#GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season at the beginning of the Christmas and holiday season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving.
November 27 is the Feast of St. Josaphat, a Middle Age prince who renounced his wealth to do charitable work.
Oh, that wacky Catholic Church!
November 27, 1920 -
United Artists released the silent film The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks on this date. The film will go on to be extremely influential in the world of comics.
Douglas Fairbanks was looking to try something new from the normal boy-meets-girl romance movies he had been making for the previous few years. This is when the actor came across the story of Zorro - originally published in the magazine All-Story Weekly. Previous to Fairbanks' portrayal, practically nobody had ever heard of the Robin Hood-like hero Zorro.
November 27, 1948 -
You see what some ducks will do for money!
Another (less familiar) Daffy & Porky pairing, Riff Raffy Daffy, premiered on this date.
November 27, 1967 -
The Beatles released Magical Mystery Tour album the US on this date.
Paul McCartney wrote Hello Goodbye, (John Lennon hated the song.) His friend Alistair Taylor, who was visiting McCartney, asked Paul one day how he wrote his many songs, and how he came up with his ideas. Paul took him into his dining room to give him a demonstration of his hand-carved harmonium. As an experiment, Paul asked Taylor to shout out the opposite of whatever he sang, such as black and white, yes and no, hello and goodbye, etc. From this, the song was born.
November 27, 1979 -
For those so inclined, you could start spending time in the boys locker room of Carrver High School when the White Shadow premiered on this date.
Of the actors playing the Carver players, Nathan Cook was the oldest (28) when the show debuted, only seven years younger than Ken Howard. Timothy Van Patten was the youngest at 19.
November 27, 1980 -
The sitcom Bosom Buddies, staring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari premiered on ABC-TV on this date.
(Yes, I know, this is not the original theme song - the production company lost the rights to the song.) In the summer of 1984 as Tom Hanks was becoming a household name thanks to the movie Splash, NBC bought the rights to the ABC sitcom and re-aired selected episodes to lead off their Saturday night line-up.
November 27, 2013 –
The Walt Disney's film, Frozen, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, went into general release in the US on this date.
The characters of Hans, Kristoff, Anna and Sven are a reference to Hans Christian Andersen, the author of The Snow Queen. Say the names quickly in sequence and hear the similarity.
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
November 27, 1852 -
Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, was bled to death to cure her uterine cancer on this date. (In a strange coincidence, her father was also bled to death to cure a fever.)
She is often thought of as the world's first computer programmer, due to her interest in mathematics and her work on Charles Babbage's analytical engine.
Alfred Nobel signed his last will, which established the Nobel Prize on this date in 1895. (Yes, this is the second reference to Alfred in the same week.)
Sadly, in recent years the foundation appears to have forgotten its roots and has begun awarding prizes to men and women whose work for peace has resulted in things blowing up.
I encourage you all to write the Nobel Committee to take immediate corrective action, lest they continue to mislead people into thinking that Peace can be achieved by anything other than the blowing up of Evil Bastards.
November 27, 1910 -
Although Pennsylvania Station had already begun service for the Long Island Rail Road several months earlier (September 8th); it was on this date that trains from the Pennsylvania Railroad entered Manhattan for the first time by way of tunnels under the Hudson River.
November 27, 1924 -
Macy's sponsored its first Macy's Thanksgiving Parade (called Macy's Christmas Parade) in New York City on this date. The three-hour parade is held annually and is the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade along with Detroit's "America's Thanksgiving Parade," which began on the same day.
Three floats (pulled by horses), four bands and zoo animals from the Central Park Zoo - camels, donkeys, elephants and goats - starred in the parade (balloons didn't show up until 1927.)
November 27, 1934 -
Notorious US murderer and bank robber Baby Face Nelson was killed in a gun battle with the FBI on this date. Known as the Battle of Barrington, the shootout occurred in Barrington, Illinois. Two FBI officers also were killed.
During his criminal career, Nelson, whose real name was Lester Joseph Gillis, killed more FBI agents than any other US citizen in history.
November 27, 1978 -
City Supervisor Dan White entered San Francisco City Hall through an open basement window (avoiding metal detectors), walked into the office of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and shot him dead. Then White went on to kill Supervisor Harvey Milk on this date.
Apparently, Mr. White consumed too many Twinkies. (Given there has been no noticeable increases in incidents of Twinkie induced rages, the Hostess Company may have changed the formula since their resuscitation.)
And so it goes
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3 comments:
Coincidentally, on this day in 1930, Frank B. Kellogg won the Nobel Peace Prize. Kellogg was secretary of state for the Coolidge administration and was a judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague. He's from St. Paul, so of course there's a street, a state office building, and a university classroom building named for him. He was not involved in making cereal.
I have mentioned Mr. Kellogg in the past and his involvement in the Kellogg–Briand Pact, outlawing war, which unfortunately didn't quite last as long as it should have.
Yes. I had almost forgotten about the Kellogg Raisin Brand Pact. My mother often cited it to make us slurp up the last of the milk from our cereal bowls.
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