Browsing: Arts & Entertainment

A Brief History On October 12, 1957, Little Richard made a dramatic gesture to prove he was quitting rock music for a more religious life when he tossed four diamond rings into the Hunter River in Sydney, Australia.  Well, that lasted five years before Little Richard was back on stage, where he still is to this day, rocking and rolling at the age of 81. In 1955 Little Richard had a massive hit with the song “Tutti Frutti” at a time when many white parents were trying to keep their kids away from rock and roll.  This slam-bang-in-your-face song was…

A Brief History On October 11, 1975, the iconic television show Saturday Night Live made its debut with the late, great George Carlin hosting.  Guest performers included Andy Kaufman, Billy Preston and Janis Ian.  That memorable show featured Janis Ian singing her second major hit song, “At Seventeen.” Her first hit had been the controversial song “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking),” a song that dealt with a relationship between a 16-year-old white, Jewish girl and a black man.  Initially released in 1965, the song about interracial love was released 3 times before it made the charts in 1967.  It was subsequently banned from many radio stations…

A Brief History On October 9, 2012, Malala Yousafzai boarded her school bus in northwest Pakistan.  A gunman asked for Malala by name, then pointed a Colt 45 at her and fired three shots.  One bullet hit the left side of Malala’s forehead, traveled under her skin the length of her face and then penetrated her shoulder.  In the days immediately following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in England for intensive rehabilitation.  She went on to win Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for 2013. Digging…

A Brief History On October 8, 2014, the latest iteration of American Horror Story debuts with series regular Jessica Lange portraying a character based on a real-life actress of early twentieth-century cinema! Digging Deeper According to E Online and Entertainment Weekly, the persona of Lange’s character was molded after Marlene Dietrich who ranked fourth on History and Headlines’s list of German-speaking actresses of the early years.  American Horror Story: Freak Show (AHS: FS) is set in Florida in the early 1950s, around the time when Dietrich starred in such American and British films as Stage Fright (1950), No Highway in the Sky (1951) and Rancho Notorious (1952). Other aspects of the show also drew inspiration from reality.  First,…

A Brief History On October 8, 1806, British forces fighting the French at Boulogne employed Congreve rockets, the same type of rockets mentioned in the National Anthem of the United States (“…and the rockets red glare…”). Here nine people or things named “Rocket” are listed.   Digging Deeper 9. Congreve Rockets. These weapons of war were actually developed to replicate the Mysorean rockets which had been used in India against the British in the late 18th century.  The Mysorean Rockets were the first iron-cased rockets to have been successfully utilized in combat.  The British rocket program began in 1801, and the Congreve rocket was the…