It's Saints Crispin and Crispinian's Day

They are the patron saints of cobblers, tanners and leather workers. So remember, when you see someone dressed all in leather making their way home this morning, wish them a Happy St. Crispin's Day


October 25, 1957 -
One of Frank Sinatra's great movie performances, Pal Joey was released on this date.



Rita Hayworth plays the rich older woman keeping Frank Sinatra as her play thing. In real life, Hayworth was only in her late thirties when she made this film and was three years younger than Sinatra.


October 25, 1957 -
Another classic 50's Drive-in movie, The Amazing Colossal Man, opened in NYC on this date.



So you may ask, did the Colossal Man date the 50 foot Woman? Yes, but ended badly.


October 25, 1965 -
Jean-Luc Godard's take on Sci-Fi Film Noir, Alphaville, opened in NYC on this date.



Keep an eye out for the fact that the film is set in the future, but all the weapons are conventional firearms.


Today in History -
It's 1415, as it has been often said, times were hard - the only way to tell who the king was in England was looking for the person with the least amount of crap on him. The wastrel son of a usurping King leads a ragtag army into another sovereign nation.



After giving a stirring speech, the outnumbered army beats the far superior and well fortified army and wins the decisive Battle of Agincourt on this day. More than one hundred years later, either Wm. Shakespeare and a bunch of other people wrote a slew of Henry plays


It's 1854, this time. The British want to maintain their naval superiority of the globe and continue to enjoy the thrill of sodomy on the open seas. The Russian Tsar (or Czar, as most monarchs are to busy to get a proper education, so they could barely figure out what type of monarch they are) decided that the Russian naval needed to get into a little of those high seas hijicks, began moving his army towards Turkey, hoping for a Russian port in the black sea. Thus, buggery is one of the underlying causes of The Crimean War.


It typical British fashion, On the morning of October 25, 1854, the English were winning the Battle of Balaclava (not Baklava, the delicious Greek pastry wars, to be described at a future date, but the goofy hat war with the ear flaps) when Lord Cardigan (yes, of sweater fame) received his order to attack the Russians fortifications.



Unfortunately for the Light Brigade, the Russian army was also on the other side of the valley that they were charging towards. The brigade was decimated by the heavy Russian guns, suffering 40 percent casualties. It was later revealed that the order was the result of Alfred Lord Tennyson needing a new hit poem and not intentional.




October 25, 1881 -
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso, the Spanish-born doodler and noted womanizer (considered the most influential artist of the 20th century) was born on this date.


I wonder if his pictures are still worth anything?


October 25, 1938 -
The Archbishop of Dubuque, the Most Reverend Francis J.L. Beckman, denounces the newfangled Swing music


-- the latest craze -- as nothing more than "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away the moral fiber of young people."



Its cannibalistic rhythms are said to lead one down the "primrose path to Hell."


October 25, 1957 -
In chair number four of the barber shop at the Park Sheraton hotel in Manhattan, Mafia don Albert Anastasia is shot five times by the Gallo Brothers, under orders from Carlo Gambino.


The barber shop is now a Starbucks.


October 25, 1983 -
In order to maintain an uninterrupted supply of nutmeg to satisfy global demand, the United States of America invades the Caribbean island of Grenada.


The invasion is rationalized as a rescue mission for the American medical students at the local school. A good friend of mine was at the school at the time and was widely quoted in the media.


October 25, 1991 -
On the way back from a Huey Lewis concert, rock promoter Bill Graham is killed when his helicopter hits high-voltage power lines in Vallejo, California.


Wow, he died because of Huey Lewis.



And so it goes