The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower 60 years ago today. Its other title was the “National Interstate and Defense Highways Act,” and it authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile system of highways. The highways themselves ear signs identifying the roads as a part of the “Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.”

A national network of highways is something that Congress had discussed and even voted into law several times before—in 1916 and in 1944—but authorizing highways does not pay for their construction. The 1956 bill changed all that: it also authorized a means of paying for Eisenhower’s imagined “ribbons across the land.” A federal gas tax of two cents a gallon (now three cents) was imposed to help the federal government fund 90% of the construction costs of the new highways.
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Mel Brooks is 90 today. Every day is a celebration of life for him. Marc Maron introduced his interview with Brooks with the declaration, “He won life.”

“What were you born?” asked David Susskind of Brooks in 1970. Brooks replied, “George M. Cohan.” That quote is from Kenneth Tynan’s 1978 New Yorker magazine profile, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” which I just discovered is only available online, through the new Yorker itself, as a PDF of a photocopy.

There is little I can add to the world’s knowledge or collection of thoughts about Mel Brooks so here is a visit from the 2000 Year Old Man (after the jump):
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Dark Shadows, a daytime soap opera that seemed at first glance to resemble every other daytime soap opera on American television—except its characters featured a vampire, Barnabas Collins, and witches and werewolves and ghosts—debuted on ABC television 50 years ago today.

The character Barnabas was introduced in 1967. Jonathan Frid, who played Barnabas, spent the rest of his long life (he died in 2012 at the age of 87) in what appeared to be complete joy at getting to play such a … full-blooded? … character. Here is the clip introducing Barnabas (after the jump). The theremin music soundtrack was how one knew something spooky was afoot:
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