Bunkies, please be forewarned: The pressure in a bottle of champagne is 90 pounds per square inch, about three times that in your automobile tire.
October 20, 1918 -
Rarely seen now, but one of Charlie Chaplin's most popular films at it time, Shoulder Arms, was released on this date.
Chaplin's fellow director, Ernst Lubitsch, once said that this was the best film depiction of World War I.
October 20, 1939 -
The ninth Marx Brothers film, At the Circus, premiered on this date.
The Marx Brothers had been out of favor at MGM since the sudden death in 1936 of their producer and benefactor Irving Thalberg during the production of A Day at the Races. So in the middle of the production of this film, longtime Thalberg rival Louis B. Mayer removed songwriters Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg from this film and reassigned them to the "prestige" MGM production The Wizard of Oz.
October 20, 1955 -
Harry Belafonte, advocate for civil rights and humanitarian causes, recorded the famous Day-O (Banana Boat Song) on this date.
This song was first recorded in 1952 by Edric Conner, a musician from Trinidad who sang it with his band The Carribeans as Day De Light. The song re-emerged in 1956 when the folk singer Bob Gibson taught the song to the folk trio The Tarriers (Alan Arkin was a member of the trio,) after hearing it on a trip to Jamaica. Once The Terriers recorded it, the Calypso Craze took off in America, and Belafonte capitalized on the trend: According to BMI, the Calypso album was the first to sell over 1 million copies.
(Now try getting the song out of your head today.)
October 20, 1957 -
Walter Cronkite's documentary series, The Twentieth Century, premiered on CBS-TV on this date, with Churchill, Man of the Century.
The program presented filmed reports on news and cultural events that were important for the development of the 20th century.
October 20, 1973 -
One of the rare ballad for The Rolling Stones, Angie became a #1 hit on this date.
Keith Richards wrote this song in Switzerland after the Exile on Main St. album had been approved by the record company, but before it was released. Angie was one of the first songs The Stones recorded for Goat's Head Soup, which they first attempted in Jamaica at the Dynamic Sounds studio in Kingston. They got very little done at these sessions, arriving nightly with armed escort and locking the doors until they were done for the day. Much of the album was done at sessions in Los Angeles and London under more hospitable conditions.
October 20, 1976 -
The Led Zeppelin concert documentary The Song Remains The Same, directed by Peter Clifton and Joe Massot premiered in London and New York, with the band attending the New York opening.
For their three New York performances, the band members wore exactly the same clothes to facilitate seamless editing of the film, except for John Paul Jones who wore three different sets of attire on each of these nights, which created continuity problems.
October 20, 1979 -
Bob Dylan performed his first and only time on Saturday Night Live, on this date. The songs he performed were Gotta Serve Somebody, When You Gonna Wake Up, and I Believe in You.
Dylan debuted I Believe in You when he was on Saturday Night Live that evening. The first time he played it during a full concert was on November 1, 1979, in San Francisco. Since then, he's played it live more than 250 times.
October 20, 1980 -
U2 released their debut album, Boy, produced by Steve Lillywhite, on this date.
It doesn't yield any hits but I Will Follow becomes one of their most popular songs.
October 20, 1985 -
The first of two reunion films, I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later, starring Barbara Eden, Wayne Rogers, and Bill Daly aired on NBC on this date. Larry Hagman was unavailable to reprise his role as Tony Nelson reportedly because he was too busy filming his CBS series Dallas at the time.
At first, Barbara Eden said no to NBC executives about reprising her role as Jeannie: "I had no intention of playing Jeannie again. It's a super-high risk to repeat something done well in the first place. And the series is still running in syndication". She later explained: "I read the script, and it was fun - and before I knew it, I was doing it. And I don't have any regrets".
October 20, 1991 -
Exactly six years after the broadcast of I Dream of Jeannie... Fifteen Years Later, I Still Dream of Jeannie, airs on NBC on this date., Barbara Eden, and Bill Daly once again reprise their roles. Once again, Larry Hagman was unavailable to reprise his role of Tony Nelson, as he had just completed a 14½ season run on Dallas and was taking a vacation with his family.
Bill Daily openly admitted that he disliked the reunion movies, due to faulting the scripts and the absence of Larry Hagman.
Another unimportant moment in history
Today in History:
October 20, 480 BC - (Sometimes the world changes in a day)
The Athenian fleet, under the command of Themistocles, defeated the Persians in the Naval Battle of Salamis on this date. And please get your minds out of the gutter, Salamis is the name a place.
That victory will arguably lead to the rise of Greece as a global power and the eventual dissemination of Greek philosophies and ideals, such as democracy, throughout the western world. And as always, there was much roasted lamb consumed and much sodomy engaged in that night.
October 20, 1720 –
Caribbean pirate Calico Jack Rackham, one of the first pirates to use the “Jolly Roger”, was captured by the Royal Navy, on this date.
While the majority of pirate crews used designs that had a depiction of full human skeletons using some weapon, Calico Jack promoted an iconic pirate flag design that today represents a synonym for a naval piracy - black flag with white human skull and two white crossed swords beneath it.
October 20, 1818 -
The International Boundary is commonly referred to as the world's longest undefended border, but this is true only in the military sense, as civilian law enforcement is present. But we're keeping an eye on those sneaky Canadians and their cheese curd fries.
There are some 150 people who live in the Northwest Angle, MN, a spot of land that is separated from the rest of the USA by Lake of the Woods.
Students who live in the Northwest Angle go to school in Warroad, MN, the Angle Inlet School (the only surviving one room school,) and have to cross the international border on their way to and from school each day. It must suck to get a full body cavity search every day before school.
Thank you neighbors from the north for your kind words. Now keep to your side of the parallel!
October 20, 1930 -
Death row murderer William Kogut committed suicide in San Quentin prison with MacGyver like ingenuity, on this date.
I wonder if he went to a specialized High School.
October 20, 1944 -
Gen. Douglas MacArthur stepped ashore at Leyte in the Philippines, 2 1/2 years after he'd said, "I shall return," on this date.
He landed with Sergio Osmena, the president-in-exile, Gen’l. Carlos Romulo, who later served as foreign minister and a boatload of press and photographers to record the event.
October 20, 1947 -
Chaired by J. Parnell Thomas (one of the committee's members was Richard M. Nixon), The House Un-American Activities Committee began its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood.
The resulting hysteria results in the creation of a blacklist in the film industry, preventing certain individuals from working in the business for years.
October 20, 1967 -
Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin reported that on this date they had captured a purported Sasquatch on film at Bluff Creek, California. This came to be known as the Patterson-Gimlin film, which is purported to be the best evidence of Bigfoot by many advocates.
If only that had named their film - Bigfoot: I want to grab you by your nether regions, perhaps it would have done better box office in it's opening weekend.
Many years later, Bob Heironimus, an acquaintance of Patterson's, claimed that he had worn an ape costume for the making of the film. Organizations such as Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization have suggested that that Heironimus himself is a fraud.
October 20, 1973 -
The Saturday Night Massacre: Richard Nixon fired Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus when they each refuse to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox on this date.
Who was the man who finally fired Cox: Robert Bork -
October 20, 1977 -
En route to a gig at Louisiana State University, Lynyrd Skynyrd band members Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines were killed when their private plane runs out of fuel and crashes into a swamp in Gillsburg, Mississippi. Their record company MCA withdraws the flame-filled cover art for their ironically-named Street Survivors album
Drunken frat boys everywhere cry out in their mournful lamentations, "Play 'Freebird' man".
And so it goes
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