That must have been one hell of a bladder

In April 1941, a German incendiary bomb fell through the roof of the house where a Great Dane named Juliana and her owner lived. Juliana reportedly walked over to the bomb, stood over it and urinated on it. By marking the incendiary device, Juliana extinguished it and prevented the fire from spreading. For her actions, she was awarded the Blue Cross medal. The first animals to be awarded the medal were horses that had served in WWI.

Three years later, Juliana came to the rescue again. In November 1944, a fire broke out in her owner’s shoe shop. Juliana alerted her owner’s family and everyone was able to evacuate the shop before any lives were lost. For this, she was awarded a second Blue Cross.

Tragically, Juliana died in 1946 after she consumed a poison that was dropped through her owner’s mail slot.


May 24, 1964 -
The Beatles performed You Can't Do That from the set of A Hard Day's Night in a taped segment on The Ed Sullivan Show on this date.



Ironically, You Can't Do That would be cut out of the finished film.


May 24, 1968 -
The Rolling Stones released Jumping Jack Flash, in Britain, on this date.



The Rolling Stones have played Jumping Jack Flash during every tour since its release; it ranks as the number the band has played in concert most frequently.


May 24, 1969 –
The Beatles with Billy Preston hit No. 1 with Get Back, where it stayed for the next month. (It is the Beatles' only single that credited another artist at their request.)



There was speculation that the character "JoJo" was based on Joseph Melville See Jr., Linda McCartney's first husband, who was from Tucson, Arizona. McCartney denied this, explaining in his 1988 autobiography Many Years From Now that he and Linda were on good terms with See, who used the first name Melville, and that "JoJo" was "an imaginary character, half-man and half-woman."


May 24, 1974 -
The final episode of The Dean Martin Show was aired on NBC on this date. The show had been on the air for nine seasons.



Dean Martin's contract stipulated that he was only required to work on Sundays. This necessitated that blocking the camera setups and rehearsals be done on Saturdays. It also meant that guest stars rehearse with Lee Hale standing in for Martin. On Sundays, Martin would usually work less than four hours and leave the set before taping was wrapped.


May 24, 1989 -
The third movie in Steven Spielberg's salute to Saturday afternoon serials, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, premiered nationwide on this date.



As with the other Indiana Jones movies, Harrison Ford did many of his own stunts. According to stuntman Vic Armstrong, he had to pull Ford to one side and ask him to let him "do some work" because Ford was doing so much of the action himself. Armstrong later said, "If he wasn't such a great actor, he would have made a really great stuntman."


May 24, 1991 -
MGM released Ridley Scott's controversial (at the time) take on the 'buddy movie', Thelma & Louise, starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, on this date.



It took producers so long to find someone for the role of Louise that Geena Davis had to sign a contract stating that the producers could cast her in either role if need be.


May 24, 1999 -
The last episode of Mad About You, The Final Frontier aired on NBC on this date. (The re-boot of the series can be seen on Amazon TV.)



Paul and Jamie's daughter, Mabel, got her name from her grandmother (played by Carol Burnett). When Paul and Jamie were looking for a name, Jamie's mother said to them, "Mothers always bring extra love" M.A.B.E.L.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
May 24, 1610 -
Buggery was criminalized for the first time in North America by Sir Thomas Gates, when the Virginia colony declares that "no man shall commit the horrible, and detestable sinnes of Sodomie upon pain of death."

I've uncovered that the actual punishment for breaking this new law was - Whipping -a good strong bare butt whipping. Hmmm, I see. (This is what came from the lack of good lubrication in the early colonies.)


May 24, 1626 -
Peter Minuit was the director-general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland who was credited with the purchase of the island of Manhattan on this date.

According to legend, he persuaded the natives, perhaps a Metoac band of Lenape known as the Canarsee, who were actually native to what is now Brooklyn - to "sell" the island for a handful of trade goods worth approximately 60 guilders (appx. $24.)



I've often said that there are those in Congress looking to give New York back to the Indians.


May 24, 1686 -
Gabriel Fahrenheit was born on the date. Mr Fahrenheit did pioneering work in the field of temperature. It was his dream to develop a more sophisticated temperature measurement system than the accepted worldwide standard of his era, which consisted of only seven gradations: brr!, cold as hell, chilly, warm, hot, hotter than hell and ow!.

Hard at work on the same problem was his colleague Anders Celsius. Mr Fahrenheit eventually discovered the "degree." It took 32 of Mr Fahrenheit's degrees to freeze water and 212 of them to boil it. Mr Celsius, meanwhile, had discovered a different kind of "degree."

It took only a hundred of his degrees to bring water to a boil, and, even more impressively, he discovered that water would freeze without any degrees at all.



By requiring fewer degrees to get things done, and less tick marks on thermometers, Mr Celsius's system was more compact and economical than Mr Fahrenheit's. This made it a natural for the crowded lands of Europe, where storage came at a premium. In the great unsettled expanse of the New World, however, space was not an issue and Mr Fahrenheit's system took hold.


May 24, 1819 -
Today is International Tiara Day because of Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria was born as Princess Alexandria Victoria at Kensington Palace, London on this date. Through a series of accidents, debauched living and bad planning on the part of her uncles, she became Queen. She reigned for 64 years, and lent her name to an era best remembered for its prudery and chastity.



Remember, this was the time when one put skirts on piano legs for fear of arousing the passions of young men. This pent up frustration resulted in so many citizens having to stay home and care for their children, since Victoria's reign also saw the largest population explosion in British history.


May 24, 1844 -
Samuel F. B. Morse formally opens America's first telegraph line, when he demonstrated a magnetic telegraph, sending a message from the chambers of the Old Supreme Court courthouse in Washington D.C. to his partner, Alfred Vail, at the Mount Clare Depot of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company in Baltimore, Maryland, on this date.



Vail responded by retransmitting the same message back to Morse. The message, "What hath God wrought?" was the first message sent on a commercial telegraph line.


May 24, 1856 -
A small gang led by abolitionist John Brown murdered five unarmed pro-slavery homesteaders in Franklin County, Kansas, on this date, hacking them to pieces with swords.



The event comes to be known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.


May 24, 1883 -



The Brooklyn Bridge (originally the New York and Brooklyn Bridge), one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, stretches 5,989 feet (1825 m) over the East River connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn opened for business today. On completion, it was the largest suspension bridge in the world and the first steel-wire suspension bridge. Since its opening, it has become an iconic part of the New York Skyline and is still considered one of the Wonders of the Modern World.



The first person to jump from the bridge was Robert E. Odlum (and not Steve Brodie) on May 19, 1885.



Robert, a swimming teacher, made the jump in a costume bearing his initials. He survived the pre-announced jump, but died shortly thereafter from internal injuries. Apparently, no one told him taking the high dive off the bridge would get him killed.

This showed him.


May 24, 1920 -
Senile French President Paul Deschanel fell off a train bound for Montbrison, and was later discovered wandering along the track in his pajamas. The Station master's wife later commented that she knew he was a gentleman because he had such "clean feet."



Soon afterwards, Deschanel walked out of a state meeting, straight into the fountains at the Rambouillet chateau, fully clothed.

As I mentioned yesterday, The French, they are a strange race.

(Interesting side note - the actress Zooey Deschanel is related to the former president.)


May 24, 1927 -
The final levee breach of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 occurred at McCrea, Louisiana, on the east bank of the Atchafalaya levee. The flood, which began several weeks earlier, along the Mississippi killed some 500 people and displaced thousands.



The levee system broke in 145 places and caused 27,000 square miles of flooding in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.


May 24, 1928 -
The airship Italia, commanded by General Umberto Nobile, crashed while attempting to reach Spitzbergen, during its return flight from the North Pole on this date.



Nine men, including Nobile survived the initial crash.


May 24, 1941 -
Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham Zimmerman, a young boy from a small shtetl called Duluth, in the great state of Minnesota, don't ya know, who has been a major figure in popular music for nearly six decades, was born on this date.







Even Zigman and Anna's grandson, Shabtai can still write a good song, now and then.


May 24, 1941 -
During the Battle of the Denmark Strait (World War II,) the German battleship Bismarck sank the HMS Hood on this date.



More than 1,400 crewmen died; only three survived.


May 24, 1962 -
Scott Carpenter becomes the second American to orbit the Earth when he is launched into space aboard NASA's Aurora 7 space capsule, on this date.



Carpenter circles the globe three times, reaching a maximum altitude of 164 miles before his spacecraft splashes into the Atlantic Ocean about 1,000 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral about five hours later.


May 24, 1976 -
In France, on this date, two California wines won a tasting event over several French classics for the first time. Steven Spurrier, English owner of a wine shop and wine school in Paris, held a competition tasting of French and American wines.



The best red wine was a 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars. The best white wine was a 1973 Napa Valley Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena, owned by Jim Barrett.


Don't forget - Tomorrow is Towel Day,

you know what you need to do - DON'T PANIC!



And so it goes.