Quiz: When a pundit states the obvious by saying “ I’m Shocked. Shocked!” What movie is he/she referencing?

Question: The George W. Bush Presidency broke the Curse of Tecumseh. What is that?
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History for 1/21/2010
Birthdays: Leadbelly (Harlan Ledbetter), Thomas J."Stonewall" Jackson, J.Carol Naish, Tele Savalas, Christian Dior, Placido Domingo is 69, Wolfman Jack, Akeem Olajuwon, Paul Scofield, Robby Benson, Jack Nicklaus, Benny Hill, Emma Bunton- Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, Gena Davis
Happy Tele Savalas Day!

1198- THE THIRD CRUSADE DECLARED- In reaction to the news of Salladin's capture of Jerusalem, King Henry II of England, Phillip Augustus of France and Conrad the Emperor of Germany "take the Cross", to invade the Holyland. Henry died before the army departed and was replaced by his son Richard the Lionhearted. Every morning before breakfast and every night before retiring, all the knights of the Crusade would raise one steel-clad fist towards the east, and to the sound of massed trumpets they would shout: " AEIDEUVA, AEIDEUVA, SANCTUS SEPULCHORUM!!" "Help, Help to the Holy Sepulchre!".

1793- KING LOUIS XVI GUILLOTINED- For three years since the Bastille fell the French King tried to play a constitutional monarch while conspiring with the other European monarchs to crush the French Revolution. It was a game that was too subtle for him. When foreign armies invaded France and declared their intention to remake Louis an absolute ruler, the revolutionary government condemned him to death. Citizen Capet, so named for an old family name of French kings, mounted the scaffold at Place de La Concorde currently where the U.S. Embassy is. He tried to speak to the people but the drummers were ordered to drown him out. As the blade fell his chaplain shouted: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!" The revolutionaries then stuck his head between his legs and threw him in a hole. Where the site of the Chapel Expiatore is today. The court executioner, Charles Henri Samson, wore pistols under his coat in case people tried to rush the guillotine. He usually never felt remorse for his victims ( "I am not killing them, the State is" ) but this one bothered him. He stayed away from home for two nights and would later hide escaped political prisoners in his cellar.

1861- SECESSION! COLLAPSE! President-elect Lincoln was still packing his bags in Springfield and writing out the luggage tags in his own hand "A.Lincoln, White House, Washington, D.C.", while state after state of the South voted to leave the Union and join the new Confederacy. On this date Mississippi senator and former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis resigned from the Congress. As he left the Senate Georgia senator Robert Toombs declared out loud to the Speakers chair:" The Union sir, is Dissolved !" Toombs had to hire a carriage to take him South because his personal servants had run off to be free. The Mormons of Utah were in an open state of rebellion, New Jersey and New York City talked of secession, California talked of pulling out of the union and joining Oregon to make a new country called TransPacifica. Mobs in Baltimore proclaimed Abe Lincoln would never get to Washington alive. Outgoing President James Buchanan said gravely: "I fear I may be the Last President of the United States.."

1899- The Opel motorcar company opened for business.

1916- The National Board of Review outlawed nudity in Hollywood movies.

1923- LENIN DIED. The Soviet dictator died of respiratory failure and cerebral hemorrhage at 54. The lack of a reliable system of succession plagued Communist states. As Lenin lay dying Leon Trotsky, Zioniev, Kamieniev, Krupskaya and a dozen others began a backroom scramble for power. Finally a minor bank robber and terrorist from Tblisi in Georgia who had risen rapidly in the last two years came out above them all- Comrade Kobal, also called Josef Stalin. Stalin even made sure Lenin's last will and testament was ignored and suppressed because it probably never mentioned him. One Soviet ministry removed Lenin's brain and kept it alongside Stalin, Gorky's and Sakharov's.

1935- the conservation group The Wilderness Society created.

1938 -Max Fleischer tells his New York cartoon studio they are relocating to Florida.

1938- George Melies, the father of Motion Picture Special Effects, died selling chocolates in a Paris train station -Gare du Norde to be exact.

1950-After a highly publicized trial top State Department official Alger Hiss was found guilty of perjury in a trial that accused him of covering up his connections to Communist agents in Washington. The trial made a national figure of a then little known congressman named Richard Nixon. Hiss served four years in prison, and lived the rest of his life maintaining his innocence.

1958- BADLANDS- Teenagers Charlie Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate kill her family and go on a Bonnie & Clyde style crime spree throughout Nebraska, killing 11 people. When they were caught Starkweather pleaded self defense, even against the murder of Fugates infant baby brother. He went to the electric chair. Carol Ann Fugate did twenty years, yet always denied she was anything more than an unwilling accomplice. Starkweather had a 'James Dean-Marlon Brando' leatherjacket look and the two teen killers seemed to typify America's dread of juvenile delinquency and the 'degenerate Rock and Roll' culture of the 1950's. Their story inspired several films including 'Badlands" .

1977- President Jimmy Carter declared a pardon for most Vietnam War draft resistors.

1991- Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
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Yesterday’s answer: One achievement of the outgoing George W. Bush Presidency is that it forever broke the Curse of Tecumseh. What is that?

Answer: THE CURSE OF TECUMSEH-
The legend goes in 1828 when the great Seneca Indian leader Tecumseh was killed trying to stop white expansion, he supposedly put a curse on the entire white tribe in America. He declared every Great White Chief selected in a decade year would die.

Here is the record so far:
1840- President William Henry Harrison- died in office of pneumonia.
1860- Abraham Lincoln- assassinated.
1880- James Garfield- assassinated.
1900- William McKinley- assassinated in his second term.
1920- Warren Harding- died in office, possible poison.
1940- Franklin Roosevelt- a stretch- Roosevelt lived to win re-election in 1944, then died in office in 1945.
1960- John F. Kennedy- assassinated.
1980-Ronald Reagan- shot full of bullets and almost died.
2000-Bush- nothing happened!

Question: George W. Bush’s Presidency broke the Curse of Tecumseh. What was it?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered: Who Put the Bop in the Bop-Shoo Wop Ba-Dop? Who put the…?
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History for 1/20/2010
Birthdays: King Charles III of Spain, Richard Henry Lee- signer of the Declaration of Independence, Frederico Fellini, Patricia O’Neal, Mario Lanza, David Lynch, George Burns, DeForest Kelly, Edwin Buzz Aldrin the second astronaut to walk on the moon, Arte Johnson, Lorenzo Lamas

661 A.D. -Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, was assassinated by a partisan of Muyawiah Ibn Abi Suffian- the founder of the Ummayad Dynasty of Caliphs. Ali’s supporters were called Ali's SHIAH or Ali's Partisans – which became the branch of Islam called Shiite, the rest of Islam is known as Sunnite. It became a split as fierce as the one between Catholic and Protestants in Christianity.

1193- Licensed prostitution began in Japan.

1777- George Washington invited a brave young Colonial artillery captain to join his personal staff. Alexander Hamilton’s career among the top echelons of America began.

1779- The English dramatic actor David Garrick died. Supposedly his last words were when asked “Is it hard to die?” Garrick replied:” Dying is not Hard. Comedy is Hard.”

1908- The Sullivan Ordinance barred women from smoking in public facilities.

1920- The American Civil Liberties Union founded by Roger Baldwin.

1924- WAR ON THE MAFIA- In 1924 the Mafia was almost completely destroyed. By who? Benito Mussolini. While not yet Il Duce but merely Italy’s Prime Minister Benito had had enough of the crime family clans in Sicily and sent a huge army to crush them. The blackshirted jackbooted regiments marched across the island arresting 11,000 and executing hundreds. Mussolini declared victory and many of the surviving dons fled to America where Prohibition was providing great new opportunities for crooks.

1936- King George V of England died. In great pain from incurable cancer, only recently a doctor admitted getting obeying instructions from Edward VIII to euthanize him with a strong shot of cocaine and morphine. The doctor timed his offing of the king so the news would be out with the morning newspapers instead of the trashier afternoon tabloids.
His Majesties last words were reported to be:" How goes the Empire? " He actually winced at the sloppy way the injection was done and said: " Oww! G--Damn You!".

1937- Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated for his second term after defeating Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas. He is the first president to be inaugurated in January instead of the customary March 4th. The Depression still raged despite all his efforts, he gives the inaugural speech decrying the rampant poverty in the U.S. "I see one third of the nation, ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clothed, living in conditions far beneath the minimum standards we regard as decent, etc."

1938-The first true animator, Emile Cohl, died while headed for the Paris premiere of Disney's"Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Cohl was so poor that the electricity in his flat had been turned off and the candles had ignited his beard. Angry he was never recognized in his time, he once said: "the French prefer their artists with marble and flowers on top." An Italian sculptor subscribed funds to build a statue to Cohl in Paris. Walt Disney and Dave Fleischer donated money. The sculptor took the money and skipped town, the statue was never built.

1942- The Wanasee Conference-Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann and other top Nazis have a lunch conference in a suburb in Berlin. Over cocktails invented The Final Solution. Zyclon –B gas chambers instead of electrocution or carbon-monoxide. They set a target goal of ten million Jews to be murdered by 1946.

1945- Franklin D. Roosevelt sworn in as U.S. President for a fourth consecutive term, the only person ever to do so.

1949- FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave Shirley Temple a pen that shoots tear gas.

1953- The Birth of Little Ricky on the I Love Lucy show drew a larger viewing audience than the televised inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower.

1961- John F. Kennedy gave his famous inaugural speech:” Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Outgoing President Eisenhower disliked JFK personally and was angry that his election seemed a repudiation of his policies, so almost nothing was said between them in the limousine during the drive to the ceremony. John Kennedy also went through that day mostly hatless, inaugurating the fashion. Before JFK, a man was not fully dressed without a fedora or cap of some sort.

1965- Alan Freed, the disc jockey who coined the term Rock & Roll died at 43 of uremic blood poisoning. He was broken by the Rock payola scandal and died so poor his friends passed the hat to pay for his funeral.

1969- Richard Nixon sworn in as President capping one of the most amazing comebacks in political history. After losing to Kennedy in 1960 Nixon lost yet again to Pat Brown for the governorship of California and was considered politically finished. Anybody remember Michael Dukakis, Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale,? Yet Nixon worked on his image over the years and re-emerged in 1968 as “The New Dick”.

1981- As President Reagan was being sworn in, the hostages taken at the United States Embassy in Teheran were released after being held for 444 days. Years later it was revealed a deal was made with the Iranian militants to release the hostages in exchange for a ransom of weapons. But at the time, all the American public knew was that all the Old Gipper had to do was show up, to make the Mad Mullah’s hightail-it outta town.

1982- Rock star Ozzie Osbourne was hospitalized in Des Moines Iowa after biting the head off a dead bat thrown on stage during a concert. At another concert with Lou Reed, Ozzy picked up a straw filled with ants and snorted it up his nose so his kids could watch ants crawling out of his mouth, nostrils and tear ducts. ROCK AND ROLL BABY!!

1982- SONY introduced the Camcorder, the personal video camera.

1986- The worlds first computer virus, Brain, was sent out over the internet.

2001- George W. Bush inaugurated as the 43rd President. He is only the second son of a president to be elected, the other being John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams. Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of William Henry Harrison. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a second cousin of Teddy Roosevelt.

2009- Standing in front of the U.S. Capitol, a building built mostly by slaves, Barack Obama is inaugurated 44th President of the United States. The first African-American.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who Put the Bop in the Bop-Shoo Wop Ba-Dop? Who put the…?

Answer: Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong. Who is that man? I’d like to shake his hand. He made my baby fall in love with me.
The doowop group The Viscounts did , recorded in 1961.

Quiz: Who Put the Bop in the Bop-Shoo Wop Ba-Dop? Who put the…?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Was Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous poem Ozimandias based on a real person?
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History for 1/19/2010
Birthdays: James Watt, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Lee, Paul Cezanne', Janis Joplin would have been 66, Tipi Hedren is 80, Slobodan Milosovic’, radio star Ish Kabibble, Dolly Parton, Michael Crawford, Desi Arnez Jr., Chic Young, Guy Madison, Richard Lester, Jean Stapleton, Fritz Weaver, Sean Wayans, Robin MacNeill, Paul Rodriquez, Antoine Fucqua, Drea Di Matteo is 38, and Bart the Bear-1977 Bear who starred in movies like Clan of the Cave Bear, The Bear, White Fang and Legends of the Fall

Happy Feast of St. Wulfstan.

1547-Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan IV Vasilievich, called Ivan the Terrible, crowned Tsar or Czar- a Russian form for Caesar.

1633- Thomas Morton was twice deported by the Pilgrims for holding “licentious Maypole celebrations” at his Indian trading post. This day he returned to England and tried to have the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter revoked. The King probably refused because that might make the whole crowd of buckle-shoed killjoys return home!

1729- British Restoration playwright William Congreve died. He willed all his property to Henrietta, the Duchess of Marlborough. But then the Duchess did something a bit odd. She had a death mask made of Congreve’s face and attached it to a life size mannequin. She ate and conversed with the dummy all day and slept with it at night. She insisted her servants wait upon the dummy and treat it when she felt it was ill. When she died she was buried with the dummy.

1829 Johann Von Goethe published Faust Part 1.

1840- Explorer Lt. Charles Wilkes claimed all of Antarctica for the United States. He was on a scientific expedition to chart the South Seas and Southern polar waters. Captain Wilkes was really good at exploring, but he was such a tyrannical disciplinarian he was court-martialed upon his return. Wilkes’ erratic behavior may have been a model for Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab in his novel Moby Dick.

1853- Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore with the famous Anvil Chorus premiered in Rome.

1869- New York City controller of Central Park Andrew Green received a petition from 18 of the city’s wealthiest citizens. It called for the establishment of a Museum of Natural History. The famous building was built in 1874.

1919- Famed dancer of the Ballet Russe Vasclav Nijinsky danced his last dance at a hotel in San Moritz Switzerland. He later became an incarcerated mental patient and underwent numerous extreme shock therapies until his death in 1950.

1940- The Three Stooges do their impression of Hitler and the top Nazis in the Columbia Pictures short comedy “You Natzy Spy”. Moe Howard is still the best Hitler impersonator of all time.


1955- President Eisenhower held the first press conference that was shown on television. It was held in the treaty room of the State Department. Eisenhower was famous for his ability to speak at great length and never say anything of substance. “This day, My Fellow Americans, more than at any other time, ahead of us lies the Future!”

1961- The first episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show filmed.

1966- Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Nehru, became prime minister of India.

1977- In one of his last acts as President, Gerald Ford pardoned Tokyo Rose. Iva Toguri D’Aquino was a Japanese American who did propaganda broadcasts for Radio Tokyo encouraging American GI’s to give up. She explained she was stranded in Tokyo when the war broke out and was coerced into doing the broadcasts.

1979- Wendy O. Williams, mohawk-haired lead singer of the punk band the Plasmatics was arrested in Milwaukee for going on stage and masturbating with a sledgehammer.

1983- Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia and extradited to France. Barbie was the Nazi Gestapo chief in France and was called the Butcher of Lyon for his torture and execution of hundreds of French resistance and Jews. After the war Barbie avoided arrested and was briefly hired by the CIA as an anti-soviet spy. He went to South America and applied his skills for the dictators there until his extradition. While other former Nazis like Kurt Waldheim were disingenuously vague about their past, Barbie was loudly unrepentant. It was reported he continually embarrassed the Nazis trying to hide in South America by Sieg-Heil saluting them on the street and singing old stormtrooper songs over his steak fajitas.

1985- Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA peaked the pop charts at #9.

1989- President Ronald Reagan, in one of his last acts as president, pardoned Yankee Baseball club owner George Steinbrenner for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon.

1991-Eastern Airlines ceased operations and goes out of business. Chairman and former astronaut Frank Borman was philosophical: “Business without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.”
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Was Percy Shelley’s famous poem Ozimandias based on a real person?

Answer: Apparently Shelley got the idea when he saw some broken monuments to the Tartar conqueror Tamerlane. Tamerlane tried to build an empire as vast as Genghis Khan, but after this death it quickly fell apart. The name Ozymandias came from a Greek variation on the name of Pharoah Ramses the Great, who's statue was just unveiled in the British Museum. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Quiz: Was Lord Byron’s famous poem Ozimandias based on a real person?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: The opera Carmen is about a sexy gypsy smuggler in Spain who dumps her soldier boyfriend for a dashing bullfighter. What language is Carmen sung in?
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HISTORY FOR 1/18/2010
Birthdays: Daniel Webster, A.A.Milne, Joseph Glidden, Oliver Hardy, Cary Grant- born Archie Leech, Danny Kaye, Emmanuel Chabrier, Bobby Goldsboro, Pierre Roget (Roget’s Thesaurus), Ray Dolby (Dolby sound), John Boorman, Kevin Costner is 55

In honor of Cary Grant’s Birthday (1904) One of his favorite poems was a bit of doggerel: "They bought me a box of tin soldiers,/I threw all the Generals away,/I smashed up the Sergeants and Majors,/Now I play with me Privates all day."

1486- King Henry VII Tudor married Elizabeth of York, one of the opposing sides in the just concluded War of the Roses. This further confirmed his legitimacy as king.

1535- Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizzarro founded the city of Lima Peru.

1787- Captain Cook landed at Kauai and "discovers" Hawaii. He named the place the Sandwich Islands after his boss John Montague the First Lord of the Admiralty the Earl of Sandwich.

1854- THE KINGDOM OF WALKER- Soldier of Fortune William Walker declared himself president of Sonora -a new country formed out of the Mexican state of Sonora and Baja California. It didn’t stick and he had to run for it. A few years later Walker and a gang of U.S. mercenaries actually succeeded in overthrowing the government of Nicaragua and making himself a king. But soon the Nicaraguans put him up before a firing squad.

1865- This was a target date John Wilkes Booth had to spring his plan to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln out of his box at Ford’s Theater and exchange him for thousands of Confederate POW’S to continue the Souths war effort. That the young actor naively planned to physically overcome and truss up the 6’5" president who although in ill health was an ex-wrestler , then sling him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, jump 12 feet to the stage and carry him off in front of an audience, is a strange plan to say the least. Lincoln did attend the theater that night but Booth cancelled the plan, because he had to prepare to do Romeo the day after tomorrow. His real job superceded his hobby as a conspirator.

1871-GERMAN UNIFICATION- Wilhelm of Prussia crowned first Kaiser of Germany in a ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. At one time Germans lived in 38 little princedoms that were great for operettas but lousy as a political entity. Germans formed a symbolic parliament in Frankfurt and formed nationalist societies called Tugenbund to dream of unification. But Prussian Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck said "unity would not be won by parliaments and papers but by Blood and Iron!" Bismarck had first defeated Austria to ensure Germans would look to Berlin and not Vienna for leadership, then he picked a war with France to unite all the German peoples against their old enemy. So the crowning was two-fold the highpoint of victory over France and the symbol of unification. Sulky Wilhelm Ist didn’t want to be an emperor and was happy as king of Prussia but Bismarck bullied him into it.

1903- President Teddy Roosevelt and King Edward VII exchanged the first wireless messages long distance between Washington and London. The system was invented by Gugielmo Marconi.

1908- Frederic Delius orchestral tone poem Brigg Fair premiered.

1912- Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, "Scott of the Antarctic" reaches the South Pole to discover the Norwegian flag of Pier Ammundsen who got there first. -Doh !

1919- American Society of Cinematographers formed (ASC).

1943- The Red Army lifted the 900 day Nazi siege of Leningrad.

1943- As part of the war effort the US government ordered the sale of sliced bread be stopped for the duration. The phrase “ the greatest thing since sliced bread” entered the slang vocabulary.

1949- Look Magazine published a photo essay called "Prizefighter". The photographer was a young kid from the Bronx named Stanley Kubrick. Mr Kubrick said he now wanted to try filmmaking.

1953-The Hollywood Animation Guild chartered. Originally the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839, signatories included Disney legends Milt Kahl, Les Clark, John Hench and Ken Anderson.

1962- The US Army in Vietnam began an experiment with spraying the jungle with chemical defoliants to get at hidden Vietcong guerrillas. The chemical Agent Orange defoliated jungles but also infected thousands of American serviceman and Vietnamese civilians who continue to die from cancers decades after.

1962- THE FRENCH CONNECTION- NYPD cracked a drug ring smuggling heroin from South East Asia into New York via Marseilles. The French Connection bust nabbed $3.5 million in dope and made heroes out of the two detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grazzo. Egan joked to Grazzo:" I’ll betchya Paul Newman will play me and Ben Gazzarra you!" Actually Gene Hackman played Egan and Roy Scheider Grazzo in the Oscar winning 1971 film. Both cops retired from the force to make careers in show biz. Ironically while the film was being made the real heroin from the case disappeared from the NYPD evidence lockup and was replaced with bags of corn starch. It was never recovered.

1964-Plans are revealed for building New York City’s World Trade Center towers.

1977- The cult documentary PUMPING IRON premiered. Filmmakers George Butler and Rob Fiore maxed out his American Express card to the tune of $35,000 to bring this look at the little known world of professional body building to the screen. The film first brought to the public a charmingly confident Austrian body builder named Arnold Schwarzenegger who wanted to try acting someday. Also Lou Ferrigno who would also star in movies and as the TV Hulk.

Many year later politician Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to buy the rights to the film so he could edit out the scenes of him puffin’ the ganja.

1978- In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, rock star Frank Zappa described most rock journalism as " People who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read."

1987- National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition premiered.

2004- The I HAVE A SCREAM SPEECH. Democratic presidential challenger Howard Dean gave an address after losing the New Hampshire primary. Known for his energy, at one point he got so carried away he let out a jubilant yelp above the cheering throng.

The media picked this up and played it to death. It became a big joke on Saturday Night Live. Soon it would be impossible to think of Dean as a serious candidate. He lost the nomination to stiff John Kerry, who lost to unpopular President George W. Bush.

Republican White House strategist Karl Rove later admitted it would have been much harder to defeat Howard Dean than John Kerry, but then there was that scream.
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Yesterday’s Question: : The opera Carmen is about a sexy gypsy smuggler in Spain who dumps her soldier boyfriend for a dashing bullfighter. What language is Carmen sung in?

Answer: French.

Quiz: The opera Carmen is about a sexy gypsy smuggler in Spain who dumps her soldier boyfriend for a dashing bullfighter. What language is Carmen sung in?

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: What play featured Sir Toby Belch and Mrs. Malaprop?
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History for January 17, 2010
Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin, Max Sennett-1880, Al Capone, Ethan G. Hodell 1883- the inventor of the Tow-Truck, Constantin Stanislavsky, Moira Shearer, Shari Lewis, James Earl Jones is 79, Vidal Sassoon, Betty White, Zooey Deschanel, Denny Doyle, Kevin Reynolds, Muhammad Ali is 69, Jim Carrey is 47, Michelle Obama is 46
Happy Birthday Shari Lewis

50 BC- Julius Caesar¹s chief rival for power in Rome was Pompey Magnus. Pompey was as famous a general as Caesar and he controlled the Roman Senate. Pompey bragged that if Caesar started a civil war all he had to do would be to stamp his foot and soldiers would spring up everywhere to defend Rome. But when Caesar invaded Italy, Pompey stamped his foot and nothing happened. Pompey¹s troops were in Spain and Greece. The only legions locally were loyal to Caesar. This day Pompey and the Senate abandoned Rome and fled south to the heel of the Italian boot, then to Greece.

395AD- Death of Theodosius Ist, the last Roman Emperor to rule over the all the Empire from Scotland to Iran. After his death the Roman Empire divided permanently between East and West.

1775-Sheridan's Restoration comedy The Rivals premiered at Covent Garden Theater, London.

1794- SCANDAL!! ANDY JACKSON MARRIES RACHEL DONELSON FOR THE SECOND TIME. Mrs. Rachel D. Robards was married to a brutal older man, when she fell in love with the dashing young officer in the Tennessee wilderness. Separated from Mr. Robards she and Jackson were in Natchez, Mississippi at her sister¹s, when they heard word that Robards had filed for a divorce back in Nashville.
Jackson and Rachael then married and lived together for a year but then discovered that the divorce report was false and worse, Mississippi where they were married was still Spanish territory that didn't recognize Protestant marriages as legal. Rachel finally got her divorce from Robards, and they married again. Still, the social stigma of 'living in sin' stuck.
Rachel became morose in later years when Jackson's political enemies used the charge of adultery to attack him. Jackson fought duels and killed men over his wife's honor. By the time Jackson was elected President, Rachel Jackson was too ill to go to Washington. She died just before the Inauguration. The widower President lived long, but never got over his love for his Rachel.

1836- Texas General Sam Houston orders Jim Bowie to go to the Alamo and blow it up. Then bring the soldiers and the valuable cannon back to the main army to fight Santa Anna. But once there, Bowie was convinced by William Travis to disobey orders and defend the Alamo to the bitter end.

1926- FATS WALLER KIDNAPPED-Harlem Jazz great Fats Waller was in Chicago for a gig. On the street several gunmen grabbed him and dragged him into their limo and sped off to the lair of mob boss Scarface Al Capone. When he arrived there the terrified Waller was reassured by Capone that as it was Big Al¹s birthday all he wanted was for Waller to perform at his party. The bash lasted three days and the joint was really jumpin! Waller left unharmed, and with a very fat paycheck as well, but resolved to stay in Harlem where it was safe.(-?).

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1929- First appearance of Popeye the Sailor in E.C. Seegar's comic strip the Thimble Theatre.

1935- In an address to Congress, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed national unemployment insurance.

1949- The first Volkswagen beetles arrive in North America.

1949- The Goldbergs, a radio comedy show about a Jewish family in the Bronx, moved to television and became the first true sitcom. The show ended when Mrs. Goldberg was accused by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee of being a Communist.

1950- THE BRINKS JOB- Several small time hoods wearing Halloween masks entered a Brinks Armored Car office in Boston and stole $1,2 million in cash and 1.5 in securities. By 1953 one crook broke down and confessed just eleven days before the statute of limitations would run out.

1957- The first non-stop jet flight around the world. Three U.S. B-52 bombers took off from Edwards Air force base in California and by flying at supersonic speed and refueling in mid air circumnavigated the globe in a little over 48 hours. The mission was not intended to set a record or for any scientific value as to demonstrate that the U.S. could now go anywhere on the earth and drop a nuke on you. They cemented this idea by dropping a dummy bomb after passing over Malaya.

1961- Frank Sinatra¹s Ratpack had campaigned hard for their friend John F. Kennedy for president. Black entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. had worked particularly hard to help Kennedy win the African American vote. But Sammy had a preference for blond white actresses and had married one, May Britt in 1960. To fend off negative publicity this day JFK had his secretary Mrs. Lincoln telephone Sammy Davis and un-invite him to the President¹s Inaugural Ball. We¹re Liberal, but not that liberal. And uhh..thanks for the help. Dean Martin was so angry at this insult to his friend that he canceled his appearance at the inaugural. In 1968 Sammy Davis angered the black community when he embraced republican Richard Nixon.

1961- President Dwight Eisenhower¹s farewell speech to the nation. He warned against the growing influence of the ³Military Industrial Complex².

1964- The first Porsche Carrera sportscar arrived in L.A..

1977- Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah for murdering an elderly couple. They pinned a paper on his chest with a heart drawn on it so marksmen could aim straight. Norman Mailor wrote the book ³Executioners¹ Song² about the event.

1994-The Great Northridge Earthquake rocked Los Angeles. 72 deaths and 20 billion dollars in damage. It was officially listed as 6.8 on the Richter Scale, although many persist that in some areas it was as high as 7.2 . The epicenter was in the San Fernando Valley, so the valleys two major industries, animated cartoons and pornography, were temporarily disrupted.

1995- In a strange coincidence one year to the day after the Los Angeles earthquake a massive earthquake struck Kobe Japan. The Japanese place great resources and time in earthquake preparedness, yet this 7.2 quake toppled whole freeways, killed 5,000 and left 1 1/2 million people homeless. It was the worse natural disaster in Japan since the 1923 Tokyo quake.

2000-A Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton was offered for sale on E-Bay.
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Yesterday¹s Question: What play featured Sir Toby Belch and Mrs. Malaprop?

Answer: Sir Toby Belch is in Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT.
Mrs. Malaprop is in Sheridan's THE RIVALS.