Morning Update, October 28, 2009

The_Kitchen_Guy

There were no new developments in Paige's case yesterday. No news, no new developments.

In news of Candles for Paige we had 68 candles as of this post. Remember, candles go out after 48 hours so keep lighting candles for Paige, her family and her three children.

Instructions for lighting candles for Paige are in the Missing thread, in this post.

On This Day In History...

...in 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, for the second time, this time, overriding the veto or President Woodrow Wilson. In December of 1918, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, prohibiting the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. The amendment itself had no teeth, so the Volstead Act was passed to create a special prohibition enforcement arm of the Treasury Department. Both laws were pretty much ignored and organized crime flourished, providing a successful and very lucrative distribution network for illegal alcohol, at least, until August, 1929. Eliot Ness, who had been a Treasury Agent since 1923, was tasked with creating a special unit for the specific purpose of bringing down Alphonse Capone, the kingpin of the Chicago underworld. The elite group of prohibition agents were all chosen for being above reproach. A car pulled up alongside a car full of agents and a wad of bills was tossed into the agents' car. The agents threw it back. The Chicago press coined the term, "Untouchables" and the name stuck. Eliot Ness, along with "The Untouchables," put Al Capone out of business by 1931. The 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.


Eliot Ness

...in 1950, The Jack Benny Program made the move to television, beginning a run that would last 15 years. Benny had been popular on radio, after going on in 1932, and he continued on radio while doing television. Benjamin Kubelsky was born in Waukegan, Illinois in 1894, the son of a Lithuanian haberdasher. He began violin lessons at the age of six and continued through high school. He (seriously) played the violin in vaudeville, and when he joined the navy in 1918, he was assigned to entertain the troops. (No one seems to be able to tell us if Benny was actually a good violinist, or if he was really as bad as he pretended to be.) In 1927, he married an actress, Sayde Marks, and they were married until his death in 1974. (Sayde was a cousin of the Marx Brothers.) Benny also made films, but comedy was his specialty and radio was his medium. The cast of characters included Benny, portraying himself as a ego-maniacal tightwad, eternally 39 years old. Eddie Anderson, one of the first African American voice actors to make it on radio, played Benny's long suffering valet, Rochester Van Jones. (On a road trip, the owners of a hotel said Eddie would not be able to stay with the rest of the staff. Benny replied, "If he doesn't stay here, neither do I." The staff relented.) Sayde, as Mary Livingstone, played his girlfriend, deflating his ego at every opportunity. Dennis Day portrayed a naive tenor who usually got the best of his boss, anyway. Phil Harris, and later Bob Crosby, were band leaders on the show. Mel Blanc played several miscellaneous characters, including his frustrated violin teacher as well as Benny's 1916 Maxwell. (He was too cheap to buy a new car.) Don Wilson was the studio announcer and part of the cast. In reality, Benny was modest and generous in real life. He died of cancer in 1974, at the age of 39.


The cast of the ]Jack Benny Program, Eddie Anderson, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Mary Livingston, Jack Benny, Don Wilson and Mel Blanc.

(One of the funniest bits that Jack Benny did with Mel Blanc, and it was repeated often, was Benny playing a hapless character who runs into Mel Blanc's Mexican character, names Cy. Si, er, see it on YouTube.

...in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis came to an end, as Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev agreed to remove the offensive missiles from Cuba in exchange for the United States removing nuclear missiles from Turkey and guaranteeing to respect Cuban sovereignty. Not everyone was happy, European allies of the US were incensed that Kennedy kept them out of the loop during the crisis, and Soviet hardliners were incensed that Khruschev removed the missiles from Cuba at all. Leonid Breshnev and Aleksei Kosygin pushed Khruschev out of power and began to amass military materiel. More importantly, though, a "hotline" was installed between the two capitals to prevent this sort of stand off happening again. Actually a teletype, the American terminal is located in the Pentagon, not the White House.


Contrary to Hollywood and popular opinion, the
"Hot Line" was a teletype system with the American
terminal in the Pentagon. A duplicate to this station was
located in Moscow. The system was updated to use satellites
and fax machines, to share documents, in 1986. If there
have been updates since then, they are secret.

...in 1965, construction crews topped out the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri's Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park. The arch is 603 feet tall springing from a width of 630 feet, nearly 1/8th of a mile, at the ground level. Eoro Saarinen's 1947 design commemorates the western expansion.



St. Louis was only one of many points of embarkation of westward pioneers, but its location near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers did make it an attractive starting point. Visitors are able to ride a small capsule to the top of the arch for an expansive view of St. Louis and points west.


The inside of a tram car. It's not for the claustrophobic!


The Observation Deck

That's it. That's all we know as of 12:01 AM, EDT.

raebates

I've heard lots of great stories about Jack Benny over the years. By all accounts he was a sweet, wonderful man--pretty much the exact opposite of the person he played.

NooraK

I'm embarrassed to say I did not know that a fellow Finn designed the Gateway Arch.

ChefLoriG

when I was in the Air Force, I used to fix those teletype machines

ChefBeckyD

Are you sure Jack Benny died in 1974 @ the age of 39?

Addie4TLC

Addie4TLC

The_Kitchen_Guy

Absolutely! (At least, that's how old he said he was.)