This year, my first Hanukkah gift to you is to remind you to add Conagra stock to your portfolio (Conagra Brand is the owner of the Wesson Oil® family of products.)
Co-incidentally, today is the first Advent Sunday of this season. Advent means 'Coming' in Latin. It is a time to "get ready" for the celebration of Christmas. (The first candle represents HOPE. I didn't just joke around at St. John's; once in a blue moon, I paid attention.)
December 2, 1969 –
Jeanie finally married Major Anthony Nelson (her 'master') on the I Dream of Jeannie episode, The Wedding, on this date.
The original broadcast was interrupted and the wedding show was shown on the following Saturday.
December 2, 1972 -
Carly Simon released her hit, You're So Vain, with background harmonies supplied by Mick Jagger (who just happened to be in an adjoining studio at the time,) on this date.
As mentioned in her memoir, Boys in the Trees, Carly Simon finally revealed that the second verse of the song is definitely about Warren Beatty. According to an interview in People Magazine, Carly joked, "Warren thinks the whole thing is about him!"
December 2, 1988 -
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! premiered on this date.
During Vincent Ludwig's (Ricardo Montalban's) first encounter with Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), Ludwig is feeding his "fighting fish" small minnows. This is identical to a scene in Bruce Lee's Game of Death where we see Dr. Land (Dean Jagger) (the main villain) feeding the same fish.
December 2, 1997 –
Gus Van Sant's drama, Good Will Hunting, starring (and written by) Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, as well as, Robin Williams, Minnie Driver, and Stellan Skarsgård, premiered in Westwood, California on this date.
When Robin Williams and Matt Damon were shooting the scene on the bench in the Public Garden, in the movie, it seems like they're the only people in the park. Robin Williams being a massive star, there were, at one point, over three thousand people out there, watching that scene.
Remember: Hanukkah means "dedication"
Today in History:
December 2, 1763 -
The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island was dedicated on this date.
Touro is the only surviving synagogue from the colonial era in the US and has operated more or less continually since its dedication.
December 2, 1814 -
Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, Marquis de Sade, died in a lunatic asylum at Charenton on this date.
The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed on this day in 1823, "... that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers."
The doctrine set forth the principle that meddling European bastards should keep their meddling goddam hands out of the Americas. Former US Pres. Thomas Jefferson (one of our original grabby-ass forefathers) helped Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.
December 2, 1859 -
At Charlestown in Western Virginia, abolitionist John Brown was hanged for treason on this date.
His body is still moulding in the grave.
December 2, 1877 -
Louis-Paul Cailletet became the first to liquify oxygen. He went on to liquify nitrogen, hydrogen, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and acetylene.
None of them could beat a finely made gin martini.
December 2, 1908 -
John Baxter Taylor Jr. was an American track and field athlete and member of the Irish American Athletic Club (yes, they were integrated) notable as the first African American to win an Olympic gold medal.
According to the Winged Fist Website: Less than five months after returning from the Olympic Games in London, Taylor died of typhoid fever on this date, at the age of 26. In his obituary, The New York Times called him "the world's greatest negro runner."
December 2, 1939 -
New York's La Guardia Airport began operations as an airliner from Chicago landed at 12:01 a.m. on this date.
December 2, 1942 -
On the squash court underneath a football stadium of the University of Chicago, at 3:45 p.m., control rods were removed from the "nuclear pile" of uranium and graphite, revealing that neutrons from fissioning uranium split other atoms, which in turn split others in a chain reaction. The Atomic Age was born when scientists, led by Enrico Fermi, demonstrated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
The reaction was part of the Manhattan Project, the United States' top-secret plan to develop an atomic bomb. This little event led to nuclear power and nuclear weapons and had an incalculable effect on geopolitics, the economy, and art.
December 2, 1954 -
The US Senate voted 67-22 to condemned Joseph R. McCarthy (Sen-R-WI) for misconduct after his ruthless investigations of thousands of suspected communists, for 'conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.'
This followed the McCarthy investigation of the Army. Roy Cohn was McCarthy's aide and Joseph Welch was the attorney for the army.
December 2, 1956 -
George P. Metesky, better known as The Mad Bomber, struck again. Angry and resentful about events surrounding a workplace injury suffered years earlier, Metesky plants yet another bomber at Brooklyn's Paramount Theater, injuring seven, on this date.
Metesky was finally arrested in January of 1957. After undergoing extensive psychiatric examinations, for the time, he was found to be legally insane and incompetent to stand trial.
December 2, 1959 -
The first color photograph of the Earth from outer space was taken from the nose of a Thor missile launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
December 2, 1986 -
Desi Arnaz died from lung cancer, on this date.
Although recognized as a great innovator of television, I guess he might have had second thoughts about that Philip Morris sponsorship of the I Love Lucy show.
And so it goes
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Before you go - I haven't check in on The Royal Ocean Film Society website for a while and I just found the first part of a three part video essay about the UPA animation studio -
If you can, find the time to watch it and the rest of the series
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