History for 10/16/2007
Birthdays: Lord Cardigan, Eugene O'Neill, Noah Webster, Dave DeBusschere, David Ben-Gurion, Angela Lansbury is 82, Gunter Grass, Linda Darnell, Charles Colson, Tim Robbins, Susanne Somers is 61, David Zucker, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers

1689- Seventeen year old Peter the Great entered Moscow to assume supreme power in Russia. Czar Peter had to push aside two rivals, his older half-brother Ivan who was mentally ill and his halfsister Sophia who was angry that as a woman she couldn’t hold power. Ivan stepped aside for Peter and Sophia was shipped off to a convent at the Arctic Circle. From then until 1725 Peter reformed Russian society and made it a world power. He even made future Russian society liberal enough to accept future female rulers like Catherine the Great.

1746-Peace of Aix la Chapelle- Ended the War of Austrian Succession. Part of the treaty stated France would stop supporting the exiled Stuart Dynasty trying to get back the English throne and Bonnie Prince Charlie would have to leave Paris. To celebrate the peace Georg Frederich Handel wrote the Royal Fireworks Music. When performed in Green Park London the fireworks set fire to a pavilion and caused a panic but the music survived.

1793- French Queen Marie Antoinette guillotined. The crowd in the Paris streets didn't have much sympathy for the foreign born wife of Louis XVI. They called her "'la chienne d'Autriche' '-the Austrian Bitch. Besides her infamous remark that if the poor had no bread "Let them eat cake", she had a peasant hut constructed at her palace Le Petit Trianon so she and her court could dress up in costumes and play at being be poor. Her last words were as she ascended the scaffold she stepped on the toe of the executioner. 'Excuse me."she said.

1813- BATTLE OF THE NATIONS- First day of Leipzig- Napoleon's army is overwhelmed by the combined armies of Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden and other German states. There were British and Swiss advisors and Napoleons army had Poles, Dutch and Italian contingents as well. United Europe, in a way. At the height of the furious house to house fighting in the burning city Napoleon was seen walking the streets calming whistling to himself Malbrouk s'en-va-t-en Guerre ("For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow") a popular song of the day.

1817- Giovanni Belzoni discovered the great tomb of Pharaoh Seti Ist in the Valley of the Kings. He discovered 8 more ancient royal tombs in the valley as well as the inner chambers of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, making the world aware of the of the Valley of the Kings.

1829- The Tremont Hotel opened in Boston. Called the first modern hotel in America, it had a luxurious 170 rooms and 4 meals a day. All for an exhorbitant $2 a night.

1834- The British House of Parliament caught fire and burnt to the ground in a horrific conflagration. Luckily artists William Turner and John Constable were around watching the blaze from the south bank of the Thames, so at least we got a few neat paintings out of it...

1846- At Massachusetts General Hospital Dr. John Warren performed the first operation on a patient under anesthesia. A Georgia doctor named Morton extracted a tooth using ether two years earlier and there was a fracas as to who invented it first. But the new was groundbreaking. Until then surgeons were considered social inferiors to doctors because all surgeons really needed in their work was strong arms to hold people down while sawing on them.

1859-HARPERS FERRY- Kansas abolitionist John Brown led a group of followers and slaves to seize the large U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. They planned to use the weapons to begin a general slave uprising throughout the South. Brown had declared: "the Sins of this Nation are so great that they cannot be expunged but by a great effusion of blood!" Harriet Tubman wanted to be present but for an illness. Brown and his men were surrounded by the army and forced to surrender after a gunbattle in which two of Brown's sons were killed. The slaves did not rise in revolt. Present at the army operation were U.S. army officers Robert E. Lee and a Virginia National guard reservist, actor John Wilkes Booth. Brown was later hanged. Northerners considered John Brown a hero and martyr, Southerners thought him a dangerous lunatic who would murder them in their beds. Frederic Douglas thought Brown’s action reckless but his final praise was unstinting: "I have lived my life for my people. But John Brown died for my people. " One surviving son of John Brown who was at the battle changed his name and moved the family to Pasadena California, dying an old man in 1893.

1901- One of the first acts of new President Teddy Roosevelt was to invite Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute to an official dinner. It was the first time a black American was ever invited to dine with the President. The conservative South roared in loud protest. Teddy roared back:” In my veins flow the blood of both North and South, and such nonsense must end!”

1916- THE FIRST BIRTH CONTROL CLINIC opens in the U.S. It was set up on 46 Amboy St in Brooklyn by feminist-progressive Margaret Sanger. Police closed it down 9 days later and imprisoned Ms. Sanger for 30 days. She spent her time in jail lecturing women convicts about family planning. Margaret Sanger also hired bootleggers to smuggle French diaphragms into the U.S. disguised as innocent cases of illegal booze. Mrs. Sanger later married the owner of the Three-In-One Oil company, and smuggled spermicide into the U.S. in oil cans. In the 1930’s Margaret Sanger was invited on CBS radio. When CBS chief Bill Paley worried if Sanger would say something controversial he was reassured "don’t worry, she says she’s just going to read nursery rhymes". She began "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. She Had So Many Children Because She Didn’t Know What to Do!" CBS cut off her microphone.

1923- Walt Disney Studios Born. 22 year old Walt and his older brother Roy sign a deal with M.J.Winkler for six "Alice in Cartoonland" short cartoons. Budget-$1,500 each.

1929- The Chrysler Building in NY completed. It won a race with the Bank of Manhattan Company to become the world’s tallest building, but it only held the title for a few months until the Empire State Building went up.

1929- The frosted light bulb patented.

1945-World War Two over, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer bade farewell to the Los Alamos nuclear facility to work for Cal Tech university. After laudatory speeches and plaques Oppy warned his fellow scientists : " If nuclear weapons become a regular part of the arsenals of other countries then the time may come when the people of the world will curse the name of Hiroshima and Los Alamos."

1952- Charlie Chaplin’s film "Limelight" premiered in London. Chaplin had shot the film in Hollywood but released it in Europe because he had been driven into exile by McCarthyite Red Baiters.

1955- Ann Landers published her first column.

1968- During the Mexico City Olympics- African American gold and silver track medalists Tom Smith and John Carlos shocked the world by giving the Black Power raised fist salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. Despite being the fastest men on earth their medals were taken away and they were kicked off the US Olympic Team.

1969- The Miracle Mets. The New York Mets, then possessing some of the worst records in baseball history, defied all 100-1 odds and won the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles in 5 games. Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Nolan Ryan. Rusty Staub. Thousands of fans at Shea went crazy and danced and partied on the field with the players. My brother recalled in the parking lot cars were covered with turf because the fans had stolen the bases and ripped up the sod for souvenirs.

1976- Disco Duck by Rick Dees became #1 on the pop charts.

1978- Polish cardinal Karol Woytila elected as Pope John Paul II. First non-Italian pope since Adrian IV in 1513. Dying in 2005 He had the longest reign of any pope in the twentieth century and had created more saints than any other pope.

1992- The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson filed a $1.4 million dollar lawsuit against a French tabloid for publishing photos of her topless and her boyfriend Texas millionaire John Bryan sucking her toes.

1995- The Million Man March - One million African-American men converge on Washington D.C. to protest black on black violence and family values.

1997- According to the writers of the 1965 television show 'Lost in Space', this was the date the Jupiter-2 with Will, Penny, Dr. Smith and the Robot took off to colonize deep space. "Danger! Danger! Spare me your insolence, you mechanical ninny..."

Birthdays: Quintus Virgilius -Virgil- 70 BC, Oscar Wilde, Fredrich Nietszche, Mikail Lermontov, John L. Sullivan, Burt Gillet, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Trout, Klaus Barbie the Butcher of Lyon, P.G. Wodehouse, Chuck Berry, Penny Marshall, Mario Puzo, Linda Lavin, 'Tanya Roberts, Sarah Ferguson-Fergie' the former Duchess of York is 46, Chef Emeril LeGasse

Ancient Roman Festival of the Ides, a chariot race where the winning team of horses was sacrificed to Mars the Avenger

1564- Great doctor and medical scholar Andreas Vesalius died of exposure after his ship was wrecked off the coast of Zante Greece. Vesalius specialty was anatomy, he described the lobes of the liver, the bones of the jaw and finally got modern medicine to stop following the conclusions of the Roman doctor Galen and go experiment for themselves. Vesalius was so passionate about anatomical dissection that he would sneak out to the hangmans’s tree outside town and pull the bodies down for study.

1582- THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR took effect- Julius Caesar’s 366 day calendar was losing 11 minutes every year since 45 BC. Medieval scientists like Dennis Exiguus ( the man responsible for B.C.-A.D. counting) and Roger Bacon in the 1200’s noticed something was wrong. By 1582 the calendar was 11 days off the solar year. Pope Gregory XI had scientist Dionysius Ingratius revise the calendar of Julius Caesar by using a 400 year cycle of 365 days with a leap day every four years and no leap year when it occurred every fourth century. So 2000 was a leap year while 1900,1800 and 1700 were not.
On this day people had gone to sleep on Oct. 5th and woke up on Oct.15th !
The calendar at first wasn't accepted universally. At first only Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland changed over. France and the Protestant countries took 70-100 years to change and England not until 1752! China adopted the western calendar in 1949. Because a lot of history happened during the interim, sloppy historians can confuse the 11 day difference in the calendars (so if you disagree with any of my dates, That's My Excuse, Hah!!) For instance we celebrate Columbus Day on the 12th of October when Columbus himself thought he had landed on the 22nd Old Style. Russia, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia go by the Eastern Orthodox (Julian) calendar, which also can confuse. The Russians refer to the Bolshevik Revolution of Nov.7th as Red October and Orthodox Christmas is around Jan. 6th. The Mayans supposedly had a perfect calendar that required no leap days but the conquistadors killed anybody who could read it. An Arab scientist named Abu Abadallah Mohammed in the 9th century calculated to within 22 seconds of the current system but everyone ignored him.

1757- Prussian King Frederick the Great took time out from fighting wars with most of Europe to try and convince German poet Johann Gottsched to stop trying to write poetry in German. “So many guttural explosions, so many consonants- Klop, Knap, Krotz, Krok how could you make melody in such a language?.” Frederick spoke French exclusively and switched to German only to address servants and soldiers. Ironically, despite Frederick’s preference his military victories sparked a renaissance of German music, poetry and philosophy- all in German.

1764- While wandering through the ruins of ancient Rome, British writer Edward Gibbon is inspired to write "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". After 20 years labor and thousands of pages he finished. When he gave the first copy bound in gold to mad King George III, the king said to him: " What's this? Another big damned black book, eh, Mr. Gibbon? Scribble, scribble!"

1858- The last Lincoln- Douglas debate. Lincoln scored major moral points on the slavery issue but Douglas "the Little Giant" won the election to Congress anyway. After the Civil War began although Douglas was a Democrat he was a very strong Lincoln supporter and pro-union man. Douglas had also once dated Mary Lincoln before she married old Abe.

1880-Victorio, a leader of the Chiracua Apaches as famous as Geronimo, was finally hunted down and killed south of El Paso by a combined force of US and Mexican Army troops.

1905- First Little Nemo comic strip by Winsor McCay premiered.

1905- Premiere of Claude Debussy’s tone poem La Mer- the Sea.

1917- MATA HARI- 41 year old beautiful erotic dancer and German spy H21, was shot by firing squad. Her real name was Gertrude Zelle from Holland, she made up a new identity as an Indian princess with the name Mata Hari- The Light of Day in Malay. She would use her sexual charms to seduce top enemy officers and pass information on to German High Command. But she was finally caught, tried and shot at the Chateau Vincennes outside Paris. She refused to wear a blindfold and blew a kiss at the French firing squad. She still elicited enough sympathy, that out of a 12 soldier squad only four bullets were found in her body.

1927- Iraq strikes its’ first gusher of oil. The gusher was so large it took 8 days to bring under control.

1929- The Canadian Parliament passed a resolution declaring women to be persons too.

1930- Duke Ellington first recorded Mood Indigo.

1934- THE LONG MARCH- During the Chinese civil war Mao Tse Tung’s Communist forces broke out of a ring of encircling Kuomintang (Nationalist) armies and began an epic 6,000 mile march to the safety of Shenxi and Yenan in Northwest China. 100,000 people fought battles, internal divisions, starved and marched until in October 1935 only 8,000 survivors reached their destination. Mao’s two children and younger brother died but he emerged as the overall leader of the Chinese Communists. Their example inspired thousands of young men to enlist in their cause. In 1993 Premier Ly Pung succeeded Deng Zhao Ping, one of the last surviving veterans of the Long March.

1940- Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator premiered.

1951- THE FIRST I LOVE LUCY SHOW- The most successful family sitcom in history began its pilot episode this night. CBS and Phillip Morris had wanted Lucille Ball to transfer her popular radio show-“My Favorite Husband” to television. The story of the family life of Ricky Ricardo, a Cuban immigrant nightclub band leader, his daffy wife Lucy and their landlord friends Fred and Ethel Murtz became an overnight sensation. The show was shot on film instead of live TV and it was produced in Los Angeles instead of New York City because Lucy and Dezi Arnez refused to relocate back east. The show also pioneered the three camera shooting system still used to day and when Lucille Ball was pregnant the show proved re-runs could be just as popular as first time showings. The January 1953 episode of little Ricky’s birth drew more viewers than the inauguration of President Eisenhower.

1965- The first large scale peace protests over U.S. involvement in Vietnam began in Oakland California. David Miller is the first young man to burn his draft card, followed by many others. Chants of “One, Two, Three, Four, We don’t want your F**king War! Uncle Sam, Drop the Bomb! We Don’t Wanna Go to Nam!”

1976-What’s Love got to do with it?- Ike and Tina Turner break up.

1989- Wayne Gretsky surpassed Gordie Howe’s all time record of scored points in hockey-1,850. The Great One went on to set a new record of 2,837 points before his retirement.

2003- On the anniversary of the Long March, Wang Lee Wei became the first Chinese astronaut to go into space.

Voyager II and Neptune

I am in Seattle where I spent a nice day with my friend Dr. Jim Blinn. For those who don't know their CGI history, in 1979-1980 Jim Blinn at the Jet Propulsion Lab created the beautifully dramatic recreations of how the Voyager I and II space probes were then touring the outer planets of our Solar System. He also did the CG work for Carl Sagan's breakthrough TV series COSMOS. Before this CG was viewed by most of mainstream Hollywood as just a lot of expense to get weak wireframes with simple movements for a ficticious computer readout or something.

Of course, there were other pioneers creating new advances in visual textures and movement, but you had to go to a specialized festival or conference to see them. Jim Blinn's animation of the Voyager ziping through the rings of Neptune and around the Jovian moon system came into millions of homes via their major news shows on free network TV. For the first time millions were thrilled and inspired by CGI animation. They just assumed the images were real. The COSMOS show on PBS back then was a major event like a Ken Burns documentary today- Blinn's work- like Carl Sagan walking through a virtual recreation of the long destroyed ancient Library of Alexandria, demonstrated the potential of the computer created image. I think his work extended the range of the digital image by a quantum leap. CG pioneer Dr. Ivan Sutherland had said back then, " Of the top ten computer animators in the world, Jim Blinn is seven."

Check out Jim's fun and informative website http://research.microsoft.com/~blinn/

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Correction: Yesterday I wrote that actor Clarence Muse played Sam the piano player in the Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca. It was actually Dooley Wilson. Thanks to all who wrote in to bust me on that one. Mea Culpa!

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B-Days: William Penn-1644, King James II Stuart, Joseph Plateau, Samurai sword master Masoaka Shiki 1867, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lillian Gish, Ralph Lauren, Eamon De Valera, e.e.cummings, Mobutu Sese Seko, C. Everet Koop, John Dean III, Cliff Richards, Roger Moore is 80, Jack Arnold -the director of the Creature from the Black Lagoon

1066-WHEN WILLIAM ROSE AND HAROLD FELL- BATTLE OF HASTINGS- The Norman army of William the Bastard defeats and kills King Harold Godwinson of the Anglo-Saxons. The occupation and settlement of Norman French into England had a dramatic effect on the language ensuring the language you are now reading would become English, instead of something between Dutch and Danish. The Normans also introduced the English to the concept of surnames- Wulf the Tailor yielding to Robert Beauceant and William Longchamps. Duke William, who was never fond of the title 'Bastard", became instead King William the Conquerer.

1492- Columbus and his men left San Salvador to continue west and look for Cipango- their name for Japan.

1529- WESTERN EUROPE DISCOVERS COFFEE- The first Turkish Siege of Vienna ends. Despite the oath of Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent, who told his troops that if they didn't win he would fill the Danube with their genitals, the Turkish army lifts the siege and retreats back into Hungary. As the Viennese went through the Turkish camp they found large quantities of black beans that tasted awful. the ancient Egyptians mashed coffee beans into cakes and ate them. A Polish mercenary named Adam Kolschitsky had lived in Turkey and knew what to do with the bitter beans. He opened the first Viennese coffeehouse, the KolschitskyDom. He is also credited with inventing the coffee filter, which made the strong Turkish java palatable to Europeans. The Viennese commemorated their victory with a pastry shaped like the Turkish battle ensign, the crescent, or the Croissant. History however is silent about who first uttered the awesome command DOUBLE-DOUBLE-ICE-MOCHA-NON-FAT-LATTE !

1670-At a performance before King Louis XIV the Sun King at the Chateau of Chambord Moliere’s satire “Le Bourgeouis Gentilhomme” premiered. Lully wrote the music.

1873-MY NAME IS MUYBRIDGE. One night a carriage drove up from San Francisco to the Yellow Jacket Mine near Calistoga in the north Napa Valley. A man asked for the foreman Major Harry Larkyns. When Larkyns answered the door the man quietly said to him:”Good Evening, Major. My name is Muybridge. Here is the answer to the message you sent my wife earlier. “ He drew a pistol and shot Larkyns through the heart, killing him instantly. The killer was the famous photographer and Motion Picture pioneer Edweard Muybridge. It seems that while he was working on his Motion Studies Series in Palo Alto, Muybridges’ young wife Flora had been having an affair with Major Larkyns. Muybridge found out from the maid. Even the son Flora bore him was not his. They called the child Little Harry behind his back. The jury that convened in Napa did not hang the artist-inventor. In the Code of the Old West, proven adultery was considered a justifiable homicide. Muybridge was acquitted. Mrs. Flora Muybridge divorced him in 1875. After her early death two years later Muybridge gave Little Harry to the San Francisco Orphans Asylum and refused to pay for his upkeep.

1908- The Chicago Cubs defeated the Detroit Lions for their first, and so far only, World Series championship. The next time they got to the series was 1945.

1912- While going to give a political speech in Milwaukee, a lunatic named William Shrenck shot Teddy Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was slowed down tearing through his clothes, speech notes and eyeglasses case and just missed any important organs. Bleeding from his side Teddy spat in his hand to see if there was blood in his spittle, which would mean internal damage. Seeing there was none he went ahead and gave his 90 minute speech before going to a hospital. -Bully!

1926- Happy Birthday Winnie the Pooh! A.A. Milne’s first book of Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Christopher Robin debuted this day.

1934- The Lux Radio Theater premiered.

1947- Chuck Yeager in the X-1 “Glamorous Glennis” first breaks the Sound Barrier.

1954- First day of shooting on Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of the Ten Commandments staring Charlton Heston out in the Egyptian desert. This was the film where heat exhausted star Anne Baxter complained to Vincent Price ” And who do I have to sleep with to get OFF this movie?”

1959- Errol Flynn died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Exhausted by overindulgence in his favorite vices, doctors said the 50 year old movie star had the body of a 70 year old. A descendant of one of the Bounty mutineers, the Tasmanian born actor's last film was ' Cuban Rebel Girls'.

1962- THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS BEGAN- President John F. Kennedy was shown top secret U-2 photos of Russian nuclear missile pads being constructed 90 miles away in Cuba. This meant instead of a 30 minute warning time a Soviet H-Bomb could hit New York or Washington in 7-10 minutes. Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked CIA operative Richard Helms: “Dick, is it true there are Russian missiles in Cuba?” When Helms replied there were, the usually erudite RFK reacted: “ OH, SH*T!!” For the next 14 days the world came close to nuclear armageddon.

1964- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize.

1978- Scott Thorsten “outs” Liberace by filing a palimony suit against him. Even after Liberace died of AIDS my mother refused to believe the outrageous pianist was gay. She thought “he just never found the right girl..”

Birthdays: Revolutionary War heroine Mary Ludwig nicknamed Molly Pitcher, Paul Simon is 65, Lily Langtry-the Jersey Lilly, Lenny Bruce, Larraine Day, Nipsy Russell, Cornel Wilde, Margaret Thatcher, Herblock, Yves Montand, Nancy Kerrigan, Sammy Hagar, Marie Osmond, Jerry Rice, Chris Carter, Kelly Preston, according to the X-Files this is the birthday of Special Agent Fox-Mulder-1961

539BC- The Persian armies of Cyrus the Great captured the city of Babylon, beginning the great Persian Empire which would last for a thousand years. Cyrus also allowed the Israelites to return home, ending their Babylonian Captivity.

54AD- Elderly Roman Emperor Claudius died from eating poisoned mushrooms served to him by his wife Agrippina. Another account has him vomiting the mushrooms but Agrippina administered to him an herbal enema which she had also poisoned. This way she ensured her boy Nero would be emperor before Claudius could come to his senses about making that fat little maniac his heir. Later as emperor Nero had his mom killed. Robert Graves wrote that Claudius feigned simple-mindedness but many Romans felt it wasn’t an act. It was the custom when a Roman emperor died to deify him, make him a god. The writer Seneca thought it would be embarrassing for the gods to have a dolt like Claudius in their company. He wrote an epic poem on the subject called the 'Pumpkinification of Claudius".

1269-Henry III's rebuilding of Westminster Abbey completed and the bones of St. Edward the Confessor re-interred.

1307- MASSACRE of the TEMPLARS- The Knights Templar were a holy order of warrior monks named for their Crusader base at he site of the Temple of Herod in Jerusalem. After the Crusades while the Knights of St John continued to fight Moslems in Greece and Malta the Templars settled back in Europe and went into banking. They amassed great wealth all tax-free because it was Church property. This annoyed kings like Brtiain’s Edward Ist and France’s Phillip the Fair. So this day Phillip bribed the Pope to declare the entire Templar Order heretics and burned at the stake. Myths abound about the Templars having bizarre rituals and the secrets like the location of the Holy Grail, but most of it was made up by the Inquisitors to frame them. But one neat idea they brought back from the Middle East was the personal check. This way a Templar Knight could cross international borders without carrying heavy bags of gold, then go to the nearest Templar castle and redeem a note with his signet on it for money. I wonder if their notes had pretty sunsets painted on them...

1590- Chief Powhatan, head of a confederation of Algonguian tribes in the Cheasapeake Bay area, wiped out a Spanish Jesuit colony attempting to set up on his beach. He had heard from the Seminoles in Florida what these metal clad palefaces were capable of. Nineteen years later in 1607 another annoying bunch of English palefaces landed on his beach, but this time Powhatan was curious about these ones, especially when one started dating his daughter Pocahontas.

1670- The Virginia Colony passed a law that Negroes brought from Africa who proved to be Christians could not be kept as slaves. The law was repealed in 1682.

1685- In 1610 King Henry IV of France had ended a long period of religious wars by granting total freedom of worship with his Edict of Nantes. King Louis XIV later decided Henry was a knucklehead and all Frenchmen should be Catholic, so he revoked the Edict of Nantes and drove the French Protestants (Huguenots) to Canada, England, Maryland, New York City and Charleston, South Carolina.

1768- THE BIRTH OF YANKEE DOODLE- The first written evidence of the song being played, this day by a British army band at a harvest festival in the Hudson Valley. The song means Yankee Doodle -Stupid American... “ stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" A macaroni was English slang for someone dressed in the latest Italian fashions, hence a dandy. That just because the stupid Yankee sticks a feather in his hat he thinks he is a gentleman. Later in the Revolution the song meant to lampoon Americans was adopted by the rebels and played to the British while they were laying down their arms at Yorktown and Saratoga.

1792- Cornerstone of the White House set. First called the President’s Palace, later the Executive Mansion, it was modeled by James Hoban after the Irish estate house of the Duke of Leinster. Instead of a chaplain President George Washington had Masters of the Masonic Rite sanctify the building with their secret rituals. The mansion took 8 years to build. Constant problems halted construction like when the workers went on strike when the government closed down their on-site bordello. A compromise was made to move it off site.
When President John Adams moved in in 1800 it still wasn't finished, plus Washington took all his furniture with him. Abigail Adams hung her wash in the East Room because of the nice breeze. It wasn't until after the British torched the place in 1814 did it receive it's first coat of whitewash. The Oval Office wasn't built until Truman's time in 1947.

1813- Battle of Queenstown Heights. It costs the life of the brilliant young British General Issac Brock, but he defeats the enemy and saves Canada from the clutches of the invading United States.

1815- Joachim Murat shot by firing squad. Marshal Murat was France's bravest cavalry leader. A wild bon-vivant, he would "ride to the sound of the guns" dressed in peacock feathers and pink uniforms but was amazingly never harmed. Even in Russia he walked out in front of Russian cannons but wasn't even scratched. Trying to regain the throne Napoleon gave him in Naples, his luck finally gave out when the Neapolitans put him up against the wall. His last words were:" AIM FOR THE HEART! DON'T TOUCH MY FACE!!"

1857- Wall Street has yet another financial panic and crash.

1903- Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland premiered.

1904- Sigmund Freud's book 'The Interpretation of Dreams" first published.

1938- RKO Pictures was having a salary dispute with their singing cowboy Gene Autry. So they cast around for another handsome cowpoke. Today they signed a would-be dentist from a vocal group called the Sons of the Pioneers named Leonard Slye. He became a star with the film “Under Western Skies” under his new name- Roy Rogers.

1947- Kukla, Fran & Ollie debuted on television. Burt Tillstrom was the creator and puppeteer and Fran was his wife.

1978- Mickey Mouse gets his star on Hollywood Blvd.

1982- The computer spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3 introduced.

1988- Scientists declare the Shroud of Turin a high quality medieval forgery. Even the Vatican was curious whether the thing was real or not and for once cooperated fully in the investigation. But that still doesn’t convince everyone. Many still believe that the piece of cloth could be the real burial cloth of Jesus, with an imprint of his body created almost photographically by the heat of the Resurrection.

Birthdays: "God's Imp"King Edward VI- only son of Henry VIII, Emperor Pedro Ist of Brazil 1798, actress Helena Modjeska, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, Alastair Crowley, Luciano Pavarrotti, animator Izzy Klein, Joan Rivers, Dick Gregory, Tony Kubek, Susan Anton, Kirk Cameron, Hugh Jackman, animator Russell Calabrese

1492- COLUMBUS STEPS ASHORE IN AMERICA.- The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria drop anchor off San Salvador in the Bahamas after sighting land around 2:10 A.M., Oct 22nd Old Style. It was a full moon. Columbus had offered a reward for the first man to see land. Juan de Boromeo aboard the Pinta sighted land first, but Columbus later claimed he did and kept the money- cheap bugger. Expecting to meet Chinese people Columbus brought with him a translator who could speak Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish and Hebrew as well as a letter from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to the Great Khan of Cathay. Obviously none of this was of much help with the Taino tribe of Arowack Indians. Although other people have claimed to have discovered the Western Hemisphere earlier: The Chinese, the Vikings or Irish Saint Brendan, Columbus' landing was the beginning of the great European-African Migration to the Western Hemisphere. As Noel Coward put it:" Let’s just say, that by 1492 we just couldn't ignore you any longer."

1776- Battle of Throgg's Neck- The British amphibiously landed a force behind George Washington's army in the Bronx. This forced the American rebels to escape to White Plains and later across the Hudson into New Jersey. Throgg's Neck is a garbled Dutch form of 'frog's neck'.

1800- The Independent Chronicle reported the national debt of the United States was around $70 million dollars. The Bank of the United States refused any additional loans to the government to help complete construction of Washington D.C. Todays national debt is in the multi-trillions.

1810- THE FIRST OCKTOBERFEST- Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig 1st invited the people of Munich to celebrate his marriage to Princess Theresa von Sachsen-Hildeburghausen. Big tables were set up outside the city gates, horse races held and beer flowed freely for days. The custom was too good to do only once so every year the Octoberfest occurs in Therese’s Fields- Thereseweisen, or simply Weis’n. Ein Prozit!

What? You'd rather have a picture of Columbus? Or Izzy Klein?

1886- Beginning of Sherlock Holmes story:” Adventure of the Second Stain”.

1920- Famed thoroughbred race horse Man O’War won his last race.

1928- The Winnie the Pooh stories featuring Tigger are first published

1937- Under pressure from parent Paramount Studio, Max Fleischer signed the first animation union contract and settled the Cartoonist strike begun May 8th. The following year Fleischer tried to escape unions by moving his studio to Right-To-Work State Florida, but the additional expenses and poor box office ruined his studio.

1940-60 year old silent movie star Tom Mix died in auto crash outside of Florence, Arizona. He ignored signs that a bridge was out and fell into a dry gulley. A large overpacked suitcase popped out of his back seat and crushed him. The “Suitcase of Death” is preserved along with Tony the Wonder Horse at the Tom Mix Museum in Oklahoma.

1960- During a long loud debate on colonialism during a speech by the Phillipine Ambassador Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev got the attention of the U.N. General Assembly by taking off his shoe and banging it on the table. This caused an uproar so uncontrollable that the Secretary General broke his gavel trying to restore order.

1964- Adding to their string of success in the Space Race, the Soviets launched Vokshod 1, the first capsule with a multi-person crew and the first ship where Cosmonauts didn’t need to wear their space suits inside.

1966- Sammy Davis Jr. appeared on the Batman TV Show. Sock-it-to-me!

1969- Police arrest Charles Manson inside Death Valley National Park..

1971-Weber & Rice’s hippy musical Jesus Christ Superstar opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger theater.

1977- Script completed for the classic film comedy Animal House.

1994-Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg announce the partnership that would later be named Dreamworks SKG.

1997-53 year old Singer John Denver died when he crashed his ultra-light Long E-Z plane into the ocean near Monterrey California. Later reports showed he was flying inebriated. The impact was so great his body had to be identified by fingerprints.

1998- Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was taken out to a field by a gang of other boys, tied to a rail fence and was beaten and pistol whipped. His assailants then left him tied to the fence all night with no way to call for help. He died by morning. Matthew Shepards’ death caused a wave of revulsion nationwide against anti-gay violence.

2000- A suicide bomber in a speed boat blew a hole in the USN destroyer Cole in a harbor in Yemen, killing 16 American sailors. The attack was done by Al Queda, the same terrorist group that did the World Trade Center attack.

2001- After the 9-11 attack NATO AWAC planes began patrolling the East Coast of the US. This is the first foreign aid for America since Lafayette, Rocheambeau and the Marquis de Galves helped General Washington in the American Revolution.

2005- Chinese archaeologists near the Yellow River discover the world’s oldest bowl of noodles. Someone’s fossilized noodle lunch from a bowl that tipped over four thousand years ago, or 2,000BC.