Smile, if you can, for the camera

Other things to occupy your mind with other than COVID-19 - During the Victorian period, it was normal to photograph relatives after they died.



Photographs of loved ones taken after they died may seem morbid to modern sensibilities. But in Victorian England, they became a way of commemorating the dead and blunting the sharpness of grief. People would dress their newly-deceased relatives in their best clothing, and then put them in lifelike poses and photograph them. They did this to preserve one last image of their dead loved one in a strange form of commemoration.


Today is Lasagna Day. I'm not going to lie to you - I don't believe you can just whip up a lasagna together in a day. It's going to take you a day or two just to collect all of the ingredients. Why not have a nice family dinner this coming weekend by planning on making a nice tray of fresh homemade Lasagna this week. (Watch this video or check out the box of pasta on how to assemble it, if you don't know; I've linked my recipe for gravy.)



Start shopping for you ingredients today and enjoy your family this upcoming weekend


July 29, 1957 -
Jack Paar took over as new host of The Jack Paar Tonight Show on this date. Paar brought the show back to its in-studio interview format.



More a conversationalist than comedian, audiences were drawn to Paar's show because of the interesting guests be brought on, from entertainers to politicians, and for the controversy that occasionally erupted there.


July 29, 1959 -
Another campy cult classic William Castle flick (this time featuring 'Percepto',) The Tingler opened on this date.



Pamela Lincoln and Darryl Hickman, who play the young suitors, actually got married on November 28th after The Tingler release on July 29th 1959. They had two children, and divorced on December 8th, 1982.


July 29, 1965 -
The Beatles movie Help! premiered in London on this date.



By Paul McCartney's and Ringo Starr's own admission, they were so stoned on pot the day they shot the scene where Dr. Foot (Victor Spinetti) and Algernon (Roy Kinnear) tried to blow them up in the Austrian Alps, that when George Harrison screamed his line "It's an fiendish thingy! Run Ringo!" both Ringo and Paul ran over the next hill.


July 29, 1972 -
Gilbert O'Sullivan topped the charts with his hit Alone Again (Naturally) on this date.



One of the most depressing songs ever written, Alone Again (Naturally) tells a rather sad tale of a lonely, suicidal man being left at the altar and then telling the listener about the death of his parents. The song connected with listeners on various levels: the downtrodden could commiserate with the singer, and the lucky ones who were not in this position were reminded of their good fortune.

(I will not take responsibility for the following ear worm; listen to the clip at your own risk.)


July 29, 1982 –
Professional wrestler Jerry Lawler slapped actor Andy Kaufman in the face on the program Late Night with David Letterman, a staged event that prompted a several month ‘war’ between the two of them.



It remains among the greatest Letterman moments of all time. The video went viral long before the Internet gave rise to the term, with people across the country clamoring for bootlegged VHS and Beta tapes of the incident.


Another failed ACME Products


Today in History:
July 29, 1588 -
Phillip II of Spain sent his armadillo to invade England. This Spanish armadillo was defeated by the belly-buttons of Lord Howard and Sir Francis Drake in one of the greatest navel engagements of all time.



The defeat altered the balance of power in Europe irreversibly and marked the last use of armadillos in navel warfare.


July 29, 1900 -
Italian King Umberto I thought he was have a good day. It was a warm summer evening and he had just finished distributing prizes to athletes after a sporting competition. Umberto got back into his carriage and Gaetano Bresci, an Italian-born anarchist who had resided in America, burst from the crowd brandishing a revolver and fired four times, killing the king instantly.

The murder was believed to be due to the king’s decision to fire cannon rounds into a crowd of starving peasants and workers that had assembled asking the king for assistance; 100s were killed; Bresci was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to a life of hard labor at Santo Stefano Prison on Ventotene Island. Umberto was succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel III. After serving less than a year of his life sentence, Bresci was found dead in his cell, in extremely suspicious circumstances. (One might suspect that you could get a passable lasagna at the prison.)


July 29, 1921 -
The Council on Foreign Relations was incorporated in New York City on this date by a group of bankers and other influential people, including John D Rockefeller. The CFR remains a vital component of the New World Order, and is surpassed in importance only by the Trilateral Commission.

Now that you have this information, you know too much and you'll probably have to be killed.


July 29, 1921 -
Adolf Hitler was selected as leader of the National Socialist Party on this date.

I'm guessing there are still a scant few Germans of a certain age that have regrets concerning this election.


July 29, 1945 -
After delivering parts of the first atomic bomb to the island of Tinian, the cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis was torpedoed and sunk by the I-58 Japanese submarine around midnight on this date.



Some 900 survivors jumped into the sea and were adrift for four days. Nearly 600 died before help arrived. Most of its crew was ravaged by sharks.

Talk about karma.


July 29, 1948 –
After a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, Britain's King George VI opened the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, in London, on this date.



Germany and Japan were not invited and the Soviet Union chose not to attend.

Alice Coachman of the US team was the first black woman to win a gold medal when she triumphed in the high jump.


July 29, 1958 -
President Eisenhower stopped playing golf long enough to sign the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA on this date.

Richard Nixon immediately gave Ike a rum toddy and let him take his afternoon nap.


July 29, 1966 -
Returning home from his manager Albert Grossman's house, Bob Dylan had some sort of motorcycle accident, on this date.  The accident, which has become somewhat mythic, purportedly left Dylan with a broken vertebrae in his neck, but no ambulance was called and he was not admitted to a hospital. Dylan spent years recuperating and became something of a recluse, disappearing from the public spotlight for eight years.

He continued to write and record music, but with only a few exceptions, did not appear in public again until January 1974, when he launched his "North American Tour."


July 29, 1968 -
Pope Paul VI issues encyclical Humanae Vitae, prohibiting all unnatural forms of birth control.



This did not please many practicing Catholics, although it answers the age-old question ever priest knows - Altar boys can't get pregnant.


July 29, 1974 -
Cass Elliot (Ellen Naomi Cohen,) a very large part of The Mamas and the Papas, died in London on this date.



Although initial reports ascribe the cause of death to choking on a ham sandwich, in actuality it was a heart attack.


July 29, 1981 -
In the fairy tale wedding of the century, Britain's Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in an internationally televised ceremony at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, England on this date.



The couple was later divorced in 1996, Diana was 'killed' in a car accident in 1997, and Charles fulfilled his long time fantasy and became a feminine hygiene product when he married his mistress Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005.

Hey, fairy tales don't always have happy endings.


July 29, 1987 –
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream signed a licensing agreement for their Cherry Garcia flavor, named after the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, with Mr. Garcia on this date.

Ben and Jerry’s agreed to donate a portion of the proceeds to the Rex Foundation, the Grateful Dead Band's primary philanthropic outlet since 1984. For a month following the musician's death in 1995, the ice cream was made with black cherries instead of Bing Cherries as a show of mourning.



And so it goes.


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