Words to live by

Other things to occupy your mind with other than COVID-19  - Louise-Marie-Thérèse de Saint Maurice, Comtesse de Vercellis farted while she was dying.

She said, “Good. A woman who can fart is not dead.”


August 31, 1929 -
RKO released the musical film-short St. Louis Blues, starring singer Bessie Smith, on this date.



At W.C. Handy's suggestion, Bessie Smith was picked to be the star of the film. Bessie had scored a huge hit in 1925 with her recording of St. Louis Blues, which had featured Louis Armstrong on cornet. This is the only known footage of Bessie in existence.


August 31, 1946 -
Howard Hawks' version of Raymond Chandlers classic Philip Marlowe yarn (William Faulkner was one of the screen writers), The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, was put into general release on this date.



On the first day of shooting, Humphrey Bogart allegedly had five or six drinks at lunch, which infuriated Howard Hawks, who berated Bogart for his unprofessionalism. After that he was limited to one beer.


August 31, 1946 -
Warner Bros. introduced Foghorn Leghorn and the Barnyard Dawg, when the Merrie Melodies cartoon Walky Talky Hawky, (directed by Robert McKimson,) premiered on this date.



Foghorn Leghorn was closely based on Sen. Claghorn, a blustery, windbag Southern politician on radio's The Fred Allen Show -played by Allen's announcer Kenny Delmar - whose trademark lines included, "Somebody, Ah say, somebody knocked," "That's a joke, son," and "Pay attention, boy!".


August 31, 1987 -
Epic/CBS Records released the Michael Jackson album, BAD on this date.



A nearly 18 minute video of the title song, written by novelist and screenwriter Richard Price and directed by Martin Scorsese, debuted on CBS-TV on this same day, as well.


Word of the Day


Today in History -
Gaius Caesar Caligula was born on August 31 in the year 12 AD. Caligula succeeded Tiberius in the year 37, and his reign was most notable for its policy of Sex with the Emperor.



(Please note - this guy not only slept with the unwilling wives of senators and his sisters, he married his horse and tried to have him made a god.) This turned out to have been a weak Political Philosophy, because the Romans all had classical educations and saw right through him.



So they killed him.


August 31, 1422 -
Henry V of England, one of the great warrior kings of the Middle Ages, died suddenly of dysentery on this date. He was 34 at the time.

At the time of his death, Henry had not only consolidated power as the King of England but had also effectively accomplished what generations of his ancestors had failed to achieve through decades of war: the near unification of the crowns of England and France in a single person.



In 2002 he was ranked 72nd in the 100 Greatest Britons poll. And yet, lack of proper sanitary conditions carried him away.

Bunkies, listen to your ole pal, herr doktor - wash your hands after visiting the rest room.


August 31, 1879 -
Alma Maria Schindler, noted in her native Vienna for her beauty and intelligence, was born on this date.

In her youth she was an aspiring composer. But that's not why I bring her up. She was the wife, successively, of the composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel, and lover to the painter Oskar Kokoschka. Rather than try to encapsulate the story of this very busy woman,



Listen to Tom Lehrer's song Alma, which nicely gives you the gist of her life.


August 31, 1887 -
The kinetoscope was  patented by Thomas Edison (U.S. patent #589,168) on this date.

When his assistant W.K.L. Dickson invented the motion picture viewer, Edison initially considered it an insignificant toy. However, it turned out to be an immediate success.


August 31, 1910 -
The first U.S. airplane flight over water is made by Glenn Hammond Curtiss in his biplane over Lake Erie from Euclid Beach Park in Cleveland, Ohio, to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio.

A crowd of 18,000 flocked to Euclid Beach to see his plane take off , and all across Cleveland people left their workplaces and headed outdoors to catch a glimpse of the amazing sight. The next day, flying back to Cleveland, he beat both the Lake Shore Limited train and homing pigeons, although it took longer than the first flight because he had to face strong winds. His return to Euclid Beach was greeted by 20,000 people.


August 31, 1919 -
Workers of the world unite!

In Chicago, journalist John Reed established the American Communist Labor Party, on this date,



providing entertainment for Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover for decades.


August 31, 1920 -
John Lloyd Wright, son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was issued a patent for "Toy-Cabin Construction," which are known as Lincoln Logs. (U.S. patent 1,351,086)

Wright sold his rights to Playskool for $800, to supplement his meager salary, at the time. It is estimated that over 100 million sets of Lincoln Logs have been sold worldwide.


August 31, 1945 -
Let's all wish the intensely litigious and curmudgeonly, George Ivan Morrison, singer and songwriter, happy birthday.





Van the Man, is still the greatest living blue-eyed soul singer.


August 31, 1948 -
Los Angeles police arrested actor Robert Mitchum, the coolest cat in Hollywood, for marijuana possession on this date. He later received a 60-day sentence.



Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands celebrated her Golden Jubilee on this date as well. (You figure out the connection.)


August 31, 1955 -
The first solar-powered car, the 15 inch Sunmobile (designed by William G. Cobb,) was publicly demonstrated by General Motors Corporation, on this date. Light energy falling on twelve tiny selenium photoelectric cells created electric current sufficient to power the electric motor that turns a driveshaft connected to the car’s rear axle by a pulley.

It was one of the 253 exhibits at the General Motors Powerama in Chicago, Illinois, which will be seen by over 2,500,000 visitors during the course of the twenty-eight day, seven million dollar event spread over one million square feet on the shore of Lake Michigan.



August 31, 1957 -
When I'm writing, I will always work, I'm so disciplined about what I do. It's one of the things I learned very early on. If I allowed it to be some craft where I'm working for inspiration, I think I probably would have written 30 songs by now. Instead I've written a couple thousand. Not all of them are good, but I learned - again, early on - that some songs would just come to you, and that would be great.



Glenn Tilbrook, singer, guitarist and with his writing partner Chris Difford, formed the pop group Squeeze, was born on this date.


August 31, 1976 -
George Harrison was found guilty of unintentionally plagiarizing My Sweet Lord from the Chiffons song He's So Fine.



Those damn Beatles could never come up with an original tune.


August 31, 1977 -
Ian Smith, espousing racial segregation, won the Rhodesian general election with 80% of overwhelmingly white electorate's vote.



Oops.


August 31, 1997 -
On August 28, 1997, My wife and I were coming out of the revolving doors at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and a very famous couple were coming in. A few days later on this date, a charming, slightly addled, beautiful divorcee with two children decides to take a car ride with her very rich Egyptian boyfriend and his very drunk driver. She makes the fatal mistake of not buckling her seat belt and paid a very heavy toll.



So ended the glamorous and controversial life of Diana Spencer Mountbatten-Windsor.

Kids here a good piece of advice for anyone, if you don't want to end up dying in the backseat of a black 1994 Mercedes-Benz W140 in a road tunnel in Paris - BUCKLE UP.



And so it goes .


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