November 29, 1940 -
W.C. Fields at his peak - The Bank Dick, premiered on this date.
Universal's censors initially objected to W.C. Fields' script and demanded many changes. Director Edward F. Cline suggested that Fields should go ahead and film it their way, ignoring the censors' changes, and that the front office wouldn't notice the difference. They didn't.
November 29, 1945 -
Remarkable for it frank portrayal of alcoholism (for it's day), The Lost Weekend, opened in Los Angeles on this date.
Billy Wilder claimed the liquor industry offered Paramount $5 million to not release the film; he also suggested that he would have accepted, had they offered it to him.
November 29, 1950 -
Jean Cocteau's beautifully lyrical, Orphee, opened in the US on this date.
Orphee's obsession with deciphering hidden messages contained in random radio noise is a direct nod to the coded messages that the BBC concealed in their wartime transmissions for the French Resistance.
November 29, 1992 -
U2's first TV special, called U2's Zoo TV Outside Broadcast, aired on Fox-TV on this date.
The show contains footage from their concerts at Yankee Stadium in New York and the Houston Astrodome, earlier that year.
Expect Delays - the Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting is today.
Today in History:
November 29, 1777 -
José Joaquín Moraga proved that he knew the way to San Jose on this date,
November 29, 1864 -
The Sand Creek Massacre occurred, on this date, when Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington, in retaliation for an Indian attack on a party of immigrants near Denver, massacred at least 400 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants (mostly children, women, physically- and mentally-challenged, and elders) inside Colorado Territory.
It also generated two Congressional investigations into the actions of Chivington and his men. The House Committee on the Conduct of the War concluded that Chivington had "deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the varied and savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty."
The American Government has so much to be proud of with their dealings with the Native Americans.
November 29, 1924 -
Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels before he could complete his opera Turandot. Franco Alfano finished it.
His death marked the end of a 300-year tradition of Italian opera.
November 29, 1929 -
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd (on a break from his experiments with frozen vegetables) radioed that he'd made the first airplane flight with pilot Floyd Bennett, over the South Pole: "My calculations indicate that we have reached vicinity of South Pole."
After briefly loitering around the Pole, Byrd and his crew headed back to their home base, Little America and more intense testing of frozen zucchini.
November 29, 1935 –
Physicist Erwin Schrödinger published his famous thought experiment ‘Schrödinger’s cat’, a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Once the cat is in the box, do you know if it really alive, or dead?
November 29, 1951 -
The United States set off the first underground nuclear explosion named "Uncle" at Frenchman Flats in Nevada on this date.
It was a great success, except for the giant spiders, ants, grasshoppers and other insects left in the aftermath.
November 29, 1961 -
The US sent the chimpanzee Enos into space, aboard the Mercury Atlas 5 capsule from Cape Canaveral on this date.
Enos returns to earth safely but died less than a year later before he could sign with the William Morris Agency.
November 29, 1972 -
Pong, the first commercially successful video game, was released on this date by Nolan Bushnell (who was also the co-founder of the video game company, Atari.)
Pong is similar to digital tennis or ping-pong, and its great success was a big part of the early beginnings of the video game industry.
November 29, 1986 -
I do not think Cary Grant was a homosexual or bisexual. He just got carried away at those orgies - US congressman Bob Dornan, spoken on the House floor (I love that quote.)
82 year old Archibald Leach, better known as Cary Grant, died on this date.
November 29, 2001 -
The Beatles will exist without us.
The "quiet" Beatle George Harrison was silenced by cancer on this date.
November 29, 2004 -
Godzilla received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on this date.
In honor of the event, the Toho star was allowed to run rampant through Little Tokyo that afternoon.
And on a personal note:
Oh yeah, millions of years ago (or at least more than half a century ago) the earth cooled and formed a hard crust, huge dinosaurs ruled the land and John was there to see it all. Happy Birthday John.
And so it goes
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