Pizza usually gets to your home before the police do

It's National Junk Food Day.

It doesn't really matter what you eat - at some point, you'll be dead.


July 21, 1984 -
President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month. He also declared that the third Sunday in July would be National Ice Cream Day.



You may begin screaming for your ice cream now but heed this story - my late father-in-law threatened to shoot the local Mr. Softie man if he continued to drive his truck past the house during dinnertime.



July 21, 1951 -
I basically started performing for my mother, going, 'Love me!' What drives you to perform is the need for that primal connection. When I was little, my mother was funny with me, and I started to be charming and funny for her, and I learned that by being entertaining, you make a connection with another person.



Robin McLaurim Williams, actor and comedian, was born on this date (or was it 1952.)


July 21, 1990 -
Roger Waters staged an over-sized version of Pink Floyd's The Wall near the Berlin Wall, on this date, to celebrate the actual wall's fall several months earlier.



Waters constructed, then dismantled, a 240-foot-wide, 35-foot-tall edifice behind the stage that was actually 4 1/2-times the size of the actual Berlin Wall. Inflatable Wall-themed puppets, each of them as tall as six-story buildings, loomed over the crowd, while army helicopters swept low overhead. Watching it all were hundreds of thousands concertgoers -- and perhaps a billion more around the world.


The book that could be an all purpose gift


Today in History:
July 21, 365 -
An earthquake destroyed the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria, causing the sea to recede and then re-enter the city with tremendous force. Many of those not killed by collapsing buildings were drowned. Fifty thousand died.

It was not a good day in Ole Alexandria


July 21, 1730 -
Holland established the death penalty for acts of sodomy on this date.

I've often said, this is what comes from trolls and the lack of proper lubricant.


July 21, 1899 -
Ernest Hemingway was born on this date. He was young at the time of his birth. It was fine to be young.

He drove an ambulance in the first world war. It wasn't called the first world war then. It was called the war. It was one of those times when people shot at each other. When people were shooting at each other they didn't have time to worry about what to call it. It was only afterwards that they needed to call it something.

"What should we call that time when we were shooting at each other?"

"Let's call it the Great War."

"Good."

It was a good ambulance. It was long with a red and white sign. It had flashing lights and a siren that went "wee-ooo, wee-ooo." He liked that.



After the war he lived in Paris. A lot of Americans lived in Paris after the war, but only a few of them had ever driven an ambulance. In the 30s he went to Spain. He was a journalist. They were having a war.

They called it the Spanish Civil War. It was started by an Evil Stoogie named General Franco on July 18, 1936. It was a test drive to see whether or not they should have World War II. They had fascists and socialists and anarchists. They even drank sangria. People shot at each other.



(General Franco finally gave up power on July 19, 1974, because he was sick. Maybe he had always been sick. It is sometimes hard to understand sickness. Maybe we are not meant to understand it.)

Later Hemingway lived in Cuba. He liked to fish. He liked to drink. He thought all men should fish. He wrote stories about fishing. Finally he blew his brains out at his home in Idaho. It was July 2, 1961.

He had written a lot of books but now he was dead.


July 21, 1919 -
The Wingfoot Air Express (owned by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company) caught fire and crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago, 13 people were killed. This was the worst Airship disaster in the USA until the Zeppelin Airship, Hindenburg crashed in 1937.



Of the 13 who died: one was a crew member, two were passengers whilst the remaining 10 were bank employees in the building below.


July 21, 1925 -
The so-called "Monkey Trial" ended in Dayton, Tenn., with John T. Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.

Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100. The conviction was later overturned on the technicality that the judge had set the fine rather than the jury.


July 21, 1969 -
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin blast off from the Moon after twenty-one and a half hours on the surface and return to the command module piloted by Michael Collins on this date.



The lunar module’s lower section, left behind, has a plaque mounted upon it, reading, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”



While all of the world is celebrating the success of the Apollo 11 mission; a little remembered incident also occurred 50 years ago this week, the Soviets nearly landed an unmanned vehicle on the Moon first, Luna 15. The USSR had ambitious lunar landing and exploration plans. The country’s “Luna” space program – envisaging the launch of interplanetary spacecraft to the Moon – appeared in 1958, earlier than NASA’s Apollo program. Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight in 1961 only strengthened the Soviet belief that it was their destiny to dominate space. And for a while, it seemed they would.  The five-ton Soviet station (Luna 15 was launched Sunday, July 13,) approached the Moon on July 17, three days before the now airborne Apollo 11, and went into near-lunar orbit. But then, the unforeseen happened. For some reason, the spacecraft got stuck in lunar orbit, allowing Apollo 11 to sneak past.



As the first men on the Moon prepared to launch from the lunar surface, astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Manchester  heard commands being sent up to Luna 15 from Moscow. The Soviet spacecraft was beginning its 52nd orbit and preparing to descend towards the surface… it wasn’t until this moment the English astronomers realized the craft was designed to land. They tracked the spacecraft in real time as it sped towards the surface, listened as it gained speed and finally crashed right into Mare Crisium, the Sea of Crises, about two hours before Armstrong and Aldrin we set to leave the lunar surface.

“I say, this has really been drama of the highest order,” remarked one Jodrell Bank astronomer when it was all over.


July 21, 1972 -
In Milwaukee, George Carlin was arrested for obscenity and disorderly conduct for performing his "Seven Dirty Words" routine on a Summerfest stage in Milwaukee. (Tits is still the funniest.)



He was released after posting $150 bail.


July 21, 1981 -
Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the shooting of John Lennon. His only response is to read a passage from Catcher in the Rye.

After New York State prescribed bouts of forced sodomy (without the proper lubricant,) with irate Beatles fans,  Mr. Chapman has had a chance to rethink his crime. (Mr Chapman has been denied parole eight times and still remains behind bars.)



And so it goes.


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