With doing two openers a week and my day-job cranking up, I'm easing into a streamlining mode: Fewer pix/videos, more information. Feel free to let me know what you think, either here or in a PM.

I'll be happy to add more as time allows (or include less), depending on what y'all prefer. I enjoy the creative aspect of the intricate openers, but they do take more time.



On this day...

0254 St Lucius I ends his reign as Catholic Pope.

1461 Henry VI was deposed by Duke of York during War of the Roses.

1528 Utrecht Governor Maarten van Rossum plunders The Hague.

1558 Smoking tobacco introduced in Europe by Francisco Fernandes. (An explorer and a smoker. Guess you gotta do something - other than battling scurvy - during those long months on the boat.)

1623 1st American temperance law enacted, Virginia.

1750 1st American Shakespearean production -"altered" Richard III, New York NY. (As in neutered? Poor Richard...)

1770 Blanche Kelso Bruce sworn in as a US Senator from Mississippi.

1770 Boston Massacre, British troops kill 5 in crowd; Crispus Attackus becomes 1st black to die for American freedom.

1795 Treaty of Basel-Prussia ends war with France.

1836 Mexico attacks the Alamo.

1836 Samuel Colt manufactures 1st pistol, 34-caliber "Texas" model.

1845 Congress appropriates $30,000 to ship camels to western US. (Huh???)

1849 Zachary Taylor sworn in as 12th President.

1868 Stapler patented in England by C H Gould. (Gotta wonder how many times he stapled a finger.)

1877 Rutherford B Hayes inaugurated as 19th US President.

1900 American Hall of Fame is founded.

1912 Spanish steamer "Principe de Asturias" sinks northeast of Spain, 500 die.

1922 "Nosferatu" premieres in Berlin. (Just about the creepiest film ever.)

1923 Montana & Nevada become 1st states to enact old age pension laws.

1924 Computing-Tabulating-Recording Corp becomes IBM.

1924 Frank Carauna, becomes 1st to bowl 2 successive perfect 300 games.

1924 King Hussein of Hedzjaz appoints himself kalief. (Hey, why not? I'll appoint myself kalief of Vermont this afternoon.)

1933 FDR proclaims 10-day bank holiday.

1933 Germany's Nazi Party wins majority in parliament.

1934 Mother-in-law's day 1st celebrated; Amarillo TX. (Yeah, that one's become real popular...)

1945 Allies bombs The Hague, Netherlands.

1946 Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton MO.

1953 Josef Stalin's death announced.

1955 Elvis Presley's 1st TV appearance on "Louisiana Hayride" show.

1956 "King Kong" 1st televised.

1960 Elvis Presley ends 2-year hitch in US Army.

1962 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.

1966 Bob Seagren pole vaults 5.19 meter indoor world record.

1968 US launches Solar Explorer 2 to study the Sun.

1970 SDS Weathermen bomb 18 West 11th St, New York NY. (No, not meteorologists...terrorists.)

1970 Nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect.

1973 Yankee pitchers Peterson & Kekich announce they swapped wives. (Better than if they slapped wives. Ah, the difference a letter can make.)

1974 "Candide" opens at Broadway Theater NYC for 740 performances.

1978 "Hello, Dolly!" opens at Lunt-Fontanne Theater NYC for 152 performances. (So why do community theatres always do Dolly...and not Candide?)

1981 World Men's Figure Skating Championship in Hartford won by USA's Scott Hamilton.

1985 New York Islander Mike Bossy is 1st to score 50 goals in 8 straight seasons.

1991 Iraq repealed its annexation of Kuwait.

1992 Ethic committee votes to reveal congressmen who bounced checks.

1993 Former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry divorces his wife Effi. (Ya think maybe she divorced him?)

1994 Largest milkshake - 1,955 gallons of chocolate-Nelspruit South Africa. (Oooo...that must've attracted a few flies.)

1994 Singer Grace Slick arrested for pointing a gun at a cop.

1995 Graves of czar Nicholas & family found in St Petersburg.

1997 Tommy Lasorda, Nellie Fox & Willie Wells elected to the Hall of Fame.

Today is also...



Just five feet tall, one wouldn’t expect Phoebe Anne Oakley Mozee to be able to use a rifle, a pistol or a shotgun. Yet, the diminutive Annie Oakley found out, at the age of nine, that she was a dead shot. Born in a log cabin in Patterson Township, Ohio on August 13, 1860, Annie starred in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show for seventeen years.

On this day in 1922, Annie broke all existing records for women’s trap shooting. She smashed 98 out of 100 clay targets thrown at 16 yards. She hit the first fifty, missed the 51st, then the 67th.

On another day, ‘Little Sure Shot’ took a .22 rifle and hit 4,772 glass balls out of 5,000 tossed in the air. She could hit a playing card from 90 feet (the thin side facing her), puncturing it at least five times before it hit the ground. It was this display that named free tickets with holes punched in them, Annie Oakleys.

Oakley continued to set records into her 60s, and she also engaged in extensive, albeit quiet, philanthropy for women's rights and other causes, including the support of specific young women that she knew. Annie died of pernicious anemia on November 3, 1926.

Wonderful intro, AN~I read a biography of Annie Oakley in fourth grade. I was fascinated ever since.

I read a clutter-control blog and found this story in the comments:

I ran into an old professor and told him "I still have notes from your class!" (thinking it was a complement because it really shaped how I learned to think.) His response was “But what do you DO with them?”

I have lots of "notes" from what I've learned in my life...but what I am doing with them?

What a terrific professor!

Happy Friday!

heh, i had a load of stuff from secondary school that I only threw out when I bought my current house, the crap had survived two previous moves in my possession, its only when packing again i thought.... why?

perhaps in another 30 years it might become important but i doubt serious scholars will want to dissect my early scribblings - hell all they need to is peruse my "clutter" here!

and in todays news....

Creepy is as creepy does.

And they say California is land of the wierd and the strange...

I don't think so! Americans (at least the Hollywood variety) have a natural talent for creepiness, and many American films out-creep F. W. Murnau's Expressionist masterpiece (full title: Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens [A Symphony of Horrors (Gruesomeness)]

You can see a complete version here:

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors

Murnau's film, with its subtle visual distortions and juxtapositions, reached a level of artistic expression unknown up to that time. American culture became sufficiently hellish to compete with it only after World War II.

A couple of decades ago I was passing through Los Angeles, and visited several used book stores in the Hollywood area. I went to a small lunch counter for a bite to eat. While I was sitting at the counter, a chirpy, bubbling small-part-playing actress came in and enthused to the counterman: "I got a job! Playing in a Frankenstein movie! Good family fun!"

This was too much for me. I turned to them, put on my most morose and contemptuous appearance and tone, and said: "Only in Hollywood would Frankenstein be considered "good family fun!"

The result was all I could have hoped for. They looked at me in horror, as if a vampire had suddenly appeared before them in a cloud of sulphurous smoke!

I am sure that they still occasionally remember the visitation --- and getting an American to remember anything must be accounted a triumph.

stepping right around numan's aversion to Americans....
because I just can't tonight...
It's ok numan.
It's just me tonight. I'm tired and kinda sore.

I loved the photo oh Annie Oakley Naomi.

I'm putting you guys to sleep.
Time to do my thing.