I’m glad they banished live pigeon shooting, but I think they need to bring back rope climbing. From National Geographic.
Solo Synchronized Swimming
Tug-of-War
Jeu de Paume (Palm Game)
Rope Climbing
Hot-Air Ballooning
Live Pigeon Shooting
July 27 Notable Birthdays
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
TV producer Norman Lear (All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford & Son, Powers that Be, The Nancy Walker Show, The Jeffersons, Hot L Baltimore) is 90.
Actor Jerry Van Dyke (Coach, My Mother the Car, The Judy Garland Show, The Headmaster, Accidental Family) is 81.
Peggy Fleming (1968 Olympic gold medalist: figure skating; Olympic Hall of Famer; ABC sports commentator; International Women’s Sports Hall of Famer) is 64.
Betty Thomas (actress: For Peter’s Sake, Dream On, actress: Hill Street Blues; The Seventh Sign, When Your Lover Leaves, Troop Beverly Hills) is 64.
Singer Maureen McGovern (Different Worlds, The Morning After) is 63.
Actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta (The World Is Not Enough, Maria Maddalena, Picking Up the Pieces, Just One Night) is 44.
Actress Maya Rudolph (Saturday Night Live, City of Angels, Chuck & Buck, Duets) is 40.
Filed under Birthdays
On July 27…
1789 – The Department of Foreign Affairs was established by the U.S. Congress and President George Washington. The agency later was named the Department of State, or the State Department.
1953 – The armistice agreement that ended the Korean War was signed at Panmunjon, Korea. The war lasted three years and 32 days. The truce negotiations between North Korean and U.S. delegates representing South Korea lasted two years and seventeen days.
1974 – The U.S. House Judiciary Committee began impeachment proceedings against President Richard M. Nixon over the Watergate affair.
1995 – The Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. opened to the public on the 42nd anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War. U.S. President Bill Clinton and President Kim Young Sam of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) dedicated the memorial. A plaque at the flagstaff reads, “Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered a call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met.”
1996 – An early-morning pipe-bomb blast in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, killed 2 people and injured more than 100 others, as an overnight celebration erupted into chaos. Eric Robert Rudolph, who eluded police until his capture May 31, 2003, pleaded guilty to the bombing on April 13, 2005.
Filed under History
Retro Quote
“England is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn’t make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn’t been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler’s ambitions. Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the Earth’s land and a quarter of the Earth’s population.”
– Mitt Romney, in his book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, published last year.
Romney is starting to sound like George W. Bush – born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a gold cork up his ass.
Quote of the Day
“I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting. It had been one of those days.”
– Jim Greer, former chairman of the Florida GOP, during a deposition in his lawsuit for back pay from the state.
Filed under News
In Memoriam – Lupe Ontiveros, 1942 – 2012
Actress Lupe Ontiveros who co-starred in popular films such as Selena, As Good as It Gets and Real Women Have Curves, died of liver cancer Friday in Los Angeles. She was 69. A native of El Paso, Texas, Ontiveros began her career in 1976, when she had a brief role as a maid on Charlie’s Angels. Like many Hispanic actresses of her time, that was pretty much all she could get. But, while she embraced her ethnic heritage, she also refused to let herself be defined by it. She received greater notoriety after portraying Yolanda Saldivar, the woman obsessed with singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez, in the 1997 film Selena. Saldivar shot Selena to death in 1995, after Selena’s parents discovered Saldivar had been embezzling money from the Selena fan club she managed. Saldivar is now serving life in prison.
Most recently Ontiveros appeared in ABC’s Desperate Housewives as a nosy mother-in-law. Regardless of whatever character she played – no matter how stereotypical – Ontiveros set a high standard for all actresses to follow. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Filed under News
July 26 Notable Birthdays
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Singer Mick Jagger (The Rolling Stones; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer) is 69.
Actress Helen Mirren (Ilyena Lydia Mironoff; Prime Suspect, The Hawk, White Knights, The Queen) is 67.
Drummer Roger Taylor (Queen) is 63.
Actress Susan George (Straw Dogs, Jack the Ripper, Mandingo, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry) is 62.
Dorothy Hamill (Olympic Hall of Famer; Olympic Gold Medalist ice skater [1976]; U.S. Ice Skating Champion [1974-1976]; developed new skating move: Hamill camel) is 56.
Actor Kevin Spacey (American Beauty, The Usual Suspects, A Time to Kill, Outbreak, Consenting Adults, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Lost in Yonkers, Henry and June, Working Girl, Wiseguy, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, L.A. Confidential) is 53.
Actress Sandra Bullock (Speed, Speed 2: Cruise Control, The Net, While You Were Sleeping, A Time to Kill, Hope Floats, Forces of Nature, Miss Congeniality, Fool Proof) is 48.
Actor Jeremy Piven (The Larry Sanders Show, Ellen, Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, Kiss the Girls, Cupid, Serendipity, Highway, Black Hawk Down) is 47.
Actress Kate Beckinsale (Pearl Harbor, One Against the Wind, Much Ado About Nothing, Haunted, Shooting Fish, Brokedown Palace, Alice Through the Looking Glass) is 39.
Filed under Birthdays
On July 26…
1775 – The U.S. Congress established the U.S. Post Office and named Benjamin Franklin as its first Postmaster.
1788 – New York entered the U.S. as the 11th state.
1796 – Artist George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, PA.
1856 – Playwright George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion, Man and Superman, Saint Joan) was born in Dublin, Ireland.
1894 – Author – philosopher Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Crome Yellow, Point Counter Point) was born in Surrey, England.
1908 – U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte ordered the creation of a federal agency later called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
1909 – Actress Vivian Vance (I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Lucy in Connecticut, The Lucy Show) was born in Cherryvale, KS.
1928 – Movie director Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange) was born in New York City.
Filed under History
Chief Writing Wolf 