Today is National Drink Wine Day

Please, no jokes about it being National Drink Wine Day every day in my home.

While, I can't find the basis for the holiday, I have my suspicions:

George, the English Duke of Clarence, was convicted of treason against his brother King Edward IV and murdered in the Tower of London on February 18, 1478.

The legend arose that he had been drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine.

What a way to go.


February 18, 1938 -
If only he had his intercostal clavicle ...

The greatest screwball comedy, directed by Howard Hawks, Bringing Up Baby,  starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant was released on this date.



David's response to Aunt Elizabeth asking him why he is wearing a woman's dressing gown ("Because I just went gay all of a sudden!") is considered by many film historians to be the first use of the word "gay" in its roughly modern sense (as opposed to its archaic meaning of "happy, carefree") in an American studio film. Among homosexuals, the word first came into its current use during the 1920s or possibly even earlier, though it was not widely known by heterosexuals as a slang term for homosexuals until the late 1960s. The line was not in the original shooting script for the film; it was an ad lib from Cary Grant himself.


February 18, 1939 -
Universal Studios released the WC Fields' comedy You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, also starring Edgar Bergen, on this date.



Legend has it that on the set of the film, a stagehand was cleaning out W.C. Fields' dressing room and accidentally bumped into a table on which Fields had placed a bottle of whiskey. He caught the bottle before it hit the floor, but the cork had popped out and he couldn't find it. He placed the bottle back on the table and left. Later Fields came back to the dressing room, and a few minutes after-wards stormed out, roaring "Who took the cork out of my lunch?"


February 18, 1983 -
Martin Scorsese's black comedy, The King of Comedy, starring Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard premiered in the US on this date.



In the scene where Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard argue in the street, three of the "street scum" that mock Bernhard are Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, and Paul Simonon, members of the British punk rock band, The Clash.


Today in History:
February 18, 1405 -
Timur Lenk (also known as Timur the Lame, Tamerlane, Tamberlaine and Mr. Tambourine Man)

died mysteriously during an expedition to China on this date.


February 18, 1564 -
Michelangelo (Buonarotti), Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer died on this date.



He may have gotten the last laugh as he thought about the number of penises he got to paint on the ceiling of any church.


Elm Farm Ollie (known as "Nellie Jay" and post-flight as "Sky Queen") was the first cow to fly in an airplane, doing so on February 18, 1930, as part of the International Air Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, United States.

On the same trip, which covered 72 miles from Bismarck, Missouri, to St. Louis, she also became the first cow milked in flight. This was done ostensibly to allow scientists to observe midair effects on animals, as well as for publicity purposes. A St. Louis newspaper trumpeted her mission as being "to blaze a trail for the transportation of livestock by air."

Your life is better for knowing this.


February 18, 1930 -
Clyde Tombaugh like to look at French Postcards.  When he got tire of that, he started studying photos of the night sky where astronomers predicted a "Planet X" would show up.



Tombaugh ended up discovering the dwarf planet Pluto. He also discovered more than 800 asteroids during his search for "Planet X."


February 18, 1933 -
Yoko Ono was born on this date.



What else is there to say?


February 18, 1967 -
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, died on this date.



His children never even send him flowers.


February 18, 1979 -
Snow falls in Sahara Desert, in Southern Algeria during a storm which lasts about half an hour on this date.

It didn't snow again until January 18, 2012. Perhaps, some of you may wish to move there now.


February 18, 2001 -
Race car driver Dale Earnhardt crashed into the wall at the Daytona 500, killing him instantly. His widow files a lawsuit to force the autopsy photos to be sealed, and a Florida law is subsequently passed to prevent them from ever being released.



Earnhardt was the most well known and most successful driver in the history of the sport.



And so it goes.


Also, on a personal note - Happy Birthday Matt.