Once upon a time, the music went round and round ...

Today record stores on six continents are celebrating Record Store Day,

an annual event honoring independently owned and operated music shops.


Without garlic, I simply would not care to live.- Louis Diat, chef of the Ritz Hotel (1885-1958)



Just in time for Easter, today is National Garlic Day (helping make that lamb taste so good tomorrow.)


April 19, 1927 -
Cecil B. Demille's silent-film version of The King of Kings premiered on this date.



Cecil B. DeMille did not want to take any chances with the film. His two stars, H.B. Warner and Dorothy Cumming, were required to sign agreements which prohibited them from appearing in film roles that might compromise their "holy" screen images for a five-year period. DeMille also ordered them not to be seen doing any "un-Biblical" activities during the film's shooting. These activities included attending ball games, playing cards, frequenting night clubs, swimming, and riding in convertibles.


April 19, 1946 -
Raymond Chandler's film-noir classic The Blue Dahlia premiered on this date.



Shortly after this film released, a young woman named Elizabeth Short was murdered in Los Angeles. The local newspapers dubbed the case the Black Dahlia as a morbid twist on this film's title. Unlike the movie, the Short murder case is still unsolved.


April 19, 1961 -
Frederico Fellini's iconic, La Dolce Vita, premiered in the United States on this date.



It seems that term "paparazzo" was coined by Federico Fellini himself. Paparazzo means "sparrow" in one Italian dialect (in normal usage the Italian for "sparrow" is "passero"). Fellini explained that the photographers hopping and scurrying around celebrities reminded him of sparrows.


April 19, 1987 -
The Simpsons make their television debut in the short Good Night a segment for The Tracey Ullman Show.



(Once again, I had to hang around the murky world of the internet underground to get this blurry copy of the clip. I'd like to show you a better version of the clip but the goons, I mean lawyers from Fox would break my legs and I've just about gotten used to walking.)

I wonder whatever happened to The Simpsons.


April 19, 1978 -
The Patti Smith Group released the song Because the Night on this date.



Bizarrely, this was Patti Smith's only hit, making it an anomaly in her discography, which was aimed at a far more narrow audience.


Today in History:
April 19, 1775 -
Alerted by Paul Revere, the American Revolutionary War began at Lexington Common with the Battle of Lexington-Concord on this date. Eight Minutemen were killed and 10 wounded in an exchange of musket fire with British Redcoats.



In New York, Lexington seems to have won as there is no Concord Avenue.


April 19, 1824 -
Notorious drug user, buggerer, sister sleeping, club footed man about Europe, oh yeah, and poet, Lord George Gordon Byron, died from malaria fever in Greece on this date.



His body is set back to England for burial (his heart, literally remains in his beloved Greece, buried under a tree in Messolonghi) but he is so infamous that neither the deans of Westminster and St Paul's will accept his body for proper burial. His family at last buries him in a small family vault in Northern England.)


April 19, 1906 -
It was a rainy day in Paris. One of those days that song writers write about. Nobel-winning chemist Pierre Curie was preoccupied and in a hurry. He tried to run across the street and did not look both ways. He slipped and then was hit and run over by a horse drawn vehicle. His skull was badly fractured.



Kids' once again - Your mother is always right. Just because you're a Nobel winning - look both ways before crossing.


April 19, 1927 -
Mae West, suspected transvestite, was jailed, on this date, for her performance in Sex, the Broadway play she wrote, directed, and starred in. She was sentenced to ten days in prison. While incarcerated on Roosevelt Island, she was allowed to wear her silk panties instead of the scratchy prison issue and the warden reportedly took her to dinner every night.

She served eight days with two days off for good behavior. Media attention to the case enhanced her career - it didn't make her change her act, but it did bring her national notoriety—and helped make her one of Hollywood's most memorable, and quotable, stars.

She said: "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it."


April 19, 1993 -
More than 80 Branch Davidians burn to death in Waco, Texas as the FBI stages a disastrous final assault on their compound on this date. This brings a sudden end to the 51-day siege.



As you about to see, this helped us a great deal.


April 19, 1995 -
At 9:02 am, a large car bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, and injuring 500 including many children in the building’s day care center.



Authorities charged Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, with the crime.

Both were convicted.




And so it goes