Category Archives: On This Day

Anniversary of Dr. No

Posted on October 5, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Anniversary of Dr. No

On October 5, 1962, the 1st James Bond film, Dr. No, premiered in London (it would arrive in the US the 8th of May of 1963).

Dr. No poster

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Big Screen

RIP Steve Jobs

Posted on October 5, 2016 by James| Comments Off on RIP Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula and others designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series.

From such humble beginings, a legend was born… Jobs was the driving force behind the Macintosh (seeing potential in the mouse-driven GUI); founded NeXT after leaving Apple; aquired a little Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division (which became Pixar), and returned to Apple and become CEO.  When Pixar was aquired by Disney, he became Disney’s largest individual shareholder ever.

What a story… Wikipedia Link

Posted in Because I Can, Gadgets, On This Day

Happy Birthday, Stevie Ray Vaughan!

Posted on October 3, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Happy Birthday, Stevie Ray Vaughan!

Stephen (“Stevie”) Ray Vaughan, born in Dallas, Texas, was an American blues guitarist, known as one of the most influential electric blues musicians in history. He is often referred to by his initials, SRV.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Stevie Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990)

Wikipedia Link

Posted in Because I Can, Music, On This Day

September 30, 1954: USS Nautilus commissioned

Posted on September 30, 2016 by James| Comments Off on September 30, 1954: USS Nautilus commissioned

The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, is commissioned by the U.S. Navy.

The Nautilus was constructed under the direction of U.S. Navy Captain Hyman G. Rickover, a brilliant Russian-born engineer who joined the U.S. atomic program in 1946. In 1947, he was put in charge of the navy’s nuclear-propulsion program and began work on an atomic submarine. Regarded as a fanatic by his detractors, Rickover succeeded in developing and delivering the world’s first nuclear submarine years ahead of schedule. In 1952, theNautilus‘ keel was laid by President Harry S. Truman, and on January 21, 1954, first lady Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across its bow as it was launched into the Thames River at Groton, Connecticut. Commissioned on September 30, 1954, it first ran under nuclear power on the morning of January 17, 1955.

Posted in On This Day

Anniversary of The Flintstones

Posted on September 30, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Anniversary of The Flintstones

The Flintstones

The Flintstones is an animated American television sitcom that ran from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966 on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones is about a working class Stone Age man’s life with his family and his next door neighbor and best friend. It has since been re-released on both DVD and VHS.

Critics and fans alike agree that the show was an animated imitation of The Honeymooners with rock puns thrown in. William Hanna admitted that “At that time “The Honeymooners” was the most popular show on the air, and for my bill, it was the funniest show on the air. The characters, I thought, were terrific. Now, that influenced greatly what we did with “The Flintstones”… “The Honeymooners” was there, and we used that as a kind of basis for the concept.” However Joseph Barbera disavowed these claims in a separate interview, stating that “I don’t remember mentioning “The Honeymooners” when I sold the show, but if people want to compare “The Flintstones” to “The Honeymooners,” then great. It’s a total compliment. “The Honeymooners” was one of the greatest shows ever written.” Its popularity rested heavily on its juxtaposition of modern-day concerns in the Stone Age setting

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)

RIP Paul Newman

Posted on September 26, 2016 by James| Comments Off on RIP Paul Newman
Paul Newman

Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008)

Paul Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.

Newman was a co-founder of Newman’s Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations had exceeded US $300 million.

On September 26, 2008, Newman died at his longtime home in Westport, Connecticut, of complications arising from lung cancer.

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Big Screen

Happy Birthday, Jim Henson

Posted on September 24, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Happy Birthday, Jim Henson

James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was the most widely known American puppeteer in modern American television history.

He was the creator of The Muppets and the leading force behind their long creative run. Henson brought an engaging cast of characters, innovative ideas, and a sense of timing and humor to millions of people. He is also widely acknowledged for the ongoing vision of faith, friendship, magic, and love which was infused in nearly all of his work.

Jim Henson StatueStatue of Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog, on display outside of Adele H. Stamp Student Union in College Park, Maryland.
Wikipedia Link

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)

Anniversary of The Jetsons

Posted on September 23, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Anniversary of The Jetsons

Jetsons

On September 23, 1962, the Jetsons premiered on ABC.

The Jetsons is a prime-time animated American sitcom that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, originally airing from 1962–63 and again from 1985–87. It was Hanna-Barbera’s Space Age counterpart to The Flintstones, a half-hour family sitcom projecting contemporary American culture and lifestyle into another time period. While the Flintstones live in a world with machines powered by birds and dinosaurs, the Jetsons live in a futuristic utopia in the year 2062 of elaborate robotic contraptions, aliens, holograms, and whimsical inventions.

The original incarnation of the series aired Sunday nights on ABC from September 23, 1962, to March 3, 1963. It comprised 24 episodes, and was re-run on Saturday morning for decades. At the time of its debut, it was the first program ever to be broadcast in color on ABC-TV (as The Flintstones, while always produced in color, was broadcast in black-and-white for its first two seasons). Its continuing popularity led to further episodes being produced for syndication between 1985 and 1987.

 Wikipedia Link

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)

RIP George C. Scott

Posted on September 22, 2016 by James| Comments Off on RIP George C. Scott
George C. Scott

George Campbell Scott (October 18, 1927 – September 22, 1999)

 

George Campbell Scott was an American stage and film actor, director and producer. He was best known for his stage work, as well as his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the film Patton, as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, and as Ebenezer Scrooge in a television adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

Wikipedia Link

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)

Happy Birthday, “The Hobbit”

Posted on September 21, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Happy Birthday, “The Hobbit”

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

The Hobbit is a novel written by J. R. R. Tolkien in the tradition of the fairy tale. It was first published on September 21, 1937. While it also stands in its own right, it is often seen as a prelude to Tolkien’s monumental fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings (published in 1954 and 1955).

The story, subtitled There and Back Again, follows the adventures of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins as he travels across the lands of Middle-earth with a band of dwarves and a wizard named Gandalf on a quest to restore a dwarven kingdom and a great treasure stolen by the dragon, Smaug.

Posted in Because I Can, Literary, On This Day

RIP Jim Croce

Posted on September 20, 2016 by James| Comments Off on RIP Jim Croce
Jim Croce

James Joseph “Jim” Croce (January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973)

James Joseph “Jim” Croce (“crow-chee”) was an American singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released six studio albums and 11 singles. His singles “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle” were both number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

Croce, 30, Maury Muehleisen, 24, and four others died in a small commercial plane crash on September 20, 1973 after leaving a concert.

Wikipedia Link

Posted in Because I Can, Music, On This Day

Happy Birthday, Emoticon :-)

Posted on September 19, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Happy Birthday, Emoticon :-)

emoticon smile

An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer’s mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word of the English words emotion and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well. Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double-byte language, giving rise to especially complex forms, sometimes known by their romanized Japanese name of kaomoji.

The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, and they were commonly used in casual and/or humorous writing. Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were included in a proposal by Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a message on September 19, 1982.

Posted in Because I Can, Humor, Literary, On This Day

Happy Birthday, Batman

Posted on September 19, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Happy Birthday, Batman

 

Adam West (Batman)

William West Anderson (September 19, 1928 – June 9, 2017), better known by the stage name Adam West,

is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series (1966–1968) and the film of the same name.

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)

Anniversary of the Debut of M*A*S*H

Posted on September 17, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Anniversary of the Debut of M*A*S*H

MASH

The series premiered on September 17, 1972, and ended February 28, 1983, with the finale becoming the most-watched television episode in U.S. television history.

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)

Premier of Hogan’s Heroes

Posted on September 17, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Premier of Hogan’s Heroes

Cast of Hogan's Heroes

Hogan’s Heroes premiered on September 17, 1965, and quickly became the most popular new show of the year. In fact, for several seasons it ranked in TV’s top 20 programs …but it never escaped the controversy it premise engendered: Was it immoral to portray history’s most evil killers as bumbling -even lovable- buffoons week after week, just to make a buck?

It ran for 168 episodes from September 17, 1965, to July 4, 1971, on the CBS network. Bob Crane starred as Colonel Robert E. Hogan, coordinating an international crew of Allied prisoners running a Special Operations group from the camp. Werner Klemperer played Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the incompetent commandant of the camp, and John Banner was the inept sergeant-of-the-guard, Hans Schultz.

168 Episodes, America must have decided it was ok… 🙂

Posted in On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)

RIP Robert Jordan

Posted on September 16, 2016 by James| Comments Off on RIP Robert Jordan

Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. (October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007), under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time fantasy series. He also wrote under the names Reagan O’Neal and Jackson O’Reily.

Posted in Because I Can, Literary, On This Day

Happy Birthday, Agatha Christie

Posted on September 15, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Happy Birthday, Agatha Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976), also known as Dame Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but is remembered for her 80 mystery novels, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, which have given her the title the ‘Queen of Crime’ and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the mystery novel.

Her appeal is so huge that Christie is often called – by the Guinness Book of World Records, among others – the best-selling writer of fiction of all time, and the best-selling writer of any kind second to William Shakespeare. An estimated billion copies of her novels have been sold in English, and another billion in 103 other languages. [1]. As an example of her broad appeal, she is the all-time best-selling author in France, with over 40 million copies sold in French (as of 2003) versus 22 million for Emile Zola, the nearest contender.

Her stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest run ever in London, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre on November 25, 1952, and as of 2006 is still running after more than 20,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year, Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA, for Best Play. Most of her books and short stories have been filmed, some many times over (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, 4.50 From Paddington), and most have also been adapted for television and radio.

Posted in Because I Can, Literary, On This Day

RIP Patrick Swayze

Posted on September 14, 2016 by James| Comments Off on RIP Patrick Swayze
Patrick Swayze

Patrick Wayne Swayze (August 18, 1952 – September 14, 2009)

Patrick Swayze was an American actor, dancer and singer-songwriter. He was best-known for his roles as romantic leading men in the films Dirty Dancing and Ghost and as Orry Main in the North and South television miniseries. He was listed by People magazine as its “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1991.

Wikipedia Link

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Big Screen

Happy Birthday, The Hard Drive

Posted on September 13, 2016 by James| Comments Off on Happy Birthday, The Hard Drive

Today, the hard drive is found everywhere–from the PCs we use daily to MP3 players and memory keys so small you can toss them in your pocket and forget you’re carrying around a hard drive. But when the hard drive was first introduced on September 13, 1956, it required a humongous housing and 50 24-inch platters to store 1/2400 as much data as can be fit on today’s largest capacity 1-inch hard drives.
Read more »

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day

September 11

Posted on September 11, 2016 by James| Comments Off on September 11

Tribute in LightClick for larger image

September 11, 2001

Please observe a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. (1246 GMT) to mark the moment when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, at 9:03 a.m. (1303 GMT) when United Airlines Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, 9:37 (1337 GMT) when American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon,  at  9:59 a.m. (1359 GMT)  when the South Tower Collapses, at 10:03 (1403 GMT) when United Airlines Flight 93 crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and finally at 10:29 a.m. (1429 GMT) when the North Tower Collapses.

Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, Patriotic