Sunday, December 6, 2020

But can she go to the bathroom outside of Britian

Other things to occupy your mind with other than COVID-19 - When Queen Elizabeth visited the set of HBO’s Game of Thrones and met with its producers and cast, she was actually barred from sitting in one particular chair.



When Queen Elizabeth II visited the set of Game of Thrones, she wasn’t allowed to sit on the actual throne there – according to an ancient tradition, the reigning English monarch is prohibited from sitting on a non English throne not even a fictitious one.


Today is the Feast of Saint Nicholas (yes, that St. Nick.)



Amongst other things, he is the patron saint of children and was known for his generosity. He's also known as the patron saint of sailors, fishermen, merchants, the falsely accused, prostitutes (Huh), repentant thieves, pharmacists and broadcasters.



The biggest gift he ever gave was to a poor man and his three daughters. The man had no dowry to pay for his daughters and was worried that if they never married they would have no choice but to become prostitutes. Hearing this, Saint Nicholas visited the poor man at night and anonymously threw three purses filled with gold through his window. Because of this, he became the patron saint of pawnbrokers. Traditionally, three golden baubles are hung in the window of pawn shops to represent the three purses of money.


December 6, 1940 -
MGM released the 10th Marx Brothers film, Go West, on this date.



The film opens with Horace Greeley's famous quotation, "Go West, Young Man, go west". In actuality, the words were spoken by John Soulé; Greeley spent the rest of his life disavowing them.


December 6, 1964 -
One of the first neurotic holiday Christmas specials, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, premiered on this date



When the film was first released, in 1964, the technology of using an articulated metal armature inside the figures was considered so amazing that TV Guide devoted four pages to the story. They failed to mention that the "new" technology had been pioneered 31 years before, most prominently inside the gorilla King Kong.


December 6, 1969
The group Steam hit No. 1 on the Billboard Charts with their song Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye on this date.



The song's lead singer Gary DeCarlo was asked not to reveal that it was him on the record, since there was a different singer performing it at live appearances. He says that his manager Paul Leka and record man Bob Reno placated him by promising to get him a hit as a solo artist, but that never happened.


December 6, 1969 -
Led Zeppelin made their debut on the US singles chart with Whole Lotta Love on this date, which eventually reached No.4 and was the first of six Top 40 singles for the group in the US.



During the bands career, Zeppelin never released any singles in the UK.


December 6, 1977 -
Jackson Browne releases Running On Empty on this date, a live album compiled from performances at various stops on his summer tour.



Live albums typically rely on songs that have already been released, but this one features all new songs, the first major rock album to do so.


December 6, 1986
Ringo Starr becomes the first Beatle to use his name in an advertisement, for Sun Country wine cooler.



He was reportedly paid “in the seven figures.”


December 6, 1990 -
Twentieth Century Fox production of Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, starring Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder, Dianne Wiest and Vincent Price (in his last role,) premiered in Los Angeles on this date.



The houses used in the film were a real community in Florida, completely unchanged, except for their garish exterior paint.


December 6, 1991
Nicholas Meyer's contribution to the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, starring, well you know who was in it, premiered in the US on this date.



Christian Slater wore the trousers made for William Shatner in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. "It was an honor to get into Shatner's pants", he quipped during a BBC interview.


December 6, 1994 -
Bush released their debut album Sixteen Stone on this date, which takes off in America but is largely ignored in their native England.



Around the time of the release of the album, Britpop acts like Oasis and Blur were huge in their homeland but struggling to break through in America. It was the opposite for Bush, who got hardly a listen in their native England (Sixteen Stone peaked at #42 on the UK Albums chart), but was embraced in the US. Much of this has to do with a cut from the album, Everything Zen. Despite Gavin Rossdale's accent, the song is very American, with a heavy grunge sound and lyrics about being young and disaffected.


December 6, 2005
The more frank remake of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, premiered in NYC on this date.



Heath Ledger declined to go to the one month cowboy camp that had been organized, as he had grown up on farms in Western Australia. Jake Gyllenhaal was required to attend, however, as he needed "roughing up".


Special night, beard that's white


Today in History:
December 6, 1768 -
The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for “British Encyclopaedia”) is published under the title “Encyclopedia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan.



The series will eventually become the oldest continuously published English-language encyclopedia. The first edition is published in one hundred installments, which will later be bound into three volumes.


December 6, 1877 -
Thomas Edison records his own recitation of Mary had a Little Lamb onto a cylinder wrapped with tin foil using his newly completed prototype hand-cranked phonograph at his Menlo Park Laboratory.



For all intents and purposes, it is the first recording of a human voice. (The audio is from a re-recording in 1927. The original 1877 recording was not saved and no longer exists.)


December 6, 1896 -
Ira Gershwin, lyricist (and major writer of the American Song Book) was born on this date.

Embraceable You -




I Can't Get Started -




Someone to Watch Over Me -




They Can't Take That Away from Me -




If you're of an age, it part of the music you hear in your head as you walk down the street.


December 6, 1917 -
On the morning of December 6, the munitions ship Mont Blanc exploded in Halifax harbor after being struck by another ship, the Norwegian ship Imo.



It is the largest explosion before the atomic age. The ship was carrying 200 tons of TNT, 61 tons of gun cotton, 35 tons of Benzyl, and 2,300 tons of picric acid; the explosion destroys 325 acres of the city, leaving 1,900 people dead and injuring over 9,000.



A nicer remembrance of the days tragic events is the official Boston Christmas tree lighting, which sits in Boston Common, which occurred Thursday night. The tree is a gift from the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and has been sent every year since the 1970s. It is in recognition of the swift and sustained relief effort the people of Boston put together to aid Halifax after the explosion. (Nova Scotia doesn't complain anymore about the cost of their very generous gift - after all told the tree ends up costing the Nova Scotian government more than a quarter million dollars. The amount of positive international press Nova Scotia garners for its very magnanimous gift is priceless.)


December 6, 1955 -
N.Y. psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers won the top prize on the TV quiz show The $64,000 Question by correctly answering questions on boxing .



Dr. Joyce Brothers is the only person to win both The $64,000 Question and The $64,000 Challenge.


December 6, 1957
It wasn't a good day for the space program. A Vanguard rocket (TV3) carrying the first US satellite blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on this date.



It rose about four feet and collapsed. Its fuel tanks rupture as it fell against its firing structure, and the rocket topples to the ground on the northeast, ocean side of the structure in a roaring, rolling ball of flame.

Oops.


December 6, 1960 -
Domino's Pizza was founded by Thomas S. Monaghan on this date.



And the pizza still sucks.


December 6, 1969 -
A concert by the Rolling Stones at Altamont ends in the death of a fan at the hands of the Hells Angels, who were hired for security. He was a fat hippie anyway. (Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name...)



(Contrary to a popular urban legend, Sympathy for the Devil was not playing while Meredith Hunter was being stabbed, rather, the song was Under My Thumb.)

And Mr. Hunter was not a fat hippie but an African American with a gun.)


December 6, 1973 -
House minority leader Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the first unelected Vice President, succeeding US Vice President Spiro T. Agnew (under President Richard M. Nixon.)



Agnew, the only VP to resign in disgrace, resigned on October 10, and pleaded no contest to one charge of income tax invasion in return for the dropping of all other charges, and was fined $10,000 and given three year's probation.


December 6, 1989 -
Andy, Opie, make Aunt Bee another Rum Toddy.

Frances Bavier - "Aunt Bee" on The Andy Griffith Show died of heart failure on this date.

Suffering from advance stages of senility, Ms. Bavier became convinced that she was "Aunt Bee" (a role her grew to despise,) towards the end of her life.


December 6, 2002
Winona Ryder whose six-day shoplifting trial drew national attention and stirred tabloid frenzy, was found guilty on November 7, 2002, of grand theft and vandalism in a New York City courtroom.

She was sentenced on this date to 36 months of probation and 480 hours of community service after stealing more than $5,500 worth of merchandise from a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills, California. She also paid restitution and a fine.


Before you go - Here's a Christmas Wish from Steve Martin -



So remember Peace on Earth and all that other stuff.


And so it goes




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