Oct 24-Bologna, Drake, Monica, Kevin Kline, The Big Bopper, Batman, Annie Taylor went over Niagara Falls

0:19 Hi, I'm Jeff, and welcome to History and Factoids About Today. Today's October the 24th. My baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. My baloney has a second name, it's M-A-Y-E-R. Oh, I love to eat it every day, and if you ask me. What I'll say, cause Oscar Mayer has a way with B-L-O-G-N-A. Today is National Bologna Day. Woo-hoo! Now, it's named after the Italian city of Bologna. Now, over there, they call it mortadella. And they make it with sausage, large chunks of fat, and peppercorn. So that's mortadella. Here in the United States, we make bologna from ground meat, usually scraps of pork or beef or chicken or turkey. Usually one type, but they do combos and all that kind of stuff.

1:11 And we don't put chunks of fat in it. Yes, I'm saying it right. In the United States, we do say bologna, not bologna. All right, let's go old school today. Yep, let's have ourselves a bologna sandwich. We can make it up as fancy as we want. But if we really want it gourmet, yeah, we can have a fried bologna sandwich. That's some good eating right there. Well, let's look and see what happened on October 24th back in 1963. Number one album was My Son the Nut by Alan Sherman. Jimmy Gilmore and the Fireballs had their number one song with Sugar Shack. I'm going to drink a lot of coffee, spend a little cash, make that girl love me when. I put on some trash. You can understand why I've got to get back up to that sugar shack. Oh, yes, to that sugar shack. Yeah, honey, to that sugar shack.

2:03 Bucko, and it's out there in my country song with Love's Gonna Live Here. Life's gonna live here. Life's gonna live here again. No more loneliness. Only happiness. Life's gonna live here again. That number one selling book was The Group by Mary McCarthy. The top movie was The VIPs. London's airport, it's fogged in. Now, while their flight to New York is delayed, all the passengers, yeah, they just kind of hang out in the airport lounge. Yeah, it turns out they all end up facing crises in their own life. Stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. 1988, John Fogerty. Yeah, he went on trail. He was accused of plagiarizing himself. See, an old record company had discovered that they had just a sliver of royalty still. So they went to court. They said that when John was with Creedence Clearwater Revival, he wrote a song called Run Through the Jungle. Now that he was solo, he had changed that into Old Man Down the Road. Well, the court, yeah, they wrote the chart for Vogerty. Yeah, they decided, yeah, you don't have to pay yourself or the record company.

3:15 Oh, I thought it was a nightmare. Lord, is it all so true? I think Fogerty was guilty. I think he should have had to pay up. All right, let's see what happened on October the 24th. In the year 79, Mount Vesuvius, it might have erupted. You know, when it erupted, it buried the city of Pompeii and then like four other cities. See, the experts are fighting, though.

4:08 They can't decide whether it happened today or on August 24th. So I guess which day it happened, it really must change a lot of things, or why would they care? 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph was sent. It was sent from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., Now a telegraph line is running across the country. Yep, no need for the Pony Express. It actually closed two days later. Now it cost $ 500, 000 to put in that first coast-to-coast telegraph line. Put in 27,500 poles. Now actually, they started at the Mississippi River. Telegraphs on the east side of the Mississippi, they were already done. All they did was follow the Pony Express route. Yeah, they had the easiest route, so they just followed that. Also in 1861, West Virginia seceded from Virginia. No way were they going to be part of that South. 1901, Annie Taylor. She wanted to celebrate her 63rd birthday. So she grabbed her cat and survived going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. And surviving. Yep, she was the first person to do it. So Annie, she was a broke, out-of-work school teacher. And she did it to get rich and famous. So she had a barrel built of oak and iron. Then she used a mattress for padding. Her biggest problem was getting people to help her out. No one wanted to participate in what they thought was suicide.

5:17 She finally was able to talk some guys into helping her out. So she climbed into the barrel and with her cat in a heart-shaped pillow. Then the guys, they screwed the lid on, and now there was a little hole in the side, so they took a bicycle pump and pumped some air in it, and they put a cork in that. Then they rode out to the middle of the river and just let her go. That's right. So after she went over the falls, it took about 20 minutes for rescuers to get to her. Yeah, she was pretty much fine. She just had a gash in her forehead, and that's probably by the cat, because he was pretty pissed. Now, Annie, she made a little bit of money right off the bat, and then, yeah, all the publicity died down. She didn't make her look squat from it. She ended up dying penniless in 1921. The public actually had to donate in order to pay for her funeral. 1908, that song, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, yeah, it hit the charts. Now, songwriters Edward von Tilzer and Jag Norworth had never even gone to a baseball game. Now, you wonder, 1908 in the charts, how does that work? Well, see, back then, because they hadn't played, there wasn't any radio to play the songs on, and hardly anybody had actual record players. What they would do for music stores is you would buy the sheet music, So somebody would come out with a sheet, and yeah, and you'd grab the sheet music and go to your house, and then you would play and sing it at home. So that's actually how they rated top songs back then. 1939, nylon stockings went on sale for the very first time, but only in Wilmington, Delaware. See, that's where DuPont was headquartered, and they're the ones who made them. So they were such a big hit, and they were so popular that you actually had to prove that you lived in Wilmington in order to get them. Yeah, if you didn't have any kind of ID, they wouldn't sell them to you. Now, they did go and sell the rest of the country in May, 1944, United States Navy pilot David McCampbell, he

6:51 shot down nine Japanese warplanes in one mission. He was at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Now that record, it still stands. And he did survive the war, too. He ended up getting 34, actually, aerial victories. So he is still the Navy's all-time leading flying ace. 1960, in the Soviet Union, a prototype missile exploded on the launch pad, killed one of their highest-ranking generals, killed also over 100 other people. Now, the Soviets, they announced to the world that they all died in a plane crash. It wasn't until 1989 that everybody figured out what actually happened. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, Charlie. It's your birthday. We're going to party like it's your birthday.

7:31 We're going to sip a card like it's your birthday. And you know we don't give up because it's your birthday. Well, let's check out who was born on October the 24th. Hey, hey! Comic book writer Bob Kane was born in New York City in 1915. Bob, in 1934, he created Batman. I'm Batman. At DC Comics, they wanted him to come up with a superhero to compete with Superman in the comic book sales.

8:15 So Bob came up with Batman and Robin, the Joker and the Riddlers. Yeah, that whole cast of characters. Now, he did create a bunch of comics after that, but none of them were near as big as Batman. Now, Bob had a daughter from his first wife. He married his second wife for 11 years when he died in 1998 at 83 years old. Shantilly lace and a pretty face and a ponytail hanging down, wiggling to walk and giggling to talk. Make the world. Go round, there ain't nothing in the world like a big-eyed girl that make me act so funny, make me spend my money, make me feel real loose like a long-necked goose. Charles Richardson, he's best known as the Big Bopper. He was born in Saban Pass, Texas in 1930. He gave himself the nickname the Big Bopper. Yeah, he was a radio DJ, so that was his call name. Now, after years of working as a DJ, his singing career finally started to take off. He had that hit song, Chantilly Lace.

9:09 His next song, White Nightingale, he was getting ready to be released as a single. So he took some time off from the radio station to go out on tour. He went out with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens. Yep, sadly, they all died in that plane crash. The bopper, he was 28 years old. He was married and they had a daughter. His wife gave birth to their son two months after he was killed in that plane crash. Actor F. Murray Abraham is 87. He was born in Pittsburgh. Grew up in El Paso, Texas. Now, his name is simply Murray Abraham, but he put the F in front of it to honor his dad. Yeah, Faheer, Fahreen. Murray, he started out on Broadway. Then he first got known in the movie Scarface. Won an Oscar for Amadeus. He was also in The Last Action Hero, Star Trek, Insurrection, Finding Forrester.

9:50 On TV, he was on Homefront for like six years. Now, he's done theater as well. He's actually still doing theater, to be honest with you. So they actually inducted him into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame. He married in 1962. They have a son and a daughter. His wife died in 2022. Actor Kevin Kline was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He's 79 today. Kevin, now, he loves doing theater. He's won three Tonys. He did win an Oscar for the movie A Fish Called Wanda. He was also in Sophie's Choice, Wild Wild West, The Big Chill. On TV, he's voiced Calvin Fishoder on the Bob's Burger cartoon. He's been doing that since 2011. He married actress Phoebe Gates in 1989, and they have a son and a daughter.

10:31 I'll be there and there is nothing I won't do I will cross the ocean for you I will go and bring. You the moon. I will be your hero, your strength. And That is just Monica. That's just Monica. She's 46. She's born in College Park, Georgia. She got discovered at 11, released her first album at 15. Some of her number one songs are The First Night, Angel of Mine, So Gone. Biggest hit was with Brandy, The Boy is Mine. Monica, she had two sons from a former fiance. She married a basketball player for eight years. They had a daughter.

11:16 She got married last year in August. So she's a newlywed. So congratulations to her and her husband. Rapper, singer, Drake. He's 40. Now, if you go to Dave's Hot Chicken restaurants today, if you go to any one of them, you get a free hot chicken sandwich in honor of his birthday. Yeah, Drake, he's a co-owner in that restaurant chain. Now, he was born in Toronto, Canada in 1986. Sold over 170 million records. Now, he's not the biggest selling Canadian artist of all time. No, that's actually Celine Dion. She's gotten him beat by almost 38 million albums. Now, Drake, he started out on TV. He was on Degrassi, The Next Generation, for like seven years. When that ended, he just concentrated on music. Worked. Taylor Swift, she's the only singer who sold more records this century than he has. Now, Drake, he has one son. All righty, our quote of the day.

12:20 It comes from baseball great Jackie Robinson. He died today in 1972 at only 53 years old. Jackie said, I'm not concerned about you liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being. Well, thank you all for listening today. Don't forget to follow us who you're listening to us on so we're easy to find. And check out today's show description so you can get all the links and all that kind of stuff from us. Our country underground radio artist of the day goes with Jesse down in Tucson. He wants to hear Todd Barrow and his newest song, Ain't looking back now. You guys have an awesome day and we'll talk tomorrow. I'm a long ways from home. Traveling places, a stranger when I roam. That's okay. I'm doing fine. Not afraid to cross that line.

13:09 Time don't matter. Memories along these roads Reflect life's episodes Point of no return Learning as I go Life is hard But I'll make it work Still lessons to learn back now I'm at the point of no return it's hard of mine just ticking away even when blue skies turn to grey Cali rays pierce my eyes getting closer with each sunrise Frisco Bay headed south West Coast by the sea