Mass Historia: 365 Days of Historical Facts and (Mostly) Fictions

Mass Historia Rewrites History with Hilarious Results

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On this day in history in 1896, Utah became state number forty-five, which was also the average number of wives enjoyed by most Utah men at the time.

Utah was settled by Mormons seeking religious freedom in 1847. Leader Brigham Young arrived with a band of 148 pioneers at the Valley of the Great Salt Lake and declared, "This is the place." Most settlers then began setting up tents before he could finish his statement with "...for me to take a whiz," but Young didn't bother correcting anyone because the evening was just beginning and he had twenty wives who were expecting "vacation sex."

A few years later, Young was named governor of the state, but soon Washington, D.C., began to bristle at the flagrant Mormon violations of antipolygamy laws. (Jealous!) In 1857, President James Buchanan (a lifelong bachelor—really jealous) removed Young from his post and sent the army to the state to maintain order. (The only other time the army was sent to Utah to maintain order was in the 1970s, when a herd of perennially dieting Donnie Osmond groupies rioted in Salt Lake City over the scant availability of Tab soda.)

Albert Einstein, Time magazine's Person of the Century (suck on that, Oprah), was born on this day in 1879 in Germany. And yes, we all know that he didn't speak until he was three and wasn't much of a reader, but that doesn't mean your kid isn't a dimwit.

Einstein formulated the theories of relativity and made inestimable contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory and forever changed the way in which mankind views his universe. And by "mankind," we mean "people who know what the hell Einstein was talking about." The rest of us would have preferred he channeled his great intellect into something practical, like a good hangover cure or a jetpack or something.

After Einstein's death, large chunks of his brain were divvied up and placed in jars for further study. It was eventually concluded that Einstein's inferior parietal lobe, which is responsible for mathematical thought and visuospatial cognition, was 15 percent wider than normal. The part of the brain that tells you to write a will, requesting that people don't chop up your brain and put it in jars, was a little smaller than it ought to have been.

Both famous musicians share a birthday today. Bach was born in 1685, while Federline began to kick it, mortal-style, in 1978. This puts "K-Fed" at thirty, so he should probably get serious about career goals and retirement plans, or maybe marry Jessica Simpson or something.

Trying to find some commonality between the two is not easy, although Bach's twenty children seems to be a "spawning benchmark" for Federline, the rapper-model-dancer-actor and future star of I Pass For a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Also, Bach never had the vision to name one of his twenty kids "Preston Federline," which sounds like the name of a supporting character in The Music Man. Let's look at the two side by side.

Californians love electing actors (Ronald Reagan) and nonactors who've been in films (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to office. This fine tradition continued on April 8, 1986, when actor, director, and dried applehead doll Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of the Carmel-by-the-Sea (a town that will change its name to Carmel-Under-the-Sea when the long-awaited "Big One" hits).

Some Clint Eastwood Fun Facts

• Clint is a descendant of Plymouth colony governor William Bradford, whose threat, "How many bullets did I shoot, punk?" was ineffective in the days of single-shot, front-loading muskets.
• Clint got his big break on the television series Rawhide. (There's a bar in New York's Chelsea neighborhood called Rawhide. If one goes in and declares to the other gentleman patrons that one is a big Clint Eastwood fan, one will be bought a drink.)
• Clint didn't become a movie star until he landed in Sergio Leone's "Spaghetti Westerns." To learn more about these movies, go study the posters on the dorm room wall of the film student who never gets any.
• Despite starring in so many Westerns, Clint is allergic to horses!
• Despite starring in so many films with the actor, Clint is allergic to Morgan Freeman!
• In 1971, Clint played the title role in Dirty Harry. His costar was a giant .44 Magnum. And yes, Mr. Film Student with the Fistful of Dollars Poster on His Wall, we all know what that's supposed to represent.
• One of Clint's biggest hits was the comedy Every Which Way but Loose. He costarred with an orangutan named Clyde, who died in the late '90s (autoerotic asphyxiation).
• If you leave Clint in a glass of water overnight, he will grow to over fifteen times his normal size!
• The seventy-eight-year-old Clint can beat up the author of this book.
• Clint supports gay marriage and his name is an anagram for "Old West Action." (Bring these factoids up when at the bar at Rawhide. The drinks will keep rollin' rollin' rollin' in!)

On This day in 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy released a statement claiming sole responsibility for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. It was the sort of honesty that all but assured this rube was never going to see a second term.

A week earlier, 1,500 Cuban exiles armed with U.S. weapons landed on the southern coast of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, hoping to find support from the local population. Unfortunately, after years of living in a place known as the Bay of Pigs, the self-esteem of the locals was such that they felt they were ultimately too fat and unpopular to lend much support.

This lackluster landing led to Kennedy's decision to cancel several bombing raids on the Cuban Air Force, thus sparing its plane.

With the failure of this invasion, Cuba was able to continue on as a Communist island paradise, if you refuse to measure "paradise" on the international "Access to Medicine and Protein" paradise scale. Her music was later heard around the world thanks to the album The Buena Vista Social Club, which you may have heard if you've attended any boring cocktail party over the last five years thrown by someone who had misplaced his or her Norah Jones CD.

On April 27, 1897, over one million people attended the dedication ceremony of Grant's Tomb, on Manhattan's Riverside Drive and 122nd street. The celebrants were entertained by Civil War reenactors, a parade, and nearby Columbia University students protesting the "Gross and Inequitable Use of Marble and Granite!"

Designed by architect John Duncan, the structure was completed after many years of planning and remains the largest mausoleum in North America (after Boca Raton).

The Grant Monument Association had been formed in the early 1880s to raise funds for constructing a monument in the general's name. The organization had actually been formed before Grant died, which led to the then-popular trick question of "Who is not yet buried in Grant's tomb?"

Ultimately, 90,000 people donated $600,000 to the project. This aggressive fundraising push led to the former Confederate states establishing the first-ever Do Not Call Registry. (Although this didn't go into effect until 1971, when most southern states finally got phone service.)

Look to the skies. Today is a day where famous aviation events fly high, or come crashing down.

July 2, 1900 Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf von Zeppelin debuts his namesake invention, the Zeppelin, once he finally decided not to call it a "Flying August Heinrich." His invention's days were numbered after the Hindenburg disaster, but his name lived on in the slightly more volatile creation, Led Zeppelin.

July 2, 1937 Amelia Earhart goes missing over the Pacific Ocean while trying to circumnavigate the globe. Later honored in the song "Fly to the Angels" by the band Slaughter, a hair metal outfit that wanted more than anything to be like the band who took their name from Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf von Zeppelin.

July 2, 1947 Aliens supposedly crash-land in Roswell, New Mexico. People who believe in the occurrence of this event are also willing to believe that Amelia Earhart is still living on an island in the Pacific with Judge Crater, Ambrose Bierce, and Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.

July 2, 1982 A man in California named Larry Walters ties forty-five helium-filled balloons to a lawn chair and reaches an altitude of sixteen thousand feet. His story is later the inspiration for the movie Danny Deckchair, which starred Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, who was once in the rock band Super Furry Animals, to which making a Led Zeppelin comparison would be harder than getting sixteen thousand feet in a deck chair tied to balloons.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, two of that document's writers and former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in what was either an ironic end or a bizarre, long-distance suicide pact between two closeted lovers (the rumor starts here!).

Adams, well into his nineties, supposedly uttered the last words "Thomas Jefferson still survives," although Jefferson had died a few hours before, his last words having been "I bet that dick Adams still thinks I'm alive."

To find out more about the relationship of Jefferson and Adams, rent the film version of the musical 1776. Tell everyone you're a history buff, so they don't think you're a musical-loving closeted homosexual like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (this rumor is going to be HUGE!).

Pin your American flag to your lapel and crank up the Toby Keith because today is a day of famous right-wing milestones.

August 11, 1927 The Reverend Jerry Falwell is born in Virginia, to a mother he never slept with, despite Larry Flynt's insistence to the contrary. He became a Baptist minister and formed the Moral Majority in 1979, whose greatest lasting achievement was getting liberals to remove their "You Can't Hug a Child with Nuclear Arms" bumper sticker to make way for their "Moral Majority Is Neither" bumper sticker.

August 11, 1984 Six-hundred-and-eight-year-old President Ronald Reagan, a.k.a. "the Great Communicator," did a great job of communicating how nuanced his worldview was when he joked during the taping of a radio address, "My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Many were outraged, while others knew it was a joke, especially the whole part where a president's signing of legislation leads to "action" within five minutes. Apparently, Reagan saw a dip in popularity after the remark, plunging him into the basement of a 90 to 95 percent approval.

August 11, 2000 Far Right journalist, author, and most beady-eyed member of the Nixon team, Pat Buchanan, becomes the Reform Party candidate for president, because that party's usual parade of porn stars and professional wrestlers didn't get their paperwork in on time.

Francis Scott Key, in an effort to provide descendant F. Scott Fitzgerald with more time to grab a beer or six before the first inning, composed "The Star- Spangled Banner" on this day in 1814. Key, a lawyer, had composed the lyrics after seeing the British assault on Maryland's Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. The violence seemed somewhat extreme, because even by 1814, the entire world had already forgotten what the War of 1812 was about or that it had ever happened.

Key witnessed the carnage while detained on a British prison ship, unaware of the carnage about to take place on his person once word got round among the other prisoners that a lyricist was on board. He was inspired by the fact that despite the assault, the American flag still flew over the battered fort. Of course, soldiers being soldiers, their "No Fat Wenches," barracks banner also survived but never found proper tribute in song.

The lyrics were published in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20, and eventually set to the tune of an English drinking song called "To Anacreon in Heaven" by British composer John Stafford Smith. This anecdote is always of some small comfort to Sammy Hagar, who wishes that the tight melody line of his "Mas Tequila" might someday find a higher purpose.

Our twenty-seventh president of the United States, William Howard Taft, was born on this day and one assumes began nursing immediately. Here are some fun facts about our fattest chief executive.

• As mentioned, Taft was our heaviest president, weighing in at 340 pounds. He is not to be confused with our phattest president, Calvin "Master C" Coolidge.
• Taft was the only president who later became a Supreme Court justice, and he lobbied hard for the construction of the Supreme Court Building after the Congress refused to allow him to hear cases in the dining room at the nearby Wing Lo's All You Can Eat Chinese Buffet.
• Taft was the first president to throw out the first ball at the beginning of baseball season. He was also the first president to be censured by Congress for throwing like a girl.
• He was the last president to have facial hair.
• He dramatically called the White House the "Loneliest Place in the World," although during his administration, the White House Cookie and Fudge Pantry was the "Most Visited Place in the World."
• His funeral in 1930 was the first to be broadcast on radio. And once again, presence of radio tap dancers and ventriloquists seemed inappropriate for the medium.
• Taft was the last president to keep a cow at the White House for fresh milk, a tradition that ended when he became the first president to eat an entire cow as a prebreakfast warm-up.

John Paul Jones, piloting the Bonhomme Richard, defeated two British warships, the Seraphis and the Countess of Scarborough on this day, making him the first American naval hero (not counting the time Ben Franklin invented the belly-shirt).

During the engagement, Jones, who was only thirty-two at the time, was asked by the British captain if he wanted to surrender, to which Jones replied "I have not yet begun to fight!" His less-graceful addendum, "So shove it up your ass, Nigel" was blessedly drowned out by cannon fire.

(NOTE: This hero of the Continental navy is not to be confused with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, whose only remotely nautical adventure involved a groupie and a shark. No notable quotes from that incident are known to have been uttered.)

On this day in history, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (and if he didn't want us to create an Anglicanism for his name, he shouldn't have discovered us), landed on an island in the Bahamas, and in the process, discovered America. (He was also the last Italian to land on a Bahamian island in a boat without the words "Carnival," "Stugots," or "Poppa's Toy" painted on the side.)

Technically, the Americas had already been discovered by the Vikings about five hundred years beforehand. And they were discovered by all the folks who trotted across the Bering Strait about one thousand years before that. And the folks who had been living here for as long as mankind has existed probably own some claim to discovery as well. Columbus probably realized this, which is why he promptly set about killing and/or infecting everyone who might lay claim to his "discovery."

Either way, his accomplishments are celebrated throughout our nation every year with multicity Columbus Day parades, in which Italian Americans set out to discover new routes toward behaving as loutishly in public as Irish Americans.

(Author's note: The accomplishments of the Vikings in the discovery of America should be revisited and celebrated. Especially since Viking Americans would probably throw one hell of a parade.)

On this day in history in 1926, famed escape artist and bondage perv Harry Houdini was placed in a sealed wooden box and buried under six feet of earth. His eventual failure to emerge was a disappointment to his fans yet still less off-putting than the condition of David Blaine's skin after a week in his water-filled bacne ("back acne") incubator.

Earlier in the week, Houdini had performed at McGill University, and while reclining backstage, a student named Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead entered the room and asked Houdini if it was true that he could take any punch to the stomach. Before Houdini could answer, Whitehead socked the magician several times. (Whitehead was in the habit of punching things, because his parents named him Jocelyn.)

This pain masked an already burst appendix, and the magician died of peritonitis a week later. He was laid to rest in a cemetery in Queens, New York, and every November members of the Society of American Magicians hold a "Broken Wand" ceremony at his grave site. Then, after boarding the 7 train in their wizard hats and spandex unitards, local youths help them participate in "Broken Glasses" and "Broken Femur" ceremonies.

Other magical events have transpired on October 31, a.k.a. Halloween, a.k.a. Satan's Holiday (for our Southern readers):

October 31, 1517 Martin Luther magically creates Protestantism when he posts his ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg. Last bit of magic ever associated with Protestantism.

October 31, 1864 Nevada is entered into the Union as the thirty-sixth state. In the city of Las Vegas, paychecks and sobriety pledges often vanish before one's very eyes!

On this day in history in the city of New York, the author of Mass Historia, Chris Regan, was born to Michael and Rita Regan, parents who always dreamed their child would grow up and spend many, many months writing a comedy book about obscure events in history.

Regan later grew up and enjoyed a varied career as a writer for Nickelodeon game shows, a stand-up comedian, an actor in television commercials and Korean action TV miniseries, and a writer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, for which he won five Emmy Awards and two Peabodys over seven seasons. He was a coauthor of the best-selling America (The Book), and is currently a writer on Fox's Talkshow with Spike Feresten.

Regan is married to a wonderful woman named Susannah Keagle and is coguardian to a cat named Dash. He divides his time between New York, Los Angeles, and a converted, 1861 one-room schoolhouse in Sullivan County, New York, where one hopes that history was taught with a bit more respect and accuracy, and fewer jokes about Chester Alan Arthur's facial hair.

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Contact: Kathy Hilliard, (800) 851-8923, ext. 7497, khilliard@amuniversal.com

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Mass Historia: 365 Days of Historical Facts and (Mostly) Fictions

By: Chris Regan
ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-6869-9
ISBN-10: 0-7407-6869-7
Format: Unjacketed hardcover, 8-1/2 x 10-3/8, Full color with photographs and art throughout, 256 pages
Price: $22.99 ($24.99 Canada)