(Still trying to work out the new Blogger kicks.)
Other things to occupy your mind with other than COVID-19 - The Eiffel Tower “grows” in the summer.
The Eiffel Tower gets taller by up to 6 inches during the summer, when the temperature reaches as high as 40°C. Extreme heat causes the metal at the base to expand, increasing the height of the Eiffel Tower. It also causes the top of the tower to tilt away from the sun by up to 7 inches. There's a dirty joke in here but I'm just not going to say it.
Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The holiday is a parody holiday invented in 1995 by John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap'n Slappy), of Corvallis, Oregon, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate.
Nothing says Piracy (or the British Navy) more than Rum, The Lash and Sodomy. So remember: keep plenty of rum, leather belts and ACME's Bung Balm handy today.
September 19, 1931 -
Paramount released the Marx Brother's third film, Monkey Business on this date.
Early in the movie, The Marx Brothers - playing stowaways concealed in barrels - harmonize unseen while performing the popular song Sweet Adeline' which is traditionally performed with four singers. It is debated whether Harpo Marx' singing voice was used in the soundtrack. There is also an unconfirmed rumor that he provided the puppet master's voice in the Punch and Judy show.
September 19, 1952 (there is some controversy surrounding this date) –
Emperor Hirohito's favorite television program, The Adventures of Superman, premiered, in syndication, on this date.
In the early episodes, George Reeves wore glasses without lenses in them when he played Clark Kent. As he got older Reeves eventually needed a real prescription for eyeglasses, so he began wearing his own glasses, as can be seen in many later episodes when you can see the stage lights being reflected off the lenses.
September 19, 1970 -
The greatest sitcom every produced, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, premiered on CBS TV on this date.
Often, during particularly uproarious episodes, you can hear producer James L. Brooks laughing from the studio audience. He has a very distinct and drawn out "hahhh hahhh hahh" guffaw.
September 19, 1975 -
The British sitcom Fawlty Towers, created by John Cleese, premiered on BBC2 on this date.
John Cleese says in his DVD commentary that Prunella Scales was so unlike the character she played, the harpy Sybil Fawlty, that they had trouble getting the tenderhearted Scales to hit Basil or any other character who incurred Sybil's displeasure hard enough to make it look realistic and were constantly having to do retakes of her scenes.
September 19, 1981 -
Despite the fact that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had barely spoken to each other in ten year, they reunited on this date to raise funds to renovate Central Park and performed in front of 500,000 people in New York City.
The concert was so successful, the duo decided to embark on a year-long world tour. During the tour, tensions mounted between the pair and they split again after it was completed.
September 19, 1986 -
David Lynch's profoundly unsettling film, Blue Velvet, premiered on this date, (after I saw the movie, I had to go out and have a drink. I know that doesn't seem like a shock.)
Isabella Rossellini actually was naked under her velvet robe when she did the "ritualistic rape scene", a fact that Dennis Hopper was not aware of until the cameras started rolling and his co-star opened her legs for him to kneel between. This scene was the very first time the two of them ever worked together.
Don't forget to tune in to The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today
Today in History:
September 19, 1692 -
Giles Corey was accused of witchcraft in 1692. This put him in a difficult spot. If he pleaded guilty, he'd be burned alive at the stake. If he pleaded not guilty, he'd have to take a lie-detector test.
The state-of-the-art lie detector of 1692 wasn't any less accurate than today's models, but it was significantly rougher on its subjects. It was called "dunking." The tightly bound subject would be dunked repeatedly into a pond or lake until the truth emerged.
One of the primary symptoms of demonic possession was immunity to water, so those who survived the process were rewarded with a warm, dry burning at the stake. Those who drowned, on the other hand, were clearly innocent and received a favorable ruling.
Giles Corey wasn't eager to be burned at the stake, but he wasn't keen on posthumous vindication, either. A plea of guilty meant the stake; a plea of not-guilty meant drowning (or the stake, depending on the results of the lie-detector test). Mr. Corey therefore did what any reasonable person might have done: he claimed his Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution and said nothing.
This was a foolish and costly blunder, as the Constitution had not yet been written.
Baffled by the accused refusal to enter a plea, the court pressed him for an answer. Literally. Giles Corey became the first, last, and only American ever to have been pressed to death by his own government, on this date in history.
September 19, 1876 -
Melville Bissell received the patent (No. 182,346) for his invention, a carpet sweeper with revolving brushes which picked up the dust and dirt and deposited it inside the sweeper housing.
It depended on the rotation of the wheels to drive the sweeping mechanism and only removed debris from the uppermost regions of the carpet nap
September 19, 1881 -
The 20th President of the United States, James A. Garfield, (shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau,) died from his wounds on this date.
Psst - Guiteau didn't kill the President, his doctors did. Several inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. Garfield's doctors had turned a three-inch-deep, harmless wound into a twenty-inch-long contaminated gash stretching from his ribs to his groin and oozing more pus each day. He lingered for eighty days, wasting away from his robust 210 pounds to a mere 130 pounds.
Alexander Graham Bell had made several unsuccessful attempts to remove the assassin’s bullet with a new metal detection device.
September 19, 1931 -
Adolf Hitler's 23-year-old half niece, Geli Raubal, was found dead in her uncle's Munich apartment from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest on this date.
Some allege that she and Adolf had a sexual relationship, which involved Geli urinating on him. Hitler conveniently happens to be out of town at the time of the shooting.
Oh that Hitler, what a wacky Fuhrer.
September 19, 1934 -
Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby on this date.
We aren't sure if he did it, but he did have $11,000 of the ransom money.
So they fried him two years later.
September 19, 1957 -
The U.S. conducted its first underground nuclear test, code-named Rainier, in the Nevada desert on this date. This caused a major disturbance in the natural order of the fragile desert eco-system,
ultimately resulting in Las Vegas,
and enormous spiders
and oversized seafood.
September 19, 1959 -
In a Cold War setback, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was annoyed to learn that he would not be permitted to visit Disneyland, due to concerns for his personal safety.
This mean, most of the cold war could have been prevented, if we let that fat bald premier ride Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
September 19, 1961 -
Betty (Estelle Parsons) and Barney (James Earl Jones) Hill were picked up near Indian Head, New Hampshire and anally probed by five beings in a flying saucer. The couple later describes the craft as being "banana-like, with pointed tips and windows."
Anyway, that's what Barney told Betty what happened.
September 19, 1991 -
A body was found frozen in a glacier in the Alps between Austria and Italy. A German tourist found the body and called the Austrian police. They tried to free the body from the ice with a jackhammer. It was only when an anthropologist showed up to examine the body that they realized it was a very, very old corpse - 5,300 years old, in fact - of a man between 25 and 35 years old. He was five feet, two inches tall, with hair about three inches long. He had tattoos. He wore an unlined fur robe, a woven grass cape, and size six shoes stuffed with grass for warmth.
He came to be called Ötzi the Iceman, and what made him such a remarkable discovery for anthropologists was the fact that he died while he was out walking on an ordinary day wearing ordinary clothing. He carried a copper axe and a fur quiver for his arrows, the only quiver from the Neolithic period that has ever been found. His arrows had sharp flint points and feathers that were affixed at an angle that would cause the arrows to spin. And he carried mushrooms in his bag that scientists speculate were used for medicine.
It was not until ten years later that a forensics expert noticed in an x-ray that the Iceman had an arrowhead lodged in his back. He had been murdered.
Who murdered the Iceman? Stay tuned to CSI Austria on your local CBS networks.
September 19, 1995 -
The New York Times and the Washington Post published the Unabomber's rambling, 35,000-word anti-technology screed, Industrial Society And Its Future, on this date.
In exchange, he promises to halt his bombing campaign.
And so it goes
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