Today in European History

August 22, 1350 -
John II, also known as John the Good, succeeds Philip VI, known as Philip the Recently Dead, as king of France.

But you don't care. (We lost power due to the storm and it's only just come back.)


August 22, 1929 -
Walt Disney released the animated short film The Skeleton Dance (The first of Disney's Silly Symphony series,) animated by Ub Iwerks, on this date.



At the time, Walt Disney distributed his films through a company run by Pat Powers. But Powers couldn't sell it to distributors (who found the dancing skeletons odd and even gruesome). Undeterred, Disney was able to have the film screened at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles, where it was a rousing success.


August 22, 1930 -
W.C. Fields' classic short, The Golf Specialist, premiered on this date.



The picture of Bellweather on the wanted poster shows W.C. Fields in costume for his "Fatal Glass of Beer" sketch. It obviously is taken from a stage presentation of the well-tried routine, as the comedian would not film it until 1933.


August 22, 1946 -
The last of Alfred Hitchcock's wartime thrillers, Notorious, premiered on this date.



Alfred Hitchcock got the shot where Ingrid Bergman is in the background and the coffee cup is in the foreground, with both in focus, by using a giant coffee cup placed farther away than it appears.


August 22, 1972 -
The movie that introduced Monty Python and its seminal brand of comedy to American audiences, And Now for Something Completely Different, premiered in the U.S. on this date.



Debut theatrical feature film directed by television Director Ian MacNaughton, who was also later credited for "filmed sequences" for Monty Python's later sketch comedy concert movie, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl . These two movies were MacNaughton's only theatrical movie credits.


August 22, 1981 -
Duran Duran had their breakthrough hit in Britain when their single Girls On Film, hits #5 in the UK, on this date. It does not chart on its US release, but surges in popularity after its music video goes into heavy rotation on MTV.



(Kids, ask your folks if you're allowed to watch this video)

The clip, directed by Godley and Creme, has to be heavily edited for TV as it was only intended to be played in nightclubs and features adult themes and nudity.


August 22, 1986 -
Rob Reiner adaptation of the novella by Stephen King, Stand By Me, starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, and Kiefer Sutherland premiered in US Theatres on this date.



After Rob Reiner screened the movie for Stephen King, he noticed that King was visibly shaking and wasn't speaking. He left the room and upon his return, told Reiner that the movie was the best adaptation of his work he had ever seen.


August 22, 1990 -
Allan Moyle's teen comedy-drama, Pump Up the Volume, starring Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis, premiered on this date.



Christian Slater became physically ill several times during filming due to all the cigarette smoking he had to do.


Another Book from the back shelves of the ACME Library


Today in History:
August 22, 565 -
St. Columba, the man credited with introducing Christianity to Scotland, reported seeing a monster in Loch Ness on this date.

St. Columba made the sign of the cross and told the monster, "you will go no further," and it fled. There was no written report on how many drams of whiskey the saint had downed before his encounter.


August 22, 1485 -
At the Battle of Bosworth, England's King Richard III was terminated for having made a fiscally irresponsible bid on a horse.



For evermore, kingdoms went for a great deal more than small pieces of hardware.


August 22, 1770 -
Captain James Cook claimed Australia for the British crown when he landed on a small island off the coast of Queensland.

This must have come as a great shock to the indigenous inhabitants there. But then again, they didn't have a flag.


August 22, 1776 -
George Washington asked the Continental Congress for permission to burn New York City, to stop the city from being used to quarter troops arriving via the British fleet. It is declined, but his soldiers set 1/4th of the town ablaze on September 21.

There are still many in the government that would like to enact Washington's plan right now.


August 22, 1849 -
In the first air raid in history, Austria launched 200 pilotless balloons, each attached with 30-pound bombs, against the city of Venice on this date.

The bombs don’t cause much damage (luftballoons indeed.) These unmanned balloons were also the first drones. But on this August day, exactly a hundred years later,

Japan dedicated the town of Hiroshima as a shrine of peace after a single nuclear bomb killed 130,000 people


It's Claude Debussy's birthday (You may feel piss proud of yourself for just listening.)



You may go back about your business


August 22, 1851 -
The American schooner America was allowed, through special dispensation of Queen Victoria, to enter the annual Royal Yacht Squadron's Regatta. The America won the race, beating out 15 competitors and the trophy was renamed the America's Cup after the yacht.



The race was a 53-mile (85-kilometer) regatta at the Isle of Wight. The Cup is the oldest trophy awarded in international sports.


August 22, 1864 -
12 nations sign the first Geneva Convention specifically calling for the protection of the wounded during times of active warfare on this date. This leads directly to formation of the Red Cross.



In 1882, U.S. President Chester Arthur signed the treaty, making the U.S. the 32nd nation to do so.


August 22, 1893 -
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.





Dorothy Parker was born in New York City, to Henry and Eliza Rothschild (... My God, no, dear! We'd never even heard of those Rothschilds ....) on this date.



Her birth was two months premature, allowing her to say that it was the last time she was early for anything. She was quoted, when discussing her early years, "All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me."



While she was a successful writer, she was just plain lousy at committing suicide. Dorothy Parker attempted suicide four times herself before succumbing to a heart attack in 1967.


August 22, 1902 -
President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile (a purple-lined Columbia Electric Victoria) in Hartford, Ct. on this date. The police detail covering the event rode bicycles.

I'm sure he had a bully time, but the truth is a year earlier William McKinley rode in a car, although it was the electric ambulance that took him to the hospital after he was shot.


August 22, 1906 -
The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey, manufactured its first Victrola record player on this date.

The devices, including the hand cranked unit and horn cabinet would sell for $200.


August 22, 1920 -
The late great Ray Bradbury, science fiction writer whose works include The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, was born on this date.



Though considered by many to be the greatest science-fiction writer of the of the 20th century, he suffers from a fear of flying and driving. He has never learned to drive, and did not fly in an airplane until October 1982.


August 22, 1938 -
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, one of Hollywood's most famous dancing duos, appeared on the cover of Life Magazine.

There were on the cover to promote their current film, Carefree. The film is often remembered as the film in which Astaire and Rogers shared their first long on-screen kiss.


August 22, 1939 -
The first U.S. patent (US Patent #2170531 A) was issued for a disposable whipped cream aerosol container on this date.

Julius S. Kahn's patent was titled "An Apparatus for Mixing a Liquid with a Gas" and was specifically concerned with making whipped cream, using a ordinary soda bottle.

And so Whippets were born - I've got nothing else to say.


August 22, 1962 -
A group called the OAS (Secret Army Organization in English) plotted an assassination attempt on President Charles De Gaulle, who they believed had betrayed France by giving up Algeria (in northern Africa) to Algerian nationalists.





Frederick Forsyth dramatized the events of that August in his best-selling novel The Day of the Jackal, later made into a film.


August 22, 1973 -
Henry Kissinger, German-born American bureaucrat, succeeded William Rogers as Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, on this date.

Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year, (he's also considered a war criminal by others.) He continued in office until 1977.



(I really don't care about the man but it gave me an excuse to play a clip of Gilda Radner and John Belushi.)


Before you go, the Autumnal Equinox occurs in 31 days.



And so it goes.