Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Goodbye Jumbo Redux

You had to see this coming.

Now that all the banks are running through their bail out funds giving themselves huge bonuses and redecorating their offices - states are hunting for funds to fill their coffers. And they are going to do it by increasing the audits of more regulars joes, so be warned, don't deduct the cat this year as a dependent.


February 3, 1945 -
Walt Disney's "The 3 Caballeros" released .



He was apparently suffering from Avian flu at the time.


Today in History -

February 3, 1468 -
About 600 years ago a child was born in the city of Mainz, in what is today Germany. His name was Johannes Gutenberg. He worked as a goldsmith and gem cutter until finally converting a wine press into a printing press.



He printed 200 copies of the Bible and gradually went broke. He died on this date.

Lesser known to history is the name of Edgar Weasle-Puck, the Englishman who developed a printing press at around the same time as Gutenberg. Instead of printing Bibles, however, Weasle-Puck ran off 500 copies of "Lewde & Graffical Engravingf of Perfonf Not Wearing Any Clothef." He made a small fortune, changed his name, purchased an Earldom, and moved to southern France, where he spent the rest of his days eagerly awaiting the invention of the lower-case "s."


February 3, 1882 -


P.T. Barnum purchases the elephant Jumbo. He keeps him for three years until the animal's skull is crushed by a train.



After his death, Jumbo's skeleton was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The elephant's heart was sold to Cornell University. Jumbo's hide was stuffed by William J. Critchley and Carl Akeley, both of Ward's Natural Science, and the mounted specimen traveled with Barnum's circus for a number of years.



In 1889, Barnum donated the stuffed Jumbo to Tufts University, where it was displayed until destroyed by a fire in 1975, coincidentally a fate that befell many of Barnum's exhibits during his own lifetime. The great elephant's ashes are kept in a 14-ounce Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter jar in the office of the Tufts athletic director.

I could not make this up if I wanted to do so.


February 3, 1913 -
In one of the blackest days in U.S. history, the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. This amendment created the income tax.



Although, Wesley Snipes thinks this is a fairy tale.




The United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3, 1917. The Germans were very upset by this and tried to make America jealous by flirting with Mexico. Britain overheard Germany's sweet talk and told America everything she'd heard. Unfortunately for Germany, however, it didn't make America jealous. It made America angry. A few months later the United States declared war on Germany.



(Less than two years later, World War I ended with Germany's defeat. This made Germany upset again, and they spent the next two decades planning how they'd get even. Eventually this led to World War II, which also ended with Germany's defeat. Germany remains upset to this day, but, having been deprived of an army, poses no serious threat to anyone but France.)


February 3, 1927
Kenneth Anger, American underground avant-garde film-maker, author of the book Hollywood Babylon and professional Dan Rather impersonator, was spawned on this date.


Watch Scorpio Rising in Entertainment Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


February 3, 1959 -
The Day the Music Died: A small plane carrying The Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson), Buddy Holly, and Richie Valens crashes near Mason City, Iowa, while en route to a show in Fargo, North Dakota. Richardson had developed a case of the flu during the tour (erroneously thought to have been caused by riding on the unheated bus) and asked one of Holly's bandmates, Waylon Jennings, for his seat on the plane; Jennings agreed to give up the seat. According to an account by Jennings years later, when Holly heard about this, his reply to Jennings was, "Well, I hope your ole bus freezes up!" to which Jennings replied, "Well, I hope your damn plane crashes!" This exchange of words, though made in jest at the time, haunted Jennings for many years afterward.



Dion DiMucci of Dion & The Belmonts, who was the fourth headliner on the tour, was approached to join the flight as well; however, the price of $36 was too much. Dion had heard his parents argue for years over the $36 rent for their apartment and could not bring himself to pay an entire month's rent for a short plane ride.



And yet Yoko Ono still lives.


February 3, 1998 -
Female axe murderer Karla Faye Tucker executed by lethal injection at Huntsville State Prison, Texas, the first woman to be executed in Texas since the American Civil War.



Tucker had brutally murdered Jerry Dean and Deborah Thornton with a pickaxe in 1983. The last woman executed in Texas was also an axe murderer, Chipita Rodriguez, who was hanged in 1863.


And so it goes

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