Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy Pride!



June 1, 1949: NY TV debut on WPIX, The Ghost Camera (1933). 15 year old Ida Lupino's last film before her Hollywood debut, released in the UK in 1933, had its first US theatrical exposure concurrent with its arrival on television.




June 1, 1950: the 75th anniversary of Senator Smith's Declaration of Conscience. No audio of the speech given on that day exists. In 1984, Sen. Smith did reread the address for posterity. Click here to listen or a PDF.

"I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear."
— Sen. Margaret Chase Smith



A Republican, she was among the first to criticize the tactics of Joseph McCarthy in her 1950 speech, "Declaration of Conscience". Smith was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1964 election; she was the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party's convention. Upon leaving office, she was the longest-serving female senator in history, a distinction that was not surpassed until January 4, 2011, when Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland exceeded her record. Smith was ranked as the longest-serving Republican woman in the Senate, a distinction that was not surpassed until January 3, 2021, when Susan Collins, who holds the same Senate seat she previously held, was sworn in for a fifth term.

The speech notecards Sen. Smith used on the Senate floor are in the Margaret Chase Smith Library archive.

READ:


The Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application or NERVA was a nuclear thermal rocket engine development program that ran for roughly two decades. Its principal objective was to "establish a technology base for nuclear rocket engine systems to be utilized in the design and development of propulsion systems for space mission application."

NERVA was on the edge of being ready to fly when it was cancelled. The most capable rocket engines ever built and one of the biggest ironies in space tech history. They cancelled it because they were anti space and anti NASA not anti-nuclear. Congress defunded the program in 1968 and LBJ needed more $$$ for the Vietnam War.

The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and was managed by the Space Nuclear Propulsion Office (SNPO) considered NERVA a highly successful program in that it met or exceeded its program goals. Where would we be if this engine program had continued through the 70s.

In late 1968 SNPO deemed that the latest NERVA engine, the XE, met the requirements for a human mission to Mars. The program had strong political support from Senators Clinton P. Anderson and Margaret Chase Smith but was cancelled by President Richard Nixon in 1973.

At the time of the NERVA NRX/EST test, NASA's plans for NERVA included a visit to Mars by 1978, a permanent lunar base by 1981, and deep space probes to Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets. NERVA rockets would be used for nuclear "tugs" designed to take payloads from low Earth orbit (LEO) to higher orbits as a component of the later-named Space Transportation System, resupply several space stations in orbit around the Earth and Moon, and support a permanent lunar base.

Some believe this project never ended but went Black and became part of the Secret Space Program.

An Historical Perspective of the NERVA Nuclear Rocket Engine Technology Program (1991)


8-year-old "LITTLE ATOM BUSTER" Stefan Olsen playing with the "Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab" in 1950. The following year (1951), child actor and model Stefan Olsen was the target of a bizarre kidnapping plot.



Bizarre kidnapping plot...




June 1, 1975: President Ford travels to Salzburg, Austria, to meet with Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. However, while descending from Air Force One, Ford slips and falls. Videos of Ford slipping are replayed on the nightly news, much to the President’s embarrassment.




June 1, 1977: Viva Knievel! was released. And Marjoe Gortner as "Jessie."



As a child evangelist, Marjoe Gortner performed his first marriage ceremony at the age of four. His name is a combination of "Mary" and "Joseph", a fact his parents exploited during the child evangelist period of his life.

Born Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner on Jan 14, 1944, his early career as the 4-year-old "World's Youngest Ordained Minister," Pentecostal preacher Marjoe Gortner became a 'Miracle Child' extraordinaire. Born in Long Beach, California, the young tyke, who ministered the gospel from memory and performed faith healings, drew capacity crowds as he barnstormed throughout the Bible Belt. The son of Vernon Gorst Gortner, an evangelical minister who preached at revivals, it was his mother Marge who pushed and introduced Marjoe to the world as a boy preacher, and it the primary reason for his success. At age 16, however, Marjoe grew acutely disillusioned with what he considered a horrible deception, eventually withdrawing from the scene.

Part documentary, part expose, this film follows one-time child evangelist Marjoe Gortner on the "church tent" Revivalist circuit.

Unbeknownst to his father and other ministers, Marjoe agreed to let a film crew follow him throughout his final 1971 national tour of revival meetings before leaving "the business." The fascinating Oscar-winning documentary Marjoe (1972) that resulted, based on his life as a fake evangelist, introduced the public to a new and profoundly hypnotic performer.

Prior to filming the documentary, Marjoe displayed his musical talents. As prolific musician, he could play the drums, saxophone, organ, guitar, accordion and piano and performed with a Los Angeles rock band. On the strength of the documentary's critical success, he managed to record a 1973 solo album for RCA, "Bad, But Not Evil." Feeling a strong compulsion to act, Marjoe's talents for drawing an audience and public speaking were quickly put to use. Handed potent roles in the TV projects The Marcus-Nelson Murders (1973) and The Gun and the Pulpit (1974), roles that capitalized on his magnetism and off-center flamboyance, the extremely positive reviews he received helped catapult him into 1970's films.

Unfortunately, most of Marjoe's cinematic efforts went on to earn harsh critical reviews. Following a featured psychotic role in the all-star disaster film Earthquake (1974), Marjoe went on to star in a few wild-eyed roles -- as a Billy the Kid type outlaw in the romantic crime drama Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976), a man framed as a drug smuggler in the action crime film Acapulco Gold (1976), a hunter being attacked by giant killer wasps in the horror opus The Food of the Gods (1976), a cocky cowboy in the motorcycle action film Viva Knievel! (1977), a robot-battling intergalactic outlaw in the space action flick Starcrash (1978) and a vicious, hostage-taking drug dealer in the drama When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1979). Because of such poor box office receipts for these film, Marjoe's quest for top film stardom never materialized.



Your Sunday Pentecostal mini-docu:




Marjoe Gortner: "When I was traveling (as a minister), I'd see someone who wanted to get saved in one of my meetings, and he was so open and bubbly in his desire to get the Holy Ghost. It was wonderful and very fresh, but four years later I'd return and that person might be a hard-nosed intolerant Christian because he had Christ. That's when the danger comes in. People want an experience. They want to feel good, and their lives can be helped by it. But then as you start moving into the operation of the thing, you get into controlling people and power and money.

I don't have any power. And neither do any of these other guys. Hundreds of people were healed at my crusades, but I know damn well it was nothing I was doing."


Bad, But Not Evil - Hoe-Bus (1972)




Poster Issued by the New York Department of Health (ca. 1981-1983)
Someone in NY from the 30s-40s, took gold brachytherapy implants with radon, meant for cancer treatment and melted them into jewelry. Eventually it was discovered contaminating jewelry and burning people, leading to amputation.


Her lawsuit claimed that New York State was responsible because the gold seeds had come from the state-run Roswell Park Memorial Institute. Ultimately, the lawsuit was dismissed because the statute of limitations had run out.

Poster info from Oak Ridge Associated Universities Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity

Star Trek TNG S07E16 "Thine Own Self" (1994)
During a mission to repair a probe which crashed on a planet with a Renaissance culture, an explosion damages Data bad enough to cause amnesia. He is taken in by villager Garvin and his daughter, while an arrogant teacher who puts him in her class. Before she's convinced of Data's scientific superiority by experiments, the nuclear material he carried has caused radiation sickness.