It should not be confused with the Summer Solstice (or the Swedish horror film) except they're kind of celebrating the same thing,
(it's also the feast day of St. John the Baptist.)
Upon further thought, avoid all parties throw by Northern Europeans today
June 24, 1970 -
Mike Nichols' adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 was released on this date .
While on a tirade in his office, Major Major (Bob Newhart) walks past a framed photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a continuous shot, he paces around his office, and when he passes the picture again, it is of Winston Churchill, as he makes one more round of his office and grabs the fake mustache out of his filing cabinet, the photo has changed to that of Joseph Stalin.
Since shooting took longer than planned, Art Garfunkel wasn't able to make it back to New York City in time to start creating harmonies for and recording the Simon & Garfunkel album Bridge Over Troubled Water. Angered by the delay, Paul Simon wrote the track The Only Living Boy in New York about the incident.
June 24, 1970 -
20th Century Fox, for some unknown reason, released Myra Breckinridge, starring Raquel Welch and Mae West (!?!), on this date. It's as bad as you think it might be but you must watch it.
It was not so much the box-office failure as the complete and utter critical savaging of this movie - a reception that could only be termed as "disastrous" - that wrecked the careers of Writer and Director Michael Sarne and Roger Herren. The critical and financial flop also seriously hurt Raquel Welch, who never achieved the true star status that had been predicted for her.
June 24, 1971 -
Robert Altman brilliant take of the Western, McCabe and Mrs Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (featuring songs by Leonard Cohen) premiered in NYC on this date.
During post-production on this film, Robert Altman was having a difficult time finding a proper musical score, until he attended a party where the album Songs of Leonard Cohen was playing and noticed that several songs from the album seemed to fit in with the overall mood and themes of the movie. Cohen, who had been a fan of Altman's previous film, Brewster McCloud, allowed him to use three songs from the album - The Stranger Song, Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady - although Altman was dismayed when Cohen later admitted that he didn't like the movie. A year later, Altman received a phone call from Cohen, who told him that he changed his mind after re-watching the movie with an audience and now loved it.
June 24, 1983 -
Warner Bros. releases the sci-fi film Twilight Zone: The Movie, directed by Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller, and Steven Spielberg and starring Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, Scatman Crothers, Kathleen Quinlan, John Lithgow, and Burgess Meredith in U.S. theaters on this date. The film remakes three classic episodes of the original Twilight Zone television series and includes one original story.
As Vic Morrow was waiting to film what would turn out to be the scene that killed him, he said to a production assistant, "I must be out of my mind to be doing this. I should've asked for a stunt double. What can they do but kill me, right?!" While he was filming Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, he insisted on having a $1 million life insurance policy before he would shoot any scenes involving the helicopter in which he was due to ride. He was very insistent, and when asked why, Morrow replied "I have always had a premonition I was going to die in a helicopter crash!".
June 24, 1994 -
Weezer release the song Undone - The Sweater Song, from their debut album, Weezer (aka The Blue Album) on this date.
This was the first Weezer song that Rivers Cuomo ever wrote, back in 1991. Three years later it was released as the band's first single.
June 24, 2005 –
National Geographic Films produced the Academy Award winning documentary, March of the Penguins, which was released on this date.
Morgan Freeman almost passed on narrating the film, having told his agent that he was tired of being typecast as a narrator and to stop sending him those offers. He was persuaded to take a look at this film and changed his mind.
Don't forget to tune in to The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today
Today In History:
June 24, 1374 -
Please titrate your ergot carefully, a little sexual frenzy is good and all, but ...
Many of the sufferers are afflicted with frothing at the mouth, diabolical screaming, and sexual frenzy. The phenomenon lasts well into the month of July. Nowadays, ergot madness is suspected as being the ultimate cause of the disorder.
(Please refrain from mentioning raves.)
June 24, 1812 -
Napoleon, ever the French cuisine booster, wants to spread his enjoyment of meals with heavy cream sauces and decides to invade Russia (ultimately with mixed results.)
He has to wait 70 years before Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky decides to write an Overture about the entire incident.
June 24, 1880 -
The first performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, took place at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français on on this date. The song was originally commissioned by Lieutenant Governor of Quebec Théodore Robitaille for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony.
The original lyrics were in French; an English translation was published in 1906.
Calixa Lavallée composed the music, after which, words were written by the poet and judge Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. An English translation was published in 1906. Multiple English versions ensued, with Robert Stanley Weir's version in 1908 gaining the most popularity, eventually serving as the basis for the official lyrics enacted by Parliament.
June 24, 1947 -
Businessman pilot Kenneth Arnold encounters a formation of nine flying saucers near Mt. Ranier, Washington, exhibiting unusual movements and velocities of 1,700 mph.
No explanation is found for this first report of flying saucers in the recent era, but it does earn Mr. Arnold legions of skeptics and an eventual IRS tax audit.
June 24, 1948 -
Communist forces with 30 military divisions cut off all land and water routes between West Germany and West Berlin, prompting the United States to organize the massive Berlin Airlift. East Germany blockaded the city of West Berlin.
During the Berlin Airlift, American and British planes flew about 278,000 flights, delivering 2.3 million tons of food, coal and medical supplies. General Lucius Clay, the local American commander, ordered the air supply effort.
June 24, 1957 -
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, Roth v. United States, that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, though a dissenting opinion included with the ruling notes the issue of prior restraint renders this a terrible decision.
By 1973, another case, Miller v. California, a five-person majority agreed for the first time since Roth as to a test for determining constitutionally unprotected obscenity, superseding the Roth test. By the time Miller was considered in 1973, Justice Brennan had abandoned the Roth test and argued that all obscenity was constitutionally protected, unless distributed to minors or unwilling third-parties.
(Aren't you happy when important legal issues can be boiled down to animated cartoon presentations.)
June 24, 1967 -
Pope Paul VI published his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (priestly celibacy) on this date.
June 24, 1975 -
113 people were killed when an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 crashed while attempting to land during a thunderstorm at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on this date.
The crash was later attributed to a microburst, not experienced at the control tower because of a sea breeze front.
And so it goes.
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