Here's to you Mrs. Robinson

In case you didn't get you mom a great gift, you can remind her that you got your second shot of the vaccine just the other day and you can see her soon (so you have some extra time.) What your excuse will be next year is your business.

The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British version of the day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament.

Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days.

She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.



When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. One of the first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on - spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.



Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States, (unfortunately, not this weekend, unless you're all vaccinated.)



Please enjoy one of the major holidays with actually encourages daytime drinking.


Today is Lost Sock Memorial Day, the day that we take a moment out of our busy lives to mourn the lost of a sock while we do the laundry.

After a proper amount of time; stop hoping it will appear to reunite with its mate. Focus on the only healthy choices before you: Throw out the mate-less socks or have fun with them.



(Please note, the fun you have with you sock is solely between you and your maker - no judgments.)


May 9, 1955 -
Harpo had suffered a recent heart attack and was warned by doctors not to continue performing. But, luckily for us, Harpo refused, and went on to appear in an episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy and Harpo Marx, which aired on this date.



The Lucy-Harpo "mirror routine" became a rare scene of I Love Lucy that was filmed without a live audience. Because of the complicated set-ups for the shot, the studio audience was sent home. Lucy and Harpo did take after take and the best shots were later spliced together, as one long scene, by the film editor. (After filming was over, Harpo stayed and played his harp for the cast and crew while Vivian Vance sang.)


May 9, 1958 -
Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Vertigo starring James Stewart and Kim Novak premiered in San Francisco on this date.





When Kim Novak questioned Alfred Hitchcock about her motivation in a particular scene, Hitchcock is said to have answered, "Let's not probe too deeply into these matters, Kim. It's only a movie."


May 9, 1964 -
The Beatles' I Wanna Hold Your Hand had been the number one album for over three and a half months straight.



Louis Armstrong's show tune Hello Dolly finally ended the record-breaking run on this day, knocking the Beatles out of first place in the music charts.


May 9, 1992 -
The final episode of Golden Girls, One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest, aired on NBC-TV on this date.



That must have been some after party.


May 9, 1994 -
Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait set fire to the guest chair on the Tonight Show With Jay Leno, on this date. While the action may have shocked and outraged both Leno and NBC, did not prevent them from using this inflammatory vignette in their advertising.



His actions not only got him banned from NBC, (a ban that seems to be in place to this day,) for his destructive behavior, but he had to pay a $2,700 fine for the incident and had to pay nearly $700 for the cost of the chair. In addition to the monetary dues he had obtained he was also forced to make fire safety public service announcements.


From the back shelf of the ACME library


Today in History:
May 9, 1671 -
File this under - Balls, said the queen ...: Adventurer and criminal, Colonel Thomas Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London on this date.



He and his accomplices were captured and the jewels rescued. Far from being punished, Blood was pardoned by the King himself and awarded a pension of £500 a year.


May 8, 1882 -
William F. Ford was issued a patent (US patent #257,487) for for his binaural stethoscope design.

A binaural stethoscope employs two ears pieces connected with a single bell. Today's stethoscopes derive from this design innovation.


May 9, 1926 -
Explorers Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett made the first flight over the North Pole. Two teams of aviators competed to be the first to fly over the North Pole. American Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett claimed victory when they circled the North Pole.



On May 11, in spite of his disappointment, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen launched the dirigible Norge on its planned flight, not merely over the pole, but all the way across the Arctic to Alaska. Byrd and Bennett in the Josephine Ford briefly accompanied Norge in a gesture of goodwill. Amundsen reached Alaska on May 14, but even today experts suspect that faulty navigation caused Byrd to miss the North Pole.


May 9, 1949 -
William Martin Joel, Grammy Award-winning rock vocalist/singer was born on this date.



I can still remember when one used to eagerly await a new Billy Joel album as much as a Bruce Springsteen album.


May 9, 1950 -
L. Ron Hubbard published the first edition of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health on this date.

This follows on the heels of a feature article in the pulp sci-fi magazine Astounding Science Fiction.

A book review in the The New Republic described the work as "a bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long-acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology." The subsequent movement goes on to become one of the scariest, most powerful pseudoreligious cults in modern history.

But you didn't hear this from me.


May 9, 1961 -
FCC Chairman Newton N Minow speaking at the NAB convention (the National Association of Broadcasters) gave one of the most quoted speeches of the 20th Century.



His phrase "vast wasteland" has become an icon of American culture, memorialized in hundreds of editorial cartoons, listed in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, quoted in popular fiction, and featured as an answer to questions on TV game shows such as Jeopardy!, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Trivial Pursuit.


May 9, 1978 -
The body of former Italian premier Aldo Moro was discovered in the back seat of a Renault on this date. He had been kidnapped 54 days prior by the Red Brigades, who demanded the release of their incarcerated comrades.



When Italian authorities refused to give in, Moro's captors killed him, but not before forcing the hostage to hold a newspaper announcing his own death.


May 9, 1980 -
35 people were killed in Tampa, Florida when the Liberian cargo ship Summit Venture smashed into a supporting pier of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge on this date.



Seven vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, topple into the water 150 feet below. So this is what comes from leaving the driving to racetrack dogs.


May 9, 1983 -
Pope John Paul II retracted the Catholic Church's condemnation of astronomer Galileo Galilei, issued in 1633 by Pope Urban VIII. The Church had convicted the scientist of heresy, sentenced him to house arrest, and forced him to recant central scientific truths.



In the end, this error only took 350 years to correct. A speedy correction by church standards.


May 9, 1989 -
Great moments in Vice Presidential history:

And so it goes.