Sept 17th-Apple Dumplings, Hank Williams, John Ritter, Kyle Chandler, Anastacia, 1st Person Killed Airplane Crash

0:19 Hi everyone, I am Jeff and welcome to History and Factoids About Today. Today is September the 17th. That is the only song we can find that even mentions apple dumplings. Today is National Apple Dumpling Day. A tasty little dessert. They go back to the 1740s. They're created up in the northeast. So, New England. They're pretty easy to make. You just peel and core some apples, sprinkle them with some cinnamon and sugar. Yep, wrap them in little pastries and bake. Yeah, it tastes like little apple pies. Today is also International Country Music Day.

0:59 Yeah! I know. Country music, it is popular worldwide. It is global and international. It really wasn't until the 1990s. That's when Garth Brooks and Shania Twain and that whole crowd, they got the worldwide attention to it. It gets more popular every year. Now, as you've heard me talk about, we have an internet radio station called Country Underground Radio. We play independent and up-and-coming country radio, or country artists. Now, we don't mention the listeners, though. We have listeners from all over the world. Every month, we have over 80 countries that listen to us. Now, most popular in Europe and South America. Yeah, we're really big in Brazil, and don't know why, but for some reason, we're like the number one internet country radio station over in Denmark. But we have listeners all over Africa, Russia, China, Japan, Australia. Yeah, pretty much all over the world. So if you want to celebrate International Country Music Day, we're a good place. We also play international artists, though, too. It's mostly American artists, but we do play some. We actually play quite a few country artists from Canada. We're going to play some from England.

2:19 That's okay Cause I'm not looking for love Not right now. Just a little bit of fun Not Mary's bell. But quite a few country artists from Australia Now I'm. Dancing We even play a guy from Ireland. And I know that men like me are frowned upon today.

2:59 Might be a bit too nice and you're afraid that I might stay. Have a fun International Country Music Day. All right, let's see what's going on in entertainment on September 17th. It's back to the year 2008. Number one album was All Hope Is Gone by Slipknot. T.I. had the number one song with Whatever You Like. I said you can have whatever you like. Yeah, yeah. Baby, I can treat you so special, so nice. Yeah, I took a jet for you tonight. And baby, you can go wherever you like. I said you can go wherever you like. Yeah, yeah. Brad Paisley had the number one country song with Waiting on a Woman. Oh, it's just a factor.

4:05 That number one selling book was Dark Curse by Christine Fijon. The top movie was Lakeview Terrace. A racist black Los Angeles police cop. Yeah, well, he goes bat crap crazy when an interracial couple moves next door to him. Stars Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, and Kerry Washington. All right, what happened on September the 17th? 1683, a Dutch scientist, his name was Anton van Leeuwenhoek, he made his own microscope, and he's looking at some pond water, and he saw these little animals in there, so he called them animalcules. Now, we call them bacteria. Now, the guy studied a lot after today, actually, he's the one who figured out protozoa and a whole bunch of other single-celled organisms. 1787, Congress, they sent the Constitution of the United States to the states.

4:53 Yeah, so they could be ratified. It's going to take two years. It'll come back to Congress in 1789. Now, I've told you about some of the great things that Harriet Tubman had done over the years. What all started today, 1849, up in Maryland. Now, her and two of her brothers, they actually escaped slavery. 1908, Orville and Wilbur Wright, they were at the U.S. Army base in Fort Myers, Virginia. Now, the Army was kind of interested in buying some of them airplanes. So it was Orville's job. He had to show the army how safe and practical the planes would actually be. So he took 26-year-old Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge on a test flight. Over 2,000 people had gathered to watch him. They oohed and aahed as they flew over the parade grounds and everything. Then the propeller broke off. So they were about 150 feet high, hit nose first right into the ground. Now, they didn't have seat belts, so Orville and Thomas, they were both thrown from the plane. Now, Thomas, he hit his head, fractured his skull, and he died. Orville, he had to spend a month and a half in a hospital. He had a broken leg and hips and ribs and all kinds of things like that. So Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, he was buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery. He has the honor of being the first person ever killed in an airplane crash.

6:00 Well, I guess it's kind of an honor. Now, when the Army did the autopsy on Thomas, they realized that had he not hit his head, he would have lived. He had none of his other injuries or life threatening. So the Army, they did buy some planes from the Wright brothers, but they made all their pilots wear helmets. Now, do you remember, not too long ago, I told you about how Germany had invaded Poland from the West, and that's basically what started World War I? Well, today in 1939, just a couple weeks later, Soviet Union, they invaded Poland from the East. Now they were not trying to help Poland out. No, the Soviets wanted Eastern Poland, so they wanted to get it before Germany got to it. On CBS, the TV network, 1967, both The Doors and The Who made their first appearances on American TV. The Doors, they went on the Ed Volk Sullivan Show. I think you might have heard about that. That's where Jim Morrison, he sang a song and he did not change the lyrics like he said he was going to. So he was really offensive and they banned him from CBS. After that, on the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour.

6:56 The Smothers Brothers were big. They had their own TV show. Well, they had The Who. And The Who, they rocked out their song, My Generation. Then towards the end of the song. The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, blew up his drum kit. Made Pete Townsend deaf in one ear. Now The Who, they were banned from CBS also. 1992, in a primary Democratic election in New York City, Ted Weiss won. Well, Ted, he had died three days earlier. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, Charlie, it's your birthday. We're going to party like it's your birthday. 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. Let's check out who was born on September the 17th.

7:37 We're here. That was country legend Hank Williams. He was born in Butler County, Alabama in 1923. Now he started. Singing professionally at 15 years old. Some of his classic. Hits are. I'm so lonely I could cry. You're cheating, Hart. Ramblin' man. There's a tear in my beer. Now, Hank, he was born with spina bifida. Yeah, so he had a lot of back pain his whole life, so he decided to self-medicate. Well, he actually over-self-medicated with alcohol. He became a major alcoholic.

8:23 The Grand Ole Opry, they wouldn't even let him play there anymore because of his unpredictability. Now, he did get married in 1944, and they had their son, Hank Williams Jr. Then they got divorced in 1952. Then Hank had a fun night, and that... caused him to have a daughter. Well, she was born five days after he died. So yeah, New Year's Eve in 1952, Hank, he had a college student drive him up to Canton, Ohio, where he was going to actually do a show on New Year's Day. So they had to drive all night in order to get to the show. Well, that kid stopped for gas in Oak Hill, West Virginia. Yeah, he decided to check on Hank who was asleep in the backseat. Realized Hank, yeah, he had died. All that alcohol, yeah, pretty much damaged his heart, killed him. 29 years old.

9:04 After Roddy McDowell, he was born in Herndon Hill, England in 1928. Some of his movies you might know were The Longest Day, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Poseidon Adventure, Cleopatra. He played Cornelius in all the original Planet of the Apes movies. Roddy, he was a confirmed lifelong bachelor, and he was gay. After Sam Bacroft, she was born in the Bronx, New York in 1931. She was a triple crown winner. She won two Tony Awards, and she won an Oscar for The Miracle Worker, and she was a two-time Emmy Award winner. Now, her most famous movie, though, she played Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Now, she was nominated for an Oscar for it, but yeah, she lost to Katharine Hepburn. She also voiced the Queen in the Ants movies. Her second husband was Mel Brooks.

9:47 That Mel Brooks. They got married in 1964. They had one son. They were married until Ann died in 2005 at 73 years old. She had uterine cancer. Come and knock on our door. We've been waiting for Actor John Ritter. He was born in Burbank, California in 1948. His dad was a singing cowboy, Tex Ritter. Now John made a name for himself on the sitcom Three's Company. After that, he voiced Clifford the Big Red Dog. He was on Eight Simple Rules. Some of his movies are Americathon, did those Problem Child movies, Sling Blade, Bride of Chucky. Now, he was married to his first wife for 20 years when they divorced, and they had three kids. Married his second wife in 1999.

10:33 They had one kid. 2003, on the set of Eight Simple Rules, John, he just dropped over dead. Yeah, he had an unknown heart condition that he didn't know anything about. That's five days before his 55th birthday. Comedian Rita Rudner, 73. She's born in Miami, Florida. She started out as a Broadway dancer. Unlike most dancers, she went into stand-up comedy. She's been headlining out there in Las Vegas since 2001. I mean, she does take breaks and go out on tour. So if you want to see her, you don't have to go to Vegas. She'll probably come to a comedy. Club near you. Now, she's written five best-selling books, too. She got married in 1988, and they have a daughter. Actor Kyle Chandler is 61. He's born in Buffalo, New York. He first got known on the TV show Homefront, but he got really big, big known on the TV show Friday Night Lights.

11:19 Some of his movies are Pure Country, Zero Dark Thirty, The Wolf of Wall Street. He starred in two. Godzilla movies, so that's cool. He's been married since 1995, and they have two daughters. I'm out of love. Set me free. And let me out this minute. She just goes by Anastasia. She's big enough, I guess. She can go by one name. She sold over 50 million records. All in Europe. Nope. In the United States, she hadn't sold squat. Nope, nothing. And she's an American.

12:01 She was born in Chicago in 1968. Now, she was born at Anastasia in Newkirk. She's 58. Now, she still lives here in the United States. She lives out in California. Now, besides Europe, she's also really big in Australia. She even won their third season of The Masked Singer. So that's really big. But yeah, she never has had a hit song in the United States. 50 million worldwide, none in the United States. Now, they don't even really release her songs here in the United States anymore because it's not worth their time. I don't know. She's pretty and she can sing. I guess we just don't want to listen to her. She's actually on tour in the UK right now. So when she's done, she'll come back to the United States. She'll record an album. They'll ship it over to Europe and then she'll go over there and tour Europe to support it next year. She's a tough, tough lady. At 13, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. At 34, she beat breast cancer. At 39, she beat breast cancer again. So she's been happy and healthy for about 18 years now. She married one time for only three years. All righty, our quote of the day.

12:56 It comes from comedian Red Skelton. He died today in 1997 at 84 years old. Red said, all men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner. Well, thank y'all for listening today. Don't forget to follow us on you listen to us on And check your show notes on the bottom of the podcast today. That tells all the links how to contact us. It'll tell who all those international artists are that I played at the beginning of the show too that I didn't tell you what their names were. All righty, our Country Underground Radio Artist of the Day. In honor of International Country Music Day, I get a pick. So I'm going to go with Shane Owen's song, All the Beer in Alabama. You guys have an awesome day, and I'll talk tomorrow. She left the light on She was waiting up Looking out the window for my pickup truck.

13:45 And when I walked in, it got under my skin when she asked what was. Her name of all things. She could have nailed me for staying out late, drinking with the boys, shooting that eight ball, losing track of time. Dang it, I forgot to call her. I shouldn't blame her, it ain't her fault.

14:34 I never found a straight line that I could walk. When I slipped on that ring, I made a list of things I promised. Her I'd quit. And all of me. She could have nailed me for staying out late, drinking with the boys, shooting that eight ball, losing track of time. Dang it, I forgot to call her. But what hurts me most is that she lost faith, thought I broke the vows we made. When all the beer in Alabama. Couldn't get me drunk enough to even think twice about someone else's love.

15:42 Wouldn't listen didn't want to hear the truth She could have nailed me for staying out late cranking with the boys shooting that eight ball track of time