Birthdays: Jim Bridger the mountain man, Nat King Cole, film composer Alfred Newman, Mercedes McCambridge, Leslie Ann Down, Patrick Duffy, Rudolph Nureyev, Gary Sinise, Kate Greenaway, John Sebastian, Ben Washam (Warner Bros. animator), Ken Anderson (Disney animator), Stormy Daniels (porn star), John Wayne Gacy, Kurt Russell is 75, Rob Lowe is 62
461AD- HAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY - St. Patrick was a Romanized Gaul named Patricius Magonus Sucatus who as a boy was taken as a slave to Ireland by raiders, then escaped and became a Christian Bishop at Auxerre. He returned to Ireland in 432. Patrick converted the daughters of Irish King Laoghaire and cast down the great pagan idol of Crom Cruach in Letrim. As far as snakes go, some say that was a metaphor for the pagans. He died on this day in Ireland 461AD.
The holiday was a religious festival in Ireland but in America the feast day of Ireland's patron saint became a chance to show ethnic pride and political strength in the face of anti-Irish prejudice.
965. AD- Pope Leo VIII died of a stroke while in bed with a lady en flagrante delicto.
1780- General Washington ordered his army to commemorate St. Patrick's Day in sympathy with "An ancient people's struggle for independence." One of the Pennsylvania regiments had so many Irish volunteers that it was called The Line of Ireland.
1811- The first sidewheel Mississippi riverboat The New Orleans was launched.
1845- Rubber Bands invented.
1874- MACY'S- Jacob and Isadore Strauss, two German Jewish immigrants whose first job in America was selling Confederate War Bonds, bought a dry goods store from a retired Quaker whaling captain named R.H. MACY. They decided to keep the name to divert anti-Semitic customers. The store was later so successful that in 1904 Macys’s moved to it's present location on 34th St. The location was close by the new Penn. Station and also across the street from the two largest brothels in New York.
When Macy was a sailor, he had a red star tattoo on his arm. That red star remains the Macys logo.
Izzy Strauss later went down with the Titanic in 1912 and Jacob's kids founded Strauss stores. When Jacob visited Paris in 1919, he joked on General Pershing's comment "Lafayette Nous'Voici", Lafayette We are Here!” to "Galerie Lafayette we are here!" Galerie Lafayette is a French department store.
1879- New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace stopped work on his novel Ben Hur long enough to meet face-to-face outlaw Billy the Kid to discuss an amnesty.
1884- To quiet the fears of New Yorkers that the Brooklyn Bridge was too dangerous to cross, circus-master P.T. Barnum led a herd of his circus elephants led by Jumbo the Elephant across the bridge safely.
1901- At a grand exhibition of his paintings at Bernheim-Jeune Palace in Paris, the world discovered the brilliance of a poor Dutch lunatic who had shot himself a few years back- Vincent Van Gogh.
1906- Teddy Roosevelt in a speech to the Gridiron Club coins the term "Muckraker".
1912- The Camp Fire Girls created.
1939- The Walt Disney short cartoon “Goofy and Wilbur” released. The character Goofy had been in Mickey shorts since 1932, but this was his first as a solo star.
1941- The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington D.C.
1949- The first car show for Porsche sportscars.
1965- Chicago began the Saint Patrick’s Day tradition of dyeing the Chicago River green.
1982- Politically conservative Hollywood actors led by Charlton Heston broke with the Screen Actor’s Guild and form a rival group called AWAG (American Working Actor’s Guild). They were angered by SAG president Ed Asner’s taking their union into national politics by publicly condemning Pres. Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America, capped by the SAG board refusing Reagan (their former president) the Guild lifetime achievement award.
As a result Ed Asner’s hit TV show “Lou Grant” lost sponsors and was cancelled, and Heston’s career cooled as well, beyond speaking at NRA events, and writing cranky letters to the L.A. Times that Ben Hur wasn’t gay.
1983- On trial for libel, and refusing to name sources, wheelchair bound porn publisher Larry Flynt showed up in a US Federal court wearing a diaper made from an American flag. This was calculated to mock a conservative demand for a Constitutional amendment against burning the flag.
1991- Irish Gays and Lesbians were first barred by The Ancient Order of Hibernians from marching in the New York and Boston St Patrick’s Day Parades. They took it to the Supreme Court who ruled the Hibernians could bar from marching whoever they wanted to. NYC and Boston welcomed LGBTQ groups in 2013. Today most major St. Paddys Day parades around the world admit LGBTQ groups to march.y.
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