, and Billy Preston, performing Nothing from Nothing and Fancy Lady.


October 11, 1981 -
The surprise art-house hit, My Dinner With Andre, starring Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory (sitting around, eating and talking,) premiered on this date.



In the movie Wally and Andre specifically mention electric blankets as one of the negative examples of technology in the modern world. As it turned out, because of the overly cold set they had to work on, many of the cast and crew resorted to using them to stay warm.


October 11, 1986 -
Janet Jackson's single, When I Think of You goes to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100, on this date, making her and Michael the first siblings to land #1 solo singles on the chart.



Jackson was just 20 years old when this was released, but she had already put out two albums, including her self-titled debut in 1982.


October 11, 2003 -
Justin Timberlake made his first of five appearance as host on Saturday Night Live, doing double-duty as host and musical guest, on this date.



Timberlake has appeared seven times as a musical guest over the years. During the Punk'd Barely Legal sketch, Justin Timberlake wears the same 'Jesus is my Homeboy' T-Shirt worn a week earlier by Jack Black in The Wade Robson Project sketch.


October 11, 2006 -
One of the funniest shows about TV (other than Mary Tyler Moore) 30 Rock, starring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and Tracy Morgan, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Alec Baldwin loved Jack's wardrobe so much that he purchased the suits at the end of the series. According to costume designer Tom Broecker, Baldwin "wrote a big check to NBC" so he could take the clothes home when the show ended.


Another album from the discount bin at The ACME Record Shoppe today


Today in History:
October 11, 1884 -
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, was born in New York City on this date.



She was the first wife of a president to hold her own news conference at the White House, in 1933. She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 until 1952. During her time at the United Nations, she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


October 11, 1890 -
Founded in Washington D.C. on this date, the Daughters of the American Revolution has chapters around the world and in all 50 US states. They work to promote US patriotism and preserve history as well as raise money for educational scholarships.



All members have a traceable ancestry lineage to someone who actively worked to achieve US independence. Since the mid-1980s, the DAR has supported a project to identify the names of African Americans, Native Americans, and individuals of mixed race who were patriots of the American Revolution.


October 11, 1899 -
The Bores of South Africa declared war on Great Britain in the hopes of generating interest, on this date.



(The war should not be confused with the Boar War, which had been canceled on account of the loss of tusks.)


October 11, 1910 -
Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane on this date. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey at Kinloch Field (Lambert-St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri in a plane built by the Wright Brothers.



He was having such a good time, he became the first US President to be repeatedly clubbed like a baby seal to get him out of the plane.

Bully!


October 11, 1919 -
Britain's Handley Page Transport became the first airline to serve in-flight meals when it offered lunch boxes on its London-to-Paris flight on this date.



The meals, consisting of a sandwich, fruits and chocolate, were sold at 3 shillings each. (British Airways has some of those first meals still available for purchase.)


October 11, 1939 -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt receives the Einstein-Szilárd letter, in which notable physicists warn Roosevelt of the possibility of Nazi Germany conducting research on nuclear fission in an attempt to create an atomic bomb. They urge Roosevelt to launch a similar research program before it’s too late.



The letter was written by Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner, but it will receive considerable national attention because it was also signed by renowned scientist and media icon Albert Einstein. The letter will arguably become the genesis of the Manhattan Project, and it will later become legendary when it’s revealed by scientist Linus Pauling that, by the end of his life, signing this letter had become one of Einstein’s greatest regrets.


October 11, 1952 -
Referee Francis DeReus halted the college football match between Wesleyan and Dubuque because of the profanity spewing from Dubuque's coach, Kenneth "Moco" Mercer. DeReus tossed coach and team from the game, and called the game because of profanity. The final score was Iowa Wesleyan 1, Dubuque 0. History does not record which vulgarities were involved.

Wanna guess?


October 11, 1961 -
Leonard 'Chico' Marx, the oldest of the Marx Brothers, died on this date. Chico was a compulsive womanizer and had a lifelong gambling habit. His addiction cost him millions of dollars by his own account. His brother, Gummo Marx, in an interview years after Chico's death, said, "Chico's favorite people were actors who gambled, producers who gambled, and women who screwed."



For a while in the 1930s and 1940s Chico led a big band. Singer Mel Torme began his professional career singing with the Chico Marx Orchestra (Desi Arnaz also toured with that band.)



Chico's lifelong gambling addiction compelled him to continue in show business long after his brothers had retired in comfort from their Hollywood income, and in the early 40s, he found himself playing in the same small, cheap halls he had begun his career in 30 years previously.



It was rumored that when Bugsy Siegal was shot, one of the items found on his person was a check from Chico, payment of a gambling debt from a poker game.


October 11, 1968 -
NASA launched Apollo 7, the first successful manned mission in the Apollo lunar-landing program on this date. The launch was performed with very little fanfare, as it was the first American space mission since three astronauts died in a fire aboard Apollo 1.



The mission, however, does mark the first live television transmission from a spacecraft in orbit.


October 11, 1975 -
William Jefferson (Blythe III) Clinton and Hillary Diane Rodham were married in Fayetteville, Arkansas 47 years ago, on this date.



The past is another country: they absolutely did things differently there.


October 11, 1976 -
After the death of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Mao's widow Jiang Qing and three others, dubbed the "Gang of Four," were arrested and charged with plotting a coup, on this date.

After the death of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Mao's widow Jiang Qing and three others, dubbed the "Gang of Four," were arrested and charged with plotting a coup, on this date. Their first album, Entertainment! was released two years later.



After their re-education, eventually, so were they.


October 11, 1978 -
Former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) stabbed girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb) to death in room 100 of New York's Chelsea Hotel on this date. Because Sid remembered nothing about the crime, theories include robbery and an abortive suicide pact. Vicious died of an ugly heroin overdose shortly before his trial.



Folks, there are no pretty heroin overdoses.


October 11, 1984 -
Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space on this date. During her three-hour extra-vehicular activity (EVA), Sullivan tested NASA's Orbital Refueling System (ORS) to determine the feasibility of fueling satellites in orbit.



Sullivan was joined aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger by Sally Ride, the first American woman to reach outer space. Mission STS-41-G was the first space flight with two women astronauts.


October 11, 1991 -
One of the comedian Redd Foxx and the cast of The Royal Family were in the midst of practicing. “They were rehearsing on the set and clowning around, and Redd was sort of breaking people up when he collapsed,” said Rachel McCallister, a spokesperson for the show, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “They all thought he was joking around at first, and then they called the paramedics.”signature running gags involved faking a heart attack by putting his hand on his chest and saying "It's the big one, I'm coming to join ya honey/Elizabeth" (referring to his late wife).



So when he had a real heart attack on the set of his television show on this date, his castmates thought he was trying to be funny. It proved to be fatal and Foxx died later the same day.


October 11, 2008 -
Luc Costermans, of Belgium, wanted to prove something on this date. So he borrowed a Lamborghini Gallardo that was outfitted with some special equipment. (I don't have any friends that would loan me their Lamborghinis.)



Driving with Guillaume Roman, Costermans drove 192 miles per hour on an airstrip in France, breaking the previous record of 178.5 miles per hour, which had been set three years before.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Costermans was blind and apparently Roman was crazy.



And so it goes

Celebrate with a little Fra Diablo sauce

With your newsfeed jam packed with other, more heady news, some may not remember that we are celebrating cephalopods this week - today we also celebrate Squid Day/Cuttlefish Day.



Calamari could loom large in your day today.


Today is also Hug a Drummer Day.

Without drummers, we would soon notice how different and even weak music can be, so hail a day to celebrate such percussionists!


October 10, 1936 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Boulevardier from the Bronx , directed by Friz Freleng, was released on this date.



The first Merrie Melodies cartoon to use Merrily We Roll Along as its theme. This cartoon also debuts a blue Warner Bros. shield, which would be used until sometime in 1938.


October 10, 1941 -
The last movie W C Fields starred in, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, premiered on this date.



W. C. Fields wanted to call the film The Great Man. When Universal executives insisted on the title Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (taken from the end of his previous film Poppy), Fields said, "What does it matter, they'll never get that on a marquee. It'll probably boil down to 'W. C. Fields - Sucker.'"


October 10, 1953 -
The wonderful Stan Freberg record, St. George and the Dragonet, was No. 1 on the Billboard Charts, on this dated.



The B side was another Dragnet spoof, Little Blue Riding Hood, based on the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood.


October 10, 1956 -
George Steven's sprawling epic, Giant, premiered in NYC on this date.



Rock Hudson and James Dean did not get along. Although later rumors would suggest that Dean had rejected a pass from Hudson, most sources reported that each had little respect for the other's approach to acting, and Hudson resented what he considered Dean's unprofessional behavior.


October 10, 1957 -
Guy Williams galloped across TV screens as the masked hero, when Zorro, debuted on ABC-TV on this date.



Although Zorro was the most popular show in its Thursday evening slot, the series was pulled in 1959 due to legal wrangling between the Disney Studios and the ABC network. Disney tried to keep the character before the audience by shooting four one-hour episodes for another anthology series, but by the time the lawsuit was settled, the studio had decided the public had lost interest in the character and the series was cancelled.


October 10, 1958 -
The private-eye series 77 Sunset Strip starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



The ownership battle over the rights to this show was the reason that Roy Huggins left Warner Bros. He'd created the concept behind the series, and Stuart Bailey was his creation, but the pilot episode was released theatrically, and had not been written by Huggins at all. It was a Warner Bros. property because the actual writer had been working for hire and had no legal claim to it, and so legal ownership of the show belonged to them.


October 10, 1959 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Wild About Hurry, directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, was released on this date.



The roadrunner breaks the wall in a non-traditional way to end the short. This technique would be used several times in the roadrunner coyote series.


October 10, 1961 -
Elia Kazan's bittersweet romance, Splendor in the Grass, starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, premiered on this date.



In the bath scene, Natalie Wood's wrist is very briefly revealed. She normally always wore a bulky bracelet or long sleeves to hide the protrusion of a bone in her wrist which she thought to be an ugly anomaly.


October 10, 1962 -
The British Broadcasting Company banned Monster Mash -- the Halloween-themed novelty tune by Bobby "Boris" Pickett -- for being "offensive."



The BBC felt the song was offensive (but never specifies precisely why) and banned it from the airwaves until 1973. It was re-released in 1973 and the song rose to #3 in the charts in the UK. By this time, Boris Pickett was driving a cab in New York City to earn a living.


October 10, 1964 -
The Shangri-Las released their operatic hit, Leader of the Pack, on this date.



This was written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry and producer Shadow Morton. Morton was looking for a follow-up to the first Shangri-Las' hit, Remember (Walking in the Sand). He had a motorcycle and was part of a motorcycle gang in his youth, so he, Greenwich and Barry decided to use that as the theme. Together, they came up with the rather dramatic story, being sure to name the characters in the lyric (Betty and Johnny) so the listener could form an attachment. A hallmark of the song is the spoken dialogue that sets up the story.



Later in 1964, The Detergents recorded a parody of this song called Leader Of The Laundromat.


October 10, 1966 -
The lumbering epic, based on the eponymous 1959 novel by James A. Michener, Hawaii. directed by George Roy Hill, and starring Julie Andrews, Max von Sydow, Richard Harris, Gene Hackman, and Carroll O'Connor premiered on this date. (If you don't blink, you can see Bette Midler, in her first screen appearance and an extra.) While the film opened to only middling reviews, it did quite well in the box office,



Fred Zinnemann was originally slated to direct and Audrey Hepburn and Sir Alec Guinness were set to star. Unfortunately, conflicts with producer Walter Mirisch and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, as well as numerous delays caused by the weather, forced him to walk off the project shortly before filming started. George Roy Hill was brought in to direct.


October 10, 1968 -
One of the silliest movies Jane Fonda (or anyone else, for that matter) ever made, Barbarella, landed in US theatres on this date.



Lobby card stills and set photographs survive, showing footage of a seduction scene between Barbarella and the Black Queen on a bed. However, this footage has never appeared in any print of the movie.


October 10, 1969 -
King Crimson releases their debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, considered by many to be the first progressive rock album.



An Atlantic Records ad at the time of the album's release claimed it featured the heaviest riffs on record since Mahler's 8th Symphony. "I know it had to cost ten thousand pounds to make," The Who's Pete Townshend was quoted as saying. "I can't tell if it's worth it."


October 10, 1980 -
The very funny comedy, directed by Howard Zieff, Private Benjamin, starring Goldie Hawn, Eileen Brennan, and Armand Assante, went into general release in the US on this date.



This movie was the first ever movie screenplay especially written and tailored for Goldie Hawn. This was also the first film that she ever acted as a producer. Hawn said of this in the biography Pure Goldie: The Life and Times of Goldie Hawn by Marc Shapiro: "I didn't plan on becoming a producer... I only wanted to create better roles for myself, and I loved the idea of Private Benjamin so much that I felt it would be the perfect opportunity to finally control my own destiny."


October 10, 1986 -
Warner Bros. released the quirky musical comedy, True Stories, starring David Byrne, John Goodman, Swoosie Kurtz, and Spalding Gray in the US on this date. Talking Heads recorded an album featuring their versions of the songs featured in the movie.



The Puzzling Evidence segment of the film was inspired by the Church of the Sub-Genius, a parody religion to which David Byrne is an adherent. In church lore, Puzzling Evidence is the name of the assassin of the religion's fictional founder, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs.


October 10, 2000 -
The comedy series The Geena Davis Show, starring Geena Davis (of course), Peter Horton, Mimi Rogers, and Kim Coles, premiered on ABC-TV, on this date.



Geena Davis had tried out for archery in the 2000 Olympics but fell short of qualifying for the team, ranking 24th place, which increased her obsession with the sport. Hoping to go to the 2004 Olympics, Davis persistently practiced on set, and as a gag, she gave costar Peter Horton a T-shirt with a giant target on it.

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


Today in History:
October 10, 1780 -
Over 48 hours, a slow-moving hurricane decimates Barbados, killing 4,326 (however according to the island's governor, "fortunately few people of consequence were among the number").

Over the next week, the catastrophic storm system moves on to Martinique (9,000 dead) and St. Eustatius (4-5,000). The unprecedented Great Hurricane of 1780 remains the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record.


October 10, 1813 -
It's Joe Green's birthday today.



Verdi was so beloved in Italy that while he lay dying in the Grand Hotel in Milan, the horses in town had their hooves covered in cloth, so the noise would not disturb him.


October 10, 1886 -
Pierre Lorillard's family were wealthy tobacco magnates who owned country property in Tuxedo Park, just outside of New York City. At a formal ball, held at the Tuxedo Club in October 1886, the young Lorillard wore a new style of formal wear for men that he designed himself.



He named his tailless black jacket the tuxedo after Tuxedo Park. The tuxedo caught on and became fashionable as formal wear for men.


October 10, 1910 -
You think "The Skull and Bones" Society rule this country. Several of the readers and I (and well as George Stephanopoulos) are members of the fraternity, Tau Epsilon Phi. (It causes me a great deal of grief to think that Rick Santorium and I share a common fraternity.)

Tau Epsilon Phi (TEF, commonly pronounced "TEP") is a predominantly American fraternity with approximately 40 active chapters, chiefly located at universities and colleges in the Northeastern United States. The organization was founded on this date, by ten Jewish men at Columbia University, as a response to the existence of similar organizations who would not admit Jewish members. The national headquarters is currently located in Voorhees, New Jersey and the official colors of the organization are lavender and white (although most chapters use purple instead of lavender).

But don't ask about our secret handshake or whose pinball machine we had in the basement.


October 10, 1911 -
Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel was the distiller and the founder of the Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey company. He was known as an impatient man; he wouldn't wait for anything.



One day, coming to work early, he was unable to open his safe, having trouble remembering the combination. In frustration he kicked it, injuring his toe. The toe became infected and he died of blood poisoning on this day.


October 10, 1911 -
The Chinese revolution began in Hankow, on this date.



The revolution spread rapidly, resulting in the abdication of six-year-old Henry Pu-Yi, the Academy Award-winning "Last Emperor" of China.


October 10, 1913 -
Two years later on this date, President Woodrow Wilson was bored and puttering around the White House. He started fiddling around with things on his desk and pressed a button.

This triggered a blast which exploded the Gamboa Dike down in Panama and somehow the Panama Canal was completed on this date and a popular palindrome was born.

Why the China Revolution and the completion of the Panama Canal are connected is anybody's guess?


October 10, 1957 -
A fire in the Windscale plutonium production reactor (later called Sellafield) north of Liverpool, England, spread radioactive iodine and polonium through the countryside and into the Irish Sea. Livestock in the immediate area were destroyed, along with 500,000 gallons of milk.



At least 30, and possibly as many as 1,000, cancer deaths were subsequently linked to the accident. The event, known as the Windscale fire, was considered the world's worst nuclear accident until the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. (Then both were dwarfed by the Russian Chernobyl disaster in 1986.) PM Harold Macmillan ordered the disaster hushed up.


October 10, 1964 -
NBC-TV aired the opening ceremonies of the XVIII Olympiad in Tokyo on this date. The 1964 Summer Games were the first Olympics held in Asia, and the first time South Africa was barred from taking part due to its apartheid system in sports



It was the first live color TV program to be transmitted to the U.S. by satellite. (And ok smartpants, the games were help in October to avoid the mid summer heat of Japan and the typhoon season in September.)


October 10, 1967 -
The Outer Space Treaty, formally known as the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, signed on January 27, 1967 by more than sixty nations, went into effect on this date.



The treaty prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space and forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet.


October 10, 1973 -
Bribe-happy Vice President Spiro T. Agnew finally resigned, after pleading Nolo contendere to federal income tax evasion on this date.



It should be noted that humorist Dave Barry points out that one can rearrange the letters in "Spiro Agnew" to spell "Grow A Penis."

October 10, 1985 -

... A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.



As to all, cheap wine hawkers, voice-over whores and movie legends, Orson Welles, whose remarkably innovative Citizen Kane was named the best American-made picture of all time in a 1998 American Film Institute poll, died of a heart attack at the age of 70 on this date.

Yul Brynner, Russian-born, Academy Award-winning Broadway and Hollywood actor died on October 10, 1985 (the same day as Orson Welles, his co-star in The Battle of Neretva) in New York City. The cause of death was lung cancer brought on by smoking. Throughout his life, Brynner was always seen with a cigarette in his hand. In January 1985, nine months before his death, he gave an interview on Good Morning America, expressing his desire to make an anti-smoking commercial.

The clip from that interview was made into just such a public service announcement by the American Cancer Society and released after his death; it includes the warning "Now that I'm gone, I tell you, don't smoke."



If only he listened to himself.



And so it goes