It's the best cure for whatever ails you

Next Monday is the start of National Mocktail Week - January 14-20, in honor of Dry January.



In case that's not how you roll, feel free to celebrate Hot Toddy Day today.


January 11, 1940 -
The classic newspaper comedy, His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, premiered in New York on this date.



The film finished shooting seven days behind schedule. The delays were caused by the complexity of shooting the rapid-fire dialogue, which had to be carefully timed with business and movement. The restaurant scene in which Burns takes Hildy and Bruce to lunch took four days to shoot. The original schedule had only allotted two days for the scene.


January 11, 1958 –
Danny & the Juniors' single, At The Hop, reached the No. 1 position on the Billboard Charts, on this date.



Danny & the Juniors were the Philadelphia group of Danny Rapp, Dave White, Frank Maffei and Joe Terranova. At the time, they were known as The Juvenairs. They were on a street corner singing when a someone who worked at a recording studio heard them and brought them in to sing. The rest, as they say, is history.


January 11, 1966 -
The children's adventure-series Daktari, debuted on CBS-TV on this date.



Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion and Judy the Chimpanzee both won PATSY Awards for the Series.


January 11, 1972 -
The TV movie, Kolchak, The Night Stalker, starring Darren McGavin premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



While filming in Las Vegas, producer Dan Curtis was amazed at how oblivious the casino gamblers were to any events going on around them other than gambling. So as a joke one day, actor Barry Atwater (Janos Skorzeny) was asked to walk through the Sahara's casino in full costume and makeup to see if anyone noticed him. He did this for over 40 minutes, and didn't even get a second glance.


January 11, 1980 -
The Pretenders eponymous album Pretenders debuted on this date in the UK.



In the UK, three singles were released before the album appeared. The first was a cover of The Kinks song Stop Your Sobbing, which was released in January 1979 and reached #34 in March 1979. Kid followed in June, going to #33 in August. In November, Brass In Pocket was released; it rose to the top in January 1980, and stayed at #1 for two weeks. The album is consistently cited as one of the greatest debuts in rock.


January 11, 1983 -
Painting bad landscapes was never so easy when The Joy of Painting featuring Bob Ross premiered on this date.



Bob made three copies of every painting he made. The first copy always hid off screen, and Ross referred to it while the cameras rolled. Ross painted a third copy when filming finished. This time, an assistant would stand behind him and snap photos of each brush stroke. These pictures went into Ross' "How to" books.


January 11, 1998 -
Nike debuted its I Can commercial, introducing the British band The Verve to a wide American audience with the song Bitter Sweet Symphony, on this date.



The song becomes the band's only hit in the States, which is sucked for the band because they had to sign away royalties to the song to get the publishing rights to the string sample from the Andrew Oldham Orchestra's version of the Rolling Stones song The Last Time.


Another ACME Safety Film


Today in History -
January 11, 1569 -
The very first English lottery was drawn at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, under a royal proclamation issued by Queen Elizabeth I, on this date.



The tickets were ten shillings each, beyond the means of an ordinary person, which makes it different from a modern lottery, where tickets are often priced low enough so that low income people can afford them. the proceeds will be used to repair fortifications, harbours and other public works.


January 11, 1753 -
Hans Sloane (b.1660), Anglo-Irish physician, naturalist and collector, died in London, on this date.



He bequeathed his collection to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Museum. (Great bar bet - Sloane is very important in the introduction of chocolate in England.)


January 11, 1813 - (File this under: the bitterest ironies)
Among many of the things Columbus stole from the New World, taking back to Europe with him, were pineapples. From there, the tasty fruit spread throughout other parts of civilization. It was carried on sailing ships around the world because it was found to, like oranges, help prevent scurvy, a devastating disease that often afflicted sailors on long voyages. the pineapple came to Hawaii to stay. On January 11, 1813, pineapples were first planted there.



It was at the end of one of these long voyages that Don Francisco de Paula y Marin, a Spanish advisor to King Kamehameha, brought the famous fruits back with him. On this date, legend has it that pineapples were first planted in Hawaii. Currently, it's much cheaper to produce pineapple in Asia and South America. In 2009, Maui Land and Pineapple also shut down operations. Today, the state of Hawaii produces less than 10% of the pineapple sold worldwide. So the Hawaiian people had their kingdom stolen from them because of a crop no longer grown there.


Harry Gordon Selfridge was born on January 11, 1864. Though American-born, he is best known as the founder of the British store Selfridge and Co., Ltd (think Macy's, for those of you unfamiliar with the store). He receives little or no attention here in the United States. His name does not appear in any textbooks, he is not honored with any holidays. And yet Mr. Selfridge's philosophy has had more impact on western civilization than a dozen Aristotles.

His great maxim is uttered carelessly by a million voices every day, is enshrined in the halls of commerce and government alike, and has permeated our culture to the point where it has become a cliche. Like most successful ideas, we can hardly imagine that his concept was ever new or controversial; we must strain our imaginations to conceive a world unilluminated by his wisdom.



It was Mr. Selfridge's philosophy that "the customer is always right."


January 11, 1878 -
Milk was first delivered in bottles by milkman Alexander Campbell, in New York on this date.

Previously, one had to keep a cow in a spare room of their apartment, making taking out the trash a mandatory daily occurrence.


January 11, 1902 -
Popular Mechanics magazine, with just five paying subscribers, was published for the first time, on this date

The publication quickly helps put a more incredible technical achievements into the public's view, showcasing an inspiring arsenal of scientists and cultural heavyweights along the way.


January 11, 1922 -
The first insulin injection was given to Leonard Thompson, a teenager in Canada, on this date. He weighed only 65 pounds and was about to slip into a coma and die. Drs. Frederick Banting and Charles Best worked on the insulin, then called Isletin, using a fetal calf pancreas extract. Unfortunately, the injection was so impure that Thompson had a severe allergic reaction and further injections were canceled.



Researchers worked around-the-clock for the next 12 days to refine the process, and with the help of Dr. James Collip, the next injection went off without a hitch. The availability of insulin turned diabetes from a fatal condition into a treatable one.


January 11, 1928 -
Thomas Hardy, English novelist and all around curmudgeon, died near Dorchester, England on this date. In his will, Mr. Hardy specifically requested to be buried with his beloved first wife. His friends, however, didn’t think this was good enough for the author and lobbied to have him buried in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey instead.



An ugly fight between Hardy fans and family ensued, until they reached a compromise. The author’s heart was removed and buried with his wife; his ashes were preserved in a bronze urn inside the Abbey. There’s also a long-running (but unsubstantiated) rumor that Hardy’s sister’s cat snatched the heart, somehow left on a table, and that a pig’s heart had to be substituted for the burial ceremony.


January 11, 1935 -
Amelia Earhart took off from Honolulu on this date, to become the first person to fly solo between Hawaii and California. She landed in Oakland the next day.



Three years earlier, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. According to one of our favorite bunkies, Earhart was hankering for some BBQ and hopped into a taxi after her flight to California to the Everett and Jones barbecue joint. They are still there.


January 11, 1943 -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt flew to Morocco for a top-secret meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He had not flown since 1932, when he traveled from Albany, New York, to Chicago to accept his nomination at the Democratic national convention.



No U.S. president had previously flown while in office because the Secret Service regarded flying as a dangerous mode of transport.


January 11, 1961 -
The Throgs Neck Bridge, carrying six lanes of Interstate 295 (I-295) over the East River where it meets the Long Island Sound, opens to traffic, on this date.



The bridge connects the Throggs Neck section of the Bronx with the Bay Terrace section of Queens. The bridge carried 20,000 vehicles and generating $5,000 in tolls in the first 12 hours.


January 11, 1964 -
The Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, (Luther Terry was the Surgeon General st the time,) issued their Smoking and Health report, which said smoking caused bronchitis and lung cancer. It also linked, though without statistical proof, smoking to emphysema, heart disease and cancer.



It was the first formal government acknowledgement of the health dangers of cigarette smoking - changing the tobacco industry forever. Notably, most of the committee members were themselves smokers.


January 11, 1971 -
Music makes us want to live. You don't know how many times people have told me that they'd been down and depressed and just wanted to die. But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength. That's the power music has.

Mary Jane Blige, eight-time Grammy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated American R&B singer-songwriter rapper, record producer, and actress, was born on this date.



Billboard ranked Blige as the most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years.



And so it goes