THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 31

August 31 is the 243rd day of the year (244th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 122 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56). 

NATIONAL DIATOMACEOUS EARTH DAY  

1314 – King Håkon V Magnusson moves the capital of Norway from Bergen to Oslo.

1422 – King Henry V of England dies of dysentery (at age 36) while in France. His son, Henry VI becomes King of England at the age of 9 months.

1795 – War of the First Coalition: The British capture Trincomalee (present-day Sri Lanka) from the Dutch in order to keep it out of French hands.

1803 – Meriwether Lewis and William Clark start their expedition to the west by leaving Pittsburgh at 11 in the morning.

1864 – During the American Civil War, Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launch an assault on Atlanta.

1888 – Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's confirmed victims.

1897 – Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector.

1935 – In an attempt to stay out of the growing turmoil in Europe, the United States passes the first of its Neutrality Acts.

1939 – Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland the following day thus starting World War II in Europe.

1943 – The USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after a black person, is commissioned. The Harmon was named after Mess Attendant Leonard Roy Harmon, who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on the USS San Francisco during the battle of Guadalcanal.

1958 – A parcel bomb sent by Ngô Đình Nhu, younger brother and chief adviser of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm, fails to kill King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.

1980 – After two weeks of nationwide strikes, the Polish government was forced to sign the Gdańsk Agreement, allowing for the creation of the trade union Solidarity.

1982 – Anti-government demonstrations are held in 66 Polish cities to commemorate the second anniversary of the Gdańsk Agreement.

1996 – Saddam Hussein's troops seized Irbil after the Kurdish Masoud Barzani appealed for help to defeat his Kurdish rival PUK.

1997 – Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul die in a car crash in Paris.

2006 – Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream, stolen on August 22, 2004, is recovered in a raid by Norwegian police.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

12 – Caligula, Roman emperor (d. 41)

1903 – Arthur Godfrey, American radio and television host (d. 1983)

1935 – Eldridge Cleaver, American activist and author (d. 1998)

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.

MOVIE DIALOG OF THE DAY ― YOUR HIGHNESS (2011)

Connection with the previous post (500 DAYS OF SUMMER): Zooey Deschanel co-starred in both films.

RATINGS: IMDB ― 5.6/10, Rotten Tomatoes ― 27%, ME ― DNS

Belladonna: Why would anyone want to be with you?

Leezar: I'm not sure really... oh yeah, perhaps because I'm rich, I live in a castle and I can do magic.

Zooey Deschanel as Belladonna and Justin Theroux as Tom

Trivia (From IMDB):

Although the film was written by Ben Best and Danny McBride, the dialogue is heavily improvised. Director David Gordon Green said there was never a script used on-set. Only the plot outline and written notes were used.

During filming, James Franco flew back and forth between New York City and Belfast, because he was attending full-time classes in college.

The premise for the movie evolved from a frivolous game David Gordon Green and Danny McBride used to play to while away on film sets. Each would take turns in suggesting a title for a film, and the other would try to concoct a viable storyline. When the title "Your Highness" was put forward, the premise was, "It's about a Prince who gets stoned and fights dragons."

James Franco took sword training for nine months before and during filming.

Natalie Portman admitted she only did this movie because there was some uncertainty if Black Swan would get green-lit by a major studio. She signed on to this film for a paycheck, and use it to help finance Black Swan herself, should the need have ever risen. However, Black Swan got green-lit, and went underway fairly easily, and Natalie got stuck doing this film having already signed on.

The name of Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) could be taken to mean "beautiful woman" in Italian. However, belladonna is also an extremely toxic plant (Atropa belladonna, a.k.a. "Deadly Nightshade") used in ancient and medieval times as an aphrodisiac, a hallucinogenic, and a poison. Witches were said to use belladonna to enable them to fly.

For the green band (appropriate audiences) trailer a shot of Natalie Portman's back (that was also used unaltered in the red band trailer) was digitally altered to turn a thong into a more substantial and less revealing garment.

James Franco plays Danny McBride's older brother in this movie. In real-life, Franco is younger than McBride by a little more than a year.

Filming began in Northern Ireland in the Summer of 2009, and concluded in October 2009.

A possible sequel has not been ruled out, and Danny McBride may return as Thadeous. Natalie Portman may or may not return as Isabel, and James Franco is not likely to return as Fabious, because he disliked the film. However, due to the film only earning 24.8 million dollars worldwide on a budget of 49.9 million dollars, a sequel is highly unlikely.

James Franco and Zooey Deschanel sing their own songs in the movie.

The Kingdom of Mourne from which the brothers hail is likely derived from the Mourne Mountains, located close to the shooting locations in Northern Ireland.

Voted online as one of the worst films ever made.

Isabel (Natalie Portman) could had gone on to her own spin-off movie. But, due to negative reviews from critics and poor box-office results, a possible spin-off film, which focused on Natalie Portman's character, never came to consideration or realization.

That same year, "Game of Thrones" premiered. In the series, Charles Dances played Tywin Lannister. In this film, Charles Dance plays King Tallious.
4 of 19 found this interesting | Share this

Isabel (Natalie Portman) is a warrior. In the Star Wars and Thor franchises, Natalie Portman's characters falls in love with warriors.

Natalie Portman struggled to keep a straight face and kept losing it over the "burning in my beaver" line which she stumbled with and the scene had to be filmed 4 times.

Spoilers ― 

The ending which Isabel convinces Thadeous to go with her to slay the witch, which Isabel will be free of her chastity belt hinted at and left it open for a sequel. But, due to poor Box-Office results, a sequel never happened.

EXPLANATIONS TO 28 JOKES ONLY SMART PEOPLE CAN UNDERSTAND: PART IV

22. Pretentious? Moi?

Why it’s funny: Only a pretentious person whose daily life doesn’t require French would actually say “moi” and mean it.

23. Two women walk into a bar and talk about the Bechdel test.



Why it’s funny: The Bechdel test is a measure of gender equality in the media. A piece of media is considered to pass the test if it includes at least two women who talk to each other about something besides men. This joke passes the test.

24. Heisenberg was speeding down the highway. A cop pulls him over and says “Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?” Heisenberg says, “No, but I knew where I was.”



Why it’s funny: Werner Heisenberg was a German physicist and one of the key figures in quantum theory. His famous “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal” states that we can know either where a quantum particle is or how fast it’s moving, but it’s impossible to know both at the same time.

25. C, E♭, and G walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry, no minors.”

Why it’s funny: C, E♭, and G are the musical notes that constitute a C minor chord.

26. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.



Why it’s funny: You were expecting the word “problem,” but the joke-teller replaced it with “precipitate,” which is the solid that forms in a solution of liquid after a chemical reaction has taken place.

27. A linguistics professor says during a lecture that, “In English, a double negative forms a positive. But in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, in no language in the world can a double positive form a negative.” But then a voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

Why it’s funny: “Yeah” and “right” are technically affirmative words, but put these two positives together and you get an ultra-sarcastic, “Yeah, right.”

28. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? A fish.



Why it’s funny: Surrealism is an movement all about creating weird illogical art. As this joke makes no sense, it is itself a surrealist work.

From bhavinionline

THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 30

August 30 is the 242nd day of the year (243rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 123 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Friday or Saturday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Wednesday (56).

NATIONAL TOASTED MARSHMALLOW DAY  

1363 – Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing,Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition.

1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre — Creek "Red Sticks" kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.

1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Richmond — Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.

1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.

1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1974 – A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. Eight are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities.

1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Azerbaijan declares independence from Soviet Union.

1995 – Bosnian War: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.

1998 – The Second Congo War: Armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and their Angolan and Zimbabwean allies recapture Matadi and the Inga dams in the western DRC from RCD and Rwandan troops.

2003 – While being towed across the Barents Sea, the de-commissioned Russian submarine K-159 sinks, taking nine of her crew and 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel with her.

2014 – Prime Minister of Lesotho, Tom Thabane, flees to South Africa as the army allegedly stages a coup.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1893 – Huey Long, American lawyer and politician, 40th Governor of Louisiana (d. 1935)

1912 – Edward Mills Purcell, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)

1930 – Warren Buffett, American businessman and philanthropist

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.

TOP 100 SONGS OF 1967 ― NUMBER 1

50 years ago these songs were released. I took the top 100 from Rolling Stone for 1967 and put them in the order in which I think they should have listed, since this was the decade of the music I grew up on. Hope you enjoyed it.

SOMEBODY TO LOVE ― JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

Genre ― Psychedelic Rock



Video  

"Somebody to Love", originally titled "Someone to Love", is a rock song that was written by Darby Slick. It was originally recorded by The Great Society, and later by Jefferson Airplane. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Jefferson Airplane's version No. 274 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Background ― 

Written by The Great Society guitarist Darby Slick after realizing his girlfriend had left him, and first performed by that band, which included his then-sister-in-law Grace Slick on vocals, the song made little impact outside of the club circuit in the Bay Area. The song was released in 1966 as a single with the B-side another Darby Slick composition titled "Free Advice" on the North Beach subsidiary of Autumn Records, and received minimal circulation outside of San Francisco. San Francisco in the mid-'60s was the epicenter of free love, but Darby Slick saw a downside to this ethos, as it could lead to jealousy and disconnect. This song champions loyalty and monogamy, as the singer implores us to find that one true love that will nurture us and get us through the tough times.

Rerecording ― 

When Grace Slick departed to join Jefferson Airplane, she took this song with her, bringing it to the Surrealistic Pillow sessions, along with her own composition "White Rabbit". Subsequently, the Airplane's more ferocious rock and roll version became the band's first and biggest success; the single by Jefferson Airplane scored at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Jefferson Airplane's first hit song, "Somebody To Love" was also one of the first big hits to come out of the US West Coast counterculture scene. Over the next few years, musicians flocked to the San Francisco Bay Area to be part of this scene. The original version of this song that Grace Slick sang with The Great Society is more subdued. With Jefferson Airplane she sounds far more accusatory and menacing when she belts out lines like "Your mind is so full of red" and "Your friends, baby, they treat you like a guest."

"Somebody to Love" was also a track on their influential album released in February 1967, Surrealistic Pillow. The lyrics are in the second person, with each two-line verse setting a scene of alienation and despair, and the chorus repeating the title of the song, with slight variations such as: "... / Don't you need somebody to love? / Wouldn't you love somebody to love? / ..." Like the album on which it appeared, this song was instrumental in publicizing the existence of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture to the rest of the United States.

Personnel ― 

Grace Slick – lead vocals
Marty Balin – tambourine, backing vocals
Jorma Kaukonen – lead guitar (Gibson ES-335)
Paul Kantner – rhythm guitar (Rickenbacker 360)
Jack Casady – bass (Fender Precision Bass)
Spencer Dryden – drums

Use in media ― 

This version appears in the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when Raoul Duke reminisces about the first time he took LSD at The Matrix club in San Francisco in 1967. The song is also played during prologue in TV movie A Bright Shining Lie (1998), and in A Home at the End of the World (2004). The song also appears in the (2014) film St. Vincent.

In the 1996 film The Cable Guy, Jim Carrey performs a karaoke version as his character Ernie "Chip" Douglas. Carrey's version is also on the movie's soundtrack.

The full, vocal version of the song can also be heard on a radio in the beginning of the Paramount film Four Brothers.

The song is played during the Landing Zone Albany loading screen and can be played from any vehicle in the 2004 EA video game Battlefield Vietnam.

The song works as a metaphorical framing device for the Coen brothers' film A Serious Man. The senior Rabbi (Rabbi Marshak) quotes a slightly altered version of the first two lines of the song in his meeting with Danny following Danny's bar mitzvah.

The song is featured in episode five of season two of Being Human as the vampire Mitchell explores his residual humanity, through a relationship with a mortal woman.

The song was played on episode 3 of ITV drama Marchlands.

The song is a downloadable content for Rock Band 3.

The Song Is A Plays In Speakers Of Rabbids Go Home By Ubisoft

The song is part of the soundtrack of Mafia 3 by Hanger13

It was the debut single by German electronic music duo Boogie Pimps. It is a remixed version of the song. It was released on 11 January 2004 and reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. The song features uncredited vocals of Danish singer Mariah Webster in place of Grace Slick's vocals.

Music video ― 

The song is also well known for its iconic music video, which was an instant hit in the UK. It features several infants sky diving out of an aeroplane towards a giant woman (Natasha Mealey) lying on a grassy hill country landscape in her underwear, singing the song. One of the babies cries as his parachute malfunctions and he lands on the woman's breast, causing him to bounce and survive the fall (a possible reference to premature ejaculation). This is proven by the seven babies being apparent before and after the parachute jump, in a star formation, and sitting on her left breast after landing on her waist and breast area. The video ends with the woman taking a giant baby bottle and squirting milk all over the camera.

Other versions ― 

• Japanese rock band The Mops covered it on their 1968 debut album Psychedelic Sounds in Japan.
• Aguaturbia covered the song in 1969 on their self-titled debut LP. Their cover version is titled "Alguien Para Amar".
• The Lambrettas (a British mod-revival band) released "Somebody to Love" as a single on Elton John's Rocket label in 1982.
• Irish band In Tua Nua covered the song in 1985.
• South African Hi-NRG group Café Society covered the song in 1984.
• It was covered by Angry Samoans on their 1986 EP, Yesterday Started Tomorrow (with some lyric changes).
• The Serbian hard rock band Cactus Jack recorded a version on their live cover album DisCover in 2002.
• The song also received cover versions by Mother's Finest.
• Great White covered it in 1992 on their album Psycho City.
• W.A.S.P. in their 1995's album Still Not Black Enough.
• The Ramones (with background vocals by Traci Lords) on their 1993 cover album Acid Eaters.
• Jim Carrey on the soundtrack of the film The Cable Guy.
• In 2003 by Boogie Pimps (No. 3 UK) with the music video featuring Natasha Mealey.
• Salsoul Orchestra on the album Salsoul Orchestra.
• Kasabian covered it on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge.
• Lo-Fi artist Zola Jesus covered it, featuring Dead Luke
• Chaud covered the song on her 2010 EP The Black Market Revealed
• Alice Gold covered the song on BBC Radio 2.
• Russian band Mumiy Troll covered the song in 2010.
• Marcella Detroit, as Marcy Levy, covered the song on the American Pop Soundtrack.
• Barbara and Ernie covered the song on their 1971 folk/funk album "Prelude to..."
• Mandy Morton of Spriguns of Tolgus on her 1983 solo album "Valley of Light"
• Saint Privat released a single cover in 2006, also featured in their album Superflu.
• Agent Orange covered the song on their album "When you Least Expect It".
• In 2015, The Jefferson Airplane version was heavily sampled by House producers, Mr. Belt & Wezol and Freejak, released on Spinnin' Deep.
• In 2015, DeAnna Johnson covered the song on The Voice.

From Wikipedia and Google (image)

THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 29

August 29 is the 241st day of the year (242nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 124 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Thursday or Friday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Sunday (56).

NATIONAL CHOP SUEY DAY  

1498 – Vasco da Gama decides to depart Calicut and return to Kingdom of Portugal.

1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.

1756 – Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War.

1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen.

1910 – The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, also known as the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, becomes effective, officially starting the period of Japanese rule in Korea.

1944 – Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.

1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1958 – The United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1966 – The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

1966 – Leading Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb is executed for plotting the assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1991 – Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party. The end of the Soviet Union.

2003 – Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing an estimated 1,836 people and causing over $108 billion in damage.

2007 – United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: Six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.

2012 – At least 26 miners are killed and 21 missing after a blast in the Xiaojiawan coal mine, located at Panzhihuain Sichuan Province, China.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1632 – John Locke, English physician and philosopher (d. 1704)

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.

EXPLANATIONS TO 28 JOKES ONLY SMART PEOPLE CAN UNDERSTAND: PART III

15. Helium walks into a bar and orders a beer, the bartender says, “‘Sorry, we don’t serve noble gases here.” He doesn’t react.

Why it’s funny: Helium is a noble gas which is inert.


16. Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar. And doesn’t.

Why it’s funny: Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment in quantum physics, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The scenario presents a cat that may be both alive and dead, depending on an earlier random event. Although the original “experiment” was imaginary, similar principles have been researched and used in practical applications. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics.


17. A Buddhist monk approaches a hot dog stand and says “Make me one with everything.”

Why it’s funny: The punch line is “make me one with everything” which is part of the Buddhist idea, being “one with everything in the world”.


18. A Higgs Boson walks into a church and the priest says “we don’t allow Higgs Bosons in here”. The Higgs Boson then replies, “but without me, how could you have mass?”

Why it’s funny: The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle discovered and announced at CERN. It would explain why some fundamental particles have mass when the symmetries controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force. Co-incidentally it is called "the god particle", which can create mass. Here it is used to effect of a  church mass.


19. The programmer’s wife tells him: “Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread. If they have eggs, get a dozen.” The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread.

Why it’s funny: As he is a computer programmer he would follow it as a computer instruction. So his wife asked him to get bread and if they had eggs get 12. Since they had eggs he bought 12 loaves of bread.


20. There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet.

Why it’s funny: 1 giga byte = 1024 MB or megabytes. GB is also called as gigs popularly.


21. A photon is going through airport security. The TSA agent asks if he has any luggage. The photon says, “No, I’m traveling light.”

Why it’s funny: “Traveling light” is a turn of phrase used to indicate traveling without much (or any) luggage. In science, a photon is a particle of light (almost always moving).

From bhavinionline

TOP 100 SONGS OF 1967 ― NUMBER 2

50 years ago these songs were released. I took the top 100 from Rolling Stone for 1967 and put them in the order in which I think they should have listed, since this was the decade of the music I grew up on. Enough of the formalities, here we go. Enjoy.

LIGHT MY FIRE ― THE DOORS

Genre ― Psychedelic Rock / Acid Rock



Video  

"Light My Fire" is a song by the Doors, which was recorded in August 1966 and released in January 1967 on their self-titled debut album. Released as an edited single on April 24, 1967, it spent three weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in late July, and one week on the Cash Box Top 100, nearly a year after its recording.

A year later, it re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968 following the success of José Feliciano's version of the song (which peaked at #3 on the Billboard chart), peaking at #87. The song was largely written by the band's guitarist Robby Krieger, and was credited to the entire band. The single was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in September 1967 for 1,000,000 units shipped. As of December 1971, it was the band's best-selling single; with over 927,000 copies sold.

A live version was released in 1983 on their album Alive, She Cried, the first of several live albums released in subsequent decades to include the song. "Light My Fire" achieved modest success in Australia, where it peaked at #22 on the ARIA chart. The single originally reached #49 in the UK in 1967, but experienced belated success in that country in 1991, when a reissue peaked at #7. This reissue was more successful in Ireland, peaking atop the IRMA chart for two weeks in June. The reissue occurred due to a revived interest in the band following Oliver Stone's film biopic The Doors. The song is ranked at #35 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was included in the Songs of the Century list. Feliciano's cover version won a 1969 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, the same year he won another Grammy for Best New Artist.

History ―
The song originated as a Robby Krieger composition. Although the album version was just over seven minutes long, it was widely requested for radio play, so a single version was edited to under three minutes with nearly all the instrumental break removed for airplay on AM radio.

Ray Manzarek played the song's bass line with his left hand on a Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, while performing the other keyboard parts on a Vox Continental using his right hand. After the recording session, producer Paul A. Rothchild brought in session musician Larry Knechtel to overdub a Fender Precision Bass guitar to double the keyboard bass line. When the Doors played the song at live concerts, Manzarek used the Fender Rhodes Piano Bass without augmentation.

The Ed Sullivan Show ―

The band appeared on various TV shows, such as American Bandstand, miming to a playback of the single. However, "Light My Fire" was performed live by the Doors on The Ed Sullivan Show broadcast on September 17, 1967. The Doors were asked by producer Bob Precht, Sullivan's son-in-law, to change the line "girl, we couldn't get much higher", as the sponsors were uncomfortable with the possible reference to drugs. The band agreed to do so, and did a rehearsal using the amended lyrics, "girl, we couldn't get much better"; however, during the live performance, the band's lead singer Jim Morrison sang the original, unaltered lyrics. Ed Sullivan did not shake Jim Morrison's hand as he left the stage. The band had been negotiating a multi-episode deal with the producers; however, after violating the agreement not to perform the offending line, they were informed they would never do the Sullivan show again. Morrison's response was "We just 'did' Sullivan."

Buick TV commercial ―

John Densmore recalled that Buick offered $75,000 in October 1968 to adapt the song for use in a Buick Opel TV commercial ("Come on, Buick, light my fire"). Morrison, however, was still in London after a European tour had just ended on September 20 and could not be contacted by the other band members, who agreed to the deal in his absence. As the band had agreed in 1965 to both equal splits and everyone having veto power in decisions, Morrison consequently called Buick and threatened to personally smash an Opel with a sledgehammer on television, should the commercial be aired.

Speed discrepancy ―

The 40th Anniversary mix of the debut album presents a stereo version of "Light My Fire" in speed-corrected form for the first time. The speed discrepancy (being about 3.5% slow) was brought to Bruce Botnick's attention by Brigham Young University professor Michael Hicks, who noted that all video and audio live performances of the Doors performing the song, the sheet music, and statements of band members show the song in a key almost a half step higher (key of A) than the stereo LP release (key of A♭/G♯). Until the 2006 remasters, only the original 45 RPM singles ("Light My Fire" and "Break On Through") were produced at the correct speed.

From Wikipedia and Google (image)

THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 28

August 28 is the 240th day of the year (241st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 125 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Wednesday or Thursday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Saturday (56).

NATIONAL CHERRY TURNOVERS DAY  

1189 – The Third Crusade: The Crusaders begin the Siege of Acre under Guy of Lusignan.

1524 – The Kaqchikel Maya rebel against their former Spanish allies during the Spanish conquest of Guatemala.

1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay.

1789 – William Herschel discovers a new moon of Saturn: Enceladus.

1833 – The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 receives Royal Assent, abolishing slavery through most of the British Empire.

1845 – The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.

1862 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas. The battle ends on August 30.

1914 – World War I: The Royal Navy defeats the German fleet in the Battle of Heligoland Bight.

1924 – The Georgian opposition stages the August Uprising against the Soviet Union.

1953 – Nippon Television broadcasts Japan's first television show, including its first TV advertisement.

1957 – U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond begins a filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on Civil Rights Act of 1957; he stopped speaking 24 hours and 18 minutes later, the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator.

1968 – Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention.

1988 – Ramstein air show disaster: Three aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collide and the wreckage falls into the crowd. Seventy-five are killed and 346 seriously injured.

1990 – An F5 tornado strikes the Illinois cities of Plainfield and Joliet, killing 29 people.

1996 – Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales divorce.

1998 – Second Congo War: Loyalist troops backed by Angolan and Zimbabwean forces repulse the RCD and Rwandan offensive on Kinshasa.

2004 – Software Freedom Day is established and is firstly observed.


TODAY'S BIRTHS

1749 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author, poet, playwright, and diplomat (d. 1832)

1774 – Elizabeth Ann Seton, American nun and saint, co-founded the Sisters of Charity Federation in the Vincentian-Setonian Tradition (d. 1821)

1962 – David Fincher, American director and producer

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.