Lizzie Bordon

Lizzie Bordon was born on 19 July 1860. She had a relatively religious upbringing, attending Central Congregational Church; after high school she taught Sunday school to immigrant children and was the secretary-treasurer of the Christian Endeavor Society. She was also involved with social movements such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and was a member of the Ladies Fruit and Flower Mission.

Her father, Andrew Borden, was a successful property developer.and directed several textile mills including the Globe Yarn Mill Company, Troy Cotton and Woolen Manufacturing Company, and he owned considerable commercial property, as well as was both president of the Union Savings Bank and a director of the Durfee Safe Deposit and Trust Co

In 1865, her mother, Sarah Borden, died and her father remarried to Abby Gray, who had a daughter named Emma. Lizzie referred to her stepmother as "Mrs Borden" instead of "mother". The Bordens rarely ate meals together. Andrew upset Lizzie in May 1892 when he killed one of Lizzie's pigeons wih an axe because he believed it was attracting intruders. The following month, a family argument led to the two sisters taking extended vacations.

Tension had been growing in the family in late July 1892, especially over Andrew's gifts to various branches of the family. After Abby's relatives received a house, the sisters demanded and received a rental property, which they later sold back to their father for cash. For several days afterward, the entire household had been violently ill. The family doctor blamed food left on the stove for use in meals over several days, but Abby had feared poisoning, as Andrew Borden had not been popular.

On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden breakfasted with his wife and made his usual rounds of the bank and post office, returning about 10:45 am. The Bordens' maid, Bridget Sullivan, testified that she was in her third-floor room, resting from cleaning windows, when just before 11:10 am she heard Lizzie call out, "Maggie, come quick! Father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him."

Andrew was slumped on a couch in the downstairs sitting room, struck ten or eleven times with a hatchet. One of his eyeballs had been split cleanly in two, suggesting he had been asleep when attacked. Soon after, as neighbors and doctors tended Lizzie, Sullivan discovered Abby Borden in the upstairs guest bedroom, her skull crushed by nineteen blows.Police found a hatchet in the basement which, though free of blood, was missing most of its handle. Lizzie was arrested on August 11.

The victims' heads were removed during autopsy and the skulls were shown as evidence during Borden's trial (Borden fainted upon seeing her father and stepmother's skulls)

On 20 June 1893,a jury acquitted Lizzie Borden of the murders. Despite the acquittal, Lizzie was ostracized by her community. Her name was again brought into the public eye when she was accused of shoplifting in 1897. Soon after, Lizzie began using the name Lizbeth A. Borden.

Lizzie Borden died of pneumonia on 1 June 1927.

The murders were turned into a popular nursery rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one.

 

Lizzie Borden

Nintendo

When asked when Nintendo was founded, most people will say either the 1970s or 1980s. They would be shocked to learn that one of the biggest video game companies was founded long before televisions were even a thought.

Founded 23 September 1889 (that's right, eighteen eighty-nine) by Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo Koppai started out as a card company in Kyoto, Japan, specializing in a card game called Hanafuda. Despite switching to video games, the company still makes these cards, and in fact even makes a special Mario-themed set.

In 1956, Yamauchi's grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, visited the United States to talk with the United States Playing Card Company. While there, he found that the world's largest card manufacturer was being run out of a small office. That's when he realized that the card playing industry was very limiting. He gained access to use Disney characters on the Nintendo cards to help expand the company.

In 1963, the company started experimenting in other areas to attempt to expand the company in new ways, including a taxi company, a love hotel chain, a TV network, a food company (selling instant rice, similar to instant noodles) and several other things. All of these ventures failed. In 1966, they tried making toys, such as the Ultra Hand. Even though it was successful, the company was struggling to make enough to satisfy the demand.

In 1974, Nintendo obtained the rights to distribute a new product called a video game console, specifically, the Magnavox Odyssey. In 1977, a student product developer named Shigeru Miyamoto was hired by Nintendo. He changed Nintendo's future in 1981 when he made a little game called Donkey Kong. The previous year, 1980, Nintendo had released it's very own game console, called the Family Computer, or "Famicom". In North America, the console is known as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or "NES".

And the rest, they say, is history.

The Two Lon Chaneys

Lon Chaney Sr. was born 1 April 1883 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Both his parents were deaf, and because of this he learned pantomime. He started traveling with popular Vaudeville acts in 1902. In 1905 he met and married singer Cleva Creighton, and the following year they had their first only son, Lon Chaney Jr.

The three of them moved and settled in California. In April 1913, marital problems started and one day Cleva went to the theatre where Lon was managing a show, and attempted suicide. The attempt failed, and the ensuing scandal and divorce forced Lon out of the theatre and into the motion picture industry.

From 1912 - 1917,  Lon was under contract with Universal Pictures, doing bit parts. His skills with makeup earned him many parts. In 1915, he married Hazel Hastings, a former colleague from the show he ran before.

By 1917, Lon Chaney was a very well-known actor, though his salary didn't reflect this. When he asked for a raise, studio executive William Sistrom replied, "You'll never be worth more than one hundred dollars a week."

Chaney appeared in 14 films between 1917 and 1919, all of them he starred alongside with Dorothy Phillips, and William Stowell as a team, and usually directed by husband/wife team Joe De Grasse and Ida May Park. This lasted until 24 November 1919, when Stowell was in the caboose of a train when it was hit by the locomotive from another train, killing him instantly.

Later that year, Chaney would star as "The Frog" in "The Frog" in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man. Not only did it show how talented he was as an actor, but also his skill with makeup. He quickly became one of America's favourite character actors. starring in a number of films, and earning the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces". In 1923, Chaney would play the tole of Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and in 1925 he played Erik (or "The Phantom") in The Phantom of the Opera, two of the most grotesquely deformed characters in film history. Both were done with Chaney's skills with makeup.

In late 1929, he was working on a film called Thunder when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. On 26 August 1930, Lon Chaney died.

From the time he was a child, Lon Chaney Jr. had to work hard to get out from under his father's shadow, who always discouraged him going into show business. It wasn't until his father died in 1930 that Jr. started his acting career in an uncredited roll in a 1933 film titled Girl Crazy. In 1939, he starred in Of Mice and Men. When he starred in One Million B. C., Jr. began being viewed as a character actor in the same league as his father.

The following year, 1941, he starred in what would be his signature role, The Wolf Man. After that film, be starred in a number of classic Universal Monster films, including further Wolf Man movies.

He starred in a long list of films over the years, until he was doing low budget films and making guest appearances on The Monkees.

Lan Chaney Jr. died on throat cancer on 12 July 1973.

Lon Chaney Sr. and Jr. are survived by sr.s great-grandson and Jr.'s grandson, Ron Chaney, who rums Chaney Entertainment, and attends film conventions and talks about his great-grandfather's and grandfather's careers.

Conspiracies

[Note: I will simply give you the info I have and let you decide for yourself what you think, Also, just because I include a conspiracy does not mean I believe it. It only means I find it interesting enough to include.]


Nixon murdered Joplin and Hendrix

I was originally only going to post about this tonight, but while I was researching it, I came across more things and decided to make this a collection of conspiracies. According to this one, President Richard Nixon was afraid to not be re-elected, so he has some high profile musicians followed and tapped. He didn't like the messages that Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were spreading to voters, so he had their drinks poisoned. This sounds like a ridiculous rumour, and probably is, considering that when Joplin and Hendrix died (1970), there wasn't an election in sight (Nixon started his term the previous year). Although it is true that some high profile musicians were watched, it's unlikely they would have been killed, much less by order of the President. If anything they would have been detained.


Jim Morrison faked his death and is still alive today

On 3 July 1971 the lead singer of The Doors, Jim Morrison, was found dead in a Paris apartment bathtub. No autopsy was conducted, and because of this many theories have popped up over the years. The biggest one is that he never died, but faked his death. He has even been found, supposedly. Of course, the same has been said of Michael Jackson.


Enhanced photo proves Grassy Knoll

Everyone knows the story of the Kennedy Assassination. There have been a thousand conspiracy theories made about it. In fact, the Wikipedia article for the conspiracies I linked just now is longer than the Wikipedia article about the actual event I linked before it. But the one that seems to stick around is that there was a second gunman on the Grassy Knoll. This is one I actually do believe. The evidence speaks for itself. If Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK from behind, why did the bullet enter from the front and the back of his head explode like that? Anyway, a photo from that day has been enhanced to reveal what many believe to be proof of the shooter in the Grassy Knoll. Known as Badge Man, a figure of a person behind a puff of smoke is clearly visible.

Erhu

No, I didn't put random letters as the title of this post. The Erhu (or 二胡) is a traditional Chinese musical instrument, and the sound you think of when you think of Chinese music. It's a 2-string bowed instrument that Westerners often refer to as the "Chinese fiddle". A traditional Chinese instrument, it's also used in contemporary music.

The Erhu can be traced back over a thousand years, and were made of python skin and silk strings. In the 20th century, steel strings gradually became the professional way. In 1988, China severely regulated the use of python skin, as the snakes were becoming endangered. From 1 January 2005 onward, each Erhu made had to be certified as using farm-raised python skin and not wild python skin.

This makes them be very expensive. A few months back I looked into buying one, and the cheapest real one I found was over $300. Just the cloth to clean it was over $50. I became interested in the instrument last year, when I visited San Francisco in July 2011. I was walking through Chinatown when I saw someone playing one. It was something I had never seen before, and although I grew up hearing the music of China, I had never heard the instrument live in person, or even knew what made that sound. I was able to take a picture of the person playing it.

Here is a video that explains more

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

In the 1920s, an unknown animator known as Walter Disney made a series of animated/live action shorts known as the Alice Comedies, which were based upon Alice in Wonderland. From 1923 to 1927, Disney and his business partner, Ub Iwerks, made 57 Alice shorts. But in 1927, the two decided to end the series due to the rising costs and technical limitations.

Around this time, Universal Pictures wanted to start making and releasing animations. Disney and Iwerks decided to make an animated character that they could sell to Universal. What they came up with was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Disney and Iwerks signed a contract with Universal and Oswald became Universal's first animated series. On 5 September 1927, the first Oswald short was released, titled Trolley Troubles.





In the spring of 1928, Disney traveled to New York City to attempt to negotiate a more profitable contract. As the economy was already in a slump at the time, Universal cancelled Disney's contract. As Universal owned the rights to Oswald, Disney wasn't allowed to keep him, even though he created him and drew the shorts himself.

On the train ride back home, Disney and Iwerks brainstormed to find a new character they could use. By the time they made it back home, they had came up with the idea of a mouse named Mortimer Mouse. When Disney told his wife, she said that name didn't sound pleasant at all, and suggested naming him Mickey Mouse.

Meanwhile, Universal continued using Oswald, even making a sound short in 1929, until 1951, as a cameo in a Woody Woodpecker short.

In February 2006, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Universal agreed on a trade. Disney gave ESPN Sportscaster Al Michaels to NBC Sports, and in exchange Universal gave Disney the rights to Oswald, including the rights to the shorts Disney has worked on. Disney's daughter, Diane Disney Miller had this to say about the exchange:

"When Bob was named CEO, he told me he wanted to bring Oswald back to Disney, and I appreciate that he is a man of his word. Having Oswald around again is going to be a lot of fun."

Al Michaels, who Disney traded for Oswald, had this to say:

"Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice. I'm going to be a trivia answer someday."

In 2010, Oswald was one of the main protagonists in the video game Epic Mickey, as leader of forgotten cartoon characters.

Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

"With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter."

 -from "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" by Robert Browning



Most of us grew up hearing the story of The Pied Piper, about how a village was suffering from a rat problem until the Pied Piper offered to rid them of the problem, which he did by playing his magic flute. When he went to receive his payment, the villagers refused. So, to get back at the villagers, he used his magic flute to make their children follow him out of the village to hide in a cave until the villagers agreed to pay him. This is the story I heard as a kid, although I have heard other variations over the years.

But what if I were to tell you that the fairy tale was actually a true story?

In 1285, the German village of Hamlin had a serious rat problem. A mysterious man appeared one day, many believe him to have been Nicholas of Cologne, offering to rid the village of their rats. He made an agreement with the mayor of Hamelin that he would get paid if he rid the village of their rats. It is said that he used his flute (whether magical or just really good at playing, I'll leave that for you to decide) and lured the rats into the Weser River. When the Piper went to the mayor for his payment, the mayor refused to pay him, denying they had an agreement.

That night, 26 June 1284, the Piper used his flute to lure the 130 village children out of the village. What happened next has been left out of most versions of the tale and replaced with a happy ending. The Piper led most of the children to the same river he led the rats to, and had those children drown themselves. The few who he didn't drown, he took to the top of Koppelberg Hill and had his way with them, killing them when he was done.

However, one child was able to get away, and told the villagers what was happening. By the time they caught up with the Piper, it was too late.

Mordern-day Hamelin holds reenactments every Sunday in the summer.