Happy St. Patrick's Day all!

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Question: Which old comedian was not born Jewish? A) Groucho Marx, B) Jack Benny, C) Jimmy Durante, D) Moe Howard

Yesterday’s Question answered Below: Which one of these people was not born in Ireland? A)- Liam Neeson, b)-Errol Flynn, C) Sean O’Casey, D) Lola Montez

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History for 3/17/2009
Birthdays: Jim Bridger the mountainman, Nat King Cole, film composer Alfred Newman, Mercedes McCambridge, Leslie Ann Down, Patrick Duffy, Rudolph Nureyev, Gary Sinise, Kate Greenaway, John Sebastian, Ben Washam (warner bros. animator), Ken Anderson (Disney animator), John Wayne Gacy (serial killer), Shemp Howard (stooge), Kurt Russell is 59, Rob Lowe is 46

-Ancient Roman Festival Bacchanalia-the wine festival.

44BC- Mark Anthony called the first meeting of the Roman Senate since Julius Caesars assassination. Caesar’s murderers Brutus and Cassius were annoyed that the Roman people didn’t rise up in joy over their deed but instead remained ominously still. Instead of seizing the government, they went off to brood and talk it over. Meanwhile the Senate, not knowing who would win the coming power struggle, fence straddled by passing all of Caesars bills, at the same time voting amnesty for his killers.

180AD- The Roman Philosopher Emperor Marcus Aurelius died at his army camp Vindobona- the future Vienna. He was 59 and was succeeded by Commodus. For the last 100 years Roman Emperors adopted the man best qualified to lead Rome, instead of a natural son. Since most of them were gay, there was no problem with disappointed kids. But Marcus ruined the system by naming his natural son Commodus, a sicky tyrant in the mold of Nero or Caligula. There were rumors that Commodus killed his father before he could come to his senses and change his will, but there is no evidence of this. Marcus Aurelius had been ill for most of his last year.

461AD- HAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY - St. Patrick was a Romanized Gaul named Patricius Magonus Sucatus who as a boy was taken as a slave to Ireland by raiders, then escaped and became a Christian Bishop at Auxerre. He returned to Ireland in 432, converted the daughters of Irish King Laoghaire and cast down the great pagan idol of Crom Cruach in Letrim. As far as snakes go, some say that was a metaphor for the pagans. One man converted an entire nation. He died on this day in Ireland 461 A.D..
The holiday was a religious festival in Ireland but in America the feast day of Ireland's patron saint became a chance to show ethnic pride and political strength in the face of anti-Irish discrimination. In 1780 George Washington ordered his army to commemorate St. Patrick's Day in sympathy with "An ancient people's struggle for Independence."

965. AD- Pope Leo VIII died of a stroke while in bed with a lady en flagrante delicto.

1394- THE WHITE COMPANY- Sir John Hawkwood died. During a time-out in the Hundred Years War in France Hawkwood formed a company of unemployed English knights and went to Italy to become “condottierie”-mercenaries, fighting for money in the feuds between all the little Italian city-states. Their distinctive brightly polished silver armor gave them the name “The White Company”. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle wrote a novel by that name about them. Years earlier the term 'free lance' had been coined, meaning a knight who was free of any Shield-Oath to a noble lord.

1525- THE GERMAN PEASANTS WAR BEGAN- Excited by the new Protestant movement throwing off the yoke of the Church, German peasants decide to throw off the yoke of their princes as well. Preacher Thomas Munzer led a mob of peasants to kick out the Bishop-Dukes of Mulhausen and established rule by “Eternal Council”. Martin Luther was shocked by the violence. He alienated many of his followers by disassociating himself from the revolts and urged their suppression. The rebellious mobs of peasants flying black flags across Germany, Austria and Alsace were only put down after terrible massacres. At one point a duke warned his colleagues not to kill all their peasants, because then there would be no one left to work the farms and pay taxes.

1526-Lusty King Francis II of France had been captured in battle with German-Spanish Emperor Charles V and kept a prisoner in Madrid. A year later after signing a lot of peace treaties he had no intention of honoring he was finally set free on the Spanish-French border near Hendaye. He jumped on a horse and shouted “I am King Again!” Then he jumped on an 18 year old blond his mother Louise of Savoy brought him. Thanks Mom!

1692- After the Quaker community refused to support a war with France the English Crown declared Governor William Penn deprived of his powers and the colony of Pennsylvania would be administered directly as a crown colony.

1737- The Irish Charitable Society of Boston held a dinner to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. Earliest known commemoration in America.

1762- in New York Irish militiamen against orders march down Broadway to Hull's Tavern to a St.Patrick's Day breakfast. The first recorded St. Patty's Day parade. In 1848 several Irish-American organizations marched together and the parade became large enough to bring out the Mayor to preside. As immigration grew so did the parades and the political patronage.Pulaski Day, Steuben Day, Columbus Day, Puerto-Rican Day, etc.
In the 1890’s politician Teddy Roosevelt seemed to be at so many ethnic parades saying he had relations that were Irish, German, Dutch, etc. that opponents called him "Old Mister 57 Flavors".

1768- Black slaves on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat rise up against their plantation overlords. Because many of the white overseers were Protestant Irish the slaves guessed they would be distracted by Saint Patrick’s Day partying when they attacked. At the last moment someone gave the plot away. The rebellion was crushed and nine leaders hanged.

1776-This day the British Navy of 150 ships hoisted sail and left the City of Boston. Lord Howe had concluded an armistice with colonial General Washington that in exchange for an unmolested evacuation they would not burn the city. It was seen as a great early victory for the Americans. Boston Harbor was opened for the first time in three years. The British troops were heartily glad to leave. A lieutenant Sheffield wrote:” I curse Columbus and all the other discoverers of this diabolical land!”

1808- ROYAL SCANDALS- William the Duke of York, second son of King George III had to resign his position as head of the British Army over an investigation that he kept a tootsie named Mary Clarke, who used her influence to cash in with army contractors. William’s dad the insane king was locked up and his older brother the Prince Regent later George IV didn't complain because he was hiding an illegal Irish wife named Mrs. Fitzherbert and another girlfriend named Lady Cunningham from his estranged wife Caroline the Princess of Wales, who was herself having sex with most of the men of Italy. All this scandal couldn't defeat Napoleon, but it did knock Boney out of the British newspapers for awhile, and help Prime Minister Pitt the Younger drink himself into an early grave.

1811- The first sidewheel Mississippi riverboat The New Orleans was launched.

1845- Rubber Bands invented.

1857- John Stephens founds the Fenian Brotherhood in Dublin. This group is the forerunner of Sinn Fein (Shin Fain). The Fenians tried numerous insurrections in the old country and even a conquest of Canada from New York State using former Union army soldiers in 1867. Like political leaders today worry about Hamas or Al Qaeda, Queen Victoria would cast a nervous eye over her shoulder for Fenians.

1874-MACY'S- Jacob and Isadore Strauss, two German Jewish peddlers whose first job in America was selling Confederate War Bonds, buy a dry goods store from a retired Quaker sea captain named R.H.MACY. They decide to keep the name to divert anti-Semitic customers. The store was later so successful that in 1904 Macys’s moved to it's present location on 34th St. The location was close by the new Penn. Station and also across the street from the two largest brothels in New York. Izzy Strauss later went down with the Titanic in 1912 and Jacob's kids founded Stauss stores. When Jacob visited Paris in 1919, he joked on General Pershing's comment "Lafayette Nous'Voici" to :"Galerie Lafayette we are here!" Galerie Lafayette is a French department store...(don't blame me, it's a department store joke...)

1879- New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace stopped work on his novel Ben Hur long enough to meet face to face outlaw Billy the Kid to discuss an amnesty.

1898- First test of a practical submarine. Americans had experimented with underwater travel since 1776 with Bushnells "Turtle" then the Civil War CSS Hunley. In the ocean off Staten Island a diesel-electric battery powered sub built by the John A. Holland Electric Boat Company of Georgia ran underwater for an hour and forty minutes then resurfaced. As a child Holland was inspired by Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea".

1901- At a grand exhibition of his paintings at Bernheim-Jeune Palace in Paris, the world discovered the brilliance of a poor Dutch lunatic who had shot himself a few years back- Vincent Van Gogh.

1905-Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt marry. They were cousins. Eleanor was actually more directly related to Theodore Roosevelt than Franklin was -she was TR’s niece.

1906- Teddy Roosevelt in a speech to the Gridiron Club coins the term "Muckraker".

1912- The Camp Fire Girls created.

1941- The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington D.C.

1949- The first car show for Porsche sportscars.

1965- Chicago began the Saint Patrick’s Day tradition of dyeing the Chicago River green.

1967- Senator Robert Kennedy first openly broke with the Lyndon Johnson administration and in a speech denounced the US participation in the war in Vietnam. Historians debate whether his brother John F. Kennedy who first committed US troops to the conflict would have accelerated or stopped the war had he not been assassinated. But according to reporters and confidants Robert Kennedy told them while running for the presidency in 1968 that if he won, his first priority was to get us out. Kennedy’s assassination ended that dream and the war for America dragged on until 1973.

1982- Politically conservative Hollywood actors led by Charlton Heston broke with the Screen Actor’s Guild and form a rival group called AWAG ( American Working Actor’s Guild). They were angered by SAG president Ed Asner’s taking their union into national politics by condemning Pres. Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America, capped by the SAG board refusing Reagan (their former president) the Guild lifetime achievement award.
As a result Ed Asner’s hit t.v. show “Lou Grant” lost sponsors and was cancelled and Heston’s career cooled as well, beyond heading the NRA and writing cranky letters to the L.A. Times calendar section that Ben Hur wasn’t gay.

1983- On trial for libel, and refusing to name sources, wheelchair bound porn publisher Larry Flynt showed up in a US Federal court wearing a diaper made from an American flag. This was calculated to mock a conservative demand for a Constitutional amendment against burning the flag.

1991- Irish Gays and Lesbians first barred by the Ancient Order of Hibernians from marching in the New York and Boston St Patrick’s Day Parades. They took it to the Supreme Court who ruled the Hibernians could bar from marching who ever they wanted to. They ban Irish anti-abortion activists too. So the controversy goes on.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which one of these people was not born in Ireland?
A)- Liam Neeson, b)-Errol Flynn, C) Sean O’Casey, D) Lola Montez

Answer: b) Errol Flynn was born in Tasmania, New Zealand. Liam Neeson was born in Belfast, Sean O-Casey in Dublin, and Lola Montez was born Betty James of County Sligo.

Question: Which one of these people was not born in Ireland?
A)- Liam Neeson, b)-Errol Flynn, C) Sean O’Casey, D) Lola Montez

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In Irish pubs on St. Patricks’ Day, why is it not wise to wear the color orange?
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History for 3/16/2010
Birthdays: President James Madison, Conrad Nagel, Dr. Josef Mengele the Angel of Death, Teresa Berganza, Christa Ludwig, Pat Nixon, Alice Bonheur, Jerry Lewis is 84, Bernardo Bertolucci, Eric Estrada is 61, Kate Nelligan, Isabelle Huppert is 58, Lauren Graham is 43

597 BC.- Babylonian King Nebuchanesser II captured Jerusalem and ended the Old Kingdom of Israel. He forced the Jews to relocate to Babylon and thus was the Babylonian Captivity. After Cyrus the Persian king attacked Babylon and allowed the Jews to go home two tribe’s disappeared- the Lost Tribes of Israel.

These events were the basis for the term Babylon to be associated with ultimate evil in so much Judeo-Christian apocalyptic writings. It’s been speculated by some scholars that the Israelites at this time worshiped many gods but by the time they left captivity they had trimmed down to one god, the storm god Yahweh.

In the ancient Roman religion this was the first day of nine days of fasting leading up to the Day of Blood, sacred to the Goddess Cybele. Although Jesus fasted in the wilderness, he never asked anyone else to. This pagan festival may be where the Christian Church developed the Lenten Fast.

50BC- After maneuvering Pompey and his senatorial enemies out of Rome, Julius Caesar entered the city and proclaimed a general amnesty. Between now and his murder in 44 he drained marshes, built forums, opened the first public libraries and started the first newspaper in human history. The Acta Diurna –The Daily Doings- a one sheet of the acts of the Senate and events. It was pasted on city walls or read by heralds.

37 AD- The Roman Emperor Tiberius had lived to a great old age and spent his last years at his private villa on the Isle of Capri. He had raised his sister Agrippina’s son Caligula to succeed him as Emperor upon his death. This day after weeks of failing health Tiberius seemed to breathe his last. Caligula took the signet ring from his finger and went out to receive the adulation of the Praetorian Guard and Senate as the new emperor. But suddenly word came that Tiberius had opened his eyes and was asking for wine. The embarrassed Caligula went back into the sickroom and himself smothered the old man with a pillow.

455 A.D.- Roman Emperor Valentinian III was assassinated by kinsmen of Aetius, the half barbarian Roman general who Valentinian had killed the previous September.

1758- THE ST. SABAA MASSACRE- The Apache had invited the westward expanding Spanish colonists to move into the Texas hill country near where Austin would one day be. This brought them into direct conflict with the fierce Commanche nation, just as the Apache had hoped. This day a Commanche war party descended upon the new Spanish Mission of St. Sabaa and wiped it out. 200 dead. After punitive expeditions failed the Spaniards wisely left the territory alone. It remained Commancheria until the American settlers overran it in the 1850s.

1778- In Paris, Benjamin Franklin first met Voltaire.

1792 -King Gustavus III Vasa of Sweden was assassinated at a masked ball. He had been warned and went incognito but the killers recognized him because of the bejeweled medals all over his costume. He was a good ruler to Sweden but like Catherine the Great of Russia had no use for democratic parliaments and ruled like an absolute monarch. Giusseppi Verdi later wrote an opera based on the incident, "Un Ballo en Maschera" and invented a love story where the King falls for the wife of his Prime Minister. He was later forced to revise his story however because the Swedish government resented their late king portrayed, as an adulterer. The King’s enemies in his time had accused him of being a child-molester. So to avoid any more hassle Verdi made Gustavo the Duke of Boston.


1830- DULLEST DAY IN HISTORY OF STOCK MARKET- only 31 shares traded for a grand total of $ 3,740 dollars.

1848- King Ludwig Ist of Bavaria abdicated over the scandal of his mistress LOLA MONTEZ . Lola started off as an Irish nymph named Betty James who changed her name and passed herself off as an Argentine flamenco dancer. Ludwig was so besotted with her that after awhile she was hiring and firing gov't officials as the Bavarian economy careened towards bankruptcy. Ludwig protested publicly that all Lola and he ever did was spend evenings reading aloud from Thomas a' Kempis "An Imitation of Christ". Privately he confessed she possessed extraordinary internal muscles...ahem....

He gave the crown to his brother Maximillian and she published a best selling book on beauty tips and toured the U.S..

1850- Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter published.

1861- TEXAS votes to join the Confederacy over the protests of elderly governor Sam Houston. Houston had argued that a better course to follow was to invade Mexico again and this time conquer all of it, after which the U.S would elect Houston President and he would redress all the Southerners grievances. Sam was a little out of it by now .
As the Texas legislature called out 7 times for Sam Houston to take the Oath to the Confederacy, Houston sat quietly in his chair whittling on a stick. He then retired to his ranch and died a year later. Thousands of Texans died in the Civil War and the state was under military occupation until 1877.

1906- The Rolls-Royce Motorcar Company incorporated. Mr. Charles Rolls and Sir William Royce quickly realized that they couldn’t compete with the mass produced low cost motorcars made by Henry Ford, so they appealed to the high end buyer with elegant hand made craftsmanship.

1913- Artist Aubrey Beardsley died of tuberculosis at 25. Having a religious conversion at the end of his life, but still the stickler for detail, his last words were :"Destroy all my erotic drawings...all the bad ones too...." Happily his friends did neither.

1921- On the final day of the 10th Communist Party Congress Lenin laid down the statutes barring dissent in Russia. From now on Anarchism, Socialism, Centrism, Trade Unionism, in fact any dissent or disagreement with the Soviet Communist Party from Right of Left would be seen as Counter-Revolutionary Dead-Meatism. Tired of arguing with old Bolsheviks over how Russian society should be transformed, he in effect stamped out the last sparks of democracy in Russia. The slogans of Russia belonging to the workers and peasants became just that- slogans. Russia really belonged to a small central committee controlling the Communist Party.

1926 -Robert Goddard launches the first liquid fueled rocket in Auburn Massachusetts. In later years he was invited to join Cal Tech and the Galcit group in forming the embryonic Jet Propulsion Lab. Goddard refused because at such a government facility he would no longer be the center of attention but just another scientist. Goddard set up the first testing grounds in Rosswell New Mexico.

1935- ADOLF HITLER surprised the world by announcing Germany's refusal to be bound by the Versailles Treaty anymore. He calls for universal conscription for a100 division army, and reveals the secret massive illegal German arms buildup and the Luftwaffe, now the world's largest air force. He then waited for the Allies reaction, which was nothing.

1968-THE MY-LAI MASSACRE- U.S. troops shot 400 Vietnamese civilians. The GI's were disgusted with the endless invisible ambushes and not being able to tell civilians from guerrillas. So this day they annihilated an entire village that intelligence said had aided in an ambush of an earlier patrol. They lined up people in front of an open pit and shot them down like the Nazis did a generation earlier. They got so carried away that a Huey helicopter gunship had to place itself between the soldiers and the fleeing women and children and threatened to fire if they didn't stop.
Atrocities conducted under wartime stress are sadly common in all wars, but this one and the clumsy attempt to cover it up particularly horrified the American public. The ensuing media coverage fostered a harsh public attitude towards returning veterans, unprecedented in American wars. Only one person, Lt. William Calley, went to jail. The surviving crew of the helicopter that stopped the massacre were finally acknowledged for their bravery in 1998.

1985- A.P. correspondent Terry Anderson kidnapped by terrorists in Beirut. He was held captive for seven years. 92 other foreigners were kidnapped including CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley who was tortured to death.

1994- Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding was arrested for obstructing the prosecution of the case of the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan.

2008- J.P. Morgan bought collapsing superbank Bear Sterns (BSC), the first major firm to fall in the global economic collapse of 2008. Two of their hedge-fund managers, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin lost $1.6 billion while telling investors that everything was fine.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Irish pubs on St. Patricks’ Day, why is it not wise to wear the color orange?

Answer: Green is the color of the Irish Republic, Orange is the color of Irish people of Ulster who are Protestant, sometimes called English Loyalists or Blood Orangemen. Their ancestors were brought to settle the territories by English King William of Orange, who defeated the Irish at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Question: In Irish pubs on St. Patricks’ Day, why is it not wise to wear the color orange?

Question Answered below: When Julius Caesar was warned, Beware the Ides of March, what does Ides mean?
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History for 3/15/2010
Birthdays: Andrew Jackson*, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg

* For many years in America Andy Jackson’s birthday was a public holiday.

508BC-525AD- In the Roman Republic this was the traditional day the newly elected Consuls and Senate assumed their offices and began governing.

44 B.C. -BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH- While attending the first day of the new Senate, Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by radical senators beneath the statue of his old enemy Pompey Magnus. Two of the murderers, Brutus and Cassius were former officers of Pompey to whom Caesar granted amnesty. Marcus Brutus was a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the Roman democracy. He was even rumored to have been Caesar's illegitimate son.


Even though Caesar had been stabbed 23 times, it still took him several hours to die, lying alone on the floor. Everyone was afraid to go back in. Unlike Shakespeare, Julius Caesar never said "Et Tu Brute'" Even you, Brutus? In Latin. His last words were the equivalent in Greek-"Touto kai teknon mou" which translates, "Even this my child?". Greek was to the Romans, like French is to us. Proving you can suffer multiple stab wounds, yet still be chic’.

1079-The Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan assassinated by followers of his old Vizier, Nizam Al Mulk. The vizer had been killed by the Assassins, the original terrorists of the Islamic world, hired by Alp Arslan. Witness to all this was Omar Al Khayyam, poet, mathematician and astronomer. Legend said Alp Arslan had mustachios so long he had to pin them up on his turban so he could shoot his bow. Arslans successor was Gelalladin or the Malik Shah. His reign was considered the high point of Seljuk civilization.

1493- Columbus returned to Palo, Spain from his first voyage to America. The Santa Maria had broke up on reefs in America and Captain Pinzon had taken the Pinta on ahead to take credit for himself, or Columbus so worried. He himself got home in the little bark the Nina and at one point had to put in at a Portuguese port where he and his men were impounded for a few days. Captain Pinzon did reach home first, but fortunately King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella refused to listen to him. When Pinzon got his own voyage to the New World, all the attention was on his navigator- Amerigo Vespucci.

1781-THE NEWBURGH CONFERENCE- The closest the United States ever came to a military dictatorship. George Washington's officers were fed up with the indecision of their bankrupt Congress. The Revolutionary War was over, but the army hadn’t been paid in months. Like Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army a century before, there were loud calls to march on the government. They even talked of establishing a junta of generals to run the United States! But what of their commander? The ringleaders assured: "we can handle the old man." General Washington called a meeting at his HQ at Newburgh, New Jersey and faced down his angry troops. He appealed for understanding and patriotism. Tears were shed when he put on his spectacles, implying he'd broken his health and had aged prematurely in the service of his country. He was only 49, yet he looked much older. That won them over. George Washington not only wasn’t "handled", but convinced the army to go their homes peacefully, paid with nothing but a paper IOU.

1782- The English House of Commons, fed up with the bungled American Revolution and the heavy-handed style of Lord North’s government, voted the first ever vote of no-confidence. The Lord North government resigned five days later.

1820- Maine became a state.

1865- Cross-dressing rebel Sue Mundy was hanged in Kentucky. Long haired soldier Jerome Clark once got drunk, and for a gag his buddies put him in a dress and declared him Queen of the May. Instead of being insulted, Clark liked being in drag and ravaged the countryside as the guerrilla leader Sue Mundy. Until the Yankees caught him no one was quite sure whether he was a man or woman.


1869-The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team. Players had been taking payments under the table for years to concentrate on their skills, now it was out in the open. Still some newspapers accused them of being "Shiftless young men debasing the game with their greed."

1913- President Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential news conference.

1915- Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming. He used so many of his relatives in production that Ogden Nash quipped: "Carl Laemmele has a very large Fammele." Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as it’s birthday.

1919- American veterans of World War One founded a veterans society on the model of the Civil War’s vets Grand Army of the Republic. This they called the American Legion.

1929- Scarface Al Capone was called before a Chicago grand jury to explain his involvement in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Big Al’s alibi was he was in Key Biscayne Florida at the time having lunch with the Dade County prosecutor. They couldn’t pin nothing on him and no one was ever charged with the massacre.

1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesingers Looney Tunes cartoon studio.

1941- The daughter of Cecil B.DeMille Katherine DeMille had married actor Anthony Quinn. This day tragedy struck the family. On a visit to Cecil B.’s estate the couple’s three year old son Christopher walked off into neighbor W.C. Fields yard where he fell into Fields unsupervised swimming pool and drowned. The parents were so shattered they divorced afterwards. Anthony Quinn refused to talk about the rest of his long life. Fields was so depressed he had the pool filled in and landscaped so no sign of the tragedy would remain.

1944- The DeHAVILAND CASE- A judge rules actress Olivia DeHaviland free of her exclusive seven year personal contract to Warner Bros. For years movie stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney had been fighting in court the system of exclusive contracts the studios used to keep them under control. They had no choice in the type of films they did, no residuals and studios could rent them out to other studios for higher fees and keep the money. If the actor complained they were put on disciplinary leave by the studio without pay and the penalty time added onto the end of their contract. Garbo called it the closest thing to White Slavery. Some contracts even ordered some stars not to get married for fear it would erode their sex appeal. After the DeHaviland Case movie stars got more freedom to choose roles.

1950- Disney’s "Cinderella" opens. Their first animated fairy tale story since 1942.

1956- Lerner & Lowe’s musical "My Fair Lady" premiered.

1962- The discovery of anti-matter.

1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time.

1969- Worst clashes between Soviet Russia and Red China across their long mutual border. While the free world feared a monolithic Global Communist conspiracy the fact was the animosity between Russia and China got so bad it threatened to go nuclear. During a lighter incident the Chinese People’s Army showed what they thought of their Russian comrades by lining up along a river bank, dropping their trousers, bending over and giving them a mass-mooning. The next time the Chinese did it the Russians were ready. As their butts went up the Russians held up portraits of Mao Tse Tung, the Chinese leader. The moonings stopped.

1969- Two young heirs to the Polident false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.

1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.

1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show?

1985- THE SAVINGS & LOAN SCANDALS- The Reagan White House’s policy of removing all business regulation played havoc with the savings & loan system. The problem became a public issue when this day Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio suspended business in thrift banks in his state to stop the collapse of the system. One of the most underreported and little understood stories of the 1980’s the cost to clean up the Savings & Loan mess came out to be near $28 billion dollars, double the total cost to win World War Two. Scores of crooked Savings & Loan execs like Charles Keating accumulated vast fortunes, leaving you and I to pay the bills.

1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered domain site on the Internet.

2004- Cal Tech Scientists announce the discovery of Planet Xenia, the tenth planet orbiting our Sun, beyond Pluto. Some want to call it Sedna, an Inuit goddess who lived under the ice.
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Yesterday’s question: When Julius Caesar was warned, Beware the Ides of March, what does Ides mean?.

Answer: The old Roman calendar was made up of three weeks of ten days each, The first week the Kalends, the second week the Ides, and the third week the Nones. We really remember it because of Shakespeare’s play, when the soothsayer warned Julius Caesar, Beware the Ides of March! For the rest, see above- 44BC.

Question: When Julius Caesar was warned, Beware the Ides of March, what does Ides mean?.

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who were King Vidor, Howard Hawks, Rouben Mamoulian and Wild Bill Wellman?
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History for 3/14/2010
Birthdays: Georg Phillip Telemann, Johann Strauss Sr., Albert Einstein, Casey Jones, Quincy Jones is 78, astronaut Frank Borman, Les Brown, Hank Ketcham, Wolfgang Petersen, Diane Arbus, Chris Klein, Michael Cain born Maurice Mickelwhite is 77, Billy Crystal is 62

Happy Pi Day (Einstein's b-day) 3-14 geek stuff.

44BC –The night before their planned assassination of Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius met with the other conspirators. They had heard that tomorrow at the opening of the senate, outgoing consul Lucius Cotta planned to declare Caesar a king. The senators resolved to kill him, then debated whether they should then kill more of Caesars followers like Marc Anthony and Octavian. Marcus Brutus successfully argued that if they killed all their political enemies, then this gesture would just look like another partisan brawl. They would strike down one man, the dictator Caesar, in the name of Liberty and all would respect the purity of their motives. It turned out this was a big mistake, because the men whose lives they spared, were the ones who hunted them down.

44BC- This same night Julius Caesar held a dinner party. Guests remembered at one point the conversation went to the topic-What is the best kind of Death? Caesar answered: " That which is quick and unexpected."

1757- THE ADMIRAL WAS SHOT AT NOON- English Admiral of the Blue John Byng was shot by firing squad on the poopdeck of his own flagship, the HMS Monarch. He had lost a battle off Minorca to the French fleet so was court-martialed. The admiral was seen as a scapegoat for London's slow response to the enemy threat to Minorca. Byng had already been absolved by court martial of cowardice and treason, he himself wondered just why he was being shot. Pleas for mercy even came from his French enemy the Marquis De Gallissoniere. Years later whenever the Duke of Wellington or Lord Nelson was going through a bad time they would wonder: " If I fail, I'll probably be shot like Byng..."
The writer Voltaire has his comic hero Candide entering Portsmouth Harbor, witnessing an admiral being shot. When he asks why, his English guide replies "It is good idea to shoot an admiral from time to time..."

1794- Eli Whitney patented the Cotton "Gin" short for engine. Some folks call this simple machine the beginning of American Industry. However it also revitalized the institution of Slavery, which had been dying out economically the way it had in Europe and the northern states. Suddenly huge fields needed hundreds of laborers to pick cotton.

1883- Karl Marx died in London. Marx's last words were:" Get out of Here!
Last words are for fools who haven't said enough already!"

1885- Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Mikado premiered in London.

1923- President Warren Harding became the first President to file an Income Tax Return..

1932-Inventor GEORGE EASTMAN shot himself- The inventor of the Roll-film camera, who named his celluloid strips 'film' and founded Eastman/Kodak. He had been suffering from a long illness and left the note: " To my friends: The End is near, why wait? "

1941- Xavier Cugat and his orchestra recorded "Babalu".

1943- Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" premieres. George Szell conducting. Young Leonard Bernstein once asked Copland how he could write more "American" sounding music. The maestro answered:" Lenny, just shuttup and write. You're American. It's all going to sound that way anyway!"

1967- Nine executives of the German pharmaceutical firm Grunethal were indicted over the Thalidomide scandal. Thalidomide was prescribed as a sedative for pregnant women , but the drug caused thousands of children to be born with deformed limbs.

1986- The IPO or initial public offering of stock of a new company called Microsoft. Twenty-seven dollars a share.

1991- Lyricist Howard Ashman ( Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) passed away of HIV/AIDS.

1998- The epic disaster movie Titanic surpassed Star Wars and Jurassic Park as the greatest money earning film ever. It cost over $200 million to make but it earned at least $1 billion in box office alone. Quote director James Cameron: I’m King of the World!!
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Quiz: Who were King Vidor, Howard Hawks, Rouben Mamoulian and Wild Bill Wellman?

Answer: Hollywood movie directors during the 1930s.

Quiz: Who were King Vidor, Howard Hawks, Rouben Mamoulian and Wild Bill Wellman?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was the Manchester Baby?
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History 3/13/2010
Birthdays: Hugh Walpole, Charles Earl Grey 1764-English Prime Minister whom the tea blend 'Earl Grey Tea " is named for, Pope Innocent XII (1615), Abigail Powers Filmore- First Lady of Milard Filmore, Hugo Wolf, Sammy Kaye, Danny Kaye, Neil Sedaka, L. Ron Hubbard, Dana Delaney, William Macy, Dick Katz, Annabeth Gish

27BC- AUGUSTUS BECOMES FIRST ROMAN EMPEROR- For about a hundred years the Roman Republic had been a football contested for by powerful politicians- Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Mark Anthony and Lucullus. Julius Caesar had said that Rome was a Republic in name only. Since vanquishing Anthony & Cleopata, Caesar Octavian had been the first man in Rome, yet he needed to solidify his hold on power. But Romans hated the title of King. So this day in a carefully staged bit of political theater, Octavian told the Senate he was tired of responsibility. He would resign all his offices and retire. Senators shouted for him to reconsider. They voted him the title GAIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS, IMPERATOR- PRINCEPS. Imperator used to be the name for a generals military authority and we get the word Emperor, Kaiser and Czar came from it. Princeps meant First Citizen, Augustus meant Father of His Country- with all the absolute power a father had in his family. Rome had emperors until 476AD and continued on at Constantinople until 1453.

4 B.C.- King Herod the Great died. The vibrant king who guided Israel to independence through Rome’s Civil Wars and rebuilt the temple of Solomon aged badly. He became increasingly paranoid. When a bastard son convinced him his legitimate offspring was trying to kill him, he had them executed. This may be the explanation why he could order the infamous scene in the New Testament known as the Massacre of the Innocents. On his deathbed Herod ordered village elders across Israel rounded up and killed when he died. " I know I am hated, so I want all Israel to mourn". After his death his guards ignored the order and released the elders.

1639- Richard Burbage died. Burbage was the famed Elizabethan actor and friend of William Shakespeare. On his tombstone was a simple epitaph- EXIT BURBAGE.

1758- BATTLE ON THE SNOWSHOES-Col. Robert Rogers with "Roger's Rangers" American colonial frontiersmen in British service, got ambushed by a large French Huron Indian warparty. The leathershirts scatter and Rogers eludes his pursuers by walking with his snowshoes turned backwards from the edge of a cliff. When the Indians see his tracks ending into thin air and then spot his figure running in the valley below they decided the Hipi-Manitou Spirit was with him, so they let him go.

1781-the discovery of the planet Uranus by British astronomer William Herschel. The first planet discovered since prehistoric times. Galileo and Kepler used their early telescopes to spot the rings and Saturn and moons of Jupiter, but no planets. He originally wanted to call his discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III, but other astronomers convinced him to keep to the pattern of naming planets after Greek and Roman mythology. Hershel emigrated from Germany and played violin in several symphony orchestras before becoming interested in grinding lenses and astronomy. He brought his sister over and she became an opera diva as well as observing and naming 5 comets.

1852-UNCLE SAM born.-The familiar image first appeared as a cartoon in the New York Lantern. The named derived from the nickname of an old customs agent, Sam Wilson, who stamped U.S. on goods moving down river from Canada. Civil War hero Ulysses Simpson Grant or U.S. Grant was also called Sam by his friends. The famous image on the 1918 recruiting poster of Uncle Sam pointing and saying 'I want You!" was done by James Montgomery Flagg reworking a popular British poster of Earl Kitchener. The face Flagg used for Sam was himself in a mirror.

1865- At the request of Gen. Robert E. Lee the Confederate Congress authorized the enlistment of Black soldiers to fight for Dixie. Incredibly, they got 360 volunteers.

1881-Czar Alexander II assassinated. -He was the Czar-Liberator that freed the Russian serfs but he was still seen by patriotic movements as a symbol of oppression.
On this day young revolutionaries of the People’s Will movement had already hurled one bomb at the Czar's carriage but harmed no one. The Czar was getting out when another revolutionary (this one was Polish) stepped forward shouting "It's too early to thank God!" And threw a bomb which blew Alexanders legs off. Later in the spring thaw St. Petersburg housewives were finding little bits of Czar on their rooftops when they cleaned.

1884- Chester Greenwood of Maine invented ear muffs.

1920-THE KAPP PUTSCH - In postwar Berlin anarchy reigned as Bolshevik and right wing paramilitary groups fought in the streets for control. On this day the Kaiser's former army officers march on Berlin and try and overthrow the Weimar Republic and restore the monarchy. They fail but the weak government can do no more than let them march away scot free. They even pause to fire into a heckling crowd of civilians. After this rebuff the old Prussian aristocratically -led German Army would remain aloof from politics until getting behind Hitler's Reich in the late 1930’s. One of the central conspirators of the Putsch was a bizarre figure named Trebitsch Lincoln, a Hungarian Jew who moved to England, ran for Parliament and won, was a German spy during the World War One, and finished his life as a Lama in Tibet named Chao-Kung.

1928- The White House never had much security. When you rang the bell President Thomas Jefferson answered the door himself. Abe Lincoln had one bodyguard and after the Civil War the one soldier guarding the front door was removed. Presidents like Grant & McKinley would take a stroll at night with no guards. Children played baseball and sheep grazed on the White House lawn. This night President Herbert Hoover was having a dinner party with Hollywood producer David O’ Selznik when a disheveled stranger appeared at table table. He was a homeless man who wanted to ask the President for a job. He just walked through the front door while the butler was preoccupied. The next day by Executive Order the Secret Service took over direct control of the White House security and could command the D.C. police.

1938- At the height of Stalin’s purges top Bolshevik Nicholai Bukharin was shot.

1939-Hollywood recognizes the Screen Director’s Guild later called he DGA. After a nasty battle lasting several years Guild President Frank Capra signs the contracts representing 80% of movie directors. They also contractually ensure the custom of the directors credit being the last one seen at the opening title sequence of a film. Directors had tried to unionize as early as 1926 but were intimidated by the studio threat of 'perpetual blacklisting'.

1943- Radio station WNYC goes on the air.

1944- Abbot & Costello copyrighted their baseball routine ‘Who’s on First?"

1969- Disney’s movie comedy about a Volkswagen "The Love Bug" premiered.

1983- The Larry King Show debuted on HBO, later moving to CNN.

1988-Overly endowed porn star John Holmes, also called Johnny Wad, died of HIV/AIDS. He claimed to have had sex with 14,000 women and a few men in his career, but that he contracted the disease through intravenous drug use. He also got involved with some drug dealers and was implicated in a murder. The film Boogie Nights was based on him.

1997- In Malaysia, a man named Hassan Abdallah had his penis cut off by his wife in his sleep. Her excuse was she claimed she was sleep walking and only dreamt she was strangling him. Uh- huh….?

2002-In a national press conference President George W. Bush declared he did not know where top 9-11 terrorist Osama Ben Laden was, and that he no longer cared much about him.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the Manchester Baby?

Answer: One of the earliest electronic computers the Mark I, built in 1946 in Manchester University UK, by Ron Kilbide and Alan Turing. It could not only store some data, but it was the first to store a program for use later.