It should always be National Chocolate Chip Day -

Celebrate the day by enjoying the sweet morsels in every bite of a chocolate chip cookie. (Do not confuse today though with National Chip Cookie Day which is August 4th.)



Go out and eat some raw cookie dough to celebrate (ignore the feelings of shame and worries of salmonella poisoning due to the raw cookie dough.)


May 15, 1928 -
Plane Crazy was the first animated cartoon to feature Mickey Mouse as well as Minnie Mouse (Mickey's girlfriend). The short was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.

Iwerks was also the main animator for this short and reportedly spent six weeks working on it. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were credited for assisting him; these two had already signed their contracts with Charles Mintz, but he was still in the process of forming his new studio and so for the time being they were still employed by Disney.



The cartoon was pretty much produced in secret, as Walt Disney was still contracted to the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series for Universal.


May 15, 1937 -
The Looney Tunes short, Porky and Gabby, directed by Ub Iwerks, starry Porky Pig and Gabby the Goat (in his first appearance,) debuted on this date.



This is the first time Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones are assistant directors. Eventually after Ub Iwerks left Warner Bros. Cartoons, Clampett took his place as director and eventually would work for the studio to direct more Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts up until his departure in 1945, while Jones stayed as an assistant director after Clampett took over Iwerks' unit until Porky's Poppa in 1938 and eventually became a director himself later on in 1938 after Frank Tashlin's departure.


May 15, 1943 -
The Looney Tunes short, Tokio Jokio, (a propaganda short during World War II,) directed by Norman McCabe, debuted on this date. The cartoon is no longer shown due to its offensive racist depictions.



The character "Lord Haw Haw" was a caricature of a real person. William Joyce, an American-born Nazi propagandist who had moved to Ireland and then to England before moving on to Nazi Germany in order to support the fascist Nazi Government.


May 15, 1943 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Greetings Bait, directed by Friz Freleng, debuted on this date.



This short was nominated for an Academy Award in 1944, but lost to the Tom and Jerry cartoon The Yankee Doodle Mouse.


May 15, 1953 -
Another Luchino Visconti neorealism classic, Bellissima, starring Anna Magnani opened in New York City on this date.



In the final scene of the film, Anna Magnani hears the film playing outside her room and remarks that she hears Burt Lancaster. Magnani would win an Oscar four years later for The Rose Tattoo, in which she would costar with Lancaster.


May 15, 1958 -
Vincente Minnelli's lush valentine to the La Belle Époque era, Gigi premiered in NYC on this date. (Just try not thinking the whole teen-age prostitution angle of the film and you'll enjoy it.)



Leslie Caron enjoyed working with Louis Jourdan, though he could sometimes be a challenge. She recalled, "Louis Jourdan, one of the handsomest men in Hollywood, was not comfortable with his image, yet his wit and self-deprecating humour were rare and unique.... He tended to express his angst with constant negative comments about Minnelli's staging, but instead of having it out with Vincente, he poured his grudges out on me. I was quite exhausted to hear, every time the camera stopped, his litany of grievances."


May 15, 1976 -
The Rolling Stones' 13th British and 15th American studio album, Black and Blue, goes to No. 1 on the Billboard Albums Chart on this date.



The working title for the album was Hot Stuff until they decided on Black And Blue.


May 15, 1979 -
Fans wept their bitter tears when ABC TV aired the last episode of Starkey and Hutch: Sweet Revenge on this date.



Both David Soul and Paul-Michael Glaser were affected by the "life imitates art" phenomenon. Years after Soul would find himself living in France just like Hutch was living sandwiched between French businesses, Glaser would marry a second wife, whose name, Tracy Barone, sounded exactly like (or rhymed with) the name of Starsky's first love, Rosey Malone.


May 15, 1981 -
Look, there was no real reason for this but The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island premiered on NBC on this date.



According to both Sherwood Schwartz and Dawn Wells, It was a very emotional day on set when Jim Backus filmed his brief scene. He was thin and very shaky, but he still dominated his character and few lines, as before. After Backus finished filming, he asked Dawn if he was funny, and she assured him that he was, but it broke her heart to see how poor his condition was to not be able to tell.


May 15, 1982 –
Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney started a seven week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with their single Ebony And Ivory, on this date.



While it was a big hit in the US, listeners quickly tired of the song, and it got very little radio play after it dropped off the charts. In the following years, the song was often mocked as superficial and maudlin, a stark contrast to the many McCartney and Wonder songs that have stood the test of time. In 2004, Blender magazine ranked it #10 on their list of the worst songs of all time.


May 15, 1987 -
The road movie which polarized critics, Ishtar, directed by Elaine May and starring Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, and Jack Weston, opened on this date.



Warren Beatty and Elaine May quarreled and argued quite a bit off camera and especially in the editing room. Dustin Hoffman would serve as the mediator between the two of them. Beatty would also take sides against May in disagreements between her and director of photography Vittorio Storaro. At one point, Beatty and May had an argument with May telling Beatty, "You want this scene your way? You shoot it!", and May would abandon the set for long periods of time. Beatty then reported the incident to the Columbia Pictures production representative, who then offered to fire May as director of the film on Beatty's behalf as producer of the film, but Beatty did not want to take on responsibilities of directing the rest of the film himself had May been fired.


May 15, 1993 -
Janet Jackson's (Miss Jackson, if you're nasty,) single, That's The Way Love Goes, goes to #1 on this date. It remains No. 1 for eight weeks - longer than any other single by either Janet or her famous brother.



James Brown demanded approval of the lyrics before he would allow Janet to sample his hit Papa Don't Take No Mess because he was angry at rap groups for splicing his songs with foul language. He didn't raise any fuss over Janet's sweet and seductive lyrics, though, and swiftly gave his permission.


May 15, 2011 -
Michel Hazanavicius' amazing salute to the passing of the silent film era, The Artist, starring Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, and James Cromwell, premiered at the Cannes Film festival, on this date.



The character of George Valentin is based on two silent movie stars, Douglas Fairbanks and John Gilbert. Both actors starred in silent movie swashbucklers, and both saw their careers decline with the introduction of sound films.


Another unimportant moment in history


Today in History:
May 15, 1886 -
Emily Dickinson finally heard the buzzing of that damn fly and gave up the ghost on this date.



Miss Dickinson died in Amherst, Mass. in the same house, where she had lived in seclusion for the previous 24 years.


This day is little remembered and yet of great import. It was on May 15, 1916, that Sir Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France, with Russia's assent, confirmed their agreement to carve up the tottering Ottoman Empire between them.



Most of the mess that was the 20th Century can be traced back to the accord. In brief, here are some of the some of the issues these knuckleheads were trying to sort out -

Russia vs Turkey vs Greece over Constantinople, the Straits and Thrace: Russia sought control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, a strategic desire going back to the Tsars. The Allies had promised Russia Constantinople — but that fell apart with the Bolshevik Revolution.

France vs the Arabs vs Turkey over Syria: France eyed Syria and Lebanon (their "Zone of Influence"), clashing with Arab nationalist aspirations, especially after the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria under Faisal was crushed by the French in 1920.

Britain vs France vs the Arabs vs the Zionists over Palestine: Palestine became a tangle of competing promises—the Sykes-Picot framework, the Balfour Declaration (1917, promising a Jewish homeland), and vague pledges to Arab leaders.

Greece vs Turkey vs Italy over Smyrna and southwest Asia Minor: Postwar, Greece landed troops in Smyrna with Allied backing, leading to the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). Mustafa Kemal's nationalists pushed them out in a brutal reversal.

Britain vs France vs the Arabs vs Turkey over Kurdish northern Iraq: The area around Mosul was contested not only for its strategic location and oil but also because of the Kurdish question, which remains unresolved.

France vs Turkey over southeastern Asia Minor and Alexandretta: A French mandate area that eventually went to Turkey in 1939, sowing lasting resentment in Syria.

Russia vs Turkey over Armenia and the southeast Black Sea coast: The Armenian Genocide, Turkish-Russian conflicts, and the later Soviet-Armenian tensions all converged here.

America, for once, had no dog in this fight.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement remains infamous not just for what it did but for how it did it: in secrecy, over the heads of the people who actually lived there, setting the stage for a century of mistrust, rebellion, and border disputes.


May 15, 1918 -
The US Post Office Department (later renamed the USPS) begins the first regular airmail service in the world (between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.).



Of course this new service was a rousing success - the plane got lost and the mail finally had to be sent via train days later.

The Postal Service had already begun running in the red and it has not improved much since then


May 15, 1930 -
Ellen Church, a young nurse from San Francisco, became one of the first airplane stewardess on this day. She was actually certified as a pilot, but she and seven other nurses began flying on a US Airways flight from Oakland, California, to Chicago, Illinois.  Miss Church was on the job for 18 months.

Early stewardesses did much more than pass out drinks though — they also acted as luggage loaders, made small repairs to the plane, and even helped push the plane back into the hangar at the end of flights.

In December 1942, she took to the air again -- this time as a captain in the Army Nurse Corps, Air Evacuation Service. For distinguished work in North Africa, Sicily, England and France, she was presented with the Air Medal, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with seven bronze service stars, the American Theatre Campaign Medal, and the Victory Medal.


May 15, 1942 -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation, that when into effect on this date, establishing the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.





The act, signed into law some five months after the United States entered World War II, created a voluntary enrollment program for up to 150,000 women to join the war effort in noncombat roles.


May 15, 1960 -
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik IV, a three-ton spacecraft containing a "dummy cosmonaut,"  (There is a consistent rumor that there was an actual cosmonaut on-board but the Soviets have denied this.) The mission goes fine until they attempt to retrofire.



A bug in the guidance system had pointed the capsule in the wrong direction, so instead of dropping into the atmosphere the satellite moves into a higher orbit.


May 15, 1972 -
On February 16, 1972, Arthur Bremer quit his job as a janitor. Two weeks later, he began his diary on March 1 with the words, "It is my personal plan to assassinate by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace". His purpose was "to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see".



In his haste, the gunman forgets to yell his carefully-chosen catchphrase, "Penny for your thoughts!"  And when Gov. George Wallace survived the assassination attempt, albeit confined to a wheelchair, Bremer's name was soon forgotten.


And on a personal note -
Happy Birthday Michael.

And so it goes

Is Mash Potato Day around the corner?

Today is National Chicken Dance Day -



Although I'm sure that Werner Thomas, the creator of the original Chicken Dance music ( Der Ententanz (The Duck Dance)) never had Beyoncé's dancing in mind


May 14, 1925 -
On this fine spring day, a middle-aged London society matron goes out to buy flowers for a party. Meanwhile, across town, a shell-shocked World War I veteran is grappling with severe PTSD and planning his tragic exit from a world that refuses to understand him. Just your average Thursday, really. Virginia Woolf’s groundbreaking novel Mrs. Dalloway hit the shelves on this date.



What Mrs. Dalloway actually delivers is a deep, stream-of-consciousness journey through the minds of its characters, all within the span of a single day. Readers are taken on an emotional rollercoaster of neuroses, repressed desires, class anxiety, mental illness, and existential dread—with bonus appearances by Big Ben and cucumber sandwiches. Woolf’s fluid, impressionistic style broke with literary tradition, diving headfirst into themes that were, for the 1920s, about as taboo as wearing pants to high tea. Homosexuality? Check. Feminism? Absolutely. The psychological toll of war? Front and center. All woven seamlessly into a narrative where not all that much happens - and yet everything happens.


May 14, 1938 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Now That Summer Is Gone, directed by Frank Tashlin, debuted on this date.



It would make sense that squirrels would save their nuts at the First 'Nut'ional Bank - an obvious play on First National Bank.


May 14, 1938 -
Michael Curtiz' technicolor swashbuckler, The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains, premiered in the U.S. on this date.



During one fight sequence, Errol Flynn was jabbed by an actor who was using an unprotected sword--he asked him why he didn't have a guard on the point. The other player apologized and explained that director Michael Curtiz had instructed him to remove the safety feature in order to make the action "more exciting". Flynn reportedly climbed up a gantry where Curtiz was standing next to the camera, took him by the throat and asked him if he found that "exciting enough".


May 14, 1949 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Bee-Deviled Bruin, directed by Chuck Jones, starring The Three Bears, debuted on this date.



Junyer Bear is modeled after the character Lennie, from the story and film Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.


May 14, 1951 -
The seminal It's Time For Ernie, debuts on NBC on this date.



Show like as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Uncle Floyd Show, Saturday Night Live, The David Letterman Show and even Captain Kangaroo and Sesame Street were influenced by Kovacs and his television work.

TV has never been quite the same since.


May 14, 1960 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Hyde and Go Tweet, directed by Friz Freleng, starring Sylvester and Tweety, debuted on this date.



Sylvester breaks the fourth wall when he asks the audience if he has a choice whether to jump or not..


May 14, 1973 -
François Truffaut's masterpiece about film-making, Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine), starring Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud premieres at the Cannes Film Festive, on this date.



The English title refers to a technique for filming night scenes in broad daylight, achieved by either lowering the lens aperture or through the use of filters. The French call it the "American night". Ferrand uses this literal translation when talking about the car crash shooting, but Julie cannot understand what he means ("What is American night?").


May 14, 1989 -
We say goodby to the Keaton family when NBC TV aired the last episode of Family Ties, Alex doesn't Live Here Anymore on this date.



The show was a long-time staple of NBC's "Must See TV" Thursday night line-up. After season five, the show moved from Thursday night following The Cosby Show to Sunday night. The show dropped from second place in the ratings to number seventeen due to the move. The ratings declined even further in season seven, and the show was cancelled.


May 14, 1989 -
Moonlighting, one of the better "boy/girl detective show" aired it's last episode on ABC on this date.



Even after the series had long since 'jumped the shark', Bruce Willis' toup was a thing to behold.


May 14, 1998 -
The final episode of Seinfeld aired on this date.



Jerry Seinfeld holds both the record for the "most money refused" according to the Guinness Book of World Records by refusing an offer to continue the show for $5 million per episode, and another record for the Highest Ever Annual Earnings For A TV Actor, while the show itself held the record for the Highest Television Advertising Rates until 2004, when the final episode of Friends aired.

Not too shabby for a show about nothing.


May 14, 1999 -
A lavish rendition of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Michael Hoffman, and starring Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Everett, Stanley Tucci, Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, and Dominic West, opened on this date.



Although it appears to be an idyllic location, the shoot was anything but. Five weeks of filming almost completely at night quickly took its toll on an increasingly unhinged cast and crew, whilst all the lush greenery ultimately became poisonous (the studio set was in an aircraft-sized hangar where the plants all started decaying, releasing all sorts of noxious gases into the atmosphere) under the hot studio lights.


Another lesser known Monopoly card


Today in History:
May 14, 964 -
Give me that old time religion.

Pope John XII died of injuries inflicted eight days prior by a jealous husband who caught him in flagrante delicto with his wife.



The 26-year-old pontiff (yes, I know he is often shown as a bald, and sometimes, with white hair and a beard. Apparently he was known as a 'great' fornicator and like make a randy young man, he didn't have time to sit around for a caricature,) had received a blow to the temple, causing immediate paralysis. Critics had accused John of converting the Lateran Palace into a whorehouse.


The first inoculation against Smallpox was administered on May 14, 1796, by Edward Jenner, when Jenner took fluid from a cowpox blister and scratched it into the skin of James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy



(Brief aside: How much do you trust your child’s doctor? Imagine this conversation — “Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Phipps. Little Jimmy looks great. Lungs are clear, no fevers, textbook eight-year-old. Oh, and before you go — I’m going to slice his arm open and rub cow sore juice into the wound. No need to panic, it’s for science.”)



To Jenner’s eternal credit - and Jimmy’s unintentional bravery - it worked. The boy developed a mild fever, recovered quickly, and showed immunity to smallpox. Thus began the long, winding road to modern immunization, all thanks to a combination of bovine biology and bold 18th-century guesswork. But wait! This marvel of medicine came just four days after Napoleon kicked the Austrians around at the Battle of Lodi on May 10, 1796. Coincidence? Probably. But let’s not get picky with our historical drama..



And if you like eerie coincidences, try this timeline on for size:

May 10, 1774: King Louis XV dies… of smallpox.

May 14, 1610: Henry IV (his grandfather) is assassinated.

May 14, 1643: Louis XIII (his dad) dies.
Clearly, French kings should have avoided May altogether.



After Louis XV’s death, his grandson Louis XVI took the throne - famously married to Marie Antoinette, who reportedly told the poor to eat cake (which, in fairness, they could not afford to do even sarcastically). This tone-deaf ruling class behavior led directly to La Révolution, which kicked off on La Quatorze Juillet - French for “The Fourth of July,” if you ask someone who wants to sound cultured while being deeply wrong.



Cue the Rain of Terror, then the Rise of Napoleon, then the Battle of Lodi, and suddenly we’re back to Edward Jenner and his revolutionary use of cow-goo science. Hey, it’s not technically a full circle, but it is the kind of spiraling chaos history excels at — especially when everyone keeps dying on May 14.


May 14, 1878 -
Robert A. Chesebrough begins selling Vaseline (registered trademark for petroleum jelly (U.S. Patent 127,568.)

For the remainder of his life, he ate a teaspoon of the product every day.

(While he was president, Calvin Coolidge loved having his head rubbed with Vaseline while he ate his breakfast in bed.)

Insert dirty joke here (of course liberally lubricated with Vaseline.)


May 14th, 1932 -
New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, organized a day-long Beer rally known as the "We Want Beer Parade." Nearly 100,000 people showed up in support of repeal and the legalization of beer.



On the very same day the city of Detroit held a similar even of there own, in which some 40,000 people attended.

They marched and the chanted, "Who want's a bottle of beer?"


May 14, 1936 -
Walden Robert Cassotto, singer, actor, Bronx Science grad, was born in NYC on this date.



Bobby Darin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.


May 14, 1943 -
At approximately 4:10 a.m., Australia’s AHS Centaur, a hospital ship, was sunk without warning after it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.



Of the 332 medical personnel and civilian crew aboard, only 64 survived.


It's Israel's 78th anniversary today (Israel became a nation at midnight May 14th, in 1948, upon the termination of the British mandate.)



Once again, let us hope that the current situation in Israel will end peacefully and soon.


May 14, 1973 -
The last Saturn V rocket was launched on this date, carrying Skylab One, the first manned space station. At the time, it was the largest payload launched into space by any nation.



During the following nine months, three successive teams of astronauts would crew Skylab. The space station would fall back into the Earth’s atmosphere in July 1979, accidentally scattering debris across Western Australia (luckily no one was injured.)


May 14, 1998 -
The world lost one of its smoothest voices and sharpest suits: Francis Albert Sinatra, better known as Ol’ Blue Eyes, bowed out at the age of 82.



If you believe in poetic exits, perhaps the last voice he heard really was his own, crooning from a record player, whispering, “May you live to be 100, and may the last voice you hear be mine.” From Hoboken bars to Las Vegas stages, from Oscar-winning performances to allegedly "Italian Business Men", Sinatra’s life was a masterclass in swagger. He wasn’t just a singer, he was a symbol of an era. Suave, volatile, loyal, mysterious, magnetic and with just enough mafia-adjacent intrigue to keep things spicy.



The Chairman of the Board once said, “What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can.” Which is one way to describe an existence filled with top-shelf bourbon, sold-out concerts, a few FBI files, Ava Gardner, and four marriages. A model citizen? Not quite. A cultural icon? Undeniably.



Frank Sinatra didn’t just sing songs, he inhabited them. He didn’t just perform, he commanded. And when he died on this date, of a heart attack, the world fell a little quieter. Though, somewhere, in some smoky lounge in the great beyond, you can imagine him raising a glass and saying, “What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can. I've been criticized on many, many occasions, because of - acquaintances, and what have you."



And so it goes.

Swim in the water and jump when you hit ground

Today is Frog Jumping Day. Frog Jumping Day celebrates Mark Twain's 'jumping frog' which made him famous.



The short story was first published in 1865 as Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog while Twain was still a struggling journalist in California - and two years later it was the main attraction of his first book. He never wrote another short story that had such widespread appeal and was so popular.


May 13, 1935 -
The classic Universal Pictures horror film, Werewolf of London, directed by Stuart Walker and starring Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, and Spring Byington, opened on this date.



This film made up much of its werewolf mythology out of whole cloth. The ideas that being bitten by a werewolf makes one a werewolf, that a werewolf changes under the full moon, and that werewolves were wolf/man hybrids were completely made up.


May 13, 1939 -
The Looney Tunes short, Kristopher Kolumbus Jr., directed by Bob Clampett, starring Porky Pig, debuted on this date. This short has seldom aired on TV due to prominent Native American stereotypes.



This is one of only two Warner Bros. shorts released between Porky and Teabiscuit and Hare-um Scare-um to not feature Warner Bros in a banner during the opening rings.


May 13, 1966 -
The Rolling Stones released Paint it Black, in the UK on this date.



Keith Richards explained how this song came together: "We were in Fiji for about three days. They make sitars and all sorts of Indian stuff. Sitars are made out of watermelons or pumpkins or something smashed so they go hard. They're very brittle and you have to be careful how you handle them. We had the sitars, we thought we'd try them out in the studio. To get the right sound on 'Paint It Black' we found the sitar fitted perfectly. We tried a guitar but you can't bend it enough."


May 13, 1970 -
The Beatles' final movie, Let It Be, received its U.S. premiere, in New York City theaters on this date.



John Lennon believed that Michael Lindsay-Hogg deliberately avoided including shots of him and Yoko Ono in favor of more shots of Paul McCartney. Lennon said he felt that "the camera work was set up to show Paul and not to show anybody else" and that "the people that cut it, cut it as 'Paul is God' and we're just lyin' around ..." Ringo Starr also complained that most of the "clowning" he performed at the director's behest was never used. (Please seek out the Peter Jackson documentary, The Beatles: Get Back.)


May 13, 1978 -
Lt. Columbo finally got to that one last thing on this date when the series finale of Columbo, The Conspirators aired on NBC-TV.



The series was picked up again in 1989 and continued on its eighth season onward, produced by ABC-TV.


May 13, 1978 –
Yvonne Elliman's single If I Can’t Have You (written by The Bee Gees,) went to No.1 on the Billboard Charts, replacing the song, Night Fever, another song written by The Bee Gees and also featured on The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.



The huge success of this song resulted in Elliman being remembered as a disco artist, but this style of music was an exception to the medium-tempo ballads that she specialized in, and which comprised the bulk of her recordings. She sang the role of Mary Magdalene in the original album Jesus Christ Superstar and in the subsequent Broadway and film versions, and achieved her first hit single with the ballad I Don't Know How to Love Him.


May 13, 1994 -
Nearly two years to the day after his farewell, Johnny Carson made a surprise cameo on the Late Show With David Letterman, which turned out to be his last-ever TV appearance before his death in January 2005, on this date.



Just before Carson's death in 2005, CBS executive Peter Lassally, who had produced both Letterman and Carson during his long career, revealed that Carson would occasionally send jokes directly to Letterman.


May 13, 1994 -
Soundgarden released the second single off their album Superunknown, Black Hole Sun, on this date.



Chris Cornell got the idea for this song while driving home from Bear Creek Studio, near Seattle, where Soundgarden were recording a version of New Damage for a charity album. He recalled to Uncut magazine August 2014: "I wrote it in my head driving home from Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, a 35-40 minute drive from Seattle. It sparked from something a news anchor said on TV and I heard wrong. I heard 'blah blah blah black hole sun blah blah blah'. I thought that would make an amazing song title, but what would it sound like? It all came together, pretty much the whole arrangement including the guitar solo that's played beneath the riff."


May 13, 2004 -
The last episode of Frasier aired on TV following an 11-year run on NBC-TV on this date.



The series holds the record for the most Emmy wins for a TV series of any kind (comedy or drama) with 37 wins.


Another episode of ACME's Litlle Known Animal Facts


Today in History:
May 13, 1497 -
Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola for heresy on this date.



In Florence the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola had led the February 7th burning of musical instruments, books and priceless works of art (Bonfire of the Vanities.) He preached against corruption in the Church and civil government.


May 13, 1568 -
Mary Queen of Scots was defeated by English at the Battle of Langside, south of Glasgow, on this date.



After the battle, Mary fled south. She spent her last night in Scotland at Dundrennan Abbey, near Kirkcudbright (an event commemorated by Dundrennan Road in Battlefield) before crossing to England to face captivity and eventual execution.


May 13, 1637 -
Cardinal Richelieu, a powerful French clergyman and statesman, is credited with introducing a refinement that would forever change dining etiquette: the table knife. Concerned with the increasingly crude and dangerous habits of his dinner guests — most notably their tendency to pick their teeth with the sharp points of their knives — Richelieu ordered that the tips of all table knives in his household be rounded off.



This seemingly small adjustment had a significant cultural impact. Not only did it help curb what Richelieu viewed as uncouth behavior at the dinner table, but it also marked an early step toward the more refined and formalized practices of dining that would develop throughout Europe in the centuries to follow. The rounded knife quickly caught on among the French aristocracy, eventually influencing cutlery design across the continent.


May 13, 1787 -
The first fleet of ships carrying convicted criminals left England en route to a new British prison called Australia.

You'd think that by sending their religious nuts to North America and their criminals to Australia, the British would have created a pleasant little island paradise for themselves. Instead their empire has dwindled away over the past 100 years, while the religious nuts and criminals of the U.S. and Australia have established themselves as major powers at Wimbledon.


May 13, 1846 -
The United States, under President James Polk, declared that a state of war already existed against Mexico, two months after fighting began, on this date.



This was in response to an incident where the Mexican cavalry surrounded a scouting party of American dragoons. $10 million was appropriated for war expenses by Congress. There are some in Arizona who haven't heard that the hostilities have long since ended.


May 13, 1890 –
Nikola Tesla was issued a patent (#428,057) for the Pyromagneto-electric generator.

While Tesla's patent of the pyromagneto electric generator explains the theoretical principles behind a "free energy" generator that utilizes radiant energy, no one has managed to produce a working model of this type of generator yet.


May 13, 1913 -
The latest brainchild of Russian aircraft design genius Igor Sikorsky embarks on its maiden flight on this date. (The Tzar was a little confused; he had to be convinced that being the Csar, or Czar for that matter, he was eligible for a seat inside the plane.)

The Grand, easily the world's most luxurious passenger plane, includes such innovations as upholstered seats, a balcony, and even a lavatory (you just didn't want to live under the flight path.)


May 13, 1917 -
Three small children in Fatima, Portugal receive the first of six visitations from the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, on this date, (as a former altar boy and on the other side of 60, I'm hedging my bets and making no jokes about the Virgin Mary.)



Over the next five months she lays some pretty heavy crap on the kids, including a three-part secret: a vision of Hell, a prophecy of war with godless Russia, and a third secret which involved Y2K.


May 13, 1940 -
Winston Churchill had just come into office as the British Prime Minister, a few days previously, after the pacifistic Neville Chamberlain resigned, gave his famous "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech on this date.



The speech was one of several famous ones by the over weight and increasingly alcoholic Churchill, and set the tone for the British government's approach to the war.


May 13, 1950 -
Steveland Morris Hardaway, musician was born prematurely, on this day. Too much oxygen in the incubator caused the baby to become permanently blind.



At the age of ten, Little Stevie Wonder, as he was called by Berry Gordy at Motown, was discovered singing and playing the harmonica. He had many hits during his teens including Fingertips and as an adult he has earned an Oscar and at least sixteen Grammy Awards.



It's too bad the whole blindness thing has held him back.


May 13, 1973 -
Tennis players Bobby Riggs and Margaret Court played in a $100,000 winner-take-all challenge match, on this date. The match has become known as the first Battle of the Sexes (also known as the Mother's Day Massacre.)



Margaret Court, the 1970 the singles Grand Slam champion, underestimated the 55 year old Bobby Riggs and eventually lost, and Riggs went on to challenge Billie Jean King, who famously beat him in September of that year.


May 13, 1981 -
A delusional Turk (as opposed to a malignant and a turbaned Turk) shot Pope John Paul II four times in St. Peter's Square, (the pope survived after emergency surgery.) Mehmet Ali Agca believed:

a.) that the Vatican was an abomination before God,
b.) the pope was a representation of capitalism, and
c.) both must be destroyed.



19 years later, the Church would disclose that the assassination attempt was foretold in 1917, as part of the third secret of Fatima. (Like how we tied both those item together.) It must have been a comfort to John Paul II when he lay there in agony, Agca sent him his best wishes.

This may all be on the test


May 13, 1988 -
Assassins, gangsters, and enraged mobs of the past have employed a wide variety of methods to silence their victims. One such method involves chucking people out of windows, an act known as defenestration. A very rare way to shut yourself up involves self-defenestration.



Chet Baker, heroin addict and world famous jazz trumpet player, while on a successful world tour, died in Amsterdam after "falling" from a hotel window.

Oops.



And so it goes.