Birthdays: Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Lee, Paul Cezanne', Janis Joplin would have been 64, J.D. Salinger, Tipi Hedren, Slobodan Milosovic’, radio star Ish Kabibble, Dolly Parton, Michael Crawford, Desi Arnez Jr., Chic Young, Jon Matlack, Richard Lester, John H. Johnson publisher of Ebony and Jet Magazines, Jean Stapleton, Fritz Weaver, Robin MacNeill, Bart the Bear-1977 the trained Bear who starred in films like Clan of the Cave Bear, White Fang and Legends of the Fall

Happy Feast of St. Wulfstan.

1840- Explorer Lt. Charles Wilkes claimed all of the continent of Antarctica for the United States. He was on a scientific expedition to chart the South Seas and Southern polar waters. Wilkes was really good at exploring and charting but he was such a horrible disciplinarian as a captain he was courtmartialed upon his return. Wilkes’ erratic behavior may have been a model for Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab in his novel Moby Dick.

1919- Famed dancer of the Ballet Russe Vasclav Nijinsky danced his last dance at a hotel in San Moritz Switzerland. He later became an incarcerated mental patient and underwent numerous extreme therapies until his death in 1950.

1940- The Three Stooges do their impression of Hitler and the top Nazis in the Columbia Pictures short comedy “You Natzy Spy”. Moe Howard is still the best Hitler impersonator of all time. “Hail-Hail-Hailstone of Moronica! Waahoo!”

1977- In one of his last acts as President Gerald Ford pardoned Tokyo Rose. Iva Toguri D’Aquino was a Japanese American who did propaganda broadcasts for Radio Tokyo encouraging American GI’s to give up. She explained she was stranded in Tokyo while visiting when the war broke out and was coerced into doing the broadcasts.

1979- Wendy O. Williams, mohawk-haired lead singer of the punk band the Plasmatics was arrested in Milwaukee for masturbating herself with a sledgehammer on stage.

1991-Eastern Airlines ceased operations and goes out of business. Chairman and former astronaut Frank Borman was philosophical: “Business without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.”

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