Imagine, actually doing what you set out to do

King Emmanuel I of Portugal sent navigator Vasco da Gama out to discover a trade route into the Indian Ocean. Da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon on this date. Vasco da Gama departs Portugal in search of a sea route to India.



Remarkably, ten months later Da Gama and his crew arrived in Calicut in India, becoming the first to sail the passage from Europe to India round Africa - actually reaching his destination rather than 'discovering' some tourist spot in the Caribbean. As reward, the Portuguese king confers on him the title of Admiral of the Indian Ocean.


July 8, 1932 -
W.C. Fields' very funny political satire, Million Dollar Legs, opened on this date.



According to Joseph L. Mankiewicz, star W.C. Fields was "not a nice man," and Paramount gave into his demand that he be allowed to purchase all his dialogue from the film for 50 cents.


July 8, 1932 -
Tod Browning's groundbreaking shockfest Freaks, featuring genuine carnival sideshow performers, premieres at the Rialto theater in New York on this date.



F. Scott Fitzgerald was a member of the MGM writing department at the time the movie was in production. It is said that one day, as he came into the studio commissary for lunch and saw the Hilton sisters, one reading the menu and the other seemingly understanding it, he was horrified, became nauseous, and left the lunchroom. He would later go on to write of a studio filming a "circus" picture.


July 8, 1958 -
The center of the Hollywood Universe was born today in 1958.



Remember even you are only a few degrees away from Kevin Bacon.


July 8, 1964 -
Probably Jerry Lewis' best directorial effort, The Patsy, premiered on this date. (This was Peter Lorre's last film; he died four days after completing his role. Lorre hated the experience and death must have seems a welcome release.)



In the opening scene when Lewis makes his entrance he's wearing an English Chelsea styled boot, but during the freeze-frame fall out the window, and when he has to land back on the balcony, he's wearing very sensible and safe rubber-soled shoes.


July 8, 1966 -
Universal Studios released Frankenstein Conquers the World (Furankenshutain tai chitei kaijû Baragon - Frankenstein vs. Baragon) directed by Ishiro Honda and starring Nick Adams, Tadao Takashima and Kumi Mizuno, to U.S. theaters on this date.



Instead of filming a real horse, Eiji Tsuburaya included a fake-looking puppet in the scene when Baragon tears through a farm. He was well aware of how it looked, but decided not to go with a more realistic effect because it was by his own admission "funny". Tsuburaya was well known for his jocular approach to his films which frustrated some of the staff.


July 7, 1989 -
The second single from their album The Raw & the Cooked, Good Thing by the Fine Young Cannibals, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart on this date.



At the height of their popularity, the group was hounded to accept sponsorship deals, including a ridiculous one involving this song. "The worst thing was they wanted us to remake the 'Good Thing' video with Hondas instead of Vespas," David Steele told Q magazine in 1990. "I used to hang out with scooter kids and to them the biggest joke in the whole world was the Honda scooter."


July 8, 2010 -
Christopher Nolan's thought provoking sci-fi thriller, Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine, premiered in London, on this date.



During production, details of this movie's plot were kept secret. Christopher Nolan, who wrote the script, cryptically described it as a contemporary science fiction action thriller "set within the architecture of the mind."


Today's moment of edifying culture


Today in History:
July 8, 1115 -
Peter the Hermit died on this date. Peter is notable for his invention of The Crusades and never bathing. He whipped up support for the first Crusade as an attempt to dislodge the Seljuk Turks from Jerusalem: over three hundred thousand Christians perished in less than a year, during which they destroyed hundreds of villages throughout Europe and Asia Minor and killed tens of thousands of European Jews and fellow Christians on their way to a holy land they never reached.



As a result of this astonishing success, the Crusades were serialized and ran for several centuries.


July 8, 1776 -
In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell rang out from the tower of the Pennsylvania State House (now known as Independence Hall), summoning citizens to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, by Colonel John Nixon on this date.



The bell had the inscription: proclaim liberty throughout all the land onto all the inhabitants thereof.



An interesting aside - On July 8, 1835, the Liberty Bell cracked (again) while being tolled during the funeral procession for Chief Justice John Marshall. It was never rung again.


July 8, 1800 -
The first smallpox vaccine was administered on this date in the U.S. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (no relation to Price) of Massachusetts introduced Edward Jenner's method of vaccination of cowpox serum to his five-year-old son Daniel and a household servant.

Neither ever contracted smallpox and the vaccination was determined to have been an udder success.


July 8, 1822 -
The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a month shy of his 30th birthday, along with two others, died on this date, when his boat went down in a sudden storm off the coast of the Gulf of Spezia.

It was ten days before the bodies were found, and by then Shelley was identifiable only by the clothes he wore, and the book of Keats’ poems he had in his pocket. His face and hands had been completely eaten away.

Maybe I shouldn't have shared that part of the story.


July 8, 1856 -
The crank-operated machine gun (US patent #15,315) was patented on this date by C.E. Barnes of Lowell, Massachusetts, and the revolving gun turret was invented exactly six years later by Theodore Timby.

Both inventions enabled mankind to kill itself off with unprecedented ease and efficiency, thereby launching the modern era.


July 8th was a Sunday in 1881, so when a hot young man entered Edward Berner's drugstore in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, and ordered an ice-cream soda, his request was denied. Ice-cream sodas could not be served on the Sabbath owing to the ancient Mosaic injunction against them.

The hot young man pleaded his case so eloquently, however, that Berner felt sympathetic and came up with a compromise: he plopped a scoop of ice-cream into a dish and poured the chocolate-flavored syrup directly over it.



This religious dodge quickly became popular and came to be known as the Ice Cream Sundae. (The spelling was later changed to conceal the heretical origins of the dish. And whatever you do, don't repeat this story in Ithaca, NY.)



Since that glorious day, hundreds of millions of Americans have consigned themselves to Hell.


July 8, 1969 -
The U.S. Patent Office issued a patent for the game Twister. (Yes smartpants, the game came out in 1966 but the patent wasn't issued until this date.)

Remember kids, if you are going to play nude Crisco Twister - always use protection.


July 8, 1976 -
Former President Richard M. Nixon was disbarred by the New York Bar Association. Nixon attempted to resign voluntarily, as he had from the California and U.S. Supreme Court bars, but New York refused to accept his resignation unless he acknowledged that he had obstructed justice during the Watergate coverup.

Bad, Nixon, Bad.


July 8, 1999 -
The last electric chair execution in Florida took place, when Allen Lee Davis ordered his last meal and walked his last mile on this date. His execution drew particular attention because his nose bled during the botched execution and he was burned on his leg, groin and head.

The US Supreme Court ruled death by electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment in 2008, ending the practice, which by then was only used in Nebraska.

(If you sick puppies want to - there are photos on the intraweb of Mr. Davis after his less than professional execution - you have to search them out yourselves.)



And so it goes.