I’ve been remiss (actually, I’ve been sweating, out in the yard all day, but remiss works) in not pointing out that Sir Michael Main of broadcasting fame put in a lot of time and effort constructing a Web page honoring this national holiday. He apparently couldn’t find a picture of me, but other than that it’s an outstanding job, and I’m overwhelmed. And sweaty. And remiss, but then I said that.
Carrot Top is a Vegas headliner. Somewhere in the great beyond, Bugsy Siegel is saying “If this is what I ultimately created, I deserved to be shot.” — Ken Levine
1775 — The Continental Congress establishes what would become the U.S. Post Office; Benjamin Franklin becomes the first Postmaster General.
1788 — New York (finally!) ratifies the U.S. Constitution and becomes the 11th state. Happy 219th birthday, Empire State.
1861 — George B. McClellan assumes command of the Army of the Potomac following a disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. This was a bad idea, as McClellan liked to dress up as a general but not actually, you know. Fight.
1878 — In California, the poet and American West outlaw calling himself “Black Bart” makes his last clean getaway when he steals a safe box from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The empty box will be found later with a taunting poem inside. I used to work at a dinner theater named Black Bart’s. I wrote fake Black Bart’s poems for them. This is just too weird.
1908 — Happy 99th birthday, FBI.
1947 — Happy 60th birthday, CIA, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Council. Don’t you hate sharing the day? I know I do.
1948 — President Harry Truman desegregates the military of the United States. ‘Bout time.
1963 — Syncom 2, the world’s first geosynchronous satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.
1991 — Actor Paul Reubens, AKA Peewee Herman, is arrested in a Sarasota, Florida theater for exposing himself while watching a porn flick. Peewee started renting videos after that.
811 — Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I is slain in the Battle of Pliska; the world sort of mourns.
1309 — Henry VII is recognized as “King of the Romans” by Pope Clement V.
1803 — The Surrey Iron Railway, arguably the world’s first public railway, opens in south London.
1847 — Liberia declares independence.
1882 - Richard Wagner’s Parsifal premieres at Bayreuth.
1887 — L. L. Zamenhof publishes “Dr. Esperanto’s International Language”.
1891 — France annexes Tahiti.
1944 — The first German V-2 rocket hits Great Britain.
1945 — The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide, removing Winston Churchill from power (he would serve as Prime Minister once again from 1951 until 1955). Meanwhile…
1945 — Churchill was busy issuing the Potsdam Declaration with Franklin Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek, defining terms for the Japanese surrender. The Japanese did not surrender, being unimpressed by the statement that refusing to do so would result in “the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki followed shortly thereafter.
1953 — Fidel Castro leads an unsuccessful attack on the Moncada Barracks, thus beginning the Cuban Revolution and establishing The 26th of July Movement (see: Guevara, Che).
1977 — The National Assembly of Quebec imposes the use of French as the official language of the provincial government.
1856 — George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and literary critic. He was a strong advocate for socialism and women’s rights, a vegetarian, and a teetotaller (i.e., virtuous but not a lot of fun). His most famous play is probably Pygmalion, but he also wrote Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and Superman, and Major Barbara, all of which I was required to read at one point or the other.
He died in 1950, at the age of 94, after falling from a tree while pruning.
He remains the only person to have won a Nobel Prize (for literature, in 1925) and Academy Award (for Adapted Screenplay, in 1939).
1875 — Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology. Since Jung’s theories focused on integrating spirituality and the unconscious realm into psychoanalysis, his methods are not usually taught in psychology departments, although he remains a towering historical figure. His most notable contributions include his concept of the psychological archetype, the collective unconscious, and his theory of synchronicity.
Carl Jung died at the age of 85, in 1961.
1894 — Aldous Huxley, English writer, former teacher of George Orwell, and most famously known for his novel Brave New World, expressing his views on the dehumanizing aspects of scientific progress. He was a close friend of D. H. Lawrence, and in his later years explored the effects of psychedelic drugs, particularly mescaline. He wrote of his drug experiences in the essay The Doors of Perception, which became the inspiration for the name of the rock band The Doors. He famously took 100 mg of LSD as he lay dying, and passed away on the same day as C.S. Lewis, November 22, 1963, both of their deaths overshadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy earlier in the day.
1895 — Gracie Allen, comic genius and partner of husband George Burns, to whom she was married for 38 years. She began in vaudeville at the age of 14, in 1905, being a talented dancer, and teamed up with Burns in 1922. Interestingly, she began as the straight man, setting up George for the punchlines, but he noticed her delivery was getting more laughs and so flipped their roles. Burns and Allen stayed one of the top acts for decades before Gracie retired in 1957 due to health problems.
She was also known for her fashion style, particularly full or three-quarter length sleeves, which became an Allen trademark. Unknown to her admirers, though, she had been badly burned as a child and was merely hiding a scar she was very sensitive about. When the couple moved to Beverly Hills and acquired a swimming pool, Gracie put on a bathing suit and swam the length of the pool, to prove to her children that she could swim. She never put on a bathing suit or entered the pool again.
Gracie died of a heart attack in 1964 at the age of 69; George Burns lived another 32 years, dying at the age of 100.
1909 — Vivian Vance, actress and singer, best known as Lucille Ball’s sidekick on I Love Lucy, Ethel Mertz; she also appeared occasionally on Lucy’s other shows, The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy.
Although Lucy and Vance eventually became great friends, Ms. Ball was less than enthusiastic at the time of the original casting, feeling that Ethel should be older; as it was, Lucy was 40 and Vance was 42 when I Love Lucy went on the air.
Vivian Vance was the first recipient of an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress.
She died in 1979 at the age of 70, after fighting breast cancer and suffering a stroke. She was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991.
Others include football player Bob Waterfield (b. 1920, d. 1983); writer Jean Shepherd (b. 1921, d. 1999), actor Jason Robards (b. 1922, d. 2000), and director Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928, d. 1999).
Stuff
