This will haunt you for the rest of Your days

I was listen to the radio and I thought it was a joke; but no, please get comfortable to watch Dead Mouse Theatre.



I'm waiting for next season's production of The Iceman Cometh (I hear it's quite powerful.)


Happy Columbus Tells a Lie Day!



It was discovered that Columbus' ships really landed on the 13th of October  1492, he was persuaded by Dutch sailor Piet de Stuini (or DeStynie) to change it to the 12th in the logs because he said that the number 13 might frighten sailors and future investors away. An Italian study group  called the Colombiani detected this change.



And for some reason it's Canadian Thanksgiving.


October 13, 1947 -
Kids, a lifetime ago there was a very popular TV series featuring two puppets and a very polite lady that ad-libbed the entire show - A version of what ultimately became Kukla, Fran and Ollie premiered on this date.



One episode of the show was broadcast in color in fall 1949, in Washington, D.C., as a demonstration to the FCC of RCA's line-sequential color TV system. The same episode was performed live a second time the same afternoon, for network broadcast in black and white, but using the experimental color cameras.


October 13, 1950 -
Joseph L. Mankiewicz's brilliantly caustic valentine to Broadway, All About Eve premiered in NYC on this date.



Upon learning that he had cast Bette Davis, one of her former directors, Edmund Goulding, rang up Joseph L. Mankiewicz and warned him that she would grind him down into a fine powder. This proved to be a redundant warning as Davis knew better than to mess with Mankiewicz's finely tuned screenplay. In fact, Mankiewicz found her to be one of the most professional and agreeable actresses he'd ever worked with.


Today in History:
October 13, 54 -
Roman Emperor Claudius I (Derek Jacobi) consumes a favorite mushroom dish prepared by his fourth wife, Agrippina. What he does not know is that the meal is laced with the toxin of the Amanita phalloides mushroom. Feeling ill the next morning, Claudius summons his personal physician. Unfortunately, the doctor happened to be a co-conspirator in the scheme, administering a colocynth enema which killed Claudius instantly.



So remember kids - avoid all doctor prescribed poisoned enemas.


October 13, 1792-

It was on this day in Washington D.C. that the cornerstone was laid for the presidential residence, now known as the White House. The Frenchman, Pierre L'Enfant, who designed Washington, D.C. wanted the residence to look like the palace of Versailles. George Washington thought that was a little too fancy, so he got an Irish architect named James Hoban to reduce the design to one-fifth of its original size. Washington, once agin in his Masonic frenzy, laid the cornerstone and supervised the construction. John Adams was the first president to call it home.



People nicknamed it the White House from the very beginning. There was a coat of whitewash brushed on the sandstone to protect it against winter. Thomas Jefferson was the one who installed flushing toilets. Andrew Jackson got the first shower. Martin Van Buren brought in central heating. Rutherford B. Hayes introduced the telephone. Benjamin Harrison had it wired for electricity. President Truman brought in the first TV set.


October 13, 1812 -Sir Isaac Brock, British Army Officer who fought with famous chief Tecumseh, died in Canada during the War of 1812, on this date. He became know as the Savior of Upper Canada. He and his aide-de camp, Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonell (who also died at the same battle, were buried with great military ceremony near Fort George on October 16. Thus began his zombie-like entombment (he was buried four times!)



Canada decided to built a war memorial to General Brock in 1814, so they got around to re-interring Brock and his pal Macdonell in 1824. In 1840, somehow an Irish-Canadian named Benjamin Lett, angry with the British, blew up Brock's monument. In a lightening speed response by Canadian officials, plans were drawn up to build a second memorial to Brock and Macdonell (I'm sure Macdonell was sorry he ever went to work for Brock.) Their unrested corpses were moved to a third burial site in Queenston village, near the site of their demise.



October 13, 1853 marks the fourth and final burial for these men. About fifteen thousand attended the event, some of whom were veterans of the War of 1812. The structure was inaugurated on October 13, 1859!


October 13, 1959 -
Olive Marie Osmond, actress, singer, doll designer, Nutrisystem junkie and Osmonds family survivor, was born on this date.



Hey let's all cut Marie a break, she's had to carry Donnie's sorry ass her whole life.


October 13, 1972 -

Due to poor visibility, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying the Montevideo Old Christians Rugby Club, crashed high in the Chilean Andes. Of the 45 people aboard the flight, only 27 survive the crash and just 16 make it to their rescue 72 days later.



How did they do it? Cannibalism. According to one survivor, "the slight browning of the flesh gave it an immeasurably better flavor, softer than beef but with much the same taste."

So there you go - it doesn't taste just like chicken.


October 13, 1988 -
A report published in the journal Nature declares the Turin Shroud to be a 13th century fake. Although carbon-14 testing places the shroud's fabrication somewhere between 1260 and 1390 AD, true believers spend much of the next several years attempting to explain away the radiocarbon test results.



And yet, a British art historian in 2010, re-opened the whole can of worms again by suggesting that the shroud is in fact the actual burial cloth of a man who underwent a similar execution, much like Christ, around 33 AD.



And so it goes.