For the Holidays we tend to watch movies that celebrate the occasion and for the 4th of July, it has to be Independence Day. I’m sure most, if not all, have seen it so I decided to dig around for some interesting facts.
One of my favorite scenes is when the alien ship crashes and Will Smith drags the alien across the sand. His line “What the hell is that smell?” is very memorable and was improvised.
The filming of that scene took place on the salt flats near Great Salt Lake in Utah. Brine shrimp live in the Great Salt Lake and when they die their bodies sink to the bottom and decompose. The lake is not very deep so sometimes when the wind blows across the mud, the smell of decaying shrimp can be a bit on the ripe side.
When I was in the military I attend a school where Morse code was taught. I had to translate the dots and dashes at roughly 16 words a minute. Very tough to do for some and very natural for others, I think I fell somewhere in the middle. In the movie, during an invasion scene, the drum rhythm to the music is Morse code for D-I-E.
Another July 4th movie to watch is Jaws.
On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig gave probably the most famous baseball speech in history. This came just after he was diagnosed with ALS. In case you didn’t know Lou Gehrig was a New York Yankee who held the most consecutive games record of 2,130 straight games until Cal Ripken, Jr. broke it in 1995.
Not going to post the whole farewell speech but the first paragraph and the ending.
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.”
For the rest of the speech, he doesn’t talk about himself or his terminal disease, but how great the people around him are. He closes with this.
“So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”
Happy Fourth of July
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