The Gad About Town

The Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law making it illegal to not believe in the divine origin of the Bible 370 years ago today. The punishment for this crime was death by hanging. The law also established a fine of five shillings for failing to attend church on Sunday.

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Presidents of the United States elected on November 4: James Buchanan, Grover Cleveland (1884; a campaign button from that election is at top), Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952), Ronald Reagan (1980), Barack Obama (2008).
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“Let the kids stay up with the entire family,” the ad copy reads. The Wizard of Oz, MGM’s 1939 film classic, became the first Hollywood movie to be broadcast uncut on a television network 60 years ago tonight when CBS showed it as the final episode of its anthology program, Ford Star Jubilee.

Liza Minnelli, the 10-year-old daughter of the star of The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland, and Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion, served as hosts and introduced the film.
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Howard Hughes hated the nickname, the “Spruce Goose,” given to his enormous flying boat, which was made out of a wood composite because of aluminum restrictions imposed on industry during World War II.

The plane was to be the product of a collaboration between Henry Kaiser of Kaiser Steel and Hughes to produce an aircraft strong enough to carry many fully equipped troops or a couple fully equipped tanks across the Atlantic. A U.S. government contract for three planes was issued to the two industrialists in 1942. Designs were developed, models were made, materials were tested to replace the aluminum that would otherwise be required for the body of the plane.

By 1944, Kaiser withdrew from the project, frustrated by Hughes’ perfectionism. The military contract was re-written to just one plane. Further designs were drawn up and revised. The war ended, which did not close the contract, and work on the enormous plane continued. Each piece of the wood composite that made up the plane was hand-ironed by employees of the company in Wisconsin that had developed the formula for it.
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