Saturday, June 21, 2014

Life was beginning over again with the summer

Au milieu de l'hiver, j'apprenais enfin qu'il y avait en moi un été invincible.



Today is the first day of Summer, also known as the Summer Solstice. It's the longest day of the year (and the shortest night).



The actual moment of the solstice will occur at about 6:51 A.M. EDT, while the sun sits directly above the Pacific Ocean to the west of Hawaii.  Don't complain about the heat today, remember that it's the beginning of Winter in Australia.  (The naked run is optional - please.)


June 21,1955 -
The David Lean movie, Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi premiered in New York on this date.



When Katharine Hepburn filmed the scene where she falls into the canal, one of her eyes became infected. That infection stayed with her the rest of her life.


June 21, 1977 -
Martin Scorsese's
homage to movie musicals - New York, New York, premiered on this date.



Much of the movie was shot on the same sound stages as the great musicals of the 1940s. Liza Minnelli used her mother's (Judy Garland's) old dressing room, her mother's old hairdresser (Sydney Guilaroff).


June 21, 1988 -
Robert Zemeckis'
incredible advance in animation, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, opened in NYC on this date.



Terry Gilliam was initially offered the job of directing this movie, but turned it down because he considered it "conceptually inauthentic to use the Looney Tunes genre/character stable as a springboard for a variation on the Howard the Duck story".


Today in History:
June 21, 1877
-
The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrants who were labor activists, are hanged at Carbon County Prison in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.



Author and Judge John P. Lavelle of Carbon County said of this, "The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty...A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows."


June 21, 1893 -
The first Ferris wheel debuted at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, on this date. The Ferris wheel was designed by George W. Ferris, a bridge-builder from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.



The exposition commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landing in America. The Chicago Fair's organizers wanted something that would rival the Eiffel Tower. Gustave Eiffel had built the tower for the Paris World's Fair of 1889, which honored the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.


June 21, 1905 -
It would have been the 108th birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre today.



But what the hell does he care; he's dead and it doesn't mean anything anyway.


June 21, 1982 -
Using an innovative Jodie Foster defense, John Hinckley is found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.



Nobody was impressed by this verdict.


June 21, 1989 -
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Texas v. Johnson that flag burning is indeed protected speech under the Constitution, prompting Congress to put forth an endless series of amendments to ban the activity.





And so it goes.

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