Today is International Tongue Twister Day

(Or at least I think it is, there seems to be some controversy on the date.) Tongue twisters have technically been around since as early as the 19th century when John Harris published Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation, which included a twisty tongue tango for every letter of the alphabet. And while the book was meant to help children learn the fundamentals of speech mechanics, its titular twister garnered quite the attention and inspired a lot of lore about its namesake.



Try saying - The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.


November 8, 1949 -
Robert Rossen's adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer winning novel, All The King's Men, starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Mercedes McCambridge, and Joanne Dru, premiered in New York City on this date.



Mercedes McCambridge was cast after she got angry with the producers. She and other actresses were kept waiting in an office in New York City during open auditions. McCambridge told the producers off and stormed out of the office. They called her back and eventually cast her because she fit the part of Sadie.


November 8, 1962 -
Lewis Milestone's second major Hollywood telling of the Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard and Richard Harris, premiered on this date.



Marlon Brando's notorious on-set antics reached a pinnacle on this film. According to Peter Manso's Brando biography, Brando had so much clout by this point that he got MGM to green-light virtually every outrageous idea he had. At one point, he pulled people off the film crew to decorate and design a friend's wedding in Tahiti. Another time, he had airplanes filled with cases of champagne, turkeys and hams flown to Tahiti for parties.


November 8, 1964 -
Judy Garland and her daughter, Liza Minnelli appeared together at the London Palladium on this date. The program was broadcasted in the UK and U.S. on December 1, 1964; and the album Live at the London Palladium became a classic on Capitol Records.



The show marked Judy Garland's final public appearance, and her only live appearance with daughter Liza Minnelli.


November 8, 1971 -
Led Zeppelin released their untitled fourth album, on this date.



And kids remember, according to the Consumer Protection and Toxic Materials Committee of the California State Assembly, if you play Stairway to Heaven backwards, you can hear:



So, don't play you albums backwards (many of you have no idea what albums are.)


November 8, 1975 -

David Bowie makes his US television debut on the CBS variety show Cher, on this date.







Bowie performed both on his own as well as with Cher, which included an odd and interesting six and a half minute duet medley.


November 8, 1978 -
Richard Attenborough's masterful adaptation of William Goldman's thriller, Magic, starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, and Burgess Meredith premiered in the US on this date.



Upon seeing Fats for the first time, Anthony Hopkins was allowed to take the doll home to work with it. However, he wound up being so unnerved by it that he called the consulting ventriloquist in the middle of the night, threatening to throw Fats into the canyon if someone didn't come and get the doll immediately. Director Richard Attenborough ended up going to Hopkins' house to calm him down.


November 8, 1979 -
The program, The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



The show was planned to be temporary, but it evolved into Nightline in March of 1980.


November 8, 1989 -
Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of William Shakespeare's play, Henry V, starring Kenneth Branagh, Paul Scofield, Derek Jacobi, Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, Alec McCowen, Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane, Brian Blessed, and Christian Bale, premiered on this date.



As Sir John Falstaff is dying, the screenplay interpolates a flashback scene from (and a paraphrase of) Act 2, scene 4 of William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 1. In it, Falstaff jokingly tells Prince Hal (later to become King Henry V) that when he is King, he may stop socializing with all their other friends, but he shouldn't banish Falstaff himself from his company: "banish plump Jack, and banish all the world." In the play Hal responds aloud, but in the film he responds only internally, through voice-overs.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
November 8, 1431 -
Vlad III the Impaler (Vlad Dracula), Transylvanian prince, inspiring the name of the vampire in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, was probably born on this date.



People had better things to do back then (like find something to eat or keep warm) than keep track of the birth date of some sadistic royal person.

November 8, 1519 -
The Aztecs and their leader, Moctezuma, foolishly welcomed Hernando Cortez and about 300 Spanish soldiers, 18 horses and thousands of Mexico's native inhabitants who had grown resentful of Aztec rule marched unmolested into Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec empire, on this date.



The Aztec ruler Moctezuma, believing that Cortez could be the white-skinned deity Quetzalcoatl, whose return had been foretold for centuries, greeted the arrival of these strange visitors with courtesy--at least until it became clear that the Spaniards were all too human and bent on conquest.

Oops.


November 8, 1789 -
Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, from Georgetown, Kentucky, distilled the first sour-mash whiskey for public sale on this date.

His customers from the surrounding area called his product Bourbon County Whiskey - after the county of its origin.


November 8th, 1895 -
Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays on this date, when he discovered treated cardboard he was using in routine experiments glowed in certain situations – the result of radiation hitting the surface.



During subsequent experiments he found that objects of different thicknesses interposed in the path of the rays showed variable transparency to them when recorded on a photographic plate.


November 8, 1917 -
And now another episode of That Wacky Russia Revolution!

In late autumn 1917 The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky started the November Revolution (in October), overthrew the provisional government and announced that Russia was a socialist country.



On this date in order to celebrate that the November Revolution was firmed ensconced in November, Lenin was chosen as President of Russia, the world's first communist leader. One of his first acts as its leader was to sign a peace treaty with Germany that ended Russia's participation in the First World War.


November 8, 1923 -
Adolf Schicklgruber, failed artist and World War I veteran, launched his first attempt to seize power with a failed coup in Munich, Germany, that came to be known as the Beer-Hall Putsch. He proclaimed himself chancellor and General Erich Ludendorff dictator.



No one really taken him too seriously at the time. Unfortunately, he wasn't joking.


November 8, 1949 -

One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.







Bonnie Raitt, American blues singer, guitarist, songwriter, was born on this date.


November 8, 1950 -
The world’s first battle in which a jet plane shoots down another jet plane took place on this date, early in the Korean War during a raid near the Yalu River, which separates Korea and China. A group of about ten Soviet MiG-15 jet fighters approach the American bombers and were confronted by the four U.S. fighter jets escorting the bombers, Lockheed F-80 “Shooting Stars.”



Within about five minutes one MiG was destroyed, another was damaged, and the rest were in retreat. None of the U.S. jets were damaged. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Robert Brown was credited with being the first pilot to take down another jet fighter.


November 8, 1954 -

You never know when you're making a memory.







Rickie Lee Jones, The Duchess of Coolsville, two-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist, musician, songwriter and producer, was born on this date.


November 8, 1957 -
Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb, called Operation: Grapple X, over Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, on this date. (The U.K. had become an actual thermonuclear power with the detonation of Grapple X.)



It was a bit more powerful than they expected and caused infrastructure damage and destroyed some buildings on the island. I'm guessing this finally answers the question for me: No, I do not wish to spend Christmas (or any time for that matter) on Christmas Island.


November 8, 1994 -
Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy.



Michael O'Donoghue writer for National Lampoon magazine and the first head writer for Saturday Night Live, died on this date, of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 54, after a long history of what were thought to be chronic migraine headaches.


Before you go - The English department store chain, John Lewis and Partners released their annual holiday advert, (apparently this is one of the more highly anticipated commercials and it seems to be early this year.)



And boy they seem to have gone back to the tear jerker mode.


(A certain reader was a day early yesterday.)

And so it goes