This Date in History - September 23

 

Happy birthday, Julio Iglesias.  See you down by the school yard.

1122:  POPE CALLIXTUS II AND HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR HENRY V AGREE TO THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS.

The mention of worms?   Never good.

1215:  EMPEROR KUBLAI KHAN IS BORN.

Great, great grandfather to Chaka.

1409:  BATTLE OF KHERLEN, THE SECOND SIGNIFICANT VICTORY OVER MING CHINA BY THE MONGOLS SINCE 1368.

I read all about it in a blog.  Kherlen Speaks.

1641:  THE MERCHANT ROYAL, CARRYING A TREASURE WORTH OVER A BILLION US DOLLARS, IS LOST AT SEA.

A billion dollars dumped overboard.  The 1641 version of affordable health care.

1642:  THE FIRST COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES OCCUR AT HARVARD.

In September?   They have some kinks to work out.

1779:  THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION - JOHN PAUL JONES ON BOARD THE USS BONHOMME RICHARD WINS THE BATTLE OF FLAMBOROUGH HEAD.

Way to go, JP.

1780:  THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION - BRITISH MAJOR JOHN ANDRE IS ARRESTED AS A SPY BY AMERICAN SOLDIERS EXPOSING BENEDICT ARNOLD'S CHANGE OF SIDES.

What???  Benedict Arnold is a turncoat???

1806:  LEWIS AND CLARK RETURN TO ST. LOUIS AFTER EXPLORING THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST OF THE US.

Just in time for playoff baseball.

1845:  THE KNICKERBOCKERS BASEBALL CLUB, THE FIRST BASEBALL TEAM TO PLAY UNDER THE MODERN RULES, IS FOUNDED.

Wait.   Isn't there another team they would be playing?  

1869:  TYPHOID MARY IS BORN.

Mary, Typhoid as printed in the phone book.

1889:  NINTENDO KOPPAI IS FOUNDED TO PRODUCE AND MARKET THE PLAYING CARD GAME OF HANAFUDA.

Yes, that Nintendo.

1897:  ACTOR WALTER PIDGEON IS BORN.

Mr. Miniver.

1909:  THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, A NOVEL, IS FIRST PUBLISHED.

Boy, will this have some residuals??!!

1920:  ACTOR MICKEY ROONEY IS BORN.

He probably kept the same height all his life.

1927:  SINGER MIGHTY JOE YOUNG IS BORN.

Not the ape.

1930:  SINGER RAY CHARLES IS BORN.

Georgia on his mind.

1943:  WORLD WAR II - THE NAZI PUPPET STATE IN THE ITALIAN SOCIAL REPUBLIC IS FOUNDED.

Why do I think these weren't exactly Muppets?

1943:  SINGER JULIO IGLESIAS IS BORN.

My mother loved his records.  But whose mother didn't?

1945:  ACTOR PAUL PETERSEN IS BORN.

I traded e-mails with him on a project about ten years ago.  Nice guy.

1947:  ACTRESS MARY KAY PLACE IS BORN.

I've always thought she was very underrated as an actress.

1949:  SINGER BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS BORN.

Yes, gang, I am not a fan.  Never saw him in person.   Never wanted to.

1952:  RICHARD NIXON MAKES HIS FAMOUS CHECKERS SPEECH.

King me.

1962:  THE LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS OPENS IN NEW YORK CITY.

Funny because it still looks new.

1969:  THE CHICAGO EIGHT TRIAL OPENS IN CHICAGO.

The Chicago Nine were busy losing the NL East to the Mets at the same time.

1973:  JUAN PERON RETURNS TO POWER IN ARGENTINA.

Soon to be a musical in your town.

1974:  ACTOR CLIFF ARQUETTE DIES.

Charlie Weaver!

1981:  ACTOR CHIEF DAN GEORGE DIES.

I always get him mixed up with that other Indian who was crying about the garbage on the road.

1986:  JIM DESHAIES OF THE HOUSTON ASTROS SETS THE MAJOR LEAGUE RECORD BY STRIKING OUT THE FIRST EIGHT BATTERS OF THE GAME AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS.

Two silhouettes....

1987:  DANCER/DIRECTOR BOB FOSSE DIES.

And all that jazz.

1988:  JOSE CANSECO OF THE OAKLAND ATHLETICS BECOMES THE FIRST MEMBER OF THE 40-40 CLUB.

Yeah, but I still remember him most for the ball hitting him in the head and then bouncing over the wall.

1998:  ACTRESS MARY FRANN DIES.

The TV wife of Bob Newhart that nobody remembers.

1999:  CELEBRATE BISEXUALITY DAY IS FIRST OBSERVED IN THE US.

I can't make up my mind which joke to use.

2002:  THE FIRST PUBLIC VERSION OF THE WEB BROWSER MOZILLA FIREFOX IS RELEASED.

The most recent version messed up my laptop.

Dinner last night:  Hamburger.

The Passage of Blog Time

 

When you've been doing a daily blog for nineteen years, you take some things for granted.  You naturally assume that everything is forever.

So I get an e-mail from the Blogger people who have housed this two decade nonsense.   They were alerting me that storage space is getting limited.  As a result, they need to open up some room in the etherworld.  That will necessitate the removal of some videos I have previously loaded.   

Many of you know that videos consume two days of every week with my Monday Video Laugh and assorted TV/Movie historical pastiches on Saturday.   Well, if you go back to the likes of 2014 or 2015 on Len Speaks, you will likely get this message.  How they are making the judgment of what stays and what goes is beyond my skill set.   

I mean, this is not devastating, right?  You weren't looking for a Classic Newsreel posted in 2009?

If you were, thanks for the continuous hits.

Dinner last night:  Leftover chicken.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - September 21, 2026

The super under-appreciated David Hyde Pierce.

Dinner last night:  Chicken tenders and roasted tomatoes.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - When Football Was Important To Me

 

Well, that's one long title.

The NFL football season started last Sunday and, frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn.  I started losing interest in pro football about two decades ago.  The players seemed to become more intense and increasingly cartoonish with their histrionics in the end zone and the manner in a tackle has to completely demolish the other guy.  Admittedly, American society has gotten much darker and sinister, which explains why football is now so revered in this country.

But my ambivalence wasn't always like this.  Back when I was a kid, I wandered from baseball to football as soon as the leaves started to become a crispy gold and brown.  I think this pleased my father who was a big fan. 

Now, in those days, pro football wasn't much of a sport you could watch on television.  Well, the road games of your favorite team were televised.  But blackout rules prevailed and any home games were not shown.  You had to listen to them on...gasp...the radio.  Or, if you lived in New York, you drove up to Connecticut and, provided you were close enough to the Hartford-New Haven TV market, you watched games there.  Some pulled up bar stools.  Others actually rented motel rooms to see their beloved Jets and Giants.  Hopefully, the sheets cooled off after a robust Saturday night.

As for my house, my first foray into football fandom was for the Jets as I was again adopting the allegiance of the new kids in town.  I remember my dad always listening to the New York Giant games on WNEW AM Radio, but, just as he with baseball, he gravitated to my team as well.  Fathers make those kinds of sacrifices.  Plus I previously have written about the year I spent going to Jet games at Shea Stadium with my mom's boss and her boyfriend, who were season ticket holders.   So, I suppose that I was a major part of the Jet faithful.

But, almost as soon as I became a Jet fan, they won the Super Bowl and they got a little boring as a result.  Of course, at the time, nobody knew that they wouldn't get another shot at it for the next two centuries.  So, my love for a football team wasn't as deep as it was for the New York Mets.  I could be easily pulled away.

Back in the day, it was virtually impossible to get tickets to New York Giant football games.  Most of the patrons were season ticket holders since the 1800s and seat plans were often included in last wills and testaments.  There were 60,000 privileged people every Sunday who got to enter their then-home of Yankee Stadium.

The prospect of going to a New York Giant game was about as alien to me as a trip to the Moon.  And, hell, there were people going there back then.  So, you can imagine my surprise when, on one September Saturday, I got a call from my best friend at school, Danny.

"A guy my dad knows is offering us his two season tickets for tomorrow's Giant game."

Huh?

I never turned down any invitations to any sporting event at that age.  And, since my friends and I were already well versed in traveling to Shea and Yankee Stadium by ourselves, I didn't foresee any parental opposition.

Surprise.  My dad, who probably had never been to a Giant football game himself, was a bit defensive.  And probably a little bit envious.

"What do you want to go down there for?   A lot of nuts in that place."

Well, yeah.  So? 

"It's too damn crowded.  You'll get lost."

Well, maybe.  So?

"Lots of traffic down there.  The two of you will get clipped."

I doubt it.  So?

But, as most fathers always do, my dad caved in.  As long as he could orchestrate the whole day.  He'd drive me and Danny to the Jerome Avenue subway train which would let us off right in from of the stadium.   He'd listen to the game and then time our return home and wait for us at the train station. 

And so he did. 

Meanwhile, Danny and I walked into that stadium like kings on that Sunday.  We felt like we belonged to the most elite group in the world.  The seats sucked.  Actually, the view at the top of this blog was pretty much our POV.  But, we didn't care.  And we rooted for the home team because, heck, everybody around us had owned their season tickets the turn of the century.

Yes, we became Giant fans.  And, you can imagine our euphoria when Danny got the call one Saturday later about tickets to the very next game.  

As it turns out, because the season ticket owner was having some business issues, we got to go to four of the seven home games that year.  He let us know on Saturday and, when the call came, we were delirious.  It was great.   We started to be on a first-name basis with the folks around us.   And my father's transport service and our Sunday schedule became almost robotic.

These days, football teams can make the playoffs if they score more than three touchdowns all season.  But, back then, it was a more prestigious group that moved forward.  And the Giants had to win on the last home Sunday to go into the playoffs.   This was the game everybody in town was talking about.

Danny and I waited eagerly for the Saturday call.  That never came.

Now, I was desperate to see this damn game.  So, I really pushed the envelope with my father.   

I suggested we drive to Connecticut and find a motel or bar that was airing the game.

"What are you, some kind of nut??"

I listened on the radio.  The Giants lost.   They didn't make the playoffs.  

And, since there were never any tickets in any subsequent year, my Giant fan days were done.

Dinner last night:  Orange chicken from Panda Express.

Classic TV Theme of the Month - September 2026

 Wow!  This premiered sixty years ago this week.

Dinner last night:  The buffet at the Dodger Stadium season ticket holder party.

The School Photographer is Back!

 

Barack Obama, Second Grade.

Mad Magazine had to start some place.

Nancy Guthrie could be in there.

Yes, the guy behind the camera is a pedophile.

Future bimbo runway model.

Sally Struthers, Age 8.

Hey, kid, that smell just might be you.

If Howard Stern got a nose job.

Dinner last night:  Salisbury steak.

One Last 9/11 Story

 

And it's one I can't believe.  Or stomach.  

It's not a remembrance from 2001.   It was last week as related by a work colleague who has a kid in college.   I don't know if the class involved was history or journalism.  But the reference comes from whatever dumbbell stands in front of this class to lecture.

You see, this higher educator numbskull went on a soap box to talk about how the planes going into the WTC was an early form of AI.

I heard this and shook my head.   

Yeah, the buildings never crumbled to the ground.

Almost 3,000 lives didn't end on that day.

People who worked in Ground Zero didn't get life-ending cancer years later.

I can only hope this teacher was making a sick joke.  It would be hard to fathom that somebody actually believes this.  And shares it with a bunch of kids who weren't even born in 2001.

As I always say, academia rhymes with macadamia.   Fitting because they're both nuts.

Dinner last night:  Sandwich.