Browsing: August 9

A Brief History On August 9, 1969, members of the Manson Family, followers of cult leader Charles Manson, murdered actress Sharon Tate, her unborn baby, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and 3 other people.  Although definitely nutty people with bizarre, cult ideas about sparking a race war through senseless murder, none of these people successfully played the insanity card.  Charles Manson died in prison in November of 2017 one seriously deranged dude that seemed to be a shoo in for the loony bin.  We previously discussed “9 Blatantly Nutty People Not Found Insane” and today we nominate another 3 goofy people…

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A Brief History On August 9, 1936, Clevelander and Ohio State University athlete James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens won his 4th Gold Medal at the 1936 Olympics, by anchoring the 4 X 100 m relay, winning in a world record time of 39.8 seconds.  An international sensation, Owens was not even the first Olympic athlete to win 4 Gold Medals in an Olympics!  Here we list 10 Greatest Olympic Athletes, or at least as we see it.  (No special order to the list.) Digging Deeper 1. Jesse Owens, 1936. Not only a spectacular performance at the 1936 Olympics, but Owens also set…

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A Brief History On August 9, 1974, the Watergate presidential corruption scandal reached its climax when Richard M. Nixon became the first US president to resign, leaving Vice President Gerald R. Ford to become President after not having been elected as President or as Vice President. Digging Deeper The Watergate scandal started during the 1972 presidential campaign when operatives of the Nixon campaign broke into Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. and the five men were arrested on June 17, 1972.  An investigation revealed the ties to the Nixon campaign, and the President sadly saw…

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A Brief History On August 9, 1930, the voluptuous Betty Boop made her big screen debut in the animated cartoon, Dizzy Dishes.  Featuring a gorilla patron at a restaurant and singing cats, Betty was portrayed as a sort of dog-woman (Poodle) in this cartoon, prior to her “evolution” to purely human form.  She went on to become an All-American icon, a character certainly associated with the United States by Americans and others alike.  Here we list 10 such characters that are identified as uniquely American.  (Apologies to Rocky and Bullwinkle, Woody Woodpecker, Yogi Bear and to Tom and Jerry, et…

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A Brief History On August 9th, 1965, Tom Jones’s rendition of “What’s New Pussycat?”, the title song of the movie with the same name, was released in the UK. It was hugely successful in the music charts, having reached no. 3 in the US and no. 11 in the UK and was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. Digging Deeper Two famous German-speaking actresses of the post-war years starred in the film adaptation: Romy Schneider and Ursula Andress. For more on them, please refer to Part 2 of the series. In this article we present German-speaking actresses…

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