Hello history lovers! MYHISTORYSKETCHESROCK will be on a brief break in November. We’ll be back.

Much has been written about the famous American comedian and film star Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx. He was a star of the vaudeville, Broadway, Hollywood, radio and television.

Here are some of my favorite Marx one-liners :

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.

I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

Well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… now you tell me what you know.

Wives are people who feel they don’t dance enough.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

Jacques Heim is one of coolest mu’f*ckers ever. Why? ‘Cuz he invented the mu’f*ckin’ bikini. As a result, the majority of my teenaged bonerials on the beaches of Florida where I grew up were thanks to this man’s work!

Heim introduced the bikini in Paris on July 25, 1946 – a day that needs to be recognized annually.

All women should be made to wear bikinis on that day – even Eskimo women!  Fat and octogenarian women may be excused, unless they have really awesome round boobie boobs.

Anyway. . . I , like, snapped into my own ‘Nam there for a sec. Sorry.

Heim named the piece after Bikini Atoll, a site used for nuclear weapon testing just a few days before. Heim knew that the burst of excitement the bikini would cause in pubescent boys would be akin to the nuclear device!

I’m back after a week off – and today I bring you Danish author Hans Christian Anderson.  Anderson is most famous for his fairy tales “The Snow Queen”. “The Little Mermaid”, “The Ugly Ducking”, and others.

He visited Charles Dikens once in England and overstayed his welcome – despite constant hints to leave, Anderson freeloaded for five weeks! Dickens’ daughter said of Andersen, “He was a bony bore, and stayed on and on.”

Anderson was dyslexic, and bisexual.

Hey I might not be doing any sketching today, but over 70 students here at SCAD’s 24 Hour Comics Day event are drawing 24 completed comics pages in 24 hours!  Check it out:

Okay, Mary Shelley was the sh*t. She dropped the novel Frankenstein when she was only 19 yrs old. What the f*ck were you doing at 19?!? I bet you weren’t writing a great work of Western literature.

Suck-ass slackers, one and all.

Despite her mad skills, Mary Shelley’s life wasn’t all that awesome. Her mom died 10 days after she was born, and later in life her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, porked the snot out of Mary’s stepsister Claire on a regular basis – in their own home, while she was there.

He drowned in a storm at sea at 29, Mary lived until the age of 59, but her kids dropped young like f*ckin’ flies.  That kinda sucks.

Jackie Brenston of Clarksdale, Mississippi and his Delta Cats are credited with recording the first rock n’ roll song ever, “Rocket 88.”  The song was recorded by the legendary Sam Phillips, and reached #1 on the R&B charts.

Later, Brenston became an alcoholic and a truck driver.  He died of a heart attack at the age of 49.

I have a question, since black folk were so key in the development of rock, why don’t more black people play these days?  I wish they would – I think a new black rock movement as a responce to hipster indie rock we find on Pitchfork would be cool.

Rock Trivia: The Delta Cats, in actuality, were Ike Turner and his the Kings of Rhythm.

In 1974 Bon Scott was working as the driver for emerging Austrailian rock band AC/DC when he asked if he could be their drummer. Angus Young said, “We don’t need a f*cking drummer, we need a new singer!” Young was pissed cuz their current front man was acting too much like a glam rocker – so they fired him and Bon Scott took over.

However, Scott died in the back seat of a car on February 19, 1980 after a night of heavy drinking – but how cool is this shiznit: the official cause of death was listed “death by misadventure.”

How cool is that!?!

Production note: I totally f*cked up his nose and face, but a minute is a minute.

Born in the British West Indies, Alexander Hamilton went on to do a lot of shiznit for the United States.  This dude was an Army officer, lawyer, Founding Father, political theorist, author, and the first Secretary of the Treasury.

The only problem was that Hamilton was a bit of a bitch.

Everyone, including George Washington, thought he was too hot headed and emotional to be president.  So, Hamilton founded the Federalist pary in opposition to Thomas Jefferson’s posse – who were more agricultural and less industrialist.

Trouble started for Hamilton when he put his pecker in James Reynolds’s wife a coupla times.   He was subsequently blackmailed,  and forced to resign from office in discrace.  Later, he and President Aaron Burr had some Biggy/2Pac-type drama which resulted in a dual along the bank of the Hudson River.

Hamilton got gakked.  1-8-7.

Homo erectus is an extinct species of the genus Homo. H. erectus originally migrated from Africa during the Early Pleistocene and then dispersed throughout most of the Old World!

He had mad tools, but likely no fire.