One must have peanut butter

Its National Peanut Butter day. Boldly celebrate the lowly legume Arachis hypogaea, (except for the 1.5% of US students allergic to peanuts.) Former President Bill Clinton says one of his favorite sandwiches is peanut butter and banana; also reported to have been the favorite of Elvis.



Women and children prefer creamy peanut butter, while most men opt for chunky. People living on the East Coast prefer creamy peanut butter, while those on the West Coast prefer the crunchy style.


January 24, 1927 -
Alfred Hitchcock's first film, The Pleasure Garden, went into general release on this date in England.



Although shot in 1925, and shown to the British press in March 1926, the film wasn't actually released in the UK until after The Lodger, his third film, was a massive hit in 1927.


January 24, 1939 –
George Stevens' adaption of Rudyard Kipling's poem, Gunga Din, starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Sam Jaffe premiered in Los Angeles on this date.



Budgeted at $1.915 million, this was the most expensive film RKO had produced to that date. It was nearly $500,000 over budget. The film was second only to Gone with the Wind as the biggest money-maker of 1939.


January 24, 1940 -
John Ford's film version of John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, starring Henry Fonda, premiered in New York City on this date.



John Steinbeck was particularly enamored with the performance of Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, feeling that he perfectly encapsulated everything he wanted to convey with this character. The two became good friends. Indeed Fonda did a reading at Steinbeck's funeral.


January 24, 1975 -
The Norman Lear developed TV adaptation of Lanford Wilson's 1973 off-Broadway play, Hot L Baltimore, starring Richard Masur, Conchata Ferrell, James Cromwell, Al Freeman, Jr., & Charlotte Rae, premiered on ABC, on this date.



The series garnered controversy due to its cast of characters, which included two prostitutes, an illegal immigrant, and a gay couple (one of network TV's first, in fact), leading ABC to run a disclaimer before the show started.


Another book for our times


Today in History:
January 24, 41 -
Roman emperor and crackpot Caligula was assassinated by his bodyguards on this date. His last words apparently were, "I am still alive! Strike again."

Yeah, yeah, I know you know that the Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse a senator and a god, married his sister, slept with the horse, slept with the potted plants ...



I guess this guy got more unnatural things done in a day then most of us do in a lifetime.


January 24, 1848 -
James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento, starting the California Gold Rush on this date.



According to the Gold Institute, less than two million ounce's of gold were mined during the height of the California Gold Rush in 1849.


January 24, 1908 -
The first Boy Scout troop was organized in England on this date, by its founder, Robert Baden-Powell, a man who enjoyed seeing and photographing, just a little too much, boys swimming.



I wonder what Baden-Powell would think (a noted repressed homosexual) now that girls and openly gay boys (but not transgender boys) can join the scouts.


January 24, 1922 –
Christian K. Nelson of Onawa, Iowa was granted a patent (US patent No.#1404539) for his ice cream dessert covered in chocolate ( The ‘Eskimo Pie’.)



Mr Nelson invented Eskimo Pie, America's first chocolate covered ice cream bar, in his home laboratory in 1920. The ice cream bar quickly rose in popularity in America. By 1922, Nelson was earning $2000 per day in royalties on his product.


January 24, 1925 -
A motion picture of a solar eclipse was recorded by the United States Navy from the dirigible USS Los Angeles, about nineteen miles east of Montauk Point, Long Island, New York on this date.



It is the first time a dirigible has been used for astronomical observations in the U.S.


January 24, 1935 -
The Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of New Jersey introduced the first canned beer, Krueger Cream Ale. The new, three-piece steel and tin cans containing this drink had no pull tab; they were opened by a special kind of tool called a church key.



This new method of packaging beer was an instant success and other breweries quickly followed as they noted that the new cans were more cost effective, easier to handle and took up less space than bottles.


January 24, 1947 -
Well, first of all, let me say that I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that really didn't pay off.







Warren William Zevon, singer-songwriter and musician, was born on this date.

Remember kids - keep enjoying every sandwich.


January 24, 1949 -
I'm learning to cope and not deny my own success, but I still think it's not happening a lot. I get nervous, and I am capable of doing something to blow it on purpose. A lot of actors have that problem.



John Adam Belushi, actor and comedian, was born on this date.


January 24, 1961 -
Mel Blanc, The Man of a Thousand Voices, was involved in a near-fatal auto accident on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California on this date. Hit head-on, Blanc suffered a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for three weeks, along with fractures of both legs and the pelvis.



The accident prompted over 15,000 get-well cards from anxious fans, including some addressed only to "Bugs Bunny, Hollywood, USA", according to Blanc's autobiography. One newspaper falsely reported that he had died. After his recovery, Blanc reported in TV interviews, and later in his autobiography, that a clever doctor had helped him to come out of his coma by talking to Bugs Bunny, after futile efforts to talk directly to Blanc. Although he had no actual recollection of this, Blanc learned that when the doctor was inspired to ask him, "How are you today, Bugs Bunny?", Blanc answered in Bugs' voice. Blanc thus credited Bugs with saving his life.


January 24, 1965 -
After telling his son-in-law, Christopher Soames: "I am so bored with it," Winston Churchill, at age 90, never again makes an intelligible remark to anyone and died on this date.



Churchill died at his home at 28 Hyde Park Gate in London shortly after 8:00 a.m. on the seventieth anniversary of the death of his father, Sir Randoph Churchill.


January 24, 1972 -
Shoichi Yokoi, despite the fact that the war had been over for more than 27 years, was still at his post in Guam. Yokoi was unaware that the war had ended, and had been hiding out in the jungles of Guam since American troops occupied the island in the 1940s.

He refused to surrender until his old commanding officer, who had retired from the military for more than 20 years, was found and told him to stand down on this date. He was the last Japanese soldier from World War II to surrender.


January 24, 1978 -
The nuclear-powered Soviet Cosmos 954 satellite plunges through Earth's atmosphere and disintegrates, scattering radioactive debris over parts of Canada's Northwest Territories. Much of the satellite landed in the Great Slave Lake; only about 1% of the radioactive material was recovered.



Hey, I hope we all enjoyed that smoked salmon from Canada in the late 70s.


January 24, 1986 -
Crackpot and founder of the fraudulent Scientology movement, L. Ron Hubbard died on this date (laughing his ass off about the crap he made up.) His bad science fiction writing has grown alarmingly prolific in the years since his death.



Note to Leah Remini: keep fighting the good fight - otherwise nothing to read here, move on.



And so it goes