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November 30th, 2008 sun
November 30th, 2008

Looking for neat animation ideas for holiday gifts? (Besides buying my book, of course.) Rowland Wilson was a fantastic artist-designer for PLAYBOY, THE NEW YORKER, and for RICHARD WILLIAMS and DISNEY. Rowland was a great guy, and had a great impact on many animation projects like THE LITTLE MERMAID and TARZAN. Rowland left us in 2005 , but prints of a number of his best known works have become available for purchase.



Check out Creative Talent Network, CTN.com and the Van Eaton Gallery for what's available. See in my LINKS section and search Rowland Wilson.
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Question: How old is the Earth? (discounting Bishop Ussher and his calculation of Genesis)

Yesterday’s question answered below: In live action movie shooting, what are sides?
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History for 11/30/2008
Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Andrea Doria, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guiliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, Luther Ingram, Ridley Scott is 71, David Mamet, Ben Stiller is 43, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark is 80

1731-An earthquake kills 100,000 in Peking.

1750- Marshal Saxe died. The one-eyed old general was given the beautiful French chateau of Chambord by Louis XV as his retirement home. An old ladies man, he died after an all night "interview" with eight actresses. The king's physician wrote as the cause of death on the Death Certificate; "Une surfeit des femmes."- an overdose of women.



1776- As George Washington’s minuteman army retreated across New Jersey to escape the pursuing British Army a third of his troop’s enlistment’s were up. In a cold rain two thousand New Jersey and Maryland militiamen quit and walked home. Writer Thomas Paine was serving General Nathaniel Greene as a secretary. He was moved by this pitiful sight to write the pamphlet: “The Crisis.”:”These are times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink in this crisis from the service of his country. But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of both man and woman. “ Washington called his downcast soldiers together and had the pamphlet read aloud to them.

1782- On a dark snowy day in an upstairs room on the Rue Bonaparte on Paris’ Left Bank, The United States and Britain signed the first of several protocols leading up to the full peace treaty ending the American Revolution in 1783. John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Richard Lawrence signed for America, a parliamentary delegation led by Lord Oswald signed for the Crown. On British diplomat said:” The Americans are the greatest quibblers I have ever dealt with, and I pray never to again in the future!”

1809- Napoleon told Josephine he wanted a divorce. She was the love of his life and they suited each other, but at 46 she could no longer bear children and he wanted a son and heir to establish his dynasty. Even though she suspected something like this would happen, eyewitnesses said when she heard the news she screamed and swooned. The French Army called Josephine Our Lady of Victories and marked the downfall of their good luck from this moment. Although his second wife Marie Louise gave him a son Napoleon never forgot her. On his deathbed in 1821 one of his last words was “Josephine.”

1886- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened. The home of the Can-Can, Toulouse Lautrec, Josephine Baker, Brickttop, Maurice Chevalier.

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do."

1922- The great actress Sarah Bernhardt made her last performance in Turin Italy. She was still considered sexy despite advanced age and a wooden leg.

1924- The first fax message sent. A photo of the Prince of Wales was wired across the Atlantic by radio transmission.

1940-actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Dezi Arnez. Together they pioneered the new art of Television. They divorced in 1960.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt left Warm Springs Georgia and traveled by special train to meet that evening with Japanese ambassadors Hamada and Kurusu at the White House in a last effort to prevent war. Meanwhile the main Japanese carrier fleet weighed anchor and left Yokohama for the North Pacific. It’s code name was Kido Butai. It was officially scheduled for military exercises but once out at sea Admiral Nagumo ordered radio silence and following his instructions from Admiral Yamamoto turned his ships south-southeast towards Pearl Harbor Hawaii.

1954- Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges of Sylacauga Alabama was hit by a meteorite. It shot through her roof, bounced off a radio and hit her on the hip. It gave her a nasty bruise and one heck of a story to tell. Broke her radio too.

1961- President John F. Kennedy signed a secret memorandum creating Operation Mongoose. It ordered the CIA under the direction of Attorney General Robert Kennedy to eliminate Cuban leader Fidel Castro by any means necessary. The CIA tried everything from Mafia assassins to poison cigars to chemicals to make his beard fall out. Nothing worked and Mongoose was discontinued after Kennedy’s assassination.

1966- Barbados gets its independence from Britain.

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

1970- First day shooting on William Freidkin’s film The French Connection.

1974- In a dry gully in Ethiopia Dr Dennis Johannsen discovered the perfect skeletal remains of one of the earliest human ancestors, an ape that walked upright named- Australiopithicus Afrancenis. She called it Lucy. Johannsen liked the Beatles tune Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

1976- After doing such a fine job lowering the journalistic standards of the London press Australian tabloid king Rupert Murdoch turned his attention to America and bought the New York Post. The Post, a newspaper originally started in 1794 by Alexander Hamilton, quickly gains notoriety as the trashiest newspaper in the U.S.

In an interview Murdoch said the only reason he didn’t put in the Post his “Page Three Girls” -topless photo spreads so successful in the London Daily Sun was because his wife objected...He later followed that up with buying New York Magazine and the Village Voice, whereupon half the staff immediately quit.

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS t.v. show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into SONY Pictures.

1985-Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

1991- Battered wife Mrs Omeima Nelson killed her abusive husband, dismembered his body and ate him. “I did his ribs just like in a restaurant.” she said.

1993- President Clinton signed the Brady Handgun bill into law. The bill was named for Reagan press secretary James Brady, who received a debilitating head wound in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. President Bush let it expire without renewing it.

1999- Seattle protesters trying to disrupt the World Trade Organization battle riot police and turn the downtown area into a retro-sixties battle zone. For the next several years wherever the WTO met they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of protesters, although the mainstream media trivialized their message as silly hippy tree huggers looking for an excuse to party.

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last member of the Disney family was forced to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the mandatory retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. In 2005 Eisner was compelled to retire, then Roy Disney was restored to an emeritus consultant position.
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QUESTION: In live action movie shooting, what are sides?

Answer: The sides are the few pages of dialogue to be filmed that day.


November 29th, 2008 sat.
November 29th, 2008

QUESTION: In live action movie shooting, what are sides?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?
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History for 11/29/2008
Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Vin Scully, Gary Shandling, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen of the Coen Bros., Jacques Chirac, Kim Delaney, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee

1830- The Polish November Uprising. Polish nationalists rise up against the Russian occupiers in one of their many romantic, but hopeless efforts. In America romantic literary figures like Hawthorne, Poe, Longfellow and Morse were terribly moved and wrote lots of epic poems, but not much else was done to help. Edgar Allen Poe in an opium induced delirium would run out of his Bronx cottage and march up and down the street with a musket in his hand shouting: "To Warsaw! To Warsaw!" Luckily the local constable was well aware of Mr. Poe's eccentricities and sent him home to bed.

1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.

1915- John Randolph Bray's "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" cartoon. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animated cartoons, creating positions of layout, background painters, inkers, cel painters, checkers and camera. Before this one artist like Winsor McCay and an assistant did everything. After 1919, Bray shifted his studio's focus from entertainment shorts to educational and gov't training films. Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer and Shamus Culhane all got their start at Bray's.

1929- Commander Richard Byrd radioed he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. Commander Byrd had flown over the North Pole in 1926 with his friend Floyd Bennett but Bennett had since died and when Byrd made it over the South Pole he dropped a small American flag weighted with a stone from Bennett’s grave.

1942- For World War II, the U.S. declared coffee would be rationed along with sugar, gasoline and rubber. And lots more. People put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". Gas Ration cards were listed as C, B & A. The C card meant essential war worker, police & fire, so they had unlimited access to gasoline. A cards were the least important.

1959-The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darins’ rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

1961- NASA sent Enos the Chimp into orbit.

1963-THE WARREN COMMISSION- President Lyndon Johnson set up the Warren Commission to investigate the murder of John F. Kennedy. He had originally thought the Dallas Homicide Squad was sufficient, but public outrage demanded more.
The Commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and participants included future president Gerald Ford, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State Alan Foster Dulles and future Senator Arlen Spector, who as a young attorney argued for the validity of the "magic bullet" theory”. That one bullet went through Kennedy, bounced, went through Gov. Connolly, ricocheted, went through Connolly a second time, zinged, and wound up sitting in Gov. Connolly's bedsheets in the hospital with no surface dents or marks on it -or something like that.
After ten months the Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was killed by a lone nut and there was no conspiracy. In 1975 the House Committee on Assassinations concluded to the contrary that Kennedy probably was the victim of a conspiracy but what it was is unknown. To this date there are still two million documents pertaining to the case kept classified, including Lee Harvey Oswald's tax returns, and how in a cold war blacklist-happy country, someone like Oswald, who had renounced his U.S. citizenship and lived in Moscow could re-enter the United States without a passport. Theories abound –that Attorney General Robert Kennedy squelched evidence that might have tarnished his brother’s record by proving his links to mobsters, to the CIA, Castro or space aliens pulling the trigger. Also that Jackie Kennedy when she was dying of cancer told all in a document her lawyers are instructed to keep secret until the year 2063. No matter, in the end the Warren Commission’s unsatisfying conclusions spawned a generation of conspiracy buffs.

1963- After the Kennedy assassination comic Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the dead president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies in 1962, but now it wasn’t funny anymore and Meaders career collapsed. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!”

1967- Robert MacNamara, who was Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, resigned to become president of the World Bank.

2001- former Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer.
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Question: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?

Answer: Haddon Sundblom 1899-1976, was a top illustrator who defined our idea of what Santa Claus looks like, via his many Coca Cola ads. Sundblom also created the Quaker Oats Quaker and Aunt Jemima.


November 28th, 2008 fri.
November 28th, 2008

Happy day after Thanksgiving.


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Question: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Were the Puritans and Pilgrims the same?
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History for 11/28/2008
Birthdays: Jean Baptiste Lully, William Blake, Frederich Engels, Stefan Zweig, Ernst Roehm, Brooks Atkinson, Berry Gordy the founder of Motown Records, Randy Newman, Anton Rubinstein, Gary Hart, Vern Den Herder, Paul Warfield, Hope Lange, Ed Harris is 58, Paul Schaefer, Laura Antonelli, Joe Dante, Michael Ritchie, Anna Nicole-Smith, Judd Nelson, John Stewart is 46

885 A.D. Viking Ragnar Lothbrocks, or Ragnar Hairy-Legs, raided Paris. The Parisians under Duke Bernard put up a stout resistance from the city walls until French King Charles the Fat sent help.

1493- Christopher Columbus returned to San Salvador to discover his first colony La Natividad wiped out and burned.

1520- Having recovered and refitted from navigating the Straights of Magellan around the tip of South America, Fernan Magellan began his trip across the Pacific.

1812- THE CROSSING OF THE BEREZINA RIVER- Napoleon' army on it's frozen Retreat from Moscow had to get across two rickety spans over an ice swollen river while Russian troops fire down on them from all sides. Napoleon said to his chief of staff Berthier” Well, how do we get out of this?” The bridges broke down frequently and the span of a wooden board was the difference between life and death.

1815- After Waterloo and a prisoner on the island of St. Helena, Napoleon Bonaparte for the first time put away his uniform and appeared in civilian clothes. It was his tacit admission that after more than twenty-five years at war his career was now indeed over.

1870- Painter Jean Bazille was shot and killed while serving in the French Army fighting the Prussians. He was only 29. He had been one of the leaders of the new Impressionists painters. Had he lived he might have produced many masterpieces and would’ve been as famous as Degas, Monet or Cezanne.

1905- The Sinn Fein political party founded in Dublin by Arthur Griffiths. Sinn Fein –pronounced “shinn-fain”is gaelic for “We ourselves alone”. Griffiths signed the Anglo-Irish treaty with Michael Collins the IRA chief. The subsequent outcry over giving up the six counties of Ulster hounded him into an early grave, Griffiths died of a heart attack and Collins was assassinated.

1911- The Chevrolet Automobile Company founded by the brothers Chevrolet.

1919- Lady Astor became the first woman elected to the British Parliament. She was the political as well as verbal nemesis of Winston Churchill who said "Mr. Churchill, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee!" To which Churchill replied:" Madame if I were your husband I would drink it !"

1922- The first Skywriting display. Former RAF pilot Cyril Turner wrote HELLO USA , CALL VANDERBILT 7-200 in the skies above New York City. 47,000 immediately telephoned the number.

1925- First radio broadcast from the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville.

1947- Disney's cartoon "Chip and Dale".

1948- Hopalong Cassidy premiered on television.

1953- Frank Olson, a US government employee, jumped out a window of the New York Statler Hotel. In 1975 it was revealed Olson was given LSD by Dr Sidney Gottleib given as part of a government “mind-control” experiment. It was thought that LSD was a means to expand brain capacity.

1953- Cartoonist writer Milt Gross died.

1981 - Moviestar Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and drowned. Her husband Robert Wagner friend Christopher Walken, were onboard having an argument and unaware of her predicament.

1994 –At the Columbia Penitentiary in Portage Wisconsin, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death with a broomstick by inmate Christopher Scarver while cleaning the prison bathroom. Scarver told prosecutors God told him to.
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Yesterday’s Question answered below: Were the Puritans and Pilgrims the same?

Answer: Despite all the black hats and silver buckle shoes, they were different Protestant sects. The Pilgrims were a separatist congregation that’s leaders were executed when they refused to conform to Church of England’s Act of Uniformity. They left Britain to live in Holland, then sailed to the New World in 1620. They founded Plymouth, Mass.

The Puritan movement in England was a much larger, older congregationalist movement that demanded the Reformed English Church be more in line with the main Calvinist movements in Europe. A group of them sailed to New England in 1630 and founded Boston. But many more stayed in England and fought the English Civil War. In 1691 The Crown ordered both Pilgrim and Puritan colonies consolidated into one under Royal authority.

The Puritans were famous for outlawing theater, makeup, music and other "frivolities". America is still struggling with it's Puritan past, that waters our beer and makes a story like Janet Jackson's exposed breast bigger news than war or economic collapse.



Mark Twain defined a Puritan as " Someone who cannot rest, because he has the nagging suspicion that somewhere, someone is having a good time..."
H.L. Mencken described a Puritan as " living in a house with six Bibles and no corkscrew."




HAPPY THANKSGIVING- Since the earliest recorded times societies have had harvest festivals to give thanks to the appropriate deities that they're not going to starve come winter. Whether or not you believe in 1626 The Pilgrims invited Massacoit and his Wampanoag Indians to dinner, the custom of Thanksgiving was a New England holiday for decades thereafter. A few years later the New Englanders exterminated these same Indians and stuck the head of Massacoits son King Phillip on a post. In 1789 George Washington had called for a thanksgiving celebration in late November to celebrate the new Constitution but the holiday didn’t really become an annual custom until the Civil War. Sarah Hale the editor of the Ladies Magazine, the Martha Stewart of her time, had been lobbying the US Government to make the New England custom a national one.

In 1864 after the capture of the rebel strongholds of Atlanta and Mobile Bay it looked obvious that the Union was finally going to win the Civil War. President Lincoln issued a decree that the last Thursday of November be set aside as a feast of national Thanksgiving –Old Abe had just won his re-election, when he was sure he would lose, so he had lots to be thankful for as well. As blue clad troops chowed down on their turkey and chicken dinners the Confederates withheld their fire in honor of the new Yankee holiday. To this day Thanksgiving is still declared by Presidential decree, probably buried somewhere in the back of today’s newspaper.
Happy Thanksgiving.

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Question: Were the Puritans and Pilgrims the same?

Yesterday’s answer below: Since we all now own a piece of Cititgroup Bank, what was Citibanks’ original name?
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History for 11/27/2008
Birthdays: Cornelius Vanderbuilt, Jimi Hendrix would have been 67, Bruce Lee- real name Lee Jun Fan would have been 68, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is 52, James Agee, Chaim Weizmann, Alexander Dubcheck, David Merrick, Marshal Thompson, Robin Givens, Judd Nelson, Buffalo Bob Smith, William Fichtner, Katherine Bigelow

43BC-THE SECOND TRIUMVERATE- Marc Anthony, Octavian Caesar and Marcus Lepidus compel the Roman Senate to declare them The Board of Three with Consular Powers for the Organizing of the State. This legitimized what they were in fact anyway, the rulers of the Roman Empire. They used this new pact to hunt down the killers of Julius Caesar and they published a list of "Proscribed Persons" who were declared enemies of the state. An estimated 4,000 Roman politicians and noblemen were executed, including the philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero.

221AD- Today is the Feast Day of Saint James Intercisus, or Saint James 'Cut up into tiny pieces", which leaves but little speculation about the method of his martyrdom.

1519- Martin Luther squared off with Catholic scholar Dr. Johann Eck in a grand public debate in Liepzig. Audiences sat in bleachers and cheered like a sports match. The debate about Luther’s new Protestant views would go on until July 8th. Luther won the audience with his superior eloquence and logic but Eck succeeded in getting Luther to publicly speak heresy against Rome. The Reformation now moved from a small local argument about indulgences to a major challenge to the authority of the Vatican to rule the Christian Faith.

1582- William Shakespeare 27 married Ann Hathaway 25. They had a son who died and two daughters. In 1585 Shakespeare left his wife in Stratford on Avon, and by 1591 was known as an actor in London. He invested in land in Stratford and in 1616 retired to the country to spend time with his daughters and grandchildren but he never went back to Ann. It’s been speculated that she was a Puritan while Shakespeare enjoyed making fun of Puritans in Comedys like "Twelfth Night"."Just because thou art Virtuous thinks there shall be no more Cakes and Ale?"


1868- THE GREAT BATTLE ON THE WASHITA -as it was called in those days. Generals Sherman and Sheridan had had enough of chasing small bands of Indian warriors all over the prairie. They now ordered George Armstrong Custer to introduce to the plains their style of "Hard War"- that burned Atlanta and brought the Confederacy to it’s knees.
With the sound of a band playing " Gary Owen" shattering the pre-dawn quiet Custer and his 7th Cavalry surprise attacked the village of Chief Black Kettle. The warriors were out foraging so they mostly killed women and children. They even shot the Indian’s ponies. Chief Black Kettle had recently signed a peace treaty with the white-eyes and felt so safe he flew a U.S. flag over his teepee.

1924- The First Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marvel of the parade were large displays that moved down the street thanks to small automobiles concealed under them. They seemed to "float",so they are called parade floats today. The huge balloons were added in 1934. Originally after the parade the balloons were let go to float away into the sky. Macy’s offered a bounty to people who found them after they landed, sometimes in rural New Jersey.

1933- Former Terrytoons animator Art Babbitt, now at Disney's, writes to fellow animator Bill Tytla encouraging him to move to California. "Terry owes you a lot and Disney has plans for a full length color cartoon!"

1936- Max Fleischer's cartoon featurette, "Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor".

1941-While Admiral Yamamoto’s carrier fleet was getting it’s final orders to put to sea, at Pearl Harbor the U.S. army commander General Short got a top secret coded message from Washington: " Negotiations with Japan seem at an end for all practical purposes...future moves unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act...Measures should be carried out so as not to alarm the civilian population or disclose intent."


1950- THE CHOSIN RESEVOIR- In Korea this day the US First Marine Division and British Commando 411 was cut off and attacked on all sides by massed Red Chinese armies. Commander Chesty Puller, a veteran of Guadalcanal, when told he was surrounded replied: "That just simplifies our problems of finding these people and killing them." The Marines slowly fought their way the trap in subzero cold across the frozen ice bringing out most of their wounded and some POWs. Survivors of the epic march refuse to call their campaign a retreat, they said they merely attacked in another direction. They called themselves "The Chosin Few" and the "Frozen-Choisin".

1953- Playwright Eugene O'Neill died of pneumonia and Parkinson's Disease at 65. He had been writing on cardboard laundry shirt boards because he needed something large to write on because his hands trembled so violently. When O’Neill realize his end was near he tore up six plays he was writing because he wanted no one else to complete them. He was staying at the Shelton Hotel in Boston. As his father was an actor his family traveled frequently. O'Neill's last words were : "I knew it! Born in a hotel room, and G-ddammit I'm dying in a hotel room! "

1960 – Gordie Howe becomes the first NHL player to score 1000 goals.

1967- The Beatles release Magical Mystery Tour.

1973- According to the X-Files this was the night Fox Mulder’s sister Samantha was abducted by aliens.

1975- Ross McWhirter, publisher of the Guinness Book of World Records, was killed by the IRA.

1985- Steven Speilberg married Amy Irving. The divorced a few years later.
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Yesterday’s Question: Since we all now own a piece of Cititgroup Bank, what was Citibanks’ original name?

Answer: It was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, then National City Bank of New York. Then they merged with another bank and became First National City bank of New York. In the mid 1970’s they changed their name to Citibank to make things simpler for everyone.


I love roast turkey on Thanksgiving, but lately many have had Carnivore's Remorse about the cute chubby birds. This PC twinge has been exacerbated by Gov Sarah Palin's embarrassing video being interviewed while turkeys are being executed over her shoulder.

My solution...? EAT PORK!

Why? Because during the American Civil War, many eyewitnesses watched with horror that after a battle, local farmer's hogs would meander out between the Yankee and Reb lines and eat the flesh of the honored dead.



So have some pork chops or bacon with a clear conscience, because if the positions were somehow reversed, THEY WOULD LIKE TO EAT YOU!

Bon Appetit'!


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Question: Since we all now own a piece of Cititgroup Bank, what was Citibanks’ original name?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Why is classic Jazz from the 1950’s called BeBop or Bop?
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History for 11/26/2008
Birthdays: John Harvard 1607(founder of Harvard University), Bat Masterson, Eugene Ionesco, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Marian Mercer, Tina Turner, Charles "Sparky" Schulz, Cyril Cusak, Eric Severaid, Rich Little, Wendy Turnbull, Jan Stenerud, Robert Goulet

1716- In Boston, the first African lion ever seen in America was put on exhibit.

1825-Kappa Alpha of Union College NY is established. The first college fraternity house.

1832- In New York the first public transportation began, a streetcar pulled along iron rails by a team of horses. A ticket cost 12 pennies. The last horse car bus stopped in 1926.

1865- Lewis Carroll sent a copy of the completed manuscript of his fantasy Alice in Wonderland to his12 year old friend and inspiration Alice Liddell. Carroll later published the book with his own money. This is one of the first books written solely to amuse children, and not to educate or discipline them.

1868- At first baseball games were played in a convenient cow pasture. Today the baseball game was played in an enclosed field. It was in San Francisco at Folsom & 25th St..

1896- AA. Stagg of University of Chicago invented the football huddle.

1913- THE DISAPPEARANCE OF AMBROSE BIERCE- Ambrose Bierce was one of the more popular U.S. writers of the late 19th century. A savage wit and social critic, a combat veteran of the Civil War, he pioneered sardonic anti-war fiction long before Kurt Vonnegut. But by 1913 the 71-year-old curmudgeon found himself alone, ill, his creative powers failing and not looking forward to old age. So on November 6th he announced his intention to travel to Mexico at the height of the revolution there and hopefully get killed: “Ah, to be an old gringo stood up before a Mexican firing squad, now that is Euthanasia!” This day he gave his last known newspaper interview in Laredo Texas, then disappeared forever. A niece claimed he sent her a letter from Chihuahua on Dec. 26th but that letter has never been found. The popular story is that he was executed by Pancho Villa but Villa and his people never recalled meeting Bierce. Plus Villa was followed around by so many American news correspondents that a person as famous as Ambrose Bierce there was sure to be noticed. Other theories abound- that he volunteered to spy for the State Dept.; he faked the Mexico story so he could quietly kill himself in the recesses of the Grand Canyon, even that he was carried off by a demon who wanted men named Ambrose, which is why nobody names their kids Ambrose anymore! As he planned, Ambrose Bierce has the last laugh. “I want no one to find my bones!” And no one ever has.

1926- Potato Chips, or Crisps in the UK, were invented in the 1880’s and served in restaurants and fairgrounds. I remember in Brooklyn the Dugan’s Bakery Truck delivering potato chips in a large tin container. This day Ms Laura Scudder was the first to put potato chips in a bag and sold them as a handy snack food. She sold them out of the back of her pickup truck until the business picked up. She ran her own company until 1959.

1939- The first Woody Woodpecker Cartoon, "Knock-Knock.’

1975- Former Charles Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford with a starters pistol.

1976- Sex Pistols Punk single “Anarchy in the UK” released.

1990- Acting on the example of Sony’s purchase of MGM-Columbia studios, Matushita (Panasonic) bought MCA- Universal studios for $6.6 billion. After a few fruitless years they sold it to the Bronfmans group, the distillers of Seagram’s Whiskey.

1998- Tony Blair became the first British Prime Minister to address the Irish Parliament. He said: We can no longer afford to be the Prisoners of History.”

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Yesterday’s Question: Why is classic Jazz from the 1950’s called BeBop or Bop?

Answer: Today in 1945- Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis recorded Koko, the first bebop Jazz single. The pianist at the session didn’t have his New York union card so after his solo, Dizzy dropped his trumpet and did the piano backup to Birds’ solo. The term Bop came from an earlier Lionel Hampton hit “Hey-Bop-A-ReBop”. Jazz Critic Ira Gitler picked up on the wordplay between musicians and referred to the new sound as BeBop.
Dizzy entitled his autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop. Like cooooooooool….daddy-o.


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