Birthdays: Steve Martin, Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, Erwin "Magic" Johnson, Lina Wertmuller, David Crosby, California Banditto Triburcio Vasquez, Alice Ghostly, Buddy Greco, The 20's Parisian nightclub singer known as Bricktop, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, composer James Horner, director Wim Wenders, Emmanuele Beart, Halle Berry is 40

1281-A Pacific typhoon called by the Japanese the Kamikaze or The "Divine Wind" destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet of Kublai Khan as it approached the shores of Japan. The Mongols way of showing the Japanese that they meant business was as they captured small outer islands like Ryuku and Iwo Jima they crucified the civilians to the topmasts of their ships.

1457- The first printed Gutenburg Bible finished. One agent of Gutenberg's bringing the first shipment of bibles to Paris was arrested for witchcraft because locals thought it was humanly impossible for one person to make so many identical books without the aid of black magic.

1744- LOUIS LE BIEN AIMEE- Pleasure loving French King Louis XV had become gravely ill and was near death. His father confessor the Bishop of Soisson refused to give him the sacraments unless he banished his mistresses and reformed his sinful life. He did so and Louis health improved. He was so good the peasants began calling him Louis le Bien Aimee’- the Well Beloved. But boys will be boys. Louis grew bored with being a faithful sober husband. He soon called back his bimbos and banished the Bishop instead. Louis XV lived happy, if disreputably, to a very old age.

1781- George Washington and the Comte du Rochambeau had been debating whether to use their combined forces against the British in occupied New York City or Lord Cornwallis' army in Virginia. Today Washington received a letter from the Admiral DeGrasse that he was bringing a large French battlefleet to meet them at the Chesapeake Bay. Washington knew this would be his last chance, since his French allies wouldn’t send any more help, and everyone was starting to listen to a rumor that the Czarina Catherine of Russia was offering to broker an international peace conference in Vienna. At such a peace conference of kings he was sure that the idea of American Independence would be negotiated away. Washington decided to accept Rocheambeau's plan to attack Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia.

1784- On Kodiak Island Grigori Shelekov founded Three Saints Bay, the first Russian colony in the Americas. The Russians would continue to expand their trading posts and settlements until Russian America extended from Alaska to just north of San Francisco California.

1900 -The end of the 55 DAYS IN PEKING. A multinational military force relieved the diplomats besieged by the rebellious Boxers and regular Chinese Army in the Chinese capitol. The Dowager Empress Zhou Zhsi fled into the countryside. British, American, German, Russian, French, Italian and Japanese troops fought side by side and looted the beautiful Summer Palace. Just in case you thought tasteless sensationalist journalism is a modern problem- At this time back in Europe no one knew the Peking diplomats fate. The press had picked up on a report from a Shanghai correspondent for the London Daily Mail that reported them all massacred, with lots of lurid "eyewitness "detail of their rape and torture. Queen Victoria had been fooled to the point of ordering a memorial service at St. Paul's Cathedral before reconsidering until more substantive proof came in.

1908- The first international beauty pageant held in Kent, England.

1928 - Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur's play" The Front Page," premieres in NYC. They later went on to become top comedy writers in Hollywood. MacArthur is the one who sent Hecht the famous cable from LA. "Hecht, some quick, fortunes to be made and the competition are idiots!- Mac" When MacArthur died he put on his tombstone the epitaph "Over My Dead Body!"

1935- President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the National Social Security Act. Considered the most successful US Federal social program ever, today there is great controversy over it’s financial overhaul. In 1972 young George W. Bush submitted a paper in his business class at Yale. It’s theme was that Social Security was a big commie mistake.

1945-VJ DAY (Aug 15th in Japan) -President Truman announced the surrender sparking wild celebrations in allied cities like New York and London. In Japan citizens were politely asked to stand at attention by their radios as Emperor Hirohito explained to his people about the surrender. It is the first time they had ever heard his voice. At 3 am that morning 1,000 rebel Japanese troops attacked the palace trying to prevent the disgrace of the surrender announcement. They were fought off by the Imperial guard and the guard commander was killed. The speech was pre-recorded and went on anyway. Defense minister Anami committed Hara-Kiri while listening to the address. Gangs of angry kamikaze pilots wandered the streets looking for trouble. Their commanders had emptied the gas tanks of their planes to obey the Imperial edict.

1956- The Marilyn Monroe movie "Bus Stop" premiered.

1962 - French & Italian workers break through at Mount Blanc to create a auto
Tunnel through the Alps.

1965 - Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" hits #1.FYI -their real names? Salvatore Bono and Cheriyn Sarksiian LaPierre.

1965- Jane Fonda married director Roger Vadim, who put the beautiful young blonde in naughty movies like Barbarella. His previous wife Bridgette Bardot was a beautiful young blonde that he put in naughty movies….hmm.

1979 – A rainbow was seen in Northern Wales that lasted for 3 hours duration.

1980- SOLIDARNOSC!! - At a strike at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, Communist Poland the first mass peoples movement that would eventually topple European Communism was created. An electrician named Lech Walsesa climbed the fence and joined the strike, eventually becoming the leader of the movement Solidarity. He was a political prisoner, a Nobel Prize winner and eventually President of democratic Poland.

1994 – The world’s most wanted terrorist "Carlos the Jackal" was arrested in Khartoum Sudan when he entered a clinic to have a varicose vein removed from his testicle.

2003- A blackout shuts down the power from New York to Toronto to Detroit.

2006- A UN brokered ceasefire stopped the war between Israel and the Hezbollah living in Lebanon.

2126- Get your catchers mitts out! Comet Swift-Tuttle will pass very close by the Earth.

You'll notice below I list today as a release date for Walt Disney's Bambi, while I already listed the same film two weeks ago. Thats because before 1980 studios released big films in just a few theaters in NY LA, Chicago and San Francisco- First Run theaters, then to wide or general release nationwide.So film historians have to discern whether they are recording a films Premiere, First Run or General Release.

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B-Dayz: Annie Oakley, Alfred Hitchcock, Don Ho, Buddy Rogers, Bert Lahr the Cowardly Lion, Richard Baseheart, cartoonist Saul Steinberg, Johann Christoph Denner (1655)- inventor of the clarinet. Danny Bonaduce, John Logie Baird one of the inventors of television, Daniel Schorr is 90, Bombay movie star Viyayanthimala, Fidel Castro, aka The Beard, is 81
you thought I was dead , eh? I outlasted ten Yanqui presidents!

Egyptian Festivals of Isis & Serapis

Festival of the Greek goddess Dianna of Ephesus. She had six breasts. According to the Acts of the Apostles during one of these festivals Saint Paul tried to spoil the fun by preaching his sermon to the Ephesians during their festival. They responded by running him out of town. Diana in her Greek form as Artemis from the older Near Eastern goddess Cybele had the inexplicable dual nature of Virgin and Mother. Sound familiar?

These three pagan festivals of Isis, Serapis and Artemis were in the Middle Ages converted into the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In the Italian city-state of Sienna this is the date for the Pallio, the traditional horse race through the streets in medieval splendor.

Today is also the Feast Day of Saint Cassian, the Patron Saint of Stenographers.

1521- The Aztecs surrender to Cortez. After Montezuma was killed the Aztecs chose Guatamoc as their new emperor and he drove the conquistadors from their capital Tenochtitlan vowing:" We will eat the Spaniards flesh with salsa ! " remember that image next time you order fajitas. But smallpox ravaged the population and Cortez returned with heavy reinforcements of allied Indian tribes from Texcoco who hated Aztec dominance. After 80 days of bloody house to house fighting that destroyed most of the capitol. Guatamoc and a few survivors surrendered and were tortured to death. Cortez built Mexico City on the ruins.

1642- Astronomer Christian Huygens noticed that Mars had a southern polar ice cap too.

1845- Commodore Stockton with a contingent of U.S. Marines rode up from his fleet in San Pedro Harbor to Ciudad Los Angeles. Without any orders from Washington he interrupted a local fiesta to inform the startled inhabitants that they were now part of the United States.

1907-The first motorized TAXICABS hit the streets of New York. Taxi comes from Taximeter, a little machine that tallied the fare based on distance traveled. Cab is short for the earlier form of hired horse drawn carriage. Originally called a Cabriolet, then a brand name of Hansom Cabs, then just Cabs.

1910- Florence Nightingale dies after being in sickbed convinced she was dying since age 37. She died at 90. Although claiming to be too sick to walk down a flight of stairs she worked ceaselessly reforming the army medical system, founding nursing colleges and drove several friends into early graves in the cause of medical reform. When she began, women who followed armies were usually camp followers or washer women. She created the ideal of the clean cut, disciplined nurse professional.

1934- First Little Abner comic strip by Al Capp. Dogpatch, Mammy Yokum, Daisey Mae, Kickapoo Joy Juice, Jubilation T. Cornpone and the Schmoo are born. Al Capp was a hard drinking old curmudgeon of a cartoonist who lost one leg when as a child he fell off a streetcar. He used to bring young women into his office for "interviews" and would signal the boys in the copy room he had scored by letting his wooden leg drop loudly to the floor. In his old age he gloried in being a right wing chauvinist who got into arguments with radical pop stars like John Lennon. Capp had as a young assistant Frank Frazetta, he of the Conan the Barbarian paintings.

1941- James Stuart Blackton certainly had an interesting career. The English born artist became a top newspaper cartoonist, a vaudevillian drag act as Mademoiselle Stuart, the first American animator, founder of the Vitagraph Company, the movie fanzine Motion Picture World. He even successfully faked a newsreel of the battle of Manila Bay in 1898 using toy boats, sparklers and cigar smoke. He made fortunes and lost them just as quickly. On this day, penniless, he was struck and killed by a bus on Pico Blvd.


1942 Disney's Bambi opened in theaters nationwide. Today the film looks quaint but in its time artists felt it was as realistic as artists could attain. It's why so many preferred working on Dumbo, a much more cartoony style. One designer Rico LeBrun had a hunter friend bring in a real deer he shot in the Sierras. LeBrun set up drawing and anatomy sessions to study the dead animal. But LeBrun was so inspired by the opportunity he refused to dispose of the carcass even after several days it began to smell badly and attract flies. Finally the other animators waited until LeBrun had left for lunch and tossed the rancid thing.

1946- MGM cartoon Northwest Hounded Police, the short in which Tex Avery perfected the 'Tex Avery Take" - used since in films like The Mask,and Roger Rabbit.


1955- Shooting wrapped on Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. He was remaking the film he had done in silent times. One wag said: DeMille has done God one better because he has now parted the Red Sea twice."

1991- Jack Ryan died. The toymaker was the inventor of Hot Wheels toy cars, and helped launch the doll Barbie.

1997- Matt Parker and Trey Stone's animated series Southpark debuted.

Birthdays: King George IV, Cecil B. DeMille, The alien Alf- 1757, Cantinflas-original name Mario Moreno, Buck Owens, George Hamilton, Edith Hamilton, Diamond Jim Brady, William Goldman, Mtsislav Rostropovitch, Xenia Sharpe (educator who invented the childrens reader Dick and Jane, See Dick Run...etc.) Kathy Lee Bates-the author of the song America the Beautiful, Klara Schickelgruber- Hitler’s mother, Dominique Swain, Pete Samprass, John Casale- I'm not Fredo!

1822-Vicount Lord Castelreagh, British foreign secretary during the Napoleonic wars, went mad after eating hot buttered toast and killed himself with a butter knife. He had been warned by his doctor Lord Graydon against eating hot buttered toast. Shortly afterwards his doctor Lord Graydon also committed suicide, but he didn't have any hot buttered toast. A satirical epitaph was penned by Lord Byron:
The human race will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this;
Here lie the bones of Castlereaugh...
Stop, Traveller, and piss.

1869- San Francisco lunatic Joshua Norton, who called himself Norton Ist, Emperor of the United States, today published an Imperial Edict outlawing the Democratic and Republican Parties. Hmmm… he may be on to something!

1877-THE BIRTH OF RECORDED SOUND. Thomas Edison announced his sound recording invention and demonstrates it by recording "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a tin cylinder. Edison never quite understood the possibilities of a music industry and was convinced that the recorded sound was going to be a used primarily for people to listen to the voices of deceased family, sort of like a voice from the grave. That idea was so popular that it translated to the Logo of the RCA Company with the familiar image of the dog listening to "His master's voice". The original incarnation of that dog listening to his master's voice supposedly had the dog and recorder sitting on a coffin. A few years later Emile Berliner from Georgia later invented the flat record disc. Edison thought the disc was clumsy and too fragile. In the future he declared, everyone would use recording cylinders.

1915 - "Of Human Bondage," by William Somerset Maugham, published. Maughm finished the book while staying at Shanghai's leading hotel.

1927- the William Wellman movie “WINGS” opened with Howard Arliss and Buddy Rogers, the only silent film to win best picture at the Academy Awards- because the awards were only started the following year and by then sound was all the rage.

1932 Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first published. Before anyone ever heard of stem cells Huxley had written a scholarly paper on the moral dangers inherent in controlled eugenics. Writer H.L. Mencken urged him to put his ideas in a fiction form to reach a wider audience. The title comes from Shakespeare's the Tempest " Oh Brave New World, that has such people in it!'Huxley spent some time in Hollywood trying to get screenwriting work, and even wrote a treatment for Alice in Wonderland to pitch to Walt Disney.

1951- Bob McKimson’s Warner Bros short Hillbilly Hair. The short includes the long routine animated by Emery Hawkins when Bugs Bunny takes over calling a square dance and uses it to torture the two twin brother Hillbillies who are after him.

1961-Soviet and East German troops start building the Berlin Wall, which remained a symbol of Cold War tension until it was pulled down spontaneously by Berliners in 1989.

1981- IBM introduced its first PC- personal computer and PC-DOS I.. Unlike Apple, IBM shared the basic hardware design, so a myriad of cheaper competitor PC’s soon flooded the market.

1988- Martin Scorcese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ opened in theaters to howls of protests from religious groups. There had been more inflammatory interpretations of the Christ story on screens in the past like Pasolini’s Gospel According to Saint Matthew and the Canadian film Hail Mary, but the church groups weren’t that media savvy yet. Like all these protest efforts, all the controversy did was boost it's box office.

1999- In Yorkshire England Tish, the world’s oldest goldfish, died at age 43.

2007-Producer and game show maven Merv Griffin died at age 81. The creator of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, his last message on his website was" I had planned to go on vacation, but this is not the destination I intended."

Typical student animator at Fjorg- Toy yo to- hoh!
The Iron Animator competition Fjorg! at the San Diego SIGGRAPH/07 was very successful. The final judging and awards was expected to draw 200 people. Instead it drew 2000! Teams participated from RIT, SCAD, USC, as well as Israel, Brazil and Japan. Several teams of professionals as well. Congratulations to the winners Team MoCap of Bowling Green University. Glory to organizer Pat Beckman, Scott, Becky and their Fjorg team! May Valkyries sound the battle song of praise as they ride across the skies of Mitgard! I was proud to have been invited to play a part. Thanks to the sponsors Dreamworks Animation SKG and HP. The Njorns have woven their Web of Fate, so plans are already approved for Fjorg II when Siggraph/08 beaches their dragonships again next Summer at the LA Convention Center. As the word gets around and the more schools join in, I predict the event will grow to an annual event for SIGGRAPH.

Cool documentary and see the winners at-
http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/attendees/fjorg


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Birthdays: Antonio Salieri, Frederick Ludwig Jahn 1778- founder of the Gymnastics Movement, Alex Haley, Jack Haley, Rev Jerry Falwell, Claus Von Bulow, Hulk Hogan- real name Terry Bollier- he’s 56, Dean Schiller, Dick Browne the creator of Hagar the Horrible, Steve Wozniak the co-founder of Apple Computers, Raymond Leppard, Lloyd Nolan, Mike Douglas, Patti Duke Austin, Patrick Swayze,

CORRECTION!I had stated Robert Redford's birthday as today when other sources as Wikipedia and IMDB have it as August 18th. Sometimes the research leads you astray. It's what makes History a living science.Mea Culpa!
Doh!

1270-Prince Edward of England leaves Dover for his Crusade. Nobody had pointed out to Eddie that by 1270 the Crusades were pretty much over and done with. He didn't accomplish much except inspiring that really neat church hymn "Jerusalem" in the film Chariots of Fire .

1866 - World's 1st roller skating rink opens (Newport RI)

1874 - Harry S Parmelee patents the sprinkler head.

1896 - Harvey Hubbell patents electric light bulb socket with a pull chain

1909-The first S.O.S.-'Save Our Ship' Morse signal sent by the liner S.S.Arapahoe off Cape Hatteras North Carolina.

1932- Rin Tin Tin died. The German shepherd was the first animal movie star and for awhile was the mainstay of struggling little Warner Bros studio. Jack Warner called him “our little rent check.”

1946- Playwright Moss Hart married Miss America Kittie Carlisle. Kittie Carlisle Hart played with the Marx Brothers, knew George Gershwin and Cole Porter and was the beard for still-in-the-closet NY Mayor Ed Koch. She died earlier this year at age 96.

1949- Margaret Mitchell, author of "Gone With the Wind" was hit by a taxicab and died 5 days later.

1956- Abstract Artist Jackson Pollack, known as Jack the Dripper, died when he drunkenly drove his car into a tree near East Hampton.

1957- The Toyota Car Company of Japan introduces itself to the United States with a car called the Toyopet. It's first years sales are so bad they almost gave up on the U.S.

1962- actor Sir Lawrence Olivier founded the National Theatre in London.

1965- BURN, BABY, BURN- THE WATTS RIOTS- 6 days of urban warfare began when an angry crowd attacked some LAPD apprehending a drunken black motorist named Marquette Frye. 34 deaths, 1000 injured. This was the first of similar riots, which erupted in a number of U.S. cities that year including Detroit, Newark and Washington D.C.

1972- San Antonio Texas holds it’s first Cheech & Chong Day.

1984- COLD WAR CHUCKLES- President Ronald Reagan was asked to do some sound checks for a nationwide radio address. He said into the mike: "Today we have passed legislation that will ban Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes..."
The joke got out to the press and didn't do much to calm new cold war tensions.

1997- LA police wrestle down and arrest actor Christian Slater. They encountered him in a cocaine delirium shouting “The Germans are coming to kill us all!”

2001-First day shooting on the film Hero, directed by Zyiang Yi Mou.

2002- The Parliament of the Republic of Turkmenestahn passed a bill renaming the months of the year for their President Saparmurat Niyazov the Turkmenbashi- Leader of all the Turkmen. He was made president for life in 1999. Mr Niyazov has ruled the country since he was appointed Communist Party chief in 1985 when it was still part of the Soviet Union. He quickly developed a cult of personality surrounding himself, suppressing legitimate political opposition. Much of the cash for grandiose palaces and statues is thought to stem from deals involving Turkmenistan's rich oil and gas reserves. He has also issued a decree officially extending adolescence until the age of 25 and postponing old age officially until age 85. Saparmurat Niyazov Father of the Turkmen, died in 2006.

history for 8/10/2007
Birthdays: Alexander Glauzunov, Billie Holiday, Eddie Fisher, Leo Fender, Herbert Hoover, King Jan III Sobieski, Norma Shearer, Rhonda Fleming, Jimmy Dean, Rosanna Arquette, Antonio Banderas

70 A.D.- JERUSALEM DESTROYED BY THE ROMANS- After a prolonged siege, the Roman legions of Vespasian and Titus break into the city and crush the Zealot Jewish revolt with great slaughter and destruction. The cedar panels and muslin curtains of the Great Temple of Herod catch fire and the entire temple is destroyed but for an outer building retaining wall, known thereafter as the Wailing Wall. One interesting detail is most adherents of the new sect called Christians had fled the city early, believing this cataclysm to be the first sign of the fulfillment of prophesies of the the Second Coming of Christ.
The only eyewitness account we have of this event was Flavius Josephus ( Ben Josef ), a leader of the zealot revolt who realized halfway through that the Romans were going to win. So he changed sides became a pagan and kissed the toes of funny looking idols, kissed the butt of the Emperor Titus, then retired a rich old man to a villa in Sicily well stocked with slave girls. Of course as soon as he was settled in he felt guilty so he decided to write a political history of the Jewish people. No matter what one thinks of Josephus as a man the fact is he's the only other source than the Bible we have for what went on in that corner of the world. One mystery about the destruction of Jerusalem is the disappearance of the ARK OF THE CONVENANT which was taken from the Great Temple of Herod by the Romans and kept as a treasure in Rome. Some say it was carried off by the Goths when Rome fell four hundred years later and buried with their king Alaric. Another legend said a Christian Roman General named Valerian returned the Ark to Jerusalem but the Moslems sacked the monastery it was hidden in. Still another said it is supposedly in Ethiopia guardian by a family of Orthodox monks who keep it in a temple hewn out of rock with one door and one key, guarded for life. So who knows?

256 AD- St. Lawrence's day. He was the Saint who's emblem is the grill he was roasted on. Supposedly he showed his contempt for his torturers efforts by saying:" I think I'm done on this side." The Perseid Meteor Shower occurs around this time. It has been called the Burning Tears of Saint Lawrence.

1415- King Henry V of England and his army embarked from Dover to cross the Channel and kick some serious French butt!

1492- Cardinal Roderigo Borgia elected Pope, despite openly keeping his children Caesar and Lucretia Borgia. He promised so many heavy bribes to the other Cardinals to win that humorists make jokes comparing him to Christ giving his worldly riches to the poor. When asked what his Papal name would be he replied “by the name of the Invincible Alexander” who was not even a Christian- but Alexander VI it was.

1536- CANADA GETS ITS NAME-French explorer Cartier discovered a great river on St. Lawrence's day which he calls the St. Lawrence River. Cartier asks the Huron people "what people lived upstream ?". They replied people who work with red copper, in their language" Caignetdaze". Cartier names the land "Chemyn de Canada".

1557- Battle of San Quentin. King Henry II of France thought to see if the new young king of Spain Phillip II was as tough as his predecessor Charles V was. Phillip’s armies beat the French in this battle and threatened Paris before all sued for peace.

1628- The King of Sweden Gustavus builds a huge battleship called the Vasa. In front of the whole court he launches it into a fjord and it immediately sinks straight to the bottom.

1629- Spanish painter Diego Velasquez traveled to Italy to study the Renaissance Masters on the advice of his buddy painter Peter Paul Rubens.

1675 - King Charles II lays foundation stone of Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

1680- THE GREAT PUEBLO INDIAN REVOLT. In Spanish New Mexico the Pueblo, Zuni, Hopi, Acoma and eastern Apache had had enough of Spanish colonists and their Christianity. A Pueblo leader named Pope' coordinated a simultaneous mass revolt timed by giving each chief a rope with the days marked off with knots. Today the last knot was untied and the Indians attacked the Spaniards from all sides. 500 out of 2,000 Europeans were killed and the churches and town of Santa Fe burned. The Madonna brought from Valencia Spain called La Conquistadora was riddled with arrows, the marks of which you can still see today. The Spaniards retreated to Old Mexico but returned in force 13 years later .

1787- Mozart completes his Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -A Little Nightmusic.

1788- Mozart’s on a roll! This day he completed his Jupiter Symphony #41. It was his last symphony. He never heard it performed in his lifetime.

1821- Missouri became a state. The first American state on the west bank of the Mississippi.

1867- Rather than put up with his pushy Secretary of War any longer, President Andrew Johnson asks for Edwin Stanton's resignation. Stanton (who formed the first American Secret Service and as a lawyer invented the "temporary insanity" plea) not only refused, he barricaded himself in his office and his partisans in the former Lincoln cabinet began impeachment proceedings against President Johnson.

1889 - Dan Rylands patents the screw -on cap.

1897 -German chemists working for the Bayer Company invent Aspirin, the first mass market over the counter drug. A powdered tree root that was known to the Native Americans for years.

1913-The Treaty of Bucharest signed ending the Second Balkan War. Bulgaria was beat up by Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania over the territory they all took from Turkey.

1928- Calvin Coolidge dedicated the cornerstone of the monument at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. The last time a President of the United States rode a horse to deliver a speech.

1942-HALELIEUYAH NIGHT- The Marines in the jungles of Guadalcanal were tensely awaiting a night attack by the Japanese. They convinced each other that because Japanese trying to speak English have trouble pronouncing the English letter “L”, all passwords should contain L’s. So when a few Korean slave laborers straggled into the camp perimeter the alarmed Marines thinking the attack had started yelled to each other all night: “LOLLYPOP! LIQUIFY! LILLY-LIVERED! LAPLAND! LOLLAPALOOZA!” .

1945- After Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings a third atomic pile was delivered to Tinian island air base to be assembled into another A-bomb. But it's dropping was canceled by President Truman. He told his aide Dean Acheson: "Another 100,000 people...I can't see killing any more kids."

1945- Even after two atomic bomb attacks and their navy and airforce destroyed the Japanese cabinet is still divided 3 - 3 on whether to surrender. Defense minister Anami is worried about a mutiny of the army and Prime minister Suzuki still thinks he can get Russia to negotiate separately -Stalin had just declared war and sent troops to invade Manchuria and the Kurile islands. Anami said the National Honor demanded a final battle on the home soil:" Wouldn't it be wonderful to see all of Japan destroyed...like a beautiful flower !"
The impass was broken by Emperor Hirohito who breaks tradition and personally intervened "The time has come to bear the unbearable". Next morning a note requesting negotiations based on Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration is sent to the Swiss and Swedish Consulates in Tokyo .

1948 – The Birth of Reality TV.- Allen Funt's "Candid Camera" TV debut on ABC.

1964- Near Ely, Nevada the U.S. Forrest Service cuts down a Bristlecone Pine that scientists thought to be "The oldest living thing"- 4900 years old.

1966 - Daylight meteor seen from Utah to Canada. Only known case of a meteor
entering Earth's atmosphere & leaving it again.

1966- James French was sent to the electric chair by the state of Oklahoma. He joked :How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? FRENCH FRIES!

1969- The night after Charles Manson’s cultists murdered actress Sharon Tate, they attacked another Los Angeles home at random. They murdered attorney Leo and Rosemary LaBianca on Waverly Drive in Los Feliz.

1970 - Jim Morrison is tried in Miami on "lewd & lascivious behavior"

1972 - Paul & Linda McCartney are arrested in Sweden on drug possession.

1973 –San Francisco’s first BART train travels through the transbay tube to Montgomery St Station.

1978- Ford announces a recall of it's Pinto series car after tests prove when bumped from behind the auto explodes into flames.

1979- Britain's first official nudist beach opened at Brighton- Yeah Baby, Yeah!

1983- Discovery of the Vega Galaxy. This was the first physical proof of a planetary system outside our Milky Way.

1987 - Clara Peller, the elderly actress who gained last minute advertising fame by saying Where's the Beef?, died at 86 The director and writer of the spots was the father of J.J. Sedelmier, who created the Ambiguously Gay Duo and other TV Funhouse animations for SNL.