Happy Fourth of July Bunkies

Hope you are all enjoying the day (no matter what the weather.) Due to some unforseen events, the next few days will be abbreviated postings


July 4, 1964 -
The Beach Boys' song I Get Around topped the charts and stayed there for 2 weeks on this date.



This was released as a double A-side single in May 1964 with Don't Worry Baby. It is considered one of the best ever single releases along with Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles and Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog by Elvis Presley.

July 4, 1966 -
The Lovin' Spoonful release their song Summer in the City on this date.



The band was rather particular about the traffic sounds. Instead of just using what was available on the sound effects records in the studio, they found an old-school radio engineer - a guy who used to create the soundscapes for shows, so if a guy was riding a horse, you'd hear the hooves hitting the ground and the wind whistling by. This guy, whom John Sebastian referred to as a "hilarious old Jewish sound man," came in with a huge library of street sounds, which the band went through for hours. They wanted the scene to build, so it starts softly (the horn at the beginning comes from a Volkswagen Beetle), and grows to a gridlock nightmare. To close the scene, they used a pneumatic hammer pounding away at the pavement.


July 4, 1970 -
Casey Kasem's American Top 40 debuts on station KDEO in El Cajon/San Diego, California on this date.



The concept of playing the 40 most popular songs from a national chart was a new one, and no one was sure of the success of the show at the time.


July 4, 1974 -
Steely Dan (Walter Becker and Donald Fagan) give up live performing after a show on this date in Santa Monica so they can focus on their studio work.



They don't tour again until 1993.


July 4, 1992 –
Sir Mix-A-Lot's great patriotic song, Baby Got Back, hit No. 1 on this date and remained there for a month.



The video was directed by Adam Bernstein, who also did Hey Ladies for Beastie Boys and Love Shack for The B-52's. According to Bernstein, casting the video was one of the strangest experiences of his professional life. Since it was the butts they were interested in, he and his crew took photos of the applicants' fundamentals, which they sent to Sir Mix-A-Lot for evaluation.


ACME's salute to Sedition against Our Former Sovereign Nation Day


Today in History:
July 4, 1776 -
The Continental Congress approved adoption of the amended Declaration of Independence, prepared by Thomas Jefferson and signed by John Hancock - President of the Continental Congress - and Charles Thomson, Congress secretary (among others,) without dissent.



However, the New York delegation abstained as directed by the New York Provisional Congress. The United States was very busy for the next couple of years and didn't get around to commemorating Independence Day until 1796. Another thing your teachers never told you - Mary Katherine Goddard, who was working as printer at the time, voluntarily inscribed her full name on the document, making her the only woman who 'signed' the Declaration of Independence. Congress fled Philadelphia and settled temporarily in Baltimore. When they needed somebody to print the Declaration, Goddard was the person to help.

A copy of the Declaration, signed by the founders, sits in the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum. Those who signed it knew they were taking a risk that amounted to treason against the British empire if their side lost. At the bottom of the document is written "Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katherine Goddard."


July 4, 1804 -
The first 4th of July celebration west of the Mississippi River was held, when Lewis and Clark's expedition team stopped in Kansas to throw the party on this date.

They fired the expedition canon and the men on the team got an extra ration of whiskey to celebrate the day.


July 4, 1826 -
Frienemies Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both lay dying in there respective homes on this date. Jefferson, the nation's third president, deeply in debt at age 83, died at one o'clock in the afternoon and correctly surmised that Adams had outlived him. John Adams, the second president died at age 90 in Braintree, Mass, just a few hours after Jefferson. Adams' last words were, Thomas Jefferson still survives.



It was exactly 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted.


July 4, 1831 -
James Monroe, fifth President of the United States, died in New York City at age 73 on this date.



This made him the third ex-President to die on Independence Day.

How patriotic.


July 4, 1850 -
President Zachary Taylor stood hatless in the sun for hours listening to long-winded speeches. He returned to the White House and attempted to cool off by eating cherries, cucumbers and drinking iced milk. Severe stomach cramps followed.



It is likely that Taylor's own physicians inadvertently killed him with a whole series of debilitating treatments. The cur lingered on until he unpatriotically died on July 9th.


July 4, 1862 -
Charles Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician and nude child photographer, told little Alice Liddell on a boat trip the fairy tale he had dreamed up for her called Alice's Adventures Underground on this date. We assume he had his pants on at the time.



Three year later, to the day, the first edition of Alice in Wonderland was published under Dodgson's pen name, Lewis Carroll.


July 4, 1884 -
The Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States in ceremonies at Paris, France, on this date. The 225-ton, 152-foot statue was a gift from France in commemoration of 100 years of American independence. The French, always the comedians, presented the gift eight years late of the centennial celebration and left the shipping and handling costs to the United States.



Created by the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the statue was installed on Bedloe Island (now Liberty Island) in New York harbor in 1885. It was dedicated on October 28, 1886.


July 4, 1898 -
The French passenger liner La Bourgogne, sank within an hour after a collision with the British ship Cromartyshire, in dense fog, 60 miles south of Sable Island near Nova Scotia, in the Atlantic, on this date. Only 165 of the 711 passengers survived.

While there are no deaths on the British ship, only one woman of the more than 300 women and children listed as passengers aboard the La Bourgogne, was among the survivors. The remainder were mostly the crew, along with a few men from steerage. After a brief and horrifying inquiry, the French maritime authorities heard stories of the officers vainly trying to maintain order (only 3 of the 18 officers survived) and of the crew members using knives, boat hooks, oars and whatever else came to hand, against the passengers for places in the few lifeboats that survived the collision. Even more shocking, once the boats were in the water, the brave French crew beat off and stabbed swimming passengers who had tried to clamber aboard.

The authorities refused to hold a proper investigation and the entire incident was hushed up to avoid an international scandal.

Once again, the stellar principle of 'Woman and Children first' at work.


July 4, 1916 -
Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs opened a stand at Brooklyn’s Coney Island and (according to highly specious legend) held an eating contest as a publicity stunt that became an annual event on this date.

Not to be too indelicate but some of the corpses of the first patrons have just about finished digesting that meal.



And so it goes.