Researchers we stunned when they observed that some wolf puppies will unexpectedly play "fetch," showing that an urge to retrieve a ball might be an ancient wolf trait and not a result of dog domestication. The findings were made almost accidental when researchers tested 13 wolf puppies from three different litters in a behavioral test battery designed to assess various behaviors in young dog puppies. During this series of tests, three 8-week-old wolf puppies spontaneously showed interest in a ball and returned it to a perfect stranger upon encouragement. The discovery comes as a surprise because it had been hypothesized that the cognitive abilities necessary to understand cues given by a human, such as those required for a game of fetch, arose in dogs only after humans domesticated them at least 15,000 years ago.
It's the Fourth day of Christmas and you've just received four calling bird, sometimes know as colly birds or collie birds (which are actually blackbirds). Today's score: you currently have 22 gifts - four calling birds, six French hens, eight turtledoves and four partridges in their respective pear trees (when do these trees become a grove?)
Tonight's the third night of Kwanzaa.
December 28, 1945 -
One of the first Hollywood films to deal with psychoanalysis, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound premiered in the US on this date.
Producer David O. Selznick wanted much of this movie to be based on his experiences in psychotherapy. He even brought his psychotherapist in on the set to be a technical advisor. Once, when she disputed with Alfred Hitchcock on the workings of therapy, Hitchcock responded, "My dear, it's only a movie."
December 28, 1958 -
Toho Company Ltd. released Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, starring Toshiro Mifune and Misa Uehara to theaters in Japan on this date.
Akira Kurosawa made this commercial and accessible film as a way to repay Toho Studios for allowing him to make riskier, more artistic fare such as Rashomon. It was later one of the greatest inspirations for George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
December 28, 1960 -
The MGM film, Where The Boys Are, starring Connie Francis, Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Hutton, and Frank Gorshin, was released in the US on this date.
Dolores Hart left Hollywood a few years after this movie was released and became a Benedictine nun, and has been a Mother Superior for many years.
December 28, 1968 -
Marvin Gaye's song I Heard It Through the Grapevine hit number #1 on this date.
The song was written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. Strong came up with the idea and asked Motown writers Holland-Dozier-Holland to work on it with him. They refused to credit another writer, so Strong took it to Whitfield, who helped put it together. The song eventually became a Motown classic, but it had a rough start, as executives at the company thought it was too bluesy and lacked hit potential.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
December 28, 1832 -
US Vice President John Calhoun resigned on this date, having only served 16 days in office because of political differences with President Andrew Jackson. He was the first vice president to do so.
He still continued to be a major force in American politics and was a big influence on the policies of the Confederacy. (Mr. Calhoun has fallen very much out of favor. Statues, paintings and stained glass windows have been taken down or smashed. A lake in Minnesota: Lake Calhoun, the biggest lake in Minneapolis, will now go by its original Dakota name, Bde Maka Ska.)
December 28, 1869 -
Patent for chewing gum was granted to William Semple (U.S. patent number #98,304), on this date.
William Semple's version, complete with rubber, charcoal, and myrhh, was the first one to be patented. I bet this gum doesn't lose it flavor on the bed post overnight?
December 28, 1895 -
Auguste and Louis Lumiere opened the first movie theater at the Grand Cafe in Paris, on this date . Other inventors, including Thomas Edison, were working on various moving picture devices at the time. But most of those other devices could only be viewed by one person at a time. The Lumieres were the first to project moving pictures on a screen, so that they could be viewed by a large audience.
The first film they showed to a paying audience was called Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory. It was a short, single shot with an immobile camera and it showed a concierge opening the factory gates from which dozens of workers walked and bicycled into the street. It ended with the concierge closing the gates again.
It wasn't a movie in the modern sense. It had no characters, no storyline. It was just an animated photograph. Much like most French New Wave films. The Lumiere brothers went on to make more than 2,000 films like this, each one less than a minute long depicting various scenes of human activity with titles like The Arrival of a Train, Boat Leaving the Harbor and Baby's First Steps. They didn't call these "movies" or "films," they called them "views."
It took other filmmakers to turn movies into a medium for storytelling. The Lumieres were primarily documentary filmmakers. But in their film Demolition of a Wall, they added a reverse loop to the film so that after the wall falls to the ground it miraculously picks itself back up. It was the first special effect ever uses in the history of motion pictures.
The Lumieres' movie house was a big success. Within a few months of its opening, more than 2,000 people lined up every night to buy tickets. But the Lumieres themselves thought that movies would be a passing fad. They told their cinematographers not to expect work for more than six months. Auguste went on to become a medical scientist and Louis went back to working on still photographs.
December 28, 1945 -
Please rise while reading this:
December 28, 1973 -
In between bouts of self-loathing and heavy drinking, Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law on this date. (Sometimes people can surprise you.)
It was the first legislation in American history to focus on protecting animals and their habitats from economic encroachment.
December 28, 1981 -
The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Carr, was born at 7:46 am on this date, two and a half years after the world’s first test tube baby, Louise Brown (from Oldham, England) was born.
Elizabeth was delivered at Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, weighing 5 pounds 12 ounces. She is now a journalist.
December 28, 1983 -
Dennis Wilson, original drummer of the Beach Boys, drowned while diving from a boat near Marquesas Pier on this date. He was rather drunk at the time.
You would think that someone in the Beach Boys could swim.
December 28, 1991 -
Jack Ruby's pistol, used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald, sold at auction at Christie's for $220,000 on this date.
December 28, 1991 -
Eight people died in a crush to get into a basketball game at City College in New York. The game was promoted by a young rap promoter named Sean Combs.
(Sean Combs, Sean Combs, I know that name from somewhere.)
And so it goes.
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