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August 28, 1930 -
... The elks, on the other hand, live up in the hills. And in the spring, they come down for their annual convention. It is very interesting to watch them come to the water hole. And you should see them run when they find it is only a water hole! What they're looking for is an alcohol....

The Marx Brothers second outing at Paramount, Animal Crackers, opened on this date.



Zeppo Marx, the youngest of the five brothers, was very skilled at impersonating his older siblings and occasionally performed in their place when one of them was ill or unavailable. The blackout that occurs when Ravelli and Professor are attempting to steal the painting was contrived so that Zeppo could play Captain Spaulding on a day that Groucho Marx was not on the set. (Zeppo played Spaulding several times during the show's live run; Groucho stated, "he was so good as Captain Spaulding that I would have let him play the part indefinitely, if they had allowed me to smoke in the audience.")


August 28, 1946 -
Universal's film-noir classic version of Ernest Hemingway's story, The Killers, premiered in NYC on this date.



The boxing match in the third flashback was filmed in a boxing arena for an audience of 2000 spectators. Burt Lancaster trained for two months with a boxing champion and played the part of the Swede with realism, against a real boxer, until his second KD and TKO.


August 28, 1951 -
Paramount's second film version based on Theodore Dreiser's novel, An American Tragedy, A Place in the Sun, opened in NYC on this date.



Shelley Winters was determined to be tested for the part of Alice. At the time she was being cultivated as a sex symbol, so the night before she was due to see George Stevens, she dyed her hair brown and bought some especially dowdy clothes, the kind she had seen when she had visited a factory to see how the girls who worked there dressed. She deliberately arrived at the meeting place early and sat in a corner. When Stevens came in, he didn't even notice her until he was about to leave, when he suddenly realized that the mousy girl in the corner was actually Shelley Winters.


Word of the day

(In a more serious vein - please keep the folks in Texas and Louisiana in your thoughts for the next several weeks as they find they way through the terrible situation Harvey has left them in.  I've linked to a Time-Picayune article listing local organizations you can send any contributions.)



Today in History:
August 28, 476 A.D. -
Today is believed to be the date when the Western Roman Empire, which had lasted for almost 500 years, came to an end as Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by a barbarian. (Well, his father, Orestes, the real power behind the throne, was executed on this date - he, Augustulus, relinquished the throne on September 4, 476 and disappeared into obscurity.)

Historians have been theorizing about the causes of the fall of Rome ever since. Edward Gibbon's book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) put forward the idea that the Christian Church was to blame. After Christianity became the official religion of the empire, the best and the brightest leaders became leaders of the church rather than leaders of the government or the military. Another theory is that the aqueducts, which carried the water supply, were lined with lead, and so the Romans slowly went crazy. Some geologists believe that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius released so much ash into the air that it ruined Roman agriculture and weakened the empire. One of the more recent theories is that the Roman army had been infiltrated by the barbarians themselves.



But whatever the cause, the fall of Rome actually wasn't the catastrophic event most people think it was. So-called barbarian rulers kept most of the basic laws in place, Latin remained the official language of government, everyone remained Christian and orgies continued but in private.


August 28, 1837 -
Pharmacists John Lea and William Perrins began commercially manufacturing Worcestershire Sauce on this date, based on an Indian recipe brought to them by Lord Marcus Sandys -- an ex-governor of Bengal.



If they told you the recipe (it contains anchovies), they'd have to kill you.


August 28, 1845 -
Scientific American, founded by Rufus M. Porter, was published for the first time as a four-page weekly newspaper, on this date.

It is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States.


August 28, 1883 -
The first controlled flight in a "Gull" glider was made by John J. Montgomery at Wheeler Hill, California.



The craft weight 38 pounds and sailed a distance of 603 feet at an altitude of about fifteen feet at Otay Mesa near San Diego, Ca.


August 28, 1898 -
Pharmacist Caleb Davis Bradham created a beverage, he believed would aid in digestion and boost energy, calling it "Brad's Drink," on this date.



He later renamed it Pepsi-Cola, after "pepsin" and the kola nut used to flavor the drink.

And still, made with no cocaine.


August 28, 1907 -
Two teenagers, Jim Casey and Claude Ryan decide to start the American Messenger Company in Seattle, on this date. The company's name was later changed to the United Parcel Service.

Hopefully you have those tracking numbers available, some of those packages will arrive soon.


August 28, 1922 -
The first radio commercial aired on WEAF in New York City (WEAF stood for Water, Earth, Air and Fire.)



It was a 10-minute advertisement for the Queensboro Realty Co., which had paid $100.  Programming must have really stunk if people listened to a 10 minute commercial.


August 28, 1938 -
Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen’s wooden partner ) received the first degree given to a ventriloquist’s dummy on this date.

The honorary degree, “Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback,” was presented on radio by Ralph Dennis, the dean of the School of Speech at Northwestern University.

I wrote my dissertation on. "Birthdays do not need be encompassed within 24 hours - the creation of the birthday weekend." And I earned my degree without someone's hand up my ass.


August 28, 1955 –
A 14-year-old  black teenager from Chicago, Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi, for ‘flirting’ with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Eyewitnesses linked Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and half-brother J.W. Milam to the murder. Bryant and Milam were indicted soon thereafter. Both were acquitted by an all-white jury. Bryant and Milan later confessed to the killing in a magazine interview.



Recently, Carolyn Bryant, now 82, has admitted she lied when she testified in 1955 that Emmett Till touched her.


August 28, 1963 -
During a 200,000-person civil rights rally in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech, 54 years ago today.



The speech, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.


August 28, 1982 -
Two crazy kids got married on this date.

Some of the people who were at that wedding are still alive.
More and more of them are unfortunately not.
Some of them have gotten married (even to each other.)
Others are not.
Some of them had children.
Some do not.

Thirty five years later, those two crazy kids are still alive, married and have children.

Happy Anniversary Mary.


August 28, 1996 -
Unfortunately for others, the fairy tale has a very unhappy ending,

Britons Charles, Prince of Wales, and Diana, Princess of Wales, were divorced on this date.

One year later, almost to the day, Diana would have a very nasty accident in a Paris underpass.



And so it goes


Before you go - Puddles teamed up again with Casey Abrams to cover Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit



Looks like Puddle's got his mojo back!


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