Thursday, November 8, 2012

Ooh, it makes me wonder.

November 8, 1971 -
Led Zeppelin released their untitled fourth album, containing the hits Black Dog, Rock and Roll, Stairway to Heaven, Misty Mountain Hop, Going to California and When the Levee Breaks, on this date.



And kids remember, according to the Consumer Protection and Toxic Materials Committee of the California State Assembly, if you play Stairway to Heaven backwards, you can hear:



So, don't play you albums backwards (many of you have no idea what albums are.)


November 8, 1954
-
I like words. Words are places, rooms, distant airs, thin and tropical. They make us feel and imagine we are more than our bodies.







Rickie Lee Jones, two-time Grammy Award-winning vocalist, musician, songwriter and producer, was born on this date.


(I'm getting ready to take another middle school tour, so it's will have to be an abbreviated posting)
Today in History:
November 8, 1431 -
Vlad III the Impaler (Vlad Dracula), Transylvanian prince, inspiring the name of the vampire in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, was probably born on this date.



People had better things to do back then (like find something to eat or keep warm) than keep track of the birth date of some sadistic royal person.


November 8, 1519 -
The Aztec and their leader, Moctezuma, foolishly welcomed Hernando Cortez and about 300 Spanish soldiers, 18 horses and thousands of Mexico's native inhabitants who had grown resentful of Aztec rule marched unmolested into Tenochtitlán, the capital city of the Aztec empire, on this date.



The Aztec ruler Moctezuma, believing that Cortez could be the white-skinned deity Quetzalcoatl, whose return had been foretold for centuries, greeted the arrival of these strange visitors with courtesy--at least until it became clear that the Spaniards were all too human and bent on conquest.

Oops.


November 8, 1789 -
Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, from Georgetown, Kentucky, distilled the first sour-mash whiskey for public sale on this date.


His customers from the surrounding area called his product Bourbon County Whiskey -- after the county of its origin.


November 8, 1923
-
Adolf Schicklgruber, failed artist and World War I veteran, launched his first attempt to seize power with a failed coup in Munich, Germany, that came to be known as the Beer-Hall Putsch. He proclaimed himself chancellor and Ludendorff dictator.


No one really taken him too seriously at the time. Unfortunately, he wasn't joking.


November 8, 1994
-
Working with Woody Allen is like filming Howard Hughes's will. It's a very mysterious and strange event. You never get a peek at the whole will.



Michael O'Donoghue writer for National Lampoon magazine and the first head writer for Saturday Night Live, died on this date, of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 54, after a long history of what were thought to be chronic migraine headaches.



And so it goes.

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