Who knows what's coming down the pipeline? (image courtesy Troy Holden)

At the moment, this situation is like a 7^th grade student council election. Back in my day, kids running for student council representative would gather votes through making outlandish promises that would appeal to a wide swath of eleven-year-olds, ignoring completely the feasibility of those changes. Like “Free candy all day!” or “No school on Fridays!” or “The Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync will perform an acoustic set together daily in the cafeteria, with biweekly guest appearances by 98 Degrees and Ricky Martin!” Keep in mind this was the late 1990s.

So here are eight awesome things I’d like to see on Conan’s new show, with no consideration of the practicality of any of these options.

Branch out in the top of the show. One of the best segments from Conan’s Tonight Show run was his very first cold open, where he appears to be sprinting across the country from New York to Los Angeles while Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” plays in the background. And – spoiler alert – his live show begins with a hilarious video segment featuring a fat and unshaven Conan bumbling around the house in a state of depression. Why begin the show every damn time with a monologue if you don’t have to? Let’s see more craziness at the top of the show!

ROCKING OUT. The “Legally Prohibited” Tour features several musical numbers where Conan fronts the band on guitar and vocals. The crowds have been eating this up and craving more, and with good reason – dude’s got chops. Please give us more of your rockstardom, Coco.

Rock. Star. (image courtesy JasonBaldwin)

More Clutch Cargo. Conan’s Tonight Show didn’t have enough Clutch Cargo, a bit where he’d talk to “celebrities” which were, in actuality, a static image of the interviewee with an impersonator’s lips on top. Past guests included Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (JINGLE ALL ZE VAY!), so why not update the segment with inane conversations with Barack Obama, Ahmadinejad, and Snookie and the Situation?

Pyrotechnics and explosions. Let’s break stuff! One of Letterman’s famous stunts during his time on Late Night was dropping stuff off of a five-story tall roof and showing the destruction. This bit wins every time – who doesn’t want to watch a 300 lb. safe demolish a car? Conan did some of this on the Tonight Show, one example being a monster truck crushing the world’s largest pumpkin. But why not up the ante and add lots and lots of fire? BLOW SHIT UP.

Integration with Time Warner’s other properties. When NBC merged with Universal, they acquired the rights to Walker, Texas Ranger, thus birthing one of Late Night’s classic segments: the Walker, Texas Ranger lever. Time Warner, aside from owning TBS, also owns HBO, TNT, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim, among other channels, and all of the Looney Tunes cartoons EVER MADE – so Conan will have unfettered access to that intellectual property. Conan + old school cartoons = ?

Conan, as someone else. Conan’s run on TV had actors or, more often, writers portray beloved characters, like Fed Ex Pope (Brian McCann), Frankenstein (Brian Stack), Masturbating Bear (?), the Slipnutz (Brian Stack, Andy Blitz, Jon Glaeser), and more. In these segments, Conan would play the straight one. But I’d like to see the guy take on more ridiculous roles himself – he made a hilarious Conando in spoofing overacted Spanish telenovelas, and reportedly played Slim Chestershucks, a cowboy, for his crew during their live shows in Texas. He has the chops, so let’s see some absurd Conan-fronted characters. Super hero, rock star, tax attorney – the options are endless.

More elaborate remotes. Conan shines when he improvises, and that’s doubly true whenever he ventures off of the studio lot. Because the TBS show will air only four nights a week – Monday through Thursday – the staff will have an extra empty day to plan, film, and tidy up remote segments off campus. I hear Mexico isn’t too far from Los Angeles…

Beard shaving. Conan now boasts an unemployment beard, not having shaved since he lost the Tonight Show a few months ago. It’s unclear as to whether he’ll want to keep the beard when he starts again on TBS, but should he decide to shave it, he could chip away at it over time and wean us off of the scruff. It’d be a ridiculous transition from his full beard into any one of these. Especially mutton chops. Or the Franz Josef.

Can you say Moonwalk?

Presenting the illusion that the dancer is stepping forward whilst actually moving backward, the moonwalk originated in 1943 but wasn’t made famous for nearly forty years in 1983 when Jackson preformed his signature move on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. I am willing to bet that just about every person in the world, baring the few tribes that have somehow avoided modern man, infants, and possibly the Amish, have tried to moon walk!  Annie is OK, and Michael is Awesome!

ABC, easy as…123

Rolling Stone magazine described the young Michael as “a prodigy” with “overwhelming musical gifts”, noting that Michael “quickly emerged as the main draw and lead singer” after he began to dance and sing with his brothers. Though Michael sang with a “child’s piping voice, he danced like a grown-up hoofer and sang with the R&B/gospel inflections of Sam Cooke, James Brown, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder”.

She’s not my lover…

Billie Jean’ lyrics, written by Michael himself, refer to a real-life experience, in which the a mentally insane female fan claimed that Jackson fathered one of her twins. You gotta be pretty Awesome to have someone you’ve never met ACTUALLY BELIEVE you had sex with her!

Thriller: 60 million people can’t be wrong!

Where the red leather jacket become Awesome! Thriller has sold an estimated 110 million copies worldwide, with seven of the album’s nine songs released as singles, and all seven hitting the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards at the 1984 Grammys. Almost as Awesome as this, in 2007, the inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, a maximum security prison in Cebu, in the Cebu Province of the Philippines, imitated the zombie dance featured in the music video. That video was an instant hit, with 23 million views. MJ’s Thriller has 13 million more with 37 million views!

Front man for supergroup, USA for Africa

We Are The World was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie with solos appearances by some of the Awesome-est singers ever including; like Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Diana Ross, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, and Cyndi Lauper. Hitting #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 17, 1985, followed by #1 in the UK, and finally making the top spot in almost every country throughout the world. Awesome!

Don’t Stop

Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough was Jackson’s first solo album away from Motown Records only took three months to hit the top of the charts and be certified gold! The music video was directed and produced by Nick Saxton featured a smiling Jackson floating over a background of disco lights and performing dance techniques while singing the song in a tuxedo. At one stage, Jackson is seen dancing in triplicate, which was considered innovative at the time.

Beat It

Even Weird Al’s spoof of this hit was gold! Well, Australian gold! According to Yankovic, in 1989 he presented his lyric which include: “Eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it. If it’s gettin’ cold, reheat it. Have a big dinner, have a light snack. If you don’t like it, you can’t send it back.  Just eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it.’ to Jackson for permission for the parody. Jackson allegedly thought it was amusing, and agreed to allow the parody. On October 19, 1989, the RIAA certified “Eat It” as a gold single. Awesome!

Bad

As I was putting this post together I was aiming at 10 Awesome Michaels. I asked my friends, searched google, wikipedia, youtube, and called my mom.  Those were the Top 8 Awesome ‘Michaels’ I came up with. I needed two more.

Until, I got 3! Captain EO Michael, Man in the Mirror Michael, and whoever is impersonating him on Sunset Blvd.

How Awesome are all of those? EO 3D was amazing, Man in the Mirror inspired millions and continues to today, and the creepy guy on Sunset Strip made a killing today! All 3 are pretty Awesome and had to make the list! Oh, and then there is always Michael and Magic. And of course, there’s always reason to marvel at MJ’s patent entitled “Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion.”

Believe it or not, there was a time when Jerry Springer’s show was actually less about marital problems between cousins and somewhat of a legitimate forum for discussion.

Jerry probably deserves his own post, but for now, I have this little gem for you from the early 90s.  You probably know enough about Jerry Springer, but you may not know enough about a guest featured on this particular show, GG Allin.

GG Allin was one of most likely the world’s most vile, mentally unstable, angriest, and offensive musician to have walked the earth. Here are some choice snippets from his Wikipedia page. I would read it all because it’s ironically hilarious in that “holy crap, this person actually lived” sort of way and it’s good set-up for the video.

Kevin Michael “GG” Allin (August 29, 1956 – June 28, 1993) was an American punk rock singer-songwriter who performed and recorded with many punk-rock groups during his career.

Allin is best remembered for his notorious live performances that typically featured wildly transgressive acts such as Allin defecating and urinating onstage, rolling in feces and often consuming excrement, committing self-injury, performing naked, and committing violent actions toward the audience—often doing many of these things simultaneously.

His politically incorrect lyrics, which often covered subjects such as misogyny, pedophilia and racism, deeply divided opinions of him within the highly politicized punk community. Though he had a devoted cult following, Allin’s music has received mostly negative reviews from critics.

GG was born as Jesus Christ Allin at Weeks Memorial Hospital in Lancaster, New Hampshire. He was given this messianic name because his father, Merle Colby Allin, Sr., told his young wife, Arleta Gunther, that Jesus Christ Himself had visited him and told him that his newborn son would be a great and all powerful man in the vein of the Messiah.

As a young child, his older brother Merle Allin, Jr. was unable to pronounce “Jesus” properly and kept calling him “Jeje”, which became “GG”. The family lived in a log cabin with no water or electricity. Allin’s father, who forbade all conversation in the home after dark, was a religious fanatic and an antisocial man, and was allegedly violent towards his wife and children, though GG himself never used this as an excuse for any of his own eccentricities. At age 12, Allin had contracted Lyme disease and claimed to have never fully recovered from the effects of having the disease at such a young age.

GG was considered an outcast from junior high school onwards, being placed in special ed classes and having to repeat the third grade. He was known to rebel by showing up to school dressed in drag (his 10th grade school picture depicts him this way), which he said was inspired by the New York Dolls. When asked about his childhood, GG has been quoted as saying “Very chaotic. Full of chances and dangers. We sold drugs, stole, broke into houses, cars, etc. Did whatever we wanted to for the most part – including all the bands we played in. People even hated us back then.”

By the mid to late 1980s, Allin was addicted to heroin and alcohol and general abused any intoxicants provided to him, sometimes taking pills without even asking what they were. He was poorly groomed and rarely cleaned himself. At this point, Allin also began eating laxatives before performances – as defecation was becoming a regular stage act. Allin described himself as “the last true rock and roller.” By this, he meant that rock and roll music itself had started as an embodiment of danger, anti-authoritarianism, rebelliousness but had become largely taken over by corporations and business concerns. Allin’s music and performances were thus meant to return rock and roll to what he saw as its roots, reclaiming it from the corporate system.

By this point, Allin’s performances, which often resulted in considerable damage to venues and sound equipment, were regularly stopped after only a few songs by police or venue owners. Allin was charged with assault and battery or indecent exposure a number of times. His constant touring was only stopped by jail time or by long hospital stays for broken bones, blood poisoning, and other physical trauma.

Another attraction to Allin performances was his continual threats of suicide. In 1988, Allin wrote to Maximum RocknRoll stating that he would commit suicide on stage on Halloween 1989. However, he was in jail when that day came. He continued his threat each following year but ended up imprisoned each following Halloween. When asked why he does not follow through with his threats, or sometimes his on-stage defecations, Allin stated, “With GG, you don’t get what you expect—you get what you deserve.” He also stated that suicide should only be done when one had reached their peak, meeting the afterlife at their strongest point and not at their weakest.

Despite threats of an onstage suicide, Allin died of an accidental heroin overdose in New York City on June 28, 1993, in the Manhattan apartment of John Handley Hurt and Dwanna Yount only six days after leaving prison (and three days after attending the premire of the documentary [of his life] Hated, whose director gives an account of Allin’s attendance in Bizarre magazine). He was found lying in his apartment on the night of the 29th but he actually died overnight in his sleep on the 28th. He was 36 years old. His last show was at a small club called The Gas Station in New York City. Video footage of the soundcheck, concert, and aftermath is appended to the DVD release of Hated. In his last show the power went out during the second song, after which he trashed the venue and walked the streets of New York naked and covered in blood and feces, surrounded by fans whom he openly embraced. On VH1’s Freakiest Concert Moments, Allin’s final show ranked at number four.

After arriving at his friends’ apartment, some party-goers posed for photos with Allin, not knowing that he was already dead. The next morning, some noticed that Allin still lay motionless in the same place where they had left him, and called for an ambulance. Allin was pronounced dead at the scene.

At his funeral, Allin’s bloated, discolored corpse was dressed in his black leather jacket and trademark jock strap. He had a bottle of Jim Beam beside him in his casket, per his wishes (openly stated in his self-penned acoustic country ballad, “When I Die”). As part of his brother’s request, the mortician was instructed not to wash the corpse (which smelled strongly of feces), or apply any makeup. The funeral became a wild party. Friends posed with the corpse, placing drugs and whiskey into its mouth. As the funeral ended, his brother put a pair of headphones on Allin. The headphones were plugged into a portable cassette player, in which was loaded a copy of The Suicide Sessions. The video of his funeral is widely available for purchase, and is an extra feature on the Hated DVD and some bootleg VHS tapes.

Now wasn’t that just lovely? Just imagine Thanksgiving dinner at the Allin house.

Anyway, with this in mind, I now present the semi-legendary eposide of Jerry Springer featuring GG Allin as his main guest.

“We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event… and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ before we sign off.”

• Launched a short-lived competitor to MTV in 1984, the Cable Music Channel, which lasted 33 days. The story behind CMC is actually pretty interesting and almost warrants its own post.

• Attempted to buy CBS, instead bought the MGM/United Artists for $1.5 billion just to sell parts of it back to others in an effort to reduce debt. Turner retained ownership of a gigantic film and television library, which now includes

  The Wizard of Oz
  A Christmas Story
  Gone With the Wind
  Tom & Jerry
  North by Northwest
  Gilligan’s Island
  2001: A Space Odyssey
  Looney Tunes

  … along with a significant chunk of the pre-1986 MGM/UA TV and film library, the RKO Radio Pictures Library, and the pre-1950 Warner Bros. film library.

• Used to own theatrical and television rights to Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
• Had to start an entire company (Turner Entertainment) to manage all of his film assets in 1986.
• Bought World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1988, later sold it to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).
• Launched the philanthropic Turner Foundation in 1990 which distributes grants for environmental and population-relatd work. As part of this, he created Captain Planet. That’s right. Ted Turner made Captain Planet.
• Created the United Nations Foundation in 1998 to manage his $1 billion donation to the UN’s causes. The one billionth dollar was donated by 2006.
• Served in the Coast Guard, receiving the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism (not to be confused with the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism).
• Is the recipient of 42 honorary degrees.
• Bought Hanna-Barbera Productions and acquired Castle Rock Entertainment (distributors of Seinfeld, among other things) and New Line Cinema in the early 1990s.
• In 2001, launched the Nuclear Threat Initiative to “close the growing and increasingly dangerous gap between the threat from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the global response.”
• Was Time’s Man of the Year in 1991 and Broadcasting & Cable (Magazine)’s Man of the Century in 1999. How an industry which has not existed for more than a century can have an industry publication that awards such a designation remains a mystery.

And now, the complete listing of his media properties (thanks, Wikipedia!)

TV

• CNN
• CNN HD
• HLN (CNN Headline News)
• CNN Airport Network
• CNN International
• CNN en Español
• CNN Chile
• CNN+ (Only in Spain)
• CNN IBN (Localized to India)
• n-tv (HLN Germany)
• CNN Turk (Localized to Turkey)
• truTV (formerly CourtTV)
• NBA TV
• TBS
• TBS HD
• TNT
• TNT HD
• TCM (Turner Classic Movies)
• WPCH-TV, Atlanta
• Cartoon Network
  • Cartoon Network Studios
  • Adult Swim
  • Williams Street
• Boomerang
• Boomerang UK (+ multiple localized European versions)
• Cartoonito (UK)
• Cartoon Network Too (UK)
• Fashion TV Latin America
• Infinito TV (Latin America only)
• Space (Latin America)
• Retro (Like TV Land, but for Latin America)
• China Educational Television Network (approx. 40% ownership)
• Nuts TV (UK-only, if Maxim had their own network, it would be this)
• Pogo (Cartoon Network for India)
• Boing (Cartoon Network for Italy)

Web Properties

• PGA.com & PGATour.com
• NASCAR.com
• GameTap
• CartoonNetwork.com
• AdultSwim.com
• CNNMoney.com
• CNN.com
• iReport.com
• TBS.com
• TNT.tv
• TruTV.com
• PlayON! Sports Network

It is surprising that the guy only has a net worth of about $2.3 billion.

For one reason or another, the danger surrounding Niagara Falls is attractive to daredevils. Perhaps one of the more memorable events to occur on the falls took place in 1990 and starred David Copperfield:

(The entire special can be viewed here.)

Obviously this clip was just one part of a multimillion dollar primteimte TV special.

Now get this. Fast forward to October 1st, 1995.  A wannabe stuntman by the name of Robert Overcracker tries to hit two birds with one stone. As a way to catapult himself into the stunt industry as well as raise money for the homeless, Mr. Overcracker arranged a stunt where he would ride a jetski off of the falls and safely land via a rocket-propelled parachute.

This, of course is not a particularly smart idea. As it turned out, that rocket powered parachute failed to open, sending Mr. Overcracker over the edge, his body never to be recovered, and raised more awareness for parachutes than for the homeless.

Miraculously, an Egyptian tourist snapped this incredible photo of the events:

Interestingly enough, Mr. Overcracker could have qualified for life insurance payout as a result of this ridiculous stunt too! I’m not sure whther or not he actually received anything, but hot damn, what a way to go.

• Wells Fargo Plaza in Houston and Kingdom Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are the 44th tallest buildings in the world. Guess which is which.

• The 44th Congressional District covers an area from Orange County to Riverside County in California.
• The French Connection won Best Picture at the 44th Academy Awards.
• Haydin’s Symphony No. 44 was completed in 1772. Haydin requested the symphony to be played at his funeral.
• U2 won Record of the Year, The eponymous soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? won Album of the Year, and Alicia Keys won Song of the Year (“Fallin’”) at the 44th Grammy Awards in 2002.
• The 44th Parallel North runs through France, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, Mongolia, Japan, Canada, and the United States.
• The 44th US Congress began March 4th, 1875 and ran through March 3rd, 1877.
• New Hampshire is the 44th Largest State in land area.
  
• Chile has the 44th Largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• The 44th Season of the NFL began in 1963. The Chicago Bears would go on to defeat the New York Giants in the NFL Championship Game that year.
• The liberal party won the 44th Nova Scotia general election with 51% of the vote
• The 44th Parallel South runs through New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina.
• In 1990, The Grapes of Wrath won Best Play at the 44th Tony Awards.
  
• The 44th World Science Fiction Convention held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1986 honored Ender’s Game for Best Novel and Back to the Future for Best Dramatic Presentation.
• The Polish 44th Infantry Division was among the first units of the Polish Army to defend the country from the Germans in World War II.
• Wyoming entered the union as the 44th State on July 10, 1890.
• The 44th Century will last from January 1st, 4001 to December 31st, 5000. The Mayan Calendar will end on October 14th, 4772.
• Skyang Kangri is the 44th tallest mountain (at 24,754 ft.) located on the Chinese-Pakistani border. It was first ascended by Japanese mountain climbers Yoshioki Fujioji and Hideki Nagata in 1976.
• In 2005, King County, Washington was the 44th out of 50 highest-income counties by personal per capita income in the US ($48,216).
• The 44th Super Bowl (XLIV) will be held at Dolphin Stadium in Miami, Florida on February 7, 2010 and will be broadcast on CBS.
• You Nazty Spy! was the 44th short by The Three Stooges. It was the first Hollywood production to satirize Nazi Germany.
  
  The plot, courtesy of Wikipedia, is as follows:

  In the fictional country of Moronica, three munitions manufacturers—Messrs. Ixnay (Richard Fiske), Ohnay (Dick Curtis) and Amscray (Don Beddoe)—decide their country is in need of a change. They decide to implement a dictatorship, oust the king, and go about finding someone stupid enough to be a figurehead leader. Ixnay volunteers the three wallpaper hangers simultaneously working in his dining room-the Stooges.

  Ixnay presents Moe Hailstone, Curly Gallstone, and Larry Pebble with the offer to run Moronica. Moe is instituted as the leader (the Adolf Hitler role), with Curly as Field Marshal Gallstone, and Larry as Minister of Propaganda Pebble (an amalgam of Joseph Goebbels and Joachim von Ribbentrop). After his takeover, Hailstone proceeds to give a speech to the masses, cueing Larry to display signs reading “APPLAUSE”, “CHEERS” and even “HISS”. Moe “bonks” Larry after Larry accidentally raises the cue card for “HISS” at the wrong time during one of Hailstone’s speechs.

  However, the daughter (Lorna Gray) of the overthrown king pays Hailstone a visit, going by the name Mattie Herring (a spoof of World War I spy Mata Hari). The Stooges suspect she is a spy, and attempt to execute her. She escapes, and gathers a huge mob to storm Hailstone’s palace. The trio quickly abdicate, and flee into a lion’s den. A Lion is seen exiting wearing Hailstone’s hat.

• The 44th episode of Star Trek aired September 11th, 1996.
• Italy beat Belgium in the 44th Fed Cup, the most important competition in national women’s tennis, in 2006.
• Aishwarya Rai of India was named the 44th Miss World in Sun City, South Africa.
  
• Scottie Pippen of the Chicago Bulls was voted MVP at the 44th NBA All-Star game in 1994. The East All-Stars won, 127-118.
  
• Pirates of the High Seas was the 44th serial released by Columbia Pictures.
  
  Adventurer Jeff Drake sails to a Pacific island in aid of Kelly Walsh, an old friend whose freight line is being sabotaged by a ghost ship (such as the classic Flying Dutchman). Drake and Walsh’s investigation concerns the search for Walter Castell, an escaped convict who stole 5 million dollars in diamonds at the close of World War II. Several other people, including Walsh’s sister, all want to go to the island. Drake and his friends encounter multiple dangers when they are attacked by a gang also looking for the stolen diamonds. (Source: Wikipedia)
  
• The 44th episode of Desperate Housewives is entitled “I Know Things Now.”
• Ignacio Chavez was the 44th president of Nicaragua. His term lasted from January 1st to March 1st, 1891.
• The 44th mayor of New Orleans was Walter C. Flower whose term ran from April 27th, 1896 to May 7th, 1900.
• Joseph Rakowski served as 44th mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey. He is best known for addressing the issue of garbage trucks full of trash being stolen and driven from New York City  to Jersey City where they would be abandoned.
• 1946 marked the 44th season for the New York Yankees. The team finished with a 67-67 record.
• Asador Etxebarri was voted 44th best restaurant in the world by Restaurant Magazine in 2008. It is located in Basque County in Biscay.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt served as 44th Governor of New York State.
• Charlie Chaplin received the 44th Academy Honorary Award for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century” in 1971.
  
• A 2006 study ranked Alabama as the state with the 44th highest gross state product of $160 billion or $29,697 per capita.
• The US Census Bureau estimated that Oakland, California was the 44th largest city in the United States with 397,067 people.
• The University of California – Santa Barbara has been rated 44th among national universities by US News and World Report
• Israel is estimated to have the 44th largest economy in the world.
• The 44th Giro d’Italia, a long distance cycling race, was held in 1961 and was won by Arnaldo Pambianco with a time of 111 hours, 25 minutes, 28 seconds.
• Sonny Bono was a member of the US House of Representatives from California’s 44th District from January 1995 to 1998. He was succeeded by his wife, Mary Bono Mack.
• The UK version of the 44th Now That’s What I Call Music! series was released in 1999 and is the biggest-selling Now album in history with 2.3 million copies sold. Take a look at the track listing and you’ll see why.
  
• The 44th animated film by Walt Disney Feature Animation was Brother Bear, released in 2003.
• A 2006 CNN/Money poll listed Lee’s Summit, Missouri as 44th on the list of 100 Best Cities to Live in the US.
• Canadian Charles Andrew MacGillivary was one of the most well known members of the 44th Infantry during World War II. Upon hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor, MacGillivary volunteered for the US Army in 1942. In January of 1945, he single-handedly knocked out four German machine gun nests and killed 36 German soldiers. He also would lose his right hand in the process (no pun intended earlier). He would receive the Presidential Medal of Honor for his efforts later that year. The letter from President Truman is below:
  
• The first use of a sky lobby in a building was the 44th floor of the John Hancock Center in Chicago. A sky lobby was also located on the 44th floor of the World Trade Center in New York.

Know other 44ths? Sound off in a comment!

1808 - The United States bans the importing of slaves

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1845 – The Cobble Hill Tunnel (Atlantic Ave. Tunnel) in New York City is built.

The tunnel is now abandoned, but still exists and is about 2, 750 feet long. The tunnel was originally just sort of a sunken train track used to rush passengers to ferries in Manhattan from Long Island. The trench was eventually covered up with bricks, turning it into a tunnel.  While it has been attributed to be the first subway tunnel, this claim is dubious since there weren’t any stations built along it. After the tunnel was closed for operations, it was discovered that it had been used for many purposes:

• 1916: The FBI (formed in 1908) breaks into the tunnel suspecting that German terrorists were making bombs inside. Nothing of the sort was found.
• 1920s: Mushroom growing and distilling of bootleg whiskey
• 1930s: New York City police break into the tunnel looking for “the body of a hoodlum.” The hoodlum was later discovered buried in cement, in a barrel, in Buffalo.
• 1940s: The FBI enters the tunnel again looking for spies

Schematics of the tunnel

Image of the tunnel circa 1980s

The tunnel today. Click for more pictures on Flickr.

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1863 - Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation

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1880 – Ferdinand de Lesseps, despite not being an engineer, begins the French construction of the Panama Canal. It would cost an estimated $120,000,000. Adjusting for inflation, that’s a whopping $2,548,080,527.28 in today’s dollar. The French would later cease construction on the canal altogether and the US would finish the job.

The French attempt at the Panama Canal circa 1885

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1901 – The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed.

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1908 – For the first time, a ball is dropped in New York City’s Times Square to signify the start of the New Year at midnight.

1 Times Square: 1908 and a hundred years later in 2008

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1934 – Alcatraz becomes a United States federal prison.

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1962 – United States Navy SEALs established.

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1983 – The ARPANET officially changes to using the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.

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1984 – AT&T is famously broken up by the US Supreme Court into 22 different companies, only to reassemble itself some years later when it is acquired by parts… of its former self.

Funny enough, I was interning for Cracked.com in the summer of 2006, some time before this bit aired. I had put together an almost identical written piece, but we couldn’t print it because high-quality, print-ready versions of the old “Baby Bell” logos don’t exist. You can get away with it on TV since screen resolution is so low.

People Born

• 1449: Lorenzo de’ Medici (you know, like those guys who funded the Rennaisance)
• 1752: Betsy Ross
• 1735: Paul Revere
• 1863: Organizer of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin
• 1879: Hungarian-born film producer, William Fox. He’s the “Fox” in 20th Century-Fox.
• 1895: J. Edgar Hoover
• 1919: J.D. Salinger
• 1958: Joseph Saddler (you might know him as Grandmaster Flash)