(via Laughing Squid)
July 16, 1948 -
John Huston's version of Maxwell Anderson's play, Key Largo, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall premiered in New York on this date.
Lionel Barrymore was severely disabled by arthritis (clearly visible in his hands) and was confined to a wheelchair, making the scene in which his Mr. Temple character gets up and falls taking a swing at Toots more than a dramatic moment.
July 16, 1951 -
One of the best adaptations of a Charles Dickens' novel, David Lean's Oliver Twist was released in the US on this date.
Alfie Bass was considered for the the Artful Dodger, until Kay Walsh, David Lean's wife at the time, recommended Anthony Newley who was with her in Vice Versa.
July 16, 1958 -
The classic Vincent Price Sci-Fi film, The Fly, opened in San Francisco on this date.
The film became the biggest box office hit for director Kurt Neumann, but he never knew it. He died a month after the premiere, and only a week before it went into general release. It was such a success at the box office that it became one of Fox's biggest hits of 1958.
July 16, 1983 -
The Police song about an obsessive stalker, (completely misunderstood by most of their fans,) Every Breath You Take topped the charts on this date.
This is one of the most misinterpreted songs ever. It is about an obsessive stalker, but it sounds like a love song. Some people even used it as their wedding song. Sting wrote it after separating from his first wife, Frances Tomelty.
July 16, 1999 -
Stanley Kubrick final film, Eyes Wide Shut, was released on this date.
Stanley Kubrick died just four days after presenting Warner Bros. with what was reported to be a final cut of the film, after a legendarily long shoot. His friends and family, as well as the cast and crew of the film, all claimed that Kubrick's death was completely unexpected and that he never seemed in poor health while making the film.
Today in History:
July 16, 1054 -
The 'Great Schism' between the Western and Eastern churches began over rival claims of universal pre-eminence.
Mary Baker Eddy was born on this date in 1821.
Ms. Eddy invented Christian Science, and was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1995 for having been the only American woman to found a worldwide religion without exposing her breasts.
July 16, 1860 -
A decree from Emperor Norton I of San Francisco, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, ordered the dissolution of the United States of America on this date.
July 16, 1945 -
...If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One - I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds....
Code-named Trinity, the first experimental plutonium bomb (The Gadget) was detonated in a United States test of an atomic explosion at Alamogordo Air Base, Los Alamos, New Mexico on this date. The explosion yields the equivalent 18,000 tons of TNT.
July 16, 1951 -
The Catcher in the Rye was published 65 years ago today. The book contained secret code words by means of which its author, J.D. Salinger, was able to communicate diabolical commands to his evil minions. (Exactly fourteen years later, the tunnel connecting France and Italy through Mont Blanc was opened to the public.
Draw your own conclusions.)
Salinger was a one-hit wonder. (He did write several other books, but these are of interest only to insomniacs and those with wobbly furniture.) The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, and Salinger subsequently hid himself away in the hills of Vermont, emerging from this self-imposed cloister only briefly, to serve as Prime Minister of Canada and then again, to appear as a corpse at his own funeral. For nearly half a century, The Catcher in the Rye has captured the imagination of the American teenager like no other book without pictures.
Holden Caulfield, the hero and narrator of Salinger's slim classic, may be the finest portrait of twentieth-century American teenage angst bequeathed to posterity.
Either him or Archie, it's hard to say.
http://comicsalliance.com/files/2014/07/Archie01.jpg
(although Archie gave up his life to save a friend.)
July 16, 1964 -
In accepting the Republican presidential nomination in San Francisco, Barry M. Goldwater said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" and that "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Goldwater's speech ultimately doomed his candidacy but revived the American Conservative movement and gave birth to the political rise of Ronald Reagan.
July 16, 1969 -
47 years ago on this date, the 363-foot-tall Apollo 11 space vehicle was launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, at 9:37 a.m. (As I have gotten older, I have only now put it together that some sick puppies at NASA (probably some of the 'Good Germans') arranged to have the launch on the anniversary of the Trinity test.)
It carried Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr.
July 16, 1973 -
In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the Ervin Committee on Watergate), former presidential assistant Alexander Butterfield disclosed that President Richard Nixon had tape recorded all of his conversations in the White House and Executive Office Building.
Bad, Nixon, bad.
July 16, 1999 -
16 years ago today, John F.Kennedy Jr. was killed along with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette when the aircraft he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. (Don't hitch a ride with a Kennedy.)
He was flying a Piper Saratoga II HP from Essex County Airport in New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy and his wife were traveling together to the wedding of his cousin Rory in Hyannis, Massachusetts, while Lauren was to have been dropped off at Martha's Vineyard en route.
And so it goes.
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