It was on this day in 1952 that a thick blanket of fog settled over London. Nothing unusual there, except that the weather patterns made it so the fog stayed in the city for the next four days. It combined with the coal dust and other pollution already in the air, resulting in as many as 12,000 people dying and another 100,000 becoming ill from the smog. Two years later the first “Clean Air Act” was passed by England in an effort to limit air pollution.

The earliest event that Wiki says occurred on this day is “63 BC – Cicero gave the fourth and final Catiline Orations” and the most recent is “2007 – Westroads Mall massacre: A gunman opens fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska mall, killing eight people before taking his own life.”

A few others things that also took place on this day are:

1933 –  Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution is ratified.

1955 – The AFL-CIO is formed when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge.

1968 – The album “Beggar’s Banquet” is released by the Rolling Stones.

2006 – New York City bans trans-fat in restaurants, the first city to do so.

Happy birthday to Frankie Muniz, Nick Stahl, Margaret Cho, Jack Russell, Brian Backer, JJ Cale, and Little Richard.

“America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.”

It was on this day in 1971 that “some stupid with a flare gun burnt the place to the ground.” Frank Zappa and his band The Mothers of Invention were performing at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland when an audience member shot a flare gun into the ceiling. The fire ended up destroying the entire casino complex as well as the group’s equipment and gear. Members of the band Deep Purple were staying at a hotel across the lake and were intending to start making their new album the next day at the same casino with a mobile recording studio they were renting from the Rolling Stones. They saw the fire from the other side of the lake and used the experience as the inspiration for their song “Smoke on the Water.”

The earliest event that Wiki says occurred on this day is “306 – Martyrdom of Saint Barbara” and the most recent are two from 2006: “An adult giant squid is caught on video for the first time by Tsunemi Kubodera near the Ogasawara Islands, 1,000 km (620 mi) south of Tokyo” & “Six black youths assault a white teenager in Jena, Louisiana, US; the subsequent court case becomes a cause célèbre”

A few other things that also took place on this day are:

1674 – A Jesuit mission is founded on the shores of Lake Michigan. It would grow into the city of Chicago.

1954 – The first Burger King franchise opens for business in Miami.

1956 – Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins hold an impromptu jam session in the recording studio at Sun Records.

Happy birthday to Marisa Tomei, Gary Rossington, Jeff Bridges, Chris Hillman, Wink Martindale, Dena Dietrich, and Max Baer Jr.

In honor of the pig flying on this day, here are a couple from Floyd*

*Yes, I know that one of ’em is actually Roger Waters solo and the other is Pink Floyd without Rog. What-ev-a.

It was on this day in 1976 that a giant pig flew over London. Pink Floyd was taking photographs for an upcoming album when the 40 foot inflatable balloon, shaped like a pig, got away. A strong gust of wind caused the moorings to break and the blimp quickly flew out of sight. There was a marksman (with a rifle) present during previous photo shoots, ready to shoot the balloon down in case such a thing happened, but nobody had asked him to return on this day. Airplane pilots soon spotted it at 30,000 feet, and flights at Heathrow Airport were cancelled due to the potential hazard. The pink pig was recovered later that night at a rural farm.

The earliest event that Wiki says happened on this day is “1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Wiesloch, Austrian Lieutenant Field Marshal Sztáray de Nagy-Mihaly defeats the French at Wiesloch” and the most recent is “2007 – Winter storms cause the Chehalis River to flood many cities in Lewis County, Washington, also closing a 20-mile portion of Interstate 5 for several days. At least eight deaths and billions of dollars in damages are blamed on the floods.”

A couple other things that also occurred on this day are:

1964 – 800 students at the University of California – Berkeley are arrested during a protest.

1966 – First live performance of The Monkees.

Happy birthday to Brian Bonsall, Mickey Thomas, Daryl Hannah, and Ozzy Osbourne.

It was on this day in 1983 that MTV first aired the video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The almost 14-minute-long mini-movie was directed by John Landis, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jackson. It would go on to win two Grammy Awards and four MTV Awards, and in 2009 was the first music video to be inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

The earliest event that Wiki says took place on this day is “1409 – The University of Leipzig opens” and the most recent is “2008 – Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat resigns after the 2008 Thailand political crisis.”

A couple other things that also occurred on this day are:

1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the France.

1954 – The US Senate votes to condemn Joe McCarthy (R-WI) for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute”.

Happy birthday to Aaron Rodgers, Britney Spears, Lucy Liu, Rick Savage, Bob Kevoian, and Cathy Lee Crosby.

Just say “Know”

• Ron Paul says the War on Drugs is a failure. (Of course, he has been saying that for quite a long time.)
• The ObamaAdmin says the War on Drugs is working. (And it looks like they are implying that we should also ban tobacco and alcohol.)
• Newt Gingrich says the War on Drugs can be won if people are required to pee into a cup in order to receive anything from the Federal government.
• Columbia’s government is once again making some comments about re-legalizing marijuana and cocaine.
• Huffington Post had an article about how police agencies are ignoring violent crimes because there is more profit for them when illegal gardeners and dealers get busted.
• The Pentagon is planning on hiring more mercenaries in order to fight the War on Drugs.
• Another tunnel is found under the Mexico/US border.
• A recent show shows that legalized marijuana results in less alcohol use, and thus less traffic deaths.

It was on this day in 1964 that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a personal meeting with J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI was convinced that the minister was a Communist and had financial ties to Russia, and therefore they had been conducting an investigation (including heavy use of wiretaps) against him for the past year. The previous month the agency had publicly criticized the civil rights leader (calling him the “most notorious liar in the country” during a press conference ) and MLK had requested that the director personally explain the comment. Hoover agreed to meet and the discussion was cordial with the two men agreeing to a “truce”. However, that same day a package…containing secretly recorded audiotapes of King committing adultery…was delivered to King’s hotel room. A note was also enclosed, urging him to commit suicide or face public embarrassment. Years later, during a Senate investigation into FBI domestic surveillance, it was discovered that the recordings had come from the Bureau.

The earliest event that Wiki says happened on this day is “800 – Charlemagne judges the accusations against Pope Leo III in the Vatican” and the most recent is “2009 – The Treaty of Lisbon, which amends the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community, which together comprise the constitutional basis of European Union, comes into effect.”

A couple other things that also took place on this day are:

1878 – First telephone is installed in the White House.

1955 – Rosa Parks is arrested for not giving up her bus seat to a white man.

Happy birthday to Jared Fogle, Sarah Silverman, Keith Thibodeaux, Bette Midler, John Densmore, Eric Bloom, Chuck Low, and Woody Allen.

An Arizona burglary suspect was caught flat-footed after she threatened a gas station attendant with a concealed bomb that turned out to be a toy penguin, cops said

The young woman claimed she had a bomb, demanded cash and threatened to blow the joint to smithereens when the clerk informed her the store was closing and the register was empty, cops said.

The attendant refused to cooperate and was quick-witted enough to take down Jeffers’ license plate number when she fled the scene in her Chrysler Pacifica.

An hour later, deputies nabbed Jeffers at her nearby home and obtained a confession, cops said.

Jeffers said the item she held under her shirt was a toy penguin.

###

heh

You can read more here, but that is pretty much it.

It was on this day in 1979 that Pink Floyd released their album The Wall. The rock opera was inspired during the band’s 1977 stadium tour, when Roger Waters became so frustrated with the audience that he envisioned building an actual wall between him and them. The following year the band toured in support of the album, performing only 31 shows due to the complexity of the theatrical show. A movie, also called The Wall, was released in 1982.

The earliest event that Wiki says happened on this day is “1700 – Battle of Narva – A Swedish army of 8,500 men under Charles XII defeats a much larger Russian army at Narva” and the most recent is “2005 – John Sentamu becomes the first black archbishop in the Church of England with his enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.”

A few other things that also took place on this day are:

1940 – Desi loves Lucy; they get married.

1954 – A meteorite crashes through a roof in Alabama and hits a woman taking a nap. It is the only documented case of a person being hit by a rock from outer space.

1982 – Michael Jackson’s Thriller is released. It will go on to become the best-selling album of all time.

2004 – After 74 consecutive wins, Ken Jennings finally loses a game of Jeopardy! He earned a total of $2,520,700, becoming TV’s biggest game show winner.

Happy birthday to Ben Stiller, Bo Jackson, Cherie Currie, Gordon Liu, Billy Idol, Simonetta Stefanelli, Mandel Patinkin, Roger Glover, G. Gordon Liddy, Dick Clark, and Robert Guillaume.