How dare you call me a ham?

March 6, 1942 -
Ernst Lubitsch World War II comedy, To Be or Not to Be, starring Jack Benny, Carole Lombard and Robert Stack premiered on this date.



Carole Lombard took the female lead despite the strenuous objections of her husband, Clark Gable.  After the shooting of this film was finished, Carole Lombard told many people that this film was the happiest experience of her career from start to finish.


March 6, 1998 -
The Coen Bros. off-kilter take on a Raymond Chandler detective story, The Big Lebowski, opened on this date.



The Dude is in every scene of the movie. Even in the scene where the Nihilists are ordering pancakes you can see the van in which the Dude and Walter are driving. This is in keeping with the traditional film-noir, in which the protagonist is the narrator and acts as the audience's guide throughout the film.


(due to a family emergency posting in the next few day may be abbreviated - we'll see.)
Today in History:
Michelangelo Buonarotti was born on this date in 1475. He painted and sculpted so much that it began to become embarrassing for other people, so they finally decided it was time to stop procrastinating and start the Renaissance.



So they did.


On March 6, 1619, Cyrano de Bergerac was born. Mr. de Bergerac was a brilliant French satirist and playwright, a rapier wit, and, from all contemporary accounts, an accomplished musician, an enthralling conversationalist, and a charming ladies' man.



He was unfortunately best known for his nose.


Dr. John Greenwood, George Washington's personal dentist, constructed the first 'dental foot engine' on this date in 1790.

He adapts his mother’s foot treadle spinning wheel to rotate a drill.


March 6, 1836 -
... Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.

The Alamo was seized by General Santa Ana - 3,000 versus 147, it wasn't much of a fair fight. The holdouts suffered unnecessary deaths, disobeying direct orders by remaining, and losing their arms and cannon to the Mexicans.  Davy - Pioneer, Patriot, Soldier, Trapper, Explorer, State Legislator, Congressman was one of the last holdouts to die on this day.



(The Mexican army managed to lose over 600 men.)  Remember the Alamo.


March 6, 1869 -
Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society on this date in a presentation entitled “The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements”. He left gaps in his charts and predicted the addition of three more elements in the near future.



Mendeleev's predictions were right, and he is credited with writing the first periodic table.


March 6, 1899 -
Friedrich Bayer and Co. patented their eponymous painkiller, Bayer aspirin in Berlin on this day. The main ingredient of aspirin, acetylsalicylic acid, had been used since ancient times, though Bayer's company was the first to offer it in a convenient and stable pill form.



It quickly gained popularity, and at one time was the most used painkiller in the world.


March 6, 1912 -
National Biscuit Company's (Nabisco) Oreo® cookies went on sale for the first time on this date.



The brand's competitor, Sunshine's Hydrox®, had debuted in 1908. (Hydrox has completely disappeared as a brand but secretly exists as 'cookie crumbs' for yogurt flavorings and an ingredient in piecrust.)


March 6, 1918 -
In January 1918, US naval collier (a ship that transports,) Cyclops was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service and sailed to Brazilian waters to fuel British ships in the South Atlantic.

It put to sea from Rio de Janeiro on February 16, 1918, and after touching at Barbados on March 3 and 4, was never heard from again. The loss of the ship without a trace is one of the sea's unsolved mysteries.


March 6, 1965 -
... Married. I can see you right now in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove. But I can't see the stove.

Daisy Juliette Baker, Groucho's favorite comic foil, died on this date.



Groucho was often cruel to her on-screen but when the cameras stopped rolling, he had nothing but nice things to say about her, calling her a “wonderful woman.”


March 6, 1970 -
In Greenwich Village, a townhouse at 18 West 11th St.exploded on this date. SDS Weathermen members Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins were killed at the site where a bomb was being manufactured.

Other members went underground and became known as the Weather Underground.

March 6, 1970 -
The Beatles released Let it Be in UK on this date. Paul McCartney wrote this song supposedly after he had a dream about his mother who died when he was 14.



Since Let It Be was The Beatles last album, it made an appropriate statement about leaving problems behind and moving on in life. John Lennon hated the song because of it's apparent Christian overtones. He made the comment before recording it, "And now we'd like to do Hark The Angels Come."



The Beatles were so busy arguing with each other that Aretha Franklin was able to release a cover version of the song on her album This Girl's In Love With You (as well as Eleanor Rigby), before The Beatles version came out.


March 6, 1981 -
After 19 years presenting the CBS Evening News, Uncle Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, signs off for the last time.



Now that Jon Stewart has put his load down; who will carry that weight now?



And so it goes.

Oh, cheesy puffs

It's National Cheez Doodle Day



Instead of the smudged forehead, they will know you by your neon yellow fingers.


March 5, 1954 -
The Classic B movie, Creature from the Black Lagoon, premiered on this date.



Everyone seemed to love this film - Ingmar Bergman watched this film every day on his birthday. Jean Renoir unbelievably served as an uncredited script doctor on the film.


March 5, 1970 -
Universal released the blockbuster film, Airport, starring just about everyone who was available in Hollywood, on this date.



Burt Lancaster, who headlined the film above the title with Dean Martin, made a great deal of money from the film, which was a huge hit. Lancaster's contract gave him a 10% profit participation once the movie hit $50 million, and the film grossed $45.3 million in North America alone. Despite the financial windfall, Lancaster said that the movie was "the worstpiece of junk ever made."


March 5, 1978 -
Mae West's final film, Sextette, was released on this date.



Alice Cooper has claimed on numerous occasions that Mae West sexually propositioned him and each of the film's other leading men. I just can't imagine how this film was ever made - It's just so wrong on so many levels.


Today in History:
March 5, 1770 -
British soldiers who had been taunted by a crowd of colonists opened fire, killing five people, on this date, in what would become known as the Boston Massacre. Among the five killed was an African American sailor, Crispus Attucks.



Colonists were already resenting the Townsend Acts, a very early WHO album. Tensions caused by the heavy military presence in Boston, led to brawls between soldiers and civilians and eventually to troops shooting their muskets into a riotous crowd.

SO you can see, the tradition of killing innocent black men in American is older than the Republic.


March 5, 1933 -
Germany went on a 12 year drinking binge - the Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote in German parliamentary elections, enabling it to join with the Nationalists to gain a slight majority in the Reichstag.



Adolf 'Evil Bastard' Hitler had become chairman of the Nazi party in 1921, and two years later he tried to topple the German republican government in the "beer-hall putsch." Nazi storm troopers surrounded government officials during a meeting at a beer hall in Munich. The troopers forced the officials to swear allegiance to the Nazi revolution. But the coup was defeated and Hitler fled, then he was captured and imprisoned. While in prison, Hitler dictated his autobiography Mein Kampf (or, in English, I'm Crazy and I'm Gonna Kill You or How I Intend to Enslave or Kill Millions of People Immediately Upon My Release) to a sympathetic scribe, and the book became important to Nazism.

The failed coup made Hitler famous ( he already began selling the cryptic t-shirt 'World Tour 1939 - 1945'), and the Nazi party capitalized on the economic depression of 1929, as well as the heavy reparations Germany was made to pay for World War I, and they became a powerful force in Germany. In 1932, Hitler ran for president of Germany, but lost. The next year, he became the chancellor. Just before the parliamentary elections in 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire, which led to the Reichstag Fire Decree, which rescinded habeas corpus and other protective laws.



The following week, March 5, 1933, the Nazi Party won a slight majority in the elections. Within three weeks, the Nazi-dominated Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial powers and ended the Weimar Republic in Germany.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: beer, Bavarians and the ballot do not mix.


It was on this date in 1946, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, that Winston Churchill made his famous observation that, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent."



The speech was not well received at first, as the people of Fulton weren't sure which continent he was talking about and they didn't care what sort of drapes were fashionable in foreign parts.


Bizarre ironies of History -
On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, Josif Stalin, truly Evil Bastard, did not emerge from his room the next day, having probably suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.



Although his guards thought it odd that he did not rise at his usual time, the next day they were under orders not to disturb him and he was not discovered until that evening. He died four days later, on March 5, 1953, at the age of 74, and was buried on March 9. His daughter Svetlana recalls the scene as she stood by his death bed "He suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance. Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse upon all of us. The next moment after a final effort the spirit wrenched its self free of the flesh."



Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria had, immediately after the stroke, gone about "spewing hatred against[Stalin] and mocking him", and then, when Stalin showed signs of consciousness, dropped to his knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria immediately stood and spat.



His body was preserved in Lenin's Mausoleum until October 31, 1961, when his body was removed from the Mausoleum and buried next to the Kremlin walls as part of the process of de-Stalinization.


The famed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev lived in dread fear of getting on the wrong side of Stalin. Always looking to appease the Evil Bastard, he died at the age of 61 from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 5, 1953 (the same day and even hour and cause that Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin died.)



Prokofiev had lived near the Red Square and for three days the throngs gathered to mourn Stalin made it impossible to carry Prokofiev's body out for the funeral service at the headquarters of the Soviet Composer's Union. Paper flowers and a taped recording of the funeral march from his Romeo and Juliet had to be used, as all real flowers and musicians were reserved for Stalin's funeral.

http://www.moviemoviesite.com/Films/1941/citizen_kane/Images/hermanjmankiewicz.jpg
Herman J. Mankiewicz, producer and alcoholic screenwriter, best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles on the screenplay of Citizen Kane, for which they both won an Academy Award and famously clashed over credit, died of uremia poisoning in Hollywood, CA on March 5, 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin and Sergei Prokofiev.


March 5, 1963 -
Virginia Patterson Hensley (Patsy Cline), country music singer has an unfortunate close encounter with an airplane on this date.







What was it with singers and small planes in the early 60s


March 5, 1977 -
Walter Cronkite and Jimmy Carter went on the air for a call-in radio program where ordinary citizens could call and ask the president anything they liked.



Over 9 million callers tried to get through, and the questions ranged from Carter's pardoning the draft dodgers to why he sent his daughter to public school.


March 5, 1982 -
John Belushi was found dead at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood from a cocaine and heroin overdose on this date. A sketchy woman, Cathy Smith, was later charged with administering the fatal injections.





Sorry but there was really nothing funny about that - it was just a waste.


March 5, 1989 -
Darwin Award nominee Michael Anderson Godwin, previously on death row for murder but with sentence commuted to life imprisonment, died in a toilet-related accident at the Central Correctional Institution in South Carolina on this date. Godwin, sitting on a stainless steel toilet, bit into headphone wires that were connected to his television. He was immediately electrocuted.

[Moral: use a porcelain toilet. And eat more fiber.]



And so it goes

Everyone is looking forward to this date.

Today is my favorite day - March 4th

It's the day that tells you to do something.


March 4, 1922 -
The first vampire film Nosferatu, an illegal adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, was released in Germany on this date.



After 85 years, virtually all of the exteriors were left intact in the cities of Wismar and Lubeck.


March 4, 1967 -
The Rolling Stones song, Ruby Tuesday, topped the charts on this date.



This was supposed to be the B-side of Let's Spend the Night Together, but many radio stations shied away from the sexual implications of that song, so they played this instead and made it a hit.


March 4, 1950 -
One of the classic Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, was released on this date.



By all means, please, stop eating or drinking while watching this cartoon, you may injury yourself. Also, a State dept report has just been released, the cavalry came to the rescue but it was too late.


March 4, 1961 -
Michelangelo Antonioni's landmark of European cinema, L'Avventura, premiered in the US on this date.



At its premiere at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, this was booed so much to the extent that Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti fled the theater. However, after the second screening there was a complete turn around in how it was perceived and it was awarded the Special Jury Prize


Today in History:
March 4, 1837 -
The "Windy City", "Chi-Town", "Second City," and the "City of Broad Shoulders" - Chicago becomes
incorporated as a city on this date.



10,000 extra votes from various local cemeteries were counted that day alone.

Remember, vote early, vote often.


March 4, 1849 -
This is a US secret you probably don't know - this is the day America had no President.Pres.

James K. Polk (whose cause of death was officially listed as "diarrhea") officially stepped down as the 11th US president and President Zachary Taylor (who died in office after eating cherries and milk at a July 4th celebration) refused to be sworn-in on a Sunday.

US Sen. David Rice Atchison (1807-1886) of Missouri then technically held office as president until Zachary Taylor took his oath the next day. However Atchison’s term as president pro tempore of the Senate had also expired, and his new term did not begin until March 5. For the rest of his life, Atchison enjoyed polishing this story, '' describing his "presidency" as "the honestest administration this country ever had."


March 4, 1861 -
The first official flag of the Confederate States of America, called the Stars and Bars, having seven stars, for the seven states that initially formed the Confederacy, was formally adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America, on this date.

This flag was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the Union flag under battle conditions, so the flag was changed to the Stainless Banner. The union of the Stainless Banner, known as the Southern Cross, became the one more commonly used in military operations. The Southern Cross had 13 stars, adding the four states that joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, and the two divided states of Kentucky and Missouri.



While, the Southern states were adopting their banner, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States on this date as well.

So now you know.


March 4, 1884 -
...By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt cuffs -- by each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable....



Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson begin their work on the case in A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, on this date (or maybe it didn't. I'm not going to join the massive debate the Holmesians get involved in with the accuracy of this date.)


March 4, 1952 -
Ronald Reagan married his 'mommy' Nancy Davis, in the San Fernando Valley, on this date.

March 4, 1960 -
Waaaa, Ricky I don't want to be married anymore to you, you lousy two bit skirt chasing, whoremonger.



Lucille Ball filed divorce from Desi Arnaz on this date.


March 4, 1966 -
John Lennon claimed that The Beatles were "bigger than Jesus", and that "Christianity will... vanish and shrink" on this date.



I guess he was dead wrong about that.


March 4, 1974 -
The first issue of People Magazine featuring actress Mia Farrow, starring in the movie The Great Gatsby, was released on this date.

The duration of your stay in the bathroom has never been the same.


March 4, 1994 -
Comedian John Candy died on this date.



Just think - the fun Dr. Tongue and Desi Arnaz are having in the 3D House of Slavechicks.



And so it goes.

I'll make the sun come shining through

Today is I Want You To Be Happy Day and I can think of nothing else that will make you more happy than to continue reading, or perhaps sending me small, unmarked bills in an envelope.

I know that would make me very happy.


March 3, 1933 -
W.C. Fields classic short, The Fatal Glass of Beer, premiered on this date.



In Fields' first sound film, The Golf Specialist there is a wanted poster of Fields which shows him in his "Fatal Glass of Beer" costume. It evidently was taken from an earlier stage presentation of the classic Fields sketch.


March 3, 1985 -
ABC-TV unleashed Bruce Willis, Cybill Shepherd and the crew from the Blue Moon Detective Agency onto an unsuspecting world, when it premiered the pilot episode of Moonlighting on this date.



For its time, Moonlighting was the most expensive series on TV, with an average cost of $1.6 million per episode. ABC was willing to spend the money because the network owned the show, making more profit than if the series was owned by a separate production company.


Today in History -
March 3, 1861 -
Russian Tsar, Tzar, Czar Alexander II issued a manifest and ends feudal control of serfs as part of a program of westernization.

The Russian serf lived a hopeless life of back-breaking labor and desperate poverty. Their oppression, which continued even after their liberation, caused riots, assassinations, and literature. Finally they had the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to make the serfs equal to everyone else, and it worked.

From that point forward, everyone lived a hopeless life of back-breaking labor and desperate poverty.

The American surfdom can only be blamed for the Beach Boys and Annette Funicello.


March 3, 1863 -
The National Conscription Act is signed, forcing all men between 20 and 45 years of age into the draft lotteries. Except for rich bastards, who could buy their way out for $300, or hire another man to serve in his place.

The inevitable result is the week long New York Draft Riots.


March 3, 1875 -
The opera Carmen, composed by Georges Bizet, opened in Paris at the Opera-Comique, despite intense controversy surrounding its opening. The story was considered too salacious for the general public, and Bizet had trouble getting even one actress to agree to play the title role.



This was Bizet's only hit opera, as he died suddenly at the age of 37, three months later.


March 3, 1887 -
Anne Mansfield Sullivan arrived at the Alabama home of Capt. and Mrs. Arthur H. Keller to become the teacher of Helen, their blind and deaf 6 year old daughter on this date.

Anne Sullivan was legally blind and Helen Keller was blind and deaf. They accomplished more in their lives than most able-bodied people.


March 3, 1923 -
The first issue of Time magazine, created by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (the first weekly news magazine in the United States), was published on this date. It featured on its cover, Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

It has been suggested that TIME is an acronym, for The International Magazine of Events.


March 3, 1931 -
An English beer drinking song became the National Anthem of the United States on this date. The lyrics to said drink song are -

To Anacreon in heaven where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be,
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:
Voice, fiddle aud flute, no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot!
And besides I'll instruct you like me to entwine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

I believe drinking heavily is the key here.



Perhaps we can hand out laminated cards before each game.


March 3, 1931 -
...Why, you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie....

On the same day President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional act adopting The Star-Spangled Banner, as the national anthem, Cab Calloway recorded the classic Minnie The Moocher.



It became the first million-selling jazz album.


March 3, 1934 -
John Dillinger escaped from an escapeproof jail in Crown Point Indiana, using a wooden pistol he carved himself. It's his second escape.



Remember, J. Edger was just months away from slicing up the corpse of Dillinger for his own personal collection.


March 3, 1959 -
An embittered and confused Lou Costello roused himself from his hospital bed to mutter, Fuck you Abbott, Who's on first now, coughs up bloody phlegm and died on this date.



Bud Abbott, ten years older than Lou, smiled to himself, lit a cigars and lived another 15 years to spite his former partner.


March 3, 1969 -
Apollo 9, the third manned mission in the United States Apollo space program, blasted off from Cape Kennedy on a mission to test the lunar module.



It carried astronauts James McDivitt, Russell Schweickart and David Scott and made 151 Earth orbits over 10 days. The mission was the second manned launch of a Saturn V rocket.


March 3, 1991 -
Los Angles Police officers were filmed beating black motorist Rodney King with nightsticks. Television news stations repeatedly aired the film nationwide.



Four whites were charged with the beating on March 15, and when they were found not guilty, Los Angeles erupted in riots.


And so it goes.


Before you go - the film director Spike Jonze re-imagined the opening of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert -



It always puts you in good stead, if you're a fan of Grover.

A really long way to go

March 2, 1933 -
RKO Studios, on the brink of bankruptcy, gambled the studio on a filmed puppet show for kids, releasing the film King Kong on this date.



In the original film, the character's name is Kong -- a name given to him by the inhabitants of "Skull Island" in the Indian Ocean, where Kong lived along with other over-sized animals such as a plesiosaur, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs. 'King' is an appellation added by an American film crew led by Carl Denham, who captures Kong and takes him to New York City to be exhibited as the "Eighth Wonder of the World".



Kong escapes and climbs the Empire State Building (the World Trade Center in the 1976 remake) where he is shot and killed by aircraft. Nevertheless, "it was beauty who killed the beast", as he only climbed the building in the first place in an attempt to protect the lead female character Ann Darrow.



The film saved RKO Studios from bankruptcy.


March 2, 1939 -
The first of many collaborations between John Ford and John Wayne, Stagecoach, went into general release on this date.



Local Navajo Indians played the Apaches. The film's production was a huge economic boost to the local impoverished population, giving jobs to hundreds of locals as extras and handymen.


March 2, 1965 -
The movie version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, had its world premiere at New York’s Rivoli Theater on this date.







Julie Andrews sang "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to the children in the cast to entertain them between shooting. Since Mary Poppins hadn't yet been released, they just thought she'd made up the song for them.


Today in History -
When he was a young man, no one knew for sure if Nicholas I of Russia, the son of Paul I, was Czar, Tsar, or Tzar. It was hard to know anything at all about someone whose last name was a vowel, especially when he lived in a hermitage. Nicholas was therefore as confused as he was powerful, which inevitably led to his becoming an Evil Bastard.



He didn't realize what an Evil Bastard he'd become until he lost the Crimean War, however, at which point he discovered that in addition to being Evil he was also an Incompetent Bastard. This made him Autocratic and he therefore died on March 2, 1855.



His first son Alexander, was left to ponder all of this when he became Alexander II on the same day.


March 2, 1900 -
... It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater… it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content.







Kurt Weill, composer, Brecht and Gershwin collaborator, was born in Dessau, Germany on this date.


Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was born more than 100 years ago today, on March 2, 1904. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, and is one of only a few men in history to have written illustrated books in verse about a pedophiliac cat.



You can hardly blame the guy for changing his name. (Remember it's National Read Across America Day in honor of Dr. Seuss.)


On March 2, 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev was born with a big red splotch on his head, so he got right into politics. Mr. Gorbachev was the last Evil Bastard to reign over the Soviet Empire. Fortunately, he was also Bumbling Bastard, and his invention of glasnost and perestroika accidentally made walls fall down in Germany.



This caused Boris Yeltsin to ride on top of a tank and was therefore historical.


March 2, 1939 -
Howard Carter dies of King Tut's curse on this date.



But dammit remember there is no mummy's curse.


March 2, 1944 -
A train of mixed military/civilian passengers stalls inside a tunnel outside Salerno, Italy, asphyxiating 426 from fumes. Authorities question Mussolini on the necessities of have trains run on a timely basis to meet ones death in such an unpleasant manner.

But he was having his own problems at the time.


March 2, 1944 -
... Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.







Lewis Allan Lou Reed singer, songwriter, poet and guitarist was born (on the wild side.)


March 2, 1968 -
Syd Barrett leaves Pink Floyd, after melting his mind with various extremely dangerous drugs on this date. He spends the following years mumbling about pork chops and refrigerators.



A very good biography about Syd Barrett, A Very Irregular Head, came a few years ago.


March 2, 1982 -
Science fiction author Philip K Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana, California on this date. Since 1974 the author had been possessed by a superalien who arrived in his head via a beam of pink light.



It has been suggested that Mr Dick and Mr Barrett had been in regular communication via the pork chops in his refrigerator.


March 2, 1997 -
Don P. Wolf and a team of researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center announce that they had produced rhesus monkeys from cloned embryos, the first successful use of cloning-related technology in primates.

Isn't this how that whole the Planet of the Apes problem began.



And so it goes.

Remember I told you to save the excuse

I can't remember the old saying, March comes in like a Patagonian Mara and goes out like a Sunda Colugo?

The name of March comes from ancient Rome, when March was the first month of the year and called Martius after Mars, the Roman god of war.

In Rome, where the climate is Mediterranean, March is the first month of spring, a logical point for the beginning of the year as well as the start of the military campaign season. The numbered year began on March 1 in Russia until the end of the fifteenth century.



Great Britain and her colonies continued to use March 25 until 1752, the same year they finally adopted the Gregorian calendar. Many other cultures and religions still celebrate the beginning of the New Year in March.  (But I bet you told your boss that you still tenaciously clung to the Julian Calendar and celebrated January 13th as New Years Day - well you're SOL.)



Among the things we celebrate this month are:
* Cataract Awareness Month
* Hemophilia Month
* Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Month
* Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month (Please stop broadcasting colonoscopies!)
* Rosacea Awareness Month
* Deaf History Month
* Feminine Empowerment Month
* Foot Health Month
* Furniture Refinishing Month
* Humorists Are Artists Month
* International Hamburger & Pickle Month
* Irish-American Heritage Month (Please don't let the Catholic High Schools know that St. Patrick's Day can be celebrated all month long.)
* Poison Prevention Awareness Month
* Red Cross Month
* Talk with Your Teen about Sex Month
* National Umbrella Month
* Social Worker's Month (If you don't talk to your kids about sex.)


Today is National Pig Day honoring the porcine fellow. According to one of the holiday's creators, the purpose of National Pig Day is "to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place as one of man's most intellectual and domesticated animals."



Everybody should go wallow in the mud and kiss a pig (or not.)


March 1, 1936 -
Warner Bros. Pictures releases the horror film The Walking Dead, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff and Edmund Gwenn, which premiered in New York City, on this date.



The "glass heart" machine used to revive Karloff's dead character was said to be "nearly a prefect replica" of an actual perfusion pump- a device designed to keep organs alive outside an organism's body- which had been built by Charles Lindbergh, when the legendary pilot and engineer was working with a Nobel-winning scientist at New York's Rockefeller Institute research labs in the mid-1930s.


Today in History:
March 1, 1810 -
Frédéric François Chopin, one of the best-known and best-loved composers of the Romantic period, was born on this date.



Chopin's entire musical output was devoted to his favorite instrument, the piano.


March 1, 1932 -
A person, most likely not the convicted and executed Bruno Hauptmann, climbed a makeshift ladder to the 2nd floor of Charles Lindbergh's New Jersey home and snatches his twenty-month-old son, Charles Jr. Whoever took the baby left behind a poorly-written ransom note demanding $50,000 in small bills.



Interesting aside, leading the investigation for the New Jersey state police was Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, father of the Gulf War hero, Stormin Norman, who shares his name.


March 1, 1954 -
The first hydrogen bomb is detonated at Bikini. Even though the bomb was hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb exploded there in 1946, no islanders were evacuated this time. Almost 300 people suffered radiation exposure. The test was so successful that it blew the once happy island into tiny bits that came to be known collectively as the Bikini Atoll.



Shrewd fashion moguls in France put two and two together and invented bell bottoms.


About four hundred years earlier--on March 1, 1562--Jason and his thousand Huguenots were at prayer in Vassy, France, when they were suddenly massacred by Catholics. Huguenots and Catholics subsequently fought The Wars of Religion for over three decades to settle the question of Best Religion Ever. Unfortunately the Edict of Nantes granted religious tolerance in 1598 and the question was never settled to anyone's satisfaction.

As a result, billions of human beings continue to honor the wrong religion to this very day. I truly hopes God is grading on a curve. . .


March 1, 1969 -
While performing with the Doors at The Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, the formerly svelte, now tubby alcoholic Jim Morrison asks the audience Do you wanna see my cock? then exposes himself briefly on a Miami stage.



For thus showing his peepee, Morrison received a sentence of six months hard labor.

Mr. Mojo Rising indeed.

Coincidentally, in a weird cosmic way, the Oliver Stone film, The Doors, premiered on the same date in 1991.



Val Kilmer broke his arm badly when he performed a jump from the stage into the crowd and the stuntman failed to catch him, leaving Kilmer with an abnormal growth on his right elbow.


March 1, 1971 -
You may not need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows but... The radical group Weather Underground exploded a bomb in a restroom of the U.S. Capitol building, causing significant damage. The bomb exploded after an intensive search of the building yielded no results.



Nobody was ever convicted of the attack.


March 1, 1978 -
The body of Charlie Chaplin was stolen for ransom by Galtcho Ganav (Bulgaria) and Romnan Wardas (Poland) from a cemetery in Corsier, Switzerland. The actor's corpse is recovered two months later.

One can only hope the little tramp was properly embalmed.


March 1, 1982 -
Russian spacecraft Venera 13 landed on Venus and sent back data.



Frightened scientists try to suppress the video but the world must know.



And so it goes.


Before you go - for no reason in particular - Puddles the Clown singing David Bowie's When You Rock N Roll with Me.

Enjoy this day - it doesn't come around that often

(I did horribly this year on my Oscar picks.)


February 29, 1584 -
Due to the Gregorian Calendar adjustment of two years earlier, much of Europe's population lived through its first Leap Day on this date.

But let's take a step back - Roman Emperor Julius Caesar took a break from being the dictator of the known world and took a stab at fixing the calendar when dates were no longer in sync with the seasons. First, he created one extra-long year – 445 days – to get things back on track (heavy drinking, animal sacrifices and non-stop orgies were involved.) He followed that with a pattern of three 365-day years and one 366-day year – leap year.



Fifteen centuries later, though, the calendar was off-kilter again. It turns out that Caesar’s plan created three extra leap years every 400 years. So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII came up with a way to fix the problem. That year, the calendar jumped from October 4 to October 15. Gregory also set up a new rule to get rid of those three extra leap years. Under the Gregorian calendar, only century years divisible by 400 are leap years. With the introduction.of LEAP SECOND adjustments on the final day of some years, calendar accuracy has become an almost-exact science.



Leap Year has been the traditional time that women can propose marriage. In many of today's cultures, it is okay for a woman to propose marriage to a man. Society doesn't look down on such women. It is believed this tradition was started in 5th century Ireland when St. Bridget complained to St. Patrick about women having to wait for so long for a man to propose. A law once existed in Scotland forbidding a man to refuse a proposal made to him on February 29th. Punishment for such an offense was a large fine. And yet, there is a Greek superstition that claims couples have bad luck if they marry during a leap year. Apparently one in five engaged couples in Greece will avoid planning their wedding during a leap year.

A person who was born on February 29 may be called a "leapling". In non-leap years they may celebrate their birthday on February 28th or March 1st.



For legal purposes, their legal birthdays depend on how different laws count time intervals. In England and Wales the legal birthday of a leapling is February 28th in common years (see Leap Years, above). In Taiwan the legal birthday of a leapling is also February 28 in common years. In both cases, a person born on February 29, 1980 would have legally reached 18 years old on February 28, 1998.

There are many instances in children's literature where a person's claim to be only a quarter of their actual age turns out to be based on counting their leap-year birthdays.



A similar device is used in the plot of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Frederic, born on February 29, was apprenticed to a band of pirates until his 21st birthday, which would not arrive until he was 88 years old.


Some famous leaplings are:

- William "Wild Bill" A. Wellman, American film director, (Wings, The Public Enemy and Nothing Sacred) (1896)



- Jimmy Dorsey, American bandleader (1904)



- Balthus, French-Polish painter of young girls in an erotic context (1908)



- Dinah Shore, American singer and long-time supporter of women's professional golf. (1916)



- Superman (aka Kal-El), the Man of Steel.

http://www.fortressofbaileytude.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/time1988.jpg
Clark Kent’s birthday (June 18) is the day the Kents (the Earth couple who adopted him) found baby.


Today in History -
February 29, 1504 -
Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica during his fourth voyage to the West, used a correctly predicted lunar eclipse to frighten hostile natives into providing food for his crew.

Things didn't go well for the native population after that.


February 29, 1692 -
The witch mania in Salem, Massachusetts,began on this date when Sarah Goode and Tituba, an Indian servant to a local preacher, were arrested and charged with witchcraft on this date.



Things didn't go well for them.


February 29, 1904 -
President Theodore Roosevelt appointed the Isthmian Canal Commission to detail requirements for construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama.

In 1905, the seven-man commission decided on a canal with locks, not a sea-level waterway. Completed in the 1914, its final cost was $336-million.


February 29, 1940 -
Gone with the Wind won eight Academy Awards, including best picture of 1939, on this date.



Victor Fleming was named best director, Vivien Leigh best actress and Hattie McDaniel best supporting actress, the first black performer to receive an Oscar.


February 29, 1968 -
At the Grammy Awards on this date, the Fifth Dimension's Up, Up and Away won record of the year for 1967,



while album of the year honors went to the Beatles for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.





And so it goes

Remember It's just an honor to wins your Oscar pool -

Actual betting on the results of the Oscars is illegal in most states.





The Oscars are on tonight on ABC-TV.


February 28, 1915 –
The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter.





Samuel Joel Zero Mostel, (blacklisted by the HUAC in the '50s), larger than life actor and comedian, was born on this date.


February 28, 1948 -
Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there's great truth in the songs, and that's what was so wonderful to find.





Bernadette Lazzara (Bernadette Peters), Actress/Singer was born on this date.


February 28, 1970 -
Simon and Garfunkel's song Bridge over Troubled Water reached number one on this date and stayed there for the next six weeks.



At first, Simon thought the opening lyrics were too simple: "When you're weary, feeling small. When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all." He later realized that it was this simplicity that helped give the song a universal appeal.


Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen was the 251st and final episode of M*A*S*H*. Closing out the series' eleventh season, the 2½-hour episode first aired on Monday, February 28, 1983.



Alan Alda and Loretta Swit were the only actors to appear in the first episode of MASH, and this episode.


February 28, 1986 -
The Brat-Pack Classic, Pretty In Pink, starring Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy, Jon Cryer and James Spader premiered on this date.



Robert Downey Jr. was almost cast as Duckie when the ending had Andie getting together with Duckie. Per Molly Ringwald, this ending may have stuck if Downey won the role because he didn't give her the "brother vibe" Jon Cryer did.


Today in History:
February 28, 1574 -
Two impertinent heretics were burned at the stake in Mexico at a spectacular auto-da-fe comparable to those in Spain.

The two are the first victims of the Inquisition in the New World, dying for their heretical crimes of...Lutheranism.


February 28, 1844 -
Julia Gardiner met her future husband, President John Tyler, on this date.

The USS Princeton departed Alexandria, Virginia on a pleasure and trial trip down the Potomac with President John Tyler, his Cabinet and approximately two hundred guests on board. Upon the final firing of Captain Robert F. Stockton's Peacemaker (a newly designed cannon), the defective gun finally burst, instantly killing Secretary of State Abel Upshur; Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer; Captain Beverly Kennon, Chief of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs; Virgil Maxcy of Maryland, Charge d'Affaires to Belgium, 1837–42; David Gardiner of New York, the father of Julia Gardiner; and the President's valet, a black slave named Armistead.

It also injured about 20 people, including Captain Stockton (who received severe powder burns on his face, and all the hair on his head was burned off.) A Court of Inquiry exonerated Capt. Stockton due to his political influence (he supported Tyler’s campaign), blaming the explosion on John Ericsson, designer of the ships' engines (despite the fact Ericsson had nothing to do with the design of the Peacemaker gun. Capt. Stockton, in fact, stole the design plans from Ericsson, got a key element of the design wrong in the process, and passed them off as his own), and "bad luck". When Julia Gardiner, who was aboard, found out her father had died in the explosion she fainted into President Tyler's arms.

Isn't love grand.


February 28, 1905 -
Jane Lathrop Stanford, the wife of the late Leland Stanford, died of suspected arsenic poisoning at the Moana Hotel in Honolulu. A coroner’s jury confirmed the result.

Her body was returned to the mainland under the care of David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford Univ. An examination by Stanford physicians claimed no trace of strychnine and set heart attack as cause of death.

A will signed 19 months earlier had left the bulk of her $30 million estate to Stanford University. After 100 years the only thing certain about the case - Stanford did in fact died of strychnine poisoning and somebody got away with murder.


February 28, 1939 -
On July 31, 1931, while working on the second edition of New International Dictionary for the G. and C. Merriam Company,  Austin M. Patterson, Merriam-Webster's chemistry editor, sent a slip of paper reading "D or d, cont./density."  it was meant as a note to say the the letters D or d could be used as the abbreviation for the word Density. The typo word got past proofreaders and appeared on page 771 of the dictionary around 1934.

The ghost word "dord" was not discovered to have made it into the dictionary until this date in the New International Dictionary. The word was a great source of embarrassment for the G. and C. Merriam Company, since it's not actually a word.  For some reason though, they never go around to kicking it out of the dictionary until 1947.

(But please feel free to use it in Scrabble, citing the above mentioned page as proof of it's existence.)


February 28, 1954 -
The first NTSC standard color television sets were sold on this date.  The first set was made by Westinghouse, and sold for $1295 (approximately one-half the cost of a new car.)

Only 30 of these sets were sold by April of that year and only 500 sets were ever be built. On March 25th, RCA began shipping its mass-produced all-electronic compatible color set, for $1,000, and later in the year, a still cheaper model that would secure the company’s dominance in the television market.


February 28, 1968 -
Singer and early 60s heartthrob Frankie Lymon was found dead from a heroin overdose next to his syringe, in his grandmother's New York City apartment, on this date. Years later, three women, Zola Taylor, Elizabeth Waters and Elmira Eagle, each claim to be Lymon's rightful widow and sue to stake out a piece of his estate.



SO, I'm hoping the answer to the question, Why do fools fall in love? - isn't so that they can O.D. and have three women pick over the bones of your rotting corpse.


February 28, 1986 -
Prime Minister of Sweden Olof Palme was assassinated as he left a movie theater in Stockholm on this date.

In 1996 South African former police officer Eugene de Kock said that Craig Williamson, a South African spy, was involved in the murder. In 1997 lawyer Pelle Svensson said that his client, Lars Tingstrom, wrote a statement on his deathbed in prison in 1993 that he committed the killing. The family of Christer Pettersson, a drug addict and alcoholic, was convinced that he was the killer. In 1999, Abdullah Ocalan in Turkey suggested that a rival PKK organization killed Olaf Palme.

It seems everybody wanted to get into the act.


February 28, 1993 -
Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco use armed force attempting to serve Branch Davidian leader David Koresh with a search warrant (one with no actual evidence of any illegal activity whatsoever), in what the BATF viewed as a publicity stunt to improve their image.

While the agents carefully coordinated the raid with eleven different media outlets, something apparently tipped off Koresh and as these things usual happen - things do not go well: six Davidians and four ATF agents were killed.



The warrant instead could have been served peacefully, while Koresh did his daily morning jog.



And so it goes

Today is National Kahlua Day.

Kahlua, in case you are under 21 or a Mormon, is a rich, creamy, coffee based alcoholic liqueur from Mexico.



If I could get Jeff Daniels to do voice-overs for all of my stories - I might consider switching to White Russians.


February 27, 1932 -
Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.



Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, actress and serial bride was born on this date.


February 27, 1937 -
An early Porky Pig, drawn by Tex Avery, Picador Porky, premiered on this date.



This is the first Warner Bros. cartoon to feature Mel Blanc's voice.


Today in History:
On this date in 280 A.D. (or another date or year, again remember lead cups and constant orgies, do not good calendar keepers make), Emperor Constantine the Great was born.



Constantine took half the Roman Empire and moved it to Byzantium, a little village which he built up into such a magnificent city that it was eventually named after him: Istanbul.

And it's nobody's business but the Turks.


February 27, 1859 -
Censured Congressman Dan Sickles of New York (who escorting a known prostitute into State chambers) shot and killed Philip Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. The younger Key was having an affair with the congressman's wife at the time.



He was tried on a charge of murder, but was acquitted after a sensational trial involving the first use of the insanity defense in U.S. history.

An interesting aside: Sickle went on to become a Union general and was involved in some of the bloodiest fighting at Gettysburg and lost his own right leg in the battle. He had the leg preserved and sent to Washington D.C., where it was exhibited in a little wooden coffin at the Medical Museum of the Library of Congress. Sickles frequently visited it himself.


February 27, 1933 -
The Reichstag conveniently went up in flames on this date. A mad Dutchman who was arrested at the scene, Marinus van der Lubb, may have been partially responsible but if this is so, he is likely someone's patsy. The Nazi Party benefit greatly from the subsequent crack down, and it's suspected that SA stormtroopers set things up for van der Lubb.



Another important life lesson - bad Germans in leather shorts, beer halls and matches do not mix.


On February 27, 1939, Neville Chamberlain, everyone's favorite legume supporter, recognized General Franco's government on this date. The Fascist regime was on it's way to achieved victory in the Spanish Civil War.

Ernest Hemingway had been defeated.

The war had been so successful that Europe decided to have the second world war, which was every bit as exciting as the Spanish Civil War but with more geography and submarines.

General Franco and Ernest Hemingway are still dead.


February 27, 1951 -
The 22nd Amendment to the American Constitution was ratified by Minnesota, the 36th state out of 48 to ratify, thereby making it the law of the land. The 22nd Amendment states that no person shall be president of the United States more than twice unless they're Harry Truman.

Really, look it up - it says that.

In the graphic novel Watchmen, a crushing U.S. victory in the Vietnam War leads to the repeal of the 22nd Amendment and the repeated reelection of President Richard M. Nixon, who still serves as of 1985, the year in which Watchmen is set.

Similarly, in the time-travel movie Back to the Future Part II, an alternate timeline newspaper headline, before changing to report Ronald Reagan considering a second term, reports Nixon considering a fifth term. In a Saturday Night Live sketch, Dan Aykroyd portrayed Richard Nixon writing to random congressmen, asking for repeal of the amendment.


February 27, 1968 -
CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite's commentary on the progress of the Vietnam War solidified President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision not to seek reelection in 1968. Cronkite, who had been at Hue in the midst of the Tet Offensive earlier in February, said: "Who won and who lost in the great Tet Offensive against the cities? I m not sure." He concluded: "It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out...will be to negotiate, not as victors but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."



Johnson called the commentary a turning point, saying that if he had "lost Cronkite," he d "lost Mr. Average Citizen." On March 31, President Johnson announced he would not seek reelection.


February 27, 1992 -
Trying to get the lid off her McDonald's coffee to add cream and sugar, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck accidentally splashes the 180-degree liquid on herself, causing third-degree burns to the thighs, genitals, and buttocks.



After skin graft surgery and weeks of recuperation, Liebeck asks McDonald's to turn down the temperature of their coffee and pay $20,000 to defray her hospital bills. McDonald's told the old lady go suck an egg, as they had done for a decade of similar burn claims. Ultimately, a jury awards Liebeck $2.9 million in the resulting lawsuit, which immediately triggers a renewed call for legislative tort reform and makes that one expense cup of coffee.


February 27, 2003 -
All of our neighborhoods were a little less beautiful when our good neighbor, Fred McFeely Rogers died on this date.



But let's make the most of this beautiful day.



And so it goes.


Remember to stake out your favorite seat -



tomorrow night the Oscars are on ABC-TV

Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong

Astronaut Scott Kelly has been on the International Space Station for nearly a year now, and may be getting just a little stir crazy.



Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are scheduled to come back to earth next Tuesday, March First, after their record-breaking year in space.  Perhaps they've developed Space Madness!


February 26, 1908 -
He wasn't Bugs without the gags we gave him.







Frederick Bean (Tex) Avery, animator, cartoonist, and another member of the legendary Termite Terrace was born on this date.


February 26, 1916 -
Thin people are beautiful, but fat people are adorable.



John Herbert Gleason, (The Great One) comedian, actor and musician was born on this day.


February 26, 1966 -
While Nancy Sinatra was on the same record label (Reprise) as her famous father, her record label was going to drop her because her first few singles flopped. Things changed when they teamed her with producer Lee Hazlewood. These Boots Are Made for Walkin' topped the charts on this date.



It was her first hit. In 1996, Nancy Sinatra gave a pair of white go-go boots she wore to promote this song to the Hard Rock Cafe in Beverly Hills.


February 26, 1988 -
John Water's great, albeit more mainstream feature (Water's first PG-rated film), Hairspray, opened on this date.



The role of Edna Turnblad was originally written for famed transsexual Christine Jorgensen. However, when the role of Tracy had to be rewritten, John Waters also rewrote the role of Edna in order to keep his friend and muse Divine in the production.


February 26, 1988 -
The science fiction film Alien from L.A., directed by Albert Pyun and starring Kathy Ireland was released in US theaters, on this date.



And the only reason to note it is because the MST3K guys spoofed it.


February 26, 1994 -
Bill Hicks, writer and comedian, died of pancreatic cancer on this date.



In the years after his death, Hicks' work has achieved significant admiration and acclaim.


Today in History:
February 26, 1815 -
One of the Top 10 prison breaks of all time



Napoleon managed to sneak past his guards and somehow escape from Elba, slip past interception by a British ship, and start on his return to France.


February 26, 1829 -
Levi Strauss, inventor and manufacturer of blue jeans was born, on this date.



He originally planned to make canvas tents for miners in the California gold rush, but soon found that durable pants sold better.


February 26, 1870 -
The Beach Pneumatic Transit, the first pneumatic-powered subway line in New York City was opened to the public on this date.

Propulsion was provided by a giant fan, nicknamed The Western Tornado, operated by a steam engine, drawing air in through a valve, and blowing it forcefully into the tunnel.



The tunnel was only a block long, and the line had only one car. Rush hour must have been a bitch.


February 26, 1918 -
The Grandstands at the Hong Kong Jockey Club collapsed and burnt, killing 604 spectators on this date. It was the worst disaster in sports history.

Even though mad dogs and Englishmen may go out in the midday sun - they apparently will not leave a burning stadium.


The good people at Volkswagen seem to overlook this anniversary every year.

On this date in 1936, Some junior officers in the Japanese Army mistook Japan for a foreign country and tried to conquered it.

This disrupted the Japanese automotive industry, giving Adolf Hitler the opportunity to preside over the official opening of the first Volkswagen factory on this date. (More about Hitler and cars in a moment.)


February 26, 1970 -
National Public Radio (NPR) was created by Congressional mandate, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on this date.

Its programs "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" rank among the most popular radio programs in America.


February 26, 1974 -
A U.S. Senate report reveals Ford Motor's involvement in Nazi Germany's war efforts, for which CEO Henry Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Adolf Hitler himself.

After the war, the car company was paid nearly $1M reparation by the U.S. government to compensate for one of its plants that was bombed within the Reich.

And some people worry about buying a BMW.


February 26, 1993 -
A bomb explodes on level B2 of the World Trade Center, creating a five story crater and leaving six dead and over 1,042 injured.



Mohammed A. Salameh was later arrested in connection with the bombing as he tries to claim a refund on a rented van believed to have carried the explosion.

Genius, sheer genius.



And so it goes.


Before you go - You know you've wanted to hear this - Stephen Colbert joins the Violet Femmes to sing an acoustic version of their biggest hit, Blister in the Sun -