Friday, December 2, 2011

Nice beaver!

December 2, 1988 -
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! premiered on this date.



While impersonating an umpire, the batter swings back and hits Frank in the face. This joke was suggested by Mel Brooks.


Today in History:
December 2, 1814 -
Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, Marquis de Sade, dies in a lunatic asylum at Charenton.

The Marquis must have been a panic at parties - talk about getting carried away at orgies.


The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed on this day in 1823.

The doctrine set forth the principle that meddling European bastards should keep their meddling goddam hands out of the Americas.

It should not be confused with the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine, which stated that fondling European bastards should keep their fondling goddamn hands out of ...


December 2, 1859 -
At Charlestown in Western Virginia, abolitionist John Brown was hanged for treason on this date.



His body is still moulding in the grave.


December 2, 1908 -
John Baxter Taylor Jr. was an American track and field athlete and member of the Irish American Athletic Club (yes, they were integrated) notable as the first African American to win an Olympic gold medal.

Less than five months after returning from the Olympic Games in London, Taylor died of typhoid fever on this date, at the age of 26. In his obituary, The New York Times called him "the world's greatest negro runner."

(thanks to our friends at Winged Fist for the reference)


December 2, 1939 -
New York's La Guardia Airport began operations as an airliner from Chicago landed at 12:01 a.m.



The TSA is still completing full body cavity searchs on some of those passengers from those originally flights.


December 2, 1942 -
On the squash court underneath a football stadium of the University of Chicago, at 3:45 p.m., control rods were removed from the "nuclear pile" of uranium and graphite, revealing that neutrons from fissioning uranium split other atoms, which in turn split others in a chain reaction.The Atomic Age was born when scientists, led by Enrico Fermi, demonstrated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.



The reaction was part of the Manhattan Project, the United States' top-secret plan to develop an atomic bomb. This little event led to nuclear power and nuclear weapons and had an incalculable effect on geopolitics, the economy, and art.


December 2, 1954 -
The US Senate voted 67-22 to condemned Joseph R. McCarthy (Sen-R-WI) for misconduct after his ruthless investigations of thousands of suspected communists, for 'conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.'



This followed the McCarthy investigation of the Army. Roy Cohn was McCarthy's aide and Joseph Welch was the attorney for the army.


December 2, 1956 -
George P. Metesky, better known as The Mad Bomber, strikes again. Angry and resentful about events surrounding a workplace injury suffered years earlier, Metesky plants yet another bomber at Brooklyn's Paramount Theater, injuring 7.

Metesky planted at least 33 bombs, of which 22 exploded, injuring 15 people in New York City theaters, terminals, libraries and offices, including Grand Central Terminal, Pennsylvania Station, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Public Library, the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the RCA Building, as well as in the New York City Subway between 1940 and 1956.

Metesky was finally arrested in January of 1957. After undergoing extensive psychiatric examinations, for the time, he was found to be legally insane and incompetent to stand trial.


December 2, 1986 -
Desi Arnaz died from lung cancer, on this date.



Although recognized as a great innovator of television, I guess he might have had second thoughts about that Philip Morris sponsorship of the I Love Lucy show.


18 more shopping days until Hanukkah, 23 more shopping days until Christmas.



And so it goes

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