On this day in 1965 Arthur Stanley Jefferson died. Better known by his stage name Stan Laurel and the main creative force behind Laurel and Hardy, he can lay claim to being one of the greatest comedians to have ever lived. In Buster Keaton’s words at Laurel’s funeral: “Chaplin wasn’t the funniest, I wasn’t the funniest, this man was the funniest.” Laurel and Hardy’s films and shorts certainly stand the test of time better than most comedies of their era. It has been scientifically proven that it is physically impossible not to at least smirk while watching this clip for example:
Stan Laurel also frequently drew on the Fortean and the absurd when writing comedy, notable examples of this include the ‘ghost’ and amnesia scenes from A Chump at Oxford and the running gag in Way Out West of Stan being able to use his thumb as a lighter, much to Ollie’s bemusement.
And now, the news:
Caspar the white lion moves to Isle of Wight
Man bailed as lemurs seized in Banbridge and Ballymena
Dead Fin whale strands on beach in north Cornwall
Feds outline plan to nurse Great Lakes to health
Nepalese man, 22 inches tall, seeks title of the world's shortest man
Anniversary of the cloned sheep
Q: Where can you find aged DNA?
A: In the old folks ‘genome’
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