Carpe Diem

For some reason, today is All or Nothing Day. All or Nothing Day is a time to take risks and live on the edge.



Live like today is your last day on earth and let your inner daredevil shine.


July 26, 1951 -
Walt Disney's 13th animated feature, Alice in Wonderland, premiered in the UK and New York City on this date.





The English novelist Aldous Huxley worked with Walt Disney on early scripts for this project in late 1945. The original idea was for a cartoon version of Alice embedded in a flesh-and-blood episode from Lewis Carroll's life. Huxley's mother, Julia Arnold, was one of the little girls that Carroll used to enjoy photographing, and to whom he told the Alice stories. The project was close to Huxley's heart, but Disney found his work too intellectual, and it was not used. Huxley received no credit on the finished picture.


July 26, 1991 -
One of Mel Brooks non-film parody movies, Life Stinks, starring Mel, Leslie Ann Warren, Howard Morris, and Jeffrey Tambor premiered on this date. (This was one of my father-in-law's favorite movies.)



The film's original title, "Life Sucks", was changed at the studio's insistence.


July 26, 2006 –
The directorial debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine, starring  Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, went into limited release on this date.



All of the girls acting as participants in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, except Abigail Breslin, were veterans of real beauty pageants. They wore the same costumes, including hair and makeup, and performed the same talent routines as they had in their real-life pageants. 


Another moment of Zen this week


Today in History:
July 26, 1753 -
Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, German physicist, died of electrocution in St. Petersburg, Russia on this date. He was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, when he heard thunder. The Professor ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the experiment was underway, a supposed ball lightning appeared and collided with Richmann's head leaving him dead in a red spot. His shoes were blown open, parts of his clothes singed, the engraver knocked out; the door frame of the room was split, and the door itself torn off its hinges.

Beside not telling him that hemlock was poison, his mother did not sit Little Georg upon her knee and tell him about the evils of electricity. He was apparently the first person in history to die while conducting electrical experiments.


July 26, 1775 -
The Continental Congress established a postal system for the colonies with Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general in Philadelphia on this date.

Franklin also established the standardized method of charging for mail delivery based on weight and distance.


July 26, 1826 -
Schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll was hanged in Valencia, Spain after uttering his last words: "I die reconciled to God and to man," on this date. He was the last person executed by the Spanish Inquisition.

Gee, I guess at that point everybody should have expected the Spanish Inquisition. (I promise I won't mention the Inquisition for a while.)


Winsor McCay, an American cartoonist and animator, died on this date in 1934. A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades.



His two best-known creations are the newspaper comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran from 1905 to 1914, and the animated cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur, which he created in 1914.


July 26, 1943 -
Michael Philip Jagger, Golden Globe and Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, occasional film producer and actor, was born on this date.



Deveraux Octavian Basil Jagger, Mick's eighth child (who is a toddler) is the grand uncle to his half sister Jade Jagger Fillary's first granddaughter, Ezra Key.


July 26, 1947 -
President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The act forbade the CIA from operating within the US.

With the NSA surveillance program, that's not quite working out at the moment, is it?


July 26, 1956 -
A little more than 11 hours after colliding with the Swedish liner Stockholm, the Italian liner Andrea Doria, carrying 1,134 passengers and 572 crew, sank off New England coast.



46 people on the Andrea Doria and 5 crew members of the Stockholm died as a result of the crash. The SS Ile de France had been near the collision site and was able to assist in the rescue of many of the passengers of the Andrea Doria.  Within four years, the Ile de France was used as a floating prop for the nautical disaster film, The Last Voyage, which had some plot similarities to the disaster involving the Italian liner SS Andrea Doria.


July 26,1959 -
There was a partial nuclear reactor meltdown at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, on this date. Little known outside of the area, the nuclear accident released far more radiation that the Three Mile Island accident.



A report in 2006 said it may have caused hundreds of cases of cancer in the community, and that chemicals threatened to contaminate ground and water.


July 26, 1984 -
Serial killer, cannibal and flesh suit wearer Ed Gein died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute, a home for the criminally insane on this date.

Gein inspired the films Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.  Kiddies, please follow this advice from your old Doctor - don't check out some of the true crime scene photos attached to Mr. Gein's name unless you'd like the truly grizzly.


July 26, 1991 -
Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) was arrested in Florida, for exposing himself at the South Trail XXX Cinema on this date.



For several years following the incident, Reubens lost his children's television show and product endorsements.



And so it goes.

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