Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Does everyone still have all their fingers?

July 5, 1943: USS Strong (DD-467) was sunk by Japanese destroyer Niizuki, from a distance of 13 miles and is believed to be the longest-range torpedo kill in history. LT Hugh Miller (Jan 10, 1910 – June 21, 1978) washed up on Arundel Island, a Japanese-held island. Though wounded, alone, and without a rifle, he launched a 39 day-long guerrilla campaign using grenades he found on a dead soldier. He eliminated enemy patrols and several machine gun nests before being rescued. Although he was put forward for the Medal of Honor on two occasions, it remained elusive. He received the Navy Cross bestowed on him by Eleanor Roosevelt for his Rambo style actions plus 2 Silver Stars, 6 Bronze Stars, 2 Purple Hearts, and an additional 27 distinct individual and unit awards.


Hugh B. Miller – Left For Dead In The Pacific

Lt. "Rose Bowl" Miller Graduates from Gridiron Glory to WWII Legend


July 5, 1946: National Bikini Day! Or Atomic French Bikini's for Peace!


French engineer Louis Réard introduced the modern bikini, modeled by 18-year-old Micheline Bernardini, wearing the first bikini with a newspaper-print design in Paris 1946, while displaying a matchbox capable of holding the entire outfit. It was assumed that public reaction would be similarly explosive.

None of Paris's fashion models would wear Réard's creation, so he hired Bernardini, a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris. The Paris fashion press suggests that the bikini gets its name because it looked as if its wearer is emerging in tatters from a nuclear bomb blast, wearing what little is left over. Or perhaps the combination of half-naked south sea islanders coupled with the atomic impact strikes a chord in the haute couture, and reminds them that atom bombs reduce everybody to primitive costume. Réard simply states, "Bikini--smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world."

Named for the famous Bikini atom bomb "Able" test of four days earlier. Bernardini posed at age 58 in a bikini for photographer Peter Turnley, in 1986. She's still alive today at age 96.



Nicki Giles, in The Marilyn Album, Gallery Books, New York, 1991, attributes the two B&W photographs to Bruno Bernard from July 19, 1946; this session was a test to advertise first-aid products. The June 1946 issue of Laff Magazine featured a very early photo of Marilyn Monroe in a modest bikini...




While most people associate the bikini, in all its forms, as a contemporary piece of fashion, surprisingly, there exist close analogs to the bikini that date as far back as 5600 BC in what is known as the Copper Age when human civilization began to first settle into large cities. A period that predates Ancient Mesopotamian cultures, Ancient Egypt, and other early recorded histories by several thousand years.


Afternoon Tea (1912) by Charles Bittinger (American, 1879–1970). A Victorian painter and also one of the artists invited by the U.S. Navy to witness and paint the first atomic explosions at Bikini Atoll. Best have a cup of tea whilst it's still nice and tranquil.




Joint Task Force One Dollar bills, front and back; Bikini & Kwajalein:


A "Short Snorter" issued by USS Mount McKinley (AGC-7), the control ship for Army/Navy Joint Task Force one (JTF-1), Operation Crossroads in 1946. There were 90 ships which participated in the atom bomb test. The Operation Crossroads Short Snorters were part of Joint Operations Task Force One in which 37,000 sailors and 5,000 airmen participated in "watching" the world's 4th and 5th. nuclear explosions at Bikini Atoll on July 1, 1946 and July 25, 1946.

A short snorter is a banknote which was signed by various persons traveling together or meeting up at different events and records who was met. The tradition was started by bush pilots in Alaska in the 1920's and subsequently spread through the growth of military and commercial aviation. If you signed a short snorter and that person could not produce it upon
request, they owed you a dollar or a drink (a “short snort”, aviation and alcohol do not mix!).

The Short Snorter Project


July 5, 1865: Happy birthday to the Secret Service, guardians of the green pyramid. The U.S. Secret Service began operation under the Treasury Department to aid in the prevention of counterfeiting.

July 5, 1937: SPAM - SPAMtastic! According to the company’s Spam Museum, Ken Digneau, the brother of a Hormel executive, came up with the name — a portmanteau word for “spiced ham” — in a naming contest and got $100 as a reward. The new product was introduced on this day. Austin, Minnesota is "Spamtown, USA".

To keep up Spam sales postwar, the company hired singers to tout the product, and even had a radio show Music With the Hormel Girls. Whatever the reason, it worked: Hormel produced its billionth can in 1959, amid rising sales. And yet the Spam-eating Vikings in the 1970s Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit is the pop culture Spam reference most people will remember.

TIME magazine

Music with the Hormel Girls

Have a listen...

Jay C. Hormel was the SPAM Man. Head of Hormel Foods, he was the canny heir to his father’s canned-meat business. Under him, the company introduced the smooth, spiced pork product known as SPAM right on the cusp of the Second World War. But there was a problem. By wartime’s end, 90 percent of Hormel’s inventory was shipped overseas, as food for American troops and allies. The company now needed to market wartime, tinned food to a peacetime audience.

So, in 1946, the Hormel Company started hiring for the Hormel Girls, a drum and bugle corps of female musicians who had served in the war. As a veteran himself of World War One, Hormel was concerned for his employees who served. During the war, according to authors Jill M. Sullivan and Danelle D. Keck in their paper The Hormel Girls, he had sent letters to enlisted male employees assuring them that their jobs were waiting. When two managers devised a marketing strategy of an all-female, military-style band to promote Hormel products, Jay Hormel was quick to support it. As Sullivan and Keck point out, it was designed to push a “quasi-patriotic” button for consumers, who associated Hormel with the American military.

The requirements to be a Hormel Girl reflected the times. Most of the performers were white, and all were unmarried. They also had to play instruments.

Twenty girls from the original 48 agreed to stay on, and those numbers soon grew. They marched in parades, played in shows, and sold Hormel products (especially SPAM) door-to-door. Advertisements proclaimed that when “talented ex-G.I. Drum and Bugle Girls” came to town, they distributed free SPAM or chili in stores. Driving 35 matching white Chevrolets, the performers proceeded like a caravan, drawing attention wherever they went.

In 1948, the Hormel Girls went to Hollywood and took to the airwaves. According to Sullivan and Keck, they changed their style for radio. While before they had played a mix of military and popular music, the Music with the Hormel Girls show featured big-band music, punctuated by regular reminders that Hormel’s chili and ham was the best. It proved a good combination. By 1953, the show was “number four in the yearly [Nielsen] rankings.”

In the early 1950s, the show expanded to include dance. The Hormel Girls wore elaborate costumes and performed for locals and grocers. Jay Hormel, channeling his inner bandleader, decided who would sing and play which instrument. (Some of the musicians considered him nitpicky, but he may have just been passionate about music. Several of his children and grandchildren became performers.) As the group reached its peak, many newer Hormel Girls were photogenic professional musicians, instead of G.I.’s.

But in 1953, the show came to an end. The caravan was costing the Hormel Company $1.3 million dollars a year, and Jay Hormel was sick and would die in 1954. As television proved to be cheaper advertising, the last performance was held on December 13, 1953. Laverne Wollerman, one of the final performers, told Sullivan and Keck that the curtain was quickly pulled to hide that many of them were crying.

Hormel Girls went on to other jobs at the company, or in music. But there was no denying their effectiveness. In the years that the Hormel Girls performed, Hormel’s sales doubled, and SPAM successfully made its transition from food of necessity to classic Americana. Still, in a 2010 interview, Hormel Girl’s announcer Marilyn Wilson Ritter noted that SPAM wasn’t even her favorite. “I liked the chili con carne,” she said.

The Rise and Fall of the Hormel Girls, Who Sold America on SPAM

SPAM is extremely popular in Hawaii. It's literally everywhere and mixed in just about every dish you can imagine. WHY?
Post WWII the US Gov placed sanctions on Hawaiian residents, restricting the deep-sea fishing industries that were mainly run by Japanese-Americans. Because islanders were no longer allowed to fish, one of the important sources of protein for the islands vanished. So, Spam along with other canned luncheon meats and sardines took its place and apparently still going strong. Had it a few times as a kid and ate it once in Hawaii, never again.


Are you not entertained?!

A First Look at the Epic Gladiator II


DOJ seeking six months in federal prison for Jonathan Bonney, who prosecutors noted operates a zoo in Wisconsin. Seems like there's a lot to sort out yet about the culpability of those influenced by the requests.


Court case Case No. 24-cr-17 (APM)

Ya think he got his wakeup call?? Poor millennial dumb-ass. Wasn't that a movie, "We bought a zoo"?