The short story was first published in 1865 as Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog while Twain was still a struggling journalist in California - and two years later it was the main attraction of his first book. He never wrote another short story that had such widespread appeal and was so popular.
May 13, 1966 -
The Rolling Stones released Paint it Black, in the UK on this date.
Keith Richards explained how this song came together: "We were in Fiji for about three days. They make sitars and all sorts of Indian stuff. Sitars are made out of watermelons or pumpkins or something smashed so they go hard. They're very brittle and you have to be careful how you handle them. We had the sitars, we thought we'd try them out in the studio. To get the right sound on 'Paint It Black' we found the sitar fitted perfectly. We tried a guitar but you can't bend it enough."
May 13, 1970 -
The Beatles' final movie, Let It Be, received its U.S. premiere, in New York City theaters on this date.
John Lennon believed that Michael Lindsay-Hogg deliberately avoided including shots of him and Yoko Ono in favor of more shots of Paul McCartney. Lennon said he felt that "the camera work was set up to show Paul and not to show anybody else" and that "the people that cut it, cut it as 'Paul is God' and we're just lyin' around ..." Ringo Starr also complained that most of the "clowning" he performed at the director's behest was never used. (Please seek out the Peter Jackson documentary, The Beatles: Get Back.)
May 13, 1978 -
Lt. Columbo finally got to that one last thing on this date when the series finale of Columbo, The Conspirators aired on NBC-TV.
The series was picked up again in 1989 and continued on its eighth season onward, produced by ABC-TV.
May 13, 1978 –
Yvonne Elliman's single If I Can’t Have You (written by The Bee Gees,) went to No.1 on the Billboard Charts, replacing the song, Night Fever, another song written by The Bee Gees and also featured on The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
The huge success of this song resulted in Elliman being remembered as a disco artist, but this style of music was an exception to the medium-tempo ballads that she specialized in, and which comprised the bulk of her recordings. She sang the role of Mary Magdalene in the original album Jesus Christ Superstar and in the subsequent Broadway and film versions, and achieved her first hit single with the ballad I Don't Know How to Love Him.
May 13, 1994 -
Nearly two years to the day after his farewell, Johnny Carson made a surprise cameo on the Late Show With David Letterman, which turned out to be his last-ever TV appearance before his death in January 2005, on this date.
Just before Carson's death in 2005, CBS executive Peter Lassally, who had produced both Letterman and Carson during his long career, revealed that Carson would occasionally send jokes directly to Letterman.
May 13, 1994 -
Soundgarden released the second single off their album Superunknown, Black Hole Sun, on this date.
Chris Cornell got the idea for this song while driving home from Bear Creek Studio, near Seattle, where Soundgarden were recording a version of New Damage for a charity album. He recalled to Uncut magazine August 2014: "I wrote it in my head driving home from Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, a 35-40 minute drive from Seattle. It sparked from something a news anchor said on TV and I heard wrong. I heard 'blah blah blah black hole sun blah blah blah'. I thought that would make an amazing song title, but what would it sound like? It all came together, pretty much the whole arrangement including the guitar solo that's played beneath the riff."
May 13, 2004 -
The last episode of Frasier aired on TV following an 11-year run on NBC-TV on this date.
The series holds the record for the most Emmy wins for a TV series of any kind (comedy or drama) with 37 wins.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
May 13, 1497 -
Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Girolamo Savonarola for heresy on this date.
In Florence the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola had led the February 7th burning of musical instruments, books and priceless works of art (Bonfire of the Vanities.) He preached against corruption in the Church and civil government.
May 13, 1568 -
Mary Queen of Scots was defeated by English at the Battle of Langside, south of Glasgow, on this date.
After the battle, Mary fled south. She spent her last night in Scotland at Dundrennan Abbey, near Kirkcudbright (an event commemorated by Dundrennan Road in Battlefield) before crossing to England to face captivity and eventual execution.
May 13, 1787 -
The first fleet of ships carrying convicted criminals left England en route to a new British prison called Australia.
May 13, 1846 -
The United States, under President James Polk, declared that a state of war already existed against Mexico, two months after fighting began, on this date.
This was in response to an incident where the Mexican cavalry surrounded a scouting party of American dragoons. $10 million was appropriated for war expenses by Congress. There are some in Arizona who haven't heard that the hostilities have long since ended.
May 13, 1890 –
Nikola Tesla was issued a patent (#428,057) for the Pyromagneto-electric generator.
May 13, 1913 -
The latest brainchild of Russian aircraft design genius Igor Sikorsky embarks on its maiden flight on this date. (The Tzar was a little confused; he had to be convinced that being the Csar, or Czar for that matter, he was eligible for a seat inside the plane.)
May 13, 1917 -
Three small children in Fatima, Portugal receive the first of six visitations from the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, on this date, (as a former altar boy and on the other side of 60, I'm hedging my bets and making no jokes about the Virgin Mary.)
Over the next five months she lays some pretty heavy crap on the kids, including a three-part secret: a vision of Hell, a prophecy of war with godless Russia, and a third secret which involved Y2K.
May 13, 1940 -
Winston Churchill had just come into office as the British Prime Minister, a few days previously, after the pacifistic Neville Chamberlain resigned, gave his famous "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech on this date.
The speech was one of several famous ones by the over weight and increasingly alcoholic Churchill, and set the tone for the British government's approach to the war.
May 13, 1950 -
Steveland Morris Hardaway, musician was born prematurely, on this day. Too much oxygen in the incubator caused the baby to become permanently blind.
At the age of ten, Little Stevie Wonder, as he was called by Berry Gordy at Motown, was discovered singing and playing the harmonica. He had many hits during his teens including Fingertips and as an adult he has earned an Oscar and at least sixteen Grammy Awards.
It's too bad the whole blindness thing has held him back.
May 13, 1973 -
Tennis players Bobby Riggs and Margaret Court played in a $100,000 winner-take-all challenge match, on this date. The match has become known as the first Battle of the Sexes (also known as the Mother's Day Massacre.)
Margaret Court, the 1970 the singles Grand Slam champion, underestimated the 55 year old Bobby Riggs and eventually lost, and Riggs went on to challenge Billie Jean King, who famously beat him in September of that year.
May 13, 1981 -
A delusional Turk (as opposed to a malignant and a turbaned Turk) shot Pope John Paul II four times in St. Peter's Square, (the pope survived after emergency surgery.) Mehmet Ali Agca believed:
a.) that the Vatican was an abomination before God,
b.) the pope was a representation of capitalism, and
c.) both must be destroyed.
19 years later, the Church would disclose that the assassination attempt was foretold in 1917, as part of the third secret of Fatima. (Like how we tied both those item together.) It must have been a comfort to John Paul II when he lay there in agony, Agca sent him his best wishes.
This may all be on the test
May 13, 1988 -
Assassins, gangsters, and enraged mobs of the past have employed a wide variety of methods to silence their victims. One such method involves chucking people out of windows, an act known as defenestration. A very rare way to shut yourself up involves self-defenestration.
Chet Baker, heroin addict and world famous jazz trumpet player, while on a successful world tour, died in Amsterdam after "falling" from a hotel window.
Oops.
And so it goes.
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