A "bump" of this post from over a yr. ago to note the anniversary of the JFK assassination.
Another webcam I frequently visit is the Dealey Plaza Webcam in the southeast corner window of the sixth floor in the former Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.
This is the view from the window from which an assassin fired the shots that killed President John F. Kennedy and severely wounded Texas Governor John Connally as the presidential motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
Here is the Google Earth street view looking back towards the sixth floor. The white "X" on the road marks the spot (the black arrow points to it) where Kennedy was shot. The black arrow at the top right of the building points toward the storage room where Oswald was perched and fired the shots. It is now the Sixth Floor Museum.
During the day there are almost always tourists and sightseers and I find myself holding my breath while watching someone running out to have their photo taken on the "X".
(the person in the graphic below is hard to see because I had to enlarge it, but they're right in the center of the screen shot.) This was at around six p.m. and even though the rush hour traffic has lessened, the road was still busy and they quickly had to scamper back as so to not get run over by cars speeding around the corner.
On this day in history: A part-time construction worker visits the studios of Chess Records and cuts his first record, a souped-up version of a traditional fiddle tune given new lyrics, a new title, and an unforgettable guitar riff. A smash crossover hit, ‘Maybellene’ will make Chuck Berry an overnight sensation and lead Rolling Stone magazine to later write, “Rock & Roll guitar starts here.”
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a pre-emptive military strike on the United States Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Empire of Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy, on the morning of Sunday 7 December, 1941. Two attack waves, totaling 350 aircraft were launched from six IJN aircraft carriers which destroyed two U.S. Navy battleships, one minelayer, two destroyers and 188 aircraft. Personnel losses were 2,333 killed and 1,139 wounded. Damaged warships included three cruisers, a destroyer, and six battleships. Of those six, one was deliberately grounded and was later refloated and repaired. Two sank at their berths but were later repaired and both rejoined the fleet late in the war. Vital fuel storage, shipyards, and submarine facilities were not hit. Japanese losses were minimal at 29 aircraft and five midget submarines, with 65 Japanese servicemen killed or wounded.
The drinking straw was developed by the Egyptians in order to taste beer without removing the fermenting ingredients that floated on top of the container. The oldest straw ever found was in a Sumerian tomb and was a tube made of gold and inlaid with the precious stone lapis lazuli.
The modern paper straw was invented by Marvin C. Stone in 1888 because the rye grass straw he was using to drink his mint julep was dissolving into the drink and altering the taste.
Today in history: The Broadway musical Hair debuted in 1968; the movie was released in 1979. Several of the soundtrack songs hit the charts; this was the title tune:
Louis Braille was only 15 when he devised his raised-dot writing system for the blind. Braille, who lost his sight at the age of three, started working on the dot patterns when he was 12.
In 1882, Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States, raised money to redecorate the White House by auctioning off presidential artifacts. The items included 24 wagon loads of furniture, 30 barrels of china and a pair of Abraham Lincoln's trousers.
Trailer for the classic movie, The Longest Day. One of my favorite war movies, it's chock-full of stars including Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowall, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger, Stuart Whitman, John Wayne and many more.
Today is the anniversary of the Normandy landings in 1944, arguably the most important day of WWII. Touring the D-Day beaches is on my bucket list.
Did you know President Lincoln's dog Fido was "assassinated" by a drunk in Springfield, IL. just a year after Lincoln was shot and killed? Fido, a yellow retriever-shepherd mix had been the President's faithful companion for over five years.
There have been quite a few U.S. Presidents with the same first name; there have been three Georges: Washington, H.W. Bush and W. Bush.
The names John and William tie for second with four apiece; John: Adams, John Quincy, Tyler and Kennedy. The four Williams are Harrison, McKinley, Taft and Clinton.
The most common name for Amercian presidents is James; Monroe, Madison, Polk, Buchanan, Garfield and Carter.
Yet, there have been only two First Ladies with the same first name: Abigail Adams, wife of John (on the left, below) and Abigail Fillmore, wife of Millard. (on the right)
One of my favorite movies. The movie takes place around the time I was born, but I can identify with the characters growing up in a small Texas town.
I haven't been to the movies in years, not since Titanic. (the movie, not the actual voyage) I love movies,though, and have a fairly large collection of DVDs, mostly being my favorite movies which I gleaned from the Wal Mart bargain bin. The majority of them are still in the wrappers, unopened and I'm saving them for a rainy day. Or when I don't have Internet. Or forget to pay the cable bill.
When I was a kid, my two older sisters and I used to go to the movies fairly often, nearly every Saturday. Our folks would drop us off there on a Saturday afternoon and go do Lord only knows what, but they'd be gone a long time and we'd not only watch the movie once, but sometimes sit through it a second time waiting on our parents. Even then, concession prices were outrageous so we'd smuggle candy in and use whatever money was left over from buying tickets to get soft drinks. We'd usually have a big carton of Whoppers malted milk balls, my oldest sister's favorite candy. My other sister still says my big sis would dole them out: "One for you, one for you and two for me....one for you, one for you, two for me." I don't remember it quite that way and I'm sure my sis gave me more than my share to keep me from fidgeting and whining.
At that time, there were two theaters here in town, the La Vista Theater (recent photo) and the Capri Theatre.
The La Vista was an older movie house, but some seats were reclining and they also had a "crying room", a small soundproof room with a huge picture window so mothers could take cranky infants inside and not disturb the other patrons. I used to like to go in there sometimes just for the novelty of it. Some of their seats however were threadbare and crooked, the padding compressed by thousands of movie goer's butts over the decades. I can't remember when it closed, but the last time I was in there it was very run-down and dirty, the floor permanently sticky from thousands of gallons of spilled drinks, the once-beautiful art deco marquis in front showing its age.
The other theater, the Capri, was new, but lacked the style of the LaVista. The seats didn't recline, but at least they had padding. It's closed now as well, a victim of both a new multi-screen theater in the shopping center and the advent of home VCRs.
I remember my folks speaking of La Nora Theatre with fondness, but that was before my time. According to what I read on the 'net, it burned down in 1960.
I don't recall my parents ever going to the theater with us, but I do remember all of us going to the drive-in. At one time there were two of them here in town, both long since gone. One of them had a playground right under the huge screen and I guess I was about six or seven and looking up and seeing the shower scene from Psycho, the knife ripping through the curtain, as large as a car from that perspective. I opted for baths for years after that.
Funny how things embarrass you when you're a kid. I absently mindedly scratched my butt once in the hallway at school and one of the other guys said "Hey, Mike....you goin' to the movies?" Puzzled, I shook my head. "Jes' wonderin'." he snickered. "You were pickin' yer seat." My face turned red with the howls of every kid in earshot. He didn't think it so funny when I poured vinegar into his chocolate milk later at lunch. I'm not sure what was more funny; the look on his face when he swallowed or watching it come out his nose. The lesson I learned best that day wasn't in reading or writing, but "don't get mad, get even."
I haven't been to a drive-in since I lived in Denton. A buddy and our girlfriends would load up and go, especially on the nights when it was "bumper sticker night"; if you had the bumper sticker on your vehicle of the radio station that sponsored the night, the entire carload got in for just a few dollars. The movies usually weren't all that good, but it was fun to get there early and watch the college kids drive in and unload eight or ten out of the car and sometimes several more out of the trunk. We usually went in my friend's El Camino, parking backwards in the space and sitting in lawn chairs in the back, drinking beer and enjoying the soft, warm North Texas nights more than we did the movie.
Thinking of how much fun it was to go to the movies when I was younger reminded me of a girl I went to school with. She was a couple of years younger than me, really cute, but...well, let's just say she wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree, ok? A classmate of mine took her to the movies one Saturday evening and told us about the date on the following Monday. She lived way out in the country, so he left early to pick her up as so to be able to get to the first showing of the movie he planned to take her to. She wasn't ready - I really don't think she was too good at telling time - and they got to the theater after the movie started.
They sat through the movie and the intermission after it was over. This was back when they didn't clear the theater after the showing (and that was why my sisters and I sat through two showings of a movie when we were kids) and there were local commercials, cartoons and coming attractions before the feature started. My friend and his date watched all of that, then watched the first of the movie that they had missed.
My classmate said several minutes of what they had seen had gone by and he was ready to go. He kept glancing over at the girl, but she was engrossed in the movie as if she had never seen it before. He waited a few more minutes, trying to be polite, thinking that she'd finally catch on that she had already seen that part of the movie, then leaned over to her and whispered:
"Where did we come in at?"
She looked at him like HE was the stupid one and with a mouth full of popcorn turned around and pointed:
I saw an article earlier about how today is the anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler by suicide in his bunker in 1945. I'm sure it was just a coincidence, but Family Guy had an episode just last night with this clip:
Even as horrible as is the subject matter, both suicide and Hitler, I couldn't help but laugh.
