Thursday, March 23, 2017

It missed by this much

March 23, 1989 -
A 1000-foot diameter asteroid misses the Earth by only 500,000 miles on this date.

(Astronomers did not see it until it passed.) To commemorate the event, today has become known as Near Miss Day.

Oops


Huzzah, it's also Melba Toast Day.



The toast so named for the the Australian Opera singer Nellie Melba by her great admirer (and world famous French chef Auguste Escoffier.)



but folks, get a grip, it's just toast.


March 23, 1910 -
Akira Kurosawa
, Japanese film director (Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, Ran), was born in Tokyo, Japan on this date.



One his closest friends was IshirĂ´ Honda, the writer-director behind Godzilla.


March 23, 1990 –
Garry Marshall
surprise comedy hit (which at one time was called $3,000,) Pretty Woman starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere premiered in US theatres on this date.



Edward (Richard Gere) snapping the necklace case down on Vivian's (Julia Roberts) fingers, was improvised by Gere, and Roberts's reaction (laughter) was totally natural. The filmmakers liked it so much, they decided to leave it in.


A little R & R


Today in History:
March 23, 1369
-
Pedro the Cruel, King and tyrant of Castile and Leon, was murdered on this date. Enrique, the illegitimate son of Alfonso XI of Castile, killed his half brother Pedro I in the Castilian civil war and became King Enrique I the Bastard of Castile.

Once again, I must ask, what the hell were people thinking when they named their children.


March 23, 1534 -
Pope Clement VII declared that the marriage between Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon was still valid, even though they'd been divorced the previous year and Henry had already married Anne Boleyn.

Henry decides to trump Clement with his extra I and invents his own religion and appoints a more agreeable pope.


March 23, 1840 -
Englishman John William Draper becomes the first person to successfully photograph the Moon.

The image, a full moon, is a daguerreotype, precursor of the later photograph.


March 23, 1908 -
Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.



 Joan Crawford, actress (both legitimate films and porn), executive and child beater was born on this date.


March 23, 1912 -
Wernher von Braun, German - born rocket pioneer who led the development of the V-2 rocket during World War II was born on this date.





He was deemed one of the The Good Germans we collected as a bonus prize at the end of the war. Von Braun was said to be the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century.


March 23, 1919 -
Benito Mussolini founded his own party in Italy on this date. He had tried all the other parties, but he was an awkward young man and had a hard time getting to know people. His Fasci di Combattimento ("Evil Fascist Bastards Party") was extremely popular, however, and even the cool kids came.



It got so crowded that the neighbors started complaining, which ended up starting a big fight, and the rest is history.


March 23, 1925 -
Tennessee Governor Austin Peay signs the Butler Act into law, making illegal the teaching in public school "any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible", on this date.



Teacher John Scopes couldn't think of anywhere else to teach evolution, so he ignored the ban and was later prosecuted in what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, which resulted in an Oscar for Spencer Tracy.


March 23, 1956 -
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth (from 1947 until 1956, it was referred to as the Dominion of Pakistan,) on this date.  Following the fighting in Pakistan and India in 1947 Muslims moved to Pakistan, creating a country where 96% of the population are Muslim.



Pakistan was the first modern nation to call itself an Islamic republic in conjunction with a largely secular constitution. Currently Pakistan has the world's sixth largest population.


March 23, 1961 -
Valentin Bondarenko was a young cosmonaut who had been doing routine medical tests in a pressure chamber as part of an isolation exercise, on this date. He removed some biosensors from his body and used a cotton ball moistened with alcohol to wash the sticky stuff off his skin.

He tossed the cotton ball aside and it landed on an electric hot plate, where it caught fire. Because the chamber's atmosphere was pure oxygen, the fire spread quickly. Bondarenko was removed from the chamber alive, but he died soon after of shock.Bondarenko's death was kept secret for 25 years. The fatal Apollo 1 disaster could have been averted if NASA had been aware of the accident


March 23, 1965 -
NASA launched Gemini III, nicknamed the “Molly Brown,” from Cape Canaveral on this date. It was the United State’s first maneuverable two-man mission. The mission was crewed by astronauts Virgil IvanGusGrissom and John W. Young.



The flight was the first for Young, who breaks quarantine regulations by smuggling a sandwich into orbit to share with Grissom. Before the end of the mission, Young would become the first man to eat a corned beef sandwich in space. Crumbs from the "weightless" sandwich scattered throughout the Gemini 3 spacecraft, posing a potential, if unintentional, flight safety risk. This rules violation caused NASA to clamp down on what astronauts could and could not carry into space.


March 23, 1997 -
Five dead bodies are found arranged in a cross formation at the burned Quebec home of Didier Queze. They were members of the Solar Temple cult who in 1994 to 1996 had totaled 69 suicides in Europe and North America.

Interestingly, in San Diego, The Heaven's Gate suicides (completely different set of nuts) leave 39 dead, all wearing NIKE shoes and many of the male members of the pact had previously voluntarily removed their members.



I believe this is the corollary to Thoreau's 'beware of all enterprises that require new clothes' - NEVER join a cult that requires you to remove your genitals.



And so it goes.


1400


Before I forgot - here are the answers to yesterday's quiz


O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
We will all be heading back to the Satellite of Love on April 14th when Netflix releases the reboot of  Mystery Science Theater 3000. The series, featuring Jonah Ray as Jonah Heston and Felicia Day as Kinga Forrester and Patton Oswalt as TV’s Son of TV’s Frank -



We've got Movie Sign - Again!

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