It is a great art to saunter - Henry David Thoreau
Today is known as World Sauntering Day, sometimes referred to as International Sautering Day. Created by W.T. Rabe in response to the jogging craze; it was his thought that the day would be a reminder to slow down.
June 19, 1865 -
Marching his troops into Galvaston, Texas, Union General Gordon Granger announced the emancipation of slaves on this date.
The day has become known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day.
Can you hear those glasses chilling?
We might never know how utterly charming, brilliant and entertaining we are were it not for martinis.
Who knew
Today is National Martini Day! Once again, the world seems to have fallen in line and now celebrates our National Martini Day today as well. Well, why not celebrate now.
It's never too early for a martini, it just has to be GIN (preferably Bombay Sapphire) and bone dry (and for god sake, don't swallow the toothpick!)
June 19, 1954 -
The Tasmanian Devil, Taz, made his debut in the Looney Tunes cartoon, Devil May Hare, on this date.
While Robert McKimson and his team were discussing new adversaries for Bugs Bunny, animator Sid Marcus suggested offhandedly that they have used everything except a Tasmanian devil. They looked the animal up in the encyclopedia and decided he would make a good foil for Bugs.
June 19, 1957 -
The classic 50s teenage-horror film, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring Michael Landon, premiered on this date.
American International Pictures released this on a double bill with Invasion of the Saucer Men with the tag line "We DARE You To See The Most Amazing Pictures of Our Time!"
June 19, 1962 -
One of the great film-musicals from the 60s, The Music Man, premiered on this date.
In an episode of the TV series Happy Days, Howard and Marion Cunningham are coming out of a movie theater; they pause in the lobby and look at the poster for The Music Man. Marion comments how much the little boy in the movie (Winthrop) "looks so much like Richie did when he was little". Both Winthrop and Richie were played by Ron Howard.
June 19, 1963 -
Columbia Pictures releases the Ray Harryhausen fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts, directed by Don Chaffey in the U.S. on this date.
In order to capitalize on the success of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Ray Harryhausen originally conceived of the film as Sinbad in the Age of Muses. The story would still have been set in ancient Greece and would have involved Sinbad joining Jason in the search for the Golden Fleece.
June 19, 1965 -
The Four Tops' song I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) goes to #1 on the Billboard Charts, knocking off another Motown song: Back in My Arms Again by The Supremes. Both songs were written and produced by the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland.
This was the first US #1 hit for The Four Tops, and it was a big one, topping the Hot 100 for two weeks and the R&B chart for an amazing nine. The group had paid their dues: they formed in 1953 and didn't get a Motown deal until 10 years later. Their first Motown single, Baby I Need Your Loving, did very well, but this one established them as one of the top acts in the company.
June 19, 1976 –
The original emo boy, Eric Carmen's single Never Gonna’ Fall in Love Again went to the top of The Billboard Charts on this date.
Once again, Carmen uses (steals) a piece of classical music - this time, the melody line from Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 for this song. It comes from the Adagio movement.
June 19, 1976 -
HBO launched the series, Standing Room Only (SRO) with a taped special by Bette Midler on this date.
The original HBO presentation was shown "complete and uncut, minus any editing or interruption" (per the June 1976 HBO On Air guide), lasting nearly two-and-a-half hours. When it was shown on broadcast television later that year, it was shorn to 87 minutes. That truncated version was released on videocassette by Embassy Home Video in 1984. The special - a rare opportunity to see Midler in her first phase of stardom - has yet to be released in digital format.
June 19, 1978 -
It was on this day that we got the first appearance of Garfield the Cat in the comics section.
Today in History:
June 19, 1312 -
Piers Gaveston, close personal friend of King Edward II of England, was beheaded after he attempted to return to Edward's side, having been banished for being too close a personal friend, on this date.
June 19, 1623 -
Blaise Pascal was born in France on this date (which worked out extremely well for him as he wanted to grow up to be French.)
At the age of 17 he wrote a paper entitled Essay on Conic Sections, which quickly became the best-selling paper on conic sections in European history and eventually inspired the classic French noir film, Death by Conic Section.
And he meant to get around to it right away, but in 1647 he ended up proving the existence of a vacuum. The famous French philosopher Rene Descartes visited Pascal, inspected his vacuum, and bemoaned its lack of attachable hoses. This caused an epistemological split that has endured to the present day.
("The more I see of men," Pascal observed at about this time, "the better I like my dog." This was a famous quotation and can be found on many greeting cards.)
In 1653 he discovered Pascal's Law of Pressure. A year later he was involved in a carriage accident that reminded him he had turned to religion. He turned back to it.
He began work on his famous Pensées ("Blather") in 1656 and worked on it for three years. In the book, Pascal proved that if God didn't exist then believing in Him wouldn't hurt, whereas if He did exist, not believing would hurt like Hell.
It has been observed that if Pascal was wrong, not reading his book wouldn't hurt, and if he was right it wouldn't hurt either.
When he was 39, a malignant growth in his stomach spread to his brain and he died horribly, proving that unbearable pain is unbearable pain whatever you think of God or philosophy.
June 19, 1867 -
Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (Brian Aherne), unwitting stooge for Napoleon III (Claude Rains), was executed by firing squad on this date Although he bribed the seven riflemen to not shoot him in the head, one did anyway.
Bette Davis somehow figures into this as the Mad Empress Charlotta who just snapped when she returned to France to get help for her beleaguered husband. She lived in her private mad world for over 60 years, dying in the mid twenties of the next century.
So much for the privileges afforded royalty.
June 19, 1934 -
The Federal Communications Commission, perhaps the most wicked body of do-gooders ever to exist in the United States, was created.
These are the clowns that perfected the fine art of capricious and arbitrary.
June 19, 1945 –
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
June 19, 1953 -
The day after the couple's 14th wedding anniversary, atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted at Sing-Sing Prison on this date, becoming the first civilians ever executed for espionage in American history. Five jolts of electricity were required to kill Ethel on this date. Ethel did not succumb immediately and was subjected to two more electrical charges before being pronounced dead. The chair was designed for a man of average size; and Ethel Rosenberg was a petite woman: this discrepancy resulted, it is claimed, in the electrodes fitting poorly and making poor electrical contact. Eyewitness testimony (as given by a newsreel report featured in The Atomic Cafe) describes smoke rising from her head.
While her husband Julius was on the Soviet payroll, according to recently released archives, is now clear that Ethel had no involvement in the espionage ring. For that matter, it is unclear how much Julius actually assisted the Soviet atomic bomb effort.
So much for American Justice.
June 19, 1982 -
Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriar's Bridge in London on this date. His death was initially ruled a suicide, though it was quite obviously murder; that assessment was later overturned. Calvi may have been killed because of his involvement in the laundering of drug money through the Vatican Bank.
Roberto Calvi's life was insured for $10 million with Unione Italiana, and attempts by his family to obtain a payout resulted in litigation. Following the forensic report of 2002 which established that Calvi was murdered, the policy was finally paid out, although around half of the sum was paid to creditors of the Calvi family who had incurred considerable costs during their attempts to establish that Calvi had been murdered.
So much for Italian justice.
Before you go - I nearly forgot, the summer solstice begins tomorrow at 4:51 PM EDT.
I will definitely be up by then and we'll discuss this in further detail tomorrow.
And so it goes.
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