Quiz: Which one of these was not a real Dark Ages person? Ethelread the Unready, John Softsword, Ketil Ship-Breasts, Gretel the Confused, Erling the Lop-sided, Thorfin Ironbeard.

Yesterdays Quiz Answered below: What event was called “ the Great Skeedaddle?”
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History for 7/21/2012
Birthdays: Ernest Hemingway, Issac Stern, Marshal McCluhan, Norman Jewison is 85, Don Knotts, Janet Reno, Gary Trudeau the creator of Doonesbury, Ernst Shuftan- inventor of the "Shuftan Effect", a cheap way of combining actors with miniatures by shooting through mirrors. All those "Lost World" Cesar Romero fighting the giant Iguanas were done that way. Edward Herman, Robin Williams is 60, Josh Harnett is 34

Happy National Zippo Lighter Day. Smoking is bad but Zippos are cool- another one of life’s mysteries.

365AD- The Egyptian city of Alexandria was devastated by an earthquake. The tremor may have toppled the famous Pharos lighthouse. The quake caused the waters of the harbor to recede then return with tsunami force.

1588-the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon, Seville, Corunna and Cadiz to attack England. One of the sailors was playwright and poet Lope De Vega.

1605- The false Dmitri crowned Czar in Moscow. Dmitri was a Lithuanian priest named Grishka who claimed to be the dead child of Ivan the Terrible come back to life. His claim was backed up with a powerful Polish magnate's private army, the Mniszechs. He captured Moscow as Czar Boris Gudunov died but couldn't hold it long.

1784- Abigail Adams went by coach from the English Channel via Canterbury to London to join her husband John Adams. Adams was to assume his post as first ambassador to the Court of Saint James from the new nation of the United States. Abigail wrote of her coach journey how when they passed the area called Blackheath there was fear of robbers and highwaymen. She saw one robber captured, and shuddered that he would soon be hanged. She wrote in her diary:” It is good that such terrible things do not happen in America!” Why, women alone travel the roads in perfect safety!” Hmm, I guess times have changed a bit since then…

1798- "Soldiers! Forty Centuries look down upon you! “The Battle of the Pyramids- Napoleon's cannon mowed down the Mamelukes, who had ruled Egypt since the Crusades. He was so impressed with their courage that he later enlisted a corps of them in his own army. It was speculated around this time the Sphinx lost it's nose. French troops used the Sphinx for target practice. The battle was actually fought a distance from the Pyramids, but Nappy disliked the title Battle of Embaba’s Melon Patch, so Battle of the Pyramids it was.

1821- George IV crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey, but without his Queen Caroline. They couldn't stand one another and he was trying to get a divorce. So when she showed up in her state carriage for the coronation, on the kings orders the Lords and Peers rushed to shut the cathedral doors, leaving her out in the crowd of spectators.

1861- BATTLE OF BULL RUN or FIRST MANASSAS- First major engagement of the Civil War. Irwin McDowell's Yankees and Pierre Beauregard's Confederates had unknowingly adopted the exact same battle plan, feint with right and strike around the left. They would have completely marched around each other if they hadn't blundered together. The North was so confident of victory Washington society turned out with picnic baskets to watch the fun.

What they saw was a horrible Union defeat and they were caught in the mob of panicked soldiers running back to the Capitol called the Great Skeedadddle. Uniforms weren't standard yet and many states sent their men in colorful militia costumes. The union men from Wisconsin wore grey and the Rebels from Pensacola Florida wore blue. Both were shot at by their own sides. Rebel General Thomas Jackson was holding off union assaults when a dying general shouted : "Look, there stands Jackson like a stone wall!" The nickname stuck.

Stonewall Jackson had told his men:" When you charge, howl like furies." For the first time the famous Rebel Yell was heard. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was so nervous he rushed to the battlefield in a locomotive. When he arrived on the scene he tried to make a speech to rally the spirits of some ragged soldiers he thought had fled. Turned out they were Stonewall Jackson's veterans, just resting after they won the battle for him.

Bull Run could have been an American Waterloo, because the Yankee army was completely destroyed, and nothing stood between the southerners and the White House, only 40 miles away. But the greybacks were also disorganized and exhausted, so the pursuit was called off. The Civil War would not be won in one big battle, but would drag on for four bloody years.

1865- The Civil War over and Abraham Lincoln dead, the hard line cabinet of Pres.Andrew Johnson voted to put Confederate ex-president Jefferson Davis on trial for treason. Former lawyer Davis was hoping for just such a trial; so he could force the issue of the Constitutional legality of secession out into the open and maybe even get a ruling from the Supreme Court. It was just for these reasons that cooler heads prevailed and the treason charge was never acted upon. After two years in prison Davis was quietly released and allowed to retire.

1884- In one of the dirtiest elections in U.S. history, the New York Post broke the story of Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland fathering a child out of wedlock and abandoning the mother. Cleveland admitted paternity but won election anyway, because the Republican James G. Blaine was even worse. Just as Cleveland pioneered the Democratic preoccupation with sex scandals, Blaine pioneered the cozy relationship between the Republican Party and big business. He had taken so many kickbacks, his nickname was the Tatooed Man. A leading Protestant divine stood with Blaine and accused the Democratic Party of being the 'party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion."

Every Irishman in the country immediately voted for Cleveland. (around forty per cent of the population of New York, alone, was Irish at the time). Republicans chanted "Ma, Ma! Where’s My Pa!- Dems countered" He’s Going to the White House, Ha Ha Ha!" another ditty was: "Mary is healthy and so is the Kid, We Voted for Cleveland and we’re damn glad we did!"

Aren’t you glad we don’t have name-calling negative election campaigns like that today, boys & girls?

1917-Ford introduces their first truck, the Model TT. It weighed one ton and had a new innovation not in regular automobiles, a reverse gear.

1936- Republican Spanish troops besiege the Fascist fortress of ALCAZAR. They maintained a telephone hookup with the commander, Colonel Moscardo, to try and convince him to surrender. At one point they told him they were going to shoot his son if he didn't give up. The colonel said: " Put my son on the phone!" Hello son?" Put your faith in God, shout Viva Espana, and Die like a Man!" Moscardo never surrendered and the siege was broken.

1944- Democratic Presidential Convention nominates Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri to be Franklin Roosevelt's Vice President on the second ballot. As early as December 1943 the Democratic party knew FDR was a dying man. Whoever was his running mate would in all likelyhood become President. With World War Two not finished and the United Nations to create, this was a pretty important choice.

The incumbent Vice President was Henry Wallace, an eccentric who had a guru, sent field scientists to China and India to look for traces of teenage Jesus, and who believed Joe Stalin's Russia was the model for the American economy to pull out of the Depression. Democratic Party Chairman Robert Haneghan pulled every string he had to get Wallace off the ticket and Truman on. Truman himself didn't want the job and Roosevelt was promising it to everyone he met.

At last Truman agreed, and Hanaghan barred a pro-Wallace demonstration. He even sent a man with an ax upstairs to threaten the convention organist to stop playing "The Corn Grows High in IOWA" (Wallace's home state). Truman talked to Roosevelt only once or twice before FDR died and Truman had to decide whether to drop the A-Bomb and form the post-war world. Wallace tried a third party presidential run with Chet "the Singing Cowboy" Taylor as running mate in 1948. Robert Haneghan said-"The only epitaph I want on my tombstone is: AT LEAST HE PREVENTED HENRY WALLACE FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT!"

1954- The Fellowship of the Rings, first book of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, first published. C.S. Lewis said the book “came forth like thunder on a summers day..”

1959- Judge Frederick van Pelt-Bryan ruled that Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence was not pornography and therefore could be sent through the postal system.

1969- “That’s One Small Step for Man..” Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon.

1970- In Egypt the Aswan High Dam completed, finally controlling the annual summer flooding of the Nile.

1974- Constantin Karamanlis returned to Greece from exile to signal the restoration of Greek democracy after the rule of the Colonels Junta fell.

1980- SAG went on strike for actor's residuals from video cassette and cable t.v. sales.
The actors hit the bricks twice more, in 1988 and 2000.
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Yesterday’s Question: What event was called “ the Great Skeedaddle?”

Answer: When the Yankee Army in a panic ran away from the Battle of Bull Run,. See above 1861.

Quiz: What event was called “ the Great Skeedaddle?”

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: England has had been ruled by kings since Alfred the Great in 885. Has England ever been governed without a king?
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history for 7/20/2012
Birthdays: Petrarch, Sir Edmund Hilary, Lord Elgin, Anne Hutchinson, Natalie Wood, Theda Bara the Vamp, Carlos Santana, Lord Reith, the first Director General of the BBC. Giselle Bunchen is 32, Sandra Oh is 41, Harrison Ellenshaw, Diana Rigg is 74

1402- Near Ankara (Angora), the armies of the Ottoman Sultan of Turkey were destroyed by a Tartar invasion led by Tamerlane.

1420- Czech leader John Ziska led the Hussite rebels to defeat the German Emperor Sigismund at Witkowo Hill, freeing the besieged capitol Prague. Ziska led armies in battle despite losing both eyes in fighting. When he finally died, he left instructions to have his body skinned and the skin stretched onto a war drum.

1773-The Vatican outlaws the Society of Jesus aka the Jesuits. The pope had gotten tired of all their intrigues and foreign entanglements. They went into hiding but were reformed in 1820. I noticed that at this time all their missionaries were withdrawn from the New World and replaced with Franciscans like Fra. Junipero Serra, who named all the major California cities after Franciscan Saints like San Diego. I wonder if a Jesuit had founded Los Angeles he might have named it "Ignatius Loyola" and we'd all have to sing:" I Love I.L. !"

1804 Sir Richard Owen born. He was the British scientist who coined the term Dinosaur for all the ancient lizard fossils being dug up. Yet he came to oppose Darwin’s theories.

1858 - Fee 1st charged to see a baseball game, 50 cents. NY beat Brooklyn 22-18.

1868 - 1st use of tax stamps on cigarettes.

1869- Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and in the Holy Land first published. If you ever wondered what was the most popular book in America during the 19th Century, it was not Moby Dick, War & Peace, Jane Eyre or David Copperfield. The all time best selling book in America during the Victorian Era was a sappy travel diary" Tent Life in the Holy Land "by a now forgotten author William Prime. Twain had taken the Grand Tour abroad that was fashionable with the new American wealthy classes and thought he’d have some fun recounting his own trip” To cross the Sea of Galilee by boat, a big local Arab demanded eight dollars for use of his miserable conveyance. No wonder Christ preferred to walk.”

1877-Russians besiege Turkish held Plevna in Bosnia.

1879- Joel Chandler Harris published in the Atlanta Constitution "The Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox as Told by Uncle Remus". The first Uncle Remus stories. Harris collected most of the stories from African American storytellers.

1881- Sitting Bull returned to U.S. territory and surrendered. He and his people had been residing in Canada since the Little Big Horn. When Canadian officials first challenged them being in Canada, Bull produced out of his medicine bag old treaty medals stamped with King George III on them. He said "We also are the children of the Great Redcoat Mother."

1919- Pancho Villa assassinated while driving in his new Dodge. Even with 16 bullets in him he still managed to kill one of his attackers. Three years later someone broke into his grave and stole his head.

1920- On the last day of testimony at the Scopes Monkey Trial defense attorney Clarence Darrow surprised everyone by calling prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan to the witness stand. In a dramatic all day debate Darrow and Bryan grappled over the validity of the Bible vs, Charles Darwin’s theory. The confrontation was dramatized in Stanley Kramer’s 1965 film “Inherit the Wind”.

1941-Bob Clampett's cartoon"the Great Piggy Bank Robbery" with Daffy Duck as Duck Tracy. "i' m gonna rrrrrrrrrrrubbb ya out, see !"

1944- VALKYRIE, THE GENERALS PLOT- German generals plot to kill Adolf Hitler, take over the Third Reich and declare a ceasefire with the Allies. During a conference at Hitlers strategic HQ at Rastenberg Prussia one-eyed Count von Stauffenburg planted a suitcase-bomb next to Hitler's feet and excused himself. But someone bumped against it and moved it out of the way. After watching the massive explosion Stauffenburg then relayed the code word "Valkyrie". This meant the plotters could begin to arrest key Nazis, disarm the SS and form a provisional government with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel as President.

In the explosion many were killed but amazingly Hitler only suffered a punctured eardrum and a stiff left arm. He went on nationwide radio to announce he was all right, and even read the weather in day's newspaper to prove it was not pre-recorded. The coup plotters were rounded up and executed, some hung with piano wire. Their deaths were filmed for Hitler's amusement at home. Rommel the Desert Fox was forced to commit suicide. After 5000 arrests the purge was halted only when an allied bombing hit the courtroom, and blew up the judge.

1951- King Abdallah of Jordan was shot and killed at the Al Acqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by a Palestinian. He was attending a memorial service for the Prime Minister of Lebanon who had also been assassinated. He was an enemy of the Palestinian leader the Grand Mufti and resisted the Mufti’s attempts to declare a Palestinian state after Israel’s War of Independence.

Abdallah claimed all Palestinian lands not part of Israel should be part of Jordan. Abdallah then angered the Palestinians further by wanting to make peace with Israel and declaring that the Jews had every right to worship at their holy places like the Wailing Wall, then under Jordanian control. Watching his grandfather killed was young future King Hussein, who was never that fond of Palestinians afterwards. He drove them out of his country in 1972 spawning the Black September Movement.

1954- As part of the settlement brokered by the United Nations for the French to leave colonial Indochina, the country was divided in half at the 17th parallel, with the Communists in North Vietnam and the non-Communists in the South. This set the stage for the next phase of wars that would last until unification in 1975.

1963- Lt. Colonel John Paul Vann, acknowledged one of the finest combat field commanders in the service, scheduled a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. He planned to tell them that further American military involvement in Vietnam was pointless. The generals already knew his purpose and refused to meet with him. Afterwards he was slowly pushed him out of the army for having an attitude problem. He died in combat as a civilian advisor near Da Nang in 1967.

1964 –The first surfin' record to go #1-Jan & Dean's "Surf City"

1968 - Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" became the first heavy metal song to
hit the pop charts. The song was written as “ In the Garden of Eden” but singer Doug Ingle was so drunk and stoned, In a Gadda Da Vida was all that he could slur out.

1969-Tranquility Base- The Eagle has Landed. Apollo11’s Lunar Module the LEM first landed humans on the Moon. The astronauts spent a night’s sleep and preparing and stepped out on the Lunar surface the next day.

1973- Bruce Lee died of cerebral edema one month before his last film Enter the Dragon premiered. The handsome martial arts movie star single-handedly made Kung Fu a national craze and the Chop-Socky genre film a regular in world movie theaters. He was buried in his Enter The Dragon costume. Bruce Lee was 33.

1976-Warner\Lambert, makers of Trident sugarless gum, comes out with their famous slogan "Sugarless gum is recommended by four out of five dentists who chew gum". When people asked what gum did the fifth dentist recommend, they were brushed.

1976- The Viking I probe successfully landed on Mars.

1984 - Jim Fixx, creator of the Jogging craze through his hit book Running, died at 52 of a heart attack. Apologists for a health advocate dying so young, say Fixx would have died even younger without his physical routine. The creator of PowerBars also died in his fifties. Pass me another donut.

1994 - OJ Simpson offers $500,000 reward for evidence of ex-wife Nicole’s klller. No clues or suspects other than himself ever appeared. As David Letterman later said" OJ began to vigorously search for the real killer on all the major golf courses of the nation."

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Yesterday’s Quiz: England has had been ruled by kings since Alfred the Great in 885. Has England ever been governed without a king?

Answer:.After the end of the English Civil War, in 1649 King Charles Ist was beheaded, After three years of a council of state, Puritan General Oliver Cromwell had the emblems of royalty destroyed and ruled England as The Lord Protector, namely the head of a junta of generals. Soon after Cromwell’s death in 1658, the king’s son Charles II was brought back and monarchy restored.

Quiz: England has had been ruled by kings since Alfred the Great in 885. Has England ever been governed without a king?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In 1996 Britain turned over Hong Kong to China. There was one other part of China that was own by a different European country that had to be turned over as well. What was it?
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History for 7/19/2012
Birthdays: Edgar Degas, Col. Samuel Colt, Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vicki Carr, Max Fleischer, Lizzie Borden, Ille Nastase, George McGovern is 90, Brian Harold May of Queen, Atom Egoyan, Anthony Edwards, Campbell Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch ( the BBC's Sherlock) is 36

64 A.D. THE BURNING OF ROME- As the city burned, Mad emperor Nero was inspired to run up to an observation platform and sing an elegy on the destruction of Troy while accompanying himself on the lyre. Romans later became suspicious when the areas most affected by the fire on the Palatine Hill were expropriated by the Emperor to build his palace, the Golden House.

The fire had started to die out after six days, but flared up again on the grounds of the estate of Tigellinus, an aide to Nero. The fire burned for nine days total and destroyed two thirds of the city, including a temple built by Romulus, and the shrine of the Vestal Virgins.

711 A.D. Battle of Medina-Sidonia- The Moors conquered most of Spain. When he first landed, the Moorish commander Tarik Bin Ziyad ordered his landing ships burned. He addressed his warriors: " ...The enemy is in front of you and the sea behind you... You have no choice but victory!” They pushed the Christian Spaniards north to a thin strip up against the Pyrenees Mountains. The Moors weren’t driven back until 1492. Until then the Emirs of Granada and Cordoba set up lavish courts where great sums were spent on poets, artists, mathematicians and scientists.

1500-In the Vatican, Lucretzia Borgia’s second husband Duke Alfonso of Naples was stabbed to death by men sent by her brother Caesar Borgia. Enemies of the Borgias said Caesar was jealous and had an unnatural passion for his sister, but the real reasons for the murder were political. Alfonso was angry about Caesar’s alliance with France, the enemy of Naples. Caesar had sent men attack Alfonso as he was leaving Saint Peters but he fought them off and recovered. While convalescing he spotted Caesar from his sickbed window, grabbed a bow and arrow and tried to shoot him. Then Caesar had him whacked. Cardinal Sforza, who arranged the marriage was later poisoned.

1553-Lady Jane Grey deposed after being Queen of England for nine days. When Henry VIII's sickly son died at 15 the Protestant grandees panicked that the next in line to the throne was the bigoted catholic daughter Mary Tudor. So they attempted a bit of dynastic sleight of hand with this distant protestant cousin. (remember Elizabeth was still considered illegitimate). It didn't wash and Mary soon earned the sobriquet "Bloody Mary" by having all their heads.

1629- Communications between Europe and America in the colonial period were always spotty and confused. The fastest news could travel across the Atlantic was two months. On this day an English expedition attacked the French settlement of Quebec and captured Governor Samuel Champlain. Shortly afterwards a message came from London saying the war had been over for two months and they should let him go and apologize.

1717- George Frederich Handel premiered his suite the Water Music for a procession of King George II on pleasure boats from Whitehall to Lambeth Palace.

1799- THE ROSETTA STONE DISCOVERED. During Napoleons campaign in Egypt several soldiers digging a latrine uncover a black basalt slab with several forms of writing all over it.

In 1821 Francois Champolion figured it out. The stone was the key to translating Egyptian hieroglyphics, sort of an ancient Babelfish. The document in honor of Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy is written three times. Once in Hieroglyphs (sacred letters of Ancient Egypt), then in Hieratic (governmental cursive type, a simpler form of Hieroglyphs used for texts unrelated to the Temple and Religion) and in Coptic, the same Egyptian language written in Greek letters. Since Champolion knew Greek, and had contacts with Egyptian Christian priests who spoke Coptic..The rest was easy.

Before the Rosetta Stone people thought Egyptian hieroglyphics were just magical symbols, but after the stones discovery the long mute voice of Ancient Egyptian civilization was heard again. Prayers, Literature and Poetry could now be understood. It was like the discovery of a long dead world.

1848- THE SENECA FALLS DECLARATION- The Birth of the American Woman's Rights Movement. In a Wesleyan Chapel 200 women delegates heard Lucretzia Mott and Elizabeth Cady-Stanton explained the case for women to be treated as equal citizens under the law. Frederick Douglas attended and admitted that at first he was a skeptic, but he left convinced.

1878- In New Mexico Territory the climax of the Lincoln County Wars, a feud between cattle barons and smaller independent ranchers. John Tunstall's attorney Big Jim McSween and his men including outlaw Billy the Kid were surrounded by a large force of rancher Murphy’s men backed up by militia with a Gatling gun and a howitzer. The Murphy men set the house on fire and shot the defenders as they rushed out. Billy the Kid blasted his way out to freedom. Big Jim McSween tried to surrender but was shot down.

1879- Doc Holiday had opened a saloon with a partner in Las Vegas, New Mexico. An army scout named Mike Gordon got mad at one of his dance hall girls, went out into the street and started firing wildly into the saloon. Doc Holiday came out, shot Gordon dead with one bullet, then went back in and calmly resumed his poker game.

1900- The first line of the Paris Metro underground dedicated. Ligne 1 Porte Vincennes.

1913 - Billboard Magazine publishes earliest known "Last Week's 10 Best Sellers among
Popular Songs" Malinda's Wedding Day is #1

1932- writer Daphne du Maurier married General Frederick Browning.

1934- In an affidavit dated this day an old blacksmith from Pittsburgh named Louis Davarich claimed in 1899 he flew in a flying machine before the Wright Brothers. The inventor was a German immigrant named Gustav Whitehead and he designed a monoplane powered by a small steam engine. If true this would predate the Wright Brothers by 5 years, but Whitehead never documented nor published his discoveries, did not apply for a patent and died poor and forgotten in 1927. Is it true? Believe it or not!

1939 - Dr Roy P Scholz is 1st surgeon to use fiberglass sutures, replacing cat’s intestines and wool thread.

1941 - British PM Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign. By coincidence the letter "V" in morse code corresponded with the opening notes of Beethoven ‘s 5th symphony "Dit-Dit-Dit Daaah." making it the musical theme of the BBC overseas radio service war news. If you ever lived in England you would know that reversing the two fingers sign is an insult akin to flashing someone the middle finger.

1942-Operation Drumroll cancelled. Germans withdraw U-Boats stationed off the US coastline because of effective US counter-submarine measures.

1950- Argh Mateys! Walt Disney’s Treasure Island premiered, with Robert Newton as the archetypical Long John Silver.

1952- Several UFO’s appeared on the radar of Washington DC’s National Airport. So many in fact that the Air Force was obliged to hold a news conference to calm public fears. They were dismissed as temperature inversions. Uh, huh…

1957 - 1st rocket with nuclear warhead fired, Yucca Flat, Nevada

1957- That great movie I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF starring Michael Landon premiered.

1966- 50 year old Frank Sinatra married 21 year old Mia Farrow. Frankie’s ex Ava Gardner commented:” Hah! I always knew Frank would one day wind up in bed with a little boy. “ Two years later when Mia Farrow was offered the lead role in Roman Polanski’s film “Rosemary’s Baby” Frank gave her an ultimatum "Baby, it's either me or your career”. She took the part and he sent her a divorce notice on the set. Mia got an Oscar nomination and Frank recorded “Strangers in the Night”.

1990- The Richard Nixon Library dedicated in Yorba Linda California. Nixon's Western White House of San Clemente first refused the honor of being the site as well as his real birthplace town of Whittier. The little wood frame house where Nixon was born was moved to the Yorba Linda site. At the dedication the five living Presidents were present.

Senator Bob Dole pointed at former Presidents Ford, Reagan and Nixon and joked to a friend: "Look, there’s Hear no Evil, See No Evil, and- Evil.”

1991- Heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson raped a contestant for the Miss Black America Pageant Desiree Washington. He got 3 years in jail.

1993- President Clinton launched his gays in the military initiative called "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." It caused a storm of controversy, and probably uprooted more gay men and women out of their military careers than if nothing was done. The practice was outlawed in 2010 after thousands of careers were ruined.
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Yesterday’s quiz: In 1996 Britain turned over Hong Kong to China. There was one other part of China that was own by a different European country that had to be turned over as well. What was it?

Answer: The Portuguese had a colony at Macau since 1631. They gave it back to China in 1999.

Just found out that my private E-mail accounts have been hacked. I'm taking steps, but of you get any messages from me with inane messages like "From the Bottom of My Heart", please delete immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience.

TS

Quiz: In 1996 Britain turned over Hong Kong to China. There was one other part of China that was own by a different European country that had to be turned over as well. What was it?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Many states on the East Coast have names like Williamstown, Ft. William, Williamsville. So who is this William?
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History for 7/18/2012
Birthdays: William Makepeace Thackeray, Chill Wills, Nelson Mandela is 94, James Brolin, Elizabeth McGovern, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Hume Cronyn, Red Skelton, Hunter H. Thompson, Clifford Odets, Paul Verhoeven, John Glenn is 91, Vin Diesel is 45.

Happy Ancient Egyptian New Year! The day when Cirius the Dog Star is seen in the Southern skies, it heralds the coming of the Nile’s flood. In modern times we call it the Dog Days of Summer.

390 B.C.- THE GAULS SACK ROME.- Migrating tribes of Gauls crossed the Alps, defeated the young republic's legions and stormed into the city as the population fled. When Gauls beheld aging, white haired Roman senators at first they thought they were gods. But when a Gaul pulled one of their beards and the man clopped him on the head , they knew they were just old men and slew them.

The Gauls took ransom and migrated back up to where France is today. The Romans would not meet them again until 300 years later when their empire expanded north. At one point the Romans holding out on the Capitoline Hill were alerted to a Gaulish surprise attack when the Sacred Geese of Juno started squawking. The Romans knew this must be the Goddess' intervention. St. Augustine said: "Right..,so your geese were awake while your gods were asleep !

1792- John Paul Jones died in Paris. Amazingly although Jones was one of the only captains sinking British warships in the whole Revolutionary navy he was never promoted to admiral. So he left in disgust and became a mercenary. He organized the Black Sea Fleet for Czarina Catherine of Russia but left after dodging a charge of sex with a minor. He retired to Paris. His sword and medals were pawned to pay for his funeral. The American Ambassador skipped his funeral, because he didn’t want to pass up on a dinner party.

1862- Confederate John Hunt Morgan took his rebel cavalry raiders into Yankee Indiana and raided the town of Newburg.

1863- THE ASSAULT ON FORT WAGNER- Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and his 54 Mass. Regiment proved the courage of African-American men by a suicide attack on this bastion in the complex of forts around Charleston, South Carolina. Shaw and half of his command were killed but they held the outer works before being driven back.

The fort was never taken and today is under water. 5 Medals of Honor were given that day including a sergeant who dragged himself into camp that night with six bullet wounds and the regiments Stars & Stripes stuffed in his jacket. When Col. Shaw’s family asked for his remains, Confederate commissioners snapped: "We buried him with his n*ggers!" Shaw’s father responded:" It’s what he would want, to be buried in the midst of his men." Ulysses Grant concluded: "If someone asks will a Slave fight, tell him no. But if asked will a Negro fight, tell him yes."

By the Civil War's end 180,000 black men had volunteered, 85% of the eligible male African American population who could fight. The level of integration in the U.S. army in 1865 would not be seen again until the 1950's.

1870- The Vatican published the bull Pater Aeternus, that declared Papal Infallibility. That even when the Pope is wrong he is still right because he’s the Pope and you are not.,

1877- Thomas Edison recorded sound on tin foil cylinder `Mary Had a Little Lamb-'

1925- The first volume of Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler was published. The original title was "My Four and a Half Years Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice". But publisher Max Aman prevailed upon him to edit it down to My Struggle.

Recently, copyright rules are placing Mein Kampf in public domain. So watch for silly new editions.

1933-Zionist Jewish Agency leader David Ben Gurion met with Palestinian Nationalist leader Auni Abdul Haadi, the nephew of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Ben Gurion asked "if it is possible to reconcile the ultimate goals of the Jewish people and the goals of the Arabs within Palestine? They only agreed to keep talking. Sadly, Israelis and Palestinians are still talking and dying today.

1939-MGM tried a sneak preview of the film The Wizard of Oz. Afterward they debated cutting the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow as slowing down the pace. Finally they decided to leave it in. The film debuted in August to wild success and acclaim.

1939- RKO pictures signed Orson Welles to direct movies in Hollywood. That Hollywood signed a 24 year old radio star who never directed a movie, and gave him complete freedom was an amazing deal.

1943-General Hideki Tojo's government resigned after the American victory at Saipan.

1966- Bobby Fuller who made the hit song "I fought the Law and the Law Won" was found in LA in his mothers Oldsmobile beaten and dead from "forcible inhalation of gasoline"- huffing.

1969- Senator Ted Kennedy had been in a downward spiral of depression and drink since the murders of his brothers Jack and Bobby. This night Ted and a young campaign worker named Mary Joe Kopechne drove off the rural Dike Bridge at a place near Martha's Vineyard called Chappaquiddick. Kennedy escaped the sinking car, but Kopechne drowned. Kennedy was never able to explain why he waited four hours to report the accident to the police. Despite an illustrious Senate career, Chappaquiddick destroyed Ted Kennedy's chances of ever becoming President.

1981- John Henry Abbott was a murderer and bank robber doing hard time in prison. He started writing famous author Norman Mailor about life in prison and it turned out he was a pretty good author himself. Through Mailors’ influence Random House published his book "In the Belly of the Beast" and it got him released.

Well, this day despite his literary celebrity status Abbott fell back into his bad habits and murdered another person- a Richard Adan at the Bonibon Café in New York. John Abbott was went back to prison for life, and committed suicide in 2001. Norman Mailor refused to concede it may have been a mistake- "Culture is worth a little risk."

1998- Pokemon the First movie released in Japan, stoking the Pokemon craze.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Many states on the East Coast have names like Williamstown, Ft. William, Williamsville. So who is this William?

Answer: King William III of England, of William and Mary fame. Many new settlements in the U.S. South were founded during his reign (1688-1702). The current Duke of York , the son of Charles and Di, will one day be King William V.