A little less-than-light reading on Brigadier General Norm Cota, one of the highest ranking officers to actually fight his way up the beach that June 6 long ago.

Cota was played by actor Robert Mithcum in the epic D-Day film, The Longest Day. Here's the trailer. (Cota's character appears for just a second toward the end.)

Back on April 20 we ran the story of our first president's library book problem, and even ran an exclusive photo of the presidential delinquent:

Well the good people running George's estate, Mount Vernon, have returned a copy of the same edition of the book to the library. (But not the fine—which would be in the neighborhood of $300,000.)

Good for them. Now if someone would return Dan Quayle's The Great Potatoe Book then everything would be fine.

Note: Title edited to reflect the fact that only one of the books was returned.

Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens may be retiring from the high court as his 90th birthday nears, and names are already being bandied about for his replacement. But as the very rare occasion of a Supreme Court nomination may loom, here's a look at a few people who were considered for the Supreme Court but didn’t quite make it (for various reasons).

• George W. Bush nominated attorney Harriet Miers in 2005. After three weeks, Miers removed herself from consideration due to bipartisan opposition. The big problem with Miers? She’d never been a judge in any kind of court. Miers had worked as a corporate attorney and was Bush’s chief legal advisor, but the lack of judicial experience didn’t leave much record of her stance on the kind of issues she’d be expected to rule on.

• Today, the Court is made up of nine justices, but in the 1860s, there were spots for 10 judges. Chief Justice Salmon Chase urged Congress to pass legislation to reduce the court to seven slots (reportedly, Chase was hoping the salaries set aside for those extra judges would be split amongst the remaining judges). Chase thought the best way to do it would be to simply not fill the vacancies caused by the next three judges that retired, whenever that may be. Congress only got so far as to reduce the Supreme Court to nine judges, shutting out President Andrew Johnson’s pick, Henry Stanberry.

• In 1987, Ronald Reagan nominated appellate judge Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. He was a well known political figure already, a pioneer on the legal concept of originalism, the idea that the Constitution’s meaning and intent were made clear upon its drafting in the 1780s, and that modern judges should, as such, rule very carefully without trying to overly interpret the law of the land or inject their own politics. It was a controversial stance (especially among Democrats), and Bork’s nomination was nixed by the Senate, 58-42. Not helping Bork was his role in the 1973 “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which a Watergate scandal-ravaged President Richard Nixon ordered Bork (then the acting head of the Justice Department) to fire the independent prosecutor investigating Nixon and his role in covering up the scandal.

If you look at several “On This Date” lists online (like this one) you’ll find an interesting bit of info for today, March 8: “1st flight of the Goodyear blimp (1972).”

1972? Hasn’t the Goodyear Blimp been around for a bit longer than that? Uh, yes, it has. But since it now exists only after March 8, 1972 – on the internet, where reality goes to die – we’d like to say “Happy Birthday, Blimp.” What the heck, y'know?

And just for the occasion, here are some blimpy facts, from our very own Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (page 273).

BLIMP FACTS

• The blimp's first TV coverage was at the Orange Bowl game in 1960. Now they’re used for about 90 televised events a year. Goodyear doesn’t charge TV networks; the publicity generated makes the free service worthwhile.
• Each blimp is equipped with a crew of 23, consisting of 5 pilots, 17 support members who work on rotating schedules, and 1 public relations representative. The blimps cruise at a speed of 45 to 50 mph (maximum 65 mph unless there’s a really good wind).
• Each blimp can carry 6 passengers along with the crew. They’re normally only corporate guests of Goodyear, but a few celebrities, including President Ronald Reagan and Johnny Depp, have managed to get official invitations.
• The camera operator shoots from the passenger compartment through an open window from about 1,200 feet up, from which you can see everything, read a scoreboard, and hear the roar of a crowd. The hardest sport to film is golf, because the pilots have to be careful not to disturb a golfer’s shot with engine noise or by casting a sudden shadow over the green.
• If punctured, the worst that will happen is that the blimp will slowly lose altitude. Good thing, too, since the company reports that a blimp is shot at about 20 times a year.
  Each blimp is 192 feet long, 59 feet high, and holds 202,700 cubic feet of helium. The helium does leak out, like a balloon’s air, and has to be “topped off” every four months or so.
• The word blimp is credited to Lt. A. D. Cunningham of Britain’s Royal Navy Air Service. In 1915 he whimsically flicked his thumb against the inflated wall of an airship and imitated the sound it made: “Blimp!”

P.S. Happy actual real and totally not made up birthday, Mr. Mickey Dolenz, you invention monkee, you.