Question: When John McCain in South Carolina the other day didn't apologize or correct the person who called Hilary Clinton a b*tch, that was called a Faux-pas. What is a faux-pas?

Answer to yesterday's question: What does SPAM mean? below.


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˙B-Days: Georgia O'Keefe, Irvin Rommel the "Desert Fox", Daniel Barenboim, George Bolet, William Pitt the Elder, Veronica Lake, Beverly D'Angelo, Ed Asner, Sam Waterson, Petula Clark

64 AD-THE ROMAN EMPIRE BANS CHRISTIANITY- It's hard to believe today but the Roman Empire was proud of it's religious toleration. There was a harmony to the pagan world, A Goth knew his god Wotan was called Jove in Rome, Zeus in Athens and Mithra in Persia. So the Judeo-Christian concept of One God exclusively, and everybody else’s gods were demons just didn't quite fit. The only other religion persecuted as vigorously as Christianity was the Druids, but that was because the Druids preached constant rebellion to Roman rule. The Romans dispersed the Jews as a nation, but Julius Caesar left strict laws about never violating Jewish religious Laws. Even Caligula backed down from trying to put a statue of himself in the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. Anti-Semites claim Messalina the wife of Nero was a Jewish convert and convinced her husband to outlaw the Christian cult, but the answer goes deeper than that. Secrecy and fear of its’ alien practices bred suspicion that would last 300 years.

1532- After marching his Spanish conquistadors for six months through steaming jungles and over tall mountains, Francisco Pizarro reached the border of the mysterious Inca Empire. At the little border town of Cajamarca his 200 men suddenly found themselves face to face with 40,000 Inca warriors. The Imperial Inca Army was outfitted in gold plates and weapons. He wrote“they shined like the sun!”

1754- First use of the modern trombone. It was played at a child's funeral.

1828- Author Victor Hugo signs contracts with Gosselin's Publishing House to write a story about the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris. He was paid 4,000 francs in advance, The HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was the result.

1864- SHERMAN BURNS ATLANTA- Atlanta was the economic center of the South, an enormous depot far from the front with railroad tracks linking all the coastal ports. William Tecumseh Sherman is considered by many the first modern general. He understood the Civil War was a war of peoples, outmaneuvering armies for temporary strategic gains wouldn’t decide anything. So he drove out the civilian population of the city and torched it. He called his tactics 'Hard War" but today we call it 'Total War". Sherman had an army band serenaded him beneath his window playing the "Miserere'" from Verdi's "Il Trovatore", while he observed the burning, impatiently chewing on an unlit cigar. A high strung asthmatic, he had had a nervous breakdown at the start of the war and had once tried to dye his bright red hair but it turned green. The next day Sherman began his epic March to the Sea. Not with green hair.

1907- The comic strip Mutt & Jeff debuted. The strip was so popular that it’s creator Harry “Bud “ Fisher became a celebrity and negotiated the first large backend deals.

1926- FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooks up 20 cities for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein from the Steinway building penthouse on 57th St. in Manhattan.

1934- Animator Bill Tytla starts at Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.

1969- THE MORATORIUM- 250,000 people gather in Washington to protest the War in Vietnam. Richard Nixon had run as a peace candidate but once in office escalated the Vietnam conflict to include Cambodia and Laos. President Nixon came to regard the young student protesters as the chief enemy of his administration. He appealed to the Silent Majority, staged stunts like the Hard Hat Luncheon,an event thrown for conservative construction workers. According to John Dean, by 1971 Nixon had a bunker built under the executive offices where aide John Ehrlichman monitored protests from a battery of television monitors. Nixon stalwart G. Gordon Liddy pitched preposterous schemes like infiltrating the students with mercenaries who would at a signal beat up people, and strategic commando style kidnapping of student leaders. These schemes were never implemented.

1989- Disney's The Little Mermaid debuted. When it opened in Copenhagen, director John Musker and Ron Clements attended a gala and sat next to the Queen of Denmark. They agonized over what would be her reaction to the reworking of the unhappy ending in this great Danish work, but the Queen's reaction was "It's beautiful! Hans Christian Andersen never could write a decent ending..."

1990- It was revealed that the Grammy winning pop group Milli Vanilli didn’t sing on their own album but lip synced to the music.

1995- According to the Starr report, this day President Clinton had his first sexual tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky. At one point he was on the phone to a member of Congress while doing the nasty with the chubby chick from Beverly Hills High.
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Answer to yesterday's Question: What does Spam mean?

70 years ago in 1937, Meatmaker John Hormel came up with the strange brick and held a contest to name it. Some think it means SPiced hAM, but the official company version of the name is
Shoulder,Pork and hAM.

QUIZ:What does SPAM mean?

Answer to yesterday's quiz below:
What was the name of Abe Lincoln's dog?
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History for 11/14/2007
Birthdays: Astrid Lungren the creator of Pippi Longstockings, Robert Fulton, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, McClean Stevenson, Jarahwahal Nehru, Mamie Eisenhower, Brian Keith, Louise Brooks the It Girl, Ellis Marsalis, Harrison Salisbury, P.J. O'Rourke, Prince Charles is 59, Laura San Giancomo, Patrick Wharburton, Zhang zhi Miou, Dr. Condoloeeza Rice is 53, Yanni

1565- King Phillip II of Spain ordered the Holy Inquisition to enforce his edicts against heretics in the Netherlands. When Dutch emissaries like William of Orange, nicknamed William the Silent for his diplomatic skill, urged moderation towards the growing population of Dutch Calvinists, Phillip said: “I would rather that thousands lose their lives than reign over a kingdom of heretics”.

1666- English diarist Samuel Pepys recorded witnessing the first experimental blood transfusion done on two dogs.

1798- WolfTone, the young Irish revolutionary leader, committed suicide in prison after his capture. He knew he was certain for a hangman’s noose. He is sometimes called the founder of the IRA, although this is more a romantic notion than historical accuracy.

1805- Napoleon’s French Army entered Vienna. Composer Ludwig Van Beethoven had dedicated his Symphony #3 Eroica to him when he considered Bonaparte a force for human rights, but after Napoleon became an emperor he angrily crossed it out. “So, he is just a man after all!” Now ironically with all the Austrian society run out of town Beethoven was forced to premiere his symphony to an audience of French army officers.

1832- The First regular horse drawn streetcar service began in New York.

1851- Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick, or the Whale” was first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row. Melville in part was inspired by a report of a whale named Mocha-Dick who had sunk seven ships off the coast of Java and a New Bedford whaling ship Nantucket that was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in 1839. For the famous author of Typoo and Billy Budd, Moby Dick was a critical and financial disaster. What's now considered one of the greatest works of American literature was blasted in its time. Melville, broken in spirit, sank into obscurity and finished his life as a customs agent for the Port of New York. When he died, he was so forgotten the New York Times misspelled his name in it's obituary. Today his great-great grandson Moby is a rock star.

1875- British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and banker Sir Lionel Rothschild had lunch. Their brandy and Stilton was interrupted by an agent with the secret message that the Khedive of Egypt needed money and was willing to sell the unfinished Suez Canal zone to England. But Disraeli had to get the money on the spot. Disraeli knew Parliament was out of session and probably wouldn't agree to the sum anyway. "Well, how much do you need?" Rothschild asked. Disraeli replied "Four million Pounds Sterling" ( $44 million in modern money ). "No Problem" quote Sir Lionel. So Rothschild lent the Crown the money on the spot and the Suez canal was built and maintained by Britain until 1956.

1883- London’s World newspaper printed an exchange of telegrams between writer Oscar Wilde and painter James MacNeil Whistler. “ When you and I are together we never talk about anything but ourselves.”-Wilde. Whistler:” No, no, Oscar. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me.”

1889- Inspired by Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days, New York World reporter Nellie Bly, real name Elizabeth Cochrane, set out to travel the world in the declared time. She did it in 72 days. Bly was considered by Victorian society scandalously independent, she was a war correspondent, she had herself committed to a lunatic asylum to report on mistreatment of the mentally ill, she went up in a balloon and was the first woman to go down in a diving bell- bathosphere.

1918- The Czechs declared their independence from the collapsing Austrian Empire.

1921- Winston Churchill told his political constituents that so far the "Twentieth Century has been a terrible disappointment." Just wait, Winnie, you ain't see nothing yet.

1922- the BBC- British Broadcasting Companies first regular radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results.

1927- Stalin’s victory as paramount Russian leader was completed. His chief rival Leon Trotsky was this day officially expelled from the Soviet Communist Party. Trotsky went into exile and was eventually murdered in Mexico City.

1937- SPAM introduced!

1940- The Nazi Luftwaffe bombed to ruins the English city of Conventry, not for any military reason, but as a terror warning to the British. Ironically the British had broken the Nazis secret code and knew about the attack, but if they issued a warning the Nazis would have realized their code had been compromised and would change it. Churchill had to make the terrible decision that the secret was more valuable than all those civilian casualties.

1942- THE SULLIVAN BROTHERS- Five brothers of one Iowa family all enlisted in the Navy and were all posted on the same ship –the USS Juneau. All five were killed when the Juneau went down in action off Guadalcanal wiping out the family. After the Sullivan Brothers incident laws were passed that US Selective Service could not draft in its initial callup all sons of a family without leaving one and that close relatives were not allowed to serve on board the same ship.

1943- Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct the New York Philharmonic this night so 24 year old Leonard Bernstein was asked to assume the baton. Bernstein becomes an overnight sensation.

1943- During naval maneuvers in the South Atlantic the destroyer William S. Porter accidentally fired a live torpedo at the battleship Iowa carrying President Franklin Roosevelt! The Porter reported the mistake in time so the Iowa could take evasive actions and the torpedo exploded harmlessly in her wake. But the captain of the William S. Porter was arrested and courts-martialed back at port and the incident kept top secret until the 1970’s. For years afterwards whenever the William S. Porter came into harbor she was greeted with the cry “DON’T SHOOT, WE’RE REPUBLICANS!”

1957-THE APALLACHIN CONFERENCE- The top Dons of the Mafia decided to meet at the rural estate of Joseph Barbara, the President of the Canada Dry soda pop company near Binghamton, NY. The farm was clogged with black Cadillacs and Lincolns driven by guys in silk suits named Vinny. All the heads of the Five-Families were there, Joe “Bananas” Bonano, Joey Profacci, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Paul Castellano, Joey Catena and Louis Tafficante. To this day no one’s quite sure what this meeting was about. Theories are it was an attempt to broker a peace after the hits on Al Anastasia and Frank Costello, and to decide whether the Old Sicilian capos would agree to the younger men’s request that the mob organize narcotics. As luck would have it two New York State troopers investigating a bad-check case noticed the gangland gathering and called for the farm to be surrounded. Once the cops raid commenced it was a free for all of mobsters jumping out of windows and running like rabbits through the corn stalks.
The raid produced few convictions but the headlines focused national attention on the Mafia. It proved without a doubt what had always been feared, that the Mafia was not a loose term for some local immigrant gangs but an highly centralized national organization. Congressional hearings like the McClellan Committee began to bust up the rackets. Mobsters who write of this time, say the Appalachin mistake was the beginning of the end of the Mafia’s nationwide solidarity and power.

1957-The Supreme Court refused to review the challenge to government obscenity laws brought by Irving Klaw and his wife, producers of the Betty Page kinky pinup photos.

1959- In Holcomb Kansas two men break into a farm home and murder four people. The subsequent trial and execution was attended by writer Truman Capote, who wrote the book “In Cold Blood”.

1960- Anthony Mann began shooting the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren with her pre-collagen Lips.

1961- President John F. Kennedy ordered the number of U.S. military advisors in Vietnam increased from 1,000 to 16,000. There has always been conflicting evidence about just what JFK thought about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Some scholars point to writings that said Kennedy by 1963 was having second thoughts about involvement and wanted to begin pulling out but Lyndon Johnson had deeper ties to the South Vietnamese regime and big military contractors like Bell-Huey. Others say if JFK wasn’t assassinated he still would have done the same Vietnam policy that Lyndon Johnson later did.

1963- Volcanoes push up out of the water the island of Circe, now part of Iceland.

1965- BATTLE OF IA DRANG- The First major engagement between U.S. combat troops and Vietnamese regulars. Ho Chi Minh wanted to see how his troops could withstand a major engagement with this new adversary. General William Westmoreland couldn’t think of any other way to say the battle was a success than by counting the number of enemy dead. Based on this defeat the Vietnamese would not challenge the Americans again in open battle like they had defeated the French but went underground and fought a guerrilla war for the next three years. Ia Drang was also the first battle where troops where brought in, out, and supplied totally by helicopters. Among the units involved were the reconstituted 7th Cavalry. The battle was dramatized in the Mel Gibson 2002 movie “We Were Soldiers.” Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, one of the toughest vets of Ia Drang was also a veteran of the Korean War. He calmly walked upright through the whizzing bullets telling his cowering troopers:” Stand up son, you can’t hit anything down there.” Retired Plumley was killed in the World Trade Center collapse of 2001.

1973- Britain's Princess Anne wed Captain Mark Phillips. They divorced in 1992.

1967- Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sells out his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts. He becomes the last of the original Hollywood Moguls to step down.

1986- Wall Street Tycoon Ivan Boesky who defined the 1980's with mottos like "Greed is Good, Greed is Natural", pleaded guilty to insider trading and stock fraud and willingly finked on everyone at Drexel Bernham-Lambert who helped him.

1995- Because of a deadlocked budget debate between President Bill Clinton and Congressional leader Newt Gingrich, the U.S. Government instituted a partial shut down.National parks and tourist attractions like Yosemite and the Statue of Liberty turned people away because their staffs were unpaid.

1998- Colorful and eccentric NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman married beautiful supermodel Carmen Electra. There was some doubt at first as to the validity of the story as Rodman admitted he was blind drunk throughout and didn’t remember the ceremony. They divorced shortly after.
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YESTERDAY'S QUIZ
What was the name of Abe Lincoln's dog?



answer: Fido.(1855-1866) Thats' why the name was so common with American dog owners. Fido from Latin Fides, Ever Faithful.

Quiz: What was the name of Abraham Lincoln's dog?

Answer to yesterdays' question below: Who was the original Goodtime Charlie?
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History for 11/13/2007
Birthdays: Saint Augustine 354 AD, King Edward III of England, Robert Louis Stephenson, Edwin Booth, Oskar Werner, Jean Seberg, Erte'*, Jack Elam, Judge Louis Brandeis (the first Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Alexander Scourby, Eugene Ionesco, Garry Marshall, Whoopi Goldberg- original name Karen Johnson, Joe Mantegna is 60, Chris Noth is 47, Jimmy Kimmel is 40

*Erte’ the great art deco designer was from a very old Russian military family. Their names were the Tschichagoffs. A Tschitchagoff had fought Napoleon in 1812 and all had been generals and admirals under the Tsar. But young little Emelyan Tschitchagov didn’t want to be an admiral or general, he wanted to design ladies clothes! So he moved to Paris to seek his fortune. When there, impresario Serge Diaghilev suggested he change his name to something non-Russians could pronounce, he gave the same advice to Gyorgi Balanchivadze- or George Balanchine. So Emelyan Tschichakov adopted as his name his initials E.T. - in French "Erte’".


In Ancient Rome, today was Epulium Jovis, or the Feast of Jupiter Reclining.

1789- Ben Franklin wrote " Nothing is certain except Death and Taxes."

1842- Lewis Carroll noted in his diary today:" Began writing the fairy tale of Alice. Hope to be done by Christmas.." His real name was Charles Dodgeson, The Oxford mathematics don invented the nom de plume as a fictional Renaissance writer Ludovicus Carolus, or Lewis Carroll.

1861- THE TRENT AFFAIR- All through the American Civil War Abe Lincoln's biggest fear and Jefferson Davis’ greatest hope was direct intervention of the great European powers. With England in Canada and France in Mexico and the British Navy ruling the seas this was a real possibility. The British and French thought nothing of intervening in conflicts all over the world like the Greek Revolution or the war between Argentina and Uruguay. Almost as soon as the guns of Fort Sumter rang out Emperor Napoleon III of France and the German Elector of Baden were offering their services as impartial mediators. On this day a U.S. Navy frigate fired on the British ship HMS Trent and removed from her passengers two Confederate diplomats. Mason and Slidell were being sent as ambassadors to the Court of Saint James. They claimed immunity as diplomats, the U.S. said they were rebellious citizens. London reacted to the insult to her flag with an explosion of war talk General Garnet Woolsey volunteered to raise new regiments for an invasion of New York State from Canada. Lincoln's comment was "One War at a time." He apologized profusely and offered reparations. On the other side Prince Albert helped keep the peace.

1868- Giacomo Rossini died at 68. He retired at 31 from active life and lived on royalties. It was said he became so lazy he layed about in bed all day. One day when writing a concerto his score dropped to the floor as he leaned over to fill his wine glass. Rather than bend down to pick it up, he took a fresh sheet and wrote a sonata instead.

1874 -At the sesquicentennial celebrations of the University of Pennsylvania Robert Green invented the Ice Cream Soda.

1914- Clothing designer Carez Crosby took two handkerchiefs and some ribbon off some baby bonnets and invented the Brassiere.

1917- THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR- After Lenin’s Communist Party seized power in Saint Petersburg disaffected officers and businessmen fled to the edges of the Russian Empire to organize resistance to the new regime. This day some "White" soldiers under General Krasnoe skirmished with some of Trotsky’s Red Guards. These were the first shots of a bloody Civil War that would rage for 4 years and kill millions. After just completing a World War and two Revolutions, when she heard this news one Russian poet exclaimed : "Oh God, you mean its not over?!"

1921- Premiere of the silent classic "The Sheik" introducing young actor Rudolph Valentino. Valentino’s wife Alla Nazimova made sure his image was pure male sex appeal. " Rudy looks best when he’s naked."

1940- Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' opened. as Walt put it, "this'll make Beethoven!" Disney conceived the idea during a dinner with Leopold Stokowski at Chasen's Restaurant in Beverly Hills. Frank Lloyd Wright's opinion was 'I love the visuals, but why did you use all that old music?" Of all the composers used, Igor Stravinsky was the only one still living. He was approached for the rights to his "The Rites of Spring". He was told if he refused, his Russian 1910 copyright was invalid in the U.S. because Russia never signed the international copyright pact of 1905, so they could use it anyway, ya bald commie! Stravinsky gave permission. When he saw the final result, publicists said he "Speechless with Admiration!" In actual fact he told Vanity Fair in 1960 that he thought Stokowski's orchestration was "execreble" and the visuals "imbecillic". But his opinion didn't stop him from selling Disney the rights to two more works, Renard and the Firebird.
The film was meant to be seen in Fantasound, a stereo sound system so advanced most theaters couldn't run it. To develop early components of the sound system, Disney gave a contract to two young Stanford engineers just starting out- Hewlett & Packard.

1953- An Indiana Judge ordered his local school district to remove any school books with references to the character Robin Hood. All the "take from the rich and give to the poor" it was obvious to the judge that the medieval rogue of Sherwood Forest was a Communist.

1969- President Richard Nixons’ Vice President Spiro Agnew accused the national news media of bias and partisanship. He excoriates them as "Nittering nabobs of Negativism" and gains a reputation for pithy use of the language. In reality Nixon speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan wrote all of Spiros’ best lines. Up to then White House reporters were a pretty compromising bunch, winking at John Kennedy’s bimbos and Franklin Roosevelt’s wheelchair. But Nixon’s paranoia led him to declare the press his enemy. So the press reacted in kind. You can date the birth of the modern rapacious, scandal obsessed press corps from this speech.

1971- ABC TV. movie "the Duel" premiered. It starred Dennis Weaver as a hapless motorist on a lonely freeway menaced by an unseen truck driver . The film first brought fame to a young director named Steven Speilberg.

1974- Atomic plant worker Karen Silkwood was the first person to expose lax safety practices at the US nuclear power plants. For this she was rewarded with demotion, harassment, lawsuits. Even a radioactive isotope was put under her car seat. On this night she was finally killed in a car accident. She was on her way to talk to a New York Times reporter and it’s been alleged her car was deliberately run off the road. The files she was going to hand over to the press disappeared from the car. The crash was ruled an accident.

1978- Mickey Mouse gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1986- President Ronald Reagan attempting to explain the festering Iran Contra Scandal said on nationwide TV:" We did not and I repeat did not…trade weapons or ransom for hostages or would we ever." Of course we now know that was exactly what we were doing.

1986- John Huston and Woody Allen denounced the fad of computer colorizing classic Black & White films like the Maltese Falcon. Supposedly one of the last things Orson Welles said on his deathbed was "Keep Ted Turner and his crayons away from my movies!"

1991- Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast opened, the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
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YESTERDAY'S QUESTION: Who was the original Goodtime Charlie?



ANSWER: Republican President Herbert Hoover's vice president was Charles Curtis, called by writers of the time " fat as a pastry and the apotheosis of mediocrity". He got the label Goodtime Charlie because when the Stock Market crashed and the Great Depression was putting millions of Americans out of work, VP Curtis was photographed going from one all night whoopee party to another. He didn't seem to think there was anything wrong and made speeches that things were fine. During the election of 1932 he actually argued with protesting unemployed workers, saying they were all "too damn dumb" to understand economics.
Hmmm...a conservative Republican Vice President who says things that infuriate people...gosh! I'm glad that doesn't happen today!

Jay Leno, a real hero, refuses to go back to work even though NBC is talking of replacing him for the duration.

The Writers' Strike is now entering it's second week and more TV shows are shutting down. No new talks with management are scheduled. Animated shows like Family Guy and the Simpsons that use WGA contract writers will be shutting down for awhile soon.

To those involved- a word of advice from someone who has walked a few picketlines in my day. When it becomes a tense waiting game between you and the producers, try not to get too carried away with enforcement, penalties and hunting down people going back to work. As people watch their savings drain and need someone to blame, we too often turn on each other, who is more "for-the-cause?

Believe me, it's not worth it and it just builds bad blood between union members. George Washington said "flogging a soldier just makes a bad soldier." You'll never build lasting loyalty by bringing your friends up on charges. Never lose sight of the fact of who the real enemy is. Lead by example like Jay Leno does.

Again, best of luck!

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Quiz: Who was the original “ Good Time Charlie?”

Answer to yesterday’s question below- which President was originally born William J. Blythe IV?
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History for 11/12/2007
Birthdays: Auguste Rodin, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Bahi-ullah 1817 founder of the Bahii faith, Elizabeth Cadie -Stanton, Cecil B. DeMille, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, Shamus Culhane, Charles Manson, Neil Young, Edvard Munch, Al Michaels, Nadia Comenici , Tanya Harding, Dave Brain, Ryan Gosling is 27, Anne Hathaway is 25

1035- Canute the Great died. He was the Viking King of Denmark, Scotland and England simultaneously. It was Canute who once tried to command the ocean tide to go out. All he got was wet.

1792- The Revolutionary French Republic issued a declaration that any other European kingdom that wants to chop their king’s head off, is welcome to come join the fun.

1859- The first trapeze act was demonstrated at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. The show caused such a sensation that the daredevil was immortalized by his tights becoming a fashion - Jules Leotard.

1861- THE CURRAUGH CAMP AFFAIR- When 20 year old Edward the Prince of Wales went to Oxford he was kept on a short leash by his worried parents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They expected his college life to be- well, Victorian. He was to reside off campus, limited his diet to bland foods and seltzer water and absolutely no smoking or carousing with women! This draconian regimen only stiffened Bertie’s rebellious nature. When allowed to attend maneuvers in Ireland and bunk with a company of hard drinking cavalry officers he was at last free to go wild. By unfortunate coincidence the gossip about the Prince’s all night drinking binges and bedding actresses reached his father just as Albert was showing the first signs of the typhoid fever that would kill him. For years afterwards Queen Victoria blamed her son for contributing to his father's death by breaking his heart. In his adult years King Edward VII was never without a cigar in his teeth, a girl on his lap and a drink in his hand.

1912- SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC- in the Antarctic this day the frozen bodies of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and his men were found. He had lost his race to find the South Pole to Norwegian Piers Ammundsen then was stranded by a blizzard only 30 miles from his base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf. His last diary entry ( March 29th ) said "We are showing that Englishmen can still have a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end. This diary and our dead bodies will be the proof. I should like to write more but I haven't the strength..."

1918- The day after the Armistice ending World War One, thousands of German army soldiers against orders began to march back across their borders in perfect order. Then defying the shouts and threats of their officers, the men threw away their helmets, guns and uniforms, and quietly walked home.

1920- In the wake of the "Black Sox" Baseball scandal, the first rigged World Series, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was elected first Commissioner of Baseball. He ordered all those involved in the scandal including Shoeless Joe Jackson permanently banned from baseball even though they had been acquitted in a civil trial.

1927- The Holland Tunnel completed. It runs under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey. It’s not named for the Netherlands, but for the engineer Clifford Holland, who died shortly before it’s completion.

1933- Hugh Gray of the British Aluminum Company takes the first photographs of what he claimed was a monster in Loch Ness. He would be the first of many to have claimed to have seen Nessie.

1946- Disney's "Song of the South" with William Baskett as Uncle Remus.

1955- This is the date Marty McFly returns to in the film Back to the Future and Back to the Future II.

1975- Portland Oregon had a large dead gray whale on it’s beach. It decided it would be easier to dispose if they blew it up. As an audience watched they stuffed it with half a ton of dynamite. The explosion drew cheers from the audience, then everyone ran for cover as they were showered by chunks of smelly blubber and guts.

1990- Akihito became Emperor of Japan.

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Yesterday’s question-
Which President was originally born William J. Blythe IV?

Answer: Bill Clinton. Three months before he was born his father was killed in an automobile accident. Bill’s mother Virginia registered his name at birth as William Jefferson Blythe after he late husband. A few years later she married Roger Clinton, and Bill changed his name, legally at age 15.

QUIZ: To continue the U.S presidential theme, which President was originally born William J. Blythe IV?

Answer to yesterday’s question below-
Which U.S. President was originally named Leslie Lynch King?
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History for 11/11/2007
Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Doestoyevsky, Gen .George “Blood & Guts” Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnengut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Fuzzy Zoeller, Demi Moore is 45, Leonard DiCaprio is 33

Today in the Middles Ages this was "Martinmass" the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of France.

Happy Veterans Day in the U.S., Memorial Day in many European countries.

1534- The Parliament voted the Act of Supremacy, that the King of England would be the Supreme Head of the Church in England, breaking with the Catholic Church in Rome. They Christened the new national faith The Church of England or C.of E.

1887- THE HAYMARKET EXECUTIONS- Four leaders of an early American labor movement The Knights of Labor are hanged after being charged with responsibility for a bomb tossed at police during a demonstration in Chicago. Samuel Fielden, Adolphe Fischer, August Spies and Albert Parsons. It was never proven they actually had thrown the bomb, but hey, they were a bunch of reds anyway...A later Chicago mayor ruined his political career when he proved publicly that the Haymarket defendants were innocent. Albert Parsons shouted as he dropped through the trapdoor:" Oh men of America, Let the Voice of the People be Heard!" They were demanding unheard of concessions like a six day work week and an 8 hour workday down from twelve. A monument was erected in Haymarket not to Parsons, but to the police. Hippies blew it up in 1968.

1889- Washington State admitted into the union.

1918- ARMISTICE DAY- World War One ended. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns of the Great War fall silent. It sounds poetic but it was just a coincidence, the opposing sides had been negotiating since the 8th. In many countries this is the traditional Memorial Day, the American one in May is in honor of our Civil War. In a strange kind of salute when the word went down the battlelines that the ceasefire would take effect at 11:00AM, one minute before thousands of cannons on both sides fired one last round simultaneously. One German machine gunner fired his last belt of ammunition at the allied trenches, stood up in front of everyone, bowed like an actor, turned and walked away. World War One's final tally was 22 million dead, almost 13-20% of the young male population in France, Germany and England. In only 7 months of actual fighting 200,000 American died – as opposed to 58,000 in 8 years in Vietnam and four thousand in Iraq. Soldiers came home speaking of Screaming Mimies, shellshock, wearing wristwatches instead of pocket watches and wearing trenchcoats, as Thomas Burberry’s rainproof overcoat became known. From now on meteorologists would refer to large weather patterns as Fronts, from the days when weather predictions effected military planning.

1918- TOMMY GUNS- Sitting on a New York wharf forgotten and ignored was the first shipment of Thompson submachine guns, built for a war just ended. John Thompson was an inventor who tried to solve the problem of close hand-to-hand trench warfare by inventing a light mobile machine gun that could be a “trench-broom” –spewing 800 bullets a minute. Because it fired small pistol bullets it was called a “sub-machine gun”.
But the Great War was over and the U.S.Army wasn’t interested anymore, neither were most police departments. So in 1921 the Thompson Submachine Gun went on sale to the public as a “great home defense system”. The people who did buy them were the Mafia and the IRA. They nicknamed them Choppers, Chicago Typewriters and Tommy Guns. Al Capone’s men invented the novelty of hiding one in a violin case. Old John Thompson was shocked that his creation was used by hoodlums and made incidents like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre possible. He died in 1940 just weeks before the US Army would order thousands of his Tommy Gun to fight World War Two.


1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom. According to close friends Sachmo was a lifelong marijuana smoker. He called Pot his “antidote to racism”. Gives new meaning to the song “Laughing Louie”.

1926- Route 66, the first interstate highway built for automobiles in the U.S. is started. (it will get finished in 1932) The World's first road exclusively for automobiles was opened in 1927, the Via Fiore Imperiale in Rome.

1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale. The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package the cookies.

1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chubby chanteuse Kate Smith. Berlin had written the song in1918 for a show but it didn’t fit in so he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later he revived the song for the effort to combat the Depression and it became a huge hit. Ever since 1942 there’ve been calls to have it replace the Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem. In 1970 a frustrated DJ on hippy radical radio station WBAI promised to play Kate Smith’s God Bless America over and over again until people started calling in pledges to help the station. The phones soon started ringing. After the World Trade Center attack of Sept 11th 2001 the song again echoed from a thousand throats, being sung in Berlin, Paris, Teheran and Moscow in sympathy.

1938- TYPHOID MARY- On this day 68 year old Mary Mallon died in an asylum. She was a carrier of the disease typhoid fever and, in 1910, while being a cook in a hotel resort ,infected 1,000 people. Released from jail a few years later she had promised not to resume her former profession but soon was in the kitchen again and started the epidemic of 1915. She, herself, never contracted the disease.


1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule and MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer called her a “fat monster”. So he ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.

1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.

1941- On the night before mobster Abe Reles, alias Kid Twist, was due to testify what he knew of the Mafia, he was thrown out of a Coney Island hotel window to his death. He was under Federal protection but, in 1962, Joe Valachi testified mobster Frank Costello had raised $100,000 to bribe the cops to do the deed themselves. A popular toast around Brooklyn those days was: “ Here’s to Abe Reles, a canary who could sing but not fly.”


1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol Groucho Marx.

1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar megaflop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."

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Answer to Yesterday’s Quiz:

Quiz: Which U.S. President was originally named Leslie Lynch King?

President Gerald Ford. 1913-2007. Ford was born Leslie Lynch King in a basement apartment in Omaha Nebraska. His parents divorced soon after. In 1915 His mother remarried to a paint salesman named Gerald Rudolph Ford. He adopted his stepson and renamed him Gerald R. Ford Jr. They kept this secret from him until at age 17, he found out when a stranger drove up to him at a sandwich shop and said:
" Hi. I’m Leslie, your father.”