I couldn't let the weekend go by without mentioning that on Friday night, Comedian Robert Schimmel died in a Phoenix hospital from injuries he sustained in a car accident. He was 60.
Schimmel survived a heart attack and bout of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2000.
When it's your time to go - it's time to go.
September 5, 1916 -
D. W. Griffith classic silent-film masterpiece, Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages, premiered on this date.
D.W. Griffith invested more than $2 million on the film, an unprecedented amount of money at the time. "Intolerance" never even came close to earning back its budget - audiences in 1916 were completely unused to seeing films which ran in excess of 3 hours. Even when it was re-cut and released as 2 separate features, The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law, it still failed to make money.
September 5, 1927 -
Walt Disney's Trolley Troubles, first appearance of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, premiered on this date.
Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks worked for Universal Pictures on this cartoon. Universal showed their appreciation for the two for making Oswald a star by threatening to cut their salaries. As a result, the two walked...and soon created Mickey Mouse and the rest is history.
Today in History:
September 5, 1638 -
King Louis XIV of France was born on this date.
Like Elizabeth I in England, Louis inherited a struggling kingdom and built it into a major power. Unlike Elizabeth, Louis did not remain a virgin. On the contrary, he produced so many little bastards that he came to be known as the "Son King," which led him to conclude famously L'etat, c'est moi. ("Kid, I'm your father.")
September 5, 1877 -
The great Sioux Chief Crazy Horse, a cousin of Kicking Bear, was fatally bayoneted at age 36 by a soldier at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.
His final resting place remains unknown.
September 5, 1921 -
Undiscovered actress Virginia Rappe somehow ruptures her bladder during actor-comedian Fatty Arbuckle's party at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco.
Three days later, the feverish woman is checked into a maternity hospital, where she dies from peritonitis. Arbuckle is eventually tried for murder, but acquitted. The surrounding scandal virtually destroys Arbuckle's career.
September 5, 1972 -
Five Palestinians armed with machine guns sneak into the Olympic Village in Munich. There they take nine Israeli athletes hostage, killing two others in the process.
Later, they demand safe passage out of the country and the release of 200 Palestinians from prison in Israel. Ultimately, none of the athletes makes it out alive.
September 5, 1975 -
Manson Family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme almost assassinates President Gerald Ford with a .45 automatic in Sacramento, California.
But Fromme is tackled by a Secret Service agent before she can remember to rack a round into the firing chamber.
September 5, 1990 -
In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, LAPD chief Daryl Gates opines: "Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."
Note to self: remember not to invite Mr. Gates to any social events. What a minute, he's dead. New note to self:remember not to invite Zombie Gates to any social events.
September 5, 1991 -
Disgraced children's television star Pee-wee Herman returns to the public eye for the first time after his masturbation arrest, appearing on the MTV Video Music Awards.
He opens with the line: "Heard any good jokes lately?"
September 5, 1997 -
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, died at 87 after a heart attack on this date.
Privately, Mother Teresa experienced doubts and struggles over her religious beliefs which lasted nearly fifty years until the end of her life; what Douglas Adams called "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul". Her doubts should not be confused, as Christopher Hitchens postulated as 'the thoughts of a confused old lady who it knew had for all practical purposes ceased to believe' and more as the thought process of someone seriously working their way through spiritual beliefs.
September 5, 2003 -
It wasn't so happy at the happiest place in the world when one Disneyland guest is killed and 10 others injured when the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster jumps the tracks in Frontierland.
Did they get their money back?
And so it goes.
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