Nov 4-Common Sense, Will Rogers, Ralph Macchio, Jeff Probst, Mathew McConaughey, Delbert McClinton

0:19 Hi everyone, I am Jeff, and welcome to History and Factoids About Today. Today's November the 4th. Today is National Use Your Common Sense Day. Now, we celebrate common sense today because it's Will Rogers' birthday. Well, he once said that common sense, it ain't that common anymore. Now, common sense, it's inherent in all of us. It helps us from making bad decisions. It helps us avoid danger. We don't always use it. Now, due to peer pressure, popular culture, social media, political correctness, a lot of people, they stop using common sense. Yeah, just to try and fit in. Today, you know what? Start trusting yourself. Listen to your own common sense out there. Do what you honestly believe is right.

1:18 Don't give a damn what other people think. It's amazing how much trouble you can stay out of just by listening to your own common sense. Let's see what happened on November 4th back in 1975. Number one album was Red Octopus by Jefferson Starship. Elton John had their number one song with Island Girl. John Denver had the number one country song with I'm Sorry.

1:58 I'm sorry things ain't what they used to be. But more than anything else, I'm. Sorry for myself. Their top-selling book was Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow. Number one movie was Let's Do It Again. Two guys, they make money for their charity by rigging boxing matches. Well, the mob finds out that's kind of their gig. Stars Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, Calvin Lockhart. Yeah, there's a bunch of them in that one. All right, what happened on November the 4th? 1646, Massachusetts. They enacted a law that said that if you denied the Bible was the word of God, you would be executed. Now, that law, it stood on the books in Massachusetts until 1984. So why'd they take it off? Well, the state, they abolished the death penalty, so they couldn't have that on there if they didn't have the death penalty. Now, this was before gold was discovered. It was back in 1841. The first wagon train arrived out in California. It had left Missouri and traveled 1,730 miles in five and a half months, even crossed over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Arrived in Northern California today. It arrived at the ranch of Dr. John Marsh. Yeah, by Mount Diablo. 1845, the first national election day that was uniform across all the states happened. So there were 28 states, and before then, they kind of held elections whenever.

3:31 But nope, it's all uniform now, and we still do it. Yep, the national elections are always held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. So your election day will always be between November the 2nd and the 8th. In Indianapolis in 1862, Richard Gatlin, he invented the hand-cranked Gatlin machine gun. Now, he took the whole concept from a piece of farming equipment he invented to plant seeds. 1879 in Dayton, Ohio, James Ritty, he owned a bar. Now, in order to keep his bartenders from stealing from him, he invented the first cash register. Now, that cash register, it worked so well, he sold his bar and just sold cash registers. Except he didn't call them cash registers. No, he called them Ritty's Uncorruptible Cashier. 1922 over in Egypt, Howard Carter, he discovered the tomb of, or the, yeah, the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun. We know him better as just King Tut. Now, Howard, he wasn't allowed to open it, though. See, this guy, Lord Carnarvon, he actually financed Old Dig. So Howard had to wait for him to get there. Carnarvon wanted to be there when they opened it. So basically, him and his workers, they just sat there for three weeks so Carnarvon could make it all the way from England. So I guess we'll wait till November 26th to see if they found anything inside. 1924, Nellie Ross in Wyoming and Miriam Ferguson in Texas were both elected governor of their states. Now, Nellie, she was sworn in one day before Miriam. So Nellie and Wyoming, they get credit for having the first female governor in the United States. It's kind of impressive, though, because when they got elected, women only had the right to vote for four years at that time. 1978, an Iranian army and troops, they started firing on anti-Shah student protesters outside

5:04 of Tehran University. That led to one year later, 1979, over 500 college students, they raided and took over the United States Embassy in Tehran. They took 90 hostages. Well, they released all those who were kind of not in best health, and they released all the black ones. But 52 U.S. hostages were held for 444 days. See, the students, they were loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and they blamed the United States for supporting the Shah of Iran, who they'd overthrown. Now, the Shah had come to the United States for cancer treatment. Now, the students, they wanted him brought back to Iran so they could execute him before he died from the cancer. Common sense day. 1993, in Britain, singer Elton John, he was awarded $ 518, 700 from the Sunday Mirror newspaper. In court, they proved that the newspaper lied.

5:48 The newspaper had run a story all about what Elton John ate and what his diet consisted of. Well, they were dead wrong. In South Sudan in 2015, a passenger jet crashed on takeoff. 37 were killed. One survived. It was a 13-year-old. Now she was found cradled in her arms of her father. She had a broken leg, but she lived, but her dad died. A guy was born on November the 4th. I told you I'd get to him. Humorous, social commentator, writer, actor. Will Rogers was born in Uligog. It's in the Cherokee Indian Nation and territory in 1879. Basically Oklahoma today. Now, Will, he's actually known as Oklahoma's favorite son. He made 50 silent movies and 21 talking.

6:44 He was one of the highest paid actors in the early 1930s. But he actually had a syndicated newspaper column that went nationwide, wrote over 4,000 columns. He would make humorous political and social commentary in it. Will once said, I joked about every prominent man in my lifetime, but never a man I didn't like. He was an active guy. He traveled the world three times. Then in 1935, when he was 55 years old, Will was flying in an airplane with the famous pilot Wiley Post. Yeah, they crashed in Alaska. Killed them both. Will, he had married in 1908, and they had four children. Actor Art Carney. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1918. Most famous for playing Ed Norton on the TV show The Honeymooners.

7:24 He won an Oscar for the movie Harry and Tano later on. His last movie that he was in was called The Last Action Hero. He married his high school sweetheart and they had three children, but they divorced after 25 years. So he married his second wife for 11 years. Then after they divorced in 1980, he went back and married that first wife all over again. Artie died in his sleep from natural causes in 2003 at 85 years old. Actress Doris Roberts. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1925. Acted for over 70 years. I think most of us know her best for playing the mom on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. She was Clark's wife's mom in the Christmas Vacation movie. I guess it was Clark's mother-in-law. Now, Doris, she had a son from her first husband. She married her second husband in 1963. He died in 1983. Doris, she died in 2016 from a stroke, 90 years old.

8:13 Actress Loretta Swift. Yep, she just died in May, 87 years old. She was born in Passaic, New Jersey in 1937. Most famous for playing Major Margaret Hot Lips Houlihan on the TV show MASH. She won two Emmys playing Margaret. Now, after MASH, she did a whole bunch of game shows. She married once for 12 years Country singer, blues rocker, Delbert McClinton is 86. He was born in Lubbock, Texas in 1940. Now, he plays a week every year on a party cruise. Yep, he's in January. The one this January, that's already sold out if you want to go see Delbert on the cruise. He's released 27 albums. His biggest hit was with Tanya Tucker, Tell Me About It. He also had the hits Giving It Up For My Love, I'm With You, Sending Me Angels. In the early 1960s, Delbert was touring Europe with a whole bunch of American artists.

9:15 And when they were in England, this guy came up to him. His name was John Lennon. He wanted Delbert to teach him how to play the harmonica. Well, Delbert didn't have much going on, so he gave the guy a couple lessons. Well, Lennon, he used that training he got to play the harmonica. Yeah, he played it in the Beatles song, Let Me Do. Delbert, he's married and they have a son. Actress Marky Post, she was born in Palo Alto, California in 1950. She first got known on the TV show The Fall Guy, then she hit really big on the sitcom Night Court. Biggest movie was There's Something About Mary. She played Mary's mom. Marky, she married her second husband in 1982, and they had two daughters. She died from cancer in 2021 at 70 years old. Actor Ralph Macchio is 65, born in Huntington, New York in 1961. His first big movie he was in was The Outsiders. Then he really hit big playing Daniels on Karate Kid movies. Then he was in, what, Crossroads, My Cousin Vinny, and A Knight's Run, and playing Daniel's son again on the TV show Cobra Kai. Just ended, but it had been going on since 2018. Macchio, he married in 1987, and they have two daughters. The host of the TV show Survivor, Jeff Prost. He was born in Wichita, Kansas.

10:22 He's also 65. You know, he's been doing Survivor since it first started in 2000. That's 48 seasons, 701 episodes. Now he is actually also an executive director and a producer. He married his second wife in 2011. Actor Matthew McConaughey. He's 57. He was born in Uvalde, Texas. Now his first paid acting job was for the music video for Walk Away Joe. It was sung by Trisha Yearwood. That led to the movie Dazed and Confused, then We Are Marshall, Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike, won an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club. Matthew will be married in 2012, and they have one daughter and two sons. Sean Combs, Diddy, P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, Puffy, whatever you want to call him. He's 57. He was born in New York City. They got the nickname Puffy because when he was a kid, he would always huff and puff when he was angry. Right now, he's doing a 15-month residency for the Fort Dix Federal Correction Prison in New Jersey. Now, he hasn't married yet. He has seven kids, though, from four different women.

11:21 All righty. Our quote of the day today comes from the writer Michael Crichton. He died today in 2008 at 66 years old. Michael says, Politicians are focused as if they can do something. It never occurs to them they should focus on if they should do something. Well, thank you all for listening today. Don't forget to follow us on your listen to us on. It makes it easy to find us. If you can, check out today's description and show notes. See what our links are leading you to and what we're talking about. Our Country Underground Radio Artist of the Day comes from Katie out there in Knoxville. She wants to hear the Bennett Hall Band. Their song, Lovin' Makes the Leavin' Hard. Bennett Hall Band. It's three sisters, 17, 15, and 12. You guys have an awesome day. We'll talk tomorrow. Enjoy the Bennett Hall Sisters.

12:19 One more day to say the things I didn't get to say. Why'd you have to leave? There's gotta be another way When we're together I know it won't last There's no future for us Only the.

13:04 Past My life's on the road. Chasing my dreams Yeah, it's the loving that makes a bleeding heart. Thinking back to what we've been through. Should be easy to get over you. What am I supposed to do? Another day.