Welcome to June, from Iunius, the month of Juno, queen of the Roman gods.



1939- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUPERMAN- Joe Seigel and Jerry Shuster, two aspiring cartoonists in High School create a character called “Superman”. Jewish kids, they had read about the Nazis racial concept of the Aryan supremacy based on Frederich Nietzche's concept of the Superman. They wanted to show a Superman could be on the American side. Clark Kent's name was a combination of Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, two actors they admired, Metropolis was from the Fritz Lang movie. On this day they sell all the rights to their characters to Detective Comics (D.C.) for $130.

When the first megabudget Richard Donner Superman movie was being made in the 1976, and Marlon Brando was paid one million dollars for eight minutes of work, Neal Adams and the National Cartoonist's Society pointed out that Seigel and Schuster were now poverty stricken. They never received a nickel of the multi-millions their creation had generated. Seigel was blind on disability and Schuster delivered sandwiches from a local deli. The bad publicity forced Warner Bros and DC Comics to award them and their families pensions for life.

Mrs. Schuster, the model for Lois Lane, told fellow cartoonists recently :" Cartoonists should all stick together! On your own you have no power! Your're just dirt under their (the bosses) feet!"

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Birthdays: Brigham Young, Marilyn Monroe would be 80!, Pat Boone, Mikhail Glinka, Red Grooms, Karl Von Clausewitz, Andy Griffith, Morgan Freeman is 69, Nelson Riddle, Lisa Hartman, Cleavon Little, Frederica Von Stade, Powers Booth, Rene Aubergjenois, Lisa Hartman, Brian Cox, Josef Pujol *

*Pujol was famous throughout late Victorian Europe as Le Petomane- The Fartiste- who could fart musical melodies and snuff candles at great distances. He performed an entire evening’s concert for crowned heads and would finish by farting La Marseillaise.

1813- In battle with a British warship, HMS Leopard, dying Captain Lawrence, of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, cried:" Don't Give Up the Ship!" They don't but he died anyway.

1876- Eighteen-year old Milton Hershey opened his first candy store. Hershey's goes on to become the largest candy maker in the U.S. The Hershey’s chocolate kiss is so named because the machine that creates the candy looks like it is kissing the conveyor belt.

1931- Swiss artist Albert Hurter joined the Disney staff, giving the look of cartoons like Snow White a more Germanic storybook look.

1933 - Charlie Chaplin wed actress Paulette Goddard

1936 - "Lux Radio Theater" moved from NYC to Hollywood.


1942- British actor Leslie Howard, who played Ashley in" Gone with the Wind " and Henry Higgins in the first film of "Pygmalion" joined the RAF as a fighter pilot in World War Two. This day he was shot down and killed by the Luftwaffe over the English Channel.

1961 - FM multiplex stereo broadcasting 1st heard

1966 - George Harrison is impressed by Ravi Shankar's concert in London.

1967 –FORTY YEARS AGO- Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the US and it immediately goes gold.

1968 - Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" hits #1

1979- Gannett News Services began USA Today, called by some critic's- 'MacPaper'.

1980- Ted Turner started CNN 24-hour news channel.

2001- In Katmandu, Nepal Crown Prince Dipendra quarreled so much with his mother and father, the King Birenda and Queen Aiswarya, about his upcoming marriage that he came to dinner and shot them to death. He also killed four other members of the royal family and then himself. This was the largest massacre of a royal family since Czar Nicholas II’s family was executed in 1918. Next day, a Nepalese government spokesman labeled the incident an “accident”. Dipendra was in a coma for several days before dying and in those few days a government council declared him king anyway.