It's almost unbelieveable that this was ever sold

It's National Easy Bake Oven Day. Established in 2017, the day commemorates the anniversary of the release of the iconic toy in 1963.



The original 1963 version was not a cheap toy mid you. In fact, it cost a hefty $15.95. That might not sound like a lot, but adjusting for inflation, it amounts to $127. Despite the price, the Easy-Bake Oven sold half a million units in its first year on the market, thanks largely to it's was featured at the 1964 World's Fair. Kids' think of all the fun you can have with two 100 watt bulbs.


November 4, 1948 -
The controversial (for the time) film about life inside a mental institution, The Snake Pit, starring Olivia de Havilland premiered on this date.



Stephen King has said that watching this film on TV as a child deeply disturbed him and made him feel that he could suddenly go insane, directly contributing to his macabre interests and subsequently his writings.


November 4, 1960 -
The Daniel Mann’s adaptation of John O’Hara’s 1935 novel, Butterfield 8, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, and Eddie Fisher premiered on this date.



Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Mike Todd, had planned for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to be her final movie, as she intended to retire from the screen. Todd had made a verbal agreement about this with MGM, but after his death, MGM forced Taylor to make this movie in order to fulfill the terms of her studio contract. As a result, Taylor refused to speak to director Daniel Mann for the entire production and hated this movie.


November 4, 1967 -
Motown released the Smokey Robinson and The Miracles hit, I Second That Emotion, on this date.



Smoky Robinson and Al Cleveland teamed up to write several more hits for the group, including Special Occasion, Yester Love, and Baby, Baby Don't Cry.


November 4, 1970 -
David Bowie, third studio album, The Man Who Sold the World, was released on this date in the US.



This album is one of Bowie's least known, but over the years many fans have come to appreciate it and a lot of bands have covered songs from it, including Lulu, Midge Ure, Nirvana, John (Cougar) Mellencamp, and Simple Minds, among others


November 4, 1972 -
Johnny Nash single I Can See Clearly Now hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts,on this date, becoming the first reggae tune to top the chart.



Nash wrote this song himself. He recorded it in London with members of The Average White Band, who in 1974 had a hit of their own with Pick Up The Pieces.


November 4, 1978 -
Bunkies, let the warm feelings wash over you, even though the skinny white boy is singing, - place one hand on your monitor and the other hand upon the afflicted area. He is channeling the healing powers of Rev. Al Green. Feel his power emanate and pulsate through your loins.



The Talking Heads released their version of the Al Green classic Take Me To The River, on this date. (Someone fetch me a cold compress - I need a moment to compose myself.)


November 4, 1981 –
The Fall Guy starring Lee Majors, Douglas Barr, and Heather Thomas, premiered on ABC, on this date.



Since Lee Majors started his acting career by hanging out with stuntmen, and occasionally working as one, he made sure real stuntmen got plenty of work on the show.


November 4, 1983 -
Paul Simon, sixth solo album, Hearts and Bones, was released on this date.



For the Hearts And Bones album, Paul Simon took a different approach to his songwriting. He explained in a 1990 interview with SongTalk magazine: "The language starts to get more interesting in Hearts and Bones. The imagery started to get a little interesting. What I was trying to learn to do was to be able to write vernacular speech and then intersperse it with enriched language. And then go back to vernacular. So the thing would go along smoothly and then some image would come out that was interesting and then it would go back to this very smooth, conversational thing. By the time I got to Graceland, I was trying to let that kind of enriched language flow naturally, so that you wouldn't really notice it as much. I think in Hearts and Bones you could feel it, that it was coming."


November 4, 2005 -
Walt Disney Pictures released Chicken Little, voiced by Zach Braff, Garry Marshall, Don Knotts, Patrick Stewart, Amy Sedaris, Joan Cusack, Wallace Shawn, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, and Adam West, on this date. It was the second in-house Disney film completely created with computer animation, the first being Dinosaurs in 2000.



Holly Hunter was the original voice of Chicken Little. she recorded all of her lines, but was replaced by Zach Braff when the studio decided to make the character a male.


November 4, 2016 -
Netflix premiered the incredibly successful series about a young woman forced to take over a multinational business after the unexpected death of her beloved father, The Crown, starring, Claire Foy, Matt Smith, Vanessa Kirby, Victoria Hamilton, Jared Harris, John Lithgow and Eileen Atkins, on this date.



Originally, creator Peter Morgan envisaged the series as being sixty episodes in total over six seasons, with the first season depicting events up to 1955, but as production was wrapping on season 4 on January 2020, he announced his intention to conclude the series with season 5. However, in July 2020, Morgan announced that it would be in the end the predicted six seasons, because he needed more episodes to convey the story he wanted to.


Word of the Day.


Today in History:
November 4, 1847 –
Scottish physician, James Young Simpson, one of Queen Victoria's private physicians, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.



Chloroform is a colorless toxic chemical substance, which with an acrid, sickly sweet smell and taste, sends people off to sleep as they inhale. During an experiment with friends on this date, a Miss Petrie, Simpson's niece, tried chloroform. She fell asleep soon after inhaling it while singing the words, "I am an angel!"


November 4, 1869 -
The first issue of the scientific journal Nature was published on this date. The debut issue featured an article describing some recent work by Charles Darwin—and Darwin himself wrote in two subsequent issues.

The multidisciplinary British publication has also published important work on living primates, including that of Jane Goodall on chimpanzee tool use. The world’s most cited scientific journal, it is one of the few remaining academic sources that publishes original research across a wide range of scientific fields.


November 4, 1899 -
Sigmund Freud's book, Interpretation Of Dreams, in which he argued that understanding dreams can give an insight into our personality, was published on this date.



It was slow to take off, the first edition selling only 351 copies in its first six years. However, in time it became the book that gave Freud worldwide recognition.


November 4, 1916 -
America's premier journalist and favorite 'uncle' Walter Cronkite was born on this date.



The term ‘anchor’, a central and authoritative news presenter, was coined to describe his coverage of the 1952 presidential election. His spontaneous emotional reaction to the news of President Kennedy's death cemented his relationship with the US public. And his coverage of the Vietnam War was one of the leading reasons for President Johnson's decision not to seek re-election.


November 4, 1922 -
It was on this day that a British man named Howard Carter made one of the greatest archeological discoveries of all time by discovering the tomb of King Tutankhamen (Boris Karloff).



Three months later, Carter opened the sealed doorway and found they led to the burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian Boy King Tutankhamun. Tut has been making his tour and putting a curse on those damn limeys who disturbed his eternal rest for nearly a century.


November 4, 1928 -
Arnold Rothstein, mobster and the man who fixed the 1919 World Series, was having a bit of bad luck. Rothstein had just finished playing a marathon three day game of poker with some 'business associates'.

Realizing that his losses totaled a staggering $320,000.00, Rothstein quit the game and refused to pay his debt. The Brain, as he was known by his associated suspected the game might not be on the up and up. His associates took umbrage at the accusation and 'arranged' to have Rothstein have an allergic reaction to some bullets at the Park Central Hotel in NYC on this date.

The gangster, a man of honor, refused to identify his killers on his deathbed. Had he only thought things might not be on the up and up playing cards with men named George "Hump" McManus and Titanic Thompson, things may have gone differently for him.


November 4, 1952 -
The US established the National Security Agency (NSA) on this date.

The NSA (is supposed to) serve as an intelligence agency of the US, gathering and analyzing foreign intelligence documentation and other forms of communication, usually involving encrypted information that requires decoding. (Just lift the receiver up off the phone and whisper, 'Happy Birthday', they'll hear you.)


November 4, 1960 -
After previously being a secretary, Jane Goodall was hired to study primates at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. She observed on this date, two chimps pick up small twigs, strip off the leaves, and use them as tools to fish for termites in the ground for a snack.



This was the first time that an animal was observed to modify an object to create a tool to use for a specific purpose.


November 4, 1963 -
At a Beatles command performance (present: Queen Elizabeth,the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret), John Lennon utters the remark: "Will the people in the cheaper seats clap their hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry."



If you look very closely behind the Queen Mother, I believe Princess Margaret flipped John off.


November 4, 1979 -
The US Embassy in Tehran was stormed by "students", holding 52 hostages for 444 days.



Shimon Peres assumed the post of acting Prime Minister.


November 4, 2008 -



Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected the 44th president of the United States, the first African American to hold that position, on this date.


Don't forget to vote tomorrow -

The country you save, may be your own.



And so it goes

I woke up late myself

Did you remember to set all of the clocks back?

- the DVD player (I no longer have a VCR,) the microwave, the automatic coffee pot in the kitchen?



If you've already done so, you can watch this and amuse yourself to learn that screenwriters Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar were standing on the set one day when an extra standing next to them said, "I don't know who wrote this stuff but they ought to be arrested...they should be in a different business." Kalmer, who was known as a rational and calm man, said to Ruby, "I'm going over to hit him. Who does he think he is? He's just an extra!" But before fisticuffs erupted, Kalmer and Ruby were informed that Chico Marx had paid the extra to rib the screenwriters, just for the hell of it.


Do you have friend running the NYC Marathon today?



Don't forget to remind them that the first guy who ran one died at the finish line.


Happy National Sandwich Day. It's celebrated on the birthday of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, creator of the sandwich.



As the story goes, he was playing cards and did not want to leave the gaming table to eat. He asked for a serving of roast beef to be placed between two slices of bread so he could eat with his hands. Thus, the Sandwich was born.



To celebrate, begin gambling heavily, don't get up from the table for several hours and call for your manservant to bring you a slab of beef and two pieces of bread (and a piss pot.) Remember bunkies, Enjoy every sandwich!


November 3, 1939 -
One of the crown jewels of the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood, Ninotchka opened in New York on this date.



Ernst Lubitsch disliked Gottfried Reinhardt and S.N. Behrman's original screenplay, so he commissioned a rewrite from Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch. Lubitsch himself made some significant uncredited contributions to the screenplay.


November 3, 1953 -
The quiet yet stunning masterpiece by Yasujirô Ozu, Tokyo Story, starring Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama, premiered in Japan on this date.



Yasujirô Ozu and his longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda spent 103 days at a country inn in Chigasaka working on the screenplay. After that, shooting and editing advanced extremely quickly, meaning the film was in production for a total of four months.


Gojira premiered in Japan on this date in 1954.



One of the most famous legends regarding the production of this film has Ishirô Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya on the observation deck of one of Tokyo's buildings. They were planning Godzilla's path of destruction when visitors on the deck overheard their conversation and became concerned. The pair was stopped by authorities and questioned. (If you must see Raymond Burr, check him out here )


November 3, 1955 -
Another highlight from the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood Musicals, Guys and Dolls, premiered in NYC on this date.



After filming repeated takes of the scene where Sky (Marlon Brando) and Nathan (Frank Sinatra) first meet, they had to quit for the day when Sinatra had eaten too much cheesecake. He said he could not take one more bite. Brando, knowing how much Sinatra hated cheesecake, had purposely flubbed each take so that Sinatra would have to eat piece after piece of cheesecake. The next day, they came back and shot the scene perfectly on the first take.


November 3, 1962 –
The Crystals' single, He’s a Rebel, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on this date.



The Crystals did not sing on this. While at Liberty Records as the company's West Coast A&R head in 1962, producer Phil Spector heard Pitney's demo of the song. Knowing it would be a hit, he promptly resigned and his boss, Snuff Garrett, produced a version by Vikki Carr to be released as her first single. Spector assembled his musicians to do HIS version, but the Crystals were 3000 miles away in New York City; so he recruited The Blossoms - Darlene Love, Fanita James, and Gracia Nitzsche - to sing He's a Rebel.


November 3, 1967 -
Captain Kirk and the crew has a second run in with the con man, Harry Mudd and his army of androids when the Star Trek episode I, Mudd premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



NBC considered making a Harry Mudd spin-off show after the success of I, Mudd. They assigned Gene Roddenberry to develop the idea, but being busy with Star Trek and other projects, he didn't have time for it, and the series was never conceived.


November 3, 1976 -
MGM's horror classic, based on Stephen King’s best-selling first novel, Carrie, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Sissy Spacek, premiered on this date.



Nancy Allen claims she never realized her character was going to be so evil until she saw the finished film. She thought she and John Travolta were playing such self-centered, bickering morons that they were there for comic relief. Piper Laurie also thought the character of Margaret White was so over the top that the film had to be a comedy.


November 3, 1978 -
Diff'rent Strokes premiered on NBC-TV on this date.



Gary Coleman's parents actually took all of his money that he made from this show. By the time he sued his parents, they had no money left. Coleman ended up working as a security guard for the final years of his life.


November 3, 1990 -
The American public apparently went insane and Vanilla Ice's single, Ice Ice Baby was the number one single on the U.S. music charts, on this date.



The song clearly samples the 1980 song Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, but Vanilla Ice never got permission to use it. No lawsuit was filed, but it is likely that Vanilla Ice agreed to pay Queen and Bowie a settlement. According to industry insider Hans Ebert, Brian May of Queen first heard this song in a disco in Germany. He asked the DJ what it was, and learned that it was #1 in the US.


November 3, 1993 -
Fran traveled for the first time over the bridge from Flushing to the Sheffield's door when, The Nanny, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



When the show was broadcast in the U.K., many viewers wrote in to chide Charles Shaughnessy over his "imitation" English accent, and suggested he practice with co-star Daniel Davis on how to do a proper English accent. The cast found this quite amusing, as Shaughnessy is a native Englishman, born in London while Davis is an American, born in Arkansas.


Another book from the back shelves of The ACME Library


Today in History:
November 3, 1507 -
At the height of the Renaissance, a famous middle-aged Italian artist (who may or may not have weighed in the whole gravy vs. sauce debate - he was a gravy man) was commissioned by the husband of Lisa Gherardini to paint her on this date.



The work is known as the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda.) Little known fact: The painting cannot be bought or sold according to French heritage law.


November 3, 1906 -
Anticipating ABBA, SOS was adopted as warning signal by first conference on wireless telegraphy on this date.



Previously, people had to stand on the deck of their sinking ships and scream their heads off in hopes that someone would hear them.


November 3, 1957 -

Laika the dog became the first living creature in space on this date, when she involuntarily fulfilling a canine suicide mission aboard the Soviet Sputnik 2. Soviet engineers expected Laika to die from oxygen deprivation—a painless death within 15 seconds—after seven days in orbit.



However, some western researchers speculated, then later confirmed by declassified Soviet documents in 1993, that Laika was roasted when the satellite's heat shields were detached.

I wonder if the Explorer's Club served Hot Dogs in her honor that year.


November 3, 1964 -
In 1801, the Washington D.C. district was established as a US Congressional jurisdiction; this meant residents of Washington D.C. were unable to vote.



The passing of the 23rd Amendment to the US Constitution, in 1961, reversed this policy, allowing D.C. residents to vote. Residents of Washington D.C. were permitted to vote in a US Presidential election for the first time on this date.


November 3, 1988 –
Talk-show host Geraldo Rivera’s nose was broken as Roy Innis brawled with skinheads on his daytime show, Geraldo, on this date.



He did not press charges, claiming that he did not wish to be “tied up with the roaches” and also said that “if there ever was a case of deserved violence, this was it.”


November 3, 1993 -
Russian inventor Leon Theremin, famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments, died on this date.





Thermin's instrument has shown up in the work of such diverse artist as Raymond Scott, Bernard Herrmann, The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd.

And so it goes

Those who live forever in our hearts

For the rest of those the dearly departed who didn't make the cut yesterday for All Saint's Day, take heart;

remember today is All Souls Day, aka the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (the second day of Día de los Muertos.)

In the late tenth or early eleventh century, Saint Odilo of Cluny decided that All Souls' Day would take place after All Saints' Day.



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.



This was the only film teaming Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in which they never sang together. Aware that her classical style was poorly matched to his popular vocalizing, Ernst Lubitsch even inserted a joke about the musical mismatch. At one point Chevalier seemed to be serenading MacDonald with a cultured baritone voice, only for Lubitsch to reveal the voice belonged to one of his orderlies.


November 2, 1940 -
Another funny Porky Pig Looney Tunes, The Sour Puss, premiered on this date.



This is the first appearance of the gag where a character commits suicide after saying "Now I've seen everything!" The gag is most commonly used in cartoons directed by Bob Clampett and is often censored when the cartoon is aired on television.


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.)



In the long dolly shot of Joel McCrea and Mary Astor strolling on the pier from Rudy Vallee's yacht, Preston Sturges makes a rare Alfred Hitchcock-style appearance as the chubby, moustachioed leader of the crew toting Claudette Colbert's luggage.


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 exploding musical instrument scheme is the same in three Warner Brothers cartoons. The musical score is Those Endearing Young Charms. In order, they are, first is Ballot Box Bunny, as Yosemite Sam tried to get rid of Bugs Bunny, with a piano. Second is Show Biz Bugs, as Daffy Duck tried to get rid of Bugs Bunny, with a xylophone. Then in Rushing Roulette, the rivals were Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. Wile E. Coyote set up a piano, and after the Roadrunner played a 'sour note', Wile E. played the correct theme.


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



During the filming of the episode, which took place before a studio audience at BBC Television Centre, Rowan Atkinson described sharing his character's dread of impending death and feeling a "knot in the pit of my stomach", something that he had never experienced.


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.



John Goodman and Billy Crystal sometimes recorded their lines in the same room together, an unusual move for animated films, where actors more often work alone. Steve Buscemi and Frank Oz (Randall and his assistant Fungus) also recorded their lines together for the bathroom scene.


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.



Neither David Cross' nor Jeffrey Tambor's characters were ever intended to be regular characters. It was not until the actors tested well that the writers ended up putting them regularly in the series.

Don't forget to tune in to The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today


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.

Kids, this is not the way to get ahead.


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.

Before You Go - Don't forget to set your clocks back tonight -



I'm never sure why you need to save daylight anymore, it seems to come whether or not you call.




And so it goes

Today is a reminder of the beauty of new beginnings

The name November comes from the Latin "novem" which is the Latin for the nine. In the early Roman calendar, it was the ninth month. According to the Gregorian calendar, November is the eleventh month of the year.

Go figure.

The Roman Senate elected to name the eleventh month for Tiberus Caesar and since Augustus time, it has had only 30 days. Originally, there were 30 days, then 29, then 31. This is what comes from too much of a good time - poor calendar making.



(In England it's the first day of the fox-hunting season. Oscar Wilde called fox-hunting ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’. About 30,000 foxes die each year. Just in case this comes up in conversation.)

November's Birthstone is the Topaz or Citrine.

November's Flower is the Chrysanthemum.



November comes between the fall and winter months. The leaves are almost completely gone from the trees, and the rest have lost most of their color. The Anglo-Saxons referred to November as the 'wind month' and the 'blood month' - probably because this is the month they killed their animals for food.



Lots of activities come to a halt in November. The crops have been harvested and either put in storage, or sent to processing plants or mills. Farmers already know if their year has been successful or not. Football is the main sport of the month. The weather is usually beautiful for this kind of sport.

November is:
Adoption Awareness Month,
Alzheimer's Disease Month,
Apple Month,
Aviation History Month,
Change the Batteries In Your Vibrator Month,
Impotency Month,
Christmas Seals Month,
Denounce your local Rotarian Month,
National Fun with Fondue Month,
Epilepsy Month,
Hospice Month,
Native-American Heritage Month,
Peanut Butter Lovers Month,
Real Jewelry Month (and not Real Jewry Month)
and Movember.



Oh yeah, Thanksgiving occurs during November as well.


Today is also All Saints Day, the feast celebrated on November 1 in Western Christianity, honoring all the saints, known and unknown.

It's also the first day of celebration The Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos in Spanish), a holiday celebrated mainly in Mexico and by people of Mexican heritage (and others) living in the United States and Canada.



The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and relatives who have died. The celebration occurs on the 1st and 2nd of November, in connection with the Catholic holy days of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.

All Saints Day is a Holy Day of Obligation. So if you are being observant, put you ass in a pew.


November 1, 1938 -
The Alfred Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave premiered in the US on this date.



In order to get a realistic effect, Alfred Hitchcock insisted that there should be no background music except at the beginning and the end. Between those two points, the only music heard is the music sung by the musician outside the hotel, the music tune of Miss Froy, the "Colonel Bogey March" music hummed by Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), the dance music conducted by Gilbert in his hotel room, and the dance music when Iris (Margaret Lockwood) meets Gilbert in the train.


November 1, 1967 -
Warner Brothers released one of Paul Newman's signature films, Cool Hand Luke on this date.



While passing by the prison camp set, a San Joaquin County building inspector thought it was a recently constructed migrant workers' complex, and posted "condemned" notices on the buildings for not being up to code.


November 1, 1968 –
George Harrison releases Wonderwall Music, on this date, becoming the first Beatle to release a solo album.



It’s a soundtrack to the psychedelic movie Wonderwall. The songs which were mostly Harrison instrumentals, featured Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and an unaccredited banjo contribution by Peter Tork of The Monkees.


November 1, 1969 –
Elvis Presley single Suspicious Minds went to No. #1 on the Billboard Charts on this date. It was his last #1 hit in his lifetime.



This was a big comeback song for Elvis, who hadn't had a US #1 hit since Good Luck Charm in 1962. He had been making a series of unexceptional movies, and his music had lost its luster. Suspicious Minds brought him back to #1 in November 1969, and he was off and running, launching a tour in 1970 (his first in nine years) and becoming a star attraction in Las Vegas.


November 1, 1994 -
The first Nirvana album released following the death of Kurt Cobain, MTV Unplugged in New York was released on this date.



The following week, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 310,500 copies, which was the highest first-week sales of Nirvana's career.


Another unimportant moment in history.


Today in History:
November 1, 1512 -
Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) finally stops milking the job and the Sistine Chapel ceiling was finally exhibited to public.



Thus ended the largest padding of a rehab bill since the building of the Taj Mahal.


This was a very big day for William Shakespeare.

On November 1, 1604, his tragedy Othello was first presented.



On November 1, 1611, his romantic comedy The Tempest was first presented.



Unless, Edward DeVere wrote these plays. Then it would have been a big day for him.


November 1, 1800 -
President John Adams became the first US leader to move into the Executive Mansion, which later was called the White House, on this date.



Construction began on the White House in 1792, and it took eight years to complete. And as it has been observed, it wasn't trade unionist who built it.


November 1, 1870 -
In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) made its first official meteorological forecast -



darkness approaching as night falls with a gradual increase of daylight as dawn comes on in the morning.


November 1, 1896 -
A picture showing the unclad (bare) breasts of a (Zulu) woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time,

starting a trend of providing masturbation material to youth for decades.


November 1, 1918 -
The worst accident in the history of the New York subway system - the Malbone Street wreck of 1918, which killed at least 93 people, occurred on this date. Motormen of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers went on strike against the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, the forerunner of the BMT. BRT officials decided to keep the trains running, using nonstriking workers to drive them.



An inexperienced strikebreaker drove a train too fast and the train derailed in tunnel underneath Malbone Street in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, shearing off the sides and roofs of four of the five cars. Dozens of passengers died immediately, many of them decapitated or impaled by shards of wood and glass. Rescuers rushed to the station, to help the dazed and injured and to carry away the dead. The power failure in the tunnel posed a problem for rescuers that was partially solved when automobiles pulled up near the entrance to the station to illuminate the ghastly scene.


November 1, 1939 -
The first animal, a rabbit, was conceived by artificial insemination on this date.



History does not record why anyone felt that rabbits needed any help in the procreation department.


November 1, 1941 -
Photographer Ansel Adams took a picture of a moonrise in the half-light between sunset and dark that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography, on this date.



While driving through the countryside, Adams pulled off to the side of Route 84 when he saw a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico. Desperate to capture the image in the fading light, he, his son and another passenger scrambled to set up the tripod and camera, knowing that only moments remained before the light was gone. He only managed to produce one exposure before the sunlight lifted from the gravesite’s crosses at 4:49 pm.


November 1, 1950 -
Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola tried to assassinate President Harry Truman while he was residing at the Blair House while the White House underwent renovations on this date. The two assailants were able to walk right up to the front door and open fire.



The President and his wife were upstairs and were not harmed. Torresola was killed by the US secret service during the unsuccessful attack, and Collazo was sentenced to life in prison after President Truman commuted his death sentence.


November 1, 1951 -

US Soldiers were exposed to an atomic explosion for the first time in training exercises, at Desert Rock, Nevada on this date.



Your tax dollars at work in 1951 - Participation was not voluntary and served both to train and indoctrinate.


November 1, 1952 -
The United States successfully detonated the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Ivy Mike,” in the Eniwetok Atoll of the Marshall Islands, on this date. The bomb has a yield of ten megatons, a force a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.



Eighty million tons of soil were kicked into the air by the blast. The “mushroom” cloud rose to 135,000 feet and would eventually spread to 1,000 miles in width. It was the first time fusion occurred on Earth.


November 1, 1955 -
Jack Gilbert Graham planted a time bomb aboard a United DC-6 airplane, killing all 44 people on board, above Longmont, Colorado, on this date. Graham planted the bomb in his mother's suitcase in an apparent move to claim life insurance money.



After arresting Graham federal agents learned that it was not in fact a federal crime to blow up an airplane. Colorado instead charged the man for the single murder of his mother. Graham was executed in the gas chamber Jan 11, 1957. Remember kids, the wages of sin is death.


November 1, 1975 -
Italian film director, screen writer, essayist, poet, critic and novelist, Pier Paolo Pasolini was violently murdered on this date.

The circumstances surrounding Pasolini's death remain a mystery. A young male prostitute was tried and convicted for the murder in 1976. But it was widely believed that Pasolini was murdered by the Mafia because of his investigation of their involvement in the prostitution business.



And so it goes