Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Back across the pond... Cuddy (cabin), a small cabin or cupboard, especially on a boat. Sometimes a cuddy refers to a small but cosy hut. The origin of the term is not clear. Cuddy was in use in colonial America as early as 1655. The term may derive from the Dutch kajuit, meaning a small cabin, or from the French cahute, meaning a hut.

And Oxford's second definition:

noun dialect: Scottish
noun: cuddy; plural noun: cuddies

    1. a donkey.
    2. a stupid person.
    "you great soft cuddy!"


August 15, 1933: Leading US psychologist Stanley Milgram was born in New York City. He’s best known for his highly controversial electric shock experiments on obedience, conducted in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University in 1961, three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. He was influenced by trying to find out why people carried out orders during the Holocaust. Milgram died on December 20, 1984, aged 51, of a heart attack in New York City. It was his fifth heart attack. 


10 years later American psychologist Philip Zimbardo (born 1933, still alive) carried out the Stanford prison experiment. You can read all about it in his 2007 book, "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil" and he wrote papers on MKULTRA and how to protect yourself from media brainwashing.


War and peace, San Francisco Chronicle, 1941 and 1945:




V-J Day in Times Square Iconic Kiss


For decades the photograph was mis-attributed in popular culture as being that of a nurse, (the sailor assumed she was a nurse at the time) however, Friedman was wearing a white uniform because she was a dental assistant. She had escaped the Nazi's and emigrated to the United States at age 15.

The identity of the two was a heated controversy for decades. Especially the sailor and a number of males over the decades claimed they were that lucky sailor. I did not know the two photos above were taken by TWO separate photographers. The two photo's (including the later sculptures) are a rabbit hole that you'll find hundreds of sources & commentary.

In 1987, George Mendonsa filed a lawsuit against Time Inc. in Rhode Island state court, alleging that he was the sailor in the photograph and that both Time and Life had violated his right of publicity by using the photograph without his permission. Citing legal costs, Mendonsa dropped his lawsuit in 1988.

Mendonsa was identified by a team of volunteers from the Naval War College in August 2005 as "the kisser". His claim was based on matching his scars and tattoos to scars and tattoos in the photograph. They made their determination after much study including photographic analysis by the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who were able to match scars and tattoo spotted by photograph experts, and the testimony of Richard M. Benson, a photograph analysis expert, professor of photographic studies, plus the former dean of the School of Arts at Yale University. Benson stated that "it is therefore my opinion, based upon a reasonable degree of certainty, that George Mendonsa is the sailor in Mr. Eisenstaedt's famous photograph."

The identity of the sailor as George Mendonsa has been challenged by physicists Donald W. Olson and Russell Doescher of Texas State University and Steve Kawaler of Iowa State University based on astronomical conditions recorded by the photographs of the incident. According to Mendonsa's account of the events of the day, the kiss would have occurred at approximately 2 p.m. However, Olson and Doescher argue that the positions of shadows in the photographs suggest that it was taken after 5 p.m. They further point to a clock seen in the photograph, its minute hand near the 10 and its hour hand pointing virtually vertically downward, indicating a time of approximately 5:50, and to Victor Jorgensen's account of the circumstances of his own photograph. They concluded that Mendonsa's version of events is untenable. Mendonsa died on February 17, 2019, aged 95, two days shy of his 96th birthday.

Must have been two really bored physicists. Friedman died at age 92 on September 8, 2016, in Richmond, Virginia. Her ashes are inurned beside her husband at Arlington National Cemetery.

A copyright-free Victor Jorgensen photograph, held in government archives and cited by Seward Johnson as the source for Unconditional Surrender, only extends to just below the knees of the subjects, failing to show the unusual stance of the woman—that is shown fully in the iconic Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph—and that nonetheless, appears in the statues.

Unconditional Surrender (sculpture)

More From the Scene of That Famous V-J Day Kiss in Times Square (LIFE magazine)


From the front page of The New York Times, August 15, 1945:




UK #1 on this day in 1956: Doris Day - Que Sera Sera




U.S. top 20 for August 15, 1964: Dean Martin providing a break from the British Invasion.




August 15, 1969: The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opened on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles southwest of Woodstock. It attracted an audience of 400,000. 32 acts performed, despite sporadic rain, including Jimi Hendrix, Santana and Joe Cocker. The first act on the first day of Woodstock: Richie Havens.




August 15, 1986: Corporal punishment was officially banned in British state schools. It was not ended in private schools until 1998 in England and Wales, 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in Northern Ireland.


Brexit Britain to Bring Back Caning in Schools


Peter Marshall, Host of ‘The Hollywood Squares,’ Dies at 98. I think my grandma had watched all 1900+ episodes from 1965-1980.


Marshall was born Ralph Pierre LaCock on March 30, 1926, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. His dad was a pharmacist (he died when Marshall was 10) and his mother a costume designer. He was raised in Huntington, West Virginia, by his grandmother.
The Hollywood Reporter | Peter Marshall Official Website



Greg Kihn

R.I.P. Kihnspiracy