Tuesday, September 5, 2023

After all, we all need some ‘me time’!

Although it may seem like a cruel holiday to celebrate this time of year, September 5th is Be Late For Something Day. So forget the calendar and be late for something, except school.



Remember that things can go on without you, and maybe it’s not all quite as important as you thought.


Today is also National Cheese Pizza Day.



While you do not have to don tight fitting polyester pants and strut down 86th Street in Bensonhurst to celebrate, please remember that you have to fold your pizza in half to eat it, and for god's sake, don't use a fork and a knife.


September 5, 1916 -
D. W. Griffith classic silent-film masterpiece, Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages, premiered on this date.



The Babylonian orgy sequence alone cost $200,000 when it was shot. That's nearly twice the overall budget of The Birth of a Nation, another D.W. Griffith film and, at the time, the record holder for most expensive picture ever made.


September 5, 1927 -
Walt Disney's Trolley Troubles, first appearance of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, premiered on this date.



Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks worked for Universal Pictures on this cartoon. Universal showed their appreciation for the two for making Oswald a star by threatening to cut their salaries. As a result, the two walked...and soon created Mickey Mouse and the rest is history.


September 5, 1976
The first regularly scheduled episode of The Muppet Show, starring guest host Joel Grey, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



Kermit the Frog and Waldorf are the only characters to appear in all 120 episodes of the series.


September 5, 1981 -
Soft Cell's single Tainted Love was at No.1 on the UK singles chart on this date.



This is a cover of a 1964 song by the American soul singer Gloria Jones, whose original version was released as the B-side of her single My Bad Boy's Comin' Home. A club DJ named Richard Searling picked up a copy in Philadelphia and in 1973 started playing it in his sets at Va Va's, a popular club in Bolton, England that was very influential on the UK northern soul circuit. The song found new life, and Jones recorded a new version in 1976 that was released on her album Vixen.


September 5, 1981 -
Stevie Nicks’s solo debut, Bella Donna, goes to No. 1 on the Billboard Charts, on this date. The album featured such hits as Edge of Seventeen, Leather and Lace with Don Henley, and Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.



The multi-platinum record, which remained on the US album charts for nearly three years.


September 5, 2006 -
Katie Couric made her first appearance as anchor on CBS Evening News.



Her introduction normally would have been read by an announcer, but in this case, viewers heard the voice of CBS News legend Walter Cronkite make the introduction.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
September 5, 1638 -
King Louis XIV of France was born on this date.



Like Elizabeth I in England, Louis inherited a struggling kingdom and built it into a major power. Unlike Elizabeth, Louis did not remain a virgin. On the contrary, he produced so many little bastards that he came to be known as the "Son King," which led him to conclude famously L'etat, c'est moi. ("Kid, I'm your father.")


September 5, 1698 -
Russian Tsar Peter the Great imposed the first millionaire's tax when he began taxing beards on this date.



The new taxation was an attempt to modernize his citizens from what he felt were archaic traditions. On several occasions he cut off the beards of noblemen himself. Beards were still allowed for clergy, monks and peasants.


September 5, 1870 -
It's bizarre to think you can know this but, the first woman ever to vote legally in the U.S. marked her ballot in Laramie, Wyoming, on this date.


Louisa Swain made history by casting an electoral ballot under a new law giving women full civil and political equality with men. Described as “a gentle white-haired housewife” of 69 years old, she arose early that day and arrived early to the poll, where election workers invited her inside to mark a ballot.


September 5, 1877 -
The great Sioux Chief Crazy Horse, a cousin of Kicking Bear, was fatally bayoneted at age 36 by a soldier at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, on this date.



His final resting place remains unknown.


September 5, 1882 -
The first Labor Day parade in the United States was held on this date in New York. Except it was not held on a Monday but a Tuesday. And it wasn't really a parade but a protest.

Matthew Maguire, secretary of a machinists and blacksmiths local union, pushed for the idea with the New York Central Labor Union as a way to promote the adoption of the 8-hour work day.


September 5, 1921 -
Undiscovered actress Virginia Rappe somehow ruptures her bladder during actor-comedian Fatty Arbuckle's party at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco, on this date.



Three days later, the feverish woman is checked into a maternity hospital, where she dies from peritonitis. Arbuckle is tried for her murder but ultimately acquitted of any wrongdoing by a jury, his brilliant film acting career was destroyed. He had been one of the most popular (and highest-paid) film comedians of the silent era, second only to Chaplin.


September 5, 1930 -
Charles Creighton and James Hargis completed the drive from New York City to Los Angeles and back to New York City all in reverse gear, on this date.



The trip took 42 days in their 1929 Ford Model A.


September 5, 1942 -
You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn't mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that's what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.



Werner Herzog, German actor, director, producer, and screenwriter was born on this date.


September 5, 1946 -
Farrokh Bulsara, British musician, singer and songwriter, was born on this date.



Freddie Mercury has been called one of Rock's greatest performers of all time.


September 5, 1972 -
Five Palestinians armed with machine guns sneak into the Olympic Village in Munich. There they take nine Israeli athletes hostage, killing two others in the process, on this date.



Later, they demand safe passage out of the country and the release of 200 Palestinians from prison in Israel. Ultimately, none of the athletes made it out alive.


September 5, 1975 -
Manson Family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme almost assassinated President Gerald Ford with a .45 automatic in Sacramento, California on this date.



But Fromme was tackled by a Secret Service agent before she can remember to rack a round into the firing chamber.


September 5, 1990 -
In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, LAPD chief Daryl Gates opined: "Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."

Note to self: remember not to invite Mr. Gates to any social events. What a minute, he's dead.

New note to self: remember not to invite Zombie Gates to any social events.


September 5, 1991 -
Disgraced children's television star Pee-wee Herman returned to the public eye for the first time after his masturbation arrest, appearing on the MTV Video Music Awards.



He opens with the line: "Heard any good jokes lately?"


September 5, 1997 -
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.



New (and surprisingly controversal) saint and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, died at 87 after a heart attack on this date.


September 5, 2003 -
It wasn't so happy at the happiest place in the world on this date, when Marcelo Torres, 22, was killed and 10 others injured when the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster, at Disneyland, jumped the tracks in Frontierland.


Did they get their money back?



And so it goes.

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