Bob Dylan, Mars, and Thread the Needle Day

Brownielocks.com and others among the usual suspects say today is Thread the Needle Day. Apparently Thread the Needle Day commemorates a game. Children can play it anytime (the lucky devils) but grownups are restricted to one day a year. Today, apparently.

What game you ask? Brownielocks.com links to this source, which describes says that this as a game in which two of the players hold their arms up in an arch and the others run through -- threading the needle. This is done repeatedly, with different couples taking turns to form the arch.

Gosh, Jane Austen, that sounds like fun.

Bob Dylan apparently didn't have fun on this day on 1965 when he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. Audiences were used to their folk music straight, but Dylan plugged in that day (with Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar, Al Kooper on organ, Jerome Arnold on bass, Sam Lay on drums, and Barry Goldberg on piano) and (most observers say) the aficionados booed.

It was also on this day in 1976 that NASA's Viking I probe snapped this photo of the Cydonia region of Mars.

The "Face on Mars" has been the subject of any number of insipid cable documentaries ever since.