So celebrate the day with the British Royal Family by drinking your G and T and make the room begin to spin.
October 19, 1966 -
The first pairing of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau (they went on to work together in 11 additional films), The Fortune Cookie, premiered on this date.
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau bonded early in the production process, finding a connection in their mutual love of football. They would remain friends the rest of their lives.
October 19, 1973 -
Columbia Pictures released Sydney Pollack's romantic drama, The Way We Were, written by Arthur Laurents and starring Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, on this date.
One of the first Hollywood productions to tackle explicitly the blacklisting of actors and writers during the McCarthy era which had profound repercussions for the Hollywood community in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Screenwriter Arthur Laurents was blacklisted circa 1951 while in Europe with Farley Granger, and the United States State Department declined to renew his passport for several years.
October 19, 1974 –
Billy Preston's single, Nothing from Nothing went to No. #1 on the Billboard Charts, on this date.
The B-side of the single was another song Preston wrote with his songwriting partner Bruce Fisher: You Are So Beautiful, which was later a hit for Joe Cocker.
October 19, 1977 -
Richard Brooks' somewhat lurid look at the 70s dating scene, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, starring Diane Keaton, Tuesday Weld, William Atherton, and Richard Gere, premiered in Los Angeles on this date
In order to get artistic control and creative freedom, director Richard Brooks took the minimum scale director's fee plus a percentage for directing the picture.
October 19, 1984 -
One of the greatest concert movies, the Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense, dirested by Jonathon Demme opens in the US on this date.
The big white suit worn by David Byrne in the film was inspired by Japanese Noh theater, which is known for having large, extravagant costumes. The suit was so big that it required its own specially fitted hanger.
October 19, 1990 –
Kevin Costner's directorial debut, Dances with Wolves, starring himself, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, and Rodney Grant, premiered in Washington D.C. on this date.
Because of the film's enormous success and sympathetic treatment of the Native Americans, the Sioux Nation adopted Kevin Costner as an honorary member.
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History: October 19, 202 BC - (it's quite silly to think that this is the exact date: Julius Caesar will not be working on his calendar for more than a century. The scribes and historians of the day would have been too involved with the celebratory orgies to note the proper date.)
Battle of Zama: Hannibal Barca and the Carthaginian army are defeated by Roman legions under Scipio Africanus, ending Second Punic War and the advancement of Rome as a major world force.
But what the hell do you care.
October 19, 1879 (I've also seen the date as 10/21/79, 10/22/79, 10/25/79 or 11/03/79 - I'm guessing geniuses can't be bothered when they're filing other people patents under their name every 12 minutes or crushing their competition with false and scurrilous rumors.) - Thomas A. Edison successfully demonstrates the electric light.
Unfortunately, it took several years to straighten out his first electric bill.
October 19, 1890 -
My favorite self-circumcising, Muslim passing, male brothel habitué, Late-Victorian pornographer and international man of mystery Richard Francis Burton, explorer, British consul, translator, died on this date.
His wife, Lady Burton, spent several years burning most of his unpublished notes (he had been working on translating the book The Perfumed Garden and its controversy chapters concerning homosexual sex positions - I kid you not,) before published a (highly sanitized) biography of her late husband.
October 19, 1901 -
Alberto Santos-Dumont successfully circled the Eiffel Tower in his Santos-Dumont No. 6 dirigible within a half hour and won a 100,000 franc prize.
An initial ruling said that he failed by 40 seconds because the race wasn’t finished until he touched ground. A 2nd vote granted him the win.
In the midst of the First World War, Salvation Army volunteers in France found themselves stymied by inadequate supplies and ovens for baking. Unable to prepare the cakes and and pies they so badly wanted to bake for the troops, they came up with the novel idea of frying rather than baking the dough.
The donut should not be confused with the bagel, despite their physical resemblance. The bagel is boiled and baked, whereas the donut is fried (but sometimes baked.)
Bagels are found in varieties such as onion, garlic, salt, poppy-seed, and sesame-seed, and are frequently consumed with cheese and fish.
October 19, 1953 -
After Julius La Rosa had finished singing Manhattan on Arthur Godfrey Time, the host (and general scum bag) Arthur Godfrey fired him on the air, announcing, "that was Julie's swan song with us."
Unaware the firing was coming (or what the phrase "swan song" meant), La Rosa tearfully met with Godfrey after the broadcast and thanked him for giving him his "break."
October 19, 1982 -
Maverick carmaker John DeLorean was arrested in Los Angeles with $24 million dollars worth of cocaine in his suitcase on this date.
The case was later thrown out of court when a judge rules that the FBI sting operation constituted entrapment.
October 19, 1987 -
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 22 percent dropping to 1739 making it the 2nd largest percentage drop in history in a single day, This was known as "Black Monday" and signaled other markets around the world to drop during October by 20 percent.
Many believed that some of the automatic computerized sell programs used by large financial institutions may have contributed to the fall as they are triggered automatically when certain events / figures occur in the markets and after this date more safeguards were put in place to stop a similar thing happening in the future.
And so it goes
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