FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Bill Haley & His Comets were an American rock and roll band, founded in 1952 and continued until Haley’s death in 1981. The band was also known as Bill Haley and the Comets and Bill Haley’s Comets (and variations thereof). From late 1954 to late 1956, the group placed nine singles in the top 20, one of those a number one and three more in the top ten. The single “Rock Around the Clock” became the biggest selling rock and roll single in the history of the genre and retained that position for some years.^[1]

Bandleader Bill Haley had previously been a country music performer; after recording a country and western-styled version of Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats “Rocket 88“, a rhythm and blues song, he changed musical direction to a new sound which came to be called rock and roll.

Though the group was considered to be at the forefront of rock and roll during the genre’s formative years, the arrival of more risqué acts such as Elvis Presley and Little Richard by 1956 led the more clean-cut Haley and his Comets to decline in popularity. Haley would remain popular in Europe and go on to have a comeback as a nostalgia act in the 1970s, along with many of his contemporaries. Following Haley’s death, no fewer than seven different groups have existed under the Comets name, all claiming (with varying degrees of authority) to be the continuation of Haley’s group. As of the end of 2014, four such groups were still performing in the United States and internationally.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Question of the Day

How do I keep rabbits from eating my flowers?

Try one of the following methods: (1) Dust the flowers with sulfur. (2) Sprinkle them with red pepper. (3) Spray them with a mixture of 1 teaspoon Lysol and 1 gallon water. (4) Spray them with a mixture of 1 ounce tartar emetic, 3 ounces sugar, and 1 gallon water. (5) Get a cat or a dog!

Advice of the Day

Few people know how to be old. —La Rochefoucauld

Home Hint of the Day

To clean metals (other than aluminum) before painting, wipe the metal with turpentine or paint thinner. Apply a metal primer, then a finish coat of good metal paint.

Word of the Day

Scoleciphobia

Fear of worms

Puzzle of the Day

Six-eighths of a discoverer, a preposition, and a vowel. (Use these clues to find the three “words” that, when combined, form the name of a flower.)

Answer: Columbine

Died

• Henry Clay (politician) – 1852
• Peter Jones (first native Methodist missionary to Ojibwa) – 1856
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning (poet) – 1861
• Fatty Arbuckle (actor) – 1933
• Jayne Mansfield (actress) – 1967
• Lana Turner (actress) – 1995
• Rosemary Clooney (singer) – 2002
• Katharine Hepburn (actress) – 2003
• Joel Siegel (film critic) – 2007

Born

• Dr. William Mayo (surgeon and founder of the Mayo Clinic) – 1861
• Frank Loesser (composer) – 1910
• Slim Pickens (actor) – 1919
• Harmon Killebrew (baseball player) – 1936
• Gary Busey (actor) – 1944
• Richard Lewis (comedian & actor) – 1947
• Leslie Browne (ballerina) – 1957
• Kimberlin Brown (actress) – 1961
• Martin Truex Jr. (race car driver) – 1980

Events

• Townshend Revenue Acts passed by British parliament, establishing duties on tea, glass, paint, oil, lead, and paper imported into American colonies– 1767
• San Francisco was founded– 1776
• Last stone placed for second lighthouse to be built at Minot’s Ledge, Massachusetts– 1860
• Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, containing prehistoric cliff dwellings, established by an act of Congress– 1906
• Bill Haley and His Comets reached the top of the pop music charts with Rock Around the Clock”“– 1955
• The Rooms cultural facility opened in St. John’s in Newfoundland and Labrador– 2005

Weather

• Lake Havasu City, Arizona, had a temperature of 128 degrees F– 1905
• Residents in Monticello, Florida, sweltered in record-breaking 109F heat.– 1931
• Hurricane Alice dumped 27 inches of rain on the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas– 1954
• The Livingston (Alberta) Ranger Station received 44 inches of snow, making the record for the largest summer snowfall recorded in Canada– 1963

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