No one needs to disrobe, it's much too cold, we've got plenty of beads, (unless you like to disrobe in public and then, it's between you and your maker.)
Today is also know as Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day, which heralds the beginning of fasting in Lent. On this day (so the historians say) there were feasts of pancakes to use up the supplies of fat, butter and eggs... foods that were forbidden during austere Lent. The word 'shrove' is the past tense of the English verb 'shrive' which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by way of confession and doing penance.
In England there are several celebrations on this day but perhaps the best known one is the Pancake Day Race at Olney in Buckinghamshire which has been held since 1445.
The race came about when a woman cooking pancakes heard the shriving bell summoning her to confession. She ran to church wearing her apron and still holding her frying pan, and thus without knowing it, started a tradition that has lasted for over five hundred years.
Keep flipping them pancakes!
February 21, 1964 -
The Rolling Stones release their first single in America, a cover of the Buddy Holly song Not Fade Away.
Phil Spector is credited with playing maracas on the record but in fact he was playing an empty cognac bottle with a 50 cent piece.
February 21, 1967 -
One Million Years B.C., starring Raquel Welch (R.I.P.,) her pre-historic brassière and a bunch of dinosaur puppets, premiered on this date.
As I've mentioned in the past, folks going to the Creation Museum, this is NOT a documentary.
February 21, 1970 -
The Jackson 5, led by 11-year old Michael Jackson, introduced themselves to America with their TV debut on American Bandstand.
The performances showed not only that the group were amazing performers, but that Michael was a superstar in the making.
February 21, 1981 -
Charles Rocket, first in the long line of performers on Saturday Night Live to drop the f-bomb, cursed live at the end of the episode in response to a question about how it felt being shot during a skit.
Due partially to the violation of broadcast standards, along with Saturday Night Live's low ratings, Rocket and most of that seasons cast and writers were fired shortly thereafter.
(the clip from SNL is no longer available from NBC.)
Little remembered that same evening, Prince appeared, unbilled, late on the show and performed Party Up. It was his first appearance on the show.
February 21, 2008 -
Paul Mawhinney's collection of 3 million vinyl records, amassed over 40 years while he owned a record store in Pittsburgh, was sold on eBay for $3,002,150, on this date. The bid was a sham, it turned out to be an unsuspecting Irishman who said his account had been hacked.
Mawhinney held onto his collection until 2013, when he sold it to the Brazilian collector Zero Freitas.
Mr. Freitas currently now owns over six million records, a collection which he intends to catalogue for public use and transform into a vast listenable archive.
Today's moment of Zen
Today in History:
(Please feel free to chart the following genealogy, as it may be on the test)
February 21, 1437 -
King James I of Scotland's grandfather, Robert II, had married twice and the awkward circumstances of the first marriage (the one with James's grandmother Elizabeth Mure - he didn't get around to marrying her until several years and children into their relationship) led some to dispute its validity. Conflict broke out between the descendants of the first marriage and the unquestionably legitimate descendants of the second marriage over who had the better right to the Scottish throne.
Matters came to a head on this date, when a group of Scots led by Sir Robert Graham assassinated James at the Friars Preachers Monastery in Perth. He attempted to escape his assailants through a sewer. However, three days previously, he had had the other end of the drain blocked up because of its connection to the tennis court outside, balls habitually got lost in it.
I'm sure the irony was not lost on James while he scrambled around in the sewer.
February 21, 1803 -
Edward Despard and six co-conspirators were executed at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, in front of a crowd of at least 20,000 spectators, for plotting to assassinate England's King George III and to destroy the Bank of England. Despard was originally sentenced, with six of his fellow-conspirators (John Wood and John Francis, both privates in the army, carpenter Thomas Broughton, shoemaker James Sedgwick Wratton, slater Arthur Graham and John Macnamara,) to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
These were the last men to be so sentenced in England, although prior to execution the sentence was commuted to simple hanging and beheading, amid fears that the Draconian punishment might spark public dissent.
This must have been a very pretty sight indeed.
February 21, 1878 -
The first telephone directory was issued with 50 subscribers, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut on this date.
The first prank phone call to a Mr. Lipshitz soon followed.
February 21, 1885 -
America's greatest phallic symbol, the Washington Monument, was dedicated by President Chester A. Arthur on this date. The shaft towers over 555 feet into the air and sports an aluminum foreskin.
The monument was the tallest structure in the world when completed.
Talk about feeling inadequate (and talk about smegma.)
February 21, 1916 -
The Battle of Verdun began today, which in nine months yielded 975,000 casualties and almost no change in the front line.
It is the bloodiest battle in history, and often the one remarked as having the "highest density of dead per square yard."
February 21, 1917 -
The SS Mendi steamship sank after being accidentally rammed in the British Channel by the SS Darro, an empty meat ship bound for Argentina. 607 members of the South African Labour Corps, 9 officers and 33 crew lost their lives.
The crew of the Darro made no attempt to rescue survivors. It has been suggested that this was because most of the men on the SS Mendi were black.
February 21, 1918 -
The last Carolina Parakeet, Incas, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on this date, the only native parrot species in the Eastern US. The species went extinct through a combination of loss of environment and overhunting for their decorative feathers.
Coincidentally, the last Carolina Parakeet died in the same cage in which the last Passenger Pigeon, Martha died.
February 21, 1922 -
The Italian built airship Roma crashed to the ground in Norfolk Virginia after the explosion of the hydrogen caused by the airship coming into contact with power lines turned the dirigible into a blazing inferno causing it to crash 1,000 ft to the ground.
Only 11 passengers and crew survived the crash by jumping from the airship before it hit the power lines.
February 21, 1925 -
98 years ago, the top hatted character Eustace Tilley first appeared on a magazine cover on this date. Eustace Tilley, the mascot of The New Yorker magazine, was based on an engraving of Compte Alfred d'Orsay, interpreted by house cartoonist and art director Rea Irvin.
February 21, 1931 -
Oh, what a relief it is!...
Miles Laboratories introduced Alka-Seltzer® on this date. (One of our favorite bunkies has Proustian-like memories of living just outside the Elkhart factory site.)
February 21, 1933 -
Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like being between the keys of a piano. The notes are there, you can sing them, but they can't be found on any instrument. That's like me. I live in between this. I live in both worlds, the black and white world.
Singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist, Nina Simone (Eunice Kathleen Waymon) was born on this date.
February 21, 1937 -
The first successful flying car made its maiden flight on this date. Developed by Waldo Waterman, the Arrowbile was a hybrid Studebaker-aircraft.
The three-wheeled car was powered by a typical 100-horsepower Studebaker engine. The wings detached for storage. It flew safely but generated little customer interest, and only five were produced.
February 21, 1947 -
Edwin H. Land first demonstrated, the first instant camera, the Polaroid Land camera, during a meeting of the Optical Society of America (OSA) at the Hotel Pennsylvania, in New York City.
The camera produces a black and white photograph in sixty seconds, using development and fixer chemicals sandwiched in pods with the photographic paper and film.
February 21, 1953 -
Francis Crick and James D. Watson came up with a key insight in their discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule on this date. (And yes, they stole information from Rosalind Franklin and James D. Watson is a racist but I'm not going to wade into that thicket.)
At first they were going with a squiggle or smiley face structure until they hit upon the double helix.
February 21, 1965 -
Former Black Muslim leader El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, aka Malcolm X was shot to death on this date, in front of 400 people in New York by assassins identified as Black Muslims.
He was murdered at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. His wife, Betty Sha-bazz, pregnant with twins, was sitting in the audience along with his 4-year-old daughter Quibi-lah at the time. (New information has come to light, exonerating two of the men, Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam, who each spent more than 20 years in prison.)
February 21, 1972 -
Only Nixon could go to China - old Vulcan proverb
To celebrate the 1848 publication of The Communist Manifesto in London on this date, (written by Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels) -
Richard M. Nixon (and St. Pat of the Good Republican Cloth Coat) visited the People's Republic of China to normalize Sino-American relations, becoming the first US president to visit a country not diplomatically recognized by the US.
February 21, 1988 -
Television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart of the Assemblies of God, with tears streaming down his face, confessed sinning with a prostitute (Debra Murphree) in a Louisiana hotel room.
A second scandal with yet another prostitute emerges in 1991, further killed his evangelical career. It may not have anything to do with the situation but Jimmy is related to both Mickey Gilley and Jerry Lee Lewis.
February 21, 1995 -
Steve Fossett, a 50-year-old stock broker from Chicago, became the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, on this day.
The American businessman, aviator, sailor, and adventurer landed in Saskatchewan, Canada, after taking off from South Korea - and he used the same balloon that successfully carried him across the Atlantic two years earlier. Unfortunately, he was killed in a crash in 2007 while piloting a light aircraft over the Great Basin Desert in California.
And so it goes.