October 31, 1912 -
The Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Elmer Booth, Lillian Gish, Clara T. Bracy and Walter Miller, premiered in the US on this date. The film is thought to be the first film about organized crime.
This film heavily influenced Martin Scorsese in the making of his own gangster films, Goodfellas and Gangs of New York. It was picked by Scorsese for his 2005 tribute at Beaubourg in Paris, France.
October 31, 1945 -
René Clair's adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic murder mystery And Then There Were None was released in the US on this date.
This movie, as all existent versions of Ten Little Indians, is based not on the novel by Agatha Christie but on her very similar play. While the identity of the murderer is the same in both versions, the outcome of who survives the murderer's plot is very different.
October 31, 1949 -
Cecil B. DeMille's wonderfully campy (although not intentional) version of Samson and Delilah, starring Hedy LaMarr and Victor Mature premiered on this date.
For the scene in which Samson kills the lion, Victor Mature refused to wrestle a tame movie lion. Told by director Cecil B. DeMille that the lion had no teeth, Mature replied, "I don't want to be gummed to death, either." The scene shows a stunt man wrestling the tame lion, intercut with closeups of Mature wrestling a lion skin.
October 31, 1986 -
Roland Joffé's powerful historical drama, The Mission, starring, Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Aidan Quinn, and Liam Neeson, premiered in the US on this date.
Many of the people who played the natives, were actual native South Americans who spoke little English. They were given free reign to say whatever lines they wanted, and it is rumored that in a couple of scenes, they're actually cursing up a storm.
Happy Halloween! But remember, Halloween: it's a large secret East Coast syndicate backed primarily by Big Sugar and Dental Schools.
This year, I will not suggest that you go as a sociopath - we' ve had enough of them recently.
I'd have written more but I'm way behind in adding dead mice and ground glass into kids candy bags.
( For all you parents - remember to sort your kids candy later tonight. It is not a crime to save all the good chocolate for yourself. Tell'em you have to sample it for poison.)
Today in History:
October 31, 1926 -
Harry Houdini died in room 401 of Grace Hospital in Detroit on this date.
The escape artist was killed by diffuse peritonitis, after having undergone an emergency appendectomy.
Contrary to popular belief, the fatal appendicitis could not have been caused by a punch to the stomach.
October 31, 1950 -
I thought to myself, Join the army. It's free. So I figured while I'm here I'll lose a few pounds.
John Franklin Candy, the great Canadian comedian and actor, was born on this date.
October 31, 1984 -
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was not having a good day. Daughter of Nehru, the first prime minister of the newly independent India and fashion plate of the 60s, Mrs. Gandhi was running late for an interview with Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. Two Sikh members of her bodyguard, annoyed with her involvement in the storming of the Golden Temple (The holiest of Sikh sites) took this moment to express their vexation with their boss and assassinated her on the spot.
This sparked Hindu-Sikh clashes across the country. Four days of anti-Sikh rioting followed in India. The government said more than 2,700 people, mostly Sikhs, were killed, while newspapers and human-rights groups put the death toll between 10,000 and 17,000.
Once again, people should be checking the references of their bodyguards more carefully.
October 31, 1993 -
Federico Fellini, considered as one of the most influential and widely revered film-makers of the 20th Century, passed away on this date.
He made some 24 films, including La Strada, La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and Amarcord, all hallmarks throughout the 50s and 60s Art House world.
October 31, 1993 -
The young phenom River Phoenix had an unfortunate time at the Viper Room in West Hollywood on this date.
An apocryphal story at the time was that River's last words were supposedly, "No paparazzi, I want anonymity", although the quote has become something of an urban legend. In fact, according to witnesses, River stumbled out of the nightclub and fell hard, face-first, onto the sidewalk (experts believed he likely died at that moment) before spasming violently against the pavement for eight minutes, never having uttered a word.
And so it goes
815
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Be afraid... Be very afraid.
Halloween is but a day away and shockingly enough, it's National Candy Corn Day today. The famous candy is said to have been invented in the United States by George Renninger in the 1880s and it was originally made by hand.
Nowadays, it's mass produced by Jelly Belly® using a recipe unchanged since about 1900. Candy corn is made from bottom to top. The yellow bit is the top and the white is the bottom.
But remember, I believe they stopped production sometime after the end of World War I and just continued to recycle the remaining uneaten supply.
October 30, 1937 -
A good early Looney Tunes Halloween treat, The Case of the Stuttering Pig, was released on this date.
When the picture of Uncle Solomon is shown, it's a drawing of Oliver Hardy as a pig.
October 30, 1942 -
Rene Clair's second Hollywood film, the delightful romantic comedy, I Married A Witch, starring, Veronica Lake, Fredric March, Susan Hayworth, and Robert Benchley, premiered on this date.
Veronica Lake and Fredric March did not like one another, due in part to some disparaging remarks March made about her. During filming, Lake delighted in playing pranks on March. In one scene in which the two were photographed only from the waist up, Lake stuck her foot in March's groin. In another incident, Lake hid a 40-pound weight under her costume when March had to carry her in his arms. After that incident, March nicknamed the film "I Married a Bitch."
October 30, 1943 -
A very funny war-time Bugs Bunny Cartoon, Falling Hare, was released on this date.
In the early 1940s, Walt Disney was developing a feature film based on Roald Dahl's book Gremlin Lore, and asked the other studios to refrain from producing gremlin films. While most of the studios complied, Warner Bros. already had two cartoons too far into production - this cartoon and Russian Rhapsody. As a compromise, Leon Schlesinger re-titled the cartoons to remove any reference to gremlins. The original title was Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin.
October 30, 1968 -
The wonderfully acted treachery among the 12th Century Royals, A Lion In Winter starring Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn and Anthony Hopkins opened in the US on this date.
This was the second time that Peter O'Toole played King Henry II. The first time was in Becket. He received Academy Award nominations for both performances.
October 30, 2002 –
Warren Zevon was featured on the Late Show with David Letterman as the only guest for the entire hour, on this date.
Zevon performing several songs and spoke about being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.
Kids, "...enjoy every sandwich."
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
October 30, 1863 -
OK kids, try to follow this ...
Wilhelm arrives in Athens, changes his name to a good Greek name and assumes his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes, on this date.
October 30, 1888 -
John L. Loud of Weymouth, Massachusetts was granted the first US patent for a ballpoint pen. (US No. 392,046) on this date.
October 30, 1938 -
The War of the Worlds was the Halloween episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. Directed by the wunderkind Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' classic novel The War of the Worlds (1898).
Welles's adaptation is arguably the most well-known radio dramatic production in history. Both the War of the Worlds broadcast and the panic it created have become textbook examples of mass hysteria and the delusions of crowds.
It has been suggested in recent years that the War of the Worlds broadcast was actually a news report of the Red Lectroids invasion of Earth by Orson as fact retracted as fiction. Another conspiracy theory has the Rockefeller Foundation funding the broadcast as a test to gauge the public's reaction.
There has been continued speculation that the panic generated by the broadcast inspired officials to cover up unidentified flying object evidence, to avoid a similar panic. Indeed, U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in 1956, "The [U.S. government's] UFO files are full of references to the near mass panic of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles presented his now famous The War of the Worlds broadcast."
You never know.
October 30, 1952 -
Clarence Birdseye sold first package of frozen peas on this date.
After his death, Birdeye was not frozen, as you might have incorrectly assumed but cremated and had his ashes were scattered at sea off Gloucester, Massachusetts.
October 30, 1961 -
The Soviet Union tested the largest nuclear device ever created (the Tsar Bomb) on this date. The nuclear test took place on the islands of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean.
The bomb was 4,000 times stronger than the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima.
It went BOOM and blowed up real good.
October 30, 1968 -
Silent film star, Ramon Novarro was brutally beaten and left for dead by his assailants, on this date. Novarro's life ended when two brothers, Tom and Paul Ferguson (if you're a very sick puppy, there are nude photos of Paul on the internet but I'm not going to link to them), whom he had paid to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex, murdered him.
According to the prosecution in the Novarro murder case, the two young men believed that a large sum of money was hidden in Novarro's house. The prosecution accused them of torturing Novarro for several hours to force him to reveal where the nonexistent money was hidden. They left with a mere twenty dollars they took from his bathrobe pocket before fleeing the scene.
A very unpleasant end, indeed.
October 30, 1974 -
Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held their Rumble In the Jungle boxing match in Zaire on this date.
Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title, that was taken from him for refusing military service. This fight has been voted by sports writers as the greatest sporting event in the 20th Century.
October 30, 1975 -
President Gerald Ford, on October 29, 1975, gave a speech denying federal assistance to spare New York from bankruptcy. The front page of The Daily News the next day read: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”
October 30, 1990 -
Joseph W. Burrus, an aspiring magician, died while attempting a "buried alive" stunt. He was contained inside an acrylic glass clear box,or coffin, of his own construction. Lowered into a hole, his crew began filling the hole with dirt and cement around the coffin.
Apparently, Burrus didn't calculate the correct force the weight of the wet cement had on this coffin - he had only practiced the trick with soil. At some point, the crew realized the concrete had crushed the box, and when they pulled him out, he was dead. Oops (probably non-union help.)
Folks, when you're being buried alive, spend the extra bucks and go labor!
October 30, 2013 -
Norwegian town of Rjukan experienced a winter sun for the first time after giant mirrors were installed around the town on this date. Citizens celebrated by wearing their sunglasses and gathering in the town center
Rjukan, surrounded by mountains, does not get any direct sunlight for about seven months out of the year, and the idea to use mirrors to bring sun to the town center was proposed around one-hundred years previously.
And so it goes
Once again,
816
Monday, October 29, 2018
Halloween is in two days
I bet if you dig around in your kitchen cabinets,
you could find some really old candy to give out to the neighborhood kids
October 29, 1974 -
Rhoda and Joe got married on this date.
Rhoda Faye Morgenstern and Brenda Faye Morgenstern have the same middle name. Their mother liked the name, but not enough to make it their first name.
October 29, 1999 -
Spike Jonze's surreal comedy, Being John Malkovich, written by Charlie Kaufman, and starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich, and Charlie Sheen premiered on this date.
John Malkovich was approached about this film several times and loved the script, but he and his production crew felt that another actor would fit the role better. Malkovich offered to help produce the film, and aid Spike Jonze in any way, but refused to star in it. Eventually after a couple of years Malkovich's will was worn down and he agreed to star in the film.
October 29, 1999 -
The largest grossing Japanes film of 1997, the Ghibli Studio's anime classic Mononoke-hime, was released in the US as Princess Mononoke, with new voice over work by Claire Danes, Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver, and Billy Bob Thornton, on this date.
Mononoke means angry or vengeful spirit. Hime is the Japanese honorific word that means princess, which, in the rules of Japanese grammar, is placed after a person's name instead of before, as is the custom in many Western languages. When the film's title was translated into English, it was decided that Mononoke would be left as a name rather than translated literally.
Word of the Day
Today in History :
October 29, 1618 -
Yesterday (back in 1618), Sir Walter Raleigh was a fairly forgotten figure in English History. Sir Walter, famous explorer and favorite of Queen Elizabeth I had been languishing in prison for years on some murky charges of plotting against King James I. He was left to languish in the Tower of London until 1616. While imprisoned, he wrote many treatises and the first volume of The Historie of the World, about the ancient history of Greece and Rome. His son Carew was conceived and born while Raleigh was legally 'dead' and imprisoned in the Tower of London (1604).
In 1616, Sir Walter was released from the Tower of London in order to conduct a second expedition to Venezuela in search of El Dorado. In the course of the expedition, Raleigh's men, under the command of Lawrence Keymis, sacked the Spanish outpost of San Thome on the Orinoco. During the initial attack on the settlement, Raleigh's son Walter was struck by a bullet and killed. On Raleigh's return to England, the outraged Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, the Spanish ambassador, demanded that King James reinstate Raleigh's death sentence. The ambassador's demand was granted.
Raleigh was beheaded at Whitehall on this date in 1618. "Let us dispatch," he asked his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear." After he was allowed to see the axe that would behead him, he mused: "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries". It's been said that Sir Walter final words (as he lay ready for the axe to fall) were: "Strike a match man, strike!"
The corpse was to be buried in the local church in Beddington, Surrey, the home of Lady Raleigh. "The Lords," she wrote, "have given me his dead body, though they have denied me his life. God hold me in my wits". After Raleigh's execution, his head was embalmed and presented to his wife. She carried it with her in a velvet bag until she decided she didn't like the smell.
Gentlemen, remember either to keep your head firmly in place upon your death or ask your wife to invest in a lot of room deodorizer.
October 29, 1891 -
Being a funny person does an awful lot of things to you. You feel that you mustn't get serious with people. They don't expect it from you, and they don't want to see it. You're not entitled to be serious, you're a clown.
Fanny Brice, popular and influential American comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress and entertainer, was born on this date..
October 29, 1899 -
Akim Tamiroff, Georgian born actor (was the first Golden Globe Award-winning actor for Best Supporting Actor) was born on this date.
While Tamiroff may not be a household name in the present day, his malapropistic performance as the boss in The Great McGinty inspired the cartoon character Boris Badenov,
the male half of the villainous husband-and-wife team Boris and Natasha on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
October 29, 1901 -
Leon Czolgosz was convicted and sentenced to death for the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley on September 23, 1901 in a brief trial that lasted eight and a half hours from jury selection to verdict. Upon returning to Auburn Prison, he asked the Warden if this meant he would be transferred to Sing Sing to be electrocuted and seemed surprised to learn that Auburn had its own electric chair.
He was executed by electrocution, by three jolts at 1700 volts each, on October 29, 1901, in Auburn Prison in Auburn, New York. His brother Waldek and his brother-in-law Frank Bandowski were in attendance, though when Waldek asked the Warden for his brother's body to be taken for proper burial, he was informed that he "would never be able to take it away" and that crowds of people would mob him, so the body had to be buried on prison grounds.
His last words were "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people - the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime." As the prison guards strapped him into the chair, however, he did say through clenched teeth, "I am sorry I could not see my father." Sulfuric acid and lye were thrown into his coffin so that his body would be completely disfigured, and to aid in its decomposition. His letters and clothes were burned.
The scene of the crime, the Temple of Music, was torn down in November 1901. A stone marker in the middle of Fordham Drive, a residential street in Buffalo today marks the approximate spot where the event occurred. Czolgosz's revolver is on display at the Pan-American Exposition exhibit of the Erie County Historical Society in Buffalo.
Today is the anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash in 1929 that signaled the beginning of the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world.
Few people saw it coming except for Joseph P. Kennedy and Charlie Chaplin who had cashed out of the volatile market weeks early and preserved their fortunes. The stock market had been booming throughout the 1920s. Brokerage houses had been springing up all over the country, to take advantage of everyone's interest in investment. There were stories about barbers, messenger boys and prostitutes who'd gotten rich off of overheard stock tips. Americans who ordinarily couldn't afford to invest their money were taking out loans to buy stock so they wouldn't miss out (shades of the sub prime mortgage market.)
The front-page story in The New York Times on the next day read, "Wall Street was a street of vanished hopes, of curiously silent apprehension and of a sort of paralyzed hypnosis. Men and women crowded the brokerage offices, even those who have been long since wiped out, and followed the figures on the tape. Little groups gathered here and there to discuss the fall in prices in hushed and awed tones."
The stock market didn't do so well in September of 1929, but nobody really noticed anything was wrong until October 23, when 2.6 million shares were sold in the closing hour of trading. It looked as though the selling would continue on Thursday, October 24, but a group of the most influential American bankers in the country pooled their money and began to buy up the declining stocks, supporting the market. By the end of that day it seemed like everything would be all right.
But on this day in 1929, the bottom fell out of the market. Three million shares were sold in the first half-hour. Stock prices fell so fast that by the end of the day there were shares in many companies that no one would buy at any price. The stocks had lost their entire value.
It was the most disastrous trading day in the stock market's history (until now). The stock market lost $30 billion dollars, more than a third of its value, in the next two weeks.
October 29, 1932 -
Three years to the day after the stock market crash, the French liner Normandie was launched in front of 200,000 spectators. The ship was often called the greatest ocean liner ever built
Normandie’s career as a passenger liner was cut short by the outbreak of World War II. At the end of her 139th Atlantic crossing, she arrived in New York on August 28, 1939, and would never sail again.
October 29, 1964 -
The Star of India, the famous golf-ball-sized stone was stolen, along with several other stones including the Eagle Diamond and the deLong Ruby from the American Museum of Natural History, in NYC, on this date. The thieves unlocked a bathroom window during museum open hours, climbed in that night, found that the sapphire was the only gem in the collection protected by an alarm -- and the battery for that was dead. So they raked up the stones, and fled the same way they came in.
Within two days, the notorious cat burglar, smuggler, and one-time surfing champion Jack Murphy (known as Murph the Surf) was arrested along with two accomplices, later receiving a three-year sentence. The uninsured Star of India was recovered in a locker in a Miami bus station. However, the Eagle diamond was never recovered.
October 29, 1969 -
The first computer-to-computer message transmission (ARPANET), the basis of today's internet, was established between UCLA and Stanford on this date.
Apparently, the two computers were looking for porn.
October 29, 2012 -
Most people on the East Coast were battening down the hatches, waiting for Sandy to hit landfall.
By the next day, New York harbor had risen to over 13 feet at the Battery, over two million New Yorkers has lost power, and 44 New Yorkers had lost their lives.
And so it goes
817
October 29, 1974 -
Rhoda and Joe got married on this date.
Rhoda Faye Morgenstern and Brenda Faye Morgenstern have the same middle name. Their mother liked the name, but not enough to make it their first name.
October 29, 1999 -
Spike Jonze's surreal comedy, Being John Malkovich, written by Charlie Kaufman, and starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich, and Charlie Sheen premiered on this date.
John Malkovich was approached about this film several times and loved the script, but he and his production crew felt that another actor would fit the role better. Malkovich offered to help produce the film, and aid Spike Jonze in any way, but refused to star in it. Eventually after a couple of years Malkovich's will was worn down and he agreed to star in the film.
October 29, 1999 -
The largest grossing Japanes film of 1997, the Ghibli Studio's anime classic Mononoke-hime, was released in the US as Princess Mononoke, with new voice over work by Claire Danes, Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver, and Billy Bob Thornton, on this date.
Mononoke means angry or vengeful spirit. Hime is the Japanese honorific word that means princess, which, in the rules of Japanese grammar, is placed after a person's name instead of before, as is the custom in many Western languages. When the film's title was translated into English, it was decided that Mononoke would be left as a name rather than translated literally.
Word of the Day
Today in History :
October 29, 1618 -
In 1616, Sir Walter was released from the Tower of London in order to conduct a second expedition to Venezuela in search of El Dorado. In the course of the expedition, Raleigh's men, under the command of Lawrence Keymis, sacked the Spanish outpost of San Thome on the Orinoco. During the initial attack on the settlement, Raleigh's son Walter was struck by a bullet and killed. On Raleigh's return to England, the outraged Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, the Spanish ambassador, demanded that King James reinstate Raleigh's death sentence. The ambassador's demand was granted.
The corpse was to be buried in the local church in Beddington, Surrey, the home of Lady Raleigh. "The Lords," she wrote, "have given me his dead body, though they have denied me his life. God hold me in my wits". After Raleigh's execution, his head was embalmed and presented to his wife. She carried it with her in a velvet bag until she decided she didn't like the smell.
Gentlemen, remember either to keep your head firmly in place upon your death or ask your wife to invest in a lot of room deodorizer.
October 29, 1891 -
Being a funny person does an awful lot of things to you. You feel that you mustn't get serious with people. They don't expect it from you, and they don't want to see it. You're not entitled to be serious, you're a clown.
Fanny Brice, popular and influential American comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress and entertainer, was born on this date..
October 29, 1899 -
Akim Tamiroff, Georgian born actor (was the first Golden Globe Award-winning actor for Best Supporting Actor) was born on this date.
While Tamiroff may not be a household name in the present day, his malapropistic performance as the boss in The Great McGinty inspired the cartoon character Boris Badenov,
the male half of the villainous husband-and-wife team Boris and Natasha on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
October 29, 1901 -
Leon Czolgosz was convicted and sentenced to death for the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley on September 23, 1901 in a brief trial that lasted eight and a half hours from jury selection to verdict. Upon returning to Auburn Prison, he asked the Warden if this meant he would be transferred to Sing Sing to be electrocuted and seemed surprised to learn that Auburn had its own electric chair.
His last words were "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people - the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime." As the prison guards strapped him into the chair, however, he did say through clenched teeth, "I am sorry I could not see my father." Sulfuric acid and lye were thrown into his coffin so that his body would be completely disfigured, and to aid in its decomposition. His letters and clothes were burned.
The scene of the crime, the Temple of Music, was torn down in November 1901. A stone marker in the middle of Fordham Drive, a residential street in Buffalo today marks the approximate spot where the event occurred. Czolgosz's revolver is on display at the Pan-American Exposition exhibit of the Erie County Historical Society in Buffalo.
Today is the anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash in 1929 that signaled the beginning of the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world.
The stock market didn't do so well in September of 1929, but nobody really noticed anything was wrong until October 23, when 2.6 million shares were sold in the closing hour of trading. It looked as though the selling would continue on Thursday, October 24, but a group of the most influential American bankers in the country pooled their money and began to buy up the declining stocks, supporting the market. By the end of that day it seemed like everything would be all right.
But on this day in 1929, the bottom fell out of the market. Three million shares were sold in the first half-hour. Stock prices fell so fast that by the end of the day there were shares in many companies that no one would buy at any price. The stocks had lost their entire value.
It was the most disastrous trading day in the stock market's history (until now). The stock market lost $30 billion dollars, more than a third of its value, in the next two weeks.
October 29, 1932 -
Three years to the day after the stock market crash, the French liner Normandie was launched in front of 200,000 spectators. The ship was often called the greatest ocean liner ever built
Normandie’s career as a passenger liner was cut short by the outbreak of World War II. At the end of her 139th Atlantic crossing, she arrived in New York on August 28, 1939, and would never sail again.
October 29, 1964 -
The Star of India, the famous golf-ball-sized stone was stolen, along with several other stones including the Eagle Diamond and the deLong Ruby from the American Museum of Natural History, in NYC, on this date. The thieves unlocked a bathroom window during museum open hours, climbed in that night, found that the sapphire was the only gem in the collection protected by an alarm -- and the battery for that was dead. So they raked up the stones, and fled the same way they came in.
October 29, 1969 -
The first computer-to-computer message transmission (ARPANET), the basis of today's internet, was established between UCLA and Stanford on this date.
Apparently, the two computers were looking for porn.
October 29, 2012 -
Most people on the East Coast were battening down the hatches, waiting for Sandy to hit landfall.
By the next day, New York harbor had risen to over 13 feet at the Battery, over two million New Yorkers has lost power, and 44 New Yorkers had lost their lives.
And so it goes
817
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Running very late this morning
(got the most wonderful surprise - SOS came home for an impromptu visit.)
Today is International Animation Day. The day commemorates the first public performance of Emile Reynaud’s Theatre Optique at the Grevin Museum in Paris in 1892.
So Kids make sure you grab a bowl of the sugary breakfast cereal and watch your favorite cartoons.
October 28, 1947 -
An overlooked yet still powerful film-noir, Nightmare Alley, was released on this date.
Tyrone Power gave a memorable performance. Audiences, unfortunately weren't able to deal with him cast against type and he never had such a dramatically heavy role again.
October 28, 1950 -
The eternally 39-year old Benjamin Kubelsky (who was actually 56 at the time,) transitioned his successful radio program to television on this date when The Jack Benny Show premiered on CBS-TV.
Most of Jack Benny's original radio cast appeared on television with him, including Don Wilson, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Dennis Day, and his real-life wife Mary Livingstone made several guest appearances.
October, 28, 1957 -
Federico Fellini's Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) opened in the US on this date. (A good friend of mine named her daughter after Giulietta Masina. )
According to Federico Fellini's assistant Dominique Delouche, actor Francois Perier was hired so the film could get financing as a French co-production.
October 28, 1978 -
The group KISS, may have thought that they had dodged a huge career bullet when they turned down appearing in the disasterous BeeGee's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band fiasco, due to being contractually obliged to star in another feature. Karma though had other thoughts - The Hanna-Barbera produced KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park premiered on NBC-TV on this date.
Ace Frehley, (who had admitted in his autobiography,) was heavily addicted to alcohol at the time, often failed to show up during shooting, so Ace's stunt double, an African-American, had to act in some scenes and fill in for Ace on some of the fight scenes. The stunt double's voice was overdubbed to sound like Ace.
No body has really ever read the whole book
Today in History:
October 28, 4004 BC -
You never call, you never write - God.
According to Biblical calculations by our pal, Archbishop James Ussher,
God created Adam and Eve five days after finishing the rest of the universe.
October 28, 1886 -
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated at Liberty Island, New York, by President Grover Cleveland on this date. The statue weighs 225 tons and is 152 feet tall. It was originally known as Liberty Enlightening the World. Lady Liberty, as she came to be called, quickly become a symbol of America, partly because she was such a striking visual symbol of our national reverence for liberty, partly because of the five-dollar hot dogs and ten-dollar plastic replicas sold at her feet.
(Cynics like to point out that construction of the golden door was never completed and there is a certain gentleman who would like to build a large wall instead.)
Exactly thirty-three years later, in 1919, Congress passed a law prohibiting alcohol (The Volstead Act.)
Ultimately, it resulted in toxic, bootlegged alcohol that killed more people than legal alcohol had. With alcohol outlawed, only outlaws had drinks and the atmosphere fosters Mafia encroachment into legitimate businesses. Fortunately there were an awful lot of them and they overturned the law as soon as they were sober enough to vote.
October 28, 1922 -
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini seizes power in Italy, with the assistance of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XI declared Mussolini is a man sent by divine providence.
In return for this endorsement, the silly dictator signs the Lateran treaty, restoring papal sovereignty over the Vatican.
But at least the trains ran on time.
October 28, 1948 -
The Nobel committee announces that Swiss chemist Paul Müller had won the 1948 chemistry prize on this date.
He discovered the unusual insecticidal properties of 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2- bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane. Thanks to Mueller, the world embraces the phenomenal bug-killer... until somebody discovers that the hydrocarbon, popularly known as DDT, also excels at causing cancer.
October 28, 1955 -
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle on this date.
With the world uneasiness, Bill's agressive coupon clipping has helped him deal with his drop from the number one position to number two on Forbes' world billionaire list. I believe he is holding his own with the 1%ers.
October 28, 1962 -
The Cuban Missile Crisis officially ended when Nikita Khrushchev formally agreed to dismantle the Soviet missiles and remove them from Cuba. In exchange, the US agreed not to invade Cuba and respect its sovereignty.
The world breathed a sigh of relief as the tense situation that almost caused a nuclear war came to an end.
October 28, 1963 -
A New York DJ, Murray Kaufman, played a song from a little known British group on this date.
October 28, 1965 -
Pope Paul VI issued a decree, Nostra Aetate, which among other things, absolved Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
October 28, 1965 -
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, the tallest memorial in the US, was completed on this date. The famous arch, designed by architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel, is 603 feet (about 184 meters) tall and 630 feet (about 192 meters) wide.
The memorial was built as a monument to Thomas Jefferson and all those pioneers for who St. Louis was the Gateway to the West.
And on a personal note:
Happy Birthday Olivia
And so it goes
818
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
Today we can celebrate American Beer Day, as opposed to National Beer Day, which is celebrated on April 7.
While beer is not my go to beverage of choice, I'm happy to down a frosty cold one or two.
October 27, 1954 -
"... It was all started by a mouse." Walt Disney's first TV show, Disneyland, premiered on ABC-TV on this date
All of the ABC episodes were filmed in color, even though they aired in black and white. In general, ABC did not broadcast in color until the mid 1960s. During the years on ABC, the show went by the title of Disneyland, with one of four weekly sub titles,either Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland or Tomorrowland, depending on the category of that week's show.
October 27, 1955 -
The quintessential 50s movie (although quite startling at the time,) Nicholas Ray's masterful, Rebel Without a Cause, was released on this date.
All three lead actors--James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood, died prematurely under tragic circumstances; Dean died in an automobile accident in September 1955, Mineo was stabbed to death on February 12, 1976, and Wood drowned in the late autumn of 1981. In addition, Edward Platt committed suicide in 1974 and Dennis Hopper fell ill suddenly in the fall of 2009 and died five months later.
October 27, 1964 -
Another Paddy Chayefsky scripted classic from the 60s (although unappreciated), The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews, premiered on this date.
The first of three movies Julie Andrews James Garner made together, the others being Victor Victoria and One Special Night.
October 27, 1966 -
The third Charles Schultz Peanuts special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, (directed again by Bill Melendez,) premiered on this date.
After this special originally aired, children all over the country sent candy to Charlie Brown out of sympathy.
Don't forget to tune into The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today
Today in History:
On October 27, 312, on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had a vision assuring him of victory in the name of the Christian God.
As emperor, Constantine served as a patron for the church, contributing to its rapid growth in the fourth century. (So just that I have this right - if sunglasses had been invented and he didn't have sun glare in his eyes, most of the world would still be engaged in wanton sodomy.)
October 27, 1553 -
Michael Servetus, noted theologian, was honored in Switzerland for his discovery of the pulmonary circulation of the blood, on this date by being burned at the stake just outside Geneva with what was believed to be the last copy of his writing chained to his leg. Historians record his last words as: "Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me."
John Calvin is given a good deal of credit for having arranged these honors, which may have had something to do with his own gratitude to Mr. Servetus for having raised an important theological question.
Throughout history, such important theological questions have caused almost as much bloodshed as important theological answers. That doesn't mean theology's an especially bloody field - there's been just as much carnage from philosophy, political science, economics, linguistics, and the rest of the humanities.
It's probably all that blood that puts the 'human' in the humanities or as one of my faith readers put it, the 'hard' in hard science.
October 27, 1682 -
The City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was founded on this date. In 1681, as part of a repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted William Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Penn's ship anchored off the coast of New Castle, Delaware, on October 27, 1682, and he arrived in Philadelphia (which did not exist at the time, if you are following along, the Lenni Lenape Indians certainly didn't call this place Philadelphia) a few days after that.
He expanded the city west to the bank of the Schuylkill River, for a total of 1,200 acres. Streets were laid out in a gridiron system. Except for the two widest streets, High (now Market) and Broad, the streets were named after prominent landowners who owned adjacent lots. And no cheese steaks were involved.
October 27, 1858 -
Rowland H. Macy opened R.H. Macy Dry Goods on the corner of Sixth Ave. and 14th St. in New York City on this date.
First day sales were $11.06 but by the end of the first year, sales totaled almost $90,000. By 1877, R.H. Macy and Co. had become a full-fledged department store occupying 11 adjacent buildings.
October 27, 1904 -
The Interborough Rapid Transit Subway, New York City's first underground subway line opened officially 114 years ago today. It ran from the Brooklyn Bridge uptown to Broadway at 145th Street with a fare of one nickel.
It was the first rapid-transit subway system in America. The ride currently costs $2.75 (and with any luck, they will have completed the repairs on the L line within my lifetime.)
October 27, 1939 -
John Cleese, actor, writer and all around funny guy was born on this date. (Oh yeah, I think he was in a comedy group in the late 60s, early 70s.)
I hope John stops marrying new wives, so he can stop owing more and more alimony and just relax.
October 27, 1962 -
The British comedy stage revue Beyond the Fringe, written by and starring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett opening in NYC on this date.
This show is often seen as the beginning of the British satirical comedy of the 60s and many of the members Monty Python found this show highly influential.
October 27, 1964 -
In a private ceremony, Sonny and Cher exchanged rings in Tijuana (on this date) and told others they were married,
they were not legally married until 1969.
October 27, 2013 -
I don't think anybody is anybody else's moral compass. Maybe listening to my music is not the best idea if you live a very constricted life. Or maybe it is.
Music legend (and general major pain in the ass) Lou Reed died on this date
And so it goes.
819
While beer is not my go to beverage of choice, I'm happy to down a frosty cold one or two.
October 27, 1954 -
"... It was all started by a mouse." Walt Disney's first TV show, Disneyland, premiered on ABC-TV on this date
All of the ABC episodes were filmed in color, even though they aired in black and white. In general, ABC did not broadcast in color until the mid 1960s. During the years on ABC, the show went by the title of Disneyland, with one of four weekly sub titles,either Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland or Tomorrowland, depending on the category of that week's show.
October 27, 1955 -
The quintessential 50s movie (although quite startling at the time,) Nicholas Ray's masterful, Rebel Without a Cause, was released on this date.
All three lead actors--James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood, died prematurely under tragic circumstances; Dean died in an automobile accident in September 1955, Mineo was stabbed to death on February 12, 1976, and Wood drowned in the late autumn of 1981. In addition, Edward Platt committed suicide in 1974 and Dennis Hopper fell ill suddenly in the fall of 2009 and died five months later.
October 27, 1964 -
Another Paddy Chayefsky scripted classic from the 60s (although unappreciated), The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner and Julie Andrews, premiered on this date.
The first of three movies Julie Andrews James Garner made together, the others being Victor Victoria and One Special Night.
October 27, 1966 -
The third Charles Schultz Peanuts special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, (directed again by Bill Melendez,) premiered on this date.
After this special originally aired, children all over the country sent candy to Charlie Brown out of sympathy.
Today in History:
On October 27, 312, on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had a vision assuring him of victory in the name of the Christian God.
October 27, 1553 -
Michael Servetus, noted theologian, was honored in Switzerland for his discovery of the pulmonary circulation of the blood, on this date by being burned at the stake just outside Geneva with what was believed to be the last copy of his writing chained to his leg. Historians record his last words as: "Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me."
Throughout history, such important theological questions have caused almost as much bloodshed as important theological answers. That doesn't mean theology's an especially bloody field - there's been just as much carnage from philosophy, political science, economics, linguistics, and the rest of the humanities.
October 27, 1682 -
The City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was founded on this date. In 1681, as part of a repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted William Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Penn's ship anchored off the coast of New Castle, Delaware, on October 27, 1682, and he arrived in Philadelphia (which did not exist at the time, if you are following along, the Lenni Lenape Indians certainly didn't call this place Philadelphia) a few days after that.
He expanded the city west to the bank of the Schuylkill River, for a total of 1,200 acres. Streets were laid out in a gridiron system. Except for the two widest streets, High (now Market) and Broad, the streets were named after prominent landowners who owned adjacent lots. And no cheese steaks were involved.
October 27, 1858 -
Rowland H. Macy opened R.H. Macy Dry Goods on the corner of Sixth Ave. and 14th St. in New York City on this date.
October 27, 1904 -
The Interborough Rapid Transit Subway, New York City's first underground subway line opened officially 114 years ago today. It ran from the Brooklyn Bridge uptown to Broadway at 145th Street with a fare of one nickel.
It was the first rapid-transit subway system in America. The ride currently costs $2.75 (and with any luck, they will have completed the repairs on the L line within my lifetime.)
October 27, 1939 -
John Cleese, actor, writer and all around funny guy was born on this date. (Oh yeah, I think he was in a comedy group in the late 60s, early 70s.)
I hope John stops marrying new wives, so he can stop owing more and more alimony and just relax.
October 27, 1962 -
The British comedy stage revue Beyond the Fringe, written by and starring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett opening in NYC on this date.
This show is often seen as the beginning of the British satirical comedy of the 60s and many of the members Monty Python found this show highly influential.
October 27, 1964 -
In a private ceremony, Sonny and Cher exchanged rings in Tijuana (on this date) and told others they were married,
they were not legally married until 1969.
October 27, 2013 -
I don't think anybody is anybody else's moral compass. Maybe listening to my music is not the best idea if you live a very constricted life. Or maybe it is.
Music legend (and general major pain in the ass) Lou Reed died on this date
And so it goes.
819
Friday, October 26, 2018
I got a mule, her name is Sal
But that has nothing to do with the fact that today we celebrate National Pumpkin Day and Howl at the Moon Day today.
So don't make us wait - howl at the moon, preferably while eating pumpkin pie.
October 26, 1959 -
A gentle and yet still relevant Cold War comedy, The Mouse the Roared, opened in the US on this date.
Director Jack Arnold soon learned that Peter Sellers did his best work on the first take and was usually useless by take three. The actor, schooled in improvisation, couldn't keep the lines fresh if he had to say them over and over.
October 26, 1962 -
The horror camp classic Crawford - Davis paring, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? opened in NYC on this date.
This film was a smash hit upon initial release, recouping its original budget in only 11 days, and eventually grossing $9 million. In adjusted 2017 dollars, this would be equivalent to $72,596,920.53.
October 26, 1967 -
An excellent (though almost forgotten) thriller from the 60s, Wait Until Dark, premiered on this date.
During World War II, 16-year-old Audrey Hepburn was a volunteer nurse in a Dutch hospital. During the battle of Arnhem, Hepburn's hospital received many wounded Allied soldiers. One of the injured soldiers young Audrey helped nurse back to health was a young British paratrooper - and future director - named Terence Young who more than 20 years later directed Hepburn in Wait Until Dark.
October 26, 1982 -
TV's longest dream sequence, St. Elsewhere, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.
The show was sued by Humana because of similarities between the company and "Ecumena", the company that took over St. Eligius in the show. The show eventually dropped the name and issued a disclaimer on each episode.
Thankfully it 5 pm when it needs to be; where I live
Today in History:
October 26, 1440 -
Gilles de Rais, French marshal and (alleged) depraved killer of 140 children, was strangled then thrown onto slow fire on this date.
A brilliant young French knight, he was believed to either have cracked over the torture and death of his true love, Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans or some theorists consider Gilles the victim of a plot to acquire his lands.
On this date, in 1825, New York City becomes a World Port with the opening of the Erie Canal; a river waterway between Hudson River and Lake Erie opened. It cut through 363 miles of wilderness and measured 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep. It had 18 aqueducts and 83 locks and rose 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.
Toll receipts paid back the $7.5 million construction cost within ten years. (This will all be on the test.)
October 26, 1881 -
Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holliday showed up at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, to disarm the Clanton and McLaury boys, who were in violation of a ban on carrying guns in the city limits.
This became the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLowery were killed; Earp's brothers were wounded.
October 26, 1944 -
Freemason and Vice President Harry S Truman publicly denies (yet again) ever having been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Unfortunately for him, while never an active member, he did pay the $10 membership dues in 1922 in order to get backing for a judgeship he was seeking back in Missouri.
I can't even imagine the feeding frenzy that would have go on today.
October 26, 1965 -
Queen Elizabeth decorated The Beatles with Order of British Empire, at Buckingham Palace, on this date.
The Beatles, ever polite, allowed Her Majesty to add chintz curtains and tufted sofas in their living rooms.
October 26, 1970 -
Doonesbury, the comic strip by Gary Trudeau, premiered in 28 newspapers across the U.S. on this date.
The strip is still going strong: a new strip ocassionaly published on Sundays. Who knew? (Who reads newspapers anymore?)
October 26, 1979 -
Kim Jae Kyu, director of South Korea's central intelligence agency, "accidentally" shot President Park Chung Hee to death, also killing Park's bodyguard. Park had been president (dictator, effectively) since 1961. Kim was executed the following May for his attempted coup d'etat. (I hate when someone in my cabinet tries to assassinate me.)
In 2005 at the New York Film Festival, the film, The President's Last Bang, recounted the events.
October 26, 1984 -
19-year-old John McCollum shot and killed himself while listening to Ozzy Osbourne records on this date. One year later, McCollum's parents file suit against Ozzy and CBS Records, alleging that the song Suicide Solution from the album Blizzard of Ozz contributed to their son's death.
Except that the song's subject was quite plainly alcohol addiction. The trial court dismissed the McCollum's complaint. (Please, only watch the video once, with adult supervision. And for heaven's sake, don't try to play it backwards!)
October 26, 1991 -
A sudden wind uprooted a 485-pound umbrella, part of an outdoor 'art project' installed by Christo, in the Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles and struck Lori Keevil-Matthews, 33 years old, of Camarillo, California, crushing her to death against a boulder.
That must really suck being killed by an old Hollies song.
And so it goes.
Psst, Bunkies:
Christmas is 60 days away. Did you make your Christmas Club payments? (Do you even know what a Christmas Cub is?)
820
So don't make us wait - howl at the moon, preferably while eating pumpkin pie.
October 26, 1959 -
A gentle and yet still relevant Cold War comedy, The Mouse the Roared, opened in the US on this date.
Director Jack Arnold soon learned that Peter Sellers did his best work on the first take and was usually useless by take three. The actor, schooled in improvisation, couldn't keep the lines fresh if he had to say them over and over.
October 26, 1962 -
The horror camp classic Crawford - Davis paring, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? opened in NYC on this date.
This film was a smash hit upon initial release, recouping its original budget in only 11 days, and eventually grossing $9 million. In adjusted 2017 dollars, this would be equivalent to $72,596,920.53.
October 26, 1967 -
An excellent (though almost forgotten) thriller from the 60s, Wait Until Dark, premiered on this date.
During World War II, 16-year-old Audrey Hepburn was a volunteer nurse in a Dutch hospital. During the battle of Arnhem, Hepburn's hospital received many wounded Allied soldiers. One of the injured soldiers young Audrey helped nurse back to health was a young British paratrooper - and future director - named Terence Young who more than 20 years later directed Hepburn in Wait Until Dark.
October 26, 1982 -
TV's longest dream sequence, St. Elsewhere, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.
The show was sued by Humana because of similarities between the company and "Ecumena", the company that took over St. Eligius in the show. The show eventually dropped the name and issued a disclaimer on each episode.
Thankfully it 5 pm when it needs to be; where I live
Today in History:
October 26, 1440 -
Gilles de Rais, French marshal and (alleged) depraved killer of 140 children, was strangled then thrown onto slow fire on this date.
On this date, in 1825, New York City becomes a World Port with the opening of the Erie Canal; a river waterway between Hudson River and Lake Erie opened. It cut through 363 miles of wilderness and measured 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep. It had 18 aqueducts and 83 locks and rose 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.
Toll receipts paid back the $7.5 million construction cost within ten years. (This will all be on the test.)
October 26, 1881 -
Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holliday showed up at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, to disarm the Clanton and McLaury boys, who were in violation of a ban on carrying guns in the city limits.
This became the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLowery were killed; Earp's brothers were wounded.
October 26, 1944 -
Freemason and Vice President Harry S Truman publicly denies (yet again) ever having been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
I can't even imagine the feeding frenzy that would have go on today.
October 26, 1965 -
Queen Elizabeth decorated The Beatles with Order of British Empire, at Buckingham Palace, on this date.
The Beatles, ever polite, allowed Her Majesty to add chintz curtains and tufted sofas in their living rooms.
October 26, 1970 -
Doonesbury, the comic strip by Gary Trudeau, premiered in 28 newspapers across the U.S. on this date.
October 26, 1979 -
Kim Jae Kyu, director of South Korea's central intelligence agency, "accidentally" shot President Park Chung Hee to death, also killing Park's bodyguard. Park had been president (dictator, effectively) since 1961. Kim was executed the following May for his attempted coup d'etat. (I hate when someone in my cabinet tries to assassinate me.)
In 2005 at the New York Film Festival, the film, The President's Last Bang, recounted the events.
October 26, 1984 -
19-year-old John McCollum shot and killed himself while listening to Ozzy Osbourne records on this date. One year later, McCollum's parents file suit against Ozzy and CBS Records, alleging that the song Suicide Solution from the album Blizzard of Ozz contributed to their son's death.
Except that the song's subject was quite plainly alcohol addiction. The trial court dismissed the McCollum's complaint. (Please, only watch the video once, with adult supervision. And for heaven's sake, don't try to play it backwards!)
October 26, 1991 -
A sudden wind uprooted a 485-pound umbrella, part of an outdoor 'art project' installed by Christo, in the Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles and struck Lori Keevil-Matthews, 33 years old, of Camarillo, California, crushing her to death against a boulder.
That must really suck being killed by an old Hollies song.
And so it goes.
Psst, Bunkies:
Christmas is 60 days away. Did you make your Christmas Club payments? (Do you even know what a Christmas Cub is?)
820
Thursday, October 25, 2018
It's Saints Crispin and Crispinian's Day. (it comes up later)
... He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin's day.
They are the patron saints of cobblers, tanners and leather workers. So remember, if you're walking through the West Village this morning and come upon a bleary-eye Leather Daddy walking home, wish him a Happy St. Crispin's Day!
October 25, 1928 -
Carl Theodor Dreyer silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc starring the amazing Marie Falconetti premiered in Paris on this date.
The film was thought to be lost forever, the negative was accidentally burned. Dreyer went to his grave, believing his masterpiece would never be seen again. And then, miraculously, in 1981 a complete print was found in an Oslo mental institution’s janitor’s closet.
October 25, 1957 -
One of Frank Sinatra's best movie performances, Pal Joey was released on this date.
Billy Wilder was the original choice to direct, with Mae West and Marlon Brando in the lead roles. He discussed it with Columbia studio head Harry Cohn over lunch one day. Not only did Cohn turn down him as director, but he later sent Wilder a bill for their lunch.
October 25, 1957 -
The greatest 50s Drive-in movie, The Amazing Colossal Man, opened in NYC on this date. (American International Pictures released Cat Girl in a double feature with this film.)
In the 1958 film, Attack of the Puppet People, a clip of this film is shown at a drive-in movie theater.
October 25, 1965 -
Jean-Luc Godard's take on Sci-Fi Film Noir, Alphaville, opened in NYC on this date.
Despite the fact that the film is a work of science fiction and supposed to be in a city of the future, all the sets were existing locations in Paris in 1965, and all the weapons are conventional firearms.
October 25, 1967 -
The Lerner and Loewe take on the the Arthurian legend, Camelot, starring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero, premiered on this date.
Richard Harris desperately sought the lead role, despite being repeatedly refused due to his limited singing ability. At one point, he even paid a man to carry a board down the Strand that said, "Harris Better than Burton, Only Harris for Camelot".
October 25, 1971 -
The PBS children's show The Electric Company premiered on this date.
Each episode of Love of Chair ended with the narrator, Ken Roberts, asking "And what about Naomi?" He's referring to Naomi Foner, an associate producer of the show during its first two seasons. She is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (for Running on Empty), and the mother of actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
October 25, 1975 -
Quite arguably the funniest episode ever broadcast on network TV, The Mary Tyler Moore Show - Chuckles Bites the Dust first aired on this date.
Mary Tyler Moore recalled in her autobiography that the insides of her cheeks were almost raw from biting them so hard to keep from laughing during the actual taping of the episode.
October 25, 1978 -
The independently produced horror film Halloween, directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis, premiered in the US on this date.
John Carpenter and Debra Hill have stated many times over the years that they did not consciously set out to depict virginity as a way of defeating a rampaging killer. The reason why the horny teens all die is simply that they are so preoccupied with getting laid that they don't notice that there is a killer at large. On the other hand, Laurie Strode spends a lot of time on her own and is therefore more alert.
October 25, 1982 -
Bob Newhart's second successful-sitcom Newhart, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
The characters "Larry, Darryl, and Darryl," who often waxed philosophical, probably got their names from the main character of the book The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham, Larry Darrell, who traveled the world looking for the meaning of life.
Things change in a moment
Today in History -
It's 1415, as it has been often said, times were hard - the only way to tell who the king was in England was looking for the person with the least amount of crap on him. The wastrel son of a usurping King led a ragtag army into another sovereign nation on this date.
After giving a stirring speech, the outnumbered army beats the far superior and well fortified army and wins the decisive Battle of Agincourt on this day. More than one hundred years later, either William Shakespeare or a bunch of other people wrote a slew of Henry plays
It's 1854, this time. The British want to maintain their naval superiority of the globe and continue to enjoy the fruits of sodomy on the open seas. The Russian Tsar (or Czar, as most monarchs are to busy to get a proper education, so they could barely figure out what type of monarch they are) decided that the Russian naval needed to get into a little of those high seas hijinks, began moving his army towards Turkey, hoping for a Russian port in the black sea. Thus, buggery is one of the underlying causes of The Crimean War.
It typical British fashion, on the morning of October 25, 1854, the English were winning the Battle of Balaclava (not Baklava, the delicious Greek pastry wars, to be described at a future date, but the goofy hat war with the ear flaps) when Lord Cardigan (yes, of sweater fame) received his order to attack the Russians fortifications.
Unfortunately for the Light Brigade, the Russian army was also on the other side of the valley that they were charging towards. The brigade was decimated by the heavy Russian guns, suffering 40 percent casualties.
It was later revealed that the order was the result of Alfred Lord Tennyson needing a new hit poem and not intentional.
October 25, 1881 -
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, the Spanish-born doodler and noted womanizer (considered the most influential artist of the 20th century) was born on this date.
I wonder if his paintings are still worth anything?
October 25, 1920 -
On a fine October day in 1920, King Alexander of Greece (cousin of my favorite Greek itinerant sailor - Philippos) was walking in the gardens of the royal palace in Athens. The young monarch was walking with his favorite dog when they were attacked by a pair of wild monkeys (once again, I can't make this stuff up.) Alexander attempted to drive the monkeys away from his dog but was bit during the scuffle.
The incident proved fatal for both parties. King Alexander suffered an infection and died from sepsis on this date and the monkey was destroyed when the Greek people sought revenge for the regicide. His father, the former King Constantine I (Philip's uncle) was called back into service to be king until his disastrous actions in the Greco-Turkish War.
Winston Churchill said, 'It is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million people died from this monkey bite.'
Once again, sometimes it stinks to be the king .
October 25, 1931 -
In every home there is a heartbreak
This story is truly not for the faint of heart.
Elena Hoyos, a pretty and vivacious 21 year old Cuban-American girl died from tuberculosis in Florida on this date. While this is sad, it wouldn't be noteworthy other than for her middle aged neighbor with a strange infatuation with Elena. Carl Tanzler (also known as Carl von Cosel), German-born radiologist became obsessed with his young neighbor. Not only did Mr. Tanzler attempted to treat and cure Hoyos with a variety of medicines, as well as x-ray and electrical equipment, that were brought to the Hoyos' home but Tanzler showered Hoyos with gifts of jewelry and clothing, and allegedly professed his love to her.
In April, 1933, Tanzler removed Hoyos' body from the mausoleum, carted it through the cemetery after dark on a toy wagon, and transported it to his home. Carl, with a little help from some home embalming, lived with Hoyos' corpse until October, 1940, when Elena's sister Florinda heard rumors of Tanzler (now known as Von Cosel) sleeping with the disinterred body of her sister, and confronted Tanzler at his home, where Hoyos' body was eventually discovered. Von Cosel was not charged with a crime because the statute of limitations on grave robbing had expired. Elena Hoyos was eventually buried at a secret location. Von Cosel, separated from his love, used a death mask to create a life-sized dummy of her, and lived with it until his death in 1952.
(This story is even more disturbing then you think, I've left some of the very unsavory details out for those readers with a more delicate nature.)
October 25, 1938 -
The Archbishop of Dubuque, the Most Reverend Francis J.L. Beckman, denounces the newfangled Swing music
-- the latest craze -- as nothing more than "a degenerated musical system... turned loose to gnaw away the moral fiber of young people" on this date.
Its cannibalistic rhythms are said to lead one down the "primrose path to Hell."
October 25, 1955 -
Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who lived near Hiroshima, Japan. She was only two years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. As she grew up, Sadako was a strong, courageous and athletic girl. In 1954, at age eleven, she became dizzy and fell to the ground. Sadako was diagnosed with leukemia, the "atom bomb disease".
While in the hospital, a friend gave her a golden paper crane and retold the story about the paper cranes (one who folded 1,000 cranes was granted a wish.) She may or may not have completed her goal in August of 1955, reports vary, and continued to fold cranes.
During her time in the hospital her condition progressively worsened. Around mid-October her left leg became swollen and turned purple. After her family urged her to eat something, Sadako requested tea on rice and remarked "It's good." Those were her last words. With her family around her, Sadako died on the morning of October 25, 1955 at the age of 12.
October 25, 1957 -
In chair number four of the barber shop at the Park Sheraton hotel in Manhattan, Mafia don Albert Anastasia, the Lord High Executioner of Murder Inc., was shot five times by the Gallo Brothers, under orders from Carlo Gambino.
The barber shop is now a Starbucks - such is life.
October 25, 1983 -
In order to maintain an uninterrupted supply of nutmeg to satisfy global demand, the United States of America invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada.
The invasion was rationalized as a rescue mission for the American medical students at the local school. A good friend of mine was at the school at the time and was widely quoted in the media.
October 25, 1991 -
On the way back from a Huey Lewis concert, rock promoter Bill Graham was killed when his helicopter hits high-voltage power lines in Vallejo, California on this date.
So, he died because he had to listen to Hip To Be Square.
And so it goes
821
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin's day.
October 25, 1928 -
Carl Theodor Dreyer silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc starring the amazing Marie Falconetti premiered in Paris on this date.
The film was thought to be lost forever, the negative was accidentally burned. Dreyer went to his grave, believing his masterpiece would never be seen again. And then, miraculously, in 1981 a complete print was found in an Oslo mental institution’s janitor’s closet.
October 25, 1957 -
One of Frank Sinatra's best movie performances, Pal Joey was released on this date.
Billy Wilder was the original choice to direct, with Mae West and Marlon Brando in the lead roles. He discussed it with Columbia studio head Harry Cohn over lunch one day. Not only did Cohn turn down him as director, but he later sent Wilder a bill for their lunch.
October 25, 1957 -
The greatest 50s Drive-in movie, The Amazing Colossal Man, opened in NYC on this date. (American International Pictures released Cat Girl in a double feature with this film.)
In the 1958 film, Attack of the Puppet People, a clip of this film is shown at a drive-in movie theater.
October 25, 1965 -
Jean-Luc Godard's take on Sci-Fi Film Noir, Alphaville, opened in NYC on this date.
Despite the fact that the film is a work of science fiction and supposed to be in a city of the future, all the sets were existing locations in Paris in 1965, and all the weapons are conventional firearms.
October 25, 1967 -
The Lerner and Loewe take on the the Arthurian legend, Camelot, starring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero, premiered on this date.
Richard Harris desperately sought the lead role, despite being repeatedly refused due to his limited singing ability. At one point, he even paid a man to carry a board down the Strand that said, "Harris Better than Burton, Only Harris for Camelot".
October 25, 1971 -
The PBS children's show The Electric Company premiered on this date.
Each episode of Love of Chair ended with the narrator, Ken Roberts, asking "And what about Naomi?" He's referring to Naomi Foner, an associate producer of the show during its first two seasons. She is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (for Running on Empty), and the mother of actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
October 25, 1975 -
Quite arguably the funniest episode ever broadcast on network TV, The Mary Tyler Moore Show - Chuckles Bites the Dust first aired on this date.
Mary Tyler Moore recalled in her autobiography that the insides of her cheeks were almost raw from biting them so hard to keep from laughing during the actual taping of the episode.
October 25, 1978 -
The independently produced horror film Halloween, directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis, premiered in the US on this date.
John Carpenter and Debra Hill have stated many times over the years that they did not consciously set out to depict virginity as a way of defeating a rampaging killer. The reason why the horny teens all die is simply that they are so preoccupied with getting laid that they don't notice that there is a killer at large. On the other hand, Laurie Strode spends a lot of time on her own and is therefore more alert.
October 25, 1982 -
Bob Newhart's second successful-sitcom Newhart, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
The characters "Larry, Darryl, and Darryl," who often waxed philosophical, probably got their names from the main character of the book The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham, Larry Darrell, who traveled the world looking for the meaning of life.
Things change in a moment
Today in History -
It's 1415, as it has been often said, times were hard - the only way to tell who the king was in England was looking for the person with the least amount of crap on him. The wastrel son of a usurping King led a ragtag army into another sovereign nation on this date.
After giving a stirring speech, the outnumbered army beats the far superior and well fortified army and wins the decisive Battle of Agincourt on this day. More than one hundred years later, either William Shakespeare or a bunch of other people wrote a slew of Henry plays
It's 1854, this time. The British want to maintain their naval superiority of the globe and continue to enjoy the fruits of sodomy on the open seas. The Russian Tsar (or Czar, as most monarchs are to busy to get a proper education, so they could barely figure out what type of monarch they are) decided that the Russian naval needed to get into a little of those high seas hijinks, began moving his army towards Turkey, hoping for a Russian port in the black sea. Thus, buggery is one of the underlying causes of The Crimean War.
It typical British fashion, on the morning of October 25, 1854, the English were winning the Battle of Balaclava (not Baklava, the delicious Greek pastry wars, to be described at a future date, but the goofy hat war with the ear flaps) when Lord Cardigan (yes, of sweater fame) received his order to attack the Russians fortifications.
Unfortunately for the Light Brigade, the Russian army was also on the other side of the valley that they were charging towards. The brigade was decimated by the heavy Russian guns, suffering 40 percent casualties.
It was later revealed that the order was the result of Alfred Lord Tennyson needing a new hit poem and not intentional.
October 25, 1881 -
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, the Spanish-born doodler and noted womanizer (considered the most influential artist of the 20th century) was born on this date.
I wonder if his paintings are still worth anything?
October 25, 1920 -
On a fine October day in 1920, King Alexander of Greece (cousin of my favorite Greek itinerant sailor - Philippos) was walking in the gardens of the royal palace in Athens. The young monarch was walking with his favorite dog when they were attacked by a pair of wild monkeys (once again, I can't make this stuff up.) Alexander attempted to drive the monkeys away from his dog but was bit during the scuffle.
The incident proved fatal for both parties. King Alexander suffered an infection and died from sepsis on this date and the monkey was destroyed when the Greek people sought revenge for the regicide. His father, the former King Constantine I (Philip's uncle) was called back into service to be king until his disastrous actions in the Greco-Turkish War.
Winston Churchill said, 'It is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million people died from this monkey bite.'
Once again, sometimes it stinks to be the king .
October 25, 1931 -
In every home there is a heartbreak
This story is truly not for the faint of heart.
Elena Hoyos, a pretty and vivacious 21 year old Cuban-American girl died from tuberculosis in Florida on this date. While this is sad, it wouldn't be noteworthy other than for her middle aged neighbor with a strange infatuation with Elena. Carl Tanzler (also known as Carl von Cosel), German-born radiologist became obsessed with his young neighbor. Not only did Mr. Tanzler attempted to treat and cure Hoyos with a variety of medicines, as well as x-ray and electrical equipment, that were brought to the Hoyos' home but Tanzler showered Hoyos with gifts of jewelry and clothing, and allegedly professed his love to her.
In April, 1933, Tanzler removed Hoyos' body from the mausoleum, carted it through the cemetery after dark on a toy wagon, and transported it to his home. Carl, with a little help from some home embalming, lived with Hoyos' corpse until October, 1940, when Elena's sister Florinda heard rumors of Tanzler (now known as Von Cosel) sleeping with the disinterred body of her sister, and confronted Tanzler at his home, where Hoyos' body was eventually discovered. Von Cosel was not charged with a crime because the statute of limitations on grave robbing had expired. Elena Hoyos was eventually buried at a secret location. Von Cosel, separated from his love, used a death mask to create a life-sized dummy of her, and lived with it until his death in 1952.
(This story is even more disturbing then you think, I've left some of the very unsavory details out for those readers with a more delicate nature.)
October 25, 1938 -
The Archbishop of Dubuque, the Most Reverend Francis J.L. Beckman, denounces the newfangled Swing music
Its cannibalistic rhythms are said to lead one down the "primrose path to Hell."
October 25, 1955 -
Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who lived near Hiroshima, Japan. She was only two years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. As she grew up, Sadako was a strong, courageous and athletic girl. In 1954, at age eleven, she became dizzy and fell to the ground. Sadako was diagnosed with leukemia, the "atom bomb disease".
During her time in the hospital her condition progressively worsened. Around mid-October her left leg became swollen and turned purple. After her family urged her to eat something, Sadako requested tea on rice and remarked "It's good." Those were her last words. With her family around her, Sadako died on the morning of October 25, 1955 at the age of 12.
October 25, 1957 -
In chair number four of the barber shop at the Park Sheraton hotel in Manhattan, Mafia don Albert Anastasia, the Lord High Executioner of Murder Inc., was shot five times by the Gallo Brothers, under orders from Carlo Gambino.
October 25, 1983 -
In order to maintain an uninterrupted supply of nutmeg to satisfy global demand, the United States of America invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada.
The invasion was rationalized as a rescue mission for the American medical students at the local school. A good friend of mine was at the school at the time and was widely quoted in the media.
October 25, 1991 -
On the way back from a Huey Lewis concert, rock promoter Bill Graham was killed when his helicopter hits high-voltage power lines in Vallejo, California on this date.
So, he died because he had to listen to Hip To Be Square.
And so it goes
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Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Ask not what is in your cold cuts
When was the last time you had a Baloney sandwich?
It's National Bologna Day
Just don't ask how they make it.
October 24, 1962 -
A taut thriller with the underlying theme of an afternoon tea party gone horribly wrong - The Manchurian Candidate, premiered on this date.
By his own admission Frank Sinatra's best work always came in the first take. John Frankenheimer always liked the idea of using the freshness of a first take - so nearly all of the key scenes featuring Sinatra are first takes, unless a technical problem prevented them being used.
October 24, 1969 -
The original version of Brokeback Mountain, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, premiered on this date.
According to William Goldman, his screenplay originally was titled The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman read the script at approximately the same time and agreed to do it, with McQueen playing The Sundance Kid. When McQueen dropped out, the names reversed in the title, as Newman was a superstar.
October 24, 1970 -
One of the greatest character actresses, Nancy Walker, made her first appearance in one of her most famous roles, Ida Morgenstern, in the The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode Support Your Local Mother on this date.
This episode's guest star Nancy Walker and the preceding episode's guest star John Schuck each landed regular roles on the following year's popular NBC Mystery Movie series McMillan & Wife.
October 24, 1973 -
The series about bald, dapper, New York City policeman, Kojak, starring Telly Savalas, premiered on CBS-TV on this date. (Here's a gimme piece of trivial - Telly was Jennifer Aniston's godfather.)
Telly Savalas is seen throughout the series both sucking on his lollipop and smoking. The lollipop was used to cut back on smoking. His character Kojak even admitted once that he smoked too much and sucked on lollipops every day except on Sundays.
Another failed ACME product
Today in History:
October 24, 1601 -
Tycho Brahe, nobleman, astronomer and alchemist, died from politeness on this date. He was fabulously wealthy and had a dwarf court jester sit under the table at dinner to amuse him. Tycho lost his nose in a duel and had a metal one made which he famously wore for the rest of his life. He also had a pet moose, who died from a drunken fall (I can't make this stuff up.)
Brahe went to a party at a friend’s house and drank heavily, bound by the etiquette of the day, Tycho couldn’t leave the table until his host did -not even to go to the bathroom. When he finally left the table he found he could not go; his bladder was blocked from waiting too long. He lingered for days in utter agony for days until he died on this date.
Traditionally it’s believed he died from urine poisoning. Recent analysis of hair taken from his remains shows that he must have ingested a large dose of mercury about 20 hours before his death, possibly as a medicine for his illness or perhaps he was poisoned - some believe by his famous student Johannes Kepler, who worked for him at the time and was appointed his successor as imperial mathematician.
October 24, 1836 -
(Please follow along on your flow charts - this will be on the test) Mankind was not fully mankind until it learned how to set things on fire. That happened a long time ago and enabled such hallmarks of early civilization as cooked meat, heated homes, and flaming heretics. Only in the past few hundred years has mankind learned how to start fires quickly and easily.
In 1680, Irish scientist Robert Boyle discovered that rubbing phosphorus and sulphur together caused them to burst into flames. Such was his reward for a lifetime spent rubbing phosphorus against things to see what would happen.
In 1827, seizing upon the Irish invention with a zeal usually reserved for Irish real estate, an Englishman named John Walker invented "sulphuretted peroxide strikeables," which were like matches except they were three feet long and as likely to explode as ignite.
A variation on this firestarter was introduced in England in 1828, patented by Samuel Jones. It was called the Promethean, and consisted of a glass bulb of sulphuric acid. The bulb was coated with potassium chlorate, sugar, and gum, then wrapped in paper. To ignite the Promethean, one broke the glass bulb against one's teeth. Dentists loved it, but the public remained wary.
Germans began manufacturing small phosphorus matches in Germany in 1832. Like so many other German inventions, however, these tended to ignite with a series of explosions that spread fire about one's feet. They also exploded when stepped on. This dampened their popularity among the arson-averse public.
Finally, on this date, a patent was issued in the United States to Alonzo D. Phillips for the manufacture of friction matches and called them Locofocos.
October 24, 1901 -
Anna Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old widow, was the first woman to go safely over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The barrel was four and a half feet high and three feet across. Ms. Taylor went over Niagara Falls and dropped 175 feet.
She made the attempt for the cash award offered, which she put toward the loan on her Texas ranch and help her make a fortune touring the world. Although the stunt did indeed receive international attention, Taylor reaped a few financial rewards but died in poverty after twenty years as a Niagara street vendor.
October 24, 1929 -
The stock market began a catastrophic collapse and this day became know as Black Thursday nearly 13 million shares traded hands and stock prices plummeted.
This ultimately led to the Great Depression. Scientists around the world desperately sought a cure for the millions of Depressed peoples on every continent. Researchers from the National Socialist Society eventually demonstrated that the people of Germany, Italy and Spain were Depressed because their trains didn't run on time, and fascism was invented to address this shortcoming.
Having resolved their train schedules, however, fascists discovered that many people were still unhappy. This was found to have been the result of socialism (remember, National Socialist are not Socialists i.e. Communist), which was incompatible with fascism, and persons who failed to become happy were subsequently shot.
This caused the Spanish Civil War, which was so successful it inspired World War II, after which everyone felt much better.
October 24, 1931 -
The George Washington Bridge opens to public traffic, linking New York City with New Jersey. The bridge became a famous New York landmark and has been featured in many movies and TV shows. The toll to cross the bridge was to be temporary -- just to cover costs.
But it costs and costs and costs when you have to keep repairing and painting a bridge that big -- so, the bridge toll continues. And the bridge is still being painted. But there are no traffic studies today
October 24, 1947 -
In a very UN-American fashion, Neo-Nazi and American Isolationist Walt Disney testified before the House Unamerican Activities Committee on this date.
Disney named employees he believes to be Communists, ranting about how Communists were infiltrating the unions he has to deal with, and how "Commie groups began smear campaigns against [him]."
October 24, 1960 -
At the Soviet Union's Baykonur space facility, an R-16 ballistic missile exploded on the launch pad, incinerating 165 people on this date.
Included among the dead was Field Marshall Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is covered up as having occurred in a plane crash.
Before you go - The mid-term elections are 13 day away -
I saw this funny (and timely) video in a weekly inbox zine I read, Rusty's Electric Dreams
And so it goes
822
It's National Bologna Day
Just don't ask how they make it.
October 24, 1962 -
A taut thriller with the underlying theme of an afternoon tea party gone horribly wrong - The Manchurian Candidate, premiered on this date.
By his own admission Frank Sinatra's best work always came in the first take. John Frankenheimer always liked the idea of using the freshness of a first take - so nearly all of the key scenes featuring Sinatra are first takes, unless a technical problem prevented them being used.
October 24, 1969 -
The original version of Brokeback Mountain, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, premiered on this date.
According to William Goldman, his screenplay originally was titled The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman read the script at approximately the same time and agreed to do it, with McQueen playing The Sundance Kid. When McQueen dropped out, the names reversed in the title, as Newman was a superstar.
October 24, 1970 -
One of the greatest character actresses, Nancy Walker, made her first appearance in one of her most famous roles, Ida Morgenstern, in the The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode Support Your Local Mother on this date.
This episode's guest star Nancy Walker and the preceding episode's guest star John Schuck each landed regular roles on the following year's popular NBC Mystery Movie series McMillan & Wife.
October 24, 1973 -
The series about bald, dapper, New York City policeman, Kojak, starring Telly Savalas, premiered on CBS-TV on this date. (Here's a gimme piece of trivial - Telly was Jennifer Aniston's godfather.)
Telly Savalas is seen throughout the series both sucking on his lollipop and smoking. The lollipop was used to cut back on smoking. His character Kojak even admitted once that he smoked too much and sucked on lollipops every day except on Sundays.
Another failed ACME product
Today in History:
October 24, 1601 -
Tycho Brahe, nobleman, astronomer and alchemist, died from politeness on this date. He was fabulously wealthy and had a dwarf court jester sit under the table at dinner to amuse him. Tycho lost his nose in a duel and had a metal one made which he famously wore for the rest of his life. He also had a pet moose, who died from a drunken fall (I can't make this stuff up.)
Brahe went to a party at a friend’s house and drank heavily, bound by the etiquette of the day, Tycho couldn’t leave the table until his host did -not even to go to the bathroom. When he finally left the table he found he could not go; his bladder was blocked from waiting too long. He lingered for days in utter agony for days until he died on this date.
Traditionally it’s believed he died from urine poisoning. Recent analysis of hair taken from his remains shows that he must have ingested a large dose of mercury about 20 hours before his death, possibly as a medicine for his illness or perhaps he was poisoned - some believe by his famous student Johannes Kepler, who worked for him at the time and was appointed his successor as imperial mathematician.
October 24, 1836 -
(Please follow along on your flow charts - this will be on the test) Mankind was not fully mankind until it learned how to set things on fire. That happened a long time ago and enabled such hallmarks of early civilization as cooked meat, heated homes, and flaming heretics. Only in the past few hundred years has mankind learned how to start fires quickly and easily.
Germans began manufacturing small phosphorus matches in Germany in 1832. Like so many other German inventions, however, these tended to ignite with a series of explosions that spread fire about one's feet. They also exploded when stepped on. This dampened their popularity among the arson-averse public.
October 24, 1901 -
Anna Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old widow, was the first woman to go safely over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The barrel was four and a half feet high and three feet across. Ms. Taylor went over Niagara Falls and dropped 175 feet.
She made the attempt for the cash award offered, which she put toward the loan on her Texas ranch and help her make a fortune touring the world. Although the stunt did indeed receive international attention, Taylor reaped a few financial rewards but died in poverty after twenty years as a Niagara street vendor.
October 24, 1929 -
The stock market began a catastrophic collapse and this day became know as Black Thursday nearly 13 million shares traded hands and stock prices plummeted.
This ultimately led to the Great Depression. Scientists around the world desperately sought a cure for the millions of Depressed peoples on every continent. Researchers from the National Socialist Society eventually demonstrated that the people of Germany, Italy and Spain were Depressed because their trains didn't run on time, and fascism was invented to address this shortcoming.
Having resolved their train schedules, however, fascists discovered that many people were still unhappy. This was found to have been the result of socialism (remember, National Socialist are not Socialists i.e. Communist), which was incompatible with fascism, and persons who failed to become happy were subsequently shot.
This caused the Spanish Civil War, which was so successful it inspired World War II, after which everyone felt much better.
October 24, 1931 -
The George Washington Bridge opens to public traffic, linking New York City with New Jersey. The bridge became a famous New York landmark and has been featured in many movies and TV shows. The toll to cross the bridge was to be temporary -- just to cover costs.
But it costs and costs and costs when you have to keep repairing and painting a bridge that big -- so, the bridge toll continues. And the bridge is still being painted. But there are no traffic studies today
October 24, 1947 -
In a very UN-American fashion, Neo-Nazi and American Isolationist Walt Disney testified before the House Unamerican Activities Committee on this date.
Disney named employees he believes to be Communists, ranting about how Communists were infiltrating the unions he has to deal with, and how "Commie groups began smear campaigns against [him]."
October 24, 1960 -
At the Soviet Union's Baykonur space facility, an R-16 ballistic missile exploded on the launch pad, incinerating 165 people on this date.
Included among the dead was Field Marshall Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is covered up as having occurred in a plane crash.
Before you go - The mid-term elections are 13 day away -
I saw this funny (and timely) video in a weekly inbox zine I read, Rusty's Electric Dreams
And so it goes
822