Sunday, January 16, 2011

Proof Positive, Television is dead

After watching this, remind yourself, this Romanian TV ad is for car insurance.



Do you need a little lie down after that - go ahead - I'll wait.


This is National Nothing Day, set aside each year for people to sit around for the entire day and just hang out. No celebrating, observing or honoring anything.



It was created by newspaperman, Harold Pullman Coffin in 1972 and first celebrated in 1973.


Please do continue read today's postings.


Funny and definitely risque, Paramount released the Betty Boop animated short, Boop-Oop-A-Doop, on this date.



Please - don't take her boop-oop-a-doop away - Betty is supposed to be just 16.


January 16, 1959 -
Helen Folasade Adu, OBE, singer-songwriter, composer, and record producer, was born on this date.







I have said it before and I'll say it again - one of the most beautiful women in the entertainment industry with a voice to match.


January 16, 1973 -
NBC-TV presented the 440th and final episode of Bonanza (which began airing on NBC on September 12, 1959) on this date.



Bonanza was the first network television series to film all of its episodes in color. The show chronicled the weekly adventures of the Cartwright family, headed by widowed patriarch Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene). He had three sons, each by a different wife: the oldest was Adam (Pernell Roberts); the second was Eric, better known to viewers by his nickname of "Hoss" (Dan Blocker); and the youngest was Joseph or "Little Joe" (Michael Landon).


January 16, 1976 -
Peter Frampton's platinum live album, Frampton Comes Alive, was released by A&M Records.



The double LP soon reached the top spot of the album charts and stayed perched there for 17 weeks. It sold 19 million copies in its first year in the record racks .

As it has been said - if you were a teenage around that time, you were issued this album and a tube of Clearasil.


Today in History:
January 16, 1547 -
Ivan IV was crowned Tsar of Russia. . He is better known by his nickname: Ivan the Terrible. He was the first king of Russia to call himself a Caesar, probably in the hopes that Shakespeare would write a play about him.



He couldn’t pronounce Caesar, however, so he simply called himself "zar," and subsequent arguments over whether that should be spelled czar, tsar, zar, or tzar became so heated that they eventually resulted in Russian History.


January 16, 1908 -



Ethel Merman, actress, singer and the woman who learned love at the hands of Ernest Borgnine, was born on this date.






January 16, 1920 -
Kids, as you are mid weekend on this long weekend with binge drinking,



save a small set of brain cells and remember that Prohibition went into effect in the U.S. on this date.


January 16,1939 -
The McClure Syndicate began distributing a Superman newspaper comic strip, which lasts until 1966 on this date.

The strip written by Jerry Siegel had the first use of the name Krypton, and Superman's parents being originally called Jor-L and Lora.


January 16, 1942 -
Raising money for the war, actress Carole Lombard, her mother, 18 passengers and three crew, were killed when their plane crashed into Mount Potosi, 32 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Lombard was much loved for her unpretentious personality and well known for her earthy sense of humor and blue language.


January 16, 1965 -
You finally get control back of the vertical and horizontal of your television set - ABC-TV aired the final episode of Outer Limits on this date.



The final episode of the Outer Limits deals with four plane crash survivors who suddenly find themselves trapped in an alien space probe that was taking water samples. Inside they find a puzzle they need to solve before all four are killed.


January 16, 1991 -
Operation Desert Storm commences as Baghdad is pummelled live on CNN. Targeted with smartbombs are "command and control facilities" and Saddam Hussein himself.



We seem to miss both, but do manage to kill about 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the surreal bombardments that follow.



And so it goes.

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