Here's the reason you may have the day off

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.



Besides being a sales day at department stores, it's Martin Luther King Day.



To celebrate the day and the man, I'd like you to once again opine these words:

... A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and everytime you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points. 


It's National Fig Newton Day, (named not after Sir Isaac Newton but the town of Newton in Massachusetts, near The Kennedy Biscuit Works, which first made the cookie back in 1891.)



Please celebrate responsibly


It's National Nothing Day, set aside each year for people to sit around for the entire day and just hang out. No celebrating, observing or honoring anything.



It was created by newspaperman, Harold Pullman Coffin in 1972 and first celebrated in 1973.

Please do continue to read today's postings.


January 16, 1932 -
Funny and definitely risque, Paramount released the Betty Boop animated short, Boop-Oop-A-Doop, on this date.



Please - don't take her boop-oop-a-doop away - Betty is supposed to be just 16.


January 16, 1959 -
People generally let me be me. People are aware that I'm not someone particularly begging for attention. They hold back a bit with me.







Helen Folasade Adu, OBE, singer-songwriter, composer, and record producer, was born on this date.


January 16, 1965 -
You finally get control back of the vertical and horizontal of your television set - ABC-TV aired the final episode of The Outer Limits on this date.



When this episode originally aired, a live announcer spoke over the Control Voice's closing statement about returning "next week at this same time." The live announcer stated that The King Family Show would be seen "next week in this time period."


January 16, 1973 -
NBC-TV presented the 440th and final episode of Bonanza (which began airing on NBC on September 12, 1959) on this date.



This was the first US Western television show to have all its episodes filmed in color.


January 16, 1976 -
Peter Frampton's platinum live album, Frampton Comes Alive, was released by A & M Records on this date.



Frampton used a talkbox, a device hooked up to his guitar amp that allowed him to make distorted vocal sounds through a tube in his mouth. Other groups had success with the device around that time (Aerosmith used it on "Sweet Emotion" the year before), but Frampton became known for it because he played a talkbox solo on this. Every time he formed words, the crowd went nuts, especially when he sounded out "I want to thank you," which came out sounding like "I want to f*ck you."


Today in History:
January 16, 1547 -
Ivan IV was crowned Tsar of Russia. He is better known by his nickname: Ivan the Terrible. He was the first king of Russia to call himself a Caesar, probably in the hopes that Shakespeare would write a play about him.



He couldn’t pronounce Caesar, however, so he simply called himself "zar," and subsequent arguments over whether that should be spelled czar, tsar, zar, or tzar became so heated that they eventually resulted in Russian History.


January 16, 1865 -
General William T. Sherman issues Special Field Order No. 15, entitling the household of each freed slave "a plot of no more than forty acres of tillable ground" along the Carolina coastline between Charleston and Jacksonville.

After the Confederate surrender, the Johnson administration makes a halfhearted attempt to follow through on the acreage, but all efforts to parcel out the land in question are abandoned just a few months later.


January 16, 1908 -



I can hold a note as long as the Chase National Bank.





Ethel Merman, actress, singer and the woman who learned love at the hands of Ernest Borgnine, was born on this date.


January 16, 1920 -
Please save some of your brain cells during this upcoming long weekend of binge drinking,



and remember that Prohibition went into effect in the U.S. on this date.


January 16, 1942 -
Raising money for the war, actress Carole Lombard, her mother, 18 passengers and three crew, were killed when their plane crashed into Mount Potosi, 32 miles southwest of Las Vegas on this date.



Lombard was much loved for her unpretentious personality and well known for her earthy sense of humor and blue language.


January 16, 1969 -
Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first docking of manned spacecraft in orbit as well as the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another.



Yevgeny Khrunov became the first astronaut to transfer between linked capsules. It is the only time such a transfer will ever be accomplished with a space walk.


January 16, 1991 -
Operation Desert Storm commenced as Baghdad was pummeled live on CNN on this date. Targeted with smartbombs were "command and control facilities" and Saddam Hussein himself.



We seem to miss both, but did manage to kill about 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the surreal bombardments that follow.


January 16, 2003 -
NASA launched the Space Shuttle Columbia on its 28th and final mission on this date.



The shuttle's mission ended in tragedy when, 16 days later, on February 1st, the Columbia disintegrated as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven of the shuttle’s crew members. The disaster shocked the nation, and set the space shuttle program back.



And so it goes.



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