Quiz: Why does the term quarantine mean isolating people with a contagious disease? If someone has Typhus, you give them 25 cents?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What was Saint Paul's real name?
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History for 5/7/2008
Birthday: Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilyich Tschaikowsky *, Gary Cooper**, Gabby Hayes, Robert Browning, Marcus Loew of Loews Theater chain, Darin McGavin, Edward Land (inventor of the Polaroid lens and camera), Bob Clampett, Amy Heckerling, Traci Lords

*It's ironic that Brahms and Tschaikowsky had the same birthday because they couldn't stand one other. Tschaikowsky referred in his diary "What an unharmonious German bastard!" The only way they'd stay at a party was if Anton Dvorak was there too.

**The great cowboy-actor from Montana who's original name was Frank James Cooper and his first ambition was to be a cartoonist for the Helena Times.

Happy Birthday, Coop! Being a movie star was fun, being rich and making love to lots of beautiful women, but I'm sure you would have rather drawn cartoons...

Happy Norwegian National Day. ’Huff Da!

Greek Festival of the Birth of Apollo.

401 B.C. SOCRATES DIED. Contrary to modern perception not everyone in ancient Greece loved philosophy. The Greeks had the same conflicts we have now between faith, tradition and rational thought and science. The scientist Anaxagoras was run out of town for saying that the Sun wasn’t Phoebus in a chariot but a burning rock floating in space. Euripides the playwright was also in trouble for doubting the Gods existence. But Socrates pushed the argument to its most extreme conclusion. The Athenian conservatives convicted Socrates of blasphemy and subverting the public morals. All hoped Socrates would just pay a fine and shut up, but Socrates unrepentant stance forced the law to go all the way to the death penalty. He was ordered to commit suicide by being given a cup of Hemlock. Actually it wasn’t a cup., the poison was held in a leaf of Romaine Lettuce, then called Lettuce of the Isle of Cos. His friend Crito said “You don’t deserve to die!” To which he replied: “You weep because you would rather I did deserve death? ”Socrates students like Plato and Xenophon continued on and became great writers on their own. My favorite story was that Socrates wife Xantippe was always yelling at him for wasting his time philosophizing when he should be working at his real job as a stone-cutter. After one loud tirade she dumped a pisspot's contents on his head. Socrates looked at his friends and replied:" After thunder one should expect some rain."

1863- Hard-fighting Confederate major general Earl 'Buck' Van Dorn was killed, but not in battle. A Tennessee doctor named J.G. Peters made an appointment with the general, went up behind him while he was at his desk and shot him in the back of the head. Peters then calmly got back into his carriage and rode to Union lines. Peters wasn't a Yankee assassin. He was expressing his disapproval of the fact that the handsome Van Dorn was having an affair with his wife.

1914-Paramount Pictures formed by a consortium led by Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. Demille.

1915- THE LUSITANIA- The Civilian oceanliner Luisitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. 1,198 drowned, including many Americans. The Kaiser later gave a medal to the U-boat Captain Walter Schweige. These acts outraged American opinion and led us into World War I, despite many pro-German immigrants. It was revealed later that the reason Lusitania sank so quickly, just 18 minutes - even Captain Schweige was surprised- was that it's cargo hold was full of explosives. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill fought the German U-boat blockade by covertly transporting purchased American weapons on hospital ships, civilian ocean liners and let some British freighters illegally fly the flags of neutral countries. The German government knew that the Lusitania had been classified by the British admiralty a military cruiser. The German government apologized to the American government and stopped the unrestricted U-boat campaign for two years, but the Lusitania shifted neutral U.S. public sympathy irrevocably to the Franco-English side. Winsor McCay later did the animated film about the incident.



1926- Gangster Al Capone killed 3 men with a baseball bat over dinner.

1937-Nobel Prize winning writer William Faulkner hired by MGM Studios, earning $500 a week. He celebrated by going on a two week long drinking binge. When MGM's Head of Writing Sam Marx had him tracked down to an Oakie migrant camp in the Imperial Valley, he was dragged off boozily whining: " Ah only wanna write for Mickey Mouse !!"

1941-Glen Miller records the "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" for RCA. the first gold record million seller.

1942- Battle of the Coral Sea-The U.S. Navy, suffering only defeats up 'til then, stops a Japanese task force. This is the first engagement in which the two fleets never saw each other, but fought long distance with carrier launched airplanes. Veterans commented that one of the sadder losses was when the aircraft carrier USS Lexington went down, she took the fleet's supply of 6 Bugs Bunny cartoons with her. War is Hell.

1945- V.E. Day. Grand Admiral Doenitz, the successor to Adolph Hitler, officially surrendered the Third Reich to the allies. They repeat the ceremony to the Russians next day. There was a fear after the fall of Berlin that the remaining Nazis would form a 'National Redoubt" in the Bavarian Alps or that a "werewolf army" of young fanatics would continue to fight on as guerrillas with poison gas. But that threat failed to materialize. Admiral Doenitz said after the signing:" I feel we shall not see our flag fly over a prosperous Germany in our lifetime." Well, not in your lifetime, Karl....

1945- In a top secret test at Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project scientists detonated, in the desert, a single blast 100,000 pounds of TNT. This was to measure the effect of a blast that big and provide a control to gauge the effectiveness of the Atomic Bomb. 100,000 pounds of TNT became known as one Kiloton. The Hiroshima A-Bomb was 20 kilotons, the largest thermonuclear device was 50 kilotons.

1966- “Monday Monday” by the Mamas and the Papas becomes #1 in the pop charts.

1996- Comedian Martin Lawrence went berserk and ran down a main intersection in Van Nuys Cal. raving and waving a pistol. When asked to explain himself, Lawrence blamed it on “Dehydration.”

1998- Apple Computers introduced the iMac.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was Saint Paul's real name?

Answer: He was originally a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus. He became known as Paul, the Greek version of his name, since that was the common second tongue of the ancient Middle East.

Quiz: What was St. Paul’s real name?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does DC comics stand for?
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History for 5/6/2008
Birthdays: Maximillien Robespierre, Sigmund Freud, Rudolph Valentino, Orson Welles, Robert Peary, Willie Mays, Stewart Granger*, Bob Seger, Toots Schoor, Andriana Caselotti- the voice of Snow White,Tony Blair, Anne Parillaud- Nikita in La Femme Nikita, , George Clooney is 48,

*English actor Stewart Granger had to change his name to get into Hollywood movies. His real name was Jimmy Stewart.

1527- THE SACK OF ROME- Pope Clement VII "the Medici Fox" played the diplomatic tango with the world powers a bit too clumsily and Emperor Charles V of Spain, Holland and Germany launched an army at Rome. Charles gave his general Charles De Bourbon a hangman's noose dipped in gold, a "Golden Rope to Hang the Pope" The Vatican armies were led by the late Pope Julius's bastard son Maria Della Rovere who didn't like Clement so he kept his army out of the whole war. The city of Rome’s defense was organized by the artist Benevenuto Cellini. He managed to get off one shot before escaping out the back door and that shot killed Charles de Bourbon, so now a loot crazed mercenary army with no commander was let loose in the richest city in Europe. The troops pillaged for months, only the plague drove them out. Many of the troops were newly converted Protestants, so they looked forward to despoiling the Great Whore of Rome. They entered the orphanage of Santo Spirito and slaughtered all the patients, then ran into St. Peters and massacred all the harmless people who sought sanctuary there. They dressed a donkey in cardinals robes, proclaimed Martin Luther pope and made campfires in the Sistine chapel-which is why the fresco was darkened by smoke. Pope Clement escaped the golden rope, but the Vatican never regained the power it once had and popes actually started to concentrate on spiritual stuff!

1793- American artist Gilbert Stuart arrived back home after a stay in Europe dead broke. In the Age of Gainsborough, Romney and West, Stuart didn’t do so well. He left America because he was tired of being pestered to do copies of his famous portrait of George Washington, the one that is currently on our dollar bill.

1862- Henry David Thoreau dies at age 44. When his sister asked him :"Have you made your peace with God?" Thoreau replied:" I was unaware that we had ever quarreled."

1903-A bronze plaque was attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. On it was a poem The New Colossus by a young Jewish immigrant woman named Emma Lazarus. She was disturbed by the Anti-Semitic violence in Russia and wrote this inspired by the symbol of the Statue. “Give Me your Tired, Your Poor..” The French creators had intended the Statue of Liberty to symbolize political liberty but Lazarus’s poem had confirmed the Statue as“ The Mother of Exiles ”.

1915-Babe Ruth hits his first home run. He was a Boston Red Sox pitcher at the time. He will finish his career with 714 home runs, a record that held for decades until Hank Aaron.

1919- Seattle dockworkers go on strike refusing to load weapons destined to fight fellow workers in the Russian Revolution.

1919- Wizard of Oz creator L.Frank Baum died of heart disease at 62. He was trying at the time to buy real estate in Los Angeles for an Oz- theme amusement park.

1937-The Giant Zeppelin Graf HINDENBURG EXPLODED while landing in Lakehurst New Jersey. Despite the horrible film images 63 of the 90 passengers and crew escaped.
People to this day aren’t sure what happened, from an igniting from static electricity to an anti-nazi saboteur firing a flare gun into the hydrogen gas bags. The explosion originated behind the large swastika on the tail. The previous year a visit from a German luxury liner the S.S. Bremen caused a riot on the New York City docks as demonstrators fought police to tear the hated Nazi flag down. It was possible at that time to fly a dirigible with non flammable helium, but it was much more expensive than hydrogen and the worlds chief supplier of helium, the United States, was reluctant to sell Hitler that much of the strategic chemical. The American ground crew wanted to give a gift to the German captain who was dying of 3rd degree burns, so they presented him with an engraved cigarette lighter! (tacky) My grandparents told me they drove out to see the wreckage with a huge crowd. Even though it was still smoldering people were prying chunks off it for souvenirs.
Zeppelins were once supposed to be moored to the top of the Empire State Building but that never came about. By 1939 Goring ordered all remaining zeppelins and hangers scrapped for their valuable materials.

1937- THE FLEISCHER STRIKE-Cartoonists vote to strike Max Fleischers Studio after Max fires 13 animators for union activity and complaining about the 6 day work week.
The strike was settled several weeks later when parent company Paramount forced Max to concede. Strikers sang "We're Popeye the Union Man! We're Popeye the Union Man! We'll Fight to the Finish, Cause We Can't Live on Spinach ! We're Popeye...etc."

1937- The Society of Motion Picture Art Directors formed.

1941- A friend of Bob Hope who was now in the military suggested the comedian come and entertain troops on their army post. Hope takes the suggestion and it becomes his signature event. Into his eighties he entertained servicemen around the world in five wars.

1949-EDSAC invented in England. The first computer that could store data in it’s memory.

1954- Oxford student Roger Bannister ran the first Four Minute Mile. His time was 3:59.04.

1994- The Channel Tunnel or Chunnel opened between Folkestone England and Calais France.

2001- Variety reported that the Walt Disney Company in promoting their upcoming summer film Pearl Harbor, had canceled plans for Pearl Harbor Happy Meals at MacDonalds, as being in bad taste. Hmmm…do ya think..?

2003- A giant tornado destroyed the factory in Jackson, Tennessee that produced most of the world’s supply of Pringles Potato Chips.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does DC comics stand for?

Answer: Detective Comics. Founded in 1934 as National Allied Publications, they began publishing detective comics and action comics in 1936. Superman and Batman first came out as Action and Detective comics respectively.

Quiz: What does DC comics stand for?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: Who was the first Superhero?
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History for 05/05/08
Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Michael Palin, Pat Carroll, Patrick Ewing, John Rhys Davies, Lance Henriksen, Pat Carrol the original Ursula the Sea Witch is 81.

National Teacher's Day.

National Cartoonist's Day.

2349BC- According to Flemish Bishop Ussher, a XVI Century cleric who tried to calculate a date for every event in the Bible, today is the day Noah’s Ark struck dry ground on Mount Ararat.

840- Louis the German, a son of Charlemagne, died of fright after witnessing a total eclipse of the sun.

1504 -Sir Anton of Burgundy, known as The Great Bastard, dies at 82. We don’t know much about this knight but you gotta wonder how he got that nickname!

1800- Shortly after winning his Federalist parties nod to run for re-election President John Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams” Tis a pity that politicians would sacrifice all that Good men hold dear and Sacred just to win an election.” Of course, that doesn’t happen today, now does it?

1821"...le Armee'......Josephine....." Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St.Helena at age 52. Recent radioactive analysis of his hair samples reveal that in his last 18 months the arsenic level in his body went up 150%. Did he die of stomach cancer like his father or was he poisoned as he stated in his memoirs ? Was there too many bits of mercury and arsenic in his prescribed medicines or the wallpaper ? The debate continues to this day.
When the news reached England King George IV was in the middle of trying to get divorced from his estranged wife Queen Caroline so he could marry his mistress. When an aide announced to him :"Sire! Your Majesty's greatest enemy has died !" George replied: " She is-? Oh, Thank the Lord !"

1862-HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO- Battle of Puebla-Mexican Juaristas under a daring young general named Porfirio Diaz defeated a French invasion force. After Benito Juarez’s presidency Porfirio Diaz made himself dictator and reigned until being ousted in the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

1889- THE PARIS WORLD EXHIBITION opened. This exposition was what the Eiffel Tower was built for: it was the centerpiece of this World's Fair. At the time, it was the world's tallest free-standing metal structure, and hailed as a marvel - and now as an enduring symbol - of the Industrial Revolution. Yet it is still almost a hundred feet shorter than the largest building ever constructed (presumably by mass of construction materials!), the
Great Pyramid at Giza, which is 500 feet tall; only six feet short of Seattle's Space Needle! Americans remembered it as the event where American painting first stood out on the world stage, despite being given a small gallery space between Bosnia and Denmark. The judging of the artwork was controversial. Here they are trying to show the world the uniqueness of American painting yet with not a single Copley, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer or Mary Cassatt was accepted. James McNeill Whistler considered himself American although he lived most of the time in London. When the show was announced he patriotically entered a dozen paintings but the American judges rejected them all. He angrily re-submitted them as a British artist and won a gold medal.

1891-Carnegie Hall in New York opens. One old musician told me the acoustics are so perfect that you can fart in the trumpet section and you'll be heard in the second balcony.

1953- Broadway Director Jerome Robbins was riding high after directing hits like On the Town and King & I when he was labeled a Communist by Ed Sullivan. To save his career, this day he testified before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee HUAC and named names. One actress he finked on Jack Gilford's wife-Margaret Lee said” I’ve just been stabbed by a wicked fairy”. Ironically Robbins went on to direct two of his biggest hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Fiddler on the Roof using blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel, Bea Arthur and Jack Gilford, who all hated him.

1960- Soviet Premier Khruschev announces to the world press the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia. President Eisenhower vigorously denied anything of the sort until Khruschev in a world media news conference produced the planes wreckage and pilot Lt. Francis Gary Powers. The incident not only deepened the Cold War, but for the first time in modern history a U.S. President was caught lying his head off. For the most recent time, uh, what’s in the news today?

1961- Alan Shepard became the first American in space on board Friendship VII. The rocket took him 115 miles into space but not high enough to achieve an orbit. That was done one year later by John Glenn. Shepard was kept on the ground in his capsule for so long he had to pee in his suit. In the upside down position the fluid ran up his back and puddles in his helmet behind his head. Ick.

1968- Albert Dekker, star of monster movies like Dr. Cyclops, was found hanged in his bathroom, handcuffed, and wearing ladies lingerie. A narcotics needle was sticking in his arm. The police declared it an 'auto-erotic episode that had gone wrong."

hey, so I like to party in my own way. Don't go all Hollywood Babylon on me!

1975- Anne Rice’s novel The Interview With The Vampire first published.

1985- President Ronald Reagan started a firestorm of controversy among WWII veterans when he laid a wreath in Germany at a cemetery in Bitburg that contained graves of 49 Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. Some of them may have participated in the infamous Malmedy Massacre of US prisoners. When looking for a place for Reagan to stay the State Department scouted around for a German host who was conservative but had no Nazi connections. Finally they found a Baron who was born in 1942. So Reagan stayed at his castle. Once there the Baron revealed even though his father was not in the Nazi party, his godfather was Adolf Hitler! Doh!

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Quiz: Who was the first Superhero?

Answer: The problem is to define where the concept of Superhero, a fictional character with superhuman powers, differs from a Hero of Legend, like Hector, Achilles, Theseus, Robin Hood, Siegfried, Mushashi Miyamoto. In this definition then the first superhero was the Sumerian King Gilgamesh, the hero warrior of the epic story of 2600BC, who was “ two thirds god and one third man”.

You could argue the first superhero of American literature was Natty Bumppo called Hawkeye. In the James Fennimore Cooper novels like The Last of the Mohicans (1826) he was the super-frontiersman- drawn out of stories of real life heroes Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. This form later adapted to the Western cowboy, making a fictional hero out of real scout Buffalo Bill Cody, then into the Industrial Age with Tarzan the Apeman in 1910. In modern comics the supra-human superhero began with 1938’s Superman, and from then on it was Up, Up and Awaaayyy!!

Quiz: Who was the first Superhero?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?
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History for 5/4/2008
Birthdays: Bartolomeo Christofori'-inventor of the piano, Audrey Hepburn –real name Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, Roberta Peters, Maynard Ferguson, Howard Da Silva ,Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Pia Zadora is 54

1493- the Papal Bull Inter-Contrera and the Treaty of Tordesillas was announced. Pope Alexander VI Borgia divided up the non-European world between Portugal and Spain- saying Spain could conquer everything west of the Cape Verde Islands like America and Portugal could have everything east like Africa and India. Damned sporting of him! Columbus knew of this impending treaty when he sailed so may have deliberately falsified coordinates in his ship's logs to hide the fact he was violating Portuguese territorial waters to catch the transatlantic current he counted on.

1626- Peter Minuit arrived at the settlement of New Amsterdam to be it’s first governor.

1715- A French inventor demonstrated the first folding umbrella.

1776-While marching up the California coast Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola came upon a Chumash Indian village on a big placid bay. It being Saint Monica's feast day he named the bay Santa Monica.

1876- THE ARREST OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER- General Custer almost didn't make his fateful ride to the Little Big Horn. He had gotten in big trouble with the Grant administration when he testified to Congress about waste and corruption in the War Department. He even implicated President Grant's own brother-in-law Orville as leading a graft ring and his testimony helped impeach Secretary of War William Belknap.
On May 4th when Custer stepped off a train in Chicago he was intercepted by two officers who told him he was under arrest and should remain there to await orders. He defied this order and continued on to Fort Lincoln where he tearfully begged Generals Terry and Sheridan to intercede for him to get his Seventh Cavalry back. Terry's written pleas to Grant and Sherman worked and Custer was allowed to resume his command. Terry had drawn up a contingency plan for a Colonel Hazen to lead the Seventh to the Little Big Horn. So we almost had Hazen's Last Stand.

1886-The HAYMARKET RIOT. A defining incident in U.S. labor history. Striking workers demonstrating in Chicago for an eight hour workday confront mass police and militia. Suddenly a bomb explodes among the police who open fire on the crowd. The culprits are never identified but authorities blame the union leaders- The Haymarket Eight - who are all arrested. Despite an international outcry from celebrities like George Bernard Shaw and William Morris they are all convicted and hanged. The Haymarket incident was considered damaging to the prestige of the union movement at the time but the union organizers hanged on circumstantial evidence became martyrs to the average working person. As the defiant Albert Parsons dropped from the gallows door he shouted: "Oh America, Let the voice of the People be heard!" A decade later a Chicago mayor reexamined the evidence and concluded they had executed innocent men. He lost his bid for reelection. In 1968 a monument erected to the policemen was blown up by hippy radicals.

1891 –THE DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES According to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle this was the day Sherlock Holmes, perished at the Reichenback Falls grappling with sinister Prof. Moriarity- The Napoleon of Crime. Conan Doyle had tired of his eccentric detective and wanted to get on to other types of writing like novels. But English readers were horrified he had killed off the great sleuth. Conan-Doyle couldn’t take a walk down the street without someone stopping him:” Sir, How could you?!” When touring the US he wanted to lecture about historical subjects but people only wanted know more about Holmes and Watson. After a while Arthur Conan-Doyle gave in and began a new series of the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1897- In Paris during a charity cinematograph show the nitrate film catches fire and 200 die. Movie film before the 1940’s was made from a very unstable mixture and could explode from the slightest contact with flame.

1927-The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences formed. Studio heads Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer originally conceived the Academy as an an arbiter and ombudsman where studio artists could air grievances without fear of retaliation, thereby sidetracking the call for unions. It didn't work because of the nature of it's founders. Writer Dorothy Parker commented: "Going to the Academy with your problems is like trying to get laid in your mother's house, someone's always peeking through the curtains"
After the stock market crash the Academy supported the studio heads enforced employee salary cuts. Soon all pretense as a human resources ombudsman was abandoned and AMPAS focused on being the arbiter of artistic achievement.

1959- At the first Grammy Awards, Ross Bagdasssarian, aka David Seville, won two Grammies for the Chipmunk Song.

1967- The Big Mac hamburger is invented in a MacDonald's restaurant in Uniontown Pennsylvania by franchise manager Jim Deligatti. After trying names like The Aristocrat and the Blue Ribbon Burger, the name Big Mac was coined by Esther Glickstein Rose, a legal secretary at MacDonalds Chicago offices. The Big Mac went national in 1968.

1970- KENT STATE- Two days after Vice President Spiro Agnew tells law enforcement associations that" you should treat the student anti-war protesters as you would have treated the brown shirted stormtroopers." Ohio National Guard units opened fire on college demonstrators at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine, two of whom weren't even protesting but had just paused to watch. Troops also fired on students at Jackson State a week later. These incidents and the fatal bombing of a science lab by militants at Wisconsin later in the month caused the public to recoil from increasingly militant rhetoric over Vietnam. Shortly afterwards one friend recalled seeing President Nixon at an appearance in Akron mutter something to the effect that he wished more students had been gunned down at Kent State. President Nixon had called the anti-war protesters "bumbs". The middle class father of one of the slain students wrote him: "Mr President, my daughter was not a bumb!"

2000- The Love Bug Computer virus ravaged the worlds commerce through Microsoft Outlook causing $10 billion dollars in damage and shutting down temporarily the e-commerce of large firms like Reebok. It was launched by a Phillipino AMA Computer College graduate student as part of his thesis.

2001- Bonnie Lee Blakely, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was found in her car dead of a gunshot wound to the head outside of Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, Ca. They had just had dinner and Mr. Blake had returned into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left at his table. In 2005 the actor was acquitted of his wife’s murder, but lost a wrongful death suit to Blakely’s family. It is still on appeal. Why did Robert Blake bring a gun to his dinnertable? I guess it’s if the waiters get snippy or something.

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Yesterday’s Question: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?

Answer: In 1809 writer Washington Irving wrote a fanciful History of New York, by the fictitious author Deidrich Knickerbocker. It celebrated the port’s early Dutch colonial roots. To the growing young American City already feeling that arrogance that so annoys the rest of the country, it provided a nostalgic central mythology. Members of old New York families started calling each other Knickerbockers. The book also coined the nickname for New York City- Gotham.

Just got back from a week in New York City doing final mixes on two episodes of CLICK & CLACK'S AS THE WRENCH TURNS. Had some pizza, a toasted bagel with cream cheese and a Carvel soft cone with chocolate sprinkles. Mission Accomplished!


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Question: Why are New York City folks sometimes called Knickerbockers?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Which one of the four men who wrote the Gospels, Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, actually knew Jesus personally?
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History for 5/3/2007
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70's singer Englebert Humperdinck, Dule Hill

1702-William Hyde- Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former Nieu Amsterdaam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an uncomfortable resemblance to England¹s Queen Anne. He later explained he dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like, but nobody believed him. There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society . It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack, which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.


Lord Cornbury in drag at the New York Historical Society

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold¹s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1848- Working people of Saxony revolt against their king. Leo Bakunin the father of anarchism and the composer Richard Wagner were two of the leaders. The Prussian army was sent to help put down the workers and Wagner fled into Switzerland, but not before he had the pleasure of burning down the Leipzig Opera House.

1851- San Francisco burned down.

1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. O.O. Howard, the Union General in charge of that area wouldn¹t believe the scouts reports of an imminent attack and when a German immigrant officer demanded he prepare Howard accused him of being drunk. Then Jackson¹s men burst out of the woods and sent the Yankees running. The fighting lasted well into the evening and confusion reigned in the darkness. General Daniel Sickles division got into a vicious three way firefight with a Confederate division shooting at him from one side and his own reinforcements shooting at him from the other. Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. General A.P. Hill called out " Don't shoot! Were Southerners! ". But the Mississippi colonel in charge had been surprised once already that night by enemy cavalry :" It's a Yankee trick! Pour it into them, boys !" A mass volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.

1888- Poem "Casey at the Bat" published.

1948-THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theater chains had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years and a World War later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature.

1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle gov't. All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom."The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". Conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit¹s Jewish foreign background . This caused an even larger angrier march of everyday Parisians and Unionists chanting: "We are all Jews!"

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.

1971- National Public Radio¹s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first national news program with women news anchors- Linda Ellerbee and Susan Stanberg.

1973- Chicago¹s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the worlds¹ tallest office building.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. So thank Gary that you get endless messages like "Biancas Backdoor Bliss" and "Nigerian Bank Trustee Investment schemes."

1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocers daughter called the Iron Lady dominated British politics for the next twenty years.

1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule on the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company tells a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears. -Uh-huh.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.
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Yesterdays Question: Which one of the four men who wrote the Gospels, Luke, Mark, Matthew and John, actually knew Jesus personally?

Answer: It's amazing that a book so central to Western Civilization has an authorship that is so little understood. Some Biblical scholars maintain that Saint John the Evangelist is the St. John the Apostle who was the only one who was not martyred, and lived to a great age. Modern scholarship concludes that the oldest of the books, the Gospel of Mark, was written in 120AD, so then all four could not have lived long enough to meet Christ. In fact, some scholars contend that Matthew not only is not the Matthew the Tax Collecting Apostle, but that five people wrote that one work under his name. Still other groups like the Southern Baptists maintain that the whole work is written by God, and so can't be interpreted or doubted. But all acknowledge that the Bible was edited by the Vatican who declared it complete at one point.

So when a Gospel of St. Thomas appeared in a 1945 dig in Nag Hammadi Egypt, everyone kinda hemmed and hawed and put it on the trivia shelf. This even though scholars like Joseph Cambell declared it the genuine voice of St. Thomas the Apostle. But no one seems to want to open the argument of what is in the Bible. So the discussion continues.