If you have problems understanding this or the Immaculate Conception, remember the old lady in church, saying her rosaries that I've made mention of in the past, please go bother her, I'm not even going to try explaining this one to you. Not that I can't - I just want to see her smack you upside the head.
August 15, 1918 -
The Sinking of the Lusitania, written and directed by Winsor McCay, went into general release in the U.S. on this date.
It is the first full-length feature cartoon documentary, featuring over twenty five thousand individual drawings which took twenty-two months to produce. The twelve minute silent film is a an educational explanation of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
August 15, 1948 -
CBS-TV inaugurated the first nightly news broadcast with anchorman Douglas Edwards.
Mr. Edwards held the job for 14 years and was succeeded by Walter Cronkite.
August 15, 1964 -
Dean Martin's song Everybody Loves Somebody knocks The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night from the #1 spot on the Hot 100 on this date.
In 1964, Dean Martin was finishing up recording his Dream with Dean album and had completed 11 songs. Albums always had 12 songs in the US, so Dean asked his conductor and piano player, Ken Lane, if he had something else for him. Ken said he had an old song he had written - Everybody Loves Somebody. Dean liked it and recorded it with just Ken, a bass player, a guitar and drums. The reaction to the cut on the album was so great that Dean went back into the studio and re-recorded it for a single release with a full orchestra and background singers.
August 15, 1979 -
Neal Israel's futuristic comedy film, Americathon, starring John Ritter, Fred Willard, Peter Riegert, Harvey Korman, and Nancy Morgan, with narration by George Carlin, premiered in the US on this date.
Dorothy Stratten appears in an uncredited role wearing a Playboy Bunny style costume in the scene where Roy Budnitz donates blood.
August 15, 1979 -
The very long delayed epic, Apocalypse Now, premiered in NYC on this date. (Order some Banh xeo and a couple of bottles of Tiger Beer, and watch the Redux version, in honor of the anniversary.)
An early scene where Captain Willard is alone in his hotel room was completely unscripted. Martin Sheen told the camera crew to just let the cameras roll. Sheen was really drunk. He punched the mirror, which was real glass, cutting his thumb. Sheen also began sobbing and tried to attack director Francis Ford Coppola. The crew was so disturbed that they wanted to stop shooting, but Sheen wanted to keep the cameras going. At the time he was fighting a drinking problem and his own issues. He got so caught up in the scene and his own inner struggles that he hit the mirror. He believed that continuing the scene would help him face his problems.
August 15, 1981 -
Diana Ross and Lionel Richie started a nine week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with Endless Love, on this date.
This was released on the Motown label, which was home to both artists (the Commodores were a Motown act, and Richie stayed on the label as a solo artist). Ross, though, left Motown two months before it was released, signing a $20 million deal with RCA. Motown made the most of what they had recorded from Ross, and included Endless Love on a Diana Ross compilation album called All the Great Hits, which was also released in 1981.
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
August 15, 1057 -
Macbeth was killed at the Battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire on this date, by Malcolm Canmore, the eldest son of King Duncan I, who was deposed by Macbeth years earlier
He had been king of Scotland for 17 years. For those of you who do not know, you're not suppose to say the name of the Scottish king 'aloud'.
August 15, 1534 -
St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish ecclesiastic, founded the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in Paris with the aim of defending Catholicism against heresy and undertaking missionary work, on this date. Ignatius converted to Christianity while convalescing after a battle and wrote his Spiritual Exercises meant as a guide for conversion.
You may now impress your friends with that bit of knowledge.
August 15, 1843 -
Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark, the world's second oldest amusement park still in operation, offers rides such as roller coasters and carousels as well as exotic flower gardens, opened on this date. Today, it is the most visited amusement park in Scandinavia.
The world's oldest amusement park still in operation is the Dyrehavsbakken park, also in Denmark.
August 15, 1877 -
Thomas Edison wrote to the president of the Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, PA on this date (stay with me.)
The letter stated that the word, "hello" would be a more appropriate greeting than "ahoy" when answering the telephone.
So now you know
August 15, 1911 -
Procter and Gamble unveiled Crisco shortening on this date.
August 15, 1914 -
The SS Ancon cargo ship was the first to pass through the newly-built Panama Canal on this date.
Today, more than 14,000 ships pass through each year.
August 15,1914 -
109 years ago today, Julian Carlton, a servant of architect Frank Lloyd Wright burned down Wright's Wisconsin home, Taliesin and murdered seven people, including Wright's lover, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, and her two children. Wright was in Chicago at the time, working on a project.
Carlton was almost immediately captured and jailed, but died six weeks later (a result of having swallowed acid), without uttering a meaningful word about the motive behind his rampage.
August 15, 1935 -
Will Rogers, the most famous man in America, died near Barrow, Alaska when his sea plane plunges into a lagoon. At the time, he and one-eyed aviator Wiley Post were surveying possible flight paths between Seattle and the Soviet Union.
Remember bunkies, let this be a lesson to you - don't take a flight with a drunken, one eyed pilot.
August 15, 1945 -
Harry Truman hadn't sobered up yet. He could not quite believe that he was President and got to drop not one but two atomic bombs.
Truman had announced the Japanese surrender the day before. But it was on this day in 1945 that the Allies officially declared V-J Day.
Aug 15, 1947 -
At the stroke of midnight on the 14th of August, Britain withdrew its control on the jewel in its crown and India and Pakistan became two separate, independent, democratic nations,after some 200 years of British rule.
The division of Pakistan from India prompted mass emigration: Muslims moving west to Pakistan and Hindus moving east toward India. The event also unleashed a period of religious turmoil in India and Pakistan that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, including Gandhi.
August 15, 1965 -
The Beatles played to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, on this date, marking the birth of stadium rock.
People tend to forget that this was one of the first major stadium concerts by a rock group.
August 15, 1969 -
The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair began on this date, on Max Yasger's farm in upstate New York.
The greatest gathering of marketing and advertising professionals in American history, the festival featured the musical artists behind some of today's hottest commercial jingles.
August 15, 1977 -
The Big Ear radio telescope, operated at Ohio State University by the SETI project, receives a strong seventy-two second narrowband radio signal from deep space (6EQUJ5.) The event is named the “Wow! signal” for the notation made by Jerry Ehman, a volunteer on the project.
The signal appears to have come to the northwest of the globular cluster of M55 in the constellation Sagittarius, near the Chi Sagittarii star group. It has never been detected again.
There are a plethora of birthdays today:
I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give..
It's the 111th birthday of Julia Child - Chef, Spy, Philosopher and in my opinion, one of the greatest Americans of the last century.
Besides Julia's, today is the birthday of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769),
Rose Marie (1925),
Oscar Peterson (1925),
Linda Ellerbee (1944), (possibly the second greatest living American)
Jimmy Webb (1946),
Oh, and my friend Liz
And so it goes.
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