Try to avoid all unlucky things

It's Friday the 13th.



In most large cities in the United States, many building don't have 13th floors. In Japan, they don't have 4th floors, because the word for four sounds similar to the word for DEATH! Some say that the modern basis for Friday the 13th phobia dates back to Friday, October 13, 1307.



On this date, Pope Clement in conjunction with the King Philip of France secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France. The Templars were terminated with extreme prejudice (burned to a crisp) for apostasy, idolatry, heresy, "obscene rituals" and homosexuality, corruption and fraud, and secrecy, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long.

Those wacky Knights were such party animals.

Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, author of 13: The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition, suggests in his book that references to Friday the 13th were practically nonexistent before 1907; the popularity of the superstition must come from the publication of Thomas W. Lawson's successful novel (of it's day,) Friday, the Thirteenth. In the novel, a stock broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on Friday the 13th.

If it gives you some comfort, today is the only Friday the 13th of this year.


Today is International Lefthanders Day.



The U.S. has had eight left-handed presidents; James Garfield, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.


August 13, 1942 -
Walt Disney's Bambi premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York on this date.



Unusual for the time, Walt Disney insisted on children providing the voices for the animals when they were young, instead of using adults mimicking youngsters.


August 13, 1947 -
The apex of technicolor film-making - Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's Black Narcissus, premiered in New York City on this date.



Director of Photography Jack Cardiff drew inspiration for his shots from the great painters; he experimented with the tones of Van Gogh, for example, or the reds and greens from Rembrandt.


August 13, 1966 -
Napoleon XIV's goofy breakup song They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-haaa peaks at #3 on Billboard's Hot 100 on this date. It quickly drops to the bottom of the Top 40, however, as several radio stations ban the tune, fearing its lyrics might be interpreted as being insensitive to the mentally ill.



When this novelty song became a surprise hit, the record company sent other people to perform it at live appearances while Jerry Samuels, a recording engineer from New York City, kept working at his day job. (An interesting bit of trivia, at least to me,) when this novelty song became a surprise hit, the record company sent other people to perform it at live appearances while Samuels kept working in the studio. Once a song is released, it falls into the realm of compulsory licensing, which means anyone can record it if they pay the statutory royalty rate. Since this has no discernable melody, the producers were able to copyright it as a lecture intended for oral delivery instead of as a song. This meant other record companies couldn't copy it without permission.


August 13, 1967 -
One of the defining movies of the 1960s, Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, had its US premiere on this date.



A screening for Jack L. Warner went very badly for Warren Beatty and Arthur Penn, Warner got up three times to pee. Warner initially dumped the film into drive-in and second run theaters, and apparently went to his grave still hating the film.


August 13, 1976 -
AIP released the sci-fi film Futureworld, starring Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner, Arthur Hill and Yul Brynner, on this date.



This film was the first film sold to China for a large-scale release after President Jimmy Carter formalized relations with the country.


August 13, 1997 –
Trey Parker and Matt Stone decide to become millionaires many times over when their program South Park premiered for the first time on Comedy Central on this date.



To date, South Park still holds the Guiness World Record for "Most Swearing in animated series."


Another unimportant date in history


Today in History:
August 13, 1521 -
After a 75 day siege, Hernando Cortes captured and destroyed the capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan (Aztec for "Mexico City") on this date.



When the Spaniards fail to discover Montezuma's treasure, they tortured Cuauhtemoc (the current Aztec king) by pouring hot oil over his feet. The emperor responds by asking, "Am I on a bed of roses?" (Who knew the Aztecs were such comedians?)

It was important to defeat the Aztecs, because they were an Evil Empire that practiced Human Sacrifice and Difficult Spelling.


August 13, 1899 -
Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.



Arguably, the most famous film director in the 20th Century, Alfred Hitchcock was born on this date. Hitchcock, known as the master of suspense, is most renowned for his films Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho.


August 13, 1907 -
The first (gasoline powered) taxicabs, the New York Taxicab Company fleet, appeared on NYC streets on this date (the actual date seems to be mired in controversy.) The first 65 taxis were imported from France by businessman Harry N. Allen, who adapted the French word taxi-mètre and coined the word "taxicab" to describe the vehicles he was importing.

In time, the shortened term "taxi" came into common usage. (The first gas powered cabs were red and green. Allen was also the first person to paint his taxis yellow, after learning that yellow is the color most easily seen from a distance.)


August 13, 1918 -
Women were first allowed to enlist in the United States Marine Corps on this date.

Opha Mae Johnson was the first of 305 women to enlist in the US Marine Corps on this day.


August 13, 1926 -
Minor league Rat Bastard (depending on your point of view) Fidel Castro was born on his father's 23,000-acre sugar cane plantation near Biran, Cuba on this date.



I wonder if Castro has gotten that chance to play ball in the Major Leagues in the after life?


August 13, 1961 -
The city of Berlin split itself right down the middle on this date.

The Cold War was running pretty hot back then. The Russians were just nasty. They were so evil they convinced East Germany to shut West Germany out. East Germany locked the Brandenburg gate and threw away the key. Then, just to be absolutely safe, they built the Great Wall of Berlin, and assigned evil socialist soldiers to shoot any West Germans who tried to sneak into East Germany.



Oddly enough, no West Germans tried to sneak in.

The soldiers, being evil socialist bastards with guns and therefore needing desperately to shoot at someone, therefore shot at East Germans.

About a year later, for example, on August 17, 1962, 18-year-old Peter Fechter was shot by East German guards as he tried to cross the Berlin Wall into West Germany. He bled to death in public view.



The guards (Rolf Friedrich and Erich Schreiber) who shot him were tracked down and convicted of manslaughter thirty-four years later.

Moral: you might think you can get away with shooting people just because you're a heavily-armed socialist bastard living in an evil socialist regime propped up by an evil socialist empire - You can run. But you can't hide. (It may seem like you can, but just wait.)

Eventually John F. Kennedy announced that he was a jelly-filled donut, Ronald Reagan asked Mr. Gorbachev to tear down this wall, Boris Yeltsin rode on a tank, and there didn't seem to be any real point in having a Wall any more.

So they tore it down. (Karma does appear to bite one in the ass.)



And so it goes.