For all the lost socks

Each night in the United States, an estimated 600,000 people live on the streets. The folk at SoulPancake and Socks and Soul would like two million people to show that even a small act of love, such as donating a pair of socks, can make a big difference in the lives of our neighbors who are homeless.



So remember to pull up your socks and help those less sock inclined.


Today is the last day of International Cephalopod Awareness Days, and we are celebrating International Fossil Day (although National Fossil Day is schedule to celebrated on Wednesday October 17, the second full Wednesday in October, which it usually is. So I am a tad confused.)



Today is (or should be) Fossil Day, celebrating all the incredible suckers that have gone extinct.


October 12, 1950 -
One of the first comedy series to make the successful transition from radio to television The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



Gracie Allen was frequently seen in the kitchen preparing meals, and she endorsed a vast array of baking products. In real-life, Gracie didn't cook. Meals were either made by the family's chef, or they ate out.


October 12, 1966 -
This was a particularly busy date in history.



Sammy Davis, Jr. makes a cameo appearance on the ABC-TV series Batman, during one of their legendary Batclimbs.


October 12, 1969 -
An almost forgotten film, The Madwoman of Chaillot, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katherine Hepburn and an all-star cast, opened in the U.S. on this date.



The Place de Chaillot set, still standing at Studio la Victorine, was reused by François Truffaut as the set on which Meet Pamela, the film-within-a-film in Day for Night, was being shot.


October 12, 1993 -
Touchstone Pictures releases the stop-motion animated feature film The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton, on this date.



Tim Burton has said the original poem was inspired after seeing Halloween merchandise display in a store being taken down and replaced by a Christmas display. The juxtaposition of ghouls and goblins with Santa and his reindeer sparked his imagination.


October 12, 2007 -
The follow-up to Cate Blanchett's successful 1998 bio-pix Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, also starring Geoffrey Rush, and Clive Owen, opened in the U.S., on this date.



In the film, when Elizabeth arrives at St. Paul's Cathedral, construction is going on. In real life, St. Paul's actually needed repair work. Director Shekhar Kapur decided to improvise, and gave the workers costumes and period tools to cut real stone that was being installed in the cathedral. The workers in the scene are real-life stonemasons and construction workers.


October 12, 2008 -
The Fox Searchlight Pictures distributed Darren Aronofsky's film, The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke (in an intensely incredible performance,) and Maresi Tomei, closed the New York Film Festival on this date.



The first scene of Randy working the deli counter was improvised. When real customers kept walking up to the counter during filming, Darren Aronofsky told Mickey Rourke to take their orders while the camera would continue rolling. Also improvised were all of the backstage locker room scenes.


Today's special moment of Zen


Today in History:
October 12, 1492 -
Christopher Columbus, not the brightest bulb in the explorers club, reached America, making his first landing in the New World on one of the Bahamas Islands.



Columbus believed he had reached India.



It was discovered that Columbus' ships really landed on the 13th of October, 1492, he was persuaded by Dutch sailor Piet de Stuini (or DeStynie) to change it to the 12th in the logs because he said that the number 13 might frighten sailors and future investors away. An Italian study group called the Colombiani detected this change.


October 12, 1609 -
The children's nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice was published in London on this date.



This is reportedly the earliest known secular song published.


October 12, 1810 -

The first Oktoberfest began on this date as a festival celebrating the marriage of Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen and Prince Louis of Bavaria (later King Ludwig I) in Munich, Germany.



The festival was such a success, the locals decided to hold it annually.  (a great little known fact - Albert Einstein, once worked as an electrician and helped to set up one of the beer tents in 1896.)


October 12, 1915 -

British nurse Edith Cavell, was executed by a German firing squad in Brussels for helping Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I. The night before her execution she told the Anglican chaplain, Rev. Gahan, who had been allowed to see her, 'Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.' These words are inscribed on her statue in St. Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square in London.




Her final words to the German pastor, Le Saur were recorded as 'Ask Mr. Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.'

Pretty tough cookie.


October 12, 1960 -
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe during a dispute on this date.



This resulted in the popular stereotype of the Soviet Dictator who pounds his desk with his shoe.

In fact, many Soviet Dictators did not pound their desks with their shoes. They had their deputies do it for them.


October 12, 1964 -
The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 with astronauts Boris Yegorov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Vladamir Komarov on board (the first space flight to carry more than one crewman into orbit.)



This was also the first mission flown without space suits.


October 12, 1969 -
The Soyuz 7 spacecraft was launched on this date. The main goals of this mission in the official version was to test spacecraft systems and designs, maneuvering of the space craft with respect to Soyuz 6, which had launched a day earlier.



When it achieves orbit, it marks the first time in history that five people are in space at the same time (the three astronauts aboard Soyuz 7 and the two aboard Soyuz 6.)

Wait for it, there's more to this story.


October 12, 1970 -
During his court martial for the My Lai Massacre, Lt. William Calley testified that Cpt. Ernest Medina had ordered that anybody they couldn't move would be "wasted."

Which is why Calley said he and his men killed 350 Vietnamese, including more than 100 civilian men, women, and children.


October 12, 1973 -
U.S. President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford for the vice presidency, under the 25th Amendment, to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two days earlier.

As I've mentioned before, Ford was on the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination. When Nixon resigned, Ford became president. One of his first acts was to pardon Richard Nixon.

I'm not saying that there is a connection but it gives you pause.


October 12, 1997 -
Folk singer John Denver died when the small plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay on the California coast.



Divers later recover most of the body, but not the head. Denver was ultimately identified by his fingerprints.

Perhaps you really didn't want to know that part.


October 12, 2000 -
In the port of Aden in Yemen, a large bomb, carried by two suicide terrorists on a rubber raft, caused heavy damage to the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 39.



This event was the deadliest attack against a U.S. Naval vessel since 1987.



And so it goes


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