Saturday, June 12, 2021

The whispers of passion

Each year on June 12, people in the United States observe National Red Rose Day. The day is meant to honor the flower that is a symbol of love and romance, the red rose.



Apparent the other color roses don't have as strong a lobby.



Today is also Crowded Nest Awareness Day. While this holiday has been celebrated for years, once again this obscure holiday has never seemed more appropriate. Crowded Nest Syndrome (sometimes referred to as CNS by people not suffering from it) occurs when you have children who have moved out of the house and you've gone through Empty Nest Syndrome only to have your children (and possibly their children) come back home again and/or having your parents or in-laws move in with you so you can care for them. (But fear not, today is World Gin Day)

I wait patiently by the phone for confirmation that I have become the new spokesperson for Bombay Sapphire.



Today is the 13th World Gin Day, always celebrated on the second Saturday in June, (National Martini Day is coming up on Saturday, June 19 - I will just have to pace myself!).



Remember - A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy (or Paris - pick your poison.)



(As always, please celebrate responsibly.)


June 12, 1913 -
Pathé Frères studios releases Dachshund (also known as The Artists Dream,) the first animated cartoon made in the U.S. with modern techniques.



John Randolph Bray invented and patented the process while producing the film. He patented many of his improvements on the animation process, realizing early on the business potential of these developments.


June 12, 1950 -
Elia Kazan's film-noir thriller, Panic In The Streets, opened on this date.



The ship Blackie attempts to board at the end of the film is the S.S. Quiriqua, owned by the United Fruit Co. (now Chiquita Brands). Built in 1932 to transport fruit, passengers and mail between the U.S. and Central and South America, she was requisitioned for use in the Pacific during WWII as the U.S.S. Mizar (AF-12) and earned four battle stars. She returned to civilian service with United Fruit in 1946 and was scrapped in 1964.


June 12, 1963 -
The four-hour film spectacle, Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, premiered in New York City, on this date.



When this movie finally broke even in 1973, Twentieth Century Fox "closed the books" on it, keeping all future profits secret to avoid paying those who might have been promised a percentage of the profits.


June 12, 1967 -
The fifth James Bond film, You Only Live Twice, starring Sean Connery, (screenplay by Roald Dahl,) premiered in London, on this date.



Nancy Sinatra was the first non-British singer to perform a theme song for a James Bond movie. She was so nervous about doing it that it took twenty-five different takes, and the final song used in the film was made up of the best parts from each recording.


June 12, 1968 -
Roman Polanksi's horror classic Rosemary's Baby, premiered on this date.



Ira Levin felt that this film is "the single most faithful adaptation of a novel ever to come out of Hollywood." William Castle speculated the reasons for this were because it was the first time Roman Polanski had ever adapted another writer's work, unaware he had the freedom to improvise on the book.


June 12, 1972 -
The film Deep Throat was released in NYC on this date. You look for longer clips, I'm not taking you there.



The total box office of this movie has often been stated to be $600 million. As noted by Roger Ebert in his review of Inside Deep Throat, most of the porn theaters in the pre-video days were owned by the mob. Inflating box office receipts could have been one of their ways of laundering income from drugs and prostitution, so the $600 million figure may have been a gross overestimation. More conservative estimates would put the figure somewhere around $100 million. Whatever may be the case, very few of the people directly involved in the making of the film saw a big piece of the earnings. As stated in Inside Deep Throat, much of the box office disappeared when mobsters came to cinemas to collect all the cash profits, with no one being able to do something about it.


June 12, 1981 -
A bizarre coincidence but Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1 and Lucas/ Spielberg's Raiders Of The Lost Ark both premiered on this date.



Gregory Hines replaced Richard Pryor. Just like in Blazing Saddles, Pryor was originally cast, but had to pull out of the movie. Pryor's part eventually was taken by Hines in his screen debut. Just before filming was to begin, Pryor had his infamous drug-related accident, catching fire, and getting severely burnt.



During filming in Tunisia, nearly everyone in the cast and crew got dysentery except Steven Spielberg. It is thought that he avoided illness by eating only the food he'd brought with him: a lot of cans of Spaghetti-O's.

Aren't you glad that you know all of this.


June 12, 1997 -
Joel Schumacher's 'odd' take on the Batman story, Batman and Robin, starring the engorged nipple clad George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone, and Chris O'Donnell premieres in Los Angeles, on this date.



George Clooney called the film "a waste of money". In later interviews, he called it "the biggest break I ever had," since it got him into Hollywood, resulting in more successful roles later on. George Clooney has been known to refund people who saw this film.



Don't forget to tune in to The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today


Today in History -
In early 1381 England imposed a new tax, which was called the "Pole Tax" because everyone got the shaft.

Peasants, led by Wat Tyler marched on London, on this date, where they destroyed the houses of government ministers.


June 12, 1839 -
Alexander Cartwright, and not, Abner Doubleday, should be credited with the invention of Baseball.



On the one hundredth anniversary of the apocryphal story, the National Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, New York (in an effort to bring tourists to town.)



The first five inductees were Walter Johnson, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson and Babe Ruth.


The Swiss Army Knife was patented on June 12, 1897. It was the fruit of centuries of Swiss research, development, and testing. Its release was heralded as the dawn of a golden age of Swiss technology.



Switzerland may not have won a war since, but they've never been caught without a corkscrew.


June 12, 1942 -
A young Dutch girl received the crappy gift of a diary as a birthday present on this date.

She natters on for a little more than two years of small, inconsequential things young girls usually do in their diaries and then she abruptly stops writing. Today, her diary has been published in over 30 languages.



So parents, chose wisely when giving your children birthday gifts.


June 12, 1963 -
Civil rights leader and NAACP official, Medgar Evers was fatally shot in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by the KKK.



An informant in the KKK, Delmar Dennis, later served as a key prosecution witness in convicting Byron De La Beckwith for the slaying. Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001 at age 80.


June 12, 1967 -
54 years ago today, the US Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.



Mildred Jeter and her white husband, Richard Loving, married in 1958, had been arrested in Virginia within weeks of arriving from Washington DC and convicted on charges of "cohabiting as man and wife."


June 12, 1978 -
David Berkowitz was sentenced to a maximum of 315 years in prison without the possibility of parole on this date.

Berkowitz killed six New Yorkers between 1976 and 1977, known collectively as the Son of Sam murders.

Harvey, Sam Carr's dog, was not charged with any crime.


June 12, 1982 -
The largest anti-nuclear protest, with some one million anti-nuclear demonstrators rallied in Central Park, NYC on this date.



At the time, it was also the largest political demonstration, of any kind, in American history.


June 12, 1987 -
President Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate.



Although there is some disagreement over how much influence, if any, Reagan's words had on the destruction of the wall, the speech is remembered as an important moment in Cold War history.



And so it goes.


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