I guess this means it's YOLO Day

For some reason, today is All or Nothing Day. All or Nothing Day is a time to take risks and live on the edge.



Live like today is your last day on earth and let your inner daredevil shine, especially if you are looking to become a Darwin Award winner.


July 26, 1951 -
Walt Disney's 13th animated feature, Alice in Wonderland, premiered in the UK and New York City on this date.



This movie has more songs and characters than any other Disney animated film.


July 26, 1969 -
Johnny Cash released the single, A Boy Named Sue, on this date.



Johnny Cash performed this song in the East Room of the White House on April 17, 1970 when he and his wife were invited by President Richard Nixon. Nixon's staff had requested the song along with Okie From Muskogee and a song by Guy Drake called Welfare Cadillac, but Cash refused to perform those songs, saying he didn't have arrangements ready.


July 26, 1980 -
The Rolling Stones started a seven week run at No.1 (the group's eighth US No.1,) on the US album chart with Emotional Rescue, on this date.



Mick Jagger sang much of this in a falsetto, which was the thing to do with disco songs. The Bee Gees did the same thing, but unlike The Stones, were never able to get back the fans they lost to disco.


July 26, 1986 -
Peter Gabriel's song Sledgehammer went to No.1 on the US singles chart, No.4 hit in the UK, on this date.



Gabriel said regarding the theme of this song: "Sometimes sex can break through barriers when other forms of communication are not working too well."


July 26, 1991 -
One of Mel Brooks non-film parody movies, Life Stinks, starring Mel, Leslie Ann Warren, Howard Morris, and Jeffrey Tambor premiered on this date. (This was one of my father-in-law's favorite movies.)



The film screened out-of-competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 playing at a "surprise screening". France, being the home of great existential and phenomenological writers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, contributed to this movie screening there, the film being an "existential comedy".


July 26, 2006 –
The directorial debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine, starring Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, went into limited release on this date.



All of the girls acting as participants in the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pageant, except Abigail Breslin, were veterans of real beauty pageants. They wore the same costumes, including hair and makeup, and performed the same talent routines as they had in their real-life pageants.


July 26, 2015 -
In a field just outside of Cesena, Italy, 1000 musicians and singers play Foo Fighters Learn to Fly simultaneously with the dream of attracting the band to play a show in their city for the first time in nearly 20 years.





On November 3, 2015, the Foo Fighters performed a 27-song set for the for the Rockin’ 1000, starting with Learn to Fly.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
July 26, 1753 O.S. (August 6, 1753 N.S.) -
Professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, German physicist, died of electrocution in St. Petersburg, Russia on this date. He was attending a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, when he heard thunder. The Professor ran home with his engraver to capture the event for posterity. While the experiment was underway, a supposed ball lightning appeared and collided with Richmann's head leaving him dead in a red spot. His shoes were blown open, parts of his clothes singed, the engraver knocked out; the door frame of the room was split, and the door itself torn off its hinges.

Beside not telling him that hemlock was poison, his mother did not sit Little Georg upon her knee and tell him about the evils of electricity. He was apparently the first person in history to die while conducting electrical experiments.


July 26, 1775 -
The Continental Congress established a postal system for the colonies with Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general in Philadelphia on this date.

Franklin also established the standardized method of charging for mail delivery based on weight and distance.


July 26, 1826 -
Schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll was hanged in Valencia, Spain after uttering his last words: "I die reconciled to God and to man," on this date. He was the last person executed by the Spanish Inquisition.

Gee, I guess at that point everybody should have expected the Spanish Inquisition. (I promise I won't mention the Inquisition for a while.)


July 26, 1934 - Winsor McCay, an American cartoonist and animator, died on this date. A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades.



His two best-known creations are the newspaper comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, which ran from 1905 to 1914, and the animated cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur, which he created in 1914.


July 26, 1943 -
Michael Philip Jagger, Golden Globe and Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, occasional film producer and actor, was born on this date.



Deveraux Octavian Basil Jagger, Mick's eighth child (who is almost six years old) is the grand uncle to his half sister Jade Jagger Fillary's first granddaughter, Ezra Key, who is eight (although it is impolite to tell a lady's age.)


July 26, 1947 -
President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The act forbade the CIA from operating within the US.

With the NSA surveillance program, that's not quite working out at the moment, is it?


July 26, 1956 -
A little more than 11 hours after colliding with the Swedish liner Stockholm, the Italian liner Andrea Doria, carrying 1,134 passengers and 572 crew, sank off New England coast.



46 people on the Andrea Doria and 5 crew members of the Stockholm died as a result of the crash. The SS Ile de France had been near the collision site and was able to assist in the rescue of many of the passengers of the Andrea Doria. Within four years, the Ile de France was used as a floating prop for the nautical disaster film, The Last Voyage, which had some plot similarities to the disaster involving the Italian liner SS Andrea Doria.


July 26, 1959 -
There was a partial nuclear reactor meltdown at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, on this date. Little known outside of the area, the nuclear accident released far more radiation that the Three Mile Island accident.



A report in 2006 said it may have caused hundreds of cases of cancer in the community, and that chemicals threatened to contaminate ground and water.


July 26, 1984 -
Serial killer, cannibal and flesh suit wearer Ed Gein died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute, a home for the criminally insane on this date.

Gein inspired the films Psycho and Silence of the Lambs. Bunkies, please follow this advice from your old Doctor - DON'T go looking for any of the true crime scene photos attached to Mr. Gein's name unless you'd like the truly grizzly.


July 26, 1991 -

Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) was arrested in Florida, for exposing himself at the South Trail XXX Cinema on this date.

For several years following the incident, Reubens lost his children's television show and product endorsements.



And so it goes.