Today is Teddy Bear Picnic Day - a day set aside for you to take a stroll in the woods with your favorite bears.
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.)
After a disastrous preview (which occurred a week after the Pearl Harbor attack,) it was clear to the execs at RKO that the film was too long, too dense and too somber. Orson Welles, however, had decamped to Brazil, where he was in the midst of working on a film called It's All True (which was never completed). Welles had been shipped out there under the auspices of Nelson Rockefeller, one of the chief shareholders in RKO, to make a film boosting US-South American wartime relations. With him out of the way, however, the onus of re-cutting and trimming the film fell on editor Robert Wise.
July 10, 1965 -
The Rolling Stones topped the pop-music charts with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, on this date.
On May 6, 1965, The Rolling Stones played to about 3,000 people at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater, Florida while on their first US tour. According to an article in the St. Petersburg Times, about 200 young fans got in an altercation with a line of police officers at the show, and The Stones made it through just four songs as chaos ensued. That night, Keith Richards woke up in his hotel room with the guitar riff and lyric "Can't get no satisfaction" in his head. He recorded it on a portable tape deck, went back to sleep, and brought it to the studio that week. The tape contained his guitar riff followed by the sounds of him snoring.
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.
This was the second of three films that Burt Lancaster made for Mark Hellinger, the writer-producer who discovered the former acrobat and turned him into a movie star. The first of these was The Killers and the three-picture contract was completed with Criss Cross, a film Hellinger never lived to see, as he died before production began. His widow insisted that Lancaster honor the contract he had with her husband.
July 10, 1981 -
John Carpenter sci-fi thriller, Escape from New York, starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton, premiered in the US, on this date.
John Carpenter originally wrote the film between 1974 and 1976 as a reaction to the Watergate scandal, but no studio wanted to make it because it was deemed to be too dark and too violent. That all changed after the success of his film, Halloween.
For a healthy 5 pm
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!
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 -
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
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, 1939 -
Pops, he was a singer's singer. I loved to hear my father sing. He just was so laid-back and cool. I always wished I could sing like Pops.
Mavis Staples, singer, actress, and civil rights activist, was born on this date.
July 10, 1954 -
I'm always uneasy with messages. I think if there is a message, it's about taking control of your life. Not becoming a victim. Be true to yourself. In essence it's about love in the drug culture.
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.
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 hawk 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.
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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."
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.
Before you go - It's Manhattanhenge time once again - tomorrow the sun will be perfectly lined up with the east-west streets of New York.
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