QUIZ: In the Disney Film, Make Mine Music, when Willie the Operatic Whale is hunted by Metropolitan Opera impresario Prof. Tetti-Tatti, he was a caricature of a real person. Who was that person?

Yesterdays’ question answer below…..
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History for 1/9/2008
Birthdays: Woody Guthrie, Richard Nixon, Ray Bolger, Roy Disney Jr., William Powell, George Balanchine, Judith Krantz, Bob Denver, Crystal Gayle, Joan Baez, Simone de Beauvoir, Sir Rudolph Bing, Herbert Lom, Gypsy Rose Lee, Joely Richardson

Festival of Janus, the namesake of January, Roman God of gateways and doors, not to be confused of course with Terminus, God of borders and terminal points, Lemintinus the God of Threshholds and stoops. Cardea the Goddess of hinges or Forculus the God of the door leaves and sectioned doors.

1570- Ivan the Terrible, just getting the suspicion that the city of Novgorod may be plotting treason, surrounded the city and massacred 20,000 people. Afterwards he tells the survivors: " Forget your wrongs."

1768- Former English cavalry sergeant Phillip Astley combined trick riding in a tight circular ring with a clown and some jugglers and took it all on the road. The first Circus.

1769- Gaspar De Portola and Fra Junipero Serra set sail from Mexico to colonize California. The California coastline had been explored by Juan De Cabrillo, Francis Drake and others 250 years earlier. But since there were no gold-encrusted Aztec-type cities to plunder it was quickly forgotten. Conquistadors don’t surf. The King in Madrid was finally moved to order the colonization of California to limit the encroachments of Russian fur trading settlements and English claims to Oregon territory.

1847- THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES-after a small battle near San Gabriel Mission, Commodore Richard Stockton and the U.S. cavalry retake Los Angeles and end resistance by the native Mexican population 'the Californios' to U.S. rule. The Californios had driven out the Yankee occupiers three times before.

1857- The Fort Tejon earthquake shook Los Angeles This was the last major quake in Southern Cal of the great San Andreas Fault, an estimated 8.0 !

1914 -John Randolph Bray takes out patents on the principles of film animation: cycles, arcs, keys and inbetweens. He even later tried to sue Winsor McCay, who had already been using them for years.

1924- The breakfast cereal Wheaties invented.

1936- Actor John Gilbert died of a heart attack after years of alcohol abuse. The accepted reason was he was a has-been silent film star who's voice was too thin and squeaky for talking pictures. Actually his voice wasn't too bad, some of it may of had to do with his punching Louis B. Mayer in the mouth when Mayer made a crude remark about Gilbert's sexual relations with Greta Garbo -something like "Why marry her when you're getting it anyway ?.."-BOP! . Mayer got up and screamed: "I'll ruin you if it costs me millions!" Gilbert's fading popularity and decline into alcohol as his second wife Virginia Bruce’s film career blossomed was the inspiration for the story "A Star is Born".

1939- Top Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin was hired by Walt Disney. He quit after two fruitless years and left so angry he wrote a children’s book called the "Bear that Wasn’t" about his experiences. An early vice president of the Cartoonists Guild, he also joined the Mouse House to help unionize the studio. After a stint at Screen Gems, in 1945 Frank Tashlin went to Paramount’s live action division and became the director of the Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis comedies.

1959- The tv series Rawhide debuted, starring a young cowpoke named Clint Eastwood. President Lyndon Johnson and Ladybird were Rawhide fans.

1968- THE BATTLE OF QUE SANH- Que Sanh was a U.S. Marine firebase at the western tip of the Vietnamese DeMilitarized Zone. It was so placed to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This day the Firebase Que Sanh was surrounded and attacked by huge North Vietnamese forces. General William Westmorland growled to his corps commanders "This will NOT be the American Dien Bien Phu !" Dien Bien Phu was the disastrous 1954 siege that defeated the French. The battle of Que Sanh lasted until April with the Marines fighting off huge human wave attacks. The U.S. media at the time portrayed Que Sanh as an epic showdown in the tradition of Gettysburg or Guadalcanal, but to the Vietnamese General Ngyun Vo Giap it was a feint to the real offensive when the Tet Lunar New Year holiday began....

1972- In a rare press conference by telephone from the Bahamas reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes declared the biography done of him by Clifford Irving was a total fabrication.

1976- First day of shooting in Philadelphia of the movie Rocky. It was the first movie to utilize the Steadicam, a system that balanced hand-held camera shots.

1987- THE OCTOBER SURPRISE- The Ronald Reagan White House released a memorandum from 1980 proving the sales of weapons to Iran did help bring about the release of American Embassy hostages. Even though the negotiation for the sale was begun under Jimmy Carter. The Ronald Reagan media spinners encouraged the idea that all the Old Gipper had to do was show up in the White House for the mad mullahs to release our people and hightail it outta’ town! Now the truth was out that Reagan and his people had lied to us, but too late, and not enough of a sound bite for a dazed & confused public.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why do we say God Bless You, when someone sneezes?

Answer: Old tradition says when you sneeze a hole opens in your soul and the Devil might get in, so saying God Bless you plugs the hole. During a plague in 590AD Pope Gregory started a custom that when you sneezed, hinting maybe a sign of the plague, saying GBU charmed the evil away.
But it actually goes back further from that. In pre-Christian times, The Greeks and Romans believed that when you sneezed, it was the gods speaking through you. Because a sneeze is involuntary and can’t be predicted or controlled, it was a divine message. When a Greek sneezed, people kissed their hands up towards the heavens. When a Roman sneezed, people greeted it with Jove or Jupiter Bless You. ( Xenophon, Anabasis; Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

I'm in New York City for a few days to mix episode 3 of the CarTalk Show. Unusually warm for January, lots of abandoned xmas trees piled up on the curb by high rise buildings. Will try to catch Jerry Beck's Cartoon Dump and the Comix club tonight.

ASIFA San Francisco has revamped their website. Check it out; http://www.asifa-sf.org

Tom Cruise's United Artists Studio signed a deal with the WGA. Take that Sumner Redstone! While the employers are hoping more writers scab and go back to work, the writers meantime are getting more companies to break ranks and sign their own deals. After all, who says the companies can only negotiate as a group. They never act together at any other time.

At the Academy over the weekend I saw again Sony's Surf's Up. If you never saw it, it's a very clever, witty movie, very well animated! Great dialogue ( Jeff Bridges and Shia LeBoeuf, Zooey Deschanel) and I liked the hand-held documentary style camerawork. Bravo to Chris Buck, Ash Brannon and their team. It did not deserve the disappointing box office it got -$59 million. Sony made a tragic mistake to release it not even six months after Oscar winning Happy Feet ($198 million), another spoof using penguins. The audience was confused, and stayed away. The film deserved a better fate.


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QUIZ: Why do we say God Bless You, when someone sneezes?
Answer to yesterdays question below.
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History for 1/8/2008
Birthdays: Elvis Presley would have been 73, Robert Schumann, Jose Ferrer, Shirley Bassey, Peter Arno, Yvette Mimieux, Larry Storch is 85, John Nierhardt, Bruce Sutter, Charles Osgood, Gen. James Longstreet, publisher Frank Doubleday, Steven Hawkings is 66, Saheed Jafray is 79, Soupy Sales, real name Milton Supman is 82, David Bowie is 61

871- Battle of Ashdown- English warriors of Wessex defeated a large force of Vikings led by Halfdan the Black, Bacsecg and Ivar the Boneless. On the English side second in command under his brother King Ethlered was future king Alfred the Great.

1297-MONACO FORMED- Francois the Cunning was the leader of the Grimaldis, a prominent Genoese clan. On this day he disguised himself as a monk and sneaked into Monaco castle where he stabbed the guards, then opened the gate for his troops. The Grimaldis became Princes of Monaco in 1659. In 1851 Prince Charles III Grimaldi opened the first gambling casino. In gratitude of it's success, the people named the hill town they lived in Mount Charles, or Monte Carlo. The Grimaldi family still rule Monaco today under their present Grimaldi- Prince Raynier II.

1642- Astronomer Galileo Galilei died at 77 of 'slow fever'. After being forced by the Holy Inquisition to recant his support of the theories of Copernicus in 1616 he lived under a loose house arrest. He became blind but he played his lute and still published scientific papers smuggled out to be printed in Holland. Other great thinkers like English poet John Milton could visit him. The Church admitted in 1837 that he may have been right about the Earth going around the Sun. The Vatican originally refused to allow him to be buried in consecrated ground, but relented in 1727 and he was moved to the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. During the move someone cut off three of his fingers for souvenirs. Two of the fingers were eventually recovered and his middle finger is displayed in the Florentine Museum of Science. It is displayed in the upright position.

1654- Hetman of the Ukraine Bogdan Khmeilnitski pledged his loyalty and the loyalty of all Cossacks to the Russian Czar in Moscow. There was originally no one race of Cossacks. The wild steppeland between the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Tatars of the Crimea and the Turkish Ottoman Empire was a refuge for criminals, runaways and fringe folks much like the American West or the Australian Outback. Cossacks formed communities adopting Turkish and Mongol dress and horsemanship and a fierce sense of independence. Khemilnitski tapped into this independent streak to unite these disparate groups and used them to drive out the Polish Catholic overlords. He ruled the Ukraine like Oliver Cromwell in England. After several major wars maintaining a balance between the Poles, Turks and Russians Khmeilnitski decided to throw in his lot with the Czar.
After Bogdan’s death the furious Poles dug up his grave and threw his bones to the dogs but the deed was done. The Ukraine and the Voivode of Ruthenia (Moldova-Byloruss) would stay a part of Russia until 1989. In 2004 much of the opposition in Viktor Yuschenko’s Orange Revolution began in the Cossack community.

1790- George Washington starts a custom of the President delivering an annual speech reporting on the nation's progress in the past year, later known as the State of the Union Address.

1814-"In Eighteen Fourteen we took a little Trip. With Colonel Andy Jackson down the Mighty Missa-sipp" BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.
The Last engagement of the War of 1812 and the last battle fought between England and the United States was actually fought AFTER the peace treaty had been signed. Then it took two months to cross the Atlantic with the news, too late to stop the conflict. A large British invasion force composed of Wellington’s veterans was ordered to capture New Orleans and choke off American commerce on the Mississippi River. General Andrew Jackson ( the fellow on your twenty dollar bill ) had a pathological hatred of anything English. When he heard of their landing he roared: "By Eternal God I will not have them sleeping on our soil!" He told the terrified New Orleanaise -still more French than American, that he would defend their city to the last, then burn it to the ground. At Chalumette plantation the redcoats were met by Jackson's ragtag force of regulars, militia, Jean Lafittes pirates and slaves dug-in in a dry canal. Interestingly enough, the slaves proved to be the deadliest shots. Many slave families were denied meat for their diet but one or two men a family were allowed to keep a bird rifle to bring home small game. To them bullets were precious so they learned to make every shot count. At Chalumette they were given Kentucky long rifles with a range accuracy 300 yds. to the British "Brown Bess" musket 's 150 yds. The British grand assault never got within range before they were annihilated. It was all over in half an hour.

1856- Borax discovered in the California desert by Dr John Veatch. Now where’s that 20 mule team?

1889- Herman Hollerith received a patent for the electronic counting machine. The machine fed numbers onto punch cards and was used extensively in the U.S. census of 1890. In 1896 Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which later was renamed International Business Machines or IBM.

1904- Pope Pius X banned women wearing low cut dresses in front of clergy.

1962- The Mona Lisa traveled to America and went on display today at the National Gallery in Washington. It was loaned in a deal brokered by Jackie Kennedy and French interior minister Andre Malreaux

1964- President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his War on Poverty campaign.

1965- NBC TV premiered Hullabaloo, a Rock & Roll dance show with lots of mini-skirted go-go girls.

1973- Carly Simon got a gold record for "You’re So Vain".

1992- BARF! President George Bush Sr. projectile vomited on the lap of Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone in front of press cameras at a state dinner in Tokyo.

2002- Pres George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who are these women? Brenda Chapman, Lorna Cook, Yvette Kaplan, Vicky Jenkins, June Falkenstein?

Answer: Hollywood directors of animated feature films.

Quiz: Who are these women? Brenda Chapman, Lorna Cook, Yvette Kaplan, Vicky Jenkins, June Falkenstein?

Yesterday’s Question answered below.
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History for 1/7/2007
Birthdays: Jacques Montgolfier, Joseph Bonaparte- Napoleons older brother, St. Bernadette of Lourdes, Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam, Francois Poulenc, Butterfly McQueen, Adolph Zukor, Charles Adams, E.L. Doctorow , Jean Pierre Rampal, Millard Filmore*, Katie Couric, William Peter Blatty the author of Jaws, David Caruso, Nicholas Cage- originally Nicolo Coppola

George Dubya WHO..?
HAPPY MILLARD FILLMORE DAY! Millard Fillmore is famous, if you could call it that, as Americas most irrelevant president. So far. This day the Millard Filmore Society has a banquet in his birthplace of Buffalo, N.Y.

1610- Galileo aimed his telescope into the heavens and first noted moons of Jupiter- Ganymede, Io and Europa.

1789-THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION -Meaning when the electors nominated by the various state legislatures cast their votes .The Electoral College is a remnant of this. Popular elections really didn't catch on until the 1820's. At this time only white, male, landowning literate, freeborn men could vote, so out of a population of 4 million about 160,000 voted; in England at this time only 10% of the male population could vote. George Washington won overwhelmingly over John Adams and John Hancock.

1839- Frenchman Louis Daguerre announces the invention of Photography.( Just three weeks later on the 31st William Fox Talbot will say HE invented it first ). Despite the controversy of credit, the Daguerrotype photgraphic process becomes the popular system worldwide in the nineteenth century. The image of Lincoln on the five dollar bill is from a daguerreotype.

1894-" The Sneeze" The first motion picture film to be copyrighted by Thomas Edison and his engineer Canadian W.K.L. Dickson

1896- The first Fanny Farmer Cookbook published.

1914- the Merrill-Lynch Stock brokerage founded.

1922-THE IRISH CIVIL WAR After a furious debate the Irish Dail’ ( parliament ) voted by just seven votes to approve the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiated by IRA chief Michael Collins and Sinn Fein founder John Griffiths. This was the take-it-or-war deal offered by David Lloyd George that allowed for an Irish Free State but not a republic and with six counties of Northern Island sliced off to remain part of Britain. Irish President Eamon De Valera angrily took his partisans out of the Dail and the street fighting broke out shortly afterwards. Griffiths died of a heart attack and Collins was assassinated. The Irish Republic declared in 1932 but the Northern Irish question is still being worked on.

1924- George Gershwin completed his Rhapsody for Jazz Orchestra, popularly called the Rhapsody in Blue. Ira Gershwin came up with the name after seeing a museum show of Whistler paintings with names like "Composition in Grey, Nocturne in Green," etc. It was comissioned by famed band leader Paul Whiteman, who gave Billie Holiday and Bing Crosby their starts. A retired band member of his I knew told me Whiteman had no sense of tempo nor could he carry a beat, and as a band member you quickly learned to play your part while ignoring his baton waving.

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1927- The first private telephone call from America to England.

1929-With the approval of Edgar Rice Burroughs, artist Hal Foster began drawing the Tarzan comic strip.

1934 –The First Buck Rogers adventures.

1935- Roger Sherwood’s play the Petrified Forrest opened to smash revues at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway. Leslie Howard got great notices, but the real find was an obscure hard drinking actor with sad eyes playing the gangster Duke Mantee – Humphrey Bogart. In the audience was Jack Warner of Warner Bros, who decided Mr Bogart might just make it in motion pictures.

1942-BATAAN-Gen. Homma's Japanese army attacked Gen. Douglas MacArthur's American and Phillipino last stand defense line on the Bataan Peninsula. From today until late April,the American's wage a desperate fighting retreat against overwhelming Japanese forces down the Florida-shaped peninsula, hoping for reinforcements from America that would never come. They sang:
"We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
No moma, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, sisters or nieces;
no pills, no planes, no artillery pieces.
We're the battling bastards of Bataan,
And nobody gives a damn.."
MacArthur his long life would never forgive Franklin Roosevelt for his lack of support for the Phillipines. When he heard of FDR’s death in 1945, the general ungraciously quipped:
" He never told the truth where a good lie would do..."

1943 Wartime action film of Bataan. Besides all the over the top wartime racist dialogue,and Thomas Mitchell as the most out-of-shape Marine ever caught on film, ya gotta LOVE the sight Desi Arnez in combat as Cpl. Felix Ramirez! Oh Lucy! Gimme a grenade! Babbalooo!"

1943- Nikolas Tesla died. The inventor of AC current, rotary field motors and the Tesla coil, in his last years he had been experimenting with telegraphy and trying to develop a death ray for the US Army.

1961- In Providence Rhode Island a bunch of kids were stopped by police for driving a round a neighborhood store suspiciously carrying guns and masks. One 21 year old who did three days in jail for carrying a concealed weapon later became a pretty good actor- Al Pacino.

1966- A San Francisco hippie band called the Grateful Dead got their first gig playing a club called the Matrix. They would be one of the most successful rock bands in history, only breaking up after the death of their leader Jerry Garcia in 1995.

1972-Pulitzer prize winning poet John Berryman went to a Minneapolis bridge over the Mississippi River, took off his glasses, waved at a few people then jumped to his death. He missed the river and hit the bank 110 feet below, but he achieved his initial purpose of killing himself.

1979-The invading Vietnamese Army took Phnom Penh and ended the regime of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. During his regime known as the Killing Fields, he may have murdered up to a quarter of his countrymen, over two million people.
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Yeasterday’s Quiz: Who are these women? Thelma Schoonmaker, Esfir Tobak, Margaret Booth, Barbara McLean, Anne Bauchens.

Answer: Motion Picture Film Editors. Thelma Schoonmaker cut Raging Bull and the Aviator, Esfir Tobak cut Alxander Nevksy for Sergei Eisenstein, Anne Bauchens and Barbera Mclean cut for Cecil B. DeMille.

Today the Screen Actors Guild announced that respecting the wishes of their members, they would all refuse to cross the WGA picketlines to attend the Golden Globe Awards. I'm wondering if this will also be true for the Oscars eventually, because the Writers Strike shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Their decision was unanimous.

Why would self-centered career obsessed movie stars take this stand ,when it would obviously be to the detriment of their careers? Because all of them, in all the three Glamour Guilds- Writers, Directors, Actors understand that if one loses, they all will lose.

The negotiations have been suspended, it’s now a game of one side trying to break the will of the other. Actors and Directors know if the corporations break the writers, they will be next. Once a concession is given to them, they ask it of everyone. Likewise, any victory gained, will be asked for all. It’s the push-me, pull-you tug of war that Hollywood plays in boardrooms every day.

I didn’t make this system, but it’s the world as we know it. Thinking you make your own deal is naïve. Every personal deal is based all or in part on the conditions laid down in these basic union agreements. Thats why all this is important to all of us. That, and the fact nobody has any jobs until all these folks go back to work!

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Quiz: Who are these women? Thelma Schoonmaker, Esfir Tobak, Margaret Booth, Barbara McLean, Anne Bauchens.

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who are these men? Mark Osborne, Carlos Saldanha, Eric Leighton, Lee Unkrich, Kelly Asbury, Stephen Anderson?
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History for 1/6/2008
Birthdays: St. Joan La Pucelle, also called Joan of Arc, Mountainman Jedediah Smith, Tom Mix, Alexander Scriabin, Gustav Dore',Loretta Young, Earl Skruggs, Carl Sandburg, Danny Thomas, Nancy Lopez, John DeLorean, Alan Watts, John Singleton, Rowan Atkinson, Anthony Minghella

Happy Feast Of Epiphany, Twelfthnight and The Eastern Orthodox Christmas.
Today is the end of the twelve days of Christmas when the Magi, the three kings Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar visited the Holy Family. The Magi were the priestly caste of ancient Persia and the Zoroastrian religion. They were believed to predate the Persians and come from the Chaldaeans, the people who invented the western branch of the science of astronomy. The Maya and Chinese were doing astronomy on their sides of the world. A lot of the Magi ritual concerned observation of the stars. Some astronomers theorize the Star of Bethlehem was a rare planetary alignment that created a bright spot the Magi weren't used to or a close orbit of Jupiter. Others have calculated that there was a supernova around 6 BC which is more or less the right time, Jesus birth is by modern estimate around 4 BC. or Four before Himself. In many countries the Three Kings, not Christmas, is when children get their presents, because that’s when JC got his.

1522- The Augustinian Monastery of Wittenburg had been the home base of Church reformer Martin Luther. Today, inspired by Luther’s stand against the Vatican the monks and nuns voted to disband themselves and have sex.

1759- George Washington and Martha Custis marry. Washington first loved another woman who refused him, a Sally Fairfax who married a prominent English loyalist plantation owner. They fled to Europe when the Revolution began and never returned. When George married Martha she was a very rich widow but beyond childbearing years. This might have been a factor in Washington's decision later not to be King of America, for he would have no direct heirs. Imagine the complications in the young democracy trying to establish this concept of an elective President if there was a George Washington Jr. to contend with. Or a George W.Washington? In later years when Washington wanted to be alone he would ride over to the ruins of the Fairfax Mansion.

1842- THE RETREAT FROM KABUL –No, not Geraldo Rivera. This day15,000 British troops and their dependants march out of Kabul, Afghanistan on the road to Jellallabad. They were attacked by Afghan Ghilzais tribesmen all along the route through the Khyber Pass. Only one man survived, a surgeon William Brydon, who got lost along the way.

1849- the first cartoon cover of Punch Magazine.

1853- President-elect Franklin Pierce and his family are involved in a train wreck in Concord Mass. Pierce and the first lady survived but their last surviving child Ben was killed. First Lady Jean Pierce took this as a sign that God was punishing them for wanting the Presidency and she morosely withdrew from society. Franklin Pierce himself spent most of his administration drunk or on his knees singing psalms.

1872- Millionaire robber-baron Big Jim Fisk was shot dead by Ned Stokes, his rival for the affections of beautiful actress Josie Mansfield. Fisk once conned President Grant into a business partnership while he tried to corner the gold bullion market.

1912- Scientist Alfred Wegener presented his paper to the German Geological Society in Frankfurt. In it he theorized that the Earth’s continents are not fixed in place but moving. He named it Continental Drift. This was dismissed as nonsense until after WWII when submarines charting the ocean floor discovered tectonic plates. Today it is accepted that the continents move at the speed with which you grow a fingernail. About 6 feet a century.

1919- Teddy Roosevelt died peacefully at Oyster Bay ,N.Y. at 60. He was never expected to survive childhood asthma, was wounded in Spanish American War, thrown 40 feet in a streetcar wreck, got a dangerous leg abscess while on safari, almost died of malaria in the Amazon and was shot by an assassin while giving a political speech, which he finished anyway. His daughter Alice said: " The problem with daddy is at every wedding he wants to be the bride and at every funeral the corpse."

1945- First Pepe Le Pew cartoon, "Odorable Kitty". When the Warners producer who replaced Leon Schlesinger, Eddie Selzer, heard the plans to do a short about a skunk he thundered: "Absolutely Not! Nobody will like a cartoon skunk!" Chuck Jones recalled: "As soon as he said no, I knew we just had to do it." Selzer's final opinion:" Nobody'll laugh at that sh*t!" The short won an Oscar. Selzer later went on into network T.V.

1945- Lt. George H. Bush married Barbara Pierce. Despite Barbara’s mother’s opinion of Bush “Singularly Unimpressive” Poppy Bush made Barbara First Lady and the mother of another president.

1949- Composer Leonard Bernstein noted in his diary that “JR (Jerome Robbins) called today with a novel idea- a modern version of Romeo and Juliet set in the slums.” At first the musical was going to be called East Side Story, then GangWay, finally West Side Story.

1956- Prince Rainier of Monaco announced his engagement to movie star Grace Kelly.

1956- Walt Disney met his old nemesis, Max Fleischer at an appointment arranged by director Richard Fleischer. Max’s son recalled: “Dad seemed happy but it overall felt sad, like David had been defeated by Goliath”.

1962- Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent. This was the animated version of his popular puppet show.“So Long Kids ,Wind Up Your Lids, We’ll look for You Real Soooooon.”

1975-“ Ease on Down the Road.-“ The Wiz premiered on Broadway.

1993- Ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, the most famous male dancer since Nijinsky, died of HIV/AIDS.

1994- “WHY ME, WHY ME?” Shortly after a practice in a Detroit skating rink Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan was attacked by a man trying to smash her knees with a steel pipe. The man Derrick Smith later confessed to the FBI that he was paid $6500 to do the deed by Jeff Gilhooly, the ex-husband and manager of Kerrigan’s rival skater Tanya Harding. Despite all the intense media coverage in the end Kerrigan got one Silver medal, Harding nothing and the Olympic gold in Figure Skating went to Ukrainian Oksana Baiul, who was later busted for drunk driving.

1995- In another great leap forward for low journalism CBS anchor Connie Chung gets Kathleen Gingrich, the mother of Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to call First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a “bitch”. In an earlier time such gutter utterances would have been politely edited, but this was televised and given national prominence.

1996- In Gaza, Hamas leader Yahya Ayyash called the Engineer, dialed his cellphone and it blew his head off. It was a remote control bomb set by Israeli intelligence Mossad. 100,000 attended Ayyash’s funeral.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who are these men? Mark Osborne, Carlos Saldanha, Eric Leighton, Lee Unkrich, Kelly Asbury, Stephen Anderson?

Answer:feature animation directors.

QUIZ: Who are these men? Mark Osborne, Carlos Saldanha, Eric Leighton, Lee Unkrich, Kelly Asbury, Stephen Anderson?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who are these men? Yakima Canutt, Al Leong, Richard Farnsworth
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History for 1/5/2008
Birthdays: Zebulon Pike, Stephen Decatur, Alven Ailey,J. Stuart Blackton (the first American animator, born in Lincolnshire, England ), W.D. Snodgrass, Jack Norworth -composer of " Take Me out to the Ballgame'Umberto Ecco, Yves Tanguy, George Reeves,Roger Spottiswoode, Hiyao Miyazaki, Robert Duval is 77, Dianne Keaton is 62, Spanish King Juan Carlos

1643- The first divorce granted in North America. Pilgrim Anne Clarke was granted a divorce by the Massachusetts Bay Colony from her deadbeat husband Dennis.

1757- A man named Robert Damiens attacked French King Louis XV and stabbed him. It was a flesh wound that Voltaire described as a pin-prick. The king survived and the court sentenced Damiens to the most horrible death they could think of, the medieval punishment for regicides. Nobody had done it for generations so the court executioner, Charles Samson, had to consult the history books. Hmm...Drawing and quartering....cut off assailants hands and stick stumps in pan of burning sulfur...uh-huh..got it! The execution was so ghastly that the witnesses fled, the executioner fainted and his assistants had to finish the job. Damiens believed he was doing it for the people but unfortunately he was 32 years too early for the Revolution.

1825- Writer Alexander Dumas fought a duel with the Chevalier Saint George, a black Creole from Martinique who played violin so well he helped Beethoven write his Violin Concerto. Neither man was seriously hurt and Dumas went on to write the Three Musketeers. Saint George also once fought a duel with the enigmatic Monsieur d’Eon, a transvestite who fought his duels in a womens’ ballgown.

1836- Davy Crocket crossed into Texas.

1895-Today was the famous scene of after Captain Albert Dreyfus was framed for espionage he was publicly humiliated in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire in Paris. He was stripped of his insignia and his sword broken. As he was marched off to prison he shouted aloud “Citizens of France I am Innocent!”

1896- A Vienna newspaper announced the invention by Dr. Wilhelm Roentgen of a machine that produces "X-Rays" to see inside the body. In England, scientist Lord Kelvin, who invented the Celsius temperature scales, declared x-rays a " ridiculous hoax "

1896- The New York World began printing the Yellow Kid comic strip with a yellow color on his shirt. The strip gave the name to the sensationalist tabloid press 'Yellow Journalism".



1914- The Ford Motor Company shocked the captains of American Industry by raising it’s wage rates for work shift from $2.40 a day to $5.00 a day and adopting the new 8 hour work day. Henry Ford’s idea was “when workers have more money they buy cars”. The idea worked and sales of cars quadrupled and the economic climate of Detroit boomed. I wonder what Henry Ford would have thought of today’s companies who lay off thousands of workers and move plants overseas to make their stock rise, then seem perplexed by the stagnant rate of consumer spending?

1921- Famous Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was preparing one last expedition to the South Pole. This day on his ship anchored in South Georgian Island Bay, he complained he felt ill. He said to his doctor “Oh, what do you want me to give up now?” then he fell over dead of a heart attack. He was 47.

1924- William Chrysler introduced his first automobile featuring an all steel chassis frame instead of wood. He created it for the failing Maxwell Car Company and in 1925 changed the name to the Chrysler Car Company.

1925- Nellie Taylor Ross was inaugurated as the Governor of Wyoming, the first woman to hold such an office.

1933- First day of construction on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

1933- Calvin Coolidge died peacefully. The laconic Coolidge was so low key and stand offish that he was a favorite target for political writers. H.L.Mencken said "Being fanatical for Coolidge is like being fanatical for double entry Bookkeeping". Will Rogers said:" The convention nominating Coolidge was so dull there was a call to open up the Churches early to liven things up". Dorothy Parker had the final word. When told that Coolidge had died she replied:"How could you tell?"..

1934- Both the American and National Baseball Leagues agreed upon a standard size for a baseball.

1953- Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot ( En attendant Godot ) first premiered in Paris.

1959- Buddy Holly released his last single,” It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.”

1959- The first Bozo the Clown TV show premiered on TV. Capitol Records producer Alan Livingston had created the clown in 1946 for some novelty records Bozo at the Circus. The name Bozo came from a 1916 slang term for train-riding hobo. Pinto Colvig, the voice actor who created Goofy for Disney.s was the first voice. In the 1950s one of the actors hired to play Bozo named Larry Harmon invented the TV show and became the national version of the famous children’s clown.


1961- “Hello Wilbur” Mr Ed the Talking Horse appeared on tv for the first time.

1968- A Boston grand jury indicted famous baby doctor Benjamin Spock for conspiring to abet violation of draft laws. The great scientist had come out as a vocal opponent of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War.

1970- Soap opera “ All My Children” premiered.

1979- EMI Records ended their contracts with the punk band the Sex Pistols. They felt their outrageous behavior had gone just too far.

1980- The first Hewlett Packard Personal Computer or PC goes on the market.

1998-At the Heavenly Valley Ski Resort former pop singer turned Neocon Congressman Sonny Bono died, when he skied headlong into a tree.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who are these men? Yakima Knutt, Al Leong, Richard Farnsworth

Answer: Hollywood stuntmen. Farnsworth in later life became a movie star in films like the Grey Fox and The Natural.