My hat is off to the studio that animated those Stolichnaya Vodka ads on TV with the over-the-top Soviet graphics and Red Army Chorus.
I'm very jealous, Congrats! You are awarded THREE TIMES A HERO OF THE SOVIET UNION!
I still prefer my martini's with Belvedere, though....

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Birthdays: Socrates, Pancho Villa, Thomas Chippendale -furniture maker, not male strip club owner, Igor Stravinsky, Archduchess Anastasia Romanov, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Bill Moyers, Hopalong Cassidy, Tony Richardson, Kenny G., Lancelot Ware the founder of Mensa, Spaulding Gray, Mark Wahlberg

221B.C. - The Chinese poet Chu Yuan drowned himself as a protest of an unjust Emperor. His memory is remembered by the annual Dragon Boat Festival. People decorate boats like dragons and created dumplings to drop into the river to dissuade fish from eating the remains of the poet.

1455- Poet Francois Villon gets thrown out of Paris again, this time for stabbing a priest in a bar fight. Gotta watch out for priests in bars....

1502- LEONARDO GETS A JOB- This day Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by Caesare Borgia as a military engineer. Borgia was the son of Pope Alexander VI and wanted to conquer Italy for the Church. The artist-scientist Leonardo had promised Borgia he could design horrific war making devices like tanks, flame-throwers and poison gas. Most of these things were impractical for the Renaissance but Borgia used him study the topography of the lands he intended to conquer. After a few months the Pope died and the new Pope exiled the Borgias. Leonardo went on the job search again.

1876- At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition Americans become enamoured of an exotic new food- Bananas.

1963- BRITAIN ENTERS THE 60'S, BABY...The Profumo Scandal. Sir John Profumo was defense minister, personal protege of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and seen as a rising star in Tory politics. This day he resigned in disgrace and brought down the government when it came out he was keeping a 19-year-old `party-girl' named Christine Keilor as his mistress. She was not only sleeping with married Sir John but was also dating a known Russian spy.

1964 - Davie Jones & King Bees debut "I Can't Help Thinking About Me," The group disbanded but Davie Jones went on to success after changing his name to David Bowie.