They are both the smallest and one of the most venomous jellyfish in the world. Its venom is 100 times more powerful than a cobra’s. Even more shocking, is that this tiny jellyfish is smaller than your fingernail.
Tonight is the start of Hanukkah.
This year, my first Hanukkah gift to you is to remind you that there is no pressure to buy Hanukkah Seals.
Today is Suspended Coffee Day (Caffe Sospeso,) in conjunction with International Human Rights Day. Coffee shops around the world are reviving an old Neapolitan custom, which involves paying it forward with coffee.
A customer orders one cup but pays the barista for two. This second cup - the "suspended coffee" - is served for free to someone who is down on their luck.
December 10, 1948 -
Another Preston Sturges Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine, Unfaithfully Yours, opened in the US on this date.
The camera zooms to a big close-up of Rex Harrison's left eye just before fading to each of Alfred De Carter's infidelity fantasies. Harrison happened to be blind in that eye, the result of childhood measles.
December 10, 1955 –
The Mighty Mouse Playhouse began a long-standing 'Saturday Morning Cartoon’ tradition on CBS-TV, on this date.
Terrytoons Studios produced 80 theatrical Mighty Mouse cartoons between 1942 to 1961, which were shown on this cartoon TV series on Saturday mornings. Each episode contained three Mighty Mouse theatrical cartoons and a one-shot one (especially with Heckle and Jeckle).
December 10, 1967 -
Julie Andrews!
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their first starring comedy, Bedazzled, opened in the US on this date.
Although Raquel Welch is featured in most of the promotional material for this movie, she was only on-screen for roughly seven minutes.
December 10, 1968 -
Carol Reed's musical adaptation of the Charles Dicken's classic, Oliver!, starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed and Mark Lester, opened in the US on this date.
Despite complaints of nepotism, Oliver Reed said he had to persuade his uncle Carol Reed to consider him for the role of Bill Sikes and that he also had to audition and screen test for the part at Carol Reed's insistence.
December 10, 1974 -
Another Rankin/Bass animated holiday special The Year Without A Santa Claus premiered on ABC-TV on this date.
This is the second Rankin/Bass Christmas special where Mickey Rooney voiced Santa Claus, the first being Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town. This was Shirley Booth's last filmed acting project.
December 10, 1974 -
Nobody will ever notice that. Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It's about the big picture
Ed Wood Jr., either the world's greatest visionary director or the worst filmmaker of all time, suffered a fatal heart attack on this date. At the time of his death, the industry newspaper, Variety, failed to run his obituary.
December 10, 1974 –
The classic disaster movie, Towering Inferno, opened in NYC on this date.
In an interview given years after the film was released, writer Stirling Silliphant said that he always sat under a sprinkler system head when visiting a building. He said he did that because he learned it from a fireman he interviewed while researching this project.
December 10, 1982 -
A paean to B movies, It Came from Hollywood, opened in the US on this date. (Do yourself a favor; find some time today to watch the whole film if you haven't seen it.)
Sadly this was never released on DVD. Paramount had planned to release the film on DVD in 2002. Due to copyright issues with several of the clips featured in the film, the release was ultimately canceled.
December 10, 1984 –
On a very cold night in NYC, 36 years ago, Francis Ford Coppola's Cotton Club opened in NYC. I can remember waiting on line to see the film on the opening day.
The character of Dixie Dwyer is likely based on actor George Raft. Raft grew up dirt poor in New York's Hell's Kitchen. As a young man he worked as a driver/gopher for gangster Owney Madden (also depicted in this film). After his stint working for Madden he went to California and tried his hand at acting, eventually achieving considerable success playing tough-guy roles in various gangster movies, performances he based largely on Madden and Bugsy Siegel, with whom Raft was known to associate.
It been 36 years since Do They Know It's Christmas, the charity single by the all-star group Band Aid, was released.
As of the last check, The Band Aid/ Live Aid initiatives have raised over $200 million dollars. Not bad for basically a very crappy tune.
It's the first night
Today in History:
December 10, 1520 -
The heretic Martin Luther burnt the papal bull (Exsurge Domine), on this date, issued by Leo X, demanding an end to his heresies. Luther had published 95 points against the practice of granting indulgences, and the Catholic Church only had 94 points in favor of them.
December 10, 1830 -
Who is the East?
The Yellow Man
Who may be Purple if He can
That carries in the Sun.
Who is the West?
The Purple Man
Who may be Yellow if He can
That lets Him out again.
Poet Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on this date. Only about 10 of her poems were published in her lifetime, and those were submitted for publication without her permission. After her death in 1886, more than 1,800 of her poems, which she had bound together in bundles, were discovered and published.
December 10, 1848 -
Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte), was elected president of France. By 1852, he dismantled the Republic and replaced it with the Second Empire of France, with himself as emperor.
December 10, 1936 -
Edward VIII, signed the letter of abdication to the English throne (which took effect on the next day,) to marry the twice divorced, horsey faced (and possibly transvestite) - the woman he loved on this date.
December 10, 1954 -
The patent for the first commercial, digital and programmable autonomous machine (U.S. Patent No. 2,988,237) was filed today. The robot was built by American inventor George Devol and named the Unimate.
It was not made to look like a human, but was instead designed for use, having just one arm and one hand.
December 10, 1958 -
Krishna Venta (born Francis Herman Pencovic) died in Chatsworth, California in a suicide bombing when two disgruntled former followers (Peter Duma Kamenoff and Ralph Muller) who, although never offering any documentary evidence to support their claims, charged that Venta had both mishandled cult funds and been intimate with their wives.
Venta's remains are only ever identified through dental records.
This is what comes from the laying on of hands with cult members' wives.
December 10, 1967 -
Soul singer Otis Redding plus four members of the Bar-Kays were killed when his airplane crashes into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin on this date.
So, poor Otis was laid out all over the dock of the bay.
December 10, 1973 –
CBGB’s opened in lower Manhattan, in New York City. Named for Country, Blue Grass, and Blues, on this date. The club originally intends to feature those musical styles, but becomes a mecca for punk rock and New Wave bands.
There were two rules: 1) bands had to move their own equipment, and 2) bands had to play mostly original songs – no cover bands – because the owner couldn’t afford to pay ASCAP royalty fees.
December 10, 1993 -
Adolf Hitler was baptized by proxy into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in their London temple on this date. Mormons also continued to vicariously baptism victims of the Holocaust over the strenuous objections of various Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center (even Simon Wiesenthal has had a baptism performed for himself after his death.)
December 10, 2013 -
The Higgs Boson is a particle that gives mass to other particles. It is sometimes referred to as the "God Particle." It was named after Peter Higgs, one of six physicists who, in 1964, proposed the mechanism that suggested the particle.
On this date, Peter Higgs and François Englert, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work and prediction.
And so it goes
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