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March 18th, 2009 weds.
March 18th, 2009

Many of my fellow travelers like to attend the SAN DIEGO COMICON July 23rd to 26th, the largest cartoon, animation and fantasy convention in the world.



The last few years the crowds have grown in excess of 180,000 for the four days, and the San Diego Police actually had to close off any further admissions. So the Comicon leadership has decided to go to an all online registration system for professionals. THEY WILL NOT REGISTER YOU ON SITE. Pre-Reg has begun as of March 15th.

If you already have filled out the pre-registration forms, you probably have already received a letter with your launch codes to complete your registration. Then all you do is show up, fight the lines and get your passes.

If you got one of these letters, don't wait, do your registration now. Mach Schnell, chop-chop! I see on their site the days and hotels are already selling out. Don't be disappointed come July, all dressed up in your Sailor Moon outfit and no place to go.

See more on their website- http://www.comic-con.org

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Quiz: John Kennedy was the first Catholic U.S. President, but was he the first president of Irish ancestry?

Yesterdays’ question answered below- What classic film ends with the line” Louie, I believe this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”…….?
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History for 3/18/2009
Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, John Calhoun, Nicholai Rimsky-Korsakov, Neville Chamberlain, Wilson Picket, Edgar Cayce, John Updike, Grover Cleveland, Edward Everet Horton, Vanessa Williams, F. W. DeKlerk, George Plympton, Peter Graves, Irene Cara, Luc Besson, Queen Latifah is 39

44BC-This would have been the day Julius Caesar would have left Rome to lead his legions against the Parthians (Iran), had he not received multiple stab wounds.

1286- King Alexander III of Scotland accidentally rides his horse off a cliff. Hoot- Maaaann!

1554- Princess Elizabeth Tudor was sent to the Tower of London on a suspicion of treason. An uprising of English Protestants under Sir Thomas Wyatt had been crushed. Wyatt under torture claimed his goal was to put Elizabeth on the throne. Elizabeth claimed she never heard of Wyatt and was innocent but her stepsister Queen Mary was suspicious. You could imagine what Elizabeth was thinking when she was rowed into the Tower through the Traitor’s Gate the same way her mother Anne Boleyn was. For the next several weeks she played a dangerous game pretending to be a loyal Catholic until Mary let her go. Mary soon died of cancer and she became Queen Elizabeth I.

1584-Czar Ivan the Terrible died while playing chess. Nobody is sure why except for
"a noticeable swelling of his cods." He had no natural heir, especially after beating his eldest son's brains out with a scepter, and his youngest son Dmiti getting his throat cut. Chancellor Boris Gudunov said the boy whipped out his knife and slashed his own throat during an epileptic seizure. (yeah...right...) Russia enters a period of dynastic struggle and foreign invasions known as "the Time of Troubles".

1815-VIVE L'EMPEREUR ! While marching on Paris to overthrow King Louis XVIII Napoleon is stopped near Grenoble by the Royal French army led by his old friend Marshal Ney. The whole Royal Army was Nappy’s old troops anyway, just with a different flag. Soldiers who had served side by side for twenty years suddenly were facing each other. Instead of civil war, Napoleon quietly walked up to their raised guns and smiled: " Soldiers! You all know me. If any of you want to kill your Emperor, here I am." After an agonizing pause the army cheered and went over to him en masse, including Ney.



1852- New York City steamboat skipper Henry Wells and mailman William Fargo form the Wells Fargo Company. In 1873 they went into a joint venture with several other freight shipping companies called American Express. No record if they got multimillion dollar bonuses.

1871- Citizens of Paris, disgusted with the inept handling of the Franco Prussian war and horrible siege they had to endure, declare a workers revolutionary state, The COMMUNE OF PARIS. Artist Honore' Daumier was named to it's governing board. Karl Marx, living in London, said it was still the wrong type of revolution. The Communards were enthusiastic but inefficient revolutionaries, they tried to burn down Notre Dame but it was so old and damp it wouldn't burn. Then they tried to execute the aged archbishop of Paris by firing squad. They all missed on the first try. They were eventually crushed by the regular French Army after bitter street fighting that destroyed a lot of Paris including the Tuileries Palace, the Hotel deVille and the Palace of St. Cloud. In Pere' Lachaise cemetery you can still see the 'Wall of the Comunards', where 150 were lined up and shot. They took as their banner the red flag of revolution. Young Nikolai Lenin, studying the Commune, adopted their red flag for his and it later became the symbol of world communism. When Yuri Gargarin went into orbit in 1959 he had a relic of the Commune's flag with him.

1902- BIRTHDAY OF THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. The RCA Victrola company sends it's engineers to Milan to record ten discs of the young tenor Enrico Caruso. He becomes a world celebrity and the phonograph moves from being a scientific curiosity to something every home had to have.

1924-The film “Thief of Baghdad” starring Douglas Fairbanks and designs by William Cameron Menzies premiered. It is considered the first great special effects blockbuster.

1931- Schick, Inc. introduced the electric razor.

1942- Paramounts “The Lost Dream” the first Little Audrey cartoon.

1947- William Durant, the brilliant executive who created General Motors and built it into an industrial giant., died the manager of a bowling alley in suburban Chicago. He had been ruined in the Great Depression. No bonuses here.

1965- Cosmonaut Sergei Leonov is the first human to walk in space.

1965-The Rolling Stones are fined 5 English pence for urinating on a wall in Stratford at ABC recording studio Romford.

1967- The Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened at Disneyland, designed by master animator Marc Davis. In recent years rampant political correctness has disturbed the pirates fun. One diorama that portrayed a lusty buccaneer chasing a wench around a table while she giggles. It was changed to show he was really only interested in her sandwich tray. Yeah,……right.

1968- Mel Brooks first comedy film “The Producers” premiered with Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Dick Shawn. His screenplay beat out Kubricks' 2001 for a Best Screenplay Oscar. “Springtime for Hitler and Germaneee.” In the late 1990s Brooks reworked the screenplay into a hit Broadway musical.

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Yesterdays’ question: What classic film ends with the line” Louie, I believe this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”…….?

Answer: It’s the last line of the movie Casablanca. Rick says it to Captain Renault. This ending was written long after principle photography was done. Bogart and Claude Rains had to be brought back to shoot this final scene.


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