Marked This Day

On this day in 1967, George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, eldest son of Henry the 6th Earl of Harewood and Princess Mary the only daughter of King George and Queen Mary, Khal of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Father of Dragons, married Patricia Tuckwell an Australian fashion model and violinist in New Canaan, Connecticut because pip-pip tea and crumpets that’s where all the Royals got married in the 60’s. It was George Henry Hubert Lascelles the Unburnt’s second marriage. The impatient lovebirds had a son, Mark, on July 5th, 1964 while George Henry Hubert Lascelles, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men was still married to his first wife Marion Stein the Austrian concert pianist (GHHL was all like, I’ll take musicians from countries starting with the letter A, Trebek), which really sucked for Mark because he was born out of wedlock making him ineligible to become Mark Second Name Third Name Lascelles, 8th Earl of Harewood. Of course if you’r

On this day in 1975 Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, last seen in Detroit, Michigan. He was officially declared dead 7 years later. His disappearance continues to be one of the great American mysteries/conspiracies in our history. And our country is full of mysteries and conspiracies. Our Founding Fathers being linked to the Freemasons. The JFK Assassination. The birth of the CIA and FBI. Area 51. All of the assassins that read The Catcher in the Rye. There are a bunch of mysteries. Just ask Nic Cage. They've kept him from going completely bankrupt over the last decade. How about this for a movie idea--National Treasure 3: Hoffa’s in da Heezy, starring Nicolas Cage and Snoop Lion. Okay, the title might need a little work, but it would be pretty interesting watching Nic Cage try to unravel the mystery of Jimmy Hoffa’s vanishing act. There could be a confusing map hidden in one of Richard Nixon’s journals that Nic would have to steal before enlisting the help of Jon Voight to decipher that m

Summertime. The kids are home from school driving their parents’ crazy. Inflatable pools pop up and sprinklers spurt. Snoballs and lemonade stands. If you’re lucky enough to live in the South, the July heat has you moving sluggishly, possibly because the rubber soles of your tennis shoes have melted to the cement. Baseball rules. But in the not so distant past, July 29th 1986, football was the sport making the headlines. In what has to be one of the worst outcomes of winning of a lawsuit, the USFL “won” its antitrust suit against the NFL and was awarded a clean, crisp dollar bill for its trouble. The antitrust law tripled it to three clean, crisp dollar bills. There was a lot of legal jargon that went into the verdict, but basically the gist of it was that USFL messed up so badly (debt out the ying-yang) that the NFL’s monopolizing of TV and Stadium Venues had little bearing on the league’s dire circumstances. Which is all fine and good, but it’s still a rather cruel point to make. Ima

On this day in 1586, Sir Thomas Harriot introduced Britain to the potato. Now I can’t say I ever really thought about where potatoes come from because I was more interested in how versatile and scrumptious they are. I have always wondered how people decided certain plants were edible, the potato being one of them. Mostly the artichoke though. Who the hell saw that thing and decided that was a tasty little treat? But I never stopped to think that it was the New World that introduced Europe to the spud. That’s kind of like little brother winning the jackpot on slots after big brother has been pulling the lever for two hours straight, and then giving big brother the winnings. One on hand England had to be stoked because they got to experience the joy that is the potato, although, I’m not exactly sure that Britain makes the best usage of the potato. Fish and chips? But I also wonder if deep down they felt kind of empty. Because they didn’t pull the lever. We just gave them the potato and w

Perhaps the greatest advancement in modern medicine occurred on this day last year when British scientists announced a breakthrough that could change life as we know it. They figured out how to cure cat allergies. Finally. If you had any idea how many times I’ve sat around staring at an empty apartment just wishing that I could have a feline around to not care about my existence as it stalked around quietly or sunned itself lazily on my window sill, only to be foiled by the cat allergies that I don’t have. Actually that has never happened. And I’m not going to turn this into a dog-cat thing; though I think there is a reason there are twice as many cat allergies as dog allergies. But this new advancement, in which a pill should be ready four years from now, will finally even the playing field. I will say that I am super excited that scientists found a cure for something that is such a universal issue. Forget cancer. Or AIDS. Or even mononucleosis. More people suffer from cat allergies t

Back on this day in 1487, foreign beer was banned in Leeuwarden, Netherlands in an attempt to enhance the sale of local beers. It’s understandable to want to promote local products, but messing around with people’s beer is never a good move. Beer has been behind the greatest inventions of mankind. Al Gore was drinking beer when he created the interwebs. Ben Franklin had a kite in one hand and a mug-o-beer in the other hand when he discovered electricity. Mark Zuckerberg was drinking a pilsner when he made the book of the face. Michael Jordan had beer in his Gatorade cup during the Flu Game. Beer is the most precious of human resources. It has helped white people dance and all people procreate. It is not something to be trifled with. Plus banning things, well that just creates a black market. I remember when my high school banned candy (they probably just hiked up the prices on the snack machine, but for the moral of this post, let’s all pretend they banned candy in an early attempt to

On this day in 1904, Charles E. Menches created an ice cream cone during the St. Louis World’s Fair. That is a true statement. However, I’m not quite sure it was THE ice cream cone, as there are four other people who claim to have invented the ice cream cone during this same time-period. So as not to appear to show favoritism, the four others were David Avayou, Abe Doumar, Nick Kabbaz, and Ernest Hamwi. Now, I have no idea who the truthful creator of this ingenious, delicious way of eating ice cream was, though my very scientific and in-depth research (google) seems to indicate that cones were around in some form or another well before that World’s Fair, and well, well before Madonna fashioned them into a brassiere. And I can’t exactly verify anything because I’m not Emmett “Doc” Brown, nor, as I’ve previously mentioned, do I have any plutonium. So I’m going with Nick Kabbaz because I like his name the most. Ernest is a close second because of how closely his name audibly resembles Ern

You ever wonder why it’s an insult to be called a sheep? They are quite useful creatures. They provide warm clothing. You can count them if you’re having trouble sleeping. Their young provide a nice alternative to beef when slaughtered and prepared correctly. Oh, don’t judge me. You’re telling Lamb Shawarma doesn’t sound absolutely delicious right now? Exactly. They are chalk full of religious symbolism--which I guess could be taken as a negative if you are not of the spiritual/religious inclination. I’m just saying, when you look at sheep objectively they seem to be pretty okay animals. Above board, if you will. So when that dude or girl in high school--you know, the one that constantly waged war against conventionality and conformity--and I mean genuinely did so, not like the dude who wore all black to fit in with the Goths, or the girl who suddenly became Emo when her best friend lent her a Dashboard Confessional album because they were just picking less popular forms of conformity-

July 21st, 1873. You’re on a train rolling through Adair, Iowa. You’re probably a little bored. You’re in Iowa. In 1873. You think to yourself, nothing exciting ever happens to me. I wish just once, I could get a little excitement. Odds are you wanted to see a circus. Or spot a mountain lion killing a deer. Or a black bear doing a tumble set. Just a little something to break up the monotony. But you, my friend, you tempted fate. Fate ain’t all bout dat. What fate has in store for you and your whining on this day is a little visit from the James-Younger Gang. You know Jesse James. Frank James. Cole Younger. And bunch of other Youngers. And some other people. You know, the guy Brad Pitt played in that movie when Casey Affleck sucker-shot him. Was that a term in the Old West? Should’ve been, am I right? Like Jesse James would have robbed a few more banks if Robert Ford wouldn’t have sucker-shot him in the back of the head. But back to you and your wish for some thrills. The James-Younger

On this day in 1986, video footage of the Titanic wreckage was released. In 1985 Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel located the remnants of the The Unsinkable Ship. Bad nickname. Completely tempting the Universe. You wouldn’t name your horse The Unbeatable Horse, would you? So these guys found the wreckage of the most famous ship 73 years after Captain Homeslice hit an iceberg and killed a whole lot of people. And then Ballard made sure to capture video of footage of the wreckage. There was a boon to underwater searching. By any account the finding of the Titanic was monumental and impressive. Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t really have cared, but then he actually saw Davey Crockett kill him a bear when Davey was only three years old. TJ was all like “That bear was on its last legs. I could have killed that old thing when I was one year old.” TJ just wasn’t easily impressed, so he probably wouldn’t have found the footage all that amazing. But I bet you a young James Cameron was impressed.

On this day in 1935, Variety printed the famous headline STICKS NIX HICK PIX. The article detailed that rural American audiences weren’t showing up to see movies about rural Americans. So moviegoers from the “Sticks” aka rural America were “nixing” (rejecting) motion pictures (pix) about “hicks” aka people from the sticks. Clever little use of language, or slanguage as Variety called it. It’s also pleasant to look at, don’t you think? The repetition of the ck’s and x’s is quite aesthetically pleasing. But it also makes sense. We were in the middle of The Great Depression, and while you have to be careful of shoving wealth and opulence in struggling people’s faces (for example I wouldn’t have shown a Kardashian Marathon), I doubt they would want to go to the movies to see the dismal circumstances of their everyday lives. They just wanted to escape. Can’t fault them for that. I’ve wanted to escape before. Like the time I saw my parents mugged and murdered outside of an opera. I wanted to

On this day in 1969, perhaps the most important space mission in the history of bipedal humanoids, Apollo 11 was launched. On July 20th that bad boy landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong took one small step. The whole thing was kind of a big deal. It was on TV. If, indeed, the whole thing was above-board. Because there was also the faction that believed(s) the landing was a big hoax. A fairly decent sized amount of the population thought it was all movie magic. Luckily 40 years later, Michael Bay showed us what actually happened in Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon . How you can watch the opening of that movie and believe that bipedal humanoids did not, in fact, land on the moon in order to investigate the fact that some alien toys made by Mattel® crashed on the Dark Side of the Moon in 1961. Watch the movie. It’s all very scientific. And destructive. He likes to blow things up, that Michael Bay. I’m pretty sure Michael Bay was the inspiration for Sid, the kid in Toy Story who likes to

On this day in 1922, the first exhibit of the duck-billed platypus in these United States of America occurred at the Bronx Zoo. The duck-billed platypus or DBP is a strange amalgamation of an egg-laying mammal with characteristics of a duck (the bill, geniuses), beaver (tail) and otter (feet). Oh, and it’s also one of the few venomous mammals around. The little critter is so unbelievable, when it was first discovered Down Under, people thought it was a hoax. Which might have been cooler than the actual discovery, am I right? I mean, let’s say somebody was able to capture a beaver or an otter and doctor that little guy with a duck-bill and either otter feet or a beaver tail and still have that thing able to function in the Australian wild. Okay maybe “cool” was a bad word, because unless this trickster was also a brilliant geneticist who started work on creating strange looking mutant animals that weren’t at the summit of the food chain many years before in an effort to live up the vow

On this day in 1891, John T. Smith patented corkboard after inventing a new heating process to mold the cork particles together. For the next thirty years corkboard was used in a variety of ways, but mainly as a form of insulation. But just like when somebody decided that grapes would be better digested after fermentation, George Brooks decided in 1924 that cork board would be better utilized as a place to hang or pin stuff. Basically the dude created a hub for information where people could post things and read what others had posted. He created a physical interwebs for a bygone era. Or for this era’s Luddites. Or hipsters who only hang out in authentic 1920’s coffee joints, though I’m not quite sure authentic 1920’s coffee joints are a thing. But they probably are. Everything is a thing. If you Google “Parrot Mysteries” you get 671,000 hits. Cause Parrot Mysteries are a thing. Everything is a thing. Except Albino Midgets. They should be a thing. But I’ve been searching for one for we

On this day in 1985, Coca-Cola started selling their old formula Coca-Cola Classic after the debacle that was New Coke. Remember New Coke? Probably. Remember what it tastes like? Probably not. Because it was an awful idea that messed with the most popular beverage in the world. Would McDonalds replace the Big Mac? Should Nike get rid of Air Jordans or only offer them as sandals? Should Crocs find a way to still make comfortable footwear but not have them look like Swiss cheese? Okay Crocs should definitely do that, but those other companies wouldn’t dream of altering their fan-favorite money-makers. Because if ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The decision to switch to New Coke had people rationing bottles of old Coca-Cola in fear that they would run out. So it seemed like a bonehead move. But was it really? Or was it actually a crazy, genius idea that knowingly upset people on purpose in order to have them throw up their arms in jubilation months later and bring sales of Coca-Cola Classic t

On this day in 1938, Howard Hughes began his flight around the world in a Lockheed 14 Lodestar Monoplane. He would accomplish the feat in 91 hours. I have no idea how difficult this must have been, but it seemed pretty impressive when Leo did it in The Aviator. Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have cared because we all know he was a rather difficult individual to make an impression on. TJ once saw a man dig a tunnel to China in the same amount of time it took Mr. Hughes to fly around the world. He sat there watching him dig the whole 91 hours and then promptly stood up and told some maintenance men to cover up the hole before someone fell in. Tough cookie that TJ, but at least he cared about public safety. Still among the normal folk, Hughes’ flight was impressive. Though it must be noted that the amount of fortitude, perseverance, and attention to detail that allowed Hughes to plan and risk such a flight were probably the same issues that had him shut in his room with jars of his own urine.

On this day in 1956, Dick Clark became the permanent host of American Bandstand, a position he would hold until 1989. In those 33 years, he aged three years. That was the ratio. One year of aging for every decade, cause that dude was stuck in his late thirties for the majority of his life. Must have found the Elixir of Life from the Fountain of Youth. He actually got the gig because his predecessor got arrested for drunk driving, which I didn’t even know was thing in the mid-50’s. I bet you had to be pretty sloppy drunk to get arrested for drunk driving in 1956. Apparently the law has been around in some form since 1907. But before this Marking gets completely hijacked by the history of drunken driving, I feel we should circle back to Dick. Dude spent 33 years as host of one of the most seminal music programs in our history. He shuffled off this mortal coil in 2012, leaving a bit of a hole. The applications for the next Dick really come down to two people. Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest

On this day in 1986, Scott Zimmerman set a World Record for the farthest thrown object ever. Zimmerman threw an Aerobie 383.1 meters or 1257 feet. What’s an Aerobie, you ask? It’s a Frisbee—on steroids. Created by Alan Alder, a Stanford engineer who was really into Ultimate Frisbee. Made that last part up. But it’s plausible. Why else would you spend time engineering a better throwing disc? Like most records, it has since been broken and the current record for farthest thrown object is held by David Schummy who threw a boomerang 1401.5 feet. Do you think there is a secret society of people who can throw things really far? Do they hold secret meetings in open patches of land and throw things thousands of feet? Are new recruits required to do the measuring? Because it’s the measuring that has to suck. That’s a really long tape measure, am I right? I’m racking my brain, trying to figure out reasons why this society would be beneficial to your human existence or even why knowing this infor

Otis Blue by Otis Redding. It’s one of my favorite albums. It’s mostly covers, but when you sing like Otis that doesn’t really bother me. It doesn’t have “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” but if that’s the only song you know by Otis, well then, I just feel sorry for you. If you would like a lesson in not sucking, listen to Otis’ version of Sam Cooke’s “Change Gonna Come.” Or perhaps you need a lesson in being awesome. Maybe you’re spending your nights watching reruns of MindFreak, studying Criss Angel, and trying to levitate because you think magic will totally get that girl or guy to notice you. Don’t do that though. Be better than that. Listen to Otis Redding sing B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby.” Cause that is the sauce of the awesome. So why I am imploring you to go on this quest for aural delight. Well on this day in 1965 Otis recorded the song “Respect,” which is quite funny because, while I’m sure you all know that song became a huge hit for Aretha Franklin, it was actually written an

On this day in 1776, Thomas Jefferson was impressed. FREEDOM! Happy Independence Day! This day has been Marked.

On this day in 1895, Joshua Slocum took off from Nova Scotia to continue his attempt to solo circumnavigate the world in a sailboat. He had departed earlier that April, and SPOILER ALERT he successfully completed his trip on June 27th 1898. For the vast majority of those three years, home boy was just kicking it on his sailboat, The Spray , acting all cool and circumnavigating the globe not going to school, when a couple of guys who were up to no good to started making trouble in Joshua’s neighborhood. Okay, that last part didn’t happen cause Will Smith wasn’t around in the late 1890’s. Oh and Joshua was on freaking sailboat, so schools and neighborhood troublemakers weren’t really issues he was dealing with. More likely his issues were the weather and being so lonely that he hallucinated manatees into mermaids. No matter his issues, Slocum made the trip around the world, and then wrote a book about it, became a celebrity (he got to speak at dinner honoring Mark Twain) and then he disa

Imagine you’re in the dog days of the summer in the south. What’s that? You are in the dog days of summer in the south? Fair enough. But imagine it’s 1843. I have you there, don’t I? Cause it’s not 1843, and if you think it is, you, my friend, have been seriously abusing smelling salts or have the amazing ability to exist across multiple planes of time, which would basically make you Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen , except with the added ability to exist in the past, which incidentally is impossible because it opens up the possibility of paradoxes--I saw it on late night PBS. But I digress. We were setting a scene. 1843, July 2nd, Charleston, South Carolina. A powerful thunderstorm begins. There’s wind. Thunder. Rain. Wind. Alligators. Wait what? That’s right, I wrote alligators. Apparently a two foot gator was taken for a ride by the storm and dropped down on the corner of Wentworth and Anson, essentially making it rain an alligator. One E.L. Pinckney was responsible for breaking the ne

On this day in 1810, Louis Bonaparte was forced to abdicate his throne and step down as the King of Holland. Guess who forced him? That’s right, his own freaking brother, that little turd Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon I of France, who incidentally wasn't actually that short. He was 5’6”, which was an inch over the average height for a French male. But I don't feel bad for him getting pegged with the Napoleon Complex, the dude kicked his brother off the Throne of Holland. Now I’m not exactly sure how great being king of the Netherlands was in the early 1800’s, but having your older brother just roll in and say, “Hey broski, you’re not king anymore. Sorry. But you called me short. And I’m not short. I just have tall bodyguards,” couldn’t have been a highlight. Not saying that’s how it went down exactly, but it could have been. Napoleon wasn’t quite done with the humiliation though. He gave the throne to Louis’ son, also named Louis. Of course Napoleon only let Napoleon Louis (why di