Not only that they also had a whole new timekeeping system too! Between 1793 and 1805, the ruling French government used the French Republican Calendar to remove all religious and royalist ties to the old calendar. It was also part of a wider effort decimalize France in terms of time, currency and metrication. The French Republican Calendar had 10-hour days, with 100 minutes to an hour, and 100 seconds to a minute. Whilst this crazy calendar did have 12 months, each one of these months was 30 days. They were all given new names that reflected a meaning for each season.
French King Louis XII made Cesare Borgia the Duke of Valentinois, on this date in 1498. Borgia resigned his position as cardinal, which had been bestowed on him at age 18 by his father, Pope Alexander VI - but what the hell do you care. Today is National Bad Poetry Day in the United States.
There's a very fun website will generate on command a great deal of very bad poetry here.
August 18, 1956 –
Elvis' double A side single Don’t Be Cruel/ Hound Dog, both hit no. 1 on the Billboard charts on this date.
Don't Be Cruel was written by Otis Blackwell, a songwriter who came up with a lot of hits for Elvis. On Christmas Eve 1955, Otis Blackwell found himself on the streets in front of the Brill Building in New York City trying to stay warm. Things weren't going well for Blackwell - it was raining and there were leaks in the soles of his shoes. His friend Leroy Kirkland walked by and asked Otis if he had written any more songs. Otis said yes. Over the next week, he sold 6 of them to a publishing company for $25 each. Management at The Brill Building liked him so much they offered him a full-time job writing, and Blackwell accepted. Not long after, Otis got some very good news: This up-and-coming rock star wanted to record one of his songs. The deal was, the guy wanted half the writer's fee. Otis said, "No way I'm gonna give up half that song." His friends convinced him that half of something was better than all of nothing. Besides, this new singer just might "make it" and if he did, Otis' royalties would be tremendous.
August 18, 1957 -
Denis Colin Leary, actor, comedian, writer, and director was born on this date.
His interest in the perils of firemen and his co-creation of the series Rescue Me stemmed from a tragic 1999 warehouse fire in his hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, that took the lives of six firemen, including his cousin and a childhood friend.
August 18, 1969 –
Playing on the unscheduled 4th day, Jimi Hendrix’s version of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock was considered by some, at the time, to be controversial and disrespectful. Of about 500,000 people who were there over the weekend, only about 30,000 were left, and many of them remember waking up to this song.
He had been playing this version for about a year, beginning as part of a guitar solo he played during Purple Haze. When he played southern states in the US, he was often warned not to play it because the locals made threats against him, but Jimi always played it anyway.
August 18 1989 -
Columbia Pictures released Brian DePalma's memorable war drama, Casualties of War, starring Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, John C. Reilly, and John Leguizamo, in the US on this date.
Brian De Palma had been trying to make this film since 1969 when he first read the Casualties Of War article in The New Yorker. But with the Vietnam War still going on, there was no way that was going to happen, even for many years after it ended. However, in the 1980s, following the success of Vietnam War films Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, and his own gangster hit The Untouchables, studio bosses at Paramount gave him the green light to start developing the project.
August 18, 1993 -
Woody Allen reunited with one of his favorite actress, Diane Keaton when Sony Pictures released Manhattan Murder Mystery in the US on this date.
Diane Keaton replaced Mia Farrow. Woody Allen had written the lead female role for Farrow, but Keaton got the part following the breakup of the pair's personal relationship. There is a rumor that, despite the very public feuding between her and Allen, Farrow showed up for a costume fitting, and needed to be informed that she was no longer in the movie.
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
August 18, 1227 -
Genghis Khan died in his sleep, after a fall from his horse on this date. His old age and drinking probably contributed to his death.
(or perhap a Tangut princess, to avenge her people and prevent her rape, castrated him with a knife hidden inside her - ouch) , which the Mongols manage to keep secret for some time. Apparently, it was only just announced.
August 18, 1503 -
... In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock....
Pope Alexander VI (a Borgia) died on this date. He was the father of seven illegitimate children, and during his reign chose as his lover the lovely sixteen year old Guilia Farnese. He is said to have uttered the last words "Wait a minute" before expiring. (Interesting aside - before the pope could be properly buried, his corpse bloated then exploded. Share that at the dinner table tonight.)
August 18, 1590 -
Sent to England to get supplies three years prior, John White finally returns to Roanoke Island and discovers his colony "strongly enclosed with a high palisade of great trees, with [curtain walls] and [bastions] -- very fort-like."
There is no sign of the settlers or where they may have gone, but carved in the bark of one of the trees is the word CROATOAN.
Luckily, REDRUM wasn't carved in the trees, because that would have been scary.
August 18, 1920 -
When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the Constitution on this date, all American women were guaranteed the right of to vote.
It appeared that the amendment might fail by one vote in the Tennessee house, but 24 year-old Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, "Don't forget to be a good boy" and "vote for suffrage."
August 18, 1936 -
Robert Redford, American actor was born on this date.
He is the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, which he named after his character from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He set up the Sundance Film Institute in Utah for independent filmmakers and in 1997 announced the creation of Sundance Cinemas, a venture with a major distributor to set up a chain of theaters for the screening of independent films.
August 18, 1940 -
King George VI felt bad that his brother the Duke of Windsor hadn't really found work after resigning from his previous job, as King Edward VIII of England (but that's another story,) and had him installed as Governor of the Bahamas, on this date.
Edward continued as governor of the Bahamas until 1945. Afterward, he and his wife spent the remainder of their lives essentially in retirement, waiting for death.
Not a particularly happy ending for a fairy tale.
August 18, 1958 -
... Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul....
Lolita, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author into Russian, was finally published on this date in New York. The novel is both internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the book's narrator and protagonist, Humbert Humbert, becoming sexually obsessed with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze.
August 18, 1963 -
James Meredith graduated with a political science degree from the University of Mississippi on this date; he was the first African-American to do so.
August 18, 1999 -
A giant black rainbow encircled the Earth, sucking all oxygen from the atmosphere. The air returns shortly thereafter, but only after millions die from asphyxiation. On the bright side, the survivors go on to build a Utopian civilization.
It all happens precisely as predicted in the 1950s by Criswell, the TV psychic immortalized in the movie Plan 9 from Outer Space. If you don't remember this happening, fear not, our new alien Overlords deemed you too stupid to handle this terrifying information and had you anally probed to erase your memory.
And so it goes.
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