Today in the 90′s
1994
I got married. Nothing of national historical significance today. Just that I have been married to my spectacular, awesome, wonderful, uber-super wife for 15 years.
Happy Anniversary, Babs!
I Love You,
Andy
Today in the 70′s
1977
Smokey & the Bandit
Buford T. Justice was the name of a real Florida Highway Patrolman known to Burt Reynolds’ father who was once Chief of Police of Jupiter, Florida.
The second highest grossing movie released in 1977 next to Star Wars (1977)
Near the end of the movie, one of the two Georgia State Patrol cars that block the entrance to the fairgrounds (the Oldsmobile) is equipped with an airbag (very rare for the ’70s). The airbag did not deploy in that minor collision but did deploy when they purposely wrecked the car years later. That car is shown in an airbag safety film used in some traffic schools.
The dog chosen for Snowman’s pet was picked by Burt Reynolds, chiefly because he refused to obey commands.
According to MapQuest, Atlanta to Texarkana is 665.2 miles, with an estimated travel time of 10 hours, 43 minutes (21:30 round trip). Atlanta to Boston is 1089 miles with an estimated travel time of 17 hours, 31 minutes. If driven the whole way, it would require an average speed of 121 miles an hour to do it in the 18 hours mandated by the “double or nothing” but the terms of the bet didn’t specify how they were to get to Boston and certainly not how to return so they could have driven to the airport and bought round-trip tickets.
This movie made the Pontiac Trans Am a superstar. Trans Am sales jumped from 68,745 in 1977 to 93,341 in 1978. And just one year later that number swelled to 117,108 units sold.
Hal Needham asked Jerry Reed to write a theme song for the film. A couple of hours later, Reed presented “East Bound and Down” to Needham. With an acoustic guitar, Reed started to play it and Needham immediately stopped him. Thinking Needham didn’t like it, Reed offered to re-write the song. To which Needham replied: “If you change one note, I’ll kill you!” The song went on to become one of Reed’s biggest hits.
When Hal Needham originally wrote the initial screenplay, he hired Jerry Reed to play the Bandit. But when Needham told Burt Reynolds about the film, Reynolds decided he wanted to do it and Reed was re-cast as the Snowman.
The Trans-Am used for the bridge jump was fitted with a Chevrolet engine, according to Hal Needham.
Today in the 80′s
1983
Congo Bongo
Congo Bongo was an arcade game released by Sega in 1983. The game has come to be seen as Sega’s answer to the highly successful Donkey Kong game that was released two years prior. The player takes the role of a red-nosed safari hunter who tries to catch an ape named “Bongo”. The hunter seeks Bongo to enact revenge for an apparent practical joke in which Bongo set fire to the hunter’s tent, giving him a literal “hotfoot”. The game was a commercial failure when it was released but was popular enough to be ported to nearly ever major platform of the day including Atari’s consoles, MSX, Intellivision, ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and IBM PC.
Today in the 70′s
1977
Combat
The one that started it all. Combat is an early video game by Atari for the Atari 2600. It was released as one of the nine launch titles for the system in October 1977, and was included in the box with the system from its introduction until 1982. Combat was based on two earlier black-and-white coin-operated arcade games produced by Atari: Tank in 1974 and Anti-Aircraft II in 1975.
Today in the 80′s
1982
Chopper Command
Chopper Command is a video game by Activision. The game was successful due to its perceived superiority to Atari’s home version of Defender; Chopper Command shares many similarities in gameplay to Defender.
Chopper Command involves the player controlling a military helicopter in a desert scenario protecting a convoy of tractor trailers that are in position on the ground. The goal is to destroy all enemy fighter jets and helicopters that attack the player’s helicopter and the friendly trucks traveling below. The game ends when the player loses all of his or her lives, or when the player reaches 999,999 points. The game also utilizes a type of radar in order to detect enemy craft not visible on the main screen.
Like many Activision titles, a player who achieved a particularly high score could receive a video game sew-on patch relevant to that particular game.
Today in the 80′s
1982
Burgertime
The game’s original title, Hamburger, was changed to BurgerTime before its introduction to the United States. The player is chef Peter Pepper, who must walk over hamburger ingredients located across a maze of platforms while avoiding pursuing characters.
While making burgers, Peter Pepper must deal with three enemies: Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg. Enemies can be dodged, killed, or temporarily stunned. Killing occurs when an ingredient is dropped atop an enemy, or when support for an ingredient is completely removed and the enemy falls with the piece. In the latter case, the piece will fall much farther than normal, depending on how many enemies are on it. Scoring depends heavily on killing enemies. The more enemies killed with a single sequence of falling ingredients, the higher the score. Therefore, to obtain the best score the player must endanger Peter Pepper by allowing more than one enemy to move onto the ingredient the player is on, just before the player drops it.
Peter Pepper has pepper shots to shake on nearby enemies to stun and render them harmless for a few seconds. Extra shots are obtained by collecting bonus foods, such as coffee, an ice cream cone, or French Fries, which appear in the center of the maze when a certain number of ingredients have dropped.
Where’s the podcast?
People have been wondering why the updates have stopped with the podcast. The simple answer to it is we’ve got too much on our plate right now. Work, school, scouting, soccer, housekeeping, yard work, you name it. Every time we try to sit down to do an episode, something gets in the way. Hopefully now that soccer just finished yesterday, we can get back on track. I do not want to provide Ben with too many distractions from school right now. He seems to be struggling a bit, and has had a few surprising disciplinary issues we are dealing with as well. Kind of funny now. We’ll talk about it on the show soon.
In the meantime please keep checking out the site for daily history updates from the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s, & 90′s. We’ll also be re-vamping the show a bit as well as a logo change. Stay tuned.
Today in the 80′s
1980
Mt. St. Helens erupts
Remember this? As far as living in Ohio it didn’t seem to have much of an impact here. The one thing I do remember is being able to buy baggies of the ash in the Dayton airport that they would clean off of the planes.
Today in the 70′s
1973 – Skylab is launched
Skylab was the United States’ first space station, and the second space station visited by a human crew. It was also the only space station NASA launched alone. The 100-ton space station was in Earth’s orbit from 1973 to 1979, and it was visited by crews three times in 1973 and 1974.
Today in the 80′s
1983 – Movies
Blue Thunder is released
When you’re 13 years old, nothing is cooler than the Blue Thunder helicopter. Roy Scheider stars in this movie about a cop, a helicopter, and a conspiracy. Here’s some movie trivia.
The television control room shown early in the film is the same control room set seen extensively in The China Syndrome (1979).
The helicopter used to portray Blue Thunder was a French-made Gazelle helicopter with bolt-on parts to change its appearance. Most notably the chin cannon assembly was too heavy, necessitating a weight attached to the tail to keep the nose from dipping forward in flight.
The control stick in the F-16 cockpit is identical to the one from the Viper starfighter cockpit in “Battlestar Galactica” (1978).
Although the city is Los Angeles and the action centers around the police department, the LAPD is never mentioned. The force is called the “Metropolitan Police,” and their badges are silver, of a more generic style, instead of the distinctive LAPD bronze-colored badges depicting old Los Angeles City Hall. However, City Hall does figure prominently in several fly-bys.
Actual chicken was used during the “chicken rain” sequence. Four huge vats of actual barbecue chicken were lifted by crane and released over the police car and three other cars. When the scene was over, homeless people quickly appeared to help the film crew “clean up” the scene (in exchange for the chicken, of course). No rubber chicken was used, according to director, John Badham, because rubber chicken costs 4-10 times the cost of real chicken.
