Have you mailed out your Christmas cards yet?

Like most of us, Henry Cole, an Englishman, was too busy to write personal greetings for all of his Christmas greetings in 1843. Cole hired artist John Calcott Horsley to design a ready-to-be-sent card.

The hand-colored card Horsley designed was lithographed on stiff, dark cardboard and featured adults and children raising wine glasses in a toast. Some thought the card blasphemous with the family, surrounded with religious symbols, holding glasses of wine



Printed in an edition of 1,000, Horsley's card was sold in London stores. At the time, the greeting cards could be mailed for a penny each. Less than a dozen of those cards exists today. Printed cards soon became the rage in England; the controversy is thought to have helped promote Cole's idea.


December 22, 1937 -
The center tube of the Lincoln Tunnel was opened to traffic today, charging $0.50 per passenger car.

Some of those cars are scheduled to make it through the tunnel later this week.


December 22, 1949 -
The film version of Maxwell Anderson's play (Joan of Lorraine,) Joan of Arc, starring Ingrid Bergman premiered in Los Angeles on this date.

Howard Hughes saved Ingrid Bergman from possible injury during a visit to the set when she fell off her horse. He caught her, but rather awkwardly, with one hand firmly on her crotch. Hughes made sure no photographs of the incident were taken (or survived).


December 22, 1959 -
Joseph L. Mankiewicz' film version of Tennesse Williams' strange one act play (about rape, incest, homosexuality, and cannibalism - I know that was probably a huge selling point,) Suddenly, Last Summer, premiered on this date.



The Breen office gave the filmmakers special dispensation so that the homosexuality of Sebastian Venable could be "inferred, but not shown."


December 22, 1975 -
A beautiful study of love and madness (and the razor's edge between them), L'histoire d'Adele H, opened in the US on this date.



This is another one of those films I'm suggesting you go out right now and rent, if you haven't seen it.


Today in History:
December 22, 1879 -
It's Stalin's birthday (again)! Hey, when your a dictator, you get to celebrate your birthday on more than one day. Unfortunately, the proper way to celebrate - oppress, torture and murder millions of your fellow country men - is frowned upon.

So smack someone upside the head for no reason.


December 22, 1940 -
Strange death of the day - Author Nathanael West and his wife, Eileen McKenney, died in an auto accident on this date.

They were on their way to the funeral of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who passed away a few days earlier.


December 22, 1955 -
The corpse of Evita Peron is stolen by anti-Peronistas.

29 years later (to the day), Madonna's Like a Virgin single goes #1 for weeks.

Make of the coincidence what you will.


December 22, 1965 -
David Lean's Russian epic, Dr Zhivago, premieres in the US, on this date.



The film was not shown in Russia until 1994.


December 22, 1984 -
Bernhard Goetz shoots 4 teenage boys on the NYC subway after one of them asks him for money.

Again, this practice is frowned upon, so smack someone upside the head.

December 22, 2001 -

Richard Reid attempts to blow up an American Airlines transatlantic flight by igniting a plastic explosive concealed in his shoe. Other passengers beat the living daylights out of him.



They knew, they smacked him upside the head.



2 more shopping days until Christmas (1 more shopping days until Festivus ... may I suggest you begin compiling you list of grievances).

And so it goes.