Today in History 1/22

1506: The first contingent of Swiss Guards arrive at the Vatican.
1561: Sir Francis Bacon is born.1771: Spain cedes Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to England.
1788: Lord George Byron is born. He was a leading figure in Romantic poetry, writing Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan among others.1869: Grigori Rasputin is born.
1889: Columbia Phonograph is formed in Washington, DC.
1890: The United Mine Workers of America is formed in Columbus, OH.
1901: Edward VII becomes King after his mother, Queen Victoria dies.1909: Ann Sothern is born. She provided the voice of the car on My Mother the Car.


1906: Robert E. Howard is born. He wrote the Conan novels.1917: Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Europe.
1932: Piper Laurie is born.
1934: Bill Bixby is born.
1938: Thorton Wilder's play, Our Town premieres.
1939: Jeff Smith, aka The Frugal Gourmet is born.
1940: John Hurt is born.
1946: The Central Intelligence Group, a forerunner of the CIA is formed.
1946: Malcolm McLaren, founder of The Sex Pistols, is born.1949: Steve Perry, singer for Journey is born.
1947: KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi begins operations in Hollywood, CA.
1952: The first jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet, enters service for the BOAC. The first versions suffered from catastrophic metal fatigue.1959: Linda Blair is born.
1960: Michael Hutchence, singer for INXS, is born.
1965: DJ Jazzy Jeff is born.
1965: Diane Lane is born.
1968: Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In premieres on NBC. I never, ever thought this show was funny.
1969: Olivia d'Abo is born. She played the human who doesn't know she's a Q in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the virginal sacrifice in Conan: The Destroyer.
1972: Emergency, the third part of Jack Webb's law enforcement trilogy (the other two thirds being Dragnet and Adam-12) premieres.
1973: The Supreme Court delivers its decision in Roe v. Wade striking down state laws restricting abortion during the first six months of pregnancy.
1973: Lyndon B. Johnson dies.
1973: George Foreman breaks Joe Frazier's professional career undefeated heavyweight world boxing champion status.
1984: The Apple Macintosh is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with it's famous "1984" commercial.
2003: WWII-era cartoonist Bill Mauldin dies.


Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History, 1/21

1189: Phillip II of France and Richard I of England (he of coeur de lion fame) begin to assemble troops to wage the Third Crusade. The movie The Lion in Winter posits that Dicky and Phil were more than just bloodthirsty zealots and were, in fact, bumping royal uglies.
1519: Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Spanish explorer, is executed.
1789: The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, By Sarah Wentworth Morton is printed in Boston.
1793: After being found guilty of treason, Louis XVI goes to the guillotined.
1824: Stonewall Jackson is born.
1861: Jefferson Davis resigns from the Senate.
1905: Christian Dior is born.
1911: The first Monte Carlo Rally.
1915: The Kiwanis is founded in Detroit.
1922: Telly Savalas is born.
1922: Paul Scofield is born. He played Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.
1924: Benny Hill is born.
1924: Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin begins to purge his rivals to clear his way to leadership.
1926: Steve Reeves is born. He played Hercules in many of those old Italian sword and sandal movies.
1940: Jack Nicklaus is born.
1942: Mac Davis is born.
1942: Edwin Starr is born. he is most famous for singing "War."
1947: Jill Eikenberry is born.
1950: Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury.
1950: George Orwell dies of TB.
1953: Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, is born.
1954: The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus is launched in Groton, CT.
1956: Geena Davis is born.
1959: Cecil B. DeMille dies.
1959: Carl Switzer dies in a gun battle over 50 dollars. He is best known for playing Alfalfa in the The Little Rascals but he also had a small part as the guy who annoys Jimmy Stewart at the dance in It's a Wonderful Life.
1976: Commercial service of the Concorde begins London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes.
1977: President Carter pardons nearly all Vietnam War draft evaders.
1998: Jack Lord, of Hawaii Five-0 dies.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History 1/20

1265: The English Parliament meets for the first time.
1356: Edward Balliol abdicates as King of Scotland. He reigned simultaneously with King David II and never enjoyed much support. It didn't help that he was playing footsie with the English during one of England's frequent "Let's beat on Scotland!" phases which most Scots found to be pretty irritating.
1502: The present day location of Rio de Janeiro is first explored by Portuguese explorer Gaspar de Lemos.
1649: King Charles I goes on trial for treason and other high crimes.
1783: Great Britain signs a peace treaty with France and Spain, officially ending hostilities in the Revolutionary War.
1841: Hong Kong Island is occupied by the British.
1885: L.A. Thompson patents the roller coaster.
1887: The United States Senate allows the Navy to lease Pearl Harbor.
1892: At the YMCA in Springfield, MA, the first official basketball game is played.
1896: George Burns is born.
1900: Colin Clive is born. He played Dr. Frankenstein in the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.
1920: Frederico Fellini is born.
1920: DeForrest Kelley is born. He is best known for his towering performance in the giant killer rabbit epic Night of the Lepus but he also worked on some old science fiction show.
1920: The ACLU is founded.
1924: Slim Whitman is born.
1929: Arte Johnson is born.
1930: Buzz Aldrin is born. Here he is laying the smack down on a rather aggressive conspiracy theorist.
1934: Tom Baker is born. He played the fourth (and most famous) Doctor on Doctor Who. But he also played an Elven healer in the godawful Dungeons and Dragons movie.1936: Edward VIII becomes King of the United Kingdom.1937: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is inaugurated for a second term. This is the first time the inauguration had been held on January 20th - previously it had been on March 4th.
1942: At the Wannsee conference the Nazis agree on the "final solution to the Jewish problem."
1946: David Lynch is born.1950: Liza Goddard is born. She played Kari in the 1983 Doctor Who episode "Terminus" and was married briefly to the sixth Doctor Colin Baker, aka The Worst Doctor Ever.
1952: Paul Stanley is born. He was The Starchild in Kiss. Here they are on the 1976 Paul Lynde Halloween Special:
1956: Bill Maher is born.
1958: Lorenzo Lamas is born. He played the wrongly accused cop seeking his wife's murderer on Renegade. Dr. Forrester attempts to turn Mike into him in MST3K episode # 622, Angel's Revenge.
1960: Will Wright is born. He's the guy who designed SimCity and The Sims. I've lost years off my life playing SimCity but I never got too into The Sims. It's too much like my real life. "Get up, rush to work, come home, cram food down your throat, fall into bed in a dead sleep. Repeat." Some fun!
1965: Alan Freed dies.1969: The first pulsar is discovered in the Crab Nebula.
1981: Iran releases 52 hostages twenty minutes after Ronald Reagan is inaugurated.
1984: Johnny Weissmuller dies.1986: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is celebrated as a federal holiday for the first time.
1986: The United Kingdom and France announce plans to construct the Channel Tunnel.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Well, I don't mind bourbon too much, actually.

Jenn and Chris had the 12th Annual Vermont Grazing Conference today. Jenn was the conference coordinator - basically the big cheese. Chris did IT - making sure everybody's laptop was playing nice with the main system. And my job is it's usual insanity. So we're all drinking bourbon and relaxing. It's some sort of C-grade bourbon that Chris uses to make bar-b-que sauce. Good Lord, I'm drunk blogging! The lowest of the low, apart from furries.
Here's the closing credits of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension:




God, I love this movie,

Today in History, 1/19

1419: During the Hundred Years' War, Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy.
1736: James Watt, steam engine pioneer, is born.1806: The United Kingdom occupies the Cape of Good Hope.
1807: Robert E. Lee is born.
1809: Edgar Allen Poe is born.1840: Captain Charles Wilkes circumnavigates Antarctica claiming what became know as Wilkes Land for the United States. Wilkes Land, by the way, is where Fox Mulder went to rescue Scully in the the X-Files movie Fight the Future.
1913: Minnesota Fats is born.
1915: Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.
1915: During WWI, German zeppelins bomb the cities of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in the UK killing more than 20 people. This is the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target.
1917: German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman sends the Zimmerman Telegram to Mexico, proposing a German-Mexican alliance against the United States.1920: The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.
1921: William "Billy Bats" Devino is born. He was the guy whose murder, burial, excavation and re-burial was so disturbingly portrayed in Goodfellas. The video is NSFW, to say the least.
1923: Jean Stapleton is born. She played Edith on All in the Family.
1924: Nicholas Colasanto is born. He played Coach on Cheers.
1930: Tippi Hedren is born. She was the star of The Birds.
1932: Richard Lester is born. He directed Help! A Hard Day's Night and is singlehandedly credited with ruining the Superman franchise, although that's a little unfair. After all, Alexander and Ilya Salkind certainly deserve a fair portion of the blame.
1939: Phil Everly, of The Everly Brothers, is born.
1943: Janis Joplin is born.
1944: Shelly Fabares is born. She played the daughter on The Donna Reed Show and the wife on Coach.
1946: Dolly Parton is born. She once said, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap."
1953: 68% of all US television sets are tuned into I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth.
1954: Katey Sagal is born. She provides the voice for Leela on Futurama.
1954: Cindy Sherman is born. She does these bizarre self portraits. I've had an on-again off-again obsession with her since college. 1972: Drea de Matteo is born. She played Chris Moltisanti's ill-fated girlfriend on The Sopranos.
1977: President Gerald Ford pardons Iva Toguri D'Aquino, aka Tokyo Rose.
1977: Snow falls on Miami, FL for the first and only time in the history of the city.


Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History, 1/18

1535: Francisco Pizarro founds Lima, the capital of Peru.
1777: Representatives of the New Hampshire Grants declare the independence of the Vermont Republic from Britain.
1778: James Cook becomes the first European to discover the Hawaiian Islands.
1782: Daniel Webster is born.
1813: Joseph Glidden, inventor of barbed wire, is born.
1861: Georgia secedes from the Union.
1882: A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh, is born.
1903: Teddy Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII of England. It is the first transatlantic radio message originating in the US.
1904: Cary Grant is born.
1911: Eugene B. Ely lands on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay. It is the first time an aircraft lands on a ship.1913: Danny Kaye is born.
1922: Bob Bell is born. He was the first Bozo the Clown.1919: The Paris Peace Conference opens in Versailles, France.
1919: Bentley Motors Limited is founded.
1933: John Boorman is born. He directed the laughably stupid Exorcist II: The Heretic and the stupidly laughable Zardoz.
1936: Rudyard Kipling dies.
1944: Soviet forces end the Siege of Leningrad.
1952: Curly Howard dies.1955: Kevin Costner is born. I'm one of the few people in the world who enjoyed The Postman.
1962: Allison Arngrim is born. She played the wicked Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie. I had a huge crush on her when I was kid. Everyone else loved Melissa Gilbert - I loved Nellie.1965: Dave Attell is born. He used to host Insomniac on Comedy Central.
1977: Scientists identify the bacterium that causes Legionnaires' disease.

Today in History, 1/17

1648: The Long Parliament passes the Vote of No Addresses, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and setting the stage for the second phase of the English Civil War.
1706: Benjamin Franklin is born.
1718: Captain Benjamin Church, Plymouth Colony settler and military leader dies.
1863: David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of the UK, is born. He and Churchill were always either locking horns or swapping spit with each other. In the figurative sense, that is.
1899: The US takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean.
1899: Al Capone is born.
1917: The US pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
1922: Betty White is born.
1927: Eartha Kitt is born. She was the third Catwoman on the old Batman live-action TV show. (the first two were Lee Meriwether and Julie Newmar)
1929: Popeye first appears in the Thimble Theater comic strip by Elzie Crisler Segar.
1931: James Earl Jones is born.
1933: Shari Lewis is born. I don't know about you, but Lamb Chop always gave me the creeps.
1939: Maury Povich is born.
1942: Muhammed Ali is born.
1945: The Soviets capture Warsaw, although there wasn't much of the city left to capture.
1945: Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappears in Hungary while in Soviet custody.
1949: The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television premieres.
1949: Andy Kaufman is born.
1950: 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from a Brinks office in Boston.
1959: Susanna Hoffs, lead singer for The Bangles is born. She is best known for never, ever looking at the camera during music videos.
1962: Jim Carrey is born.
1983: Doodles Weaver dies. He hosted many kiddie TV shows and is also Sigourney's uncle, but I remember him best from MST3K Episode # 615 Kitten With A Whip.
1971: Kid Rock, rocker, scum bag and herpes delivery system is born.
1980: Zooey Deschanel is born. She was in Elf and the not-really-all-that-good big budget version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
1982: "Cold Sunday" in the US sees temperatures fall to their lowest levels in 100 years. Temperatures were -40 in International Falls, MN and -5 in Jackson, MS.
2007: The Doomsday Clock is set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea's nuclear testing. That means that, at least according to The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, we are closer now to Armageddon than we were at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History, 1/16

550: The Ostrogoths conquer Rome after bribing the Isaurian garrison.
1362: A storm tide in the North Sea destroys the German island of Strand and the city of Rungholt.
1412: The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy.
1547: Ivan the Terrible becomes Tsar of Russia. Originally, the "terrible" sobriquet meant that he was terrible to his enemies, but as his family and the rest of Russia was to learn, he was pretty much terrible to everybody.1581: The English Parliament outlaws Roman Catholicism. The was after (I think) the Pope put out a hit on Elizabeth I saying, "Whosoever sends her out of this world does not only not sin in God's eyes but earns His favor" (or something like that). Basically, kill the queen and get a free pass to Heaven.
1605: Book One of Don Quixote is published.
1707: The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Act of Union, paving the way for the creation of Great Britain.
1777: Vermont declares its independence from New York.
1886: John Hamilton is born. He played Perry White on The Adventures of Superman.1901: Frank Zamboni is born. He invented that ice resurfacer that every kid would give his eye teeth to drive.1908: Ethel Merman is born
1910: Dizzy Dean is born.
1909: Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole
1919: The US ratifies the Eighteenth Amendment authorizing Prohibition.
1936: Albert Fish, serial killer, is executed. Of the sorry roster of 20th century serial killers, he was one of the nastiest.1945: Adolph Hitler moves into the underground bunker where he would spend his final days.
1948: John Carpenter is born. While he's been off his game lately, (for example, Vampires: Los Muertos and Escape from LA) his remake of The Thing is still one of the scariest movies I've ever seen.
1979: Ted Cassidy dies. He is best know for playing Lurch on The Addams Family TV show, but he also played the android Ruk in the Star Trek episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"1988: Jimmy The Greek is fired from CBS sports for making racist comments.

Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up

Today in History 1/15

1559: Elizabeth I is crowned in Westminster Abbey. Check out Glenda Jackson's portrayal of her in the BBC series Elizabeth R.
1759: The British Musem opens.
1777: During the American Revolution, New Connecticut (now called Vermont) declares its independence from England
1782: Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris goes before the US Congress to recommend the establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.
1865: During the American Civil War, Fort Fisher, NC falls to the Union cutting off the last major seaport of the Confederacy.
1870: The Democratic party is first symbolized by a donkey in a cartoon by Thomas Nast.

Click to enlarge.

1885: Wilson Bentley takes the first photograph of a snowflake.1892: James Naismith publishes the rules for basketball.
1908: Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, is born.1919: The Boston Molasses Disaster kills 21 people. A tank containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, unleashing an immense wave 15 feet high.1909: Gene Krupa is born.
1913: Lloyd Bridges is born.
1927: Phyllis Coates is born. She was best known as the first Lois Lane in the The Adventures of Superman, but she also had a small part in the MST3K episode, Invasion U.S.A.
1929: Martin Luther King, Jr. is born.1941: Captain Beefheart is born.
1943: The Japanese are driven off Guadalcanal.
1943: The Pentagon is dedicated.
1957: Mario Van Peebles is born. his father, Melvin directed Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song, widely considered the first blaxploitation movie.
1967: In the first Super Bowl, the Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10.
1973: Coleman Francis dies. He is the auteur behind such MST3K classics as Red Zone Cuba, ("I'm Cherokee Jack!"), The Skydivers, and The Beast of Yucca Flats.
1974L Happy Days premieres.
1981: Hill Street Blues premieres.
1983: Meyer Lansky, mobster, dies1986: HBO and Cinemax start scrambling their signals on Galaxy 1 using the Videocipher II system.
1987: Ray Bolger dies. He played the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz.

Today in History 1/14

1539: Spain annexes Cuba.
1639: The Fundamental Orders, the first written constitution that created a government, is adopted in Connecticut.
1741: Benedict Arnold is born.
1761: The Third Battle of Panipat was fought between the Afghans and the Marhatas. The Afghan victory severely weakened the Mughal Empire and paved the way for the British Raj.
1784: The US ratifies a peace treaty with England.
1832: Edgar Allen Poe publishes his first story, "Metzengerstein."
1875: Albert Schweitzer is born.
1886: Hugh Lofting is born. He is the creator of Dr. Doolittle.
1892: Hal Roach is born.
1898: Lewis Carroll is born.
1906: William Bendix is born.
1915: Mark Goodson, game show producer, is born.
1919: Andy Rooney is born.
1924: Guy Robinson is born - he played the Dad on Lost in Space.
1941: Faye Dunaway is born.
1943: Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchil begin the Casablanca Conference to discuss strategy for the next phase of the war.
1944: Nina Totenberg is born.
1948: T-Bone Burnett is born.
1948: Carl Weathers is born. He was never funnier as the grifting, penny-pinching version of himself on Arrested Development.
1957: Humphrey Bogart dies.
1963: George C. Wallace is sworn in as governor of Alabama with a pledge of "segregation forever."
1968: LL Cool J is born. Check him out in the godawful genetically-enhanced super-smart shark movie Deep Blue Sea. You will believe that super-smart sharks can operate machinery.
1969: Jason Bateman is born. He was also never funnier than as the put-upon scion of the Bluth family in Arrested Development.
1950: The MiG-17 makes its maiden flight.
1952: The Today Show premieres on NBC.
1978: Blossom Rock dies. She is best known for playing Grandmama on the old Addams Family TV show.
1986: Donna Reed dies.
1993: David Letterman announces he is moving to CBS.
2006: Shelley Winters dies.