Whatever

Today is National Blah Blah Blah day. It’s the day to do any of the following, or whatever.



Stop smoking, take out the trash, empty the cat litter, lose weight, pick up your clothes, put dirty dishes in the sink, get a job or quit your job BUT do something about climate change.


April 17, 1924 -
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios was created following a merger of the Louis B. Mayer Company, Goldwyn Pictures, and Metro Pictures, on this date.



The MGM studio was a division of Loew's, Inc., one of the largest theater chains in North America at the time.


April 17, 1937 -
Happy Birthday Daffy!



Porky's Duck Hunt, starring Porky Pig, is notable for being the first appearance of the character who would later be named Daffy Duck. It also notable that this is the first cartoon in which Mel Blanc voices both Porky and Daffy.


April 17, 1970 -
A little known solo artist Paul McCartney releases his first solo album, McCartney, on this date.



Although no singles were released from the album, Maybe I'm Amazed was regarded as an instant classic, gaining massive AM and FM radio airplay. In 1977, a live version of Maybe I'm Amazed peaked at Number 10 on the charts. Until recently, the song has nearly always opened the piano set of McCartney's concerts. (An unfortunate co-incidence for this day, Linda McCarthy died from complications of breast cancer on this date in 1998.)


April 17, 1971 -
Three Dog Night's single, Joy to the World, made it to the top of the pop music charts on this date. The song was number one for six weeks.



Hoyt Axton wrote this for an animated TV special called The Happy Song that never materialized. Axton, who was a popular Country singer/songwriter from Oklahoma, pitched it to the group while he opened for them on a tour. Three Dog Night also had a Top-10 hit with Never Been to Spain, which was also written by Axton.


April 17, 1981 -
The United Artist movie Caveman, starring Ringo Starr, Shelley Long, Barbara Bach, Dennis Quaid, Jack Gilford, and John Matuszak premiered on this date.



The picture was nominated for Worst Picture at the Hastings Bad Cinema Society's 4th Stinkers Bad Movie Awards in 1981. There it was a Worst Picture nominee for 'Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy' but did win a Stinker Award there for 'Least 'Special' Special Effects'.


April 17, 1987 -
The final episode of Remington Steele, Steeled With a Kiss, starring Stephanie Zimbalist, Pierce Brosnan, Doris Roberts, James Read, Janet DeMay, and Jack Scalia, aired on this date.



The series was cancelled at the end of season four, on May 15, 1986, with a 60-day option left on the show. That same day, Brosnan agreed to play the role of James Bond in multiple movies for many millions of dollars. That generated so much publicity that ratings for Steele soared during the summer months and NBC decided to bring the series back for an abbreviated fifth season of three two-hour movies. With a seven year contract, Brosnan was obligated to do it.


April 17, 2006 -
A big-budget Coke commercial with a new song by Jack White called Love Is The Truth aired once on this date and was pulled.



The video was directed by Japanese director Nagi Noda. Although I can find no reason why the commercial was pulled, Jack White has said that he “saw this as an opportunity to record an inspirational song that could reach a worldwide audience in a big way.”

The world may never know.


April 17, 2011-
The hugely successful series Game of Thrones debuted on HBO, on this date.



Writer George R.R. Martin was approached several times with plans to adapt his (still unfinished) book series A Song of Ice and Fire into a movie, but he rejected them all, as he thought his books were much too expansive to be made into a movie. He had purposely written them to be virtually unfilmable, and he also declined offers to adapt only certain storylines from the book. When David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told him that they wanted to make a series out of it, he asked them who they thought Jon Snow's mother could be. Satisfied with the answer, he agreed to sell the rights to the book.


Word of the Day


Today in History:
April 17, 1397 –
Stand-up comedy begins today - Geoffrey Chaucer starts to recite the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II on this date.



scholars believe this is the start day of the book’s pilgrimage in 1387.


April 17, 1524 -
Giovanni da Verrazzano, another in a long line of European knuckleheads trying to find a shortcut to India, reaches the Narrows, the strait between Staten Island and Long Island on this date. He made the rookie mistake of not having enough change to go through and is turned around by local native authorities.



For some reason, we (the U.S.) named two bridges after him. Little know fact - he tried that trick again of not having exact change for the tolls while exploring the island of Guadeloupe and was eaten by native toll takers.


April 17, 1960 -
Eddie Cochran, the man behind Summertime Blues and C’mon Everybody, was killed, and Gene Vincent was injured, when the taxi carrying them from a show in Bristol, England, crashed en route to the airport in London, where he was to catch a flight back home to the US.



The taxi driver lost control on a bend in the road and spun backwards into a concrete lamp post. Cochran, who was seated in the center of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée Sharon Sheeley, to shield her, and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open.


April 17, 1961 -
In an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro, 1,500 Cuban exiles make a series of amphibious landings at the Bay of Pigs. After it becomes painfully obvious in just a matter of hours that the forces were trained, equipped, and armed by the United States, the speed freak and known sex hound President John F. Kennedy withholds necessary air cover to protect them.



In three days of fighting, Cuba captures 1,197 of the rebels and killed approximately 200.


April 17, 1964 -
On March 19th, 1964, Geraldine 'Jerrie' Mock, a 38-year-old mother of three, jumped in the family Cessna 180 and departed Port Columbus (OH) Airport. Just over 23,000 miles later, after nearly a month dealing with unfamiliar cultures, mechanical problems and dangerous weather, she arrived back in Columbus to become the first woman to fly solo around the world on this date.



Mock's journey took about a month; aside from being the first woman to fly around the world by herself, she also set several speed records and was also the first woman to fly both the Atlantic and the Pacific.


April 17, 1964 -
Henry Ford II unveiled the Ford Mustang, championed by Ford Division general manager Lee Iacocca, at the New York World's Fair on this date.



the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers. Ford sold more than 400,000 Mustangs within its first year of production, far exceeding sales expectations. The first models carried a starting price tag of around $2,300.


April 17, 1964
The New York Mets played their first game at Shea Stadium on this date, when they lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The five tiered stadium seated 55,601 fans. For previous two years, the Mets had played their home games at the Polo Grounds, previously the home of the New York Giants.



It was the first stadium of its size to have an extensive escalator system, being able to convert from a football gridiron to a baseball diamond by two motor operated stands, not having light towers and in which every seat was directed at the center of the field.


April 17, 1967 -
The spacecraft Surveyor 3 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on this date. It will become the second U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, where it will study the lunar surface and send more than 6,300 pictures back to Earth.



Based on the spacecraft's surface sampling tests, scientists concluded the lunar surface was solid enough to hold the weight of an Apollo lunar module.


April 17, 1969 -
A Los Angeles jury convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy on this date. Sirhan received a death sentence, but it is later reduced to life in prison.



Poor Mr. Sirhan, one of the only people who might have spoken in his defense, Robert F. Kennedy, was dead.


April 17, 1975 -
Cambodia fell on this date, when communist insurgents known as the Khmer Rouge enter the capital city of Phnom Penh.



Not much else to say after except that hopefully we won't see a repeat of this in Kyiv.


April 17, 1986 -
The long forgotten 335 Year War (as it is now known) was a bloodless conflict between the Netherlands and the tiny Isles of Scilly, (situated off the western coast of mainland Cornwall,) which began as far back as 1651 during the English Civil War, officially ended on this date.



In 1985, a local Scilly historian, Roy Duncan, wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London to see if there was any evidence to support the seemingly absurd claim of a 335 year war between the two nations. To everyone’s surprise, the embassy uncovered a series of documents which suggested that the Netherlands and the Islands were, indeed, still at war! Duncan hastily wrote to the Dutch ambassador Rein Huydecoper inviting him to visit the islands and to sign a peace treaty. Huydecoper agreed, and on this date, a peace treaty was signed between the Isles of Scilly and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

For the first time in 335 years the Scillonians could sleep safety in their beds, for as the Ambassador remarked; “It must have been awful to know we could have attacked at any moment.”


April 17, 2014 -
Exoplanet science took a big leap when NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope confirmed the discovery of a rocky Earth-like planet orbiting the habitable zone of its star for the first time ever.



Kepler-186f is about 580 light years from humanity, and is around 11% greater in radius with respect to Earth. 186f is just one in a five planet system orbiting around the Red Dwarf star of the same designation.

So now you know.



And so it goes.