So you think you know why it gets dark at night?

You're probably wrong -




Sesame Street had another spot on parody of a television show with Birdwalk Empire:



I'm still waiting for the 30 Rock takeoff with Cookie Monster as Alex Baldwin.


October 2, 1976 -
How can we know the dancer from the dance?



John Belushi came out on stage with Joe Cocker while he was performing on Saturday Night Live on this date.


Today in History:
Three of the past century's finest comedians were born on October 2:

Groucho Marx (1890),



Bud Abbott (1895),



and Mahatma Gandhi (1869).



Groucho and Abbott were funny enough, but they pale beside the towering comic greatness of Gandhi. "When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, " he once quipped: "but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always."

That a humorist capable of such scathing sarcastic wit should have sullied himself with politics is regrettable, but not much worse than Jesus having gotten into religion.

It should also be remembered that for most of Gandhi's life the Indian subcontinent was occupied by the British, and that for the first few formative decades of his existence the British were ruled by a queen who was famously unamused. Gandhi went to extraordinary lengths to amuse Queen Victoria. It was only decades after her death that his genius came to full flower, however, and one can only hope she was amused posthumously.



(Eventually the British realized they didn't get Gandhi's jokes and withdrew from India to develop Monty Python.)



October 2, 1925 -
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first television picture with a greyscale image: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed Stooky Bill on this date.




Almost immediately, Logie Baird wanted to test his invention on a living, breathing human being. Baird went downstairs and grabbed an office bot, 20-year-old William Edward Taynton, to see what a human face would look like, and Taynton became the first person to be televised.



October 2, 1950 -
The comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles Schulz, debuted in nine newspapers with the characters of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Patty and Sherman. It is still the most-read comic strip in the world.

And yet, Charlie still hasn't kicked that damn football.


October 2, 1955 -
Revenge, the very first story on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents show premieres on this date.



Alfred Hitchcock drew the caricature of himself featured in the opening credits. He began his film career as an illustrator of title cards for silent movies.


October 2, 1959 -
...This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area that might be called The Twilight Zone.

Where is Everybody? the first episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone premiered on this date



Series creator Rod Serling made up the phrase "Sixth Dimension" to use in season one's opening narration. William Self of CBS-TV asked him what was the fifth dimension (given that dimensions one through three are exemplified by a line, a plane, and a cube, respectively, and the fourth is time). Serling answered, "I don't know. Aren't there five?" He then changed the narration to "There is a fifth dimension..."



And so it goes

Before I let you go - This is important, you should watch this: