Sláinte

The Feast Day of St. Patrick is celebrated on March 17.



St. Patrick is considered the father of Celtic Christianity. He founded more than three hundred churches, drove the snakes out of Ireland, invented green beer, and coined the popular slogan, Kiss me, I'm Irish.

The Citizenry of Chicago is encouraged to drink cheap green beer early and often before St. Patrick's Day so the Chicago River can be dyed with their vomit.


  
I find few things more scenic than 40 tons of green dye dumped in a river of raw sewage



I'm pretty sure that St. Patrick would be horrified by St. Patrick's Day.


March 17, 1756 -
St. Patrick's Day was celebrated in New York City for the first time (at the Crown and Thistle Tavern). The patrons finally sober up and six years later, the celebration evolves into a parade (the first in NYC) and the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City has become the largest celebration of the holiday in the world (drawn more revelers than any parade for the holiday in the whole of Ireland.)


March 17, 1958 -
The song Tequila by the Champs was number one on the music charts on this date.



Danny Flores, who was the saxophone player in The Champs, wrote this song (it's credited to his pen name, Chuck Rio). Flores had the melody kicking around for a while, and would play it as an interlude during the group's club shows.


March 17, 1968 -
The Bee Gees made their U.S. television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, on this date.



Besides their song, Words (which went on to become a no. 1 hit in several countries,) they sang To Love Somebody, (which went on to be one of their most covered songs.)


March 17, 1972 -
John Water presented Divine to an unsuspecting world: Pink Flamingos, premiered in Baltimore on this date.



The dog feces in the infamous final scene are real. According to director John Waters, the dog was fed steak for three days beforehand.


A Book Recommendation


Today in History:
March 17, 965 -
Pope Leo VIII died of a stroke during sexual congress with a prostitute on this date.

Perhaps a fine way for a man to die, but not a very appropriate choice for the Bishop of Rome. (it's OK if you hum to yourself, Back in the saddle again.)


March 17, 1845 -
Stephen Perry and Thomas Barnabas Daft, British inventors and businessmen patented the rubber band on this day.

They conceived of the device after experimentally slicing up rubber bottles that had been manufactured by South and Central America natives and brought to England by sailors. Other regional names for the rubber band include a binder, a laggy band, an elastic, and a gum band.


March 17, 1884 -
John Joseph Montgomery made the first manned, controlled, heavier than air flight in a glider he built. Although not publicized at the time, this flight was first described by Montgomery as part of a lecture delivered at the Conference on Aerial Navigation at Chicago, 1893 and published by Octave Chanute in Progress in Flying Machines.



While Montgomery himself never claimed firsts, his flight experiments of the 1880s are considered by several historians and organizations to have been the first controlled flights in America, or in the Western Hemisphere depending on source. After a crash destroyed his glider in 1886, Montgomery abandoned aviation, but then took it up again in 1903.


March 17, 1905 -
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, married her fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in New York on this date.

Apparently, Roosevelt confuses himself with British Royalty by marrying his distant relative.  FDR jokes with friends that, "Only on St. Patrick's Day can you marry your cousin".


March 17, 1919 -
Nathaniel Adams Coles, the premiere singer and jazz pianist was born on this date.



Cole's popularity allowed him to become the first African American to host a network variety program, The Nat King Cole Show, which debuted on NBC television in 1956. The show fell victim to the bigotry of the times, however, and was canceled after one season; few sponsors were willing to be associated with a black entertainer.


March 17, 1939 -
After German troops crossed the Czech border, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain threw all his years of careful diplomacy out the window and accused Adolf Hitler of breaking his word.

He instantly regretted having let these angry words slip, however, and subsequently resigned.


March 17, 1941 -
President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the National Gallery of Art to the public, on this date. The National Gallery of Art would become known as one of the best museums in the world. It contains a collection of more than 130,000 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, decorative arts, and furniture pieces.



At the time of its inception, it was the largest marble structure in the world. The museum stands on the former site of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station, most famous for being where 20th president James Garfield was shot in 1881 by Charles Guiteau.


March 17, 1942 -
John Wayne Gacy, part time clown, serial killer, and sodomizer of dozens of boys, was born in Chicago on this date. His father was convinced Gacy was a "sissy", but friends and family didn't really suspect anything untoward was afoot until his 1968 arrest for coercing a teenage boy employee into committing multiple homosexual acts.

It's always a clue.


March 17, 1966 -
A U.S. midget submarine, the Alvin, located a missing hydrogen bomb which had fallen from an American bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain on this date. Oops.

Most famously, the Alvin was involved in the exploration of the wreckage of RMS Titanic in 1986. Launched from her support ship RV Atlantis II, she carried Dr. Robert Ballard and two companions to the wreckage of the great liner. RMS Titanic sank while attempting to transit the North Atlantic Ocean, after striking a large iceberg in 1912.

Alvin, accompanied by a small remotely operated vehicle (ROV) named Jason Jr., was able to conduct detailed photographic surveys and inspections of the Titanic's wreckage. Many of the photographs of the expedition have been published in the magazine of the National Geographic Society which was a major sponsor of the expedition.


March 17, 1999 -
Six members of the International Olympic Committee were expelled for corruption, all from poor third world countries. They received bribes from Salt Lake City totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, a practice that had been going on for years.

It should also be noted that the IOC Vice President at the time was named Dick Pound.


March 17, 1960 -
My good friend John (a fraternity brother) was born on this day.

Not to be confused with his cousin, John, who was also born but not on this day.


March 17, 1970 -
My actual fraternal brother was born at Jewish Memorial Hospital in Upper Manhattan on this date.

As was noted at the time, he must be a lucky kid as he was a Puerto Rican baby born in a Jewish Hospital on an Irish holiday.

Happy Birthday guys.



And so it goes.


1406


This just in:  You can eat your corned beef and  cabbage without the fear of the yawning gates of hell.  Bishops have granted exceptions to the abstinence of meat on Friday for this year's St. Patrick's Day.

No words on how much money was donated by the American Beef Council to the Holy See.

Pull hard on your tongue

March 16 -
Today is the celebration of St. Urho's Day, Patron saint of Finnish vineyard workers. Attributed to him is the miracle of banishing grasshoppers from Finland which he accomplished with a few choice Finnish phrases, thereby saving the season's grape crop.



But in reality a bunch of very drunk people made this up in 1956.


It's National Hiccup Day today (apparently, according to the interweb, this is a cure for hiccups.)



It's also known as synchronous diaphragmatic flutter or singultus.

Now you know.


March 16, 1934 -
An (almost) all singing Popeye cartoon, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, premiered on this date.



The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze is based on a real person: Jules Leotard. He was a former law student who ran away from home and joined a circus as an adolescent. Young Jules was the first performer to wear the skin-tight suit of clothes that would later be named after him; he died of tuberculosis aged only twenty-eight.


March 16, 1954 -
Max Ophüls beautifully acted film, La Ronde, premiered in the US on this date. (Psst kids, the films about the transmission of syphilis - really.)



The film was shot the picture entirely in the studio.

This is a must-see film - find time to watch it today..


March 16, 1954 -
Elia Kazan's powerful family drama, East of Eden, premiered in Los Angeles on this date (this is the only one of the "big three" James Dean films to be released before his death.)



It's hard to remember how innovative James Dean's acting was in the '50s. Dean would provoke Raymond Massey off-camera so that the elder actor would hate him and he could get into character easier.


While traveling in the tropics this season -



Today in History:
March 16 1190 -
More than 150 and perhaps as many as 500 Jews, secured in Clifford's Tower at York, died from suicide and massacre after they were sieged by townspeople under Richard Malebys on this date. Malebys was a nobleman who owed money to the Jews; after their siege all records relating to moneylending were destroyed.

This was seen as a warm-up for the Crusaders invasion of the Holy Land. It is the largest massacre of Jews in the history of the United Kingdom.


March 16 1792 -
At a masquerade ball, a disgruntled Captain Jacob Johan Ankarstroem shot Swedish King Gustav III near the heart with a bullet composed of lead and carpet tacks, on this date. It took the King almost two weeks to die.

Shakespeare never wrote about Gustavus, probably because Gustavus was born well after Shakespeare's death, but Giuseppe Verdi (or his stage name, Joe Green) wrote an opera about the affair called Un Ballo in Maschera ("A Bull in Mascara").

As punishment, the Captain was decapitated, drawn, and quartered.

Ouch!!!

March 16, 1912 -
All lives have triumphs and tragedies, laughter and tears, and mine has been no different. What really matters is whether, after all of that, you remain strong and a comfort to your loved ones. I have tried to meet that test.

Thelma Catherine Pat Nixon (nee Ryan) - the patron saint of long suffering political wives and good Republican cloth coats was born on this date.


March 16, 1916 –
Tsutomu Yamaguchi, born on this date, was one of the only individuals who witnessed and survived both atom bombs in Japan, Hiroshima on August 6th, and Nagasaki on August 9.



Mr. Yamaguchi slowly recovered and went on to live a relatively normal life. He died from radiation related stomach cancer at 93, on January 4, 2010.


March 16, 1926 -
I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.



Joseph Levitch, comedian, actor, producer, writer, director, singer, Légion d'honneur recipient and the dollar sign in Dean Martin eyes, was born on this date.


March 16, 1926 -
Robert H. Goddard, fueled the first hopes of space travel when he successfully launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts on this date.



The rocket traveled for 2.5 seconds at a speed of about 60 mph, reaching an altitude of 41 feet. The rocket was 10 feet tall, constructed out of thin pipes, and was fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline.


March 16 1949 -
It's Erik Estrada's birthday today.



Reason enough to live another day.


March 16 1978 -
Italian Red Brigades kidnapped former Italian Premier Aldo Moro on this date, in order to obtain the release of imprisoned comrades.



Moro was murdered and his body was later found on May 9, 1978.



And so it goes.


1407

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

The monsters at Sesame Street and the folks at Vanity Fair present quotes from famous Hollywood movies.



Big Bird has exactly the emotional range of Ronald Reagan.


March 15, 1941 -
The first of three appearances of Cecil Turtle, Tortoise Beats Hare, premiered on this date.



Cecil is one of the very few characters who was actually able to beat, Bugs Bunny and the only one to do so three times in a row and at the rabbit's own game.


March 15, 1946 -
Columbia Pictures released Charles Vidor's film-noir classic, Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth and Glen Ford on this date.



Rita Hayworth had to wear a corset while shooting "Put the Blame on Mame," as she had given birth to her first daughter, Rebecca Welles, months before filming.


March 15, 1956 -
The landmark science-fiction film, Forbidden Planet (think The Tempest in Outer Space) , premiered on this date.



Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry has been quoted as saying that this film was a major inspiration for that series. Perhaps not accidentally, Warren Stevens, who plays "Doc" here, would later be a guest star in 1968's Star Trek: By Any Other Name, where the true shape of the alien Kelvans, like the Krell in this movie, was implied to be extremely non-humanoid but never shown.


March 15, 1972 -
The greatest film ever about pasta sauce making and risk aversion management, The Godfather, premiered in New York City on this date.



Lenny Montana (Luca Brasi) was so nervous about working with Marlon Brando that in the first take of their scene together, he flubbed some lines. Director Francis Ford Coppola liked the genuine nervousness and used it in the final cut. The scenes of Luca practicing his speech were added later.


March 15, 1977 -
Everybody was first welcomed to The Regal Beagle when Three's Company, starring John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt, and Suzanne Somers, premiered on this date.



The title of the pilot episode is "A Man About The House". This is in reference to the title of the UK comedy, "Man About The House", that "Three's Company" is based on.


Don't forget to check out Dr. Caligari's Cupboard


Today in History:
March 15, 44 BC -
Julius Caesar, already warned to be wary on this the Ides of March by the astrologer Spurinna, was assassinated with pointy knives by a group of Senators, including Brutus and Cassius, at the Pompey theater.



They were angry at him because he had crossed the Rubicon. Later Marc Antony borrowed everyone's ears and told them that Brutus was an honorable man, which upset them so much they had a Civil War.



Sixteen centuries later, more or less, William Shakespeare immortalized the story and eventually Marlon Brando got to play Marc Antony, so everyone was happy in the end.



Caesar is also celebrated because he wrote a famous book called The Garlic Wars, which begins with the famous line, All garlic is divided into three cloves. It also includes the line - veni, vidi, vinci, the exact meaning of which is still a matter of debate but, if my own Latin studies are worth anything, probably involves Druids and hollandaise sauce.


March 15, 1812 -
Luddites attack Frank Vickerman's wool processing factory at Taylor Hill in West Yorkshire, on this date, resulting in general destruction and attempted arson.

The rampaging Luddites were incensed because his machines replaced workers, but Vickerman was primarily targeted because of involvement in an Anti-Luddite committee.

So now you know more about Luddites than you thought you ever would (remember, smash the iWatches.)


Today's episode of Oh, that Wacky Russian Revolution:
At two o'clock in the morning on March 15, 1917 the Tsar sent word to Petrograd that he was awfully sorry about the war and starvation and everything, but that he had some really good ideas about what they could do now, was looking forward to working with them, believed that healthy debate was a symptom of good government, and so on.

The new government (which had recently moved to Moscow) told him to blow it out his ass.



And so at three o'clock in the afternoon, Nicholas abdicated in favor of his son (who had measles).

The new government told him and his son to blow it out their asses.



At 11:15 pm, Nicholas signed a proclamation that both he and his son (who had measles) would abdicate in favor of his brother, the Grand Duke Mikhail.



The next day, the new government told Nicholas, his son (who had measles), and the Grand Duke Mikhail to blow it out their asses. (It seems that they were anally fixated.)


March 15, 1950 -
New York City suffering through a persistent drought, hired for $100 a day - a very large sum in those times, particularly for a scientist - Dr. Wallace E. Howell, a meteorologist to make rain, on this date.  Dr. Howell, who had participated in early scientific research into cloud seeding, set up shop at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, using a police airplane to sprinkle silver iodide crystals into clouds over the Catskill watershed.

The rains came and the reservoirs began to rise. There was even a mid-April snowstorm, referred to in the papers as ''Howell's snow.'' By 1951, the crisis had passed and Dr. Howell was laid off in February of 1951.


March 15, 1964 -
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, finally legitimized their scandalous affair and were married on this date.



Both were already married –  he was married at the time to former actress Sybil Williams, she to her fourth husband Eddie Fisher, who she had famously ‘stolen’ from Debbie Reynolds.



And so it goes.


1408

As I suspected, The Blizzard petered out

It's still snowing but it's probably not going to be as bad as they predicted.

Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts ( read - lonely shut-ins) around the world on March 14th. Pi was first used as a mathematical symbol in 1706 by William Jones.







Albert Einstein's parents conveniently arranged for him to be born on Pi Day in 1879.


March 14, 1940 -
The first of the seven Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour "Road" films, The Road to Singapore, premiered in NYC on this date.



After Fred MacMurray and George Burns turned down the chance to make this film, producer Harlan Thompson offered it to Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, whom he'd seen clowning on the Paramount lot and who it seemed to him got along well.


March 14, 1969 -
The Walt Disney studio put the film, The Love Bug, starring 'Herbie,' a loveable Volkswagen bug with a personality, into general release on this date.



Herbie got his name when the crew of the film was watching one of Buddy Hackett's skits about a ski instructor with a funny accent. Then Hackett said, "If you ain't got a herbie [pronounced hoy-bie], I ain't goin'." The name stuck.


Today in History:
March 14, 1794 -
Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the Cotton Gin on this date

While it is potable, gin flavored with juniper berries is still a better choice for a very dry martini.


March 14, 1883 -
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Karl Marx died of pleurisy in London on this date. While his original grave had only a nondescript stone, the Communist Party of Great Britain erected a large tombstone, including a bust of Marx, in 1954.

His premature death prevented him from seeing the global impact of his progeny: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo and Zeppo. Karl Marx was born in Trier, Prussia May 5, 1818. He went to school at a time of severe repression. Pianos had to have skirts on for fear young men would become aroused by the sight of their bare legs. The Prussian government kept the teachers under police surveillance to make sure they wouldn't teach anything too radical like 2 + 2= 4 and so the students, including Marx, became extremely radical.

(There are no know photos of Karl and Gummo together: they never got along)

As a result of his beliefs, Marx was not able to get a job as a chicken inspector after he got his doctorate in philosophy. And without a job, he spent his time analyzing history and stealing tips left for waiters at the coffeehouses he frequented and came to the conclusion that all historical events were caused by economic forces.

He got involved in Communism - the belief that all private property should be abolished, men and women should not bathe or shave and pickled herring should be used as a cologne. Marx moved around Europe, writing for newspapers and pornographic pamphlet, studying, wanting to write a book about his economic ideas. But Marx was an obsessive researcher, and never knew when to stop reading and start writing. He only became productive after he met Friedrich Engels, a socialist who was also wealthy—the heir to a textile business and primitive whoopee cushion novelty item.

Their main theory was that the economic system was a perpetual conflict between those who controlled the capital and those who provided the labor, that the conflict would never be resolved peacefully, that in a free market, workers would continue periodically to lose their jobs, their standard of living would fall, and this would inevitably lead to violent revolution. He believed that giant corporations would dominate the world's industries, that globalism in trade would make markets even more unstable. He also believed that you could hard boil an egg by holding it under one's armpit for a week thus saving money by not paying the gas bill.



Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto and What the Butler Saw Whilst Polishing the Knob in 1848, and revolution did break out afterward in France, Italy, and Austria. Marx's newspaper was shut down. He had to flee the country. He moved to London, worked for years on his last book, Das Kapital. His family in poverty, Marx said, "I don't suppose anyone has ever written about 'money' when so short of the stuff." A spy from Prussia was keeping tabs on him and wrote, "Washing, grooming and changing his clothes are things he does rarely. He does not shave at all. But he does have an unnatural obsession watching Amenian women clip their toenails!"



He fed his family on bread and potatoes, and when one of his children died, his wife had to borrow money from a neighbor to buy a coffin.

When Marx died in 1883, only 11 persons came to his funeral. And they were all charged a mourners tax!


March 14, 1889 -
German Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his Navigable Balloon on this date.

He did not speak with Paul von Hindenburg about it at the time.


March 14, 1912 -
A young anarchist, Antonio Dalba, shot at King Victor Emmanuel III and queen Elena (of Montenegro) of Italy on this date, but missed, hitting a bodyguard and his horse instead. Their majesties were attending the annual memorial service for the previous king, Umberto I, who was assassinated by an anarchist in 1900 (whose assassination inspired Leon Czolgosz to shoot President McKinley).

Since Dalba was a legal minor (20) at the time, he could not be executed. He was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, but, perhaps because of his increasing mental instability, was pardoned in 1921, only to be committed two months later to a mental hospital, where he died in 1953.


Today on March 14 1932, one of the greatest notes was written:
George Eastman, the founder of Kodak Corporation, killed himself after a long illness on this date.

His suicide note states "To my friends: My work is done. Why wait?"

All in all, terse but to the point.


March 14, 1942 -
Mrs. Anne Miller was near death at New Haven Hospital, suffering from a streptococcal infection, before doctors Orvan Hess and John Bumsfield decided to use an experimental treatment - Penicillin, on this date.  This was the first time penicillin was successfully used to treat a patient.

Although Dr. Alexander Fleming had proven that penicillin was an effective antibacterial in 1928, few doctors seemed interested in using the common mold as a medicinal tool. Supplies were limited at the time, nearly half of the total supply produced were used on Mrs. Miller. She survived, living to be 90 years old and penicillin became widely used.

As I am deathly allergic to the drug, this medical advancement is almost meaningless to me.



And so it goes.


1409

Storm Watch NYC

The two-or-so inches of snow we got Friday was child's play compared to the "major winter storm" expected to hit NYC Monday night, then wreak havoc for at least 24 hours, according to federal weather officials

A "blizzard watch" will be in effect from midnight Monday through midnight Tuesday in all five boroughs.  I have two teenagers doing their snow dance throughout the house at the moment.


March 13, 1949 -
Donald Fauntleroy Duck's birthday is officially recognized as June 9, 1934, the day his debut film was released, but in The Three Caballeros, his birthday is given as simply Friday the 13th. In Donald's Happy Birthday, the cartoon gives his birthday as March 13.  (The best guess is this would be Donald's 103rd birthday.)




Things that make you go hmmmm - Donald doesn’t wear pants but when he comes out of the shower, covers himself with a towel.


March 13, 1954 -
It's Rocky's third appearance in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (and the funniest) - Bugs and Thugs, premiered on this date.



Near the end of the film, Bugs' office has a sign that says - "Member- Detective Guild, Local 839". Local 839 of the IATSE was the Animation Guild, whose members made the cartoon.


March 13, 1956 -
One of John Ford's greatest westerns, The Searchers, starring John Wayne (giving his finest performance) premiered on this date.





Natalie Wood was still a student in high school when this film was being made, and on several occasions both John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter had to pick her up at school on days when she was required on the set. This caused a good deal of excitement among Wood's female classmates.


March 13, 1968 -
The Beatles release the single Lady Madonna in the UK on this date.



This was the last Beatles release on Capitol Records (US), or Parlophone (UK). All future releases were on Apple Records, the label The Beatles created.


Weather Update


Today in History:
March 13, 1781 -
Scottish astronomer Sir William Hershel discovered Uranus on this date, which he first mistook for a comet.



It is the first planet discovered with the aid of a telescope.

(If you are alone, once again, feel free to twitter like a small child.)


March 13, 1881 -
An anarchist Nikolai Rysakov, from the radical group People's Will threw a bomb which disrupts Czar Alexander II's motorcade. Startled but unharmed, Alexander thanked God for his deliverance, another anarchist Ignacy Hryniewiecki, yelled "It is too early to thank God" and throws a second bomb, causing severe injuries from which Alexander bled to death several hours later.



(Nicholas II, Alexander grandson, was one of the unfortunate witnesses to Czar's gruesome death.)


March 13, 1877 –
The first US Patent (#188,292) for earmuffs was issued to teen-aged Chester Greenwood of Farmington, Maine on this date.

Think about this when you venture out tomorrow.


March 13, 1911 -
Today is the birthday of L. Ron Hubbard (the "L" is for Lafayette.) Mr. Hubbard invented Dianetics, which eventually led to Scientology, causing Scientologists and Personality Tests.



Scientologists are easily distinguished from Jehovah's Witnesses in that they don't ask you subscribe to The Watchtower and they can often be seen in major motion pictures.


March 13, 1917 -
Today on Oh That Wacky Russian Revolution:
The imperial guard, acting on the orders of the dissolved Duma, which had not been dissolved, took the Tsarina and her children (who had measles) into custody. A day later, England and France acknowledged the Executive Committee of the Duma as the official government of Russia.

Meanwhile, Nicholas II had taken a train to Pskov. He knew the revolutionaries would be unlikely to pursue him somewhere so difficult to pronounce.

That evening in St. Petersburg, the Executive Committee of the Duma met with the Petrograd Soviet and agreed that the Russian Cabinet should be dissolved, and also the Tsar.

They established a joint government, with Prince Grigori Lvov at its head, nicely countering the Czar's difficult pronunciation ploy. They put the Russian Cabinet in prison, next to the Russian Credenza.


March 13, 1964 -
A young woman, Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of multiple witnesses, all of whom fail to help her, in an incident which shocks the world and prompts investigation into the bystander effect. (This story have been proven a lie; many of her neighbors in fact did attempt to help.  Only two people, who actually witnessed the attack did nothing.)



Winston Moseley was found guilty of Genovese’s murder. He was initially sentenced to death, but that was commuted several years later and changed to life in prison, where he remains today. At 81, no living inmate has spent more time in the New York prison system.


Pope Francis has been on the job for four years now.

So far, the Pope is still giving them a run for their money at the Vatican.



And so it goes.


1410

We're running late today (Slept straight though this morning)

Did you forgot to set the clock ahead - we'll wait (while we madly dash around the house ourselves.)  Here's a short film explaining Daylight Savings Time -



Do you need some more time (did you get the clock on the microwave? None of you still have a VCR?) Here's another short film -



Alright, you can either continue reading or go back to bed for an hour.

you'll have one less hour for drinking today - start earlier.


The World Wide Web turns 28 today.



87% of all U.S. adult are sending e-mails.  What are the other 13% using - Aldis lamps?


March 12, 1953 -
John Huston's very off-beat comedy starring Humphrey Bogart, Beat the Devil, premiered in New York City on this date.



This was the fifth and last movie that Humphrey Bogart would make with his very close friend Peter Lorre. The other four were, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, All Through the Night, and Passage to Marseille.


March 12, 1971 -
Robert Wise's taut Sci-Fi Thriller, The Andromeda Strain, opened on this date.



The Wildfire scientific lab sets cost more than $300,000 to build and were described at the time as "one of the most elaborately detailed interiors ever built."


March 12, 1971 -
John Lennon released Power to the People in the United Kingdom on this date.



The song was released as a single credited to "John Lennon with the Plastic Ono Band." Phil Spector produced it with Lennon.


In case you were wondering


Today in History:
March 12, 1888 -
The day before started off seemingly fine - the temperature was mild as a light rain began to fall on March 11th, 1888. And then the weather changed. The rain became heavier and by the next day, the rains changed to heavy snow and buried the unprepared city in drifts of up to thirty feet deep! The temperature plunged and winds reached over eighty miles per hour.



On the first day of 1888 blizzard, Roscoe Conkling, former congressman and US Senator (from NY) was at his law office at 10 Wall Street. Despite the severity of the storm, Conkling decided to walk from his office to his club on Madison Square, even though it was 6:00 PM and already dark, rather than pay the outrageous rate of $50 for a cab ride.




He made it up Broadway as far as Union Square where he (as he later put it): “got to the middle of the park and was up to my arms in a drift…. For nearly twenty minutes I was stuck there and I came as near giving right up and sinking down there to die as a man can and not do it.” But somehow Conkling freed himself and continued up Broadway to Madison Square, where the people at the New York Club could “scarcely believe” he had walked from Wall Street.

Conkling developed a slight cold a few day later and a few weeks later on April 18th, became one of most famous victims of the blizzard. Conkling friends immediately set about to memorialize him with a statue in Madison Square Park. (Apparently the city fathers balked at commemorating Conkling in Union Square amidst George Washington and Abraham Lincoln - he was not that well liked.) Aside from the statue, Roscoe Conkling's greatest legacy was perhaps silent film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, who was reportedly named for Conkling by Fatty's father, who thought that his son was the product of an affair between his wife and Conkling.


March 12, 1912 -
Juliette Gordon Low organized the Girl Guides, which later became the Girl Scouts of America, at the 1848 Andrew Low House in Savannah, Ga. on this date.



Mrs. Low rented a carriage house for "club rooms" for the Girl Guides on the property of a prominent family in Georgia, the Nash family. Ogden Nash, 10 years old in 1912, grew up to be a well-known poet; he immortalized "Mrs. Low's House" in one of his poems. The Nash family continued to pay rent for the carriage house even after it was converted for use by the Girl Guides, becoming one of the first financial supporters for the fledgling movement.



On May 29, 2012, the centennial of the Girl Scouts was commemorated when Low was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


March 12, 1918 -
Today episode on the Wacky World of the Russian Revolution -

Russia's peasants and workers are still exhausted by the war and its attendant famine. The Tsar and Tsarina are past caring about their suffering - they were under arrest The Russian peasants and workers are still 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 fonts.

So what does the country do - move the capital from Petrograd to Moscow, as well as move the central headquarters of the Red Army there, on this date


March 12, 1922 -
At the end of the Second World War, America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Each bomb killed so many people so quickly and made the world so safe for peace-loving democracies that America began feeling pretty good about things and forgot all about being Depressed, etc. This caused the hula-hoop, the soda fountain, and the young Annette Funicello.



Not everyone could master the hula-hoop, however, and the alienation experienced by those who couldn't resulted in the development of an American counterculture.



Scoffing the traditional values of mainstream America, the counterculturalists experimented with bold new ideas. They forsook the established middle-class pleasures, such as wine, woman, and song, in favor of radical new ones, such as sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll.



Born 95 years ago today, Jack Kerouac was a child of the Depression and a veteran of the second world war. He was therefore torn between these competing value systems and roamed the country aimlessly in search of grammar and punctuation.



The adventures described in On the Road were based loosely on his real-life travels with the infamous Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, whose insatiable appetite for borscht led Kerouac to dub them "The Beet Generation."


March 12, 1932 -
Ivar Kreuger, the so-called Swedish Match King, (at one time, he controlled two thirds of the worldwide match production) committed suicide in Paris on this date, leaving behind a financial empire that turned out to be a massive Ponzi scheme.



The 'Kreuger crash’ shook Wall Street and led to a 1933 Securities Act, which strengthened disclosure requirements for all companies selling stock.

Madoff was a piker compared to Kreuger.


March 12, 1938 -
Germany enters Austria in the Anschluss, to annex it as part of Grossdeutchland.



Oh those wacky Germans and their World Domination Tour.


March 12, 1945 -
...The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be....



Anne Frank is thought to have died at Auschwitz on this date.


March 12, 1955 -
Bird Lives.

Charles Parker, Jr., one of the most influential jazz musicians, died on this date while while watching Tommy Dorsey on television.



Due to many years of drug and alcohol abuse, the coroner who performed his autopsy mistakenly estimated Parker's 34-year-old body to be between 50 and 60 years of age.


March 12, 1969 -
Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman on this date.



George Harrison and Patti Boyd missed the ceremony  because they had been arrested earlier that day when a very large amount of hashish was found in their home. I guess their wedding gift never got to the newlyweds.


March 12, 2000 -
Pope John Paul II asked God's forgiveness for the many wrongs committed by the Roman Catholic Church on this date. The pardon he requested divided into seven categories of Church sin, including sins against the Jews, against native peoples of the world, the crimes of the Inquisition, and general crimes against humanity.

This pardon was requested only for past sins, and apparently did not ask for it to apply to the Church's many, many, many ongoing sins.  Let us pray that Pope Francis has the strength to continue asking for all of that forgiveness.



And so it goes.


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A good sense of humor cures most of life's ills

Purim starts tonight:



The festival of Purim is celebrated every year on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar (late winter/early spring). It commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from Haman’s plot “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, infants and women, in a single day.”



It's sometimes referred to as the Jewish Mardi Gras or Halloween.

(I still like the Poppy seed Hamentaschen more than the fruit filled ones - really, who but old people would put prunes in a dessert.)

Happy Purim to all, and to all a good...wait, wrong holiday.


Today is World Plumbing Day. It is an international event, initiated by the World Plumbing Council, held on March 11 each year to recognize the important role plumbing plays in societal health and amenity.



I now need to go lay down with a cold compress


March 11, 1950 -
... After all, a man's home is his castle.



A very funny Bugs Bunny cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones, Homeless Hare, was released on this date.


March 11, 1956 -
Laurence Olivier's version of William Shakespeare's Richard III became the first film to have its U.S. premiere in theaters and on TV simultaneously, when NBC-TV broadcast the film on the same day it had its U.S. premiere in New York, on this date.



Olivier based his characterization of Richard on a much-despised theatrical director named Jed Harris. Years later he learned that the animators at Disney used Harris for the basis of the Big Bad Wolf.


March 11, 1967 -
Pink Floyd released one of the best songs about underwear stealing transvestites, Arnold Layne on this date.



Some believe that Arnold Layne was actually based on a real person, and that he routinely stole underwear from the mothers of Syd Barrett and bassist Roger Waters during their childhood days in Cambridge.


Speaking of transvestites - March 11, 1970 -
Federico Fellini's take on ancient Rome, Fellini - Satyricon (Another movie had registered the title Satyricon first. Federico Fellini fought to use the title for his movie but lost the case. Subsequently the title was changed to Fellini - Satyricon) premiered in the US on this date.



Look closely, future fitness guru Richard Simmons is in this film. An American student living in Rome in the late 1960s, he was cast as an obese nobleman in the banquet scene.


Remember to tune into the ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour


Today in History:
March 11, 222 -
Most of you with teenagers think that yours are the worst, but no, Ancient Rome had the worst by far, the Emperor Elagabalus.

His real name was Varius Avitus Bassianus but as he developed an intense interest in worshipping the Syrian god Elagabal, became High Priest of the cult and so had his name changed to Elagabalus. After the death of his grandfather, father and cousin within a year, Elagabalus, all of 14, found himself the Emperor of the known world (this is not to say, the millions of people living in Asia, Africa, Australia and the New World, even had a clue who this snarky teen was.) Rather than even thinking of governing, Elagabalus immersed himself in heavy drinking and self-worship (very intense sodomy - it is rumored that he had engaged in a sexual act ever hour he was awake for the entire four years he was Emperor - think about it - he had sex over 23,000 times in four years), leaving the affairs of the state mostly in the hands of his grandmother Julia Maesa.



Elagabalus was probably the first famous transsexual, rumored to have consulted his physicians about an early version of a sex-change operation. Having found this impossible, he took a series of male lovers, chosen by the enormous size of their private parts. When Elagabalus was enjoyably getting buggered, he also was getting drunk. Legend has it that he and his friends had gotten so drunk that when Elagabalus had a shower of rose pedals dropped on his dinner guest, many of them had suffocated under the weigh of the flowers.



Finally the Pretorian guard had enough of Elagabalus notorious excesses (but let's be clear about this; like most of the GOP, the Roman elite professed a disgust of homosexuality yet vigorously engaged in it,) and on this date, hunted down the young reprobate in a private bathroom and executed him on this date, as he tenaciously clung to his mother.


March 11, 1302 -
This is Romeo and Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare.



I've seen all of these websites that can offer to help you plan a romantic wedding 'just like Romeo and Juliet', does that mean you have to kill yourself shortly after the honeymoon?


March 11, 1669 -
After a series of premonitional earthquakes near, the largest volcano in Europe spectacularly erupted, destroying the Sicilian town of Nicolosi and killing 20,000 people.

Were there no virgins to toss into the volcano to appease the gods back in 1669?


March 11, 1811 -
Ned Ludd (not a real person) led a group of workers in a wild protest against mechanization on this date.  Members of the organized bands of craftsmen who rioted against automation in 19th century England were known as Luddites and also Ludds. The movement, began near Nottingham as craftsman destroyed textile machinery that was eliminating their jobs. By the following year, Luddites were active in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Leicestershire.

Although the Luddites opposed violence towards people (a position which allowed for a modicum of public support), government crackdowns included mass shootings, hangings and deportation to the colonies. It took 14,000 British soldiers to quell the rebellion. The movement effectively died in 1813 apart from a brief resurgence of Luddite sentiment in 1816 following the end of the Napoleonic Wars.



I'm still waiting for the anti-Apple movement - Smash the I-watches!


March 11, 1818 -
Frankenstein, "The Modern Prometheus," was published on this date. The book started out as basically a scary story told on a rainy night. That is, if you are telling scary stories to England's greatest romantic poet and his best friend, Europe's most notorious clubfooted, bisexual poet.



The book, by 21-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is frequently called the world's first science fiction novel.


More on the Wacky Russian Revolution:
On March 11, 1917 the Russian Cabinet finally became indignant and tried to dissolve the Duma, but the Duma refused to dissolve. The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies also refused to dissolve, even though the Cabinet had not asked them to dissolve.

(The Cabinet could not ask them to, because the Cabinet had determined that The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies did not exist.)


March 11, 1927 -
Samuel Roxy Rothafel opened The Roxy Theatre in New York City, a 6,214 seat movie theater at 153 West 50th Street at 7th Avenue, on this date. It was designed by Chicago architect Walter W. Ahlschlager.

The opening night film was The Love of Sunya produced by and starring Gloria Swanson. The Roxy was overshadowed by the opening of Radio City Music Hall in the Rockefeller Center in NYC in 1932.

The Roxy closed and was demolished in 1960, and Swanson was famously photographed on October 14, 1960 by Time-Life photographer Eliot Elisofon in the midst of the ruins during the theater's demolition.


March 11, 1931 -
F. W. Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe,) one of the most influential German film directors of the silent era, was out for a relaxing drive with his fourteen-year old Filipino valet Garcia Stevenson, when Mr. Murnau failed to heed one of the basic tenets of auto safety - it was rumored that Murnau decided to perform fellatio on the young driver.

Mr. Murnau and Mr Stevenson were involved in a car crash and both died on this date.

Kids, let this be a lesson to us all - for heaven's sake, please pull over if you decide to polish the knob of the driver of your automobile.


March 11, 1957 -
Charles Van Doren, darling of the American public, lost to Vivienne Nearing on the rigged TV quiz show Twenty One when both are asked to name the kings of Norway (Olav V) , Denmark (Frederick IX) , Sweden (Gustaf VI Adolf), Jordan (Hussein), Iraq (Faisal II), and Belgium (Baudouin).



Doren "missed" - the king of Belgium.


March 11, 1958 -
A B-47 bomber drops a nuclear bomb in the town of Mars Bluff in South Carolina. While it did not detonate a nuclear explosion, conventional explosives within the bomb left a 75 foot crater, destroying one house and damaging five others.



The government has to send out hundreds of 'oops' letters to the town's residents.


March 11, 1969 -
Levi Jeans added Bell Bottoms to their line of Jeans which had become fashionable as part of the hippie counterculture movement.



Though the actual creation of the first pair of bell-bottoms is unknown, the first mention of bell-bottom pants was in 1813 in reference to the uniforms of U.S. Navy sailors.


March 11, 2004 -
In Madrid, Spain, a series of 10 bombs hidden in backpacks exploded in quick succession at 3 stations, blowing apart four commuter trains on this date. 191 people were killed and over 1,450 were wounded. Spanish leaders were quick to accuse Basque terrorists but a shadowy group claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaeda.



On October 31, 2007, three lead defendants were convicted of murder. Four other top suspects were acquitted of murder but convicted of lesser charges. In all 21 of the 28 defendants were convicted. On July 17, 2008, a Spanish court cleared four of the 21 people charged for crimes related to the train bombings. In 2009, seven people were indicted for helping the bombers flee.


March 11, 2011 -
six years ago today, an earthquake and a tsunami sparked one the most severe atomic accident since Chernobyl at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan.



Over 81,000 jobs were lost due to the tsunami and four years later, 315,000 refugees of the tsunami still remain in limbo.



And so it goes.


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Before you go - We lose an hour of sleep tonight - daylight saving time starts at 2 AM tomorrow morning, so don't forget to turn all those clocks, microwaves, DVD players, etc. ahead.



Please do this work yourself:



the time you save may be your own.

Buried in the current WikiLeaks dump:

Actual photos from my medical school days.

It looks just like I remembered it.


Today is the International Day Of Awesomeness - a day for celebrating all things awesome, and everything awesome that you, your friends, and everybody else does.



Anyway that's what I read on the interweb.


March 10, 1938 -
Bette Davis won her second Academy Award and re-ignited her sagging career when Jezebel, premiered in New York City on this date.



Bette Davis came to the realization that William Wyler was a very special director when he insisted she come view the dailies with him, something she had never done with any other director before. They watched a scene where her character was coming down a staircase, a scene that had really irritated Davis as she couldn't understand why Wyler wanted to film it over 30 times. Watching the rushes however, she saw one of the takes in which he had captured a fleeting, devil-may-care expression that summed her character up perfectly. After that, she happily accepted however many takes Wyler wanted.


March 10, 1940 -
Carlos Ray Norris, the world's greatest living human being was born on this date.



Chuck Norris doesn't dial the wrong number. You answered the wrong phone.


March 10, 1972 -
Universal Pictures released the science fiction film Silent Running, directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Bruce Dern, on this date.



Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000, credits Silent Running as a major inspiration for his show.


March 10, 1989 -
Terry Gilliam's fourth film, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, starring  John Neville, Eric Idle, Uma Thurman, and a whole bunch of other people, premiered on this date.



This was Uma Thurman's first acting job, although because of the inordinate production delays for this movie, was not her debut. She also belongs to the very short list of actors who were hired on their very first audition. 


The Weather Report -


Today in History:
March 10, 1876 -
It was on this date in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell (Don Ameche) conducted the first successful experiment on a radical new technology. He put a "transmitter" in one room of his home and a "receiver" in another. He connected them with wire. He then shouted into the mouthpiece of the transmitter, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."



A moment later, his assistant, who had been waiting in the room with the receiver, came into Bell's room and said he had heard and understood everything.



When Alexander Graham Bell finished his invention of the telephone, he noticed he had two missed calls from Chuck Norris.



The invention didn't enjoy much commercial success because the market for persons with out-of-earshot assistants named Watson was not as large as Bell had hoped, but it did serve as a major stepping-stone to one of Bell's most significant inventions, the Watson Detonator.


March 10, 1948 -
The State owned Communist newspaper reported that the Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk was thrown from a window at his apartment in Prague under mysterious circumstances on this date.



Authorities rule his death was a "suicide" and then decide to rule the death as accidentally because he seems to have "fallen while sitting in a yoga position on a window sill to combat insomnia". But most likely he was suffocated first, judging from the fact that he had lost control of his bowels and the deep nail marks on the window sill.

I hate when that happens.


March 10, 1948 -
...Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold......

Author and artist, Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire at Highland Hospital, NC, along with eight other inmates on this date.



She was locked in on the 3rd floor while undergoing insulin-induced coma therapy.

I really hate when that happens.


March 10, 1951 -
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover announces that he has turned down an offer to become commissioner of baseball on this date.

The governor of California, Earl Warren, (and soon to be proponent of 'The Magic Single Bullet Theory',) had previously rejected an offer to become baseball's leader. Think how the nation would be different if baseball was able to fit Hoover with a pair of high heel cleats.


March 10, 1974 -
Second Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army surrenders to Philippine authorities on this date. He believed World War II was still underway and continued a 30 year guerrilla battle with other islanders. His final capitulation came when his senior officer, Maj. Taniguchi, ordered his surrender.



Upon return to the Japanese homeland, Onoda was treated as a hero, but had difficulty coping with his "postwar" life. Mr. Omoda died on January 16, 2014.


March 10, 1977 -
Roman Polanski gave a 13 year old girl Quaaludes and has sex with her during a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson's home on this date. He later fled the country to avoid statutory rape charges.



He would currently be living in Los Angeles (and probably having more fun) if he just went into the bathroom and auditioned his hand puppet alone.


March 10, 1977 -
Astronomers James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham and Douglas J. Mink discover rings around Uranus on this date.

Allow yourself to titter and guffaw like a school girl.


March 10, 1980 -
Jean Harris shot and killed her unfaithful lover, cardiologist Herman Tarnower, co-author of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet in his Purchase N.Y. home on this date.



She was granted clemency on December 31, 1992 by Governor Mario Cuomo after she served 12 years of a 15 year sentence. Harris was released in January 1993. Mrs Harris died in December 2013.

Sometimes, diets make you a little cranky



And so it goes.


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Before you go - Please watch this wonderful video from the folks at Great Big Story, about Haruo Nakajima, 87, was the man inside the Godzilla costume for 12 consecutive films from 1954 to 1972.