You'd better go in disguise!

Today is Teddy Bear Picnic Day - a day set aside for you to take a stroll in the woods with your favorite bears.

Perhaps I'm mistaken in which bears you should be taking with you.


July 10, 1916 -
Charlie Chaplin further develops his 'Tramp' character with the release of The Vagabond, on this date.



Look for this - Charlie loses his hat outside the bar, is seen inside wearing it, then picks it up where he lost it when he leaves. When he escapes from the gypsy, he is hatless at first, but the next shot shows the hat suddenly back in place.


July 10, 1942 -
RKO Pictures released Orson Welles' butchered masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, on this date. (Like El Dorado or Shangri-La, a work print of Welles' version supposedly exists in a vault somewhere in Brazil, tantalizingly, just out of reach.)



In the newspaper reporting the auto accident that injured George Amberson Minafer, the left-hand column is "Stage Views" featuring the picture and byline of Jed Leland, the theater critic in Citizen Kane, also directed by Orson Welles. Leland was played by Joseph Cotten, who plays Eugene Morgan in this movie.


July 10, 1965 -
The Rolling Stones topped the pop-music charts with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, on this date.



The song was released in the United States on June 6, 1965, just a month after Keith Richards woke up with the guitar riff in his head. In the UK, it wasn't issued until August 20, since The Stones did not want to release it in England until they were there to support it. While they were touring in America, they became very popular in England, so they kept recording singles in the States to keep their momentum until they could return for a tour.


July 10, 1947 -
One of Jules Dassin's post-war film-noir classics, Brute Force, starring  Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, and Charles Bickford, premiered in Los Angeles on this date.



The film was inspired by the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz in which a riot ran out of control in the prison for two days.  It's release caused quite a stir in 1947, shocking audiences with its levels of violence.


Another failed ACME product


Today in History:
July 10, 1553 –
Lady Jane Grey, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, ill-advisedly took the throne of England, upon the death of Edward VI, on this date.



Hopefully she didn't buy any green bananas. She wasn't going to be in the position to see them ripen.


July 10, 1559 -
Heed the prophecies of Nostradamus!

Henry II of France had a splitting headache today. Henry was having a friendly joust with the captain of the Scottish Guards, Gabriel de Lorges de Montgomery,  when he was momentarily blinded by the visor on the captain's helmet.



The captain's lance was somehow broken and Henry II was pierced through the eye socket and temple on June 30 (Ouch!). The King writhed in agony until he died from his wounds on this date.  Nostradamus wrote a poem about a lion and a cage and somehow that tripe predicted Henry II's death


July 10, 1856 -
Inventor and electromechanical genius Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the 20th Century, was born to Serbian parents in what is now Croatia on this date.



Remember, if we could only harness the free floating electricity,



we could do away with the electric companies.


July 10, 1871 -
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.



Marcel Proust, French novelist, tea enthusiast and master procrastinator was born on this date.


July 10, 1938 -
Aviator Howard Hughes (you know his C.V.) made a record flight around the world on this date, completing the trip in just 91 hours, breaking the previous record by more than four days.



Taking off from New York City in a Lockheed Super Electra he continued to Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Anchorage, Minneapolis, ending back at New York City.


July 10, 1954 -
It was most exciting when people first came up on the stage and then when they came back for the encore. We wanted to make a show that kept on developing, that was interesting, so we tried to do that with our live shows.



Neil Tennant, musician, singer and songwriter and the other half of the electronic dance music duo Pet Shop Boys, was born on this date.


July 10, 1958 -
The first parking meter was installed in London, England on this date in 1958, along with the second through 625th. It took nearly two dozen years for the parking meter to travel across the Atlantic: the first American parking meter had been installed in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935.

It was invented by Oklahoma City's Carl C. Magee, the head of that city's chamber of commerce, as part of an effort to free more parking spaces for daytime shoppers. Downtown parking spaces had typically been taken by office workers who left their cars parked on the street all day, making it difficult for shoppers to find open spaces and thereby causing incalculable pain and suffering. (Double-parking was not invented until 1963.)



I, personally, considers the parking meter one of the great instruments of totalitarian control, and cannot understand how conspiracy theorists who lose sleep over Roswell, the Masons, and black helicopters can walk blithely past dozens of parking meters every day.



Current estimates ("wild guesses") suggest there are now more than five million of these coercive devil machines deployed across the United States. They absorb millions of dollars in small change every day, and generate still more ill-gotten revenue by means of fines levied against persons who refuse to kneel before them.



I urge my readers to recall the words of Alexander Hamilton, who observed in the Federalist Papers that "no people are free who must pay for municipal parking."

The first concrete-paved street was built 128 years ago today in Bellefountaine, Ohio.

Paved streets are good. I have no problem with paved streets, unless they're lined with parking meters.


July 10, 1962 –
Launched by NASA aboard a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Telstar, was launched into orbit, becoming the world's first communications satellite, on this date.



Telstar 1 was placed in low Earth orbit and circled the planet every two and a half hours, only in the right position to beam transmissions between Europe and the U.S. for 20 minutes each orbit. This is in contrast to contemporary communications satellites, which fly in geosynchronous orbit, staying above one spot on the Earth.


July 10, 1985 -
Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was blown up by in Auckland Harbor, killing a photographer, Fernando Pereira, on this date.



After the New Zealand government determines that French secret agents were responsible, the French Defense Minister Pierre Lacoste, resigned and agents, Captain Dominique Prieur and Commander Alain Mafart, were jailed.


July 10, 1989 -
Mel Blanc, whose career spanned over 60 years doing voice over work for many Warner Brothers characters died on this date.



Shortly before his death, executives of Time Warner (owners of Warner Brothers) asked him if there was anything, literally anything, that they could give him to thank him for his life's body of work. He asked for--and received - a Ford Edsel.



And so it goes.


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