Columbus Day originated as a celebration of Italian-American heritage and was first held in San Francisco in 1869. The first state-wide celebration was held in Colorado in 1907. Franklin Delano Roosevelt pronounced Columbus Day in 1937, a celebration of the “promise which Columbus’s discovery gave to the world.” Since 1971, it has been celebrated on the second Monday in October. The date on which Columbus arrived in the Americas is also celebrated as the Dia de la Raza (Day of the Race) in Latin America and some Latino communities in the USA. However, it is a controversial holiday in some countries and has been re-named in others. A growing number of people in the US are pushing to change the date into a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day.
And for all of this has nothing to do with the fact that it's Canadian Thanksgiving.
It's World Egg Day, so yes, let's all celebrate the incredible edible egg
Egg prices are still low compared to the high prices earlier this decade, (You're welcome.) I did speak to the Egg Board about that situation.
We here at ACME continue to salute International Cephalopod Awareness Days, celebrated October 8th through the 12th.
Today we celebrate Myths and Legends Day, saluting all the fantastical cephalopods of movies, literature and legend.
October 11, 1944 -
The murder-romantic classic, Laura, starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and Vincent Price, premiered in NYC on this date.
Gene Tierney didn't give herself much credit for its success: "I never felt my own performance was much more than adequate. I am pleased that audiences still identify me with Laura, as opposed to not being identified at all. Their tributes, I believe, are for the character - the dreamlike Laura - rather than any gifts I brought to the role. I do not mean to sound modest. I doubt that any of us connected with the movie thought it had a chance of becoming a kind of mystery classic, or enduring beyond its generation. If it worked, it was because the ingredients turned out to be right."
October 11, 1958 -
Spencer Tracy was virtually the whole movie in The Old Man and the Sea, which opened in U.S. theaters on this date.
Ernest Hemingway can be seen sitting in the cafe in the final scene wearing a tan baseball cap and conversing with other fishermen. This was his movie debut.
October 11, 1962 -
We all got to follow the wacky adventures of the crew of PT-73 when McHale's Navy set sail for the first time on this date on ABC-TV.
During an interview, Ernest Borgnine related that when he was initially approached by his agent with an offer to star in the pilot for the show, he turned it down (it was actually to be a drama, called Seven Against the Sea, which was retooled into a comedy when the series was picked up by ABC.) Not long thereafter a boy showed up on Borgnine's doorstep selling candy. He told Borgnine that he looked familiar, but that he couldn't place him. Borgnine, who had already won an Oscar for his role in Marty, asked the boy if he knew who played the lead character Paladin in the television series Have Gun - Will Travel. The boy said, "Richard Boone." He likewise was immediately able to remember the names of several other television series stars, even though he couldn't remember who Borgnine was. After the boy left, Borgnine called his agent to ask if that Navy pilot was still available. When told that it was, Borgnine told him to accept--and so became a part of what eventually would be his signature television series.
October 11, 1963 -
CBS aired the classic The Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, starring William Shatner on this date.
William Shatner played an elaborate prank on set when he conspired with a friend who was visiting the filming, actor Edd Byrnes, to trick director Richard Donner into thinking Shatner died. Between takes, and when Donner was off set getting coffee, Shatner and Byrnes staged a fake fight on the set, which was suspended some 30 feet above a giant, empty tank. When Donner ran back in the studio to see what was happening the two men chased each other around the back of the airplane set and wound up atop the plane wing. Donner saw a body falling off the wing and Byrnes yelling in terror as it impacted the concrete floor. Donner said when he ran to the fallen, motionless figure, thinking it was a dead or grievously injured William Shatner, he was greeted with laughter the moment he realized it was just an articulated human dummy the two men had found in another part of the studio and threw off the wing. Donner later joked, "Honestly, my first reaction was, 'Don't tell me I have to shoot the whole show over again.'"
October 11, 1975 -
The long running (some say too long running) comedy variety show started at 11:30 PM, on this date, with George Carlin as its host. It was called NBC's Saturday Night, because ABC featured a program at the same time titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. After ABC canceled the Cosell program in 1976, the NBC program changed its name to Saturday Night Live on March 26, 1977.
Besides George Carlin being the guest host, the musical guests included Janis Ian, performing At Seventeen and In the Winter, and Billy Preston, performing Nothing from Nothing and Fancy Lady.
October 11, 1981 -
The surprise art-house hit, My Dinner With Andre, starring Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory (sitting around, eating and talking,) premiered on this date.
Contrary to popular belief, Gregory and Shawn have said they are not playing themselves in the film and are merely playing characters with their own names. When asked about it, they said if the opportunity ever came to remake the film, they would switch roles.
October 11, 2006 -
One of the funniest shows about TV (other than Mary Tyler Moore) 30 Rock, starring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and Tracy Morgan, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.
Tina Fey had to leave Saturday Night Live in order to appear in the show as the schedules overlapped. Rachel Dratch also left the show at this time, as she was set to play Jenna DeCarlo. After appearing in the first version of the pilot, Dratch was replaced by Jane Krakowski and given bit parts during the first season.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
October 11, 1884 -
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, was born in New York City on this date.
She was the first wife of a president to hold her own news conference at the White House, in 1933. She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 until 1952. During her time at the United Nations, she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
October 11, 1890 -
Founded in Washington D.C. on this date, the Daughters of the American Revolution has chapters around the world and in all 50 US states. They work to promote US patriotism and preserve history as well as raise money for educational scholarships.
All members have a traceable ancestry lineage to someone who actively worked to achieve US independence. Since the mid-1980s, the DAR has supported a project to identify the names of African Americans, Native Americans, and individuals of mixed race who were patriots of the American Revolution.
October 11, 1899 -
The Bores of South Africa declared war on Great Britain in the hopes of generating interest, on this date.
(The war should not be confused with the Boar War, which had been canceled on account of the loss of tusks.)
October 11, 1910 -
Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane on this date. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey at Kinloch Field (Lambert-St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri in a plane built by the Wright Brothers.
He was having such a good time, he became the first US President to be repeatedly clubbed like a baby seal to get him out of the plane.
Bully!
October 11, 1919 -
Britain's Handley Page Transport became the first airline to serve in-flight meals when it offered lunch boxes on its London-to-Paris flight on this date.
The meals, consisting of a sandwich, fruits and chocolate, were sold at 3 shillings each. (British Airways has some of those first meals still available for purchase.)
October 11, 1939 -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt receives the Einstein-Szilárd letter, in which notable physicists warn Roosevelt of the possibility of Nazi Germany conducting research on nuclear fission in an attempt to create an atomic bomb. They urge Roosevelt to launch a similar research program before it’s too late.
The letter was written by Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner, but it will receive considerable national attention because it was also signed by renowned scientist and media icon Albert Einstein. The letter will arguably become the genesis of the Manhattan Project, and it will later become legendary when it’s revealed by scientist Linus Pauling that, by the end of his life, signing this letter had become one of Einstein’s greatest regrets.
October 11, 1952 -
Referee Francis DeReus halted the college football match between Wesleyan and Dubuque because of the profanity spewing from Dubuque's coach, Kenneth "Moco" Mercer. DeReus tossed coach and team from the game, and called the game because of profanity. The final score was Iowa Wesleyan 1, Dubuque 0. History does not record which vulgarities were involved.
October 11, 1961 -
Leonard 'Chico' Marx, the oldest of the Marx Brothers, died on this date. Chico was a compulsive womanizer and had a lifelong gambling habit. His addiction cost him millions of dollars by his own account. His brother, Gummo Marx, in an interview years after Chico's death, said, "Chico's favorite people were actors who gambled, producers who gambled, and women who screwed."
For a while in the 1930s and 1940s Chico led a big band. Singer Mel Torme began his professional career singing with the Chico Marx Orchestra (Desi Arnaz also toured with that band.)
Chico's lifelong gambling addiction compelled him to continue in show business long after his brothers had retired in comfort from their Hollywood income, and in the early 40s, he found himself playing in the same small, cheap halls he had begun his career in 30 years previously.
It was rumored that when Bugsy Siegal was shot, one of the items found on his person was a check from Chico, payment of a gambling debt from a poker game.
October 11, 1968 -
NASA launched Apollo 7, the first successful manned mission in the Apollo lunar-landing program on this date. The launch was performed with very little fanfare, as it was the first American space mission since three astronauts died in a fire aboard Apollo 1.
The mission, however, does mark the first live television transmission from a spacecraft in orbit.
October 11, 1975 -
William Jefferson (Blythe III) Clinton and Hillary Diane Rodham were married in Fayetteville, Arkansas 46 years ago, on this date.
The past is another country: they absolutely did things differently there.
October 11, 1976 -
After their re-education, eventually, so were they.
October 11, 1978 -
Former Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) stabbed girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb) to death in room 100 of New York's Chelsea Hotel on this date. Because Sid remembered nothing about the crime, theories include robbery and an abortive suicide pact. Vicious died of an ugly heroin overdose shortly before his trial.
Folks, there are no pretty heroin overdoses.
October 11, 1984 -
Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space on this date. During her three-hour extra-vehicular activity (EVA), Sullivan tested NASA's Orbital Refueling System (ORS) to determine the feasibility of fueling satellites in orbit.
Sullivan was joined aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger by Sally Ride, the first American woman to reach outer space. Mission STS-41-G was the first space flight with two women astronauts.
October 11, 2008 -
Luc Costermans, of Belgium, wanted to prove something on this date. So he borrowed a Lamborghini Gallardo that was outfitted with some special equipment. (I don't have any friends that would loan me their Lamborghinis.)
Driving with Guillaume Roman, Costermans drove 192 miles per hour on an airstrip in France, breaking the previous record of 178.5 miles per hour, which had been set three years before.
Oh, I forgot to mention that Costermans is blind and apparently Roman is crazy.
And so it goes
Before you go -
(Psst - there are 75 more days until Christmas.)
actors who gambled, producers who gambled, and women who screwed." indeed
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