Don't let anyone tell you other wise

Once again, everything you learned was a lie; today is actually Independence Day - The US Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain on this day (in 1776);



the formal Declaration of Independence was approved two days later on July 4.


July 2, 1946 -
Orson Welles first attempt at restarting his Hollywood career, The Stranger, starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, and Orson Welles premiered in Los Angeles, on this date. (This was the first mainstream American movie to feature footage of Nazi concentration camps following World War II.)



Knowing Orson Welles' reputation for long exposition scenes, International Pictures gave editor Ernest J. Nims the freedom to cut any sequences from the film he felt were unnecessary. To Welles' disgust, Nims ended up cutting almost 30 minutes of Welles' final version, including 19 minutes from the film's opening. The footage is believed lost, as even the original negatives have gone missing.


July 02, 1949 -
The Looney Tunes short, Henhouse Henery, directed by Bob McKimson, and starring Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dawg, was released on this date.



This is the first Foghorn Leghorn short to feature the song Camptown Races, which would be associated with the character.


July 2, 1949 -
The adaption of Ayn Rand's bestseller, The Fountainhead, directed by King Vidor, and starring Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey, Robert Douglas and Kent Smith, was released on this date.



King Vidor originally hoped to cast Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in the lead roles, but Ayn Rand insisted on Gary Cooper in the lead. Bacall was cast opposite Cooper, but dropped out before filming began. Hoping the film would make her a star, Warner Bros cast a relative unknown, 22-year-old Patricia Neal, after considering and then rejecting Bette Davis, Ida Lupino, Alexis Smith, and Barbara Stanwyck as replacements for Bacall. Cooper objected to Neal being cast, but during filming, Cooper and Neal began an affair.


July 2, 1955 -
Wonderful, wonderful .... the average American got down and got funky when the first Lawrence Welk Show premiered nationally on ABC TV on this date



From its move to network television in 1955 until the very early 1960s, the show's primary sponsor was Dodge. The Dodge name would be part of the set and during some performances, the shots would be framed so that the Dodge name would be unobstructed. As was common in the 1950s, the name of the primary sponsor would be part of the show's official title.


July 2, 1958 -
The Michael Curtiz, musical drama, King Creole (based on the Harold Robbins novel, A Stone for Danny Fisher,) starring Elvis, Carolyn Jones and Walter Matthau premiered in the US on this date.



James Dean was at one point in the running for the role that, several years later, would be played by Elvis Presley. At this stage, the film was to be a gritty urban drama. Following Dean's death and the casting of Elvis, it was retooled to suit the King.


July 2, 1959 -
Ed Wood's greatest opus (not counting Glen or Glenda), Plan 9 from Outer Space, opened on this date.



Bela Lugosi appears in footage shot just before his death, but with no script in mind. Edward D. Wood Jr. wrote the script to accommodate all the footage shot in a cemetery and outside Tor Johnson's house in the new production. Lugosi was doubled by Tom Mason, Wood's wife's chiropractor, who was significantly taller than Lugosi, and played the part with a cape covering his face.


July 2, 1966 -
The title track of Frank Sinatra's comeback album, Strangers in the Night reached the number one spot (on this date) on the Billboard charts and marked his return to the top of the pop charts in the mid-'60s.



Sinatra knocked The Beatles down a peg when this song hit #1 in the US and pushed Paperback Writer to #2. After one week, the group reclaimed their spot at the top. A month earlier, Strangers in the Night dominated the UK chart for three weeks before The Beatles' song took over.


July 2, 1971 -
Gordon Parks' classic crime-drama Shaft, starring Richard Roundtree, premiered on this date.



One of only three films MGM released in 1971 that made a profit, and it helped save the studio from bankruptcy.


July 2, 1980 -
The David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker smash comedy, Airplane!, starring Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty premiered in the US on this date.



The doctor role was Leslie Nielsen's first comedic part. He later said he was delighted to get the offer, fearing that he was getting too old for anything but "elderly grandfather" parts.


July 2, 1986 -
The second movie Prince appeared in, Under the Cherry Moon, (Prince directed the film,) also starring Jerome Benton, Steven Berkoff, Kristin Scott Thomas (in her feature film debut), and Francesca Annis, was released on this date.



The movie's world premiere was held at the Centennial Twin Theater in Sheridan, Wyoming. The evening included an afterparty and a forty-five-minute private concert by Prince at the local Holiday Inn. Local resident Lisa Barber won the right to host the premiere when she was the ten thousandth caller in MTV's Prince Under the Cherry Moon contest. Several cast members attended, including Prince, Joni Mitchell, and Ray Parker, Jr.


July 2, 1997 -
Columbia Pictures released the science fiction comedy film Men in Black, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio and Rip Torn, on this date.



Vincent D'Onofrio researched his role as Edgar by watching a lot of bug documentaries. In order to achieve his character's distinctive walk, he put on knee braces so he couldn't bend his legs, and taped up his ankles.


July 2, 2005 -
Pink Floyd perform Comfortably Numb at the Live 8 London concert, re-forming with band members Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright for the first time since 1981, when Waters left the band.



It's the last time the four play together, as Wright died in 2008.


Another little known Monopoly card .


Today in History -
One day in the latter half of the ninth century, a poor young woman on her way to market dropped her basket of eggs - shattering all of them.

The young woman knelt on the ground beside the fallen basket and began to weep.

The local bishop had been out for his morning stroll and happened to see the entire episode. He attempted to console the woman, but she was having none of it. Without the eggs, she had nothing to sell at market. Nothing to sell meant no money to sustain her family. Being unable to sustain her family meant, well, what it usually means: degradation, illness, and eventually death. Soothing words from a bishop weren't much help.

The bishop then prayed for her pain to be eased. When he was done praying, the woman looked into her basket and saw that all of the eggs had been made whole.

"Wot's all that about, then?" she asked.

"Tis a sign of God's grace and compassion," the bishop said. "I am but his -"

"God fixed me eggs, what?"

"All things are possible with God," the bishop began, but the poor young woman interrupted again.

"All-powerful God? All-knowing God? I work meself to death eight days to the week, and when he finally comes through with a miracle - it's fixin' me eggs? What about a floor for me hut? What about clothes for me young-uns? What about -"

It is probably not necessary to record the full text of the woman's stirring solecism.

The bishop in question was St. Swithun, who died on this date in the year 862. His feast day is celebrated today in Norway (though England prefers to remember him on July 15, and spell his name “St. Swithin”).

He was the Bishop of Winchester and a royal counselor to Kings Egbert and Aethelwulf. (Yes - the very skullcap of the good bishop.)

As for the rest of his biography, history offers us next to nothing. We know he died. That’s about it. Which is why I bring him up.

Someone really ought to invent a life for the guy.

Maybe he was raised by honey badgers. Maybe he was kidnapped by cross-dressing pirates. Maybe he met three witches in a forest and they hailed him as the Thane of Cawdor. Maybe he fell hopelessly in love with the red-headed daughter of a rival landowner, and they had a tempestuous affair before she died tragically and he took holy orders in her memory. Maybe he had webbed toes and spoke fluent owl.

Who knows? No one.

So go ahead: make up a St. Swithun you can live with.


145 years ago today, Charles J. Guiteau stood up in the lobby of the B&O Railroad Depot in Washington, DC, and yelled, "I am a stalwart and Arthur is President now!" (Maybe it would have sounded less crazy if he said it in Latin - Ego sum a stalwart quod Arthur est Praesieo iam! All future Presidential assassins should take up Latin. ) The event might have passed without notice had Guiteau not been shooting President James Garfield at the time.



A wounded President Garfield lingered for 11 weeks, during which time surgeons attempted to find the bullet which had lodged in his back. The state-of-the-art technology for removing foreign objects from the body was at that time the hand. Dozens of physicians, nurses, and curious hangers-on probed Garfield's wound with their fingers in search of the bullet that had struck him. The inevitable infection of his wound killed him.



Charles Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882.


July 2, 1900 -
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's airship LZ-1, took the first zeppelin flight over Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.



"LZ" stood for Luftschiff Zeppelin, or "Airship Zeppelin"


July 2, 1937 -
Attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane, Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific with her drunken navigator, Fred Noonan, on this date. (Apparently drunkenness is a prerequisite to fly with aviation heroes.)



She still holds the record for a spouse going out for a carton of milk and not returning.


July 2, 1947 -
An object speculated to be a UFO crashes near Roswell, New Mexico on this date, though the United States Air Force claims it is a weather balloon.



I love a good 'faked' alien footage. It's World UFO Day today. So remember to Keep Watching The Skies!


65 years ago today Ernest Hemingway blew his brains out at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway was a writer. He was also a man. He knew things about being a man. He also knew things about trying to be a man.



He wrote about them, those things. He wrote love stories and stories about fishermen and soldiers. He liked to write. And in the end he blew his brains out. Maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn't. Either way, don't bother asking for whom the bell tolled.

It wasn't for you.


On this date in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting racial discrimination.



The way one of our former President was treated by Congress is proof that America has remained a paragon of racial harmony to this very day.


July 2, 1982 -
Larry Walters, a truck driver, using 45 helium filled weather balloons to lift him and his lawn chair three miles high on this date. He later was barely able to control his descent using a BB gun shooting holes in balloons when he accidentally dropped his pellet gun overboard. Walters then slowly descended back down to the ground.



He landed in a residential neighborhood in Long Beach where got tangled in some power lines, causing a 20 minute power blackout. Walters was able to climb to the ground.



And so it goes.

When fireflies write love letters in the dark.

According to the Gregorian calendar, July is the seventh month. On the Roman calendar, it was the fifth month and it was called 'Quintilis', meaning 'fifth'. Julius Caesar gave the month 31 days in 46 B.C.

Being a dictator he could. Luckily for us he didn't authorize the constant changing of underpants or most of the glory that was Rome may never have been built, due the high laundry bills. The Roman Senate named it 'Julius', in honor of Caesar because - well, he was a dictator.



July is usually the hottest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. July is one of the winter months in the Southern Hemisphere. The climate is mild in most of the Southern Hemisphere, with the exception of the COLD Antarctica, and the cold, rainy part of South America.

During July, when there isn't much rain, the grass often loses it's greenness. Some flowers are abundant in July, because they strive on the heat. Also, insects are abundant as well - life is striving in July (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway)!

Independence Day is observed in the United States on July 4. On that day in 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. In France, a similar holiday, Bastille Day, occurs on July 14 (although they did not adopt the Declaration of Independence.) Several other countries celebrate national independence in July. Independence Day is celebrated in Venezuela on July 5; in Argentina, July 9; in Belgium, July 21; and in Peru, July 28.

In my home, July 12th is a national holiday.

July is chock-a-block of celebrations.

The Ruby is the gem for July.



The water lily is the flower for the month of July.



Here are some of the causes recognized in July:

Fireworks Safety Month

Kids, don't play with your illegal fireworks, remember use only ACME brand fireworks!



Baked Bean Month
Ah, the musical fruit. And yet, I once again restrained myself - I didn't go with the Mel Brooks clip.



maybe extreme tennis isn't your thing.



Remember, if you're in a national park, the bears are not like Yogi, don't let them into your car.

July is National Hot Dog Month - National Hot Dog Day is July 23.



National Hot Dog Day is July 23. Remember don't look too closely into the bit end of your hot dog

Smart Irrigation Month
Wait a minute, maybe they didn't mean this type of irrigation.

National Hyperhidrosis Education Month
For those not in the know, it's excessive sweating.

Peach Month (There seems to be some confusion on whether National Peach Month is in July or August.
So Dammit, dare to eat the peach!!!)

Read An Almanac Month



Which is what I celebrate all the time. (One of our favorite Bunkies suggested reading, Poor H. Allen Smith's Almanac, which is a fun read, in fact.)


July 01, 1933 -
The Looney Tunes short, Beau Bosko, directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising and starring Bosko was released on this date.



The title and the cartoon are a play on the 1924 book Beau Geste and its multiple film adaptations.


July 1, 1953 -
The Howard Hawk musical comedy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe premiered in Atlantic City on this date.



According to Marni Nixon, the studio initially wanted Marilyn Monroe's entire voice dubbed, as they thought her voice was silly. Nixon thought that was "awful", as she felt Monroe's voice suited her persona so beautifully. Nixon told The New York Times in March 2007 that she ended up only dubbing the operatic "no, no, nos" at the beginning of the song and the phrase "these rocks don't lose their shape".


July 1, 1956 -
TV critic John Crosby panned the following performer's performance, calling it an 'unspeakable, untalented and vulgar young entertainer.'



Elvis Presley appeared on NBC- TV's The Steve Allen Show and performed Hound Dog, to a live Hound Dog.


July 1, 1956 -
Columbia Pictures released the classic sci-fi movie, Earth vs The Flying Saucers, featuring special effects by Ray Harryhausen, on this date.



The supposed satellite launches are actually stock footage of Viking rockets, high-altitude probes that were the predecessors of the Vanguard, intended to be the first satellite launcher. The later shots of rockets crashing at takeoff are really German V-2s, since none of the first 12 Vikings ever failed. Ironically, the 13th Viking, now called Vanguard, blew up on the launch pad, just like in the movie.


July 1, 1965 -
Paramount Pictures released the film The Sons of Katie Elder, starring John Wayne and Dean Martin on this date.



The gun battle was loosely based on the real-life story of the five Marlow brothers. These were five brothers whose parents had established a homestead in Oklahoma territory, The father was a doctor and the sons raised horses that they sold to the army. Four of the brothers were falsely accused of horse theft, were arrested and brought to Graham, Texas. The remaining brother arrived in hope of proving their innocence, but he was arrested too. After several attempts by a mob to lynch them, they were chained together and were being transported to Weatherford, Texas for trial. At Dry Creek, at the edge of the town of Graham, the mob attacked them. The brothers took the deputies' guns and a battle ensued, much as was portrayed in this film. Two of the brothers were killed. The others escaped. One was later poisoned and then shot in an attempt to make it seem he was shot avoiding capture. The killer was himself charged with murder. In 1891, during the trial of members of the mob, the judge had high praise for the Marlows for their courage and boldness, saying that it would be remembered in story and song. The remaining two brothers moved to Colorado and became well-respected lawmen.


July 1, 1967 -
The Association's song Windy (not to be confused with The Beach Boy's song, Wendy,) hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on this date. It was the Association's second No. 1 hit, following Cherish in 1966.



Although the writer of the song, Ruthann Friedman never revealed the identity of Windy, she said that he was another singer/songwriter, and not "a freewheeling Haight Ashbury Hippy" as often reported. Friedman said about the song: "I have heard so many different permutations of what the song was about. Here is the TRUTH. I was sitting on my bed - the apartment on the first floor of David Crosby's house in Beverly Glenn - and there was a fellow who came to visit and was sitting there staring at me as if he was going to suck the life out of me. So I started to fantasize about what kind of a guy I would like to be with, and that was Windy - a guy (fantasy). The song took about 20 minutes to write."


July 1, 1968 -
The Band released their debut album, Music from Big Pink, on this date.



The album title came from the big pink house in upstate New York they rented and used as a recording studio. The Band was Bob Dylan's backup band, and they moved there to be near Dylan while he was recovering from a motorcycle accident. Dylan offered to help with this album, but The Band refused because they wanted to make a mark on their own.


July 1, 1981 -
S.O.B., Blake Edwards' comedic poke in Hollywood's eye, starring Julie Andrews, Richard Mulligan, Robert Preston, Larry Hagman, Robert Vaughn, Robert Webber, Loretta Swit, Shelley Winters, and William Holden was released by Paramount Picture on this date.



This was the final theatrical movie of William Holden. Shortly after completing this movie, according to the coroners report, apparently tripped on a throw rug in his bedroom and fell, cutting his head open on the edge of an nightstand, striking it so hard the corner created a hole in the wall. Though there was a working telephone within reach, the number of blood soaked tissues found suggest he didn't understand the severity of his injury due to his high alcohol blood content and didn't call for help. He subsequently bled to death. His body wasn't discovered for several days.


July 1, 1982 -
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five release the early rap classic The Message, on this date. It's the first hip-hop hit with lyrics about struggle in the inner city.



Unlike many early hip-hop hits, like Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight or Kurtis Blow's The Breaks, which turned on thumping, up-tempo disco tracks, composers Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher and MC Melle Mel based The Message on a slow groove and a reverberated synthesizer hook. Fletcher admitted later, he'd been moved to write something in the spirit of Zapp's More Bounce To The Ounce or Tom Tom Club's Genius Of Love, both of which utilized synthesizer hooks over an amped-up funk bass.


Another episode of ACME's Lilttle Known Animal Facts


Today in History:
As always, your friends from the ACME Corp would like to salute our friends in Canada on Canada Day.



Canada is the second-largest nation in the world. It is not part of the United States – (it’s the U.S.‘ nicer sister, not dissing Mexico, the U.S.’ feistier sister.)

A little jewel sitting at the top of the continent.



In the 155 years of their nationhood, Canadians have given the world paint rollers, snowmobiles, electric organs, green ink, toboggans, snow blowers, plexiglass, and the push-up bra.



Canada has about the same population as California, but fewer Scientologists.

Residents of Churchill, Canada, leave their cars unlocked to offer an escape for pedestrians who might encounter Polar Bears.

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the Canadian national anthem, ‘Like America, But Colder.’





Canada’s leading export to the United States is Canadians. Dan Aykroyd, who happens to have been born exactly 70 years ago today, is one.



Pamela Anderson is another, and was also born today, although she’s younger (most of her is north of 40, but some parts are significantly younger). Not to give away here age but she was born on the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Canadian nation. Local news reports referred to her as a “Centennial Baby“, at the time.



Other Canadian exports: Bryan Adams, Paul Anka, Alexander Graham Bell, Raymond Burr (of nipple rouge fame), John Candy, Jim Carrey, Celine Dion, Michael J. Fox, John Kenneth Galbraith, Lorne Greene, Peter Jennings, kd lang, Marshall McLuhan, Joni Mitchell (I believe that she’s doing better), Alice Munro, Catherine O’Hara,



Mike Myers, Oscar Peterson, William Shatner, Alex Trebek, Shania Twain, Neil Young and of course everyone’s favorite Canadian Zen Buddhist, the late Leonard Cohen.



So bunkies remember, when your neighbor has a party, you don't ask why, you pick up a case of Labatt Blue's and a couple of rib-eye steaks.


July 1, 1200 -
Another bar bet winner - Sunglasses were invented in China on this date. Ancient documents describe the use of flat panes of smoky quartz sunglasses by judges in ancient Chinese courts to conceal their facial expressions while questioning witnesses.

(Historians know the date because of stringent anti-orgy laws enacted at the time by the Chinese, making record keeping and inventing a breeze.)


July 1, 1874 -
After many delays and set-backs, the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoological gardens in the United States opens to the public on the grounds of Solitude, the last estate in the area owned by the Penn family, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.



It was originally chartered by the Pennsylvania state legislature on March 21, 1859 as the Zoological Society of Philadelphia whose core purpose is to oversee “the purchase and collection of living wild and other animals” and “for the instruction and recreation of the people.”


July 1, 1893 -
President Grover Cleveland underwent a secret oral surgery aboard the yacht Oneida for a cancerous growth in his upper palate on this date.



The cancer operation remained a secret until July 1, 1917, when the doctor who performed the operation revealed the story.


July 1, 1912 -
Drama critic Harriet Quimby took a passenger up in her new Blériot monoplane from Boston to fly over Dorchester Bay at the Harvard-Boston Aviation Meet. As she descended for landing, the plane went into a dive and, without seat belts, she and her passenger were thrown out into the shallow water of the bay, where they struck the muddy bottom and were crushed to death.



Quimby was the first American to receive a pilot's license (1911) and was the first woman to solo across the English Channel (1912).

Kids, put on the damn seat belt.


July 1, 1961 -
The Honorable Diana Spencer, a direct descendant of Charles II, was born on this date. She married the Prince of Wales, Charles, in 1981 while more than 750 million people watched. Diana was 20 and her husband was 33 years old at the time.



She was killed in a car crash in 1997 when she was just 36 years old. Her televised funeral gathered 2.5 billion viewers.

Such are the vagaries of life.


July 1, 1979 -
The Sony Corporation revolutionized the music industry on this date when the first Walkman was sold. The Walkman, the first portable personal audio cassette player, allowed people to take music with them anywhere.



The first sale - a blue-and-silver model (TPS-L2), was made in Japan.

Bonus points - in the U.S., it was first marketed as the Soundabout.



And so it goes.

Today is a great day to celebrate

Today is National Ice Cream Soda day. Remember to pour the soda over the ice cream (you get a thicker ice cream soda foam.)



If you added a little Kahlua in first, even better.


June 30, 1945 -
A sequel to 1942's A Tale of Two Kitties, this Looney Tunes short, Tale of Two Mice, directed by Frank Tashin and starring Babbit and Catstello, was released on this date.



This marks the second appearance of Babbit and Catstello as features in Warner Bros. cartoons. It is the middle appearance of three cartoons where they feature (although they make a cameo appearance in a fourth), between 1942-1946.


June 30, 1951 -
The Merrie Melodies short, French Rarebit, directed by Bob McKimson and starring Bug Bunny, was released on this date.



The stuffing for Louisiana Back-Bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise a la Antoine is hot sauce, chili peppers, bay leaf, bay rum, hot mustard, horse radish, mule radish and a dash of Tabasco sauce.


June 30, 1962 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Zoom at the Top, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, was released on this date.



The Acme icicle maker is similar to the early snow making machines in use at studios, including Warner Bros.


June 30, 1971 -
Paramount Pictures' musical, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, directed by Mel Stuart (and written by Roald Dahl, based on his novel), starring Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Roy Kinnear, Denise Nickerson, Leonard Stone, Julie Dawn Cole, Paris Themmen, and Dodo Denney, opened in the US, on this date.



After reading the script, Gene Wilder said he would take the role of Willy Wonka under one condition: that he would be allowed to limp and then suddenly somersault in the scene when he first meets the children. When director Mel Stuart asked why, Wilder replied that having Wonka do this meant that "from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying or telling the truth." Stuart asked, "If I say no, you won't do the picture?" Wilder said, "I'm afraid that's the truth."


June 30, 1971 -
Mike Michols' very adult drama, Carnal Knowledge, written by Jules Feiffer and starring Jack Nicholson, Candice Bergen, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, Rita Moreno, and Cynthia O'Neal, opened on this date.



Mr. Jenkins, a theater manager in Albany, Georgia was convicted of obscenity-related charges in 1972 for showing the film in his establishment, due to its frank depictions of sex and nudity, with police seizing the print of the film and the Georgia Supreme Court upholding the conviction. The U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the conviction in the 1974 Jenkins v. Georgia case, ruling that the movie was not obscene, and the law that was used to convict the manager was unconstitutional. As a result, Avco Embassy re-released the film to theaters using the tagline "The United States Supreme Court has ruled that 'Carnal Knowledge' is not obscene. See it now!".


June 30, 1972 -
The sci-fi film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the third sequel in the Planet of the Apes oeuvre, directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Roddy McDowall, was released in U.S. theatres on this date.



In the film (set in 1991), the apes were enslaved after a plague brought back from space wiped out all of the Earth's cats and dogs a decade earlier before the events portrayed. In 1978, six years after the film's release, there was a worldwide pandemic of canine papillomavirus (a disease not known until then) that killed several thousands of dogs.

(To celebrate the premiere of the film, the world added a leap second to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) time system for the first time.)


June 30, 1979 -
Anita Ward single, Ring My Bell, started a two week run at No.1 on the Billboard chart, on this date. (This was her only charting hit.)



This was one of the first hit songs to feature a synthesized drum. The hook was the synthesized drum of Frederick Knight, which produced a sound that became copied by many other disco records. Carl Marsh is also credited for his synthesizer work on the album.


June 30, 1989 -
The quasi-biographical drama film about Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls of Fire! directed by Jim McBride and starring Dennis Quaid, Winona Ryder, John Doe, Alec Baldwin, and Mojo Nixon premiered in the US on this date.



Jerry Lee Lewis hates the film and the book from which the film was based, but praises Quaid's performance.


June 30, 1989 -
One of Spike Lee's big early films, Do The Right Thing, went into limited release in the US on this date.



The key scene when Danny Aiello and John Turturro talk alone, approximately midway through the film, was partly improvised. The scripted scene ended as the character Smiley approached the window. Everything after that, until the end of the scene, was completely ad-libbed.


June 30, 1995 -
Ron Howards' film about the ill-fated 13th Apollo mission bound for the moon, Apollo 13, premiered on this date.



Ron Howard stated that, after the first test preview of the film, one of the comment cards indicated "total disdain"; the audience member had written that it was a "typical Hollywood" ending and that the crew would never have survived.


June 30, 2006 –
The 20th Century Fox comedy, The Devil Wears Prada, starring (the lousy actress) Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci and Adrian Grenier, premiered on this date.



The only contact production had with Vogue was Jess Gonchor, the production designer, who snuck into their offices to get a look at Anna Wintour's office. He was able to re-create it so authentically that it is said that Anna redecorated hers immediately after the movie came out. The devil herself just announced that she was stepping down from being editor-in-chief of Vogue the other day.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
June 30, 1520 -
... And as the gloom begins to fall ...

After witnessing the murder of Montezuma II (or committing the murders themselves,) the Conquistadors, led by Hernan Cortes, did what any red-blooded Spaniard would do and looted Tenochtitlan, the ancient Mexican capital of the Aztec empire on this date. The retreating Spaniards were attacked by an angry Aztec mob. Tied down by armor and treasure, they are no match for the natives and nearly half of Hernan Cortes' men lose their lives.


June 30, 1837 -
England outlawed the use of the pillory on this date.

That still left the British Navy the three things they loved the most - the lash, sodomy and rum.


June 30, 1859 -
Charles Blondin (Jean François Gravelet,) a French acrobat became the first person to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope on this date. Blondin walked a 1,100 feet long rope that was 160 feet above the water.



The entire walk from bank to bank to bank took 23 minutes, and Blondin immediately announced an encore performance to take place on the Fourth of July (which he gave and survived.)


June 30, 1882 -
Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, was hanged on this date.



Tickets for the event went for as much as $300. Proving once again, give the people what they want and they'll show up.


June 30, 1894 -
Under a cloudless sky and as part of a pageant which delighted tens of thousands of people, the new Tower-Bridge, which deserves to be reckoned among the greatest engineering triumphs of the Victorian age, was declared open for traffic by land and water... - The Times of London, July 2, 1894



One of London's most iconic symbols, The Tower Bridge was officially opened on this date by The Prince of Wales (Teddy, the future King Edward VII, took time out of his unofficial profession of Royal Whore Monger, to officiate on this date.)


June 30, 1908 -
An explosion near the Tunguska River in Siberia on this date, incinerated some 300 sq. km. that encircled the impact of an estimated 60 meter diameter stony meteorite. It flattened some 40,000 trees over 900 sq. miles and caused damage equivalent to a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb.



The explosion in Siberia, which knocked down trees in a 30-mile radius and struck people unconscious some 40 miles away, is believed by some scientists to be caused by a falling fragment from a meteorite.


June 30, 1934 -
Acting on behalf of the Fuhrer, SS troops around Germany arrested hundreds of loyal SA stormtroopers under the charge of treason in order to eliminate the group.



One squad descends on a Bavarian resort, where it interrupts a contingent of SA men engaged  in homosexual festivities. Lieutenant Edmund Heines was caught in bed with a teenaged boy, and shot to death on the spot. The rest were taken into custody. Hitler sacrificed Ernst Rohm (his pal and head of the SA stormtroopers) rather than lose the support of the  military. He personally confronted Rohm in a jail cell and left a single shot pistol in the cell. Ten minutes later, Rohm had killed himself (unless he didn't, in which case, he was  executed at point blank range by Hitler's goons - reports are sketchy.)



Nobody ruins a good lederhosen and sodomy party in like Hitler's goons. (Not that I'm comparing the two situations but I have a feeling that after the Wagner uprising, Russia is about to experience their own Night of the Long Knives.


June 30, 1936 -
It's the 90th anniversary of publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind on this date.



Despite spending 10 years of her life working on the tome, Mitchell didn’t really have much intention of publishing it. When a “friend” heard that she was considering writing a book (though in fact, it had been written), she said something to the effect of, “Imagine, you writing a book!” Annoyed, Mitchell took her massive manuscript to a Macmillan editor the next day. She later regretted the act and sent the editor a telegram saying, “Have changed my mind. Send manuscript back.”



It had been extensively promoted, chosen as the July selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club, and so gushed about in pre-publication reviews -- "Gone With the Wind is very possibly the greatest American novel," said Publisher's Weekly -- that it was certain to sell, though few predicted the sustained, record-breaking numbers. Though she had been eager and active for her fame, Mitchell too was caught off guard.


June 30, 1953 -
The first Corvette rolled off the production line on this date. The car only came in white with a black top and red interior. Optional features included a curtain instead of roll-up windows and interior door handles.



300 cars were made the first year and sold for $3,498.


June 30, 1966 -
28 people, including Betty Friedan, attending the Third National Conference of State Commissions on the Status of Women, in Washington D.C., founded the National Organization for Women, on this date.



They were inspired by the failure of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and frustrated that they were unable to issue a resolution that recommended the EEOC carry out its legal mandate to end sex discrimination in employment. Betty Friedan served as its first president (1966 - 1970).


June 30, 1974 -
Alberta Williams King, mother of Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated, along with church deacon, Edward Boykin, in their church on this date. The 69-year-old former schoolteacher was shot by Marcus Wayne Chenault as she sat at the organ of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.



Although Chenault’s lawyers pleaded insanity—the young man repeatedly said he was on a mission to kill all Christians — he was given a death sentence. This was later reduced to life in prison, in part at the insistence of King family members who opposed the death penalty. He died in prison of a stroke in 1995.


Tomorrow is Canada Day, and ACME, in an effort to fulfill its legal obligation to broadcast a quota of Canadian content, er... I mean, to honor our sister of the north:
June 30, 1987 -
The Royal Canadian Mint introduced the $1 coin, affectionately known as the Loonie, on this date.



It bears images of a common loon, a bird which is common and well known in Canada, on the reverse, and of Queen Elizabeth II on the obverse. It is produced by the Royal Canadian Mint at its facility in Winnipeg.

(This will be on the test.)


June 30, 1997 -
Hong Kong was acquired by Britain in 1842, when it was ceded in perpetuity by China as a base for Britain's trading ventures. Under the First Convention of Peking, signed in 1860, the tip of the Kowloon peninsula and Stonecutters' Island were ceded to Britain.

In 1898, China granted Britain a 99-year lease for a much larger stretch of land north of Kowloon and a large number of islands, known collectively as the New Territories.

The lease ran out on this date, in 1997. The handover ceremony occurred on the following day. Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC.



And so it goes.