Thursday, June 6, 2013

Today is National Yo-Yo Day.

Go into the desk drawer, dig around and pull your old yo-yo out - I'll give you a moment.



Please celebrate responsibly - don't drink and Rock the Baby in the Pyramid.


June 6, 1972 -
David Bowie released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on this date.



Ziggy Stardust is a character Bowie created with the help of his then-wife, Angela. The character's name was inspired by the '60s psychobilly musician, Legendary Stardust Cowboy. Bowie performed under the Stardust persona for about a year. Bowie based the clothes, hair, and makeup of Ziggy Stardust on the Malcom McDowell character in A Clockwork Orange, and on William Burroughs book Wild Boys. Some of the posturing was inspired by Gene Vincent, a Rockabiliy star who injured his leg in a 1960 car accident that killed Eddie Cochran.


June 6, 1935 -
Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Dondrub), the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet's Lamaistic Buddhists was born on this date.



Once again, I'm pissing off the Chinese gov't. At this rate, I believe during the oncoming cyber war, I will be given over to the Chinese, as part of the reparations.


June 6, 1955 -
I'm very much an optimist. I don't think I could do my work if I didn't believe there was some kind of hope for humanity.



Sandra Bernhard, comedian/actress was also born on this day.


Today in History:
June 6, 1755 -
A boy was born in Coventry, Connecticut on this date. He grew up, went to Yale, and became a teacher. He never distinguished himself in any way. He never wrote or said anything of note, never committed any famous or infamous deeds, never married or had children. He seemed destined to be swallowed whole by the omnivorous mouth of obscurity. He was therefore recruited by the United States Military as an intelligence agent, dispatched behind enemy lines in British-occupied Manhattan, and captured.

He was hanged by the British on September 22, 1776.



Moments before his execution, he expressed regret that he couldn't be hanged more than once. This remark catapulted him to posthumous fame (but only after his death), and Nathan Hale is revered to this day.


June 6, 1844 -
 ... You can get yourself clean. You can have a good meal. You can do whatever you feel ...



That 'fun' place to stay, The Young Men's Christian Association was founded in London, England by George Williams and a group of Evangelical Christians on this date. (If you find yourself dancing around while watching the video clip above, maybe you may have swam in the nude at the Y as a child, or maybe even as an adult.)



June 6, 1944 -
69 years ago today, the largest seaborne invasion in history began - the allied invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord.) The date is also commonly known as D-Day. The military calls the date of every major operation D-Day, probably to confuse the enemy.



This would have been especially confusing in Normandy, which is in France, where Day begins with a J. German spies were probably waiting to hear something about J-Jour.


June 6, 1968 -
Senator Robert F. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles on this date.



The Democratic lawmaker had been campaigning for his party's Presidential nomination when he was shot three times by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan a day earlier.


Jun 6 1976 -
American expatriate J. Paul Getty, named the richest man in the world in 1957, died in London at age 83.

According to the oil baron, "If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."


June 6, 1985 -
Authorities in Embu, Brazil exhume the grave of one Wolfgang Gerhard in order to determine its true identity. The remains are later proven to be those of Dr. Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's notorious Angel of Death.

Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in the ocean in February 1979.


June 6, 1989 -
During the Tehran funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini, frenzied mourners accidentally tipped his corpse out of its coffin and onto the ground.

Three million horrified followers beared witness to the desecration.

Oops!


June 6, 1990 -
US district court judge Jose Gonzalez ruled that the rap album by 2 Live Crew violated Florida's obscenity law.



Gonzalez declared that the predominant subject matter of the record is "directed to the 'dirty' thoughts and the loins, not to the intellect and the mind."

When I was a freshman at Columbia, they were not offering 'Interpreting dirty thoughts and the loins' that year.


On a personal note - Happy Birthday Joe.



And so it goes.

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