#uncle history
Happy Halloween! Uncle History is going to dress up as Abstract Thought, once he can figure out the costume.
October 31, 1961: Joseph Stalin’s body is removed from Vladimir Lenin’s Tomb, where his body had been on display. During the interim, Lenin’s body was propped up in the corner.
October 30, 1938: Many listeners tuned in to CBS radio become frightened while listening to Orson Welle’s production of “War of the Worlds,” not realizing it was a play. Listeners also wondered why they were compelled to buy several bottles of Dr. Swifty’s Fast-Acting Laxative.
October 26, 1916: Margaret Sanger is arrested on obscenity charges for publicly advocating birth control, proclaiming that with birth control, people can “fuck like bunnies.”
October 25, 1521: Emperor Charles V bans the construction of wooden buildings in Amsterdam after most of the wooden structures in the city were destroyed in a bizarre and inexplicable incident regarding a wolf. Straw buildings didn’t fare so well, either.
October 23, 1958: Boris Pasternak, the Russian author of “Dr. Zhivago,” is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Before Pasternak can receive his award, however, he kidnapped by a deranged but plucky moose and squirrel.
October 18, 1954: Texas Instruments unveils the transistor radio. When asked how they could build a radio so small, the groundbreaking tech company credits “ear spirits.”
October 16, 1925: The Texas Board of Education bans the teaching of evolution. In its dictum, the board also states that “we ain’t so keen on this math, science, language and history stuff neither,” a view the board maintains to this day.
October 15, 1842: Karl Marx takes over the means of production when he becomes editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, where he immediately freezes wages and cuts benefits.
October 14, 1947: Chuck Yeager becomes the first man to break the speed of sound. Yeager said afterward that while nothing spectacular happened, he was puzzled by that black monolith.
October 11, 1705: French inventor physicist Guillaume Amontons dies. Amontons discovered that if you throw a rock at someone’s head, it causes “hurt.”
October 25, 1945: A long strike by set decorators turns violent outside the gates of Warner Brothers in Hollywood. No one is certain how the bloody rampage began, but witnesses say someone had yelled, “get back to work, you wascalwy stwikers” before gunshots rang out.
October 4, 1942: During the Battle of Stalingrad, German troops attack a tractor factory, but the Russians were able to get away very, very slowly.
October 3, 2003: Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is seriously injured when he is attacked by one of his tigers during a performance. While the true reason the animal attacked is still unknown, most experts do concur that tigers are mean.
October 1, 1596: England’s Queen Elizabeth has the Duke of Norfolk arrested for trying to wed Mary Queen of Scots. In all fairness to Elizabeth, the Duke had also tried to marry a horse, sheep, a pie and his codpiece.
September 28, 1066: William I (the Conqueror) invades England. He leaves after tasting marmite.
