Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Happy Birthday Princess Leia

Carrie Fisher, actress and writer was born on this date. You can't say anything bad or funny about her that she hasn't already say better herself.



"You can't find true affection in Hollywood because everyone does the fake affection so well."


October 21, 1937 -
A Great Screwball comedy, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, The Awful Truth, premiered on this date.



The dog playing Mr. Smith in ‘The Awful Truth’ was in ‘The Thin Man’ movies as Asta.


October 21, 1964 -
Yeah, yeah, Audrey Hepburn is Julie Andrews but possibly the most fully realized movie musical, My Fair Lady premiered in New York, on this date.



Because of the way Rex Harrison talked his way through the musical numbers, they were unable to prerecord them and have him lip-sync, so a wireless microphone (one of the first ever developed) was rigged up and hidden under his tie. However, this meant that his mouth and words were completely in sync and everyone else's looked off, since they were lip-syncing (when everyone is lip-syncing, it's not that noticeable). The studio thought that this was too obvious so they altered Harrison's soundtrack, lengthening and shortening notes in various places so that his synchronicity is slightly off like all the other actors.

Betcha didn't know that.

Today's word of the day -
Fopottee: noun, a simple-minded person. For all of his strongly held political beliefs, Glenn Beck is no more than a fopottee.


Today in History:
October 21, 1805 -
The Battle of Trafalgar was a historic sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy - the battle, it self, was the most decisive British victory of the Napoleonic Wars and was a pivotal naval battle of the 19th century. Admiral Lord Nelson was mortally wounded during the battle, becoming and remaining Britain's greatest naval war hero.


Nelson's body was placed in cask of brandy, mixed with camphor and myrrh, and returned to England for a spectacular funeral. An enduring rumor has evolved that the sailors aboard ship kept taking a sip from Nelson's liquory tomb hence the phrase "Nelson's blood' came into use for rum.




October 21, 1879 -
Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Alva Edison invented the incandescent electric lamp on this date (or some other date, as previously mentioned.)



That invention was the fruit of study, hard work, and years of persistent experimentation, rendering it entirely inappropriate for discussion here.


More worthy of our attention is Alfred Nobel, the founder of the Nobel Prize, born on this date in 1833.


Mr Nobel is interesting because his fortune was founded in large part on the commercial success of something he invented in 1866: dynamite.



Dynamite proved so lucrative for Mr Nobel that he was able to spend most of the rest of his life blowing things up in the interests of world peace. World peace was not achieved in his lifetime, however, so he endowed a foundation with millions of dollars to give prizes to the men and women of future generations who helped bring the world closer to peace by blowing things up.


October 21, 1973 -
John Paul Getty III's ear is cut off by his kidnappers and sent to a newspaper in Rome; It doesn't arrive until November 8.


So much for the Italians getting the trains to run on time.


October 21, 1995 -
Shannon Hoon, lead singer of the pop band Blind Melon, dies of a heroin overdose in New Orleans, inside the band's tour bus.




And so it goes

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