LAST ONE LEAVING THE MOON, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS

December 14 in history:

The last of the Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon blasted off from the lunar surface on December 14th, 1972.  Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt completed three walks outside the lunar lander during the 75 hours they spent on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

The Saturn rockets that launched men to the moon were developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center near Huntsville, Alabama.  On this date in 1819, Alabama became the 22nd state to join the Union.

The Alabama state quarter issued by the U.S. Mint in 2003 features a portrait of author Helen Keller on the tail side.  Actress Patty Duke, born Anna Marie Duke on December 14th, 1946, won an Oscar at age 16 for recreating her stage role as blind and deaf Helen in the movie, “The Miracle Worker.”  She later starred as “identical cousins” on “The Patty Duke Show.” Prior to her death in 2016, Duke wrote and spoke widely about her experience with bipolar disorder.

Patty Duke played Martha Washington in the 1984 TV miniseries “George Washington.”  On December 14th, 1799, George Washington died at his Virginia estate, Mount Vernon.  Medical experts know that Washington had soreness and swelling in the throat, but some believe the doctors’ practice of bleeding hastened his death.

Another famous George who died on this date was Notre Dame football star George Gipp.  He was 25 when he died on December 14th, 1920, apparently from a throat infection.  Future U.S. president Ronald Reagan played Gipp in the 1940 movie “Knute Rockne, All American,” in which the character urged Coach Rockne to “win one for the Gipper.”

KING’S SPEECH

December 11 in history:

It was not the title speech given in the movie The King’s Speech, but King Edward VIII’s abdication speech was an important moment in the film, and in British history.  On December 11th, 1936, Edward took to the radio to explain to his subjects why he was stepping down after less than a year on the throne:  to marry the woman he loved, a divorced American named Wallis Simpson.  Many government leaders, including the prime minister, strongly opposed the king’s plans to wed Mrs. Simpson.

King gave a speech in Oslo, Norway on December 11th, 1964:  Martin Luther King, Jr., that is.  Dr. King presented a lecture on “The Quest for Peace and Justice” one day after formally accepting the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

And now, the award for outstanding Supporting Actress born on December 11th.  The nominees are:

Betsy Blair (born 1923), for Marty,

Rita Moreno (1931), for West Side Story,

Teri Garr (birth year uncertain), for Tootsie,

Mo’Nique (1967), for Precious, and…

Hailee Steinfeld (1996), for True Grit.

And the Oscar for Supporting Actress went to…(drumroll)…Moreno in 1962 and Mo’Nique in 2010.

TIME TO TRAVEL

November 18 in history:

The U.S. was divided into time zones on November 18th, 1883 by the railroad industry.  The move was needed so that trains could have standard arrival and departure times, instead of relying on local times based on the position of the sun.

The railroad tune “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” from the movie The Harvey Girls was the first song to win an Oscar for lyricist Johnny Mercer, born on this date in 1909.  Mercer also won Academy Awards for two songs written with Henry Mancini, “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Moon River.”

A steamboat trip on a river is the setting for the first official Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie,” released on November 18th, 1928.  It’s also considered the first successful movie cartoon with sound.

CHET AND THE NET

October 29 in history:

The first version of the internet was called the ARPANET.  On October 29th, 1969, two computers were linked together to communicate with each other for the first time.  One was at UCLA, and the other was in Northern California.

One man in New York, one man in Washington.  It was a high-tech television partnership that lasted for 14 years on NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report,” which began on this date in 1956.  Chet Huntley was at the New York anchor desk, with David Brinkley in D.C.

Huntley and Brinkley also anchored NBC coverage of many space flights in the ’60s.  John Glenn first flew in space in 1962.  By the time he went into orbit again, Glenn had been elected to the U.S. Senate from Ohio.  His second space mission, as part of the crew of the shuttle Discovery, began on October 29th, 1998.

Richard Dreyfuss (born October 29th, 1947) went into space aboard an alien ship at the end of the 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”  He won an Oscar for another movie he made the same year, “The Goodbye Girl.”  Dreyfuss later starred in the movie “Nuts” with Barbra Streisand, who also won an Oscar for a film with “Girl” in the title…”Funny Girl,” the story of Fanny Brice.  Stage and radio star Brice was born on this day in 1891.

IT’S ALL “OVER” NOW

October 24 in history:

Here’s a holiday experiment that didn’t work:  moving Veterans’ Day away from the traditional date of November 11th.  The holiday, originally called Armistice Day, observed the date on which World War I ended in 1918.  But starting in 1971, Veterans’ Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, and Presidents’ Day all became Monday holidays for federal government employees.  Veterans’ Day was switched to the fourth Monday in October…and was observed that way for the last time on October 24th, 1977, before being returned to November 11th.

October 24th of 1951 was designated the last day of World War II by President Truman.  Germany and Japan both surrendered to the Allies in 1945, but the European war never officially ended with a peace treaty.  Truman apparently got tired of waiting to reach an agreement with a divided Germany, so he declared the war to be over.

Over the falls in a barrel…that where Annie Edson Taylor went on her 46th birthday, October 24th, 1901.  She became famous as the first woman to ride over Niagara Falls inside a barrel.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford went over a cliff in a famous scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” which opened around the U.S. on this date in 1969.  Both Redford and Newman won Oscars in the 1980s, as did two actors who were born on October 24th:  F. Murray Abraham (1939), who starred in “Amadeus,” and Kevin Kline (1947), a winner for “A Fish Called Wanda.”

THE SILVER SCREEN

October 6 in history:

October 6th of 1889 must have been a busy day for Thomas Edison.  On that day, a judge ruled in Edison’s favor on a dispute over the patent for his incandescent light bulb. Another inventor accused Edison of stealing the bulb design from him, but the judge decided that Edison had made improvements on the other man’s bulb. That same day, Edison demonstrated a motion picture for the first time at his New Jersey lab.  It was a “talking” picture, coordinated with a phonograph recording.

The first actual “talking picture” to catch on with the public premiered in New York on October 6th, 1927: “The Jazz Singer,” starring Al Jolson.

The first woman to win the Oscar for Best Actress, Janet Gaynor, was born on this date in 1906.

And October 6th of 1991 was the date of Elizabeth Taylor’s eighth and final wedding.  Construction worker Larry Fortensky was Taylor’s seventh husband.  They had met at the Betty Ford Clinic.  The wedding took place at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.

MORE O’ THE EXPLORERS

May 20th in history:

Christopher Columbus died in Spain on May 20th, 1506. Columbus reportedly never thought that he had come upon a new continent, but always believed that he had reached Asia by crossing the Atlantic.

Vasco da Gama reached India on this date in 1498, after starting in Portugal and going around Africa.

Charles Lindbergh began his historic flight across the Atlantic from Long Island on May 20th, 1927. He was the first person to successfully fly solo across the ocean to Europe without stopping.

Lindbergh’s flight began on the 19th birthday of future movie star Jimmy Stewart (1908). In 1957, Stewart would star as Lindbergh in a movie about the flight to Paris, called The Spirit of St. Louis.

Jimmy Stewart won an Oscar for “The Philadelphia Story,” and his hit movies include “Vertigo” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but he also starred as a lawyer in the CBS TV series “Hawkins” in 1973.  Another prime-time series on CBS in ’73 was “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”  Cher, born on this date in 1946, moved beyond records and TV to a successful movie career, and won a Best Actress Oscar for “Moonstruck” in 1987.

ON A CLEAR DAY, YOU CAN SEE FOREVER

April 24th in history:

The first fatal accident during a space mission happened on this date in 1967.  Soyuz 1, the Soviet Union’s first manned space flight in two years, crashed upon landing after two days in orbit. The crash killed the lone crew member, Vladimir Komarov, who was on his second space mission. The capsule’s parachute apparently failed to open properly.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched successfully on this date in 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery.

New Yorkers could get high in the sky without leaving the ground on April 24th, 1913, on the day that the Woolworth Building opened in Manhattan.  You could see a long distance from the top of the skyscraper, which was 792 feet tall…the tallest building in the U.S. for nearly 20 years, until the Empire State Building was constructed.

The movie musical “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” starred Oscar-winner Barbra Streisand, who was born on April 24th, 1942.  Streisand’s character in the movie believes she has been reincarnated.  Another winner of the Best Actress Oscar, Shirley MacLaine, is a real-life believer in reincarnation.  MacLaine, also a star of screen musicals such as “Can-Can” and “Sweet Charity,” came into the world as Shirley Beaty on this date in 1934.

A NEW WORLD

April 5th in history:

On April 5th of 1614, Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.

Seven years later, and farther north in the colonies, the Mayflower took to the open water, beginning its return trip to England, leaving the Pilgrims at their settlement in Plymouth.

On April 5th, 1887, six-year-old Helen Keller discovered how the word “water” was spelled in sign language, and what it meant, from her teacher, Annie Sullivan.

Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft won Oscars for playing Keller and Sullivan in the 1962 movie “The Miracle Worker.” Bancroft could not attend the awards ceremony, and Joan Crawford accepted the award for her, allegedly to spite losing nominee Bette Davis, born on this date in 1908. Davis and Crawford had co-starred the previous year in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”, but only Davis got an Oscar nomination.

Bette Davis is one of many Oscar-winning performers born on April 5th.  She received two Academy Awards, as did Spencer Tracy (born 1900), and Melvyn Douglas (born 1901).  Two men who played Abraham Lincoln during their careers also shared an April 5th birthday: Walter Huston (born 1883, Oscar winner for “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and father of director John Huston) and Gregory Peck (born 1916, won the Oscar as Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird”).

LADIES FIRST

January 5th in history:

George and Martha Washington never lived in the White House, but they were married at the “White House” in January of 1759.  This White House was Martha’s plantation in Virginia.  Sources disagree on what day the Washington wedding took place.  Some say it was January 5th.  Others say it was on the 6th, or the 17th.  Martha became the first “First Lady” of the United States 30 years later.

Jane Wyman also married a future U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, but wasn’t married to him long enough to be a First Lady. When Reagan was president, Wyman was starring on TV in “Falcon Crest.”  Her movie career included a Best Actress Oscar for the movie Johnny Belinda.  Wyman was born January 5th, 1917.

Another Oscar winner born on this day is Diane Keaton (1946), the first of many ladies to earn an Academy Award for acting in a Woody Allen film (Annie Hall).  Keaton’s credits include Reds and the Godfather movies.  She also starred in a TV movie as Amelia Earhart, the first lady to fly solo across the Atlantic.  Earhart was declared dead on this date in 1939, more than a year after she disappeared while trying to fly around the world.

And Nellie Tayloe Ross became America’s first “lady governor” when she was sworn in as governor of Wyoming on January 5th, 1925.  Nellie had won a special election to succeed her husband, William Ross, who had died after an appendectomy.