2009: Day 208 Today in 1940 , the world meets Bugs Bunny as A Wild Hare is released. (1972) The first flight of the F-15 Eagle . Born Today: (1922) Writer and producer Norman Lear . (1931) I don't care if it is Jerry Van Dyke 's birthday. I'm not going to look for episodes of My Mother The Car . However, if you should happen to want to... (1938) Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax . (1948) Actress and director Betty Thomas . (1949) Singer and broadway actress Maureen McGovern , probably best known for her vocal performance of "The Morning After" from the 1972 version of The Poseidon Adventure . (1953) Australian Yahoo Serious . (1972) Actress and comedienne Maya Rudolph . Last Gasps: (1984) Actor James Mason . (2003) Bob Hope .
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2009: Day 207 Today in Spaaaaace: (1958 ) Explorer 4 , a aatellite instrumented by Dr. James Van Allen designed to study the radiation belts surrounding the Earth (named for Van Allen), was launched. The specific intent of this mission was to study the effects of nuclear explosions on the upon the belts (presumably in conjunction with planned detonations), but that was planned to involve two such satellites, and only this one was launched. (1963) Syncom 2 (1 was lost via an electronics failure and ended up in the wrong orbit), the first geosynchronus communication satellite, launched by NASA via a Delta B #20 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral. Over all it was a successful test satellite, enabling President Kennedy to make the first-ever satellite-relayed telephone call between two heads of state (a Nigerian President) and test out the possibilities for live, satellite-relayed television broadcasts. Its successor, launched the following year, was used to relay the '64 Tokyo Olymp...
2009: Day 206 From The How'd That Work Out For You? Dept. : (1792) Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and commander of the Allied Army, issued the Brunswick Manifesto , which was essentially a proclamation threatening the people of Paris with physical harm if the revolting citizens (I couldn't resist) acted violently toward the French royal family. The result was rather the opposite of that intended. Basically, it's a bad idea to send word to a dirty mob stewing in the middle of summer that they better not step over the line. Born Today: (1870) Illustrator/artist Maxfield Parrish . Here's a gallery of his work . (1894) Academy Awards-winning character actor Walter Brennan . (1943) British musician, best known as the drummer for The Yardbirds , Jim McCarty . (1951) Attorney (former?) and anti-obscenity/violence in video games, broadcast media, rap music, etc., Sandy Vagina Jack Thompson . (1965) Another of those faces I knew, but not the name, it's Ill...
2009: Day 205 This Day In Disgrace: (1974) The U.S. Supreme Court orders the Nixon Administration to turn over subpoenaed White House Tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor. (2002) Ohio Representative James Traficant is expelled from the House of Representatives for charges of taking bribes, filing false tax returns, racketeering and using government aides to perform chores at his farm and on his houseboat. The How'd That Work Out For You? Dept. : (1929) The Kellogg-Brand Pact , renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect. Among the signatory nations were Germany, Italy and Japan. Good News, Everyone! (1683) Slavery is abolished in Chile by the Spanish crown. (1911) Hiram Bingham III re-discovers the Lost City of the Incas, Machu Picchu . Of course, it had been "lost" only in the sense that the plundering Spaniards hadn't found it, but the locals knew it was there, buried under jungle growth. Pablito Alvarez, an 11 year-old nativ...
2009: Day 204 This Date In Disgrace : (1942) The Treblinka extermination camp opens, beginning to receive freight car shipments of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto . (1967) The Detroit/12th Street riot breaks out, leading to 43 deaths, 467 injured and over 7,200 arrests over the following five days. (1968) In Cleveland, Ohio the Glenville Shootout begins with snipers ambushing and killing two tow truck drivers whose uniforms, apparently, looked similar to those of police officers. Five days of rioting and looting ensued. (1984) Vanessa Williams formally resigns her Miss America crown in the wake of nude photos of her appearing in Penthouse . (1992) A Vatican commission, led by future Pope Joseph Ratzinger affirms that it is necessary to limit the rights of homosexuals. Born Today : (1865) Christian occultist, astrologer and mystic Max Heindel . (1886) German physicist and electronics whiz Walter H. Shottky . (1888) Author Raymond Chandler - creator of Philip Marlowe. ...
2009: Day 203 I'm trying to alter this a little, to make it both easier and more enjoyable to put together, as in the end I'm doing all of this for my own entertainment and edification. On this date in 1587 the second, also apparently doomed set of colonists landed on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Caroline. Until poking around I'd never heard of the Preparedness Day bombing in San Francisco in 1916, but there it was. A not-so-great day in the U.S. space program, today in 1962 Mariner 1 , intended to be a Venus fly-by mission, started to fly erratically after take-off and was destroyed before it could become a menace. In the world of music, today's birthdays include Rufus Wainwright (36), singer/songwriter & half of the Indigo Girls, Emily Saliers (46), pianist, theater and film composer Alan Menken (60), singer/songwriter Don Henley (62), Supertramp 's Rick Davies (65), once-tean idol Bobby Sherman (66). If you're feeling Funkedelic today,...
2009: Day 202 Robber and outlaw of the American West, Sam Bass was born today in 1851. It seems to be a day for Wild West types, including train robbers as you'll see. The stuff of legends. On this date in 1865, in the market square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok shoots and kills Davis Tutt in what would become the template for the western shootout/showdown . A day for Western legends, on this date in 1873 Jesse James and the James-Younger gang manage the first successful train robbery of the American West. Sounding more like a forgotten '60s band than anything else, on this date in 1919 the Wingfoot Air Express , a dirigible, crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in Chicago. Twelve people (mostly bank employees) died in the crash, with one more - one of those who'd parachuted from the wrecked dirigible and broke both legs - dying later while in hospital. Lost Generation writer and journalist Ernest Hemingway was born today in 1899. Mollie Sug...
2009: Day 201 This date in 356 BC is an accepted birth date for Alexander the Great . Though he'd be named "father of genetics" long after his death, Gregor Mendel was born today in 1922. He never got to see his studies of pea pods and inherited traits receive proper recognition. George Llewelyn Davies , the inspiration for the characters Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, was born today in 1893. He was killed in 1915, at the age of 21, one of the many, many casualties of World War I. Stupid Flanders . Sir Edmund Hillary , who along with Sherpa mountaineer Tenzig Norgay, became one of the first climbers to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Actress Natalie Wood (1938) would have turned 71 today, but she drowned in 1981. (A joke from that era: What did Grace Kelly have that Natalie Wood could have used? A good stroke.) On the same day Diana Rigg , who I'll always think of first as Mrs. Peel, was born over in Doncaster, England. Bass guitarist and singer with the Moody Blues ...
We Choose The Moon Here's a link to a site I'd meant to put up earlier this week. It tracks the progress in real time -- albeit displaced by 40 years -- of the Apollo 11 mission , and is, as I'm sure you recognized, named for a phrase from JFK's famous speech in which he laid out a national goal for the space program for the decade. It's a little... busy in some respects, trying to get one to install widgets, stream the background audio and even follow the time-displaced mission via Twitter, but it struck me as a worthwhile and timely resource... even if it is "powered by AOL."
Healthcare For All One of my largest public concerns - and, if anything, it's only strengthening - is how warped and inhumane what passes for a health care system we have here in the United States. It's with sadness and anger that I daily come across the lies, the fear and smear campaigns, designed to keep the bucks flowing into the pockets of health care insurers (a phrase so Orwellian as to boggle the mind) and pharmaceutical companies by demonizing a single-payer system. Worse, this horrible, predatory system is tied to a social structure in which reasonable access to medical care is treated as a job perk. (Worse still, a non-transferable job perk.) So, with that in mind, here's the latest pass-along request from one of the people who, sadly, is often ridiculed but who is out there fighting for us all every day. Healthcare: Change the Debate Support a Real Public Option Dear Friends, In mid-May, in an effort to reach consensus, President Obama secured a deal with the he...