So remember to pull up your socks and help those less sock inclined.
Where has the time gone, today is the last day of International Cephalopod Awareness Days, and we are celebrating International Fossil Day (although National Fossil Day is schedule to celebrated on Wednesday October 13, according to the National Park Service website, and they don't appear to have any reason to lie. So I am a tad confused.)
Today is (or should be) Fossil Day, celebrating all the incredible suckers that have gone extinct.
October 12, 1950 -
One of the first comedy series to make the successful transition from radio to television The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
Gracie Allen wanted to retire from show business in the 1940s and was reluctant to branch out into television, but husband George Burns convinced her. Gracie decided she'd had enough of television by the fifth season and was furious that George kept going behind her back and signing contracts for additional seasons. During the eighth season, Gracie put her foot down and demanded she be allowed to retire. George retained the cast of characters for his short-lived spin-off, The George Burns Show, with hopes that Gracie would change her mind and return to the show, but she didn't.
October 12, 1966 -
This was a particularly busy date in entertainment history.
Sammy Davis, Jr. makes a cameo appearance on the ABC-TV series Batman, during one of their legendary Batclimbs.
October 12, 1969 -
An almost forgotten film, The Madwoman of Chaillot, directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katherine Hepburn and an all-star cast, opened in the U.S. on this date.
John Huston was originally set to direct this film, but left the production some 17 days before shooting was due to begin. Bryan Forbes agreed to take over in order to have the experience of directing Katharine Hepburn, who became a close friend; he also insisted on hiring Ray Simm, a regular collaborator, as the set designer, and several last-minute alterations were made to already-built settings. Forbes also gave Michael J. Lewis his first job as a film composer.
October 12, 1972 -
Motown Productions and Paramount Pictures released the Sidney J. Furie, Billie Holiday bio-pix, Lady Sings The Blues, starring Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, and Scatman Crothers, on this date.
When the film was first suggested in the late 1960s, Abbey Lincoln was the initial casting choice for the role of Billie Holiday with Diana Sands as second choice. The project was revived a few years later with Diahann Carroll as a suggested lead, but after discussions between Jay Weston and Director Sidney J. Furie, the role was offered to Diana Ross.
October 12, 1993 -
Touchstone Pictures releases the stop-motion animated feature film The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton, on this date.
Two items were invented to facilitate the filming of the movie: One was a "light alarm" which would warn the animators if any of the stage lights failed to come on. The other was a system that enabled a puppeteer to seamlessly switch to a replacement puppet if a puppet broke during a shot. Prior to this, either situation, a light failing to come on or a puppet breaking would destroy a shot.
October 12, 1994 -
The MTV Unplugged series premiered on this date, the much anticipated Robert Plant and Jimmy Page reunion, Unledded, to promote their stir album No Quarter which would be released two days later on October 14, 1994.
The reunion led to a tour in 1995 and a studio album, Walking Into Clarksdale, in 1998.
October 12, 1996 –
Though they've refused to release it on video for 27 years, largely due to dissatisfaction over their own performance, The Rolling Stones finally release their landmark 1968 all-star BBC television special, The Rolling Stones' Rock And Roll Circus, on this date.
Filmed at a studio in Wembley using an unusual hybrid type of camera, supporting both 16mm film and monochrome video. The idea was that TV production techniques could be used, with the cameramen framing shots on the video camera viewfinders, whilst a vision mixer inter-cut the camera feeds "on the fly", simultaneously controlling the film stop/start mechanisms in the cameras. Output was thus on film and could be easily edited, and prepared for final program sales. However the system was still in development and was unreliable. Equipment problems caused the tight filming schedule to overrun and the Stones finally went on stage in the small hours of the morning, after much delay.
October 12, 2007 -
The follow-up to Cate Blanchett's successful 1998 bio-pix Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, also starring Geoffrey Rush, and Clive Owen, opened in the U.S., on this date.
In the film, when Elizabeth arrives at St. Paul's Cathedral, construction is going on. In real life, St. Paul's actually needed repair work. Director Shekhar Kapur decided to improvise, and gave the workers costumes and period tools to cut real stone that was being installed in the cathedral. The workers in the scene are real-life stonemasons and construction workers.
October 12, 2008 -
The Fox Searchlight Pictures distributed Darren Aronofsky's film, The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke (in an intensely incredible performance,) and Maresi Tomei, closed the New York Film Festival on this date.
Darren Aronofsky revealed that Mickey Rourke was the first choice to play Randy "The Ram" Robinson but the studio wanted Nicolas Cage. Aronofsky fought to have Rourke as "The Ram", and ultimately won out.
October 12, 2013 –
At 16, New Zealander Lorde (Ella Yelich-O'Connor) became the youngest solo artist to write and record a Billboard No. #1 hit when Royals took that position on this date.
Lorde inspiration for writing the song came from listening to the Kanye West and Jay-Z project Watch the Throne, as well as Lana Del Rey's debut album, Born To Die. "What really got me," she told The Observer, "is this ridiculous, unrelatable, unattainable opulence that runs throughout. Lana Del Rey is always singing about being in the Hamptons or driving her Bugatti Veyron or whatever, and at the time, me and my friends were at some house party worrying how to get home because we couldn't afford a cab. This is our reality!" (laughs). "If I write songs about anything else then I'm not writing anything that's real."
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
October 12, 1492 -
Christopher Columbus, not the brightest bulb in the explorers club, reached America, making his first landing in the New World on one of the Bahamas Islands.
Columbus believed he had reached India.
It was discovered that Columbus' ships really landed on the 13th of October, 1492, he was persuaded by Dutch sailor Piet de Stuini (or DeStynie) to change it to the 12th in the logs because he said that the number 13 might frighten sailors and future investors away. An Italian study group called the Colombiani detected this change.
October 12, 1609 -
The children's nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice was published in London on this date.
This is reportedly the earliest known secular song published.
October 12, 1810 -
The festival was such a success, the locals decided to hold it annually. (a great little known fact - Albert Einstein, once worked as an electrician and helped to set up one of the beer tents in 1896.)
October 12, 1915 -
Her final words to the German pastor were recorded as 'Ask Mr. Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.'
Pretty tough cookie.
October 12, 1960 -
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev disrupted a U.N. General Assembly session by pounding his desk with a shoe during a dispute on this date.
This resulted in the popular stereotype of the Soviet Dictator who pounds his desk with his shoe.
In fact, many Soviet Dictators did not pound their desks with their shoes. They had their deputies do it for them.
October 12, 1964 -
The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1 with astronauts Boris Yegorov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Vladamir Komarov on board (the first space flight to carry more than one crewman into orbit.)
This was also the first mission flown without ejection seats, an escape tower, or even spacesuits (which in itself was a first).
October 12, 1969 -
The Soyuz 7 spacecraft was launched on this date. The main goals of this mission in the official version was to test spacecraft systems and designs, maneuvering of the space craft with respect to Soyuz 6, which had launched a day earlier.
When it achieves orbit, it marks the first time in history that five people are in space at the same time (the three astronauts aboard Soyuz 7 and the two aboard Soyuz 6.)
Wait for it, there's more to this story.
October 12, 1970 -
During his court martial for the My Lai Massacre, Lt. William Calley testified that Cpt. Ernest Medina had ordered that anybody they couldn't move would be "wasted."
October 12, 1973 -
U.S. President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald Ford for the vice presidency, under the 25th Amendment, to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned two days earlier.
I'm not saying that there is a connection but it gives you pause.
October 12, 1997 -
Folk singer John Denver died when the small plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay on the California coast.
Divers later recover most of the body, but not the head. Denver was ultimately identified by his fingerprints.
Perhaps you really didn't want to know that part.
October 12, 2000 -
In the port of Aden in Yemen, a large bomb, carried by two suicide terrorists on a rubber raft, caused heavy damage to the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 39.
This event was the deadliest attack against a U.S. Naval vessel since 1987.
And so it goes
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