October 22

He’ll get here when He gets here, what’s your rush?
William Miller was an American Baptist preacher active in the middle of the 19th century. Miller considered himself a bit of a scholar and through intensive study was convinced that he had figured out the exact date that Jesus would make his Second Coming. That date, determined by meticulous research, was October 22, 1844. It was a sure thing; no doubt about it; Miller and his many followers referred to that date as The Great Anticipation and made every preparation possible for Christ’s return and the end of the world. Well, Miller got it partly right because the sun, not the Son, did rise on the 22nd and on the 23rd as well. October 23rd came to be known as The Big Disappointment by Miller’s followers.

October 21

If you are thinking about a career path that involves working in a mailroom you’ll do well to consider the following. On July 10, 1973, John Paul Getty III, scion of the Getty family was kidnapped and held for ransom. Getty’s father balked at paying the $17 million dollar ransom that was demanded. On the 21st of October, the kidnappers cut off young Getty’s ear and mailed it to a Rome newspaper with a note indicating that were the ransom not paid within ten days, the scamp would be returned to his family in pieces. The package containing the ear did not arrive at the paper’s mailroom until November 8. I wonder what the yuck factor was for the lucky person who opened that package. Ultimately, Getty’s dad got the kidnapper down to $2 million and his son was recovered alive. I guess that puts the value of an ear at roughly $15 million, so think about that the next time you get a free ear piercing folks.

October 20

Wayne Morse was born on the 20th in 1900. Morse is remembered primarily for his tenure as United States Senator from Oregon, a post he held from 1945 to 1969. He is also notable for being one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Ernest Gruening was the other, which gave Johnson and Nixon leave to more or less turn Vietnam into a parking lot. Morse’s public career was detailed in the documentary The Last Angry Man: The Story of America’s Most Controversial Senator. This was before government controversies involved under-age pages, interns slightly over the age of consent and shady dealings with multinational corporations. All in all Morse comes across as being a man who followed his conscience, and he had a clear conscience. That’s just me though. Whatever your opinion of Morse’s politics you have to give him credit for being incredibly tenacious and possessing impressive stamina. Why? Because in 1953, he made a filibuster lasting 22 hours and 26 minutes. I always knew that politicians could be long-winded but really now. How could he come up with enough to say that he would need almost an entire day to say it? I am fairly certain that he didn’t just read The Brothers Karamazov from the first page to the last because he would have needed a heck of a lot more time to get through that little number.

October 19

Am I missing something or was that my two weeks' notice? Sometimes the subtleties of office protocol make it difficult to assess your standing in a concern’s hierarchy. On the 19th in 1953 Arthur Godfrey informed his music director, Julius LaRosa, that LaRosa’s services would no longer be required by announcing, on live national television, after LaRosa had just finished an upbeat musical number, that the song just played was LaRosa’s swan song. After the show, somebody had to tell LaRosa what Godfrey had meant by calling the number a swan song. It means you’re done, you’re outta here, fuhgedabout it, or words to that effect. From what I can determine, there was no matching ashtray and lighter set or shiny gold watch involved in the deal. I’m convinced that if Godfrey were alive today he would have told LaRosa by posting the termination notice at some blog or other, though perhaps a simple text message might have been sent to ‘all network users’. However, that sort of thing takes the personal, human side out of publicly humiliating a co-worker and where is the fun in that?

October 18

Herman Melville’s place among the literary lights is secure. Many consider his novel Moby-Dick to be one of the greatest of all American novels. Moby-Dick was published on the 18th in 1851 by Harper’s. Canio’s Bookstore in Sag Harbor, until recently held marathon readings of Moby-Dick over holiday weekends. Plenty of schools make the book required reading in English classes. I’m fairly certain I am not alone in my having once actually started writing something by beginning with “Call me Ishmael”. It’s not as if I wanted to, but my teacher, Jean Brincko, 12th grade English teacher at Brooklyn Tech, said that I had to write a 500 word essay and I came up a few words short. It didn’t help me with that paper and Melville's Moby-Dick didn’t help him much either. Harper’s did a print run of 3000 copies of Moby-Dick and the edition didn’t sell out during Melville’s lifetime. Melville ended his days by dying, on September 28, 1891, alone and all but forgotten. To add insult to injury, The New York Times got his name wrong in the obituary that they ran for him. So remember, if you’re going to write a book, don’t open with “Call me Ishmael” it’s been done to death.

October 17

When you take time out from your busy day and decide to waltz through the pages of history, you will discover that for most nations and peoples the 1930s was a time filled with, how should I put this, unpleasantness. There was the rise of the Nazis in Germany, never a particularly carefree bunch, disturbing conditions in France (though in my opinion, using the word disturbing in conjunction with France is tautological), there were rumblings of war from both Europe and the Far East, and America was struggling with unsettled economic and social conditions here at home. Was there no hope? Would no lone rider appear from across the Plains to return life on the planet to sanity? Where was Randolph Scott when we really needed him? Fear not oh ye of little faith, on the 17th in 1937, Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, appeared for the first time in a newspaper comic strip. Just so you don’t lay awake all night trying to figure out how to tell them apart: Huey wore red or orange and Dewey wore blue. That leaves Louie, and leaves are green.

October 16

Really, I have no idea how that got in my luggage.
William C. Newell needed to have a new well dug on his farm in Cardiff, New York. On the 16th in 1869, he hired some men and gave them detailed instructions about where to dig this well. Much to the surprise of the workers, but not to Newell, a 10-foot tall-petrified man was discovered exactly where they had been told to dig a well. Word quickly spread and Newell made a small fortune by charging admission to see the Cardiff Giant. P.T. Barnum got involved and a lot of people paid a lot of money to view this wonder of nature until the hoax was exposed in February 1870.