Beer Barrel Polka was composed by a Czech musician Jaromir Vejvoda in 1927, and lyrics were added in 1934 by another Czech musician Vasek Zeman. It became a popular drinking song during WWII. One of the more memorable recordings was made by the Andrews Sisters who recorded it May 3, 1939.
Their version reached #4 on the US song charts in 1939.
Spider-Man 2, released in 2004, was nominated for seven Saturn Awards from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films at the 31st annual ceremony held May 3, 2005. It took home 5 of the awards.
It won Best Fantasy Film, Best Actor for Tobey Maguire, Best Director for Sam Raimi, Best Screenplay for Alvin Sargent, and Best Visual Effects for John Dykstra, Scott Stokdyk, Anthony LaMolinara, and John Frazier.
Alfred Molina was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Doctor Octopus. Danny Elfman was nominated for Best Score.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was nominated for 9 awards, but did not receive any of them. The Day After Tomorrow received two nominations.
Samuel Chao Chung Ting, born January 27, 1936 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the first U.S.-born Asian American to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976. Ting, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shared the prize with Burton Ricther of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center for the discover of the J/psi nuclear particle.
In 1995, Ting proposed the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a cosmic ray detector and has been working on its development ever since. A prototype was flown on Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-91) in 1998. The main mission was scrubbed after the Columbia disaster in 2003. Dr. Ting successfully lobbied the US Congress to secure a space shuttle flight to carry the AMS-02. It was launched on Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-134) and installed on the International Space Station in May 2011.
Although this movie screams Roger Corman or Bert I. Gordon, The Beast of Yucca Flats was brought to us by Coleman Francis, who wrote and directed. But like Corman and Gordon, his movies ended up being riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Released May 2, 1961, The Beast of Yucca Flats tells the story of a Russian scientist, played by Tor Johnson, who is transformed into a monster after being exposed to an atomic blast. It could or could not be the inspiration for the Incredible Hulk.
The movie opens with a nude woman (in some cases, the bare breasts have been censored) being strangled by what we are to believe is the Beast. Yet, the movie follows the Beast's movements after his exposure, and the scene with the naked woman is never included or explained.
Another problem is Coleman Francis filmed the entire movie without sound, and added dialogue and narration in post-production, which becomes hilariously obvious in many places.
With a whopping 1.9 rating on imdb.com, it is considered one of the worst movies ever made.
Ervin Yen, born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1954, moved to northwest Oklahoma City in 1959, where he graduated from Putnam City High School and then a BS in zoology from University of Oklahoma. He went on to get a medical degree from OU College of Medicine.
He changed his party affiliation to Republican in 2009 and ran for the District 40 state senate seat in 2014. He won the election in the general election, becoming the first Asian American in the Oklahoma legislature history.
He lost his re-election bid in the primaries to an anti-vaxxer in 2018. Yen changed his affiliation to Independent to run for governor in the 2022 election, citing the rise of COVID-19 misinformation, Trump's election lies, and the GOP's lack of response to COVID-19.
Members of the Shenzhou 17, the sixth mission to the Tiangong space station, landed safely today in Inner Mongolia, China. The crew consisted of Commander Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie, and Jiang Xinlin. It was Tang Hongbo's second mission and the first person to visit the space station twice. The spaceflight launched October 26, 2023.
Tang Shengjie is the youngest taikonaut to perform a spacewalk at 34. The crew performed 2 EVAs for a total of 15 hours and 17 minutes.
One of my favorite actresses of all time, Cloris Leachman, born April 30, 1926 in Des Moines, Iowa, has won nine Emmy Awards, including a Daytime Emmy, more than any other performer. She won the title of Miss Chicago 1946 and competed in the Miss America pageant. She appeared in a handful of movies during the 1950s and 1960s, but mainly appeared on television. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Last Picture Show.
Leachman appeared in three Mel Brooks movies: Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and The History of the World: Part 1. She won her first Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her work in A Brand New Life. She won eight Primetime Emmys, a Daytime Emmy, and a Golden Globe among the many other awards she's received.
She remained acting until her passing in January 2021 from complications from a stroke with COVID-19 as a contributing factor.
