You're sure of a big surprise.

Today is Teddy Bear Picnic Day - a day set aside for you to take a stroll in the woods with your favorite bears.

Perhaps I'm mistaken in which bears you should be taking with you.


July 10, 1916 -
Charlie Chaplin further develops his 'Tramp' character with the release of The Vagabond, on this date.



Look for this - Charlie loses his hat outside the bar, is seen inside wearing it, then picks it up where he lost it when he leaves. When he escapes from the gypsy, he is hatless at first, but the next shot shows the hat suddenly back in place.


July 10, 1942 -
RKO Pictures released Orson Welles' butchered masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, on this date. (Like El Dorado or Shangri-La, a work print of Welles' version supposedly exists in a vault somewhere in Brazil, tantalizingly, just out of reach.)



Orson Welles demanded that the inside of the Ambersons' mansion be built as if it was a real house, with continuous rooms of four walls and ceilings. This enabled his camera to roam around the house freely and shoot from any angle. The set for the Ambersons mansion was one of the most elaborate and expensive sets ever built at the time. RKO would utilize the standing set for other films.


July 10, 1965 -
The Rolling Stones topped the pop-music charts with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, on this date.



The song was released in the United States on June 6, 1965, just a month after Keith Richards woke up with the guitar riff in his head. In the UK, it wasn't issued until August 20, since The Stones did not want to release it in England until they were there to support it. While they were touring in America, they became very popular in England, so they kept recording singles in the States to keep their momentum until they could return for a tour.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
July 10, 1553 –
Lady Jane Grey, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, ill-advisedly took the throne of England, upon the death of Edward VI, on this date.



Hopefully she didn't buy any green bananas. She wasn't going to be in the position to see them ripen.


July 10, 1559 -
Heed the prophecies of Nostradamus!

Henry II of France had a splitting headache today. Henry was having a friendly joust with the captain of the Scottish Guards, Gabriel de Lorges de Montgomery,  when he was momentarily blinded by the visor on the captain's helmet.



The captain's lance was somehow broken and Henry II was pierced through the eye socket and temple on June 30 (Ouch!). The King writhed in agony until he died from his wounds on this date.  Nostradamus wrote a poem about a lion and a cage and somehow that tripe predicted Henry II's death


July 10, 1856 -
Inventor and electromechanical genius Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the 20th Century, was born to Serbian parents in what is now Croatia on this date.



Remember, if we could only harness the free floating electricity,



we could do away with the electric companies.


July 10, 1871 -
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.



Marcel Proust, French novelist, tea enthusiast and master procrastinator was born on this date.


July 10, 1938 -
Aviator Howard Hughes (you know his C.V.) made a record flight around the world on this date, completing the trip in just 91 hours, breaking the previous record by more than four days.



Taking off from New York City in a Lockheed Super Electra he continued to Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Anchorage, Minneapolis, ending back at New York City.


July 10, 1954 -
I think the world should be one community.



Neil Tennant, musician, singer and songwriter and the other half of the electronic dance music duo Pet Shop Boys, was born on this date.


July 10, 1958 -
The first parking meter was installed in London, England on this date in 1958, along with the second through 625th. It took nearly two dozen years for the parking meter to travel across the Atlantic: the first American parking meter had been installed in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935.



It was invented by Oklahoma City's Carl C. Magee, the head of that city's chamber of commerce, as part of an effort to free more parking spaces for daytime shoppers. Downtown parking spaces had typically been taken by office workers who left their cars parked on the street all day, making it difficult for shoppers to find open spaces and thereby causing incalculable pain and suffering. (Double-parking was not invented until 1963.)



I, personally, considers the parking meter one of the great instruments of totalitarian control, and cannot understand how conspiracy theorists who lose sleep over Roswell, the Masons, and black helicopters can walk blithely past dozens of parking meters every day.



Current estimates ("wild guesses") suggest there are now more than five million of these coercive devil machines deployed across the United States. They absorb millions of dollars in small change every day, and generate still more ill-gotten revenue by means of fines levied against persons who refuse to kneel before them.



I urge my readers to recall the words of Alexander Hamilton, who observed in the Federalist Papers that "no people are free who must pay for municipal parking."

The first concrete-paved street was built 127 years ago today in Bellefountaine, Ohio.

Paved streets are good. I have no problem with paved streets, unless they're lined with parking meters.


July 10, 1962 –
Launched by NASA aboard a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Telstar, was launched into orbit, becoming the world's first communications satellite, on this date.



Telstar 1 was placed in low Earth orbit and circled the planet every two and a half hours, only in the right position to beam transmissions between Europe and the U.S. for 20 minutes each orbit. This is in contrast to contemporary communications satellites, which fly in geosynchronous orbit, staying above one spot on the Earth.


July 10, 1985 -
Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was blown up by in Auckland Harbor, killing a photographer, Fernando Pereira, on this date.



After the New Zealand government determines that French secret agents were responsible, the French Defense Minister Pierre Lacoste, resigned and agents, Captain Dominique Prieur and Commander Alain Mafart, were jailed.


July 10, 1989 -
Mel Blanc, whose career spanned over 60 years doing voice over work for many Warner Brothers characters died on this date.



Shortly before his death, executives of Time Warner (owners of Warner Brothers) asked him if there was anything, literally anything, that they could give him to thank him for his life's body of work. He asked for--and received - a Ford Edsel.



And so it goes.


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