Monday, September 13, 2010

Dammit, remember there is no global warming!

This commercial will bring a smile to your face.



Especially, if you think that the bear ate the man after the commercial.


September 13, 1961 -
The Bronx in spectacular Black and White - Car 54 Where are You?, premiered on NBC TV, on this date.



For the black-and-white location shots, the patrol cars were painted red so as not to confuse the local populace.


September 13, 1974 -
The Rockford Files, starring James Garner, was first broadcast on NBC-TV on this date.



Even though Jim didn't have a permit to carry a gun, he did have one that he kept either in the cookie jar or in the coffee canister in his kitchen. "The coffee keeps it from rusting."


September 13, 2000 -
Cameron Crowe's autobiographic film, Almost Famous, was released on this date.



A valuable lessen can be learned from this film, don't confess to any deep dark secret unless you are absolutely positive everyone is going to die in that plane crash.


September 13, 1848 -
A 13-pound tamping iron is blown through the head of railroad construction foreman Phineas P. Gage, entering beneath the left cheekbone and exiting the top of his head. The metal bar lands 30 yards away, taking with it much of his left frontal lobe. Gage never loses consciousness, even while the doctors examine his wound. Two months later, he is well enough to return home and resume an active life of work and travel.


The steel rod, along with a cast of Gage's head, and his skull, are now on display at Harvard Medical School's Warren Anatomical Museum.

September 13, 1916 -
Mary the circus elephant is publicly executed in the Erwin, Tennessee railyard, after killing a drifter named Walter "Red" Eldridge the previous day.

The five-ton animal is hanged from a derrick car in front of 3,000 onlookers, and left hanging for half an hour.

Give the people what they want ...


September 13, 1916 -

Roald Dahl was born on this date in Llandaff, South Wales. He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing. Every so often, a plain gray cardboard box was issued to each child, filled with eleven chocolate bars. It was the children's task to rate the candy, and Dahl took his job very seriously. About one of the sample candy bars, he wrote, "Too subtle for the common palate." He later said that the experience got him thinking about candy as something manufactured in a factory, and he spent a lot of time imagining what a candy factory might be like.



Today, he's best known for his children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and for the fact he ran off with his children's nanny after his wife, the actress Patricia Neal, recovered from a stroke. But even more interesting, a recently published biography of Dahl, purports that he was a spy for the British government during World War II, paid to sleep with wealthy U. S. women to gain information for the British government.

And you thought only 007 had a way with women.


September 13, 1940 -
The German Luftwaffe directly targeted Buckingham Palace during 'the Blitz' and dropped a bomb into the palace courtyard and detonated on impact. The force of the explosion blew out all the inside windows of the palace. No one was seriously hurt and had the unintended effect of bonding the Royal Family with the people of England, as the Windsors did not evacuate London.


Queen Elizabeth (the queen's mother) narrowly averted serious injury and when asked about the incident said, "I am glad we have been bombed….it makes me feel like I can look the [heavily bombed] East End in the face."


September 13, 1971 -
After 1,300 rioting prisoners reject a list of proposed concessions because it lacks immunity from prosecution, New York Governor Rockefeller orders an attack to retake Attica prison.


In all, 29 prisoners die and 85 are wounded; and 10 hostages are killed. For months thereafter, prisoners receive inhumane beatings from guards.



And so it goes

1 comment:

  1. see, another fascinating hole in the head :D
    dahl got all the good jobs, hey? haha.

    ReplyDelete