CIA spy satellites are equipped with at least 20 different types of sensorsthat are so powerful that the government can identify you in your backyard, see if you are barbecuing chicken or steak, and hear how you like it?
April 27, 1922 -
Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (some have called it the first film-noir,) premiered in Berlin, Germany on this date.
Fritz Lang originally wanted the actress portraying Venus to be completely nude. When the first take was completed, he didn't like how the woman's pubic hair looked, and ordered her to shave it off. The actress indignantly refused, sending Lang into a tantrum. Eventually, a compromise was reached when a small strip of cloth was draped over the offending hair.
April 27, 1948 -
Alexander Korda's lavish remake of Anna Karenina directed by Julien Duvivier and starring Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richarson premiered in NYC on this date.
Michael Redgrave was cast, but pulled out when he was offered Mourning Becomes Electra in Hollywood.
April 27, 1971 -
CBS executives finally sobered up and the last episode of Green Acres aired on this date.
This was to have been the pilot for a proposed spin off featuring Elaine Joyce as Carol. Oliver and Lisa only appear briefly in the beginning as an excuse to introduce Carol and the pilot. Oliver appears later talking to Carol on the phone.
April 27, 1990 -
The British film based on the lives and crimes of the English gangster twins Ronald and Reginald Kray, The Krays, starring Gary Kemp (of Spandau Ballet) and Martin Kemp, premiered in the UK on this date.
Roger Daltrey had originally intended to produce a film about the Kray twins life after acquiring the rights to John Pearson's book The Profession Of Violence. The idea was abandoned however once the Peter Medak version was announced.
April 27, 2001 -
And I fell out of bed hurting my head from things that I said ...
The Bee Gees perform audience and viewer requests for tunes from their long career in a concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom on the A&E series, Live By Request, on this date.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
April 27, 1509 -
The entire state of Venice was excommunicated by Pope Julius II for an entirely secular reason:
the refusal to place parts of Romagna under the Pope's control.
Oh, those wacky Pre-counterreformation Popes.
April 27, 1521 -
In an hour long battle with Philippine islanders, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his men were repeatedly jabbed with sharpened bamboo spears. After Magellan finally succumbs to his wounds, the natives hacked him to pieces with their swords, barbecued and consumed him on this date.
They were surprised that they were not hungry an hour after eating him as they had been after eating some Asian explorers previously.
April 27, 1822 -
Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War hero and 18th President of the United States, would have been 198 today.
And if the rumors are true, he is still buried in Grant's Tomb, which was dedicated on this date in 1897.
April 27, 1861 -
In a blatantly unconstitutional act, President Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus inside a zone between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The government could detain citizens indefinitely without ever filing charges. A year and a half later, Lincoln expanded the scope of his order to the entire nation.
I will grant you that President Obama might have read a little too much, but thank God that the current resident of the White House doesn't read much at all.
April 27, 1865 -
The worst steamship disaster in the history of the United States occurs on this date. The SS Sultana, carrying over 2,000 passengers, the majority being freed Union POWs from the notorious Andersonville and Cahaba Prisons, exploded on the Mississippi River, while en route to Cairo, Illinois.
Neither the cause of the explosion nor the final count of the dead (estimated at between 1,450 and 2,000) was ever determined. Today, the Sultana disaster remains the worst of its kind .
Talk about bad luck.
April 27, 1871 -
The American Museum of Natural History opened to the public in New York City, on this date. With a series of exhibits, the Museum’s collection went on view for the first time in the Central Park Arsenal, the Museum’s original home, on the eastern side of Central Park.
April 27, 1932 -
Writer Hart Crane was racked with self-doubt about his ability to write good poetry and agonizing over his sexuality, had been mentally unstable for some time. Crane stood on the railing of the ship Orizaba in his pajamas (en route to the United States from Mexico,) shouted, "Goodbye Everyone," to the other stunned passengers and jumped over the side of the ship on this date.
Life preservers were thrown to him, but he makes no effort to reach them and drowned. The ship halted in the water, ten miles off the Florida coast, but never recovers his body.
April 27, 1986 -
Someone interrupted the HBO satellite feed during the movie The Falcon and The Snowman on this date. For five minutes, two-thirds of their customer base receives the message: Good evening HBO from Captain Midnight. $12.95 a month?
(Showtime-Movie Channel Beware.) Captain Midnight turned out to be John R. MacDougall of Florida. After media pressure forces the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to act, MacDougall was charged and sentenced, per a plea bargain, to a $5,000 fine and one year’s probation.
April 27, 1987 -
After determining that Kurt Waldheim had "assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of persons" during his Nazi years, the Department of Justice places him on a watch list of undesirable aliens on this date. As such, the sitting President of Austria was disallowed entry into the U.S. It is the first time that a foreign head of state is legally forbidden from visiting America.
I suppose that he suffered from Waldheimer's Disease - it's having difficulty recalling that you're a Nazi
And so it goes
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