I want to ride my bicycle

Today commemorates the first recorded 'on purpose' LSD trip taken by Albert Hofmann, on this date in 1943, (Hoffman 'accidentially' dosed himself three days previously.)



If you are going to celebrate the holiday, remember to titrate your trip correctly.


April 19, 1927 -
Cecil B. Demille's silent-film version of The King of Kings premiered on this date.



It is rumored that the film featured author Ayn Rand as one of the hundreds of people in a crowd. At a time when Rand was a struggling immigrant, Cecil B. DeMille gave her the job to help get her on her feet.


April 19, 1935 -
James Whale's brilliant sequel to Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Elsa Lanchester, Ernest Thesiger, and Oliver Peters Heggie, premiered in the U.S. on this date.



Boris Karloff protested against the decision to make The Monster speak, but was overruled. Since he was required to speak in this film, Karloff was not able to remove his partial bridgework as he had done to help give the Monster his sunken cheek appearance in the first Frankenstein. That's why The Monster appears fuller of face in the sequel.


April 19, 1941-
The Looney Tunes short, Porky's Preview, directed by Tex Avery and starring Porky Pig, debuted on this date.



This is the last Porky Pig cartoon Tex Avery directed, alongside his last black-and-white Looney Tunes cartoon he directed.



April 19, 1946 -
Raymond Chandler's film-noir classic The Blue Dahlia premiered on this date.



One of the reasons that Veronica Lake was selected to star opposite Alan Ladd was because of her height. Ladd was a notably short leading man (5' 6"), and Lake's similarly diminutive stature (4' 11") meant that the filmmakers did not have to make Ladd appear taller by comparison. At the same time, Ladd resented Doris Dowling, who played his wife in the film, because she was half a foot taller than him, and tried to have her replaced. The producers placated Ladd by having Dowling sitting or lying down during all her scenes with him.


April 19, 1952-
The Looney Tunes short, Water, Water Every Hare, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny and Gossamer, debuted on this date.



This is the second appearance of the orange monster, but here he is named Rudolph. In his debut in Hair-Raising Hare, he had no name and was simply "Monster" (as is indicated on the locked door from where he first appears in this short). In his third appearance (decades later) in Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century, his name is Gossamer. The mad scientist in this short is patterned after Boris Karloff right down to the heavy eyebrows and Dr. Frankenstein riffs that made Karloff a household name from the 1930s through the 1960s.

April 19, 1961 -
Frederico Fellini's iconic, La Dolce Vita, premiered in the United States on this date.



When shooting the famous Fontana di Trevi scene, director Federico Fellini complained that the water in the fountain looked dirty. A representative of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) present at the shooting was able to supply the film team with some of the airline's green sea dye marker (for use in case of an emergency landing at sea). This was used to color the water, and the director was satisfied.


April 19, 1973 -
The sci-fi thriller Soylent Green, directed by Richard Fleischer, and starring Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, and Edward G. Robinson (in his final film role), opened in New York City on this date.



During shooting, Edward G. Robinson was almost totally deaf. He could hear people only if they spoke directly into his ear. His dialogue scenes with other people had to be shot several times before he got the rhythm of the dialogue and was able to respond to people as if he could hear them. He could not hear director Richard Fleischer yell "cut" when a scene went wrong, so Robinson would often continue acting out the scene, unaware that shooting had stopped.


April 19, 1978 -
The Patti Smith Group released the song Because the Night on this date.



Bruce Springsteen wrote this song. He gave it to Patti Smith in 1976 because he thought it would suit her voice. He was also in a legal battle with his manager, Mike Appel, that kept him from recording for almost three years.


April 19, 1980 -
Blondie song Call Me, featured in the Richard Gere movie American Gigolo went to No.1 on the US singles chart on this date.



Disco producer Giorgio Moroder wrote this with Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry, who thus became the first woman in British chart history to write three #1 hits. However she wasn't Moroder's first choice. The Italian disco king had originally wanted Stevie Nicks to provide vocals on the track but the Fleetwood Mac vocalist declined the offer.


April 19, 1986
Prince's single Kiss hits #1 on the US Billboard Charts, on this date. The #2 song is Manic Monday by the Bangles, which was written by Prince.





The band Mazarati, which was formed by Prince's bass player Brown Mark and signed to his Paisley Park record label, asked Prince for a song for their debut album, so he took a break from his Parade sessions and dashed off a minute-long bluesy acoustic demo for them on a mini tape recorder. Mazarati and producer David Z re-worked the song, giving it an irresistible funk groove. When he heard it, Prince was smart enough to take the song right back. He replaced their lead vocal, added the guitar break in the chorus and included it as a last-minute addition to his Parade album.


April 19, 1987 -
The Simpsons make their television debut in the short Good Night - a segment for The Tracey Ullman Show.



(I had to hang around the murky world of the internet underground to get this blurry copy of the clip. I'd like to show you a better version of the clip but the goons, I mean lawyers from Fox would break my legs and I've just about gotten used to walking.)

I wonder whatever happened to The Simpsons.


April 19, 1987 -
The short-lived but critically acclaimed series, Duet, starring Mary Page Keller, Matthew Laurance, Allison La Placa, and Chris Lemmon, premiered on the Fox Network, on this date. The series was part of the original Sunday prime time line up for the network that launched in April 1987.





Alison La Placa was only hired to appear in two episodes, but the crew liked her and decided to keep her around. She gradually became the show's breakout character and landed her own spinoff when this series was canceled.


April 19, 1990 -
Folks got to start flying Sandpiper Air, out of Tom Nevers Field airport in Nantucket, Massachusetts, when Wings, starring Tim Daly, Steven Weber, Crystal Bernard, David Schramm, Rebecca Schull, and Thomas Haden Church, premiered on NBC TV, on this date.



Tim Daly (Joseph Hackett), Steven Weber (Brian Hackett), Crystal Bernard (Helen Chappel Hackett) and David Schramm (Roy Biggins) are the only actors to appear in all 172 episodes of the series


April 19, 1990 -
On the BBC, the television program, French and Saunders Show, airs a Pythonque courthouse sketch featured the guitarists David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, Gary Moore and Lemmy.



The sketch ended with a jam by the musicians. Please watch the clip; you may thank me later.


April 19, 2002 -
The Nia Vardalos written rom-com (some of my friends watch it as a docudrama) My Big Fat Greek Wedding, starring Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Lainie Kazan, Michael Constantine, Andrea Martin, and Joey Fatone, premiered in the US on this date.



According to Nia Vardalos, paying for catering during the film proved not to be a problem. Wherever the film was being shot, whenever local Greek restaurants learned about it, they sent over lots of free food.


Another record from the discount bin of (The ACME Record Shopper.)


Today in History:
April 19, 1775 -
Alerted by Paul Revere, the American Revolutionary War began at Lexington Common with the Battle of Lexington-Concord on this date. Eight Minutemen were killed and 10 wounded in an exchange of musket fire with British Redcoats.



In New York, Lexington seems to have won as there is no Concord Avenue.


April 19, 1824 -
Notorious drug user, buggerer, sister sleeping, club footed man about Europe, oh yeah, and poet, Lord George Gordon Byron, died from malaria fever in Greece on this date.



His body was set back to England for burial (his heart, literally remains in his beloved Greece, buried under a tree in Messolonghi) but he was so infamous that neither the deans of Westminster and St Paul's would accept his body for proper burial. His family at last buried him in a small family vault in Northern England.)


April 19, 1897 -
The first Boston Marathon was run in Boston, Massachusetts. John J. McDermott of New York ran the 24.5-mile course of the all-male event in a winning time of 2:55:10. It was the first of its type in the U.S.



The course was lengthened to 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km) to conform to the standard set by the 1908 Summer Olympics and codified by the IAAF in 1921.


April 19, 1906 -
It was a rainy day in Paris. One of those days that song writers write about. Nobel-winning chemist Pierre Curie was preoccupied and in a hurry. He tried to run across the street and did not look both ways. He slipped and then was hit and run over by a horse drawn vehicle. His skull was badly fractured.

Kids' once again - Your mother is always right. Just because you're a Nobel winning - look both ways before crossing.


April 19, 1927 -
Mae West, suspected transvestite, was jailed, on this date, for her performance in Sex, the Broadway play she wrote, directed, and starred in. She was sentenced to ten days in prison. While incarcerated on Roosevelt Island, she was allowed to wear her silk panties instead of the scratchy prison issue and the warden reportedly took her to dinner every night.

She served eight days with two days off for good behavior. Media attention to the case enhanced her career - it didn't make her change her act, but it did bring her national notoriety and helped make her one of Hollywood's most memorable, and quotable, stars.

She said: "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it."


April 19, 1946 -
He proudly carries the Charles Atlas seal of approval!



Tim Curry, actor and singer was born on this date. Fling toast around the room and do the Time Warp in his honor today!


April 19, 1993 -
More than 80 Branch Davidians died in Waco, Texas as the FBI stages a disastrous final assault on their compound on this date. This brought a sudden end to the 51-day siege.



As you about to see, this helped us a great deal.


April 19, 1995 -
At 9:02 am, 28 years ago today, a large car bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and injuring 500 including many children in the building's day care center.



Authorities charged Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, with the crime.

Both were convicted. McVeigh was executed in 2001 and Nichols is currently serving a life sentence.



And so it goes.

Jurassic times call for Jurassic measures!

Velociraptors are small vicious dinosaurs that usually ruin everyone's day at your local millionaire's amusement park.

Remember large windows and doorways are Velociraptor points of entries. Mark them accordingly and avoid at all cost. Once you've finished locating possible velociraptor entry points within your building, you can mark those areas so that your loved ones are also aware of the building's vulnerabilities.

Velociraptor attacks are a very serious matter. Educate yourself, and make sure you always have at least four possible escape routes, since three of those will be occupied by velociraptors in the event of an attack.

Remember you don't have to outrun a raptor, you just have to outrun one of your friends.


(Oops, I nearly forgot.) Since 2007 (give or take a year), record stores on six continents are set to celebrate Record Store Day,

an annual event, held one Saturday (typically the third) every April and every Black Friday in November, in order to 'celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store'.



Click here to see which albums are being released exclusively for Record Store Day.


April 18, 1953 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Muscle Tussle, directed by Robert McKimson and starring Daffy Duck, debuted on this date.



Atomcol is pitched as the remedy to being called a scrawny weakling, much as Charles Atlas' muscle-building regime magazine ads encouraged humans to follow.


April 18, 1959 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Apes of Wrath, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny, debuted on this date.



When the stork hiccups from his drunken speech when taking a break on his delivery trip at the beginning, if one looks closely, the stork is seen having two visible eyeballs in each of his eyes in a number of quick blink-and-miss frames. Whether this is an animation mistake or completely intentional on the animators' part is unknown.


April 18, 1971 -
The first solo television special of Diana Ross, Diana!, premiered on ABC TV on this date.



The special also featured appearances by Danny Thomas and Bill Cosby, plus performances by The Jackson 5, and also included Jackson 5 lead singer Michael Jackson's solo debut.


April 18, 1975 -
John Lennon released Stand by Me on this date.



Lennon's cover was his last hit prior to his five-year retirement from the music industry.


April 18, 1979 -
For some reason, never clearly explained by TV professionals, the George Schlatter produced weekly series profiling human interest stories, Real People, premiered on NBC TV on this date.



Forms of reality television had been done in the past but Real People blended profiles of everyday citizens, comedic studio commentary and viewer interaction. And for some reason, the series was a huge hit.


April 18, 1986 -
Universal Studios releases the fantasy film Legend, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, Tim Curry, David Bennent, Alice Playten, and Billy Barty, premiered in the US on this date.



Tim Curry had to wear a large, bull-like structure atop his head with three-foot fiberglass horns supported by a harness underneath the make-up. The horns strained the back of Curry's neck because they extended forward and not straight up. Rob Bottin and his crew finally came up with horns that were hollow and lightweight. At the end of each filming day, Curry spent an hour in a bath in order to liquefy the soluble spirit gum that served as the adhesive for his make-up. At one point, he got too impatient and claustrophobic that he pulled the make-up off too quickly, tearing off his own skin in the process. Director Ridley Scott felt both horrified and sorry for Curry, and immediately tried to find an easier way to make up his character. Since he didn't want Curry to put more make-up on his torn skin, he shot around him for a week. Scott also realized that it added a dramatic build-up for the character, so he re-shot some of his opening scenes this way. The footage of Curry in the opening to the U.S. Theatrical release was filmed before any of this took place.


April 18, 1987 -
Aretha Franklin and George Michael duet I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me) hit no. #1 on the Billboard charts on this date.



The Queen of Soul had fallen out of favor and her fortunes were revived by her 1985 album Who's Zoomin' Who, which contained two US Top 10 hits: the title track and Freeway of Love. It took this duet with George Michael, however, to return her to the top of the chart, where she had not been for 20 years (with Respect).


April 18, 2003 -
Walt Disney Studios' adaptation of the children's novel, Holes, starring, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, Tim Blake Nelson and Shia LaBeouf, went into general release in the U.S. on this date.



A screenplay was initially written by Richard Kelly, who greatly departed from the source material by writing a dark, violent adaptation of the story set in a post-apocalyptic world. The studio reportedly found the script far too disturbing for a children's movie, rejecting it in favor of the final script written by the novel's author, Louis Sachar.


April 18, 2004 -
Eamon hits no. 1 on the Billboard Charts with F*ck It (I Don't Want You Back), on this date. The song holds the record for the most expletives ever in a #1 song. 

(Kids, ask your folks if you can listen to this song.)



There are 33 profane words in the lyrics, which is one reason why most radio stations didn't play the song when it first came out. The following year an edited version arrived which had all the swears silenced. The DJs referred to the song as simply I Don't Want You Back.


April 18, 2008 -
Universal's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, starring Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, and Bill Hader, premiered in the US on this date.



The film is based on script-writer Jason Segel's experience breaking up with Linda Cardellini, as well as three other breakups with unspecified women. Segel has said that the 'naked breakup' did not involve Cardellini, and that she was a great girlfriend.

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


Today in History:
It was a tense April in Boston in 1775. The colonists were simmering with resentment toward the motherland, on account of King George III having strewn the colonies with excessive tacks, painful to step on and bothersome to the horses. Furthermore, British cabbies had refused to unionize, and the colonists were adamantly opposed to taxis without representation.



In December of 1773, King George III tried to assuage the riled colonists by sending them boatloads of tea. (King George III was insane.) The colonists dressed up like Indians and poured all the king's tea into Boston harbor, proving they could be perfectly insane without any help from the king.

Meanwhile, a network of colonists had been secretly meeting for some time. They reasoned that since they preferred coffee to tea, liked salad before rather than after the entree, and couldn't make any sense whatever of cricket, they were obviously no longer British. Perhaps they had become French, or Portuguese. Finally they took a vote, which proved they were American.

The king's colonial representatives overheard some of these discussions, and decided to arrest as many of these patriots as possible, unless they could kill them first.

On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere, (William Dawes and Samuel Prescott) got wind of the British officers' plan to arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams in Lexington that very night - arrests that would have been calamitous to the colony's fledgling insurance and beer industries.



Anticipating colonial unrest, British officers had deployed Regulars on all the key roads between Boston and Lexington. (The Regulars had previously proved effective even where the Irregulars and Extra Longs had failed.)

Revere told some friends to hang two lanterns in Boston's Old North Church, in order to signal his wife that he'd be late for dinner, and immediately set out for Charlestown. Once there, he mounted a horse and began the ride to Lexington.



He found himself almost immediately pursued by Regulars, whom he eluded by means of wily Boston riding tactics: he took a series of lefts from the right lane and a series of rights from the left, utterly confounding his pursuers, who were anyway accustomed to riding on the other side of the street and still weren't sure what to do at a blinking red light. One of the Regulars rode straight into a fruit stand and ended up covered in produce. Another rode through a big plate glass window that two workmen were carrying across the road. It was pretty funny.

Just before midnight, Revere finally arrived at Jonas Clarke's Lexington home, where he breathlessly informed Adams and Hancock that the British were coming. This confounded Adams and Hancock, who, like Revere, were themselves British.



Once the confusion was cleared up, Adams and Hancock fled for safety while Revere and two others rushed on to Concord. Many memorable and important historical events ensued, such as the American Revolution, but by then it was April 19th, and therefore no longer appropriate to this date's entry.



Although Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem immortalized Paul Revere alone. Revere was the least heroic, he was captured by British patrols and held for awhile before he was released without his horse.



Please indulge your local tea party members today, Sara Palin hasn't been heard from in a while and with all that's going on, it just better this way.


April 18, 1882 –
>A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.







Leopold Stokowski, conductor, and long-time music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra was born on this date.

But, what the hell do you care?


April 18, 1906 -
A devastating earthquake struck San Francisco at 5:13 a.m., followed by a major aftershock three hours later. More than 3,000 people were killed from either collapsing structures or any of the 59 separate fires which burned over the next three days.



In the downtown area, the U.S. Army was forced to dynamite whole city blocks in order to contain the flames, due to the lack of water pressure.


April 18th, 1923 -
On the first day of the new baseball season, the gates of Yankee Stadium were opened, and 74,200 people flooded through the turnstiles, while another 25,000 were turned away – an astounding number, considering the previous attendance record for a single game was 42,000 for the 1916 World Series in Boston. In an ironic twist, the first game was fittingly played against the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth’s former team. Even more fitting was that Ruth hit the first home run in the stadium on opening day – a three-run home run, giving the Yankees a 4-1 win.



Before Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, the Yankees rented from their cross-town rivals, the New York Giants, and shared the space at the Polo Grounds. Threatened with eviction, the Yankees were forced to build their own stadium in the Bronx. The ballpark became the first to have three tiers of seating, consisting of 58,000 seats. It was also the first ballpark to be called a "stadium" due to its enormous size.


April 18, 1930 -
As impossible as this may seem, at 8:45 pm on this date, a BBC news announcer told the British public 'there is no news', and played piano music for the rest of the 15-minute interval.



The wireless service then returned to broadcasting from the Queen's Hall in Langham Place, London, where the Wagner opera Parsifal was being performed.


April 18, 1942 -
The Doolittle raids took place over Tokyo (the first U.S. air raid to strike the Japanese home islands during WWII,) and were led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, who received a congressional medal of honor for his actions.



Though the raid did not do much material damage to Japan, it demonstrated how vulnerable the Japanese home islands were to air attack just four months after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.


April 18, 1955 -
Nobel Prize recipient Albert Einstein died in his hospital bed from a ruptured aortic aneurysm on this date.



Seven hours later, Dr. Thomas Harvey, chief pathologist at Princeton Hospital, performed Albert Einstein's autopsy. He removed the brain and took it home. Thus began a 40 year journey of "They Stole Einstein's Brain".


April 18, 1963 -
Harvard's most successful 'failure' Conan O'Brien was born on this date



Don't worry, some day Coco will find himself.


April 18, 1968 -
Robert P. McCulloch, American entrepreneur and chairman of McCulloch Oil Company, bought London Bridge on this date, from the Corporation of London for $2,460,000 plus shipping costs of around $240,000.



He bought the structure as a tourist attraction to entice people to vacation and potentially retire in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, a planned community he established a few years earlier. Rebuilding London Bridge took three years and several million dollars more, which strained McCulloch's finances.


April 18, 1983 -
62 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a suicide bombing against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on this date. The attacker used a van packed with one ton of high explosives. Included among the dead was the CIA's entire Middle East bureau.



The group Islamic Jihad claims responsibility, although the intelligence community believes it was actually the work of Hezbollah.


April 18, 1988 -
American auto worker John Demjanjuk was convicted of crimes against humanity by an Israeli court on this date. They determined that he was Treblinka's notorious Ivan the Terrible. The court sentences him to hang one week later, but the conviction is later overturned when it appears to have been a case of mistaken identity.

In 2002, a U.S. federal court later strips Demjanjuk of his citizenship after it rules that he did in fact work as a Nazi prison guard, although at Sobibor, Majdanek, and Flossenburg. On May 11 2009, Demjanjuk left his Cleveland home by ambulance, and was taken to the airport, where he was deported by plane to Germany. Starting in late 2009, his trial began in Munich on charges he helped kill 29,000 Jews as a Nazi prison guard at the Sobibor death camp in 1943. On May 12, 2011, Ivan Mykolaiovych Demianiuk was convicted as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews and sentenced to five years in prison.



Mr. Demjanjuk died on March 17, 2012, still attempting to appeal his case. Since his appeal was not heard at the time of his death, his conviction was invalidated and he died without a criminal record.

I'm not sure how that helped him when he approached the gates of hell.



And so it goes.

Start a conversation that matters

Today is National Blah Blah Blah day. It’s the day to do any of the following, or whatever.



Stop smoking, take out the trash, empty the cat litter, lose weight, pick up your clothes, put dirty dishes in the sink, get a job or quit your job BUT do something about climate change.


April 17, 1924 -
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios was created following a merger of the Louis B. Mayer Company, Goldwyn Pictures, and Metro Pictures, on this date.



The MGM studio was a division of Loew's, Inc., one of the largest theater chains in North America at the time.


April 17, 1937 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Ain't We Got Fun, directed by Tex Avery, debuted on this date.



This is one of a rare handful of Warner Bros. cartoons in which the cats are depicted as the heroes and the mice as the villains rather than vice versa.


April 17, 1937 -
Everybody wish Daffy Duck a Happy Birthday !



Porky's Duck Hunt, starring Porky Pig, is notable for being the first appearance of the character who would later be named Daffy Duck. It also notable that this is the first cartoon in which Mel Blanc voices both Porky and Daffy.


April 15, 1943 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Unbearable Bear, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Sniffles, debuted on this date.



Starting from this cartoon, Sniffles has been recast as an incessant chatterbox who serves more as a nuisance than a cute protagonist, borrowing influences from Friz Freleng's discarded Little Blabbermouse character.


April 15, 1948-
The Looney Tunes short, Hop, Look and Listen, directed by Robert McKimson and starring Sylvester and Hippety Hopper, debuted on this date.



This marks the debut of Hippety Hopper, who would be Sylvester's main foe in the shorts directed by Robert McKimson.


April 15, 1954-
The Merrie Melodies short, Bell Hoppy, directed by Robert McKimson and starring Sylvester and Hippety Hopper, debuted on this date.



This marks the debut of Hippety Hopper, who would be Sylvester's main foe in the shorts directed by Robert McKimson.


April 17, 1970 -
A little known solo artist Paul McCartney releases his first solo album, McCartney, on this date.



Although no singles were released from the album, Maybe I'm Amazed was regarded as an instant classic, gaining massive AM and FM radio airplay. In 1977, a live version of Maybe I'm Amazed peaked at Number 10 on the charts. Until recently, the song has nearly always opened the piano set of McCartney's concerts. (An unfortunate co-incidence for this day, Linda McCarthy died from complications of breast cancer on this date in 1998.)


April 17, 1971 -
Three Dog Night's single, Joy to the World, made it to the top of the pop music charts on this date. The song was number one for six weeks.



Hoyt Axton wrote this for an animated TV special called The Happy Song that never materialized. Axton, who was a popular Country singer/songwriter from Oklahoma, pitched it to the group while he opened for them on a tour. Three Dog Night also had a Top-10 hit with Never Been to Spain, which was also written by Axton.


April 17, 1981 -
The United Artist movie Caveman, starring Ringo Starr, Shelley Long, Barbara Bach, Dennis Quaid, Jack Gilford, and John Matuszak premiered on this date.



The picture was nominated for Worst Picture at the Hastings Bad Cinema Society's 4th Stinkers Bad Movie Awards in 1981. There it was a Worst Picture nominee for 'Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy' but did win a Stinker Award there for 'Least 'Special' Special Effects'.


April 17, 1987 -
The final episode of Remington Steele, Steeled With a Kiss, starring Stephanie Zimbalist, Pierce Brosnan, Doris Roberts, James Read, Janet DeMay, and Jack Scalia, aired on this date.



The series was cancelled at the end of season four, on May 15, 1986, with a 60-day option left on the show. That same day, Brosnan agreed to play the role of James Bond in multiple movies for many millions of dollars. That generated so much publicity that ratings for Steele soared during the summer months and NBC decided to bring the series back for an abbreviated fifth season of three two-hour movies. With a seven year contract, Brosnan was obligated to do it.


April 17, 2006 -
A big-budget Coke commercial with a new song by Jack White called Love Is The Truth aired once on this date and was pulled.



The video was directed by Japanese director Nagi Noda. Although I can find no reason why the commercial was pulled, Jack White has said that he “saw this as an opportunity to record an inspirational song that could reach a worldwide audience in a big way.”

The world may never know.


April 17, 2011-
The hugely successful series Game of Thrones debuted on HBO, on this date.



Writer George R.R. Martin was approached several times with plans to adapt his (still unfinished) book series A Song of Ice and Fire into a movie, but he rejected them all, as he thought his books were much too expansive to be made into a movie. He had purposely written them to be virtually unfilmable, and he also declined offers to adapt only certain storylines from the book. When David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told him that they wanted to make a series out of it, he asked them who they thought Jon Snow's mother could be. Satisfied with the answer, he agreed to sell the rights to the book.


Another unimportant moment in history


Today in History:
April 17, 1397 –
Stand-up comedy begins today - Geoffrey Chaucer starts to recite the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II on this date.



scholars believe this is the start day of the book’s pilgrimage in 1387.


April 17, 1524 -
Giovanni da Verrazzano, another in a long line of European knuckleheads trying to find a shortcut to India, reaches the Narrows, the strait between Staten Island and Long Island on this date. He made the rookie mistake of not having enough change to go through and is turned around by local native authorities.



For some reason, we (the U.S.) named two bridges after him. Little know fact - he tried that trick again of not having exact change for the tolls while exploring the island of Guadeloupe and was eaten by native toll takers.


April 17, 1960 -
Eddie Cochran, the man behind Summertime Blues and C’mon Everybody, was killed, and Gene Vincent was injured, when the taxi carrying them from a show in Bristol, England, crashed en route to the airport in London, where he was to catch a flight back home to the US.



The taxi driver lost control on a bend in the road and spun backwards into a concrete lamp post. Cochran, who was seated in the center of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée Sharon Sheeley, to shield her, and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open.


April 17, 1961 -
In an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro, 1,500 Cuban exiles make a series of amphibious landings at the Bay of Pigs. After it becomes painfully obvious in just a matter of hours that the forces were trained, equipped, and armed by the United States, the speed freak and known sex hound President John F. Kennedy withholds necessary air cover to protect them.



In three days of fighting, Cuba captures 1,197 of the rebels and killed approximately 200.


April 17, 1964 -
On March 19th, 1964, Geraldine 'Jerrie' Mock, a 38-year-old mother of three, jumped in the family Cessna 180 and departed Port Columbus (OH) Airport. Just over 23,000 miles later, after nearly a month dealing with unfamiliar cultures, mechanical problems and dangerous weather, she arrived back in Columbus to become the first woman to fly solo around the world on this date.



Mock's journey took about a month; aside from being the first woman to fly around the world by herself, she also set several speed records and was also the first woman to fly both the Atlantic and the Pacific.


April 17, 1964 -
Henry Ford II unveiled the Ford Mustang, championed by Ford Division general manager Lee Iacocca, at the New York World's Fair on this date.



the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers. Ford sold more than 400,000 Mustangs within its first year of production, far exceeding sales expectations. The first models carried a starting price tag of around $2,300.


April 17, 1964
The New York Mets played their first game at Shea Stadium on this date, when they lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The five tiered stadium seated 55,601 fans. For previous two years, the Mets had played their home games at the Polo Grounds, previously the home of the New York Giants.



It was the first stadium of its size to have an extensive escalator system, being able to convert from a football gridiron to a baseball diamond by two motor operated stands, not having light towers and in which every seat was directed at the center of the field.


April 17, 1967 -
The spacecraft Surveyor 3 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on this date. It will become the second U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, where it will study the lunar surface and send more than 6,300 pictures back to Earth.



Based on the spacecraft's surface sampling tests, scientists concluded the lunar surface was solid enough to hold the weight of an Apollo lunar module.


April 17, 1969 -
A Los Angeles jury convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy on this date. Sirhan received a death sentence, but it is later reduced to life in prison.



Poor Mr. Sirhan, one of the only people who might have spoken in his defense, Robert F. Kennedy, was dead.


April 17, 1975 -
Cambodia fell on this date, when communist insurgents known as the Khmer Rouge enter the capital city of Phnom Penh.



Not much else to say after except that hopefully we won't see a repeat of this in Kyiv.


April 17, 1986 -
The long forgotten 335 Year War (as it is now known) was a bloodless conflict between the Netherlands and the tiny Isles of Scilly, (situated off the western coast of mainland Cornwall,) which began as far back as 1651 during the English Civil War, officially ended on this date.



In 1985, a local Scilly historian, Roy Duncan, wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London to see if there was any evidence to support the seemingly absurd claim of a 335 year war between the two nations. To everyone’s surprise, the embassy uncovered a series of documents which suggested that the Netherlands and the Islands were, indeed, still at war! Duncan hastily wrote to the Dutch ambassador Rein Huydecoper inviting him to visit the islands and to sign a peace treaty. Huydecoper agreed, and on this date, a peace treaty was signed between the Isles of Scilly and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

For the first time in 335 years the Scillonians could sleep safety in their beds, for as the Ambassador remarked; “It must have been awful to know we could have attacked at any moment.”


April 17, 2014 -
Exoplanet science took a big leap when NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope confirmed the discovery of a rocky Earth-like planet orbiting the habitable zone of its star for the first time ever.



Kepler-186f is about 580 light years from humanity, and is around 11% greater in radius with respect to Earth. 186f is just one in a five planet system orbiting around the Red Dwarf star of the same designation.

So now you know.



And so it goes.