courtesy Paragraphics

Morning in my hotel room in NY City - Car alarms and ambulances, hazy sunrise, Chock Full of Nuts Coffee and a toasted corn muffin, Tropicana Orange juice and some Ring-DIngs. At 5:30AM WBAI radio plays old Jean Shepard Radio Shows from WOR days. Bliss! WQXR plays Borodin's Coronation March for Czar Alexander II, the Czar Liberator. He was killed by assassins who blew his legs off. Ouch. Have to figure out how to download some Wacom software so I can keep working on reels. Gotta get to a recording session at 9:00AM. Apologies to all my NY friends that I don't have time to socialize. Just in and out. Maybe next trip. Loud airbrakes of some delivery truck out side of my window and the faint sound of a seagull.
Have a nice morning.

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Birthdays: James Cagney, John Jacob Astor Ist, Hyacinth Rigaud, Bernice Abbott, Chill Wills, Brian Trottier, Phoebe Snow, Donald Sutherland is 72, Phyllis Diller, Daryl Lamonica, Prof. Peter Schickele a.k.a. PDQ Bach, Earl Stanley Gardner the creator of Perry Mason, David Hasslehoff is 55

1429- Charles the Dauphin of France is crowned King Charles VII at Rheims thanks to the astounding military success of the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc. Charles in the end proved ungrateful to Joan but history had the last word. While other Kings get nicknames like the Great or Lionheart, Charles VII 's nickname is `The Well-Served'.

1647- A Neopolitan fishmonger named Maisaniello led 100,000 Italians in a revolt against high taxes and tariffs. Maisaniello held power in Naples for ten days until his was assassinated this day by agents of the Spanish Viceroy the Count de Orsuna. One of Maisaniellos more colorful ideas was he reduced the price of bread by half and if a baker didn’t comply he was roasted in his own oven.

1793- Charlotte Corday, the assassin of French Revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat, went to the guillotine. When her decapitated head was lifted out of the basket the executioner gave it a good smack on her cheek for being a naughty little girl to the laughter of the mob.

1803- James T. Calendar, editor of the Aurora newspaper, was among the worst scandal mongering journalists in early America. He broke the story of Alexander Hamilton’s extramarital affairs and Thomas Jefferson’s sleeping with his slaves. He called John Adams a "pernicious Hermaphrodite" and George Washington the "American Dali Lama". Everyone hated him. This night his body was found floating the James River in three feet of water. A court decided he fell in while drunk, but many wonder if his end was not aided by other hands?

1841 - British humor magazine "Punch" 1st published.

1879 - 1st railroad opens in Hawaii.

1893- Representatives of fourteen stage unions meet to form IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical & Screen Engineers of the U.S. & Canada.

1928- President of Mexico Alvaro Obregon was at a large banquet gathering of all former veterans of the Mexican Revolution. Part of the party was having an artist stroll about making cariacatures of the guests of honor. Obregon said to cartoonist Leon Toral: "Make sure you make me look good." Toral responded "Oh, I will.." and pulled a gun and shot the President to death.

1935 - Variety's famous headline "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" meaning audiences in rural areas were not attending movies with a rustic theme.

1936-. The Spanish Civil War begins. A Spanish Fascist army led by Francisco Franco invades Spain from North Africa. The first moves were to occupy the Canary Islands. The Phalangist generals figured the takeover would only take a few days but all over Spain the common people- workers, farmers, artists and poets, even women and children took up guns to fight.

1937- the Nazis open an art exhibit of banned artworks and artists called Entartete Kunst- Degenerate Art.- Works of Dali and Duchamp, Grosz, Lippschitz, Kandinsky and Miro, with appropriate insults underneath. The next day Hitler dedicates the Great German Art Collection, having cleansed the German art world for National Socialist art, mostly bad deco-greco nudes and dumb Nordic medieval fantasy scenes.

1938- WRONG WAY CORRIGAN was the last of the pioneering aviators. A former mechanic for Lindbergh, Douglas Corrigan bought a plane out of a junk heap and modified it for long distance travel. He asked permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly from New York City to Ireland. They denied his request, on the grounds that his plane was in poor condition. He seemed to accept the ruling, but when he took off for California, he banked sharply to the east and headed over the ocean. He landed in Ireland, and complained of a faulty compass. No one believed his excuse, and he lost his pilot's license, but he was greeted as a hero back in New York. Over a million people came out for a ticker-tape parade. Supposedly his first words to the locals upon landing were. "I’m Corrigan, Where am I?"

1945-THE FIRST POTSDAM MEETING-New President Harry Truman met Stalin and Churchill in a suburb of war ravaged Berlin. Halfway through the talks Churchill learned that he was defeated in parliamentary elections back home and was replaced at the talks by Clement Atlee. Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb and was surprised that Stalin wasn’t surprised. Stalin already knew because of spies he had at Los Alamos. Stalin told Truman the Japanese government was requesting peace talks asking that Russia act as intermediary, which they had no intention of doing. Stalin called the Anglo-Americans his "soyuznicki" Little Allies. Truman called him "Uncle Joe". Stalin disliked the name because he thought it was meant to be derogatory.

1955 DISNEYLAND OPENED- Walt Disney's dream of a perfect family them park, called 'The Happiest Place on Earth" was declared open with movie celebrities like Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter and the Mouseketeers in attendance. Walt Disney expected to get 10,000 visitors that first day. He got 100,000. Facilities broke down from the huge crowds and the haste with which the park was built. Concrete pavement which was poured the night before was still soft under people's feet, there were no working water fountains and the car parking was a nightmare. To the Disneyland workers opening day was nicknamed 'Black Sunday". But despite it all, Disneyland became a huge success.

1955 - Arco, Idaho becomes 1st US city lit by nuclear power.

1967 – The Monkees performed at Forest Hills NY, Jimi Hendrix was their opening act.

1968- In Iraq the Bath party seized power under President Zia al Haq. His chief of police Saddam Hussein would seize the presidency the following year.

1968- The Beatles musical cartoon feature The Yellow Submarine premiered in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Look Out ! It’s the Blue Meanies!!

1975-The Apollo-Soyuz space linkup. A second linkup would not happen until 1995.

1979- Nicaraguan rebels called Sandanistas overthrow dictator Anastasio Somosa. He escaped to Miami. The Reagan White House spent most of the 1980’s obsessed with these Communist rebels as a new escalation of the US-USSR Cold War.

1988- A home video tape was released of actor Rob Lowe having sex with two underage girls in his hotel room.