Today is June 11 2014

Corn On The Cob Day: More

• Kamehameha Day : More
  
• German Chocolate: More
  On Wikipedia: More

• In 1742, Benjamin Franklin invents his Franklin stove.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Franklin stove is a metal-lined fireplace named after Benjamin Franklin, who invented it in 1741. It had a hollow baffle near the rear (to transfer more heat from the fire to a room's air) and relied on an"inverted siphon" to draw the fire's hot fumes around the baffle. It was intended to produce more heat and less smoke than an ordinary open fireplace. It is also known as a "circulating stove" or the "Pennsylvaniafireplace".
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• In 1776, The Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Committee of Five of the Second Continental Congress were a team of five men who drafted and presented to the Congress what would become America's Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. This Declaration committee operated from June 11, 1776 until July 5, 1776, the day on which the Declaration was published'.
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• In 1935, Inventor Edwin Armstrong gives the first public demonstration of FM broadcasting in the United States at Alpine, New Jersey.'
  From Wikipedia: 'Edwin Howard Armstrong (December 18, 1890 – January 31, 1954) was an American electrical engineer and inventor, best known for developing FM (frequency modulation) radio. He held 42 patents and received numerous awards, including the first Medal of Honor awarded by the Institute of Radio Engineers (now IEEE), the French Legion of Honor, the 1941 Franklin Medal and the 1942 Edison Medal. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and included in the International Telecommunication Union's roster of great inventors.'
  
  'Armstrong had a standing agreement to give RCA the right of first refusal to his patents. In 1934 made a presentation of his new system to RCA president Sarnoff. Sarnoff was somewhat taken aback by its complexity, as he had hoped it would be possible to eliminate static merely by adding a simple device to existing receivers. From May 1934 until October 1935 Armstrong conducted field tests of his FM technology from an RCA laboratory located on the 85th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City. An antenna attached to the building's spire transmitted signals for distances up to 80 miles (130 km). These tests helped demonstrate FM's static-reduction and high-fidelity capabilities. However RCA, which was heavily invested in perfecting television broadcasting, chose not to invest in FM, and instructed Armstrong to remove his equipment.
  
  Denied the marketing and financial clout that RCA would have brought, Armstrong decided to finance his own development and form ties with smaller members of the radio industry, including Zenith and General Electric, to promote his invention. Armstrong thought that FM had the potential to replace AM stations within 5 years, which he promoted as a boost for the radio manufacturing industry, then suffering from the effects of the Great Depression, since making existing AM radio transmitters and receivers obsolete would necessitate that stations buy replacement transmitters and listeners purchase FM-capable receivers. In 1936 he published a landmark paper in the Proceedings of the IRE that documented the superior capabilities of using wide-band FM. (This paper would be reprinted in the August 1984 issue of Proceedings of the IEEE.) A year later, a paper by Murray G. Crosby (inventor of Crosby system for FM Stereo) in the same journal provided further analysis of the wide-band FM characteristics, and introduced the concept of "threshold", demonstrating that there is a superior signal to noise ratio when the signal is stronger than a certain level.'
  
  'In 1940, RCA offered Armstrong $1,000,000 for a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use his FM patents, but he refused this offer, primarily because he felt this would be unfair to the other licensed companies, which had to pay 2% royalties on their sales. Over time this impasse with RCA would come to dominate Armstrong's life. RCA countered by conducting its own FM research, eventually developing what it claimed was a non-infringing FM system. The corporation also encouraged other companies to stop paying royalties to Armstrong. Outraged by this turn of events, in 1948 Armstrong filed suit against RCA and the National Broadcasting Company, accusing them of patent infringement and that they had "deliberately set out to oppose and impair the value" of his invention, for which he requested treble damages. Although confident that this suit would be successful and result in a major monetary award, the protracted legal maneuvering that followed eventually began to severely affect his finances, especially after his primary patents expired in late 1950.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1937, The Marx Brothers' 'A Day At The Races' is released.
  From Wikipedia: 'A Day at the Races (1937) is the seventh film starring the three Marx Brothers, with Margaret Dumont, Allan Jones, and Maureen O'Sullivan. Like their previous Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature A Night at the Opera, this film was a major hit.'
  
  'During production, Irving Thalberg, who had brought the Marx Brothers to MGM, died suddenly of pneumonia at age 37. After Thalberg's death the studio never gave the proper care to the Marx Brothers, and their three later MGM films are considered to be far inferior than the first two as a result'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1940, The Ink Spots recorded 'Maybe'.
  From Wikipedia: '"Maybe" is a pop song written by The Ink Spots and published in 1940.'
  
  'The first version to chart was recorded on June 11, 1940 by the Ink Spots featuring Bill Kenny and released by Decca Records as catalog number 3258B, with the flip side "Whispering Grass". The recording reached #2 on the chart that year. The Ink Spots' version of the song was also used as the opening theme for the first game of the Fallout franchise. Another charting version was recorded by Dinah Shore on June 25, 1940, and released by Bluebird Records as catalog number 10793, with the flip side "The Nearness of You". This version reached #17 on the charts'.
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• In 1944, The USS Missouri, the last battleship built by the United States Navy and future site of the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, is commissioned.
  From Wikipedia: 'USS Missouri (BB-63) ("Mighty Mo" or "Big Mo") is a United States Navy Iowa-class battleship and was the third ship of the U.S. Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of Missouri. Missouri was the last battleship commissioned by the United States and was best remembered as the site of the surrender of the Empire of Japan which ended World War II.
  
  Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned in June 1944. In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the "Mothball Fleet"), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991.
  
  Missouri received a total of 11 battle stars for service in World War II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf, and was finally decommissioned on 31 March 1992, but remained on the Naval Vessel Register until her name was struck in January 1995. In 1998, she was donated to the USS Missouri Memorial Association and became a museum ship at Pearl Harbor'.
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• In 1966, The record, Paint It, Black, by The Rolling Stones peaks at #1.
  From Wikipedia: '"Paint It Black" (originally released as "Paint It, Black") is a song by the English rock band The Rolling Stones, written by the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and first released as a single on 6 May 1966. It was later included as the opening track to the U.S. version of their 1966 album, Aftermath. Musically inspired by the sitar playing of George Harrison and Harihar Rao, "Paint It Black", along with the Jagger and Richards-penned "Mother's Little Helper", was influential in developing the musical styles of psychedelic rock and raga rock.
  
  "Paint It Black" reached number one in both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart. The song became The Rolling Stones' third number one hit single in the US and sixth in the UK. Since its initial release, the song has remained influential as the first number one hit featuring a sitar, particularly in the UK where it has charted in two other instances, and has been the subject of multiple cover versions, compilation albums, and film appearances'.
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• In 1977, The record, I'm Your Boogie Man, by KC and Sunshine Band, peaks at #1.
  From Wikipedia: '"I'm Your Boogie Man" is a song originally performed by KC and the Sunshine Band from their 1976 album Part 3.
  
  Richard Finch said that the song was written about a DJ at a Miami, Florida radio station called Robert W. Walker, who was the first to give their hit single "Get Down Tonight" airplay. In 1977 the song reached the No. 1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 R and B Singles chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 11 song of 1977. The song was also an international chart hit, reaching No. 1 in Canada and charting in Australia (No. 38), Belgium (No. 16), the Netherlands (No. 6), New Zealand (No. 12) and the UK (No. 41).'
  
  The song was sampled in at least one preview for all five of the Scary Movie films, as well as in the 2005 film Roll Bounce, the 2007 film Superbad and comic-to-film-adaptation Watchmen. It was also the opening song for the 1995 film The Last Supper'.
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• In 1982, Steven Spielberg's movie 'E.T.' opened.
  From Wikipedia: 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American epic science fiction family film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison, featuring special effects by Carlo Rambaldi and Dennis Muren, and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore and Peter Coyote. It tells the story of Elliott (Thomas), a lonely boy who befriends an extraterrestrial, dubbed "E.T.", who is stranded on Earth. He and his siblings help it return home while attempting to keep it hidden from their mother and the government.
  
  The concept for the film was based on an imaginary friend Spielberg created after his parents' divorce in 1960. In 1980, Spielberg met Mathison and developed a new story from the stalled science fiction/horror film project Night Skies. It was shot from September to December 1981 in California on a budget of US$10.5 million. Unlike most motion pictures, it was shot in rough chronological order, to facilitate convincing emotional performances from the young cast.
  
  Released on June 11, 1982 by Universal Pictures, E.T was a blockbuster, surpassing Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time—a record it held for eleven years until Jurassic Park, another Spielberg-directed film, surpassed it in 1993. It is the highest-grossing film of the 1980s. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, critics acclaimed it as a timeless story of friendship, and it ranks as the greatest science fiction film ever made in a Rotten Tomatoes survey. In 1994, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was re-released in 1985, and then again in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, with altered shots and additional scenes'.
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• In 1993, Steven Spielberg's movie 'Jurassic Park' opened.
  From Wikipedia: 'Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The first installment of the Jurassic Park franchise, it is based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, with a screenplay written by Crichton and David Koepp. The film is set on the fictional Isla Nublar, an islet located off Central America's Pacific Coast, near Costa Rica, where a billionaire philanthropist and a small team of genetic scientists have created a wildlife park of cloned dinosaurs.
  
  Before Crichton's novel was published, four studios put in bids for the film rights. With the backing of Universal Studios, Spielberg acquired the rights for $1.5 million before publication in 1990; Crichton was hired for an additional $500,000 to adapt the novel for the screen. Koepp wrote the final draft, which left out much of the novel's exposition and violence and made numerous changes to the characters'.
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• In 2002, The television series 'American Idol' debuted.
  From Wikipedia: 'American Idol is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by 19 Entertainment, and distributed by FremantleMedia North America. It began airing on Fox on June 11, 2002, and ended on April 7, 2016. It started off as an addition to the Idols format based on the British series Pop Idol, and became one of the most successful shows in the history of American television. The concept of the series involves discovering recording stars from unsigned singing talents, with the winner determined by the viewers in America through telephones, Internet, and SMS text voting. Winners chosen by viewers in its fifteen seasons were Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze, Scotty McCreery, Phillip Phillips, Candice Glover, Caleb Johnson, Nick Fradiani, and Trent Harmon'.
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Nothing. Looks like I was lazy on this day.

No. 1 song

• Chapel of Love - Dixie Cups: More
  'My Guy' has been displaced by 'Chapel of Love', which will hold the no. 1 spot until June 27, when 'A World Without Love', takes over.

Top movie

• Hey There, It's Yogi Bear! More
  Having displaced 'From Russia with Love', it will be there until the weekend box office of June 14 1964 when, 'Bedtime Story', takes over.

• FamousBirthdays.com: June 11 Birthdays More
• FamousDaily.com: June 11 History More
• History.com: Historical Events on 11th June More
• HistoryOrb.com: Famous Deaths on 11th June More
• On-This-day.com history 11th June More
• On-This-day.com music history 11th June More
• Wikipedia.com: History June 11 More

Candy Month Dairy Month Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Month Iced Tea Month Papaya Month Seafood Month Turkey Lover's Month

June is:

June origin (from Wikipedia): Perhaps to honor goddess Juno, or from the Latin word iuniores (younger ones).
"is the sixth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and one of the four months with a length of 30 days. June is the month with the longest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest daylight hours of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. June in the Northern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent to December in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. In the Northern hemisphere, the beginning of the meteorological summer is 1 June. In the Southern hemisphere, the beginning of the meteorological winter is 1 June."

June at Wikipedia: More

If you couldn't afford 90 cents for a movie ticket, 50 years ago, or your 45 RPM record player was broke, you might watch one of these shows on TV.
From this Wikipedia article: More

Best selling books of 1964 More

• Astronomy Picture of the Day: More
• NOAA: - National Hurricane Center - Atlantic Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook: More
• Listen to Old Radio Shows: (streaming mp3 with schedule) More
• NASA TV: (video feed) More
  NASA TV schedule: More
• Public Domain eBook Links

  Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More

• Podcast: A Moment of Science. Approximately 1 minute general science facts.
  Home page: More
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• Podcast: The Naked Scientists. Current science, medicine, space and other science
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• Podcast: Quirks & Quarks. Current science news.
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• Articles and videos: Universe Today. Current space and astronomy news.
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• Old Picture of the Day - "Each day we bring you one stunning little glimpse of history in the form of a historical photograph."
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Below, are listed several holiday sites that I reference in addition to other holiday researches.

US Government Holidays

• 2014 Postal Holidays More
• 2014 Official Federal Holidays More

Holidays Worldwide

• List of holidays by country More
• Holidays and Observances around the World More