The United Nations General Assembly designated this date, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides.
It's Punch the Clock day. I have no idea why anyone would want to celebrate the soul-numbing activity of having to punch into work.
So instead, let's listen to a deep cut from the Elvis Costello album Punch the Clock, Pills and Soap.
January 27, 1918 -
Tarzan of the Apes, the first Tarzan film, premiered at the Broadway Theater in NYC on this date.
Edgar Rice Burroughs sold the film rights for Tarzan of the Apes to the National Film Corporation on June 6, 1916. He received a record $5,000 cash advance on royalties, $50,000 in company stock and 5% of gross receipts.
January 27, 1956 -
Elvis Presley released the first of his 14 records in a row that sold more than a million copies, Heartbreak Hotel, on this date.
It climbed to the top of the pop chart reaching #1 in April and spending eight weeks at the top. The success of Heartbreak Hotel began Elvis' period as the most famous American musician and teen idol.
January 27, 1976 -
Laverne and Shirley, a spinoff from Happy Days, starring Penny Marshall as Laverne De Fazio and Cindy Williams as Shirley Feeney, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.
Penny Marshall worked the milk and Pepsi joke in based on her own life because as a child her mother would fill the same cup with milk as later with Pepsi and often wouldn't rinse out the cup or even wait until it was empty.
January 27, 1984 -
Cyndi Lauper released the second single, Time After Time, from her debut album She's So Unusual on this date.
Cyndi Lauper wrote this song with Rob Hyman, who also sang backup. Hyman was in a Philadelphia band with Eric Bazilian and Rick Chertoff. When Rick took a job as a staff producer at Columbia Records, he kept in touch with Rob and Eric, who formed The Hooters. Chertoff was assigned to produce Lauper, a then-unknown artist. Lauper's band, Blue Angel, had broken up, so she needed musicians. Rick suggested Rob and Eric, then brought her to see The Hooters at a club called The Bottom Line.
January 27, 1987 -
One of Woody Allen's favorite films, Broadway Danny Rose, starring Woody Allen, Mia Farrow and Nick Apollo Forte premiered in the US on this date.
Woody Allen's manager and producer, Jack Rollins, was the inspiration for the Danny Rose character. Rollins appears in the movie as himself.
Another failed ACME product
Today in History:
January 27, 1756 -
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian musical genius, composer and fart joke lover, whose works included The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute, was born on this date.
When Mozart died in 1791, probably of heart disease, he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
January 27, 1832 –
... One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Anglican deacon, children's author, mathematician, and photographer (child pornographer?) was born on this date.
January 27, 1859 -
Kaiser Wilhelm II, (Queen Victoria's first grandchild and first cousin to both King George V and Tsar Nicholas II) emperor who ruled Germany during World War I but was forced to abdicate in 1918, was born on this date.
Oh, those wacky royals.
January 27, 1900 -
Hyman Rickover, American admiral who is considered the "Father of the Atomic Submarine", was born on this date.
Creating a detail-focused pursuit of excellence to a degree previously unknown, Rickover redirected the United States Navy’s ship propulsion, quality control, personnel selection, and training and education, and has had far reaching effects on the defense establishment and the civilian nuclear energy field.
On January 21, 1901, the great maestro Joe Green (Giuseppe Verdi was merely his stage name) suffered a stroke while staying at the Grand Hotel et de Milan, in Milan. So revered was the composer that horses hooves were wrapped in blankets to muffle their noise as they passed the hotel where he rested.
Verdi gradually grew more feeble and died six days later, on this date. To date, his funeral remains the largest public assembly of any event in the history of Italy.
In popular American folklore, the British Mr. Thomas Crapper was the man who invented and gave his name to the flush toilet. Unfortunately, there is little historical evidence to support Mr. Crapper as anything but a friendly British plumber.
Thomas Crapper died on January 27, 1910. To honor this day and the spirit of the man, we can choose to embrace the legend of Thomas Crapper.
January 27, 1967 -
A launchpad flash fire in the Apollo I capsule killed the astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward H White and Roger B Chaffee at Cape Canaveral on this date.
An investigation indicated that a faulty electrical wire inside the Apollo I command module was the probable cause of the fire.
January 27, 1973 -
North and South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and the United States signed the Paris Peace Accord on this day, ending one of the longest and most unpopular wars in American history.
Despite a ceasefire that had been put into effect a few days earlier, the last American troop to die in Vietnam was killed just 11 hours before the treaty was signed.
January 27, 1992 -
Candidate Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers mutually accuse each other of lying about whether or not they had a 12 year affair on this date.
Oh, it's hard to keep the old hound dog on the porch.
January 27, 2010 –
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as A People's History of the United States, inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died on this date.
Go out and buy his book, if not for a kid you know, buy it for yourself.
And so it goes
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