Friday, February 24, 2012

National Tortilla Chip Day

Raise your Frozen Margarita's tonight - contrary to popular belief, tortilla chips are not from Mexico. They were invented in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Stick that in your guacamole!



While looking for a clip to go with this posting, I was offered a clip for Electric Stunning of Pigs and Sheep (you find it yourselves, you sick monkeys.) I never realized making chips involved the killing of farm animals.


In the lead-up to the Oscars on Sunday, here's a brief clip on Oscar Etiquette -



Probably the best work Mike has done in a very long time.


February 24, 1921 -
It's Abe Vigoda's birthday.



...because he's a dancer.


February 24, 1973 -
I was going to bring up the point that Killing Me Softly with His Song by Roberta Flack topped the charts on this date but I thought it was more interesting to see the evolution of this song.








Today in History:
On February 24, 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a proclamation that made everyone change their calendars from the Julian calendar to his own new and improved Gregorian calendar. (Obviously he was in cahoots with the calendar printing people, or he would have done it in November or December.)

It was this shameless act of self-promotion that led to subsequent Vatican proclamations being called Papal Bull.


February 24, 1807 -
It was not a good day for a hanging - In a crush to witness the hanging of John Holloway, Owen Heggerty and Elizabeth Godfrey in England, 17 people died and 15 were wounded.

People, please, remember that you can see the executions perfectly well, if you stand back.


February 24, 1838 -
Thomas Benton Smith, brigadier general in the Confederate States Army , was born in Mechanicsville, Tennessee, on this date. He was wounded at Stone’s River/Murfreesboro and again at Chickamauga. He was captured at the Battle of Nashville (December 16, 1864) where he was beaten over the head with a sword by Col. William Linn McMillen of the 95th Ohio Infantry. His brain was exposed and it was believed he would die.

He recovered partially, ran for a seat in the U. S. Congress in 1870, but lost and spent the last 47 years of his life in the State Asylum in Nashville, Tennessee, where he died on May 21, 1923.

Now you know


February 24, 1868 -
President Andrew Johnson impeached for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is fancy talk for removing Secretary of War Stanton.



The Senate later acquitted Johnson. This remains an honor not bestowed again until the blowjob years of the Clinton Administration.


On February 24, 1920, the spokesman of a radical political group in Germany announced that it would change its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The group had previously been called the East Munich Crips. Rejected names had included The Genocidal Maniacs Party, The World Conquest Party and The Party of Smiley People Who'll Make Life a Happy Little Picnic for Everyone.



This name change made all the difference in the world, and eventually led to Evil Nazi Bastards, who later teamed up with the Evil Fascist Bastards of Italy and became a Significant Problem. They did not kill quite as many people as the Evil Communist Bastards of the Soviet Union, however, and were therefore unable to scare posterity into producing apologists.



(The party spokesman who had announced the change was of course Adolf Hitler, who did not change his own name and is therefore known to history as... you guessed it... Adolf Hitler.)


February 24, 1990 -
Businessman Malcolm Forbes died of a heart attack, at his home in Far Hills, New Jersey on this date.

Aging Chelsea leather boys still mourn his passing.



And so it goes.

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