If you need to ask, according to the old ladies who are saying their decades of rosaries in the back of the church, today is dedicated to praying for the souls of the dead so they can leave purgatory and go to heaven with impeccibly clean souls.
November 2, 1920 -
KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania started broadcasting as the first commercially licensed radio station in the United States, on this date
After building a transmitter for the company, Westinghouse employee Frank Conrad listened as colleagues broadcast the US presidential election returns from a shack on the roof of the K Building of the Westinghouse Electric Company "East Pittsburgh Works" in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. It was reportedly heard as far away as Canada. By the way, Republican Warren G. Harding (size 13 shoe wearer) won the election that night, on his 55th birthday.
November 2, 1934 -
Ernst Lubitsch charming adaptation of the famous Viennese operetta The Merry Widow starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald premiered on this date.
Maurice Chevalier avoided any confrontations with Jeanette MacDonald and Ernst Lubitsch throughout production. He did, however, blow up at his assistant, Robert Spencer. Spencer had relayed the director and co-star's invitation to Chevalier to help them plan the wrap party and provide gifts for the crew. The actor handed the assignment to Spencer, but when Spencer presented him with the bill for the gifts, which came to about $1,000, the notoriously stingy actor screamed at him. After thinking about it, and realizing that the cost of the gifts was not out of line with current Hollywood custom, Chevalier apologized.
November 2, 1940 -
Another funny Porky Pig Looney Tunes, The Sour Puss, premiered on this date.
The flying fish character may have been intended to be a fourth attempt at introducing a recurring "screwball" character in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies franchise (following on the success of Daffy Duck, Happy Rabbit (Bugs Bunny's predecessor) and Bugs Bunny), but the flying fish was not seen again after this cartoon, likely due to it not catching on with audiences.
November 2, 1942 -
Another Preston Sturges laugh out loud comedy, The Palm Beach Story, opened on this date. (Sturges, himself, had to shove a handkerchief in his mouth to avoid ruining a take by laughing.)
With parts written to their specific talents, most of the actors required little direction. The result was a relaxed set where the cast felt comfortable trying whatever the script demanded. When Joel McCrea had to fall down a flight of stairs at the end of an argument, Preston Sturges even took the fall for him first, just to show him it was safe.
November 2, 1946 -
Walt Disney's 'politically incorrect' feature, the partially- animated film, Song of the South, was released on this date.
Widely regarded as a "pariah" feature of the Walt Disney Company, Song of the South has been primarily disowned by the company since the early 1990s out of fear for the controversy surrounding the film's alleged racist undertones. The classic music, however, can still often be heard throughout the Disney theme parks and other various outlets - unknown to most younger generations who have no association with it.
November 2, 1957 -
The often edited for S & P (I definitely should know) Bugs vs. Daffy Looney Tunes cartoon, Show Biz Bugs, premiered on this date.
The segment when Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were dancing to Tea for Two was used for the opening scene, (as other Warner Brothers' popular animation stars walked across from right to left behind Bugs and Daffy, during their dance) of the television series Bugs Bunny and Friends on WNEW-TV (Channel 5, was retitled WNYW) in New York for much of the 1970s and into the early 1980s decades.
November 2, 1978 -
The Police release their debut album, Outlandos d'Amour, on this date. The working title, Police Brutality, was changed to make is sound more romantic. The title loosely translates as Outlaws of Love but the term Outlandos is actually a mix of the words for Outlaws and Commandos.
The Police started mading videos right away, starting with some tracks from their first album, Outlandos d'Amour, in 1978. Their earliest videos were mostly performance footage or shots of the band in exotic locations just larking about, but as they got more successful, their video budgets grew and they became more conceptual. When MTV went on the air in 1981, they played many of these videos because they had few to choose from.
November 2, 1989 -
BBC One aired the screaming funny conclusion to the Blackadder Goes Forth series, Goodbyeee starring Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, on this date
The decision to set Blackadder in the trenches of World War One did not come from Ben Elton, Richard Curtis or any of the cast or producers. The BBC received an unsolicited script for a new Blackadder series, set in France during WWI, from a young first-time writer. The scripts themselves were rejected, but Elton and Curtis did like the idea of a WWI setting and subsequently wrote Blackadder Goes Forth using this idea.
November 2, 1995 -
Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders guest stars on the Friends episode The One with the Baby on the Bus, on this date.
She sings Angel of the Morning and learns Smelly Cat from Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow).
November 2, 2001 -
The Disney-Pixar computer-animated movie Monsters Inc., opened in general release on this date.
In the first scene, one of the toys on the boy's bedroom shelf is the toy plane that hung from the ceiling and caused Buzz to "fly." As Mike and Sulley go through the scare floor, the rolling clown from Toy Story can be seen in the background. Lastly, when Randall is practicing camouflaging into backgrounds of walls, one of the images given to him is the wallpaper Andy had in his room.
November 2, 2003 –
FOX TV premiered Arrested Development starring Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter, and narrated by Ron Howard, on on this date. Despite acclaim from critics, Arrested Development received low ratings and the series was cancelled in 2006. It returned in 2013 for two seasons on Netflix.
Ron Howard's role as the narrator was accidental. He was merely filling in on the pilot, but his voice just "worked."
Another ACME Safety Film
Today in History:
November 2, 1913 –
The love god of my 'work wife', former circus performer Burt Lancaster was born on this date.
He was an infamous ladies man in Hollywood, which eventually irritated his wife, Norma, enough for her to leave him.
November 2, 1944 -
Thomas Midgley Jr., an American chemist who developed both leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), was notoriously known as "the one human responsible for more deaths than any other in history".
As if it was nature's idea to get revenge on him he was left disabled in his bed due to lead poisoning and polio at the age of 51.
Keeping his inventive juices flowing, he designed a complicated system of strings and pulleys on his bed so that he could lift himself up when needed. This invention was the cause of his death at the age of 55 when he was accidentally entangled in the ropes of his bed and died of strangulation.
Talk about double irony.
November 2, 1947 -
In California, industrialist, film producer/director, philanthropist, syphilitic bisexual germaphobe Howard Hughes flew the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.
The plane was crafted out of 200 tons of plywood. The war ended before the plane was deployed.
November 2, 1948 -
President Harry S.Truman somehow roused himself from his alcoholic stupor and was re-elected in an upset victory over the presumptive winner, Republican Thomas E. Dewey.
The Chicago Tribune had printed a banner headline 'DEWEY WINS!' prematurely. Truman defeated Dewey by 2.2 million popular votes and 114 electoral votes.
November 2, 1957 -
On this date in Levelland, Texas, at least 12 people, including two police officers, had separate encounters with either a large egg-shaped object in the roadway that made their car batteries die or they saw a red flash moving across the sky.
The US Air Force attempted to claim that a severe thunderstorm was responsible, but witnesses all claim there was no storm in the area at the time. The Levelland UFO Case still remains one of the most notable UFO cases in history.
Keep watching the skies!
November 2, 1959 -
Game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to a House subcommittee that he'd been given questions and answers prior to appearances on Twenty-One, the NBC game show.
Oops!
November 2, 1963 -
South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were assassinated in a military coup. Coup leader Duong Van Minh explained that "They had to be killed - Pres. Diem was too much respected among simple, gullible people in the countryside."
A 3rd brother was later tricked into surrendering to US forces and was turned over to coup leaders and killed by firing squad. (President Johnson admitted the CIA's part in the coup.)
Once again, American diplomacy at work.
November 2, 1984 -
Velma Barfield became the first woman executed in the United States since 1962 for the murder of her mother, her boyfriend and two others with rat poison in their food.
That will learn her.
November 2, 1988 -
An Internet Worm was released by Cornell grad student Robert Morris on this date. His ingenious program was meant to explore the Internet harmlessly, but due to a bug, it crashed some 6,000 computers.
Morris parlayed the incident into a career, he is now an associate professor at MIT.
November 2, 2000 -
After the Soyuz spacecraft linked up to the International Space Station (ISS), William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev, and Yuri Gidzenko boarded the station, turned on the lights and life support systems, and became the first crew to take up long term residence in space.
They would remain confined to two of the station’s three rooms until Space Shuttle Endeavor arrives in early December with giant solar panels to power the station.
And so it goes
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