Trying to get back into the swing of things

(I'm very glad I'm home but I have to admit I don't bounce back as quickly as I used to ...



Thank God for modern pharmacology.)


June 16, 1952 -
The first regularly scheduled episode of the TV comedy series, (which was a summer replacement for I Love Lucy,) My Little Margie starring Gale Storm and Charles Farrell debuted on CBS TV on this date.



In an usual move, CBS aired a radio version of the series with the same cast concurrently with the TV series.


June 16, 1956 -
Gene Vincent (Capitol Record's answer to Elvis Presley) and the Bluecaps' (so named after Ike's golf cap) Be-Bop-A-Lula, was released on this date.



Recorded in Nashville on May 4, 1956, this was released as the B-side of Vincent's first single, a provocative number called Woman Love. Radio stations in the United States wanted nothing to do with Woman Love, and the BBC banned it, so Capitol flipped the sides and put out Be-Bop-a-Lula as the A-side; for some reason the scandalous Woman Love was deemed inoffensive when relegated to a B-side.


June 16, 1960 -
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opened in New York on this date.



Alfred Hitchcock originally envisioned the shower sequence as completely silent, but Bernard Herrmann went ahead and scored it anyway, and upon hearing it, Hitchcock immediately changed his mind. Alfred Hitchcock was so pleased with the score written by Bernard Herrmann that he doubled the composer's salary to $34,501. Hitchcock later said, "Thirty-three percent of the effect of Psycho was due to the music."


June 16, 1967 -
The 3-day Monterey Pop Festival began, kicking off ‘The Summer of Love’ and securing California as the focal point of the counterculture movement. All the proceeds of the concert went to charity as all the artists agreed to perform for free.



It was the first major US appearance by The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and became the inspiration for future music festivals, like Woodstock two years later. The entire festival was recorded by D.A.Pennebaker for a documentary and record set, which inspired tens of thousands of American youth to move to the West Coast.


June 16, 1979 -
The Supertramp song Logical Song peaked at #6 on the Billboard Charts, on this date.



The German dance music band Scooter did a techno version of The Logical Song, which was wildly popular across Europe and hit #2 in the UK. It has been certified gold by the BPI, selling over 400,000 copies and was the 15th best selling single of 2002.


June 16, 1984 -
Cyndi Lauper's song Time After Time topped the charts (her first no.1 hit) on this date.



Captain Lou Albano, who appeared in the Girls Just Want To Have Fun video, played a cook at a diner in this one. Lauper's mom and boyfriend were also in the video, portraying her mom and boyfriend. The video was directed by Edd Griles, who had worked with Lauper since her days in the band Blue Angel. He also did her videos for Girls Just Want To Have Fun and She Bop.


June 16, 1984 -
Frankie Goes To Hollywood had their second UK No.1 single, on this date, with Two Tribes. It stayed at No.1 for nine weeks making Frankie Goes To Hollywood the first band to have their first two singles go to the top of the UK chart. During this run the group's previous single Relax climbed back up the charts to No.2.



Former 10cc band members Lol Creme and Kevin Godley produced a memorable video featuring a no-holds-barred, hand-to-hand fight between Ronald Reagan and then Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. Godley recalled to Q magazine: "It was a very intense shoot. We were trying to get the audience to behave in a manner that we wanted to by chanting, 'Kill! Kill! Kill!' A few of them seriously got into the spirit of it by jumping in the ring and beating each other up!"


June 16, 1997 -
The Verve released Bitter Sweet Symphony in the UK on this date. The song lives up to it's title: the song is a huge hit, but Mick Jagger and Keith Richards end up getting credits and royalties.



The famous orchestral riff incorporates a sample from an obscure instrumental version of the 1965 Rolling Stones song The Last Time by Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham, who included it on a 1966 album called The Rolling Stones Songbook (credited to The Andrew Oldham Orchestra).



The Verve got permission to use the six-second sample from Decca Records, which owned the Oldham recording, but they also needed permission from the publisher of The Last Time, something they didn't realize until after the album was completed.


Another unimportant moment in history


Today in History:
June 16 1750 BC -
King Hammurabi died in Babylon on this date and was succeeded by his son Samsu-iluna.



I know you're saying to yourself, "Who cares?". Well, now you know.


June 16, 1556 -
Keep this in mind: Always read your Baedeker before traveling.




June 16, 1858 -
More than 1,000 Republican delegates met in the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse for the Republican State Convention. By late afternoon, they chose Abraham Lincoln as their candidate for the U.S. Senate, running against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.

Later that evening, Lincoln delivered this address to his Republican colleagues in the Hall of Representatives. The title comes a sentence from the speech's introduction, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," which paraphrases a statement by Jesus in the New Testament.



If only Lincoln had read his Scriptures a little more closely he would have uncovered the passage that had confused many biblical scholars, "Hey Abe, Don't go to Ford's Theatre on Good Friday."


June 16, 1890 -
British comedian Arthur Stanley Jefferson (Stan Laurel), was born on this date. He acted in 190 films (many of them with his partner Oliver Hardy) and was awarded a Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1961.



He died in 1965 from a heart attack. At Laurel's funeral, Buster Keaton said, "Chaplin wasn't the funniest, I wasn't the funniest, this man was the funniest."


June 16, 1904 -
Happy Bloomsday!

Every June 16 (the date on which the novel is set,) the reader of Ulysses celebrate the day Leo Bloom takes his famous walk around Dublin. James Joyce fans mark the date each year, greeting one another joyously

- Yes - yes - yes! they'll nervously titter. They'll think themselves very clever (at least they will, anyway.)



They'll feel smart and proud and better than the rest of us (and you again can feel morally superior for knowing it), and now you know why.


June 16, 1948 -
In the first skyjacking of a commercial plane, three armed men stormed the cockpit of the Miss Macao, a passenger seaplane operated by Cathay Pacific airline.

When the pilot refuses to turn over the controls, he was shot dead and the plane crashes into the ocean. The only survivor among the 27 people on board was the leader of the terrorists.

Oops.


June 16, 1958 -
Imre Nagy, once prime minister of Hungary for all of ten days, was executed by the Soviet Union for attempting to withdraw his country from the Warsaw Pact on this date.

It is said that Nikita Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries."

That'll learn em.


June 16, 1959 -
While entertaining friends at his home, George Reeves (Ben Affleck), who played the title character in the original Superman TV series, went upstairs to his bedroom and committed suicide with a 9mm German Luger.



This has been hotly debated and it is now believe that the irate husband of a B movie actress Reeves was sleeping with, shot the actor in his home.


June 16, 1961 -
This may be a shock to some of you readers but some male ballet dancers engage in an active sodomy lifestyle. Rudolf Nureyev was a major buggerer, much to the consternation of both the Kirov management and the Russian political authorities. In the Kirov's first-ever appearance in Paris in 1961, Nureyev was an outstanding success, yet his defiance of company regulations about mingling with foreigners, provoked a command return to Moscow.



Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Kirov Ballet at Le Bourget Airport in France while he was on the verge of flying back to USSR on this date. Within five days, Nureyev embarked on a six-month season with the international Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, dancing the Prince and the Blue Bird in The Sleeping Beauty.


June 16, 1963 -
Valentina Tereshkova was the first female to travel outside the Earth's atmosphere, on this date.



She orbited the Earth 48 times aboard the Soviet Union's Vostok 6. She is still the only woman ever to go on a solo space mission.


June 16, 1976 -
15,000 schoolchildren took to the streets of Soweto to protest South Africa's adoption of bilingual instruction in the Afrikaans language.



The nonviolent march ended abruptly when police and soldiers opened fire on the crowd, killing 600 and igniting days of rioting throughout the region.


June 16, 1999 -
The founder of the United Kingdom's Monster Raving Loony Party, one Screaming Lord Sutch (real name David Edward Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow), was found hanged at his late mother's residence. Sutch was the longest lasting party leader in the UK at the time of his death, which was ruled a suicide.



One of the Loony Party planks was, all vegetables sold in supermarkets, should be clearly marked “Strictly for oral use only”


Before you go - as a service to our readers - ACME would like to point out as much as it makes you laugh -

this is an unacceptable Father's Day gifts for Dad.


And so it goes.