Today is Maundy Thursday.

It's sometimes called Holy Thursday,

also known as Sheer Thursday (as in to purge yourself of sin), Covenant Thursday, Great and Holy Thursday, and Thursday of Mysteries. Remember to wash your feet or the feet of someone else, if you are so inclined.

Among the other things going on remember: don't go to a dinner party with 12 other people -



This evening begins the Easter Triduum, (aka Holy Triduum, Paschal Triduum, or The Three Days,) the period of three days that begins with the liturgy on the evening of Holy Thursday and ends with Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday.

Today is a big confessional day - If you are so intent on reading about my misspent youth as an altar boy, read here.


Hot Tub Day is an annual “holiday” that serves as a reminder to relax and unwind after a hard day’s work.





Or you could just listen to James Brown.


March 28, 1935 -
Leni Riefenstahl's influential Nazi Propaganda film Triumph of the Will premiered in Germany on this date.





Leni Riefenstahl had been given carte blanche by Adolf Hitler in the making of the film: effectively, the party rally was the first produced-for-camera event.


March 28, 1941 -
Universal Pictures released the B movie, Man Made Monster starring Lionel Atwell and Lon Chaney, Jr. on this date.



Budgeted at a mere $86,000 on a 3-week shooting schedule. It was the cheapest feature film produced by Universal in 1941.


March 28, 1942 -
Another fine Looney Tunes cartoon, The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, was released on this date.



As Bugs steps out of the bathtub and readjusts his towel (at appx 3:00 in), the white tub in the gap between his legs creates the illusion that he is exposing himself.

Try not to go back and look.


March 28, 1963 -
Alfred Hitchcock's follow-up to Psycho, The Birds, starring Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedron premiered in New York on this date.



The classic scene in which Tippi Hedren watches birds attacking the townsfolk was filmed in the studio from a phone booth. When Melanie opens the phone-booth door, a bird trainer had trained gulls that were taught to fly at it.


March 28, 1967 -
NBC broke new ground in television programming by using a world-premiere, feature length movie as the preview of a potential new television series called Ironside, on this date.



I've often wondered what the line item budget was for nipple rouge on this film?


March 28, 1974 -
Writer and comedian, Pat McCormick, carrying a cocktail streaked nude across the set of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, forcing NBC censors to black out the lower half of the screen.



the streaker was arrested and later released, said Carson, for "lack of evidence."


March 28, 1975 -
The final episode of the short-lived series Kolchak - The Night Stalker, The Sentry, starring Darren McGaven, aired on ABC TV, on this date.



Kolchak is smuggled into the Merrymount Archive storage facility in a large wooden crate stamped 'FRAGILE' in capital letters. In A Christmas Story, also starring Darren McGavin, his 'major award'- the leg lamp- comes delivered to his house in a large wooden crate also stamped 'FRAGILE' in large capital letters.


March 28, 1981 –
Blondie's venture into rap, the song Rapture hit no. #1 on the Billboard charts, on this date.



Harry's rap is so goofy that it sounds like she could be mocking the genre, but this was very early in the evolution of hip-hop, and many of the rhymes that came out of the New York block parties were just as silly. Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie championed rap and got involved in the community, often attending these block parties - they even took Nile Rodgers to one, which is where he learned that his song Good Times was a DJ favorite.


March 28, 1999 -
We get to find out how Philip J Fry came to work for his great (×30) grandnephew and great (×31) grandson, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth when Futurama premiered on the Fox Network.



According to Matt Groening, viewers were able to decipher the alien language that is sometimes seen in the background the same night as the pilot episode aired. The only primer for the code in that episode was a sign that read "Drink Slurm". The sign appeared once with the word "Drink" written in the alien code and once in plain English. This resulted in the producers creating a second, more complex alien code to be seen in the background of later episodes.


Another ACME Safety Film


Today in History:
March 28, 4 BCE -
According to Des Pascha Comutus, a treatise written in 243 CE (because you know, I sit around and read old Latin treatises all the time,) Jesus Christ's birthday was March 28. It later became the familiar December 25 after the Catholic Church changed it in 336 AD.



So, Merry Christmas everybody.


March 28, 37 -
Caligula took a break from the close relationship he had with his sisters and the unnatural congress he engaged in with his horse, to accepts the titles of the Principate awarded by the Senate and entered Rome triumphantly as Emperor.



Unlike his predecessors, Caligula was the first of the men who would serve as full-fledged emperors, with unlimited power. And luckily for the Roman empire, he was cruel, probably insane and a sexual deviant.



The weekends must have been a blast at the Palace.


March 28, 193 -
The Roman ruler Pertinax was at his palace when a contingent of some three hundred soldiers rushed the gates. Pertinax was somewhat distracted. Ancient sources suggest that the soldiers had received only half their promised donativum (pay or bribe money not to kill him). Pertinax had only been emperor for 86 days and didn't have enough time to sell off the previous Emperor Commodus' property (including the concubines and youths Commodus kept for his sexual pleasures) in the giant fire sale he was having.

Neither the guards on duty nor the palace officials chose to resist them. Pertinax, although advised to flee, attempted to reason with them (never try to reason with unpaid Roman soldiers on a rampage), and was almost successful before being struck down by a member of the Praetorian Guard. There being no obvious successor and no Senatorial volunteers, the Guard auctions off the emperorship. The high bidder was Senator Didius Julianus, for 300 million sesterces. After hearing of this, Roman general Septimus Severus in Dalmatia marched on Rome, beheading the new emperor upon arrival.



Both of the films, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Gladiator, take the same historical event as a starting point.


March 28, 1515 -
... Don't let your sins turn into bad habits....

Teresa of Avila (Teresa de Jesus), Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic writer and one of my favorite saints (remember, she's the one who was repeated pierced with God's 'golden shaft' of light) was born on this date. She co-founded with John of the Cross, the Order of Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites.


March 28, 1921 -
Dirk Bogarde (Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde), actor and the epitome of coolness, was born on this date.



Going to the wrong room for a British Broadcasting Corporation audition, the young Bogarde accidentally got a part in a stage play that proved so successful he was hailed as a star overnight.


March 28, 1930 -
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.





(I can't help myself - I just love this song) Constantinople and Angora change their names to Istanbul and Ankara on this date.


March 28, 1941 -
Virginia Woolf drowned herself by weighing her pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse near her home because she had a dream that Nicole Kidman would portray her in a film with a truly horrifying fake nose, on this date.



Lesser writers would have done the same.


March 28, 1964 -
The first pirate radio station began to broadcast off the coast of England on this date. Radio Caroline debuted with a combination of rock music and lively disk jockey who's patter played to a huge audience in Great Britain.



British authorities, tried unsuccessfully, to shut down the radio station ship. Radio Caroline had become competition to the staid and usually dull British Broadcasting Corporation.


March 28, 1979 -
The Unit 2 nuclear power plant (a pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock and Wilcox) on the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg suffered a partial core meltdown on this date.



The Three Mile Island accident was the worst accident in American commercial nuclear power generating history, even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community.



And so it goes.