Nothing says Piracy (or the British Navy) more than Rum, The Lash and Sodomy. So remember: keep plenty of rum, leather belts and ACME's Bung Balm handy today.
September 19, 1931 -
Paramount released the Marx Brother's third film, Monkey Business on this date.
The Irish government banned the film thinking it might encourage "anarchic tendencies". The ban was only lifted in 2000.
September 19, 1952 (there is some controversy surrounding this date) –
Emperor Hirohito's favorite television program, The Adventures of Superman, premiered, in syndication, on this date.
When the series was filmed in black and white during its first two seasons, George Reeves wore a brown for red, gray for blue and white for yellow costume. When the show began filming in color in 1954, he switched to the trademark red and blue suit.
September 19, 1970 -
The greatest sitcom every produced, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, premiered on CBS TV on this date.
Ted Knight and Ed Asner were actually very close during the show and not enemies like their characters. Although they did get into a nasty argument after the show wrapped, with Ed saying Ted wronged him in some egregious manner, he also stated he was unable to remember what it was. They didn't speak for years until Ted was stricken with cancer in 1985 and they reconciled at his deathbed.
September 19, 1975 -
The British sitcom Fawlty Towers, created by John Cleese, premiered on BBC2 on this date.
Andrew Sachs was German by birth and was asked to dub his own lines into German when the series was exported. Being a native German speaker, he had no problem with the script, but it took him quite a while to work out how to speak German with a Spanish accent.
September 19, 1981 -
Despite the fact that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had barely spoken to each other in ten year, they reunited on this date to raise funds to renovate Central Park and performed in front of 500,000 people in New York City.
The concert was so successful, the duo decided to embark on a year-long world tour. During the tour, tensions mounted between the pair and they split again after it was completed.
September 19, 1986 -
David Lynch's profoundly unsettling film, Blue Velvet, premiered on this date, (after I saw the movie, I had to go out and have a drink. I know that doesn't seem like a shock.)
Roy Orbison initially rejected David Lynch's request to use the song In Dreams in the brothel scene. Lynch found a way to legally use the song anyway and Orbison did not discover the song was in the movie until Orbison just happened to see the movie in a California theatre. Orbison eventually filmed a video for the song that was produced by Lynch with footage from the movie.
Another failed ACME product
Today in History:
September 19, 1692 -
Giles Corey was accused of witchcraft in 1692. This put him in a difficult spot. If he pleaded guilty, he'd be burned alive at the stake. If he pleaded not guilty, he'd have to take a lie-detector test.
One of the primary symptoms of demonic possession was immunity to water, so those who survived the process were rewarded with a warm, dry burning at the stake. Those who drowned, on the other hand, were clearly innocent and received a favorable ruling.
Giles Corey wasn't eager to be burned at the stake, but he wasn't keen on posthumous vindication, either. A plea of guilty meant the stake; a plea of not-guilty meant drowning (or the stake, depending on the results of the lie-detector test). Mr. Corey therefore did what any reasonable person might have done: he claimed his Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution and said nothing.
This was a foolish and costly blunder, as the Constitution had not yet been written.
Baffled by the accused refusal to enter a plea, the court pressed him for an answer. Literally. Giles Corey became the first, last, and only American ever to have been pressed to death by his own government, on this date in history.
September 19, 1876 -
Melville Bissell received the patent (No. 182,346) for his invention, a carpet sweeper with revolving brushes which picked up the dust and dirt and deposited it inside the sweeper housing.
September 19, 1881 -
The 20th President of the United States, James A. Garfield, (shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau,) died from his wounds on this date.
Psst - Guiteau didn't kill the President, his doctors did. Several inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. Garfield's doctors had turned a three-inch-deep, harmless wound into a twenty-inch-long contaminated gash stretching from his ribs to his groin and oozing more pus each day. He lingered for eighty days, wasting away from his robust 210 pounds to a mere 130 pounds.
Alexander Graham Bell had made several unsuccessful attempts to remove the assassin’s bullet with a new metal detection device.
September 19, 1931 -
Adolf Hitler's 23-year-old half niece, Geli Raubal, was found dead in her uncle's Munich apartment from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest on this date.
Oh that Hitler, what a wacky Fuhrer.
September 19, 1934 -
Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby on this date.
So they fried him two years later.
September 19, 1957 -
The U.S. conducted its first underground nuclear test, code-named Rainier, in the Nevada desert on this date. This caused a major disturbance in the natural order of the fragile desert eco-system,
ultimately resulting in Las Vegas,
and enormous spiders
and oversized seafood.
September 19, 1959 -
In a Cold War setback, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was annoyed to learn that he would not be permitted to visit Disneyland, due to concerns for his personal safety.
This mean, most of the cold war could have been prevented, if we let that fat bald premier ride Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
September 19, 1961 -
Betty (Estelle Parsons) and Barney (James Earl Jones) Hill were picked up near Indian Head, New Hampshire and anally probed by five beings in a flying saucer. The couple later describes the craft as being "banana-like, with pointed tips and windows."
Anyway, that's what Barney told Betty what happened.
September 19, 1991 -
A body was found frozen in a glacier in the Alps between Austria and Italy. A German tourist found the body and called the Austrian police. They tried to free the body from the ice with a jackhammer. It was only when an anthropologist showed up to examine the body that they realized it was a very, very old corpse - 5,300 years old, in fact - of a man between 25 and 35 years old. He was five feet, two inches tall, with hair about three inches long. He had tattoos. He wore an unlined fur robe, a woven grass cape, and size six shoes stuffed with grass for warmth.
He came to be called Ötzi the Iceman, and what made him such a remarkable discovery for anthropologists was the fact that he died while he was out walking on an ordinary day wearing ordinary clothing. He carried a copper axe and a fur quiver for his arrows, the only quiver from the Neolithic period that has ever been found. His arrows had sharp flint points and feathers that were affixed at an angle that would cause the arrows to spin. And he carried mushrooms in his bag that scientists speculate were used for medicine.
It was not until ten years later that a forensics expert noticed in an x-ray that the Iceman had an arrowhead lodged in his back. He had been murdered.
Who murdered the Iceman? Stay tuned to CSI Austria on your local CBS networks.
September 19, 1995 -
The New York Times and the Washington Post published the Unabomber's rambling, 35,000-word anti-technology screed, Industrial Society And Its Future, on this date.
Before you go - I just saw the trailer for a biopix framed around the farewell tour of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (starring Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly.)
I have often said that they were the greatest romantic couple on screen. The genuine love and affection they had for each other is clearly visible.
And so it goes
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