The world is not smiling today

Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.





Mary Tyler Moore, actress and icon passed away yesterday.


Today is the feast day of St. Timothy.  St. Timothy is known to be the patron saint of those who suffer from stomach aches or other intestinal disorders (he was prescribed 'a little wine' for his own stomach troubles.)  Timothy is famous for being the companion and secretary to St. Paul. One of the requirements of the job was  circumcision; Timothy, ever pious and eager for the job, immediately went out and did the job himself, (remember that the next time you are hiring administrative assistants.)

Timothy, in his later life, become the first bishop of Ephesus.  While he was there, he objected to the parading around of a nude statue of the goddess Diana in celebration of the festival of Katagogian, which seems odd as Timothy was Greek himself and seeing nude statues of Greek goddesses should have been no big deal.  It apparently was a big deal to the locals of Ephesus and he was stoned to death on this date.


Today is the 68th annual Republic Day in India. Spectators line up to watch dancers from all over the nation gather in New Delhi every year on this day to dance in the huge National Arena and all along a five mile parade route.



It's Australia Day today (formerly known as Foundation Day in Australia) as well and commemorates the establishment of the first settlement at Port Jackson, now part of Sydney, in 1788. (The fleet was led by Captain Arthur Philip, who went on to establish the Colony of New South Wales, the first penal colony in Australia.) The day is filled with drinking, merriment and sodomy.



On January 26, 1979, Le Freak was on the top of the American charts.



It's nice to think there's a connection.


January 26, 1975 -
The BBC showed a documentary on David Bowie called Cracked Actor. The documentary was filmed after the end of the Ziggy Stardust tour and his tour supporting the release of the Diamond Dogs LP.



Among the TV audience was British director Nicolas Roeg, at the time planning an adaptation of Walter Tevis’s novel The Man Who Fell To Earth.


January 26, 1979 -
Dukes of Hazzard premiered on CBS television with One Armed Bandits - (A shipment of slot machines is hijacked.)



High comedy indeed.


Today in History:
January 26, 1885 -
General Charles George “Chinese” Gordon (Charlton Heston), an extremely popular and influential figure in the British Empire and governor-general of Sudan, was killed on the palace steps in the garrison at Khartoum by the forces of Muhammad Ahmed, El Mahdi on this date.



Unfortunately for Gordon, immediate after he was stabbed to death, he was decapitated and his head was paraded around for several hours until it was presented as a trophy to Muhammad Ahmed.


January 26, 1913 –
Jim Thorpe, the World's Greatest Athlete, relinquished his 1912 Olympic medals for being a professional athlete. He was paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateur rules at that time.

His Olympic medals were reinstated posthumously by an act of Congress in 1983.


January 26, 1958 -
Ellen DeGeneres, actress, comedian and Cover Girl spokes model, was born on this date.



So kids remember, apparently it is now OK to receive your Medal of Freedom wearing sneakers.


January 26, 1961 -
President Kennedy appointed Janet Travell as his personal physician, making her the first female presidential physician (as well as possibly the only woman he did not sleep with) on this date.



It was later found that she prescribed over five painkillers to the president at one time, as well as a variety of sleep aids and orthopedic shoes. The real original Dr. Feelgood.


January 26, 1962 -
Mafia boss Charles Lucky Luciano died of natural causes at the Naples airport. On the day of his fatal heart attack, Luciano had plans to sell the rights of his life's story to a movie maker. Luciano dropped dead as he was about to shake hands. The Mob disliked the idea and had tried unsuccessfully to change his mind. It has been hypothesized that Luciano's heart attack was a result of poisoning by the Mafia.



He was buried in St. John's Cemetery in Queens, New York after a federal court ruled his burial on United States soil could not be blocked on the grounds that a corpse is not a citizen of any country and is therefore not subject to immigration control or deportation laws.


January 26,1979 -
70-year-old multibillionaire Nelson Rockefeller was stricken by a massive heart attack while giving dictation to his 27-year-old research assistant, Megan Marshack on this date. Some time after that event, Marshack had called her friend, news reporter Ponchitta Pierce, to the townhouse and it was Pierce who phoned 911 approximately an hour after the heart attack.



Much speculation went on in the press regarding a personal relationship between Rockefeller and Marshack. Rockefeller's will left Marshak $50,000 and the deed to a Manhattan townhouse.


January 26, 1984 -
A magnesium flash bomb at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles ignited Michael Jackson’s hair during the filming of a Pepsi television commercial, causing third-degree scalp burns.



It is later reveals that unscrupulous doctors prescribe a full but highly unorthodox regiment of pedophilia to ease the singer’s wounds.


January 26, 1998 -
U.S. President Bill Clinton denied, on television, having had sexual relations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.



The president must have skipped class that day.


January 26, 1996 -
Insane madman millionaire John E. Du Pont shot Olympic wrestler David Schultz three times, killing him on this date. A two day police standoff follows at the Foxcatcher estate and wrestling compound, with SWAT teams biding their time under the assumption that Du Pont, an expert marksman, possessed an arsenal at his disposal (see Foxcatcher.)



Mr. Du Pont later died in prison. Perhaps Mr. Du Pont has gone to a better place where greasing yourself up and rolling around a mat with another person in nothing but a jock strap or a unitard is not considered a crime against nature.


January 26, 2004 -
A decomposing sperm whale exploded while in transport in Tainan City, Taiwan on this date. The whale was being moved to a laboratory for study when a critical build-up of gas caused it to explode, covering people and shop fronts in Tainan City with whale viscera.



Though decomposing whales are regularly exploded with dynamite to clear beaches, it is thought to be the first time a whale exploded in a city.  You may have had a bad day but you never had to go home to change because you were covered in whale viscera.



And so it goes.


Before you go - Our friends from The Netherlands welcomed our new president -



To paraphrase the greatest youtube comment about a video, "...If America is first and Netherland second does that make Germany the third Reich?"


1454