As much as she tried,

Eleanor could not get them to stay under.


March 9, 1948 -
The first of John Ford's famed 'Cavalry Trilogy', Fort Apache (a thinly veiled retelling of Custer's Last Stand), premiered on this date. This film was followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande, though it was not originally intended as a trilogy.



The Fort Apache fort, built for this production, stood for years. It was reused in dozens of productions, most notably the TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954). It was located at the Corriganville Movie Ranch in Simi Valley, California. Today it is possible to visit this location, as it is now administered as a City Park in Simi Valley.


March 9, 1954 -
... No one familiar with the history of his country can deny that Congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.



Edward R. Murrow, cigarette smoking, gin guzzling reporter took on the cigarette smoking, whiskey drinking junior senator and demagogue from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare hysteria on his program, See It Now, on this date.

Besides being arguably television's finest hour, it clearly demonstrates the powers of gin over whiskey.


March 9, 1954 -
The first local color television commercial was aired on WNBT television, now WNBC television, in New York on this date, for Castro Decorators of New York City.  Castro were the folks who made the Castro convertible sofa beds.



The television commercial featured Bernadette Castro opening a big couch into a bed (only the B & W kinescope exists.)


March 9, 1959 -
The Barbie doll went on display at the American Toy Fair in New York City for the first time.  Barbie was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States with adult features.



With its sponsorship of the Mickey Mouse Club TV program in 1959, Mattel became the first toy company to broadcast commercials to children. They used this medium to promote their new toy, and by 1961, the enormous consumer demand for the doll led Mattel to release a boyfriend for Barbie. Ruth Handler named him Ken, after her son. Barbie's best friend, Midge, came out in 1963; her little sister, Skipper, debuted the following year.


March 9, 1966 -
The Beach Boys began recording God Only Knows on this date. (Paul McCartney once called God Only Knows, "The greatest song ever written.")



The song is considered a Beach Boys classic, but it only managed to scrape the Top-40 in the United States. It was released as the B-side of Wouldn't It Be Nice in the US, partly because of fear that radio stations would refuse to play a song with "God" in the title.


March 9, 1979 -
ABC-TV aired the documentary Heroes of Rock & Roll, on this date.



This was one of the first comprehensive documentaries to be made about rock music


March 9, 1984 –
The Ron Howard romantic comedy film, Splash, starring Tom Hanks, Daryl Hannah, and John Candy, premiered on this date.



Daryl Hannah, a vegetarian, refused to eat real lobster for the restaurant scene. The crew scooped out the insides of real, cooked lobsters and filled them with a thick, tofu-like paste. Ron Howard said Hannah cried after each take over the deaths of the lobsters for their shells.


Looking for a new job?


Today in History:
March 9, 1170 -
In Essex, a UFO is spotted over St. Ostwyth, manifesting itself as a "wonderfully large dragon ... borne up from the Earth through the air". The craft kindled the air and destroyed a house.

And all of that was before LSD.


March 9, 1454 -
Amerigo Vespucci was born on this date. He was an Italian explorer who made many voyages to the new world at about the same time as Columbus.



The two continents of the new world were therefore named for him, and it wasn't until the seventeenth century (Greenwich time) that North and South Vespucci were renamed the Americas.


March 9, 1556 -
David Rizzio, the secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, was stabbed 56 times by a gaggle of Scottish nobles on this date.

Her husband Henry Lord Darnley had orchestrated the murder with Mary witnessing, hoping to precipitate a miscarriage.

Isn't love among the royalty grand?


March 9, 1562 -

It lasts for about a day before the local nobleman is forced to rescind it .


March 9, 1858 –
Philadelphia iron products manufacturer Albert Potts patented his design for a lamppost mounted collection mailbox.

His box was designed to be mounted to a lamppost so people could drop their letters into the box instead of making a special trip to the post office to mail their letters.


March 9, 1961 -
Korabl-Sputnik-4, also known as Sputnik 9, was launched with a dog named Chernushka (Blackie) on a one orbit mission. Also onboard the spacecraft was a cosmonaut dummy (whom Russian officials nicknamed "Ivan Ivanovich"), mice and a Guinea pig.



The dummy was ejected out of the capsule during re-entry and made a soft landing using a parachute. The animals were recovered unharmed inside the capsule. Chernushka went on to a successful career as the provincial governor of the Kazakhian region. The Cosmonaut dummy could not be used again as 'Blackie' had spent the entire flight having a 'brief but intense' relationship with the leg of Ivan Ivanovich.


March 9, 1967 -
Josef Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, walks into the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and asks to defect (some reports have it that she defected on March 6th - does it really matter - you don't give a damn.)



Her defection was one of a series of high-profile defections throughout the Cold War.


March 9, 1981 -
Dan Rather succeeded Walter Cronkite as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News.

Rather was the third person to occupy that seat since the program's 1948 launch. His last broadcast was March 9, 2005.


March 9, 1996 -
Nathan Birnbaum, the comedian Gracie Allen carried around for years, forgot to have his daily martini and died on this date.



Kids, let this be a lesson to us all - not only does alcohol taste good, it's good for you - even if you are 100 years old.


March 9, 1997 -
Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) was killed in a drive-by outside the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles on this date. The murder has never been officially solved, though an ongoing feud with Death Row Records may have had something to do with it.



Be thankful that most of us aren't hip hop stars.



And so it goes


1414

Wear Red today in Solidarity

Today marks the observance of International Women’s Day, celebrating the achievements of inspiring women around the world. (This year, International Women’s Day asks everyone to #BeBoldForChange.)






The earliest Women’s Day observance was held on February 28, 1909, in New York; it was organized by the Socialist Party of America in remembrance of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. An annual "international women's day" was first organized by the German socialist and theorist Clara Zetkin along with 100 delegates from 17 countries in March 1911.


March 8, 1933 -
The quintessential backstage musical, 42nd Street, premiered in New York City on this date.



Both Harry Warren and Al Dubin are credited onscreen for both music and lyrics, but no songs are credited onscreen. However, Warren wrote the music for all the songs recognized and listed in the soundtrack, and Dubin the lyrics for those songs which were sung.


March 8, 1959 -
The apex of the golden age of Television was achieved on this date when The Incredible Jewel Robbery aired. Groucho, Chico and Harpo made their final TV appearance together.



It was all down hill from here.


March 8, 1964 -
The first of three film adaptions of Richard Matheson novel, I am Legend, The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price, premiered on this date.



The script was written in part by Richard Matheson, but he was dissatisfied with the result and was therefore credited as Logan Swanson. Richard Matheson as felt Vincent Price was miscast as Robert Morgan.


March 8, 1967 -
Mad Monster Party was released by Embassy Pictures for Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc on this date.



In her stand-up comedy routines, Phyllis Diller (The voice of The Monster's Mate,) referred to her husband as "Fang". She decided to use that name when referring to the character of Frankenstein's Monster whom her character is married to in this film because that is what she is used to. The producers decided to allow that since the name "Frankenstein's Monster" was copyrighted and use of it would have required them to pay for its use.


March 8, 1974 -
All good things must come to an end - the last episode The Brady Bunch series, The Hair-Brained Scheme aired on ABC-TV on this date.



Robert Reed was written out of this episode. He felt that the plot involving hair tonic was implausible. When he began arguing with the producers over the script, studio security wanted to remove him from the set. However, Sherwood Schwartz would not allow it because he felt that it would be too distressing for the kids. Reed remained on the set to watch the filming of the episode, which would ultimately become the final episode of the series.


March 8, 1991 -
The highest grossing independent film of 1991, New Jack City, directed by Mario Van Peebles was released on this date.



The film is largely based on a real-life Detroit gang known as The Chambers Brothers. Writer Barry Michael Cooper got the idea for the film after visiting Detroit and learning about the gang's exploits.


March 8, 1996 -
The film that put the Coen Bros. into the mainstream consciousness, Fargo, went into limited release on this date.



William H. Macy stated in an interview that, despite evidence to the contrary, he did hardly any ad-libbing at all. Most of his character's stuttering mannerisms were written in the script exactly the way he does them in the film.


Let's see what's going on in the 100 Acres woods, shall we?


Today in History:
March 8, 1941 -
Sherwood Anderson and his fourth wife, Eleanor, were enjoying a well deserved vacation on a ocean liner bound from from New York to Valparaiso, Chile. During a cocktail party on the ship, Anderson was enjoying his olive from a well chilled martini: it would be his last.

Anderson soon became very ill and he and his wife had to disembarked at Colon in Panama and headed to a local hospital. He died in agony, two days later on this date. An autopsy revealed that he had accidentally swallowed a small piece of a toothpick (presumably in the martini olive), which had perforated his colon and caused a fatal case of peritonitis.

Not a great way to go.


March 8, 1950 -
Marshal Voroshilov announced the existence of the Soviet atomic bomb on this date.

This baffled the western powers, who were sure they had left it somewhere safe.



33 years later, on this date, the ever swift President Ronald Reagan gets around to calling the Soviets, "an evil empire."


March 8, 1968 -
The Soviet submarine, K-129, sank in the Pacific Ocean, killing all 97 crew members aboard. Later in the year a U.S. submarine secretly retrieves an encryption machine, codebooks, and nuclear warheads from the Soviet vessel.



A further bold attempt is made in 1974 to bring up the entire submarine using the CIA ship Glomar Explorer, built by Howard Hughes. That mission supposedly fails, and was made public by the Los Angeles Times to the great embarrassment of the Agency.


March 8, 1999 -
Joseph Paul "Joe" DiMaggio passed away in his Florida home on this date in 1999.

We actually know where he's gone? And since he's been dead for 18 years, we should take our lonely eyes off of him.

It still gives me the creeps.



And so it goes.


1415

Kids, do not try this at home

The folks at Bon Appétit enlisted the Cookie Monster to help them celebrate 100 years of cookies



I am very surprised that Oreo cookies were not included.


March 7, 1936 -
Walt Disney's Mickey's Grand Opera, premiered on this date.



I'm not a big Disney fan (especially Mickey Mouse) but this one is pretty funny. Donald Duck underwent a major face lift after this cartoon.


March 7, 1962 -
The Alain Resnais' enigmatic masterpiece, L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad), opened in the US on this date.



I'll tell you the plot - a man meets a woman at a European spa and tries to convince her (and himself) that they met one year ago. According to screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, the movie is a pure construction, without a frame of reference outside of its own existence - just watch it.


March 7, 1955 -
Peter Pan, the first full-length Broadway production broadcast in color, (starring Mary Martin and the show's original cast) was broadcast on this date.



It was so well received that the musical was restaged again live for television on January 9, 1956. Both of these broadcasts were produced in color, but only black-and-white kinescope recordings survive.


March 7, 1964 -
John Frankenheimer's under- appreciated almost documentary-like thriller set set during WWII, The Train, premiered on this date.



In real life the museum's paintings were indeed loaded into a train for shipment to Germany, but fortunately the elaborate deception seen in the movie was not really required. The train was merely routed onto a ring railway and circled around and around Paris until the Allies arrived.


March 7, 1986 -
This was a Red Letter Day for Daniel Day Lewis.

The stars somehow aligned for him and both My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With A View, opened in NYC on this date.





Lewis was relatively unknown in the US at that time and critics raved about how great the range of his talent was to play such vastly different characters. (It's called acting)


Hard Choices


Today in History:
March 7, 1876 -
Alexander Graham Bell receives US Patent #174,465 for his revolutionary new invention–the telephone.

Elisha Gray, Antonio Meucci and Thomas Edison all claimed to have invented the telephone first, and the issue is still a source of controversy.


The Crazy Mixed-Up Russian Revolution
March 7, 1917 -
Russia's 1917 February Revolution began on March 7, which was then the middle of February, in the city of St. Petersburg, which was then Petrograd, in what was then Russia, but would soon be the Soviet Union.

Tsar (or Czar) Nicholas II of the Romanov (or Romanoff) line had been away from St. Petersburg (or Petrograd) most of the winter, leading his army against the German Empire's Eastern Front (or Russia's Western Front).

Russia's peasants and workers had become exhausted by the war and its attendant famine and were exasperated by the Tsarina's indifference to their suffering. They were furious with the government, which had become two governments and therefore twice as bad. And they were tired of all this nonsense about March being February, St. Petersburg being Petrograd, the Czar being Tsar, and all those crazy, mixed-up fronts.



In short, the peasants were revolting. And so these poor bastards began a series of riots and strikes that eventually led to what is now known as the February Revolution.

With her usual delicate touch, the Tsarina tried to assuage the rioters by having them shot, but her soldiers refused to fire on the crowds. She therefore ordered the soldiers to shoot themselves and was disobeyed again.



It was a bleak moment for the House of Romanov, which like most monarchies had endured through the centuries largely as a result of its soldiers' willingness to shoot people.

One Year later:
On March 7, 1918 the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Russian Communist Party.



Bolsheviks is Russian for majority, as opposed to Mensheviks, which means minority. The Mensheviks, however, were in fact the majority party in 1918, and the Bolsheviks the minority, so the name change helped ease the work of journalists, who had become so confused they'd begun writing stories about children and ducks.


March 7, 1923 -
The popular poem by Robert Frost, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, was first published on this day in The New Republic.



It was an instant classic, and many a student can recite the lines:

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep
but I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep
and miles to go before I sleep."


March 7, 1933 -
Charles Darrow, for some reason claims that he invented The Monopoly board game on this date. Thank your rich Uncle Pennybags.



(Quite truthfully, the history of the Monopoly game is so complicated, for legal reasons, just go with this date, don't ask about Elizabeth Magie's 'The Landlord Game' and her patent of March 23, 1903.)


March 7, 1945 -
Gen. George Patton urinated in the Rhine after the U.S. Third Army takes the bridge at Remagen on this date.

So remember, you can't slap a soldier for cowardice but you can piss in your enemy's river.


March 7, 1965 -
Protesting the shooting death of  Jimmie Lee Jackson (a 26-year-old church deacon from Marion,) by an Alabama State Trooper, a group of more than 600 Civil Rights marchers trying to get to the state capitol in Montgomery, was broken up in Selma, Alabama, on this date.



Coverage of the riot, which was broken up by state troopers with tear gas and whips, was one of the first to get major coverage in the Civil Rights movement and put the national spotlight on the issue.


March 7, 1988 -
Transvestite actress Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead,) who appeared in several John Waters films, died from sleep apnea on this date. Divine was about to join the cast of Married with Children when she unexpected stopped breathing.



The producers of Married With Children sent flowers to the funeral, along with a humorous card that read, If you didn't want to do the show, you could have just SAID something!



And so it goes.


1416

... That rug really tied the room together.

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.



When war breaks out in Poland there's a scene where grave stones are destroyed by the bombing by the German forces. One of the grave stone that is shattered has the name "Benjamin Kubelsky" which is Jack Benny's birth name.


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



In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, John Goodman stated that The Dude referring to The Big Lebowski as a "human paraquat" was one of the only improvised lines to make it into the final film. Virtually every other line, including every 'man' and 'dude,' was scripted.


When did the first 'twerk' occur?

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 in the age of Trump, who will carry that weight now?



And so it goes.


1417

Sorry, I'm running late

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.



Ricou Browning, a professional diver and swimmer, was required to hold his breath for up to 4 minutes at a time for his underwater role as the "Gill Man." The director's logic was that the air would have to travel through the monster's gills and thus not reveal air bubbles from his mouth or nose. Thus, the costume was designed without an air tank.


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



Trans Global Airlines was the name of the fictional airline for the film. For many years it was not unusual to see props from the movie (with the fictional TGA logo) in other Universal films where airliner interior scenes were shot.


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



Timothy Dalton later described the film as "a sort of carnival ... extremely special to do."


Remember learning your ABC's?


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 . 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.

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 –
There's less violence in the world when people are using Hula-Hoops. - Mikey Way

The US Patent Office issues patent No. #3,079,728 to Arthur K. Melin and Richard Knerr for their Hula Hoop design.


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


1418

It's a date and a sentence

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, 1950 -
One of the classic Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, was released on this date.  This was another show I was not allowed to watch with my family because I laughed too loudly.



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


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, 1982 -
The David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker silliness, Police Squad, starring  Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



Each week featured a "Special Guest Star" who is killed off in the opening credits. Lorne Greene and William Conrad are knifed and tossed out of cars; Georg Stanford Brown has a safe dropped on him; Florence Henderson is shot during a musical number; Robert Goulet is executed by a firing squad; and William Shatner avoids a burst of machine-gun-fire only to drink a glass of poisoned wine.


Another episode of  ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour


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.President.



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.


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I'm a very ordinary man

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 find me a new job that pays something.

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.



Bruce Willis was the very last of about 3,000 actors to audition for the role of David Addison, Jr.


A random thought


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.


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And on a personal note:  Happy Birthday Cara!

Ain't we got enough of them in New York?

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, 1882 -
Queen Victoria was a much beloved monarch, except by her would-be assassins. The queen escaped another assassination attempt on this date. Roderick Maclean, the final in a series of eight malcontents over the course of her very long reign, took a shot at the queen as her carriage pulled away from Windsor railway station after she refused to accept one of his poems.

He was beaten back by two schoolboys with umbrellas and arrested by Superintendent Hayes of the Windsor Police. He was tried for high treason but found “not guilty but insane” and sent to an asylum.


March 2, 1900 -
... I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music. There is only good music and bad music.







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 -
... I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine.







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.


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Stirs the dancing daffodil.

I can't remember the old saying ... March comes in like a The Gerenuk and goes out like a Babirusa?

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  
* Honor Society Awareness 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.) 

Hominem te esse memento! Memento mori! - You're not being helpful - by trying to wipe the the smudge mark on your friend's forehead today





( Did you find the coin in the Kings cake? )



So begins forty days (remember that the six Sundays between today and Easter don't count as part of the 40 days) of prayer, fasting, contemplation and community service and not the Lentil season, which is marked by forty days of legume eating and gas passing (but that's another story.)


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.


March 1, 1985 – 
Another of Woody Allen's takes on the public's relationship with the movies, The Purple Rose of Cairo starring Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello, premiered on this date.



After this film was previewed, word got back to Woody Allen that if he just changed his ending, he could have a big hit. Allen declined, saying that the ending is one of the reasons he made the film.


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.



The bar that Jim and his buddies frequented in the movie is Barney's Beanery, a popular spot in W. Hollywood, California. It was the last place Janis Joplin visited before she died at a nearby hotel later that night.


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.


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