Quiz: For the D-Day invasion, who originated the term, the Longest Day?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What did in mean in Vietnam War slang when something cost boocoo bucks?
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History for 6/6/2014
Birthdays: Diego Velasquez, Pierre Corneille. Alexandre Pushkin, Nathan Hale, John Trumbull, Thomas Mann, The Dalai Lama, Klaus Tennestedt, Bjorn Borg, Richard Crane, Dr. Karl Braun, Walter Chrysler, Isaiah Berlin, Aram Kharachaturian, Jason Issacs, Sandra Bernhard is 59, Paul Giamatti is 47, Aaron Sorkin is 53

1438- THE ACT OF UNION. Emperor John III Paleologus was desperate.
His Byzantine Empire had been reduced to the suburbs of Constantinople, and the armies of the Turkish Sultan were massing for a final assault. He needed help from his fellow Christians in the West. But since the Crusades, the knights of the Europe had tired of long distance adventures. The courts of Italy wined and dined John, and made many pretty frescos of him, but gave him no troops. Greek scholars like George Lascaris lingered on and resettled in Italy, where their reintroduction of ancient literature helped spark the Italian Renaissance.

The Act of Union supposedly reconciled the differences between Latin and Greek Churches, but John went home empty handed and the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. Other Orthodox Churches like the Russian Church renounced their allegiance to the Patriarch of Constantinople, over his making a deal with the Pope in Rome. John Paul II in our time has tried to unify the two the Latin and Greek Churches but with not much success either.

1536- The Spanish Inquisition sets up shop in Mexico.

1654- Queen Christina of Sweden, daughter of the Protestant war hero King Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated her throne to turn Catholic and live at the Vatican. She could ride and shoot like a man and was learned enough in philosophy to debate some of the great minds of Europe. In the 1930’s Greta Garbo made a movie of her life. My favorite comment of hers was when one scientist declared that the Human Body was a machine, she countered:" If that is so, then why can’t my clock give birth to little baby watches?"

1660-The Peace of Copenhagen signed.

1683- The worlds first public museum , the Ashmolean, was opened. English archaeologist Elias Ashmole donated his collection of curiosities to Oxford University for the students to study. A building was commissioned from Christopher Wren and the museum opened to the public this day.

1727- BATTLE OF THE DIVAS- In Old London at this time the rage was for Italian Operas. Many international musicians made lucrative livings singing for Britons. Italian soprano Francesca Cuzzoni was the reigning star but a rival arrived in town named Faustina Bodoni. This night at His Majesty’s Theatre Covent Garden with the Princess of Wales in attendance as Bodoni tried to sing Astianatte, Cuzzoni fans booed, hissed and shouted so much a fight broke out. Soon the two rival singers were up on stage tearing each others hair out, fistfights in the pit and scenery being pulled down. Composer George Frederich Handel laughingly accompanied the mayhem with an impromptu solo on kettledrums.

1740- Prussian King Frederick the Great instituted a new medal. Originally called the Order of Generosity, Frederick called the little blue Maltese cross Order Pour Le Merite fur Offizeren. Frederick liked to say things in French. The medal became famous as the Blue Max, coveted by World War I flying aces.

1797- The Lake Poets meet. In the Coxwolds region of England Samuel Taylor Colderidge walked across a field and visited William Wordsworth in his cottage. This began one of the great collaborations in literature. Coleridge had just finished the Rubiyat of Omar Khayam. The married Mr Colderidge even had a platonic affair with Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy and later Wordsworth’s sister-in-law Susan Hutchinson.

1833- President Andrew Jackson becomes the first President to ride a train.

1844 –George Williams formed the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London, for lonely young men working in the new urban factories to have an alternative to pubs and dance halls.

1857- THE SIEGE & MASSACRE OF KANPUR- The most infamous episode of the Indian Sepoy Rebellion against the British. The Hindu Maharrata of India and the Moslem Moghul Emperor Bajadur had thrown their support behind the Sepoys, the rebellious Indian troops attacking British posts throughout India. At Kanpur the rebels surrounded a garrison of British troops with their wives and children in a little hospital compound.

After a two weeks of fighting and starving in100 degree heat the British surrendered on a promise of safe conduct. After giving up their weapons the Indians murdered them all, using professional butchers to chop up the captive women and children and fill a dry well with their body parts. 600 died. The incident horrified Victorian society, which adopted a harder attitude towards their Indian subjects. Captured Sepoys were tied across the mouths of cannon and blown to bits.

1867- THE KA-KA COMPROMISE- The Austrian Empire quiets its nationalist Hungarian subjects by turning their country into a dual monarchy. Hapsburg Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth go to Budapest and are crowned King and Queen of Hungary. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was called in German `Kaiserlich-Koniglich' or K.K. The regime's opponents called it KaKa, and they had understood the pun just as we do.

1918- BATTLE of the BELLEAU WOOD- In World War One as the first U.S. Marine units arrive in the Western Front, Marshal Foch threw them in front of a major German attack. They stopped the Germans only 37 miles from Paris. When the Yanks arrived in the trenches, the French commander announced the entire line was retreating. Marine Major Taylor replied: " Retreat ? Hell, we just got here !" and they went into action. Later in the fighting the same major was heard bellowing to his men:" Come on' you sons a' b-tches! Do you wanna live forever?!"

1925 - Walter Percy Chrysler founded Chrysler Corp.

1933-The first Drive In movie opens in Camden, New Jersey.

1934- President Roosevelt signed the Securities and Exchange Act, which set up a regulatory commission to rein in the under the table shenanigans of brokers and financiers that had caused the Great Depression. The chairman of the SEC was Joseph Kennedy Sr, the father of JFK.

1939- Playright Eugene O’Neill had hit a dry spell of no writing and fears of impending Parkinsons disease. This day he got the inspiration to sketch out two outlines for two potential plays- The Iceman Cometh, and Long Days Journey into Night.

1941- Actor George Raft wrote a memo to studio head Jack Warner reminding him of his contractual commitment to send Raft only good quality scripts. The latest he got: " The Maltese Falcon" he thought was a lousy substandard idea that has no chance." Humphrey Bogart did the film instead.

1942- Two days after the Battle of Midway the abandoned burning wreck of the carrier USS Yorktown was torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-162. In 1997 the Yorktown was found on the bottom of the Pacific by Dr. Robert Ballard, the same scientist who found the Titanic. To give you an idea of the depth of the Pacific compared to the Atlantic, Ballard said it took 1 1/2 hours for his submersible to descend to the Titanic, but it took three full hours one way to visit the Yorktown.

1942 – Adeline Grey does the first nylon parachute jump in Hartford Conn.

1944 D-DAY, the NORMANDY INVASION- General Dwight Eisenhower launched 4,000 ships, 11,000 planes and 150,000 troops on the shores of Nazi occupied France with the order: "Okay. Let's go.". In Moscow where the Soviets had been begging for a second front, there was wild celebrations and Radio Moscow played "Yankee-Doodle" all day. Eisenhower had planned that young green troops be used in the first wave. "If they knew what was waiting for them like the veterans know, they wouldn't go."
The German High command was taken completely by surprise. When the invasion happened many officers were coming home from a weekend seminar on how to fight an invasion. Adolf Hitler had taken a sleeping pill and left orders not to be disturbed.

In the assault were future Senator Robert Dole, Voiceover actor Paul Frees, Disney key assistant Dale Oliver and Warner artist Victor Haboush. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was in the second wave to Utah Beach. Max Fleischer animator Willy Bowsky was killed in the hedgerows by tank fire. Sergeant Baumgarden drew on his jacket a large Star of David and wrote "Bronx, N.Y." under it to let Hitler know who was coming. Many of the infantry had rolled condoms onto the muzzles of their guns to keep sand and water out of them. On Omaha Beach, war photographer Robert Capa leaped into the surf before the landing barges reached shore and walking backwards with the whole Nazi army shooting at him to photograph the first G.I.s landing. His 22 rolls of film were later ruined by an inept lab developer. Only three photos remain.

1949-Comic strip character Joe Palooka gets married to Ann Howe.

1949-BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING- George Orwell's book about technological tyranny -1984 was first published. Orwell's working title was "The Last Free Man", but the publisher thought it too depressing to sell. So Orwell picked the date 1984, who's only significance was that it was the year he was writing 1948- reversed

1955 - Bill Haley & Comets, "Rock Around the Clock" hits #1.

1972 - David Bowie releases "Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust"

1976- The Glendale Galleria shopping mall in Glendale Cal. opened.

1978- Proposition 13 property tax cut approved by California voters.

1982- the Israeli army invaded Lebanon. Prime Minister Menachem Begin felt that the operation should take only one or two days. In 2000 after an 18 year occupation and fighting among a confusing mix of Syrian & Iranian backed guerrillas, US Marines and Christian Maronite militias, the Israeli troops were finally withdrawn. The war remains controversial in Israel to this day. Ariel Sharon, the defense minister who was nicknamed "the Butcher of Beirut" because he allowed Lebanese militias to massacre Palestinian refugees, was Prime Minister in 2001 to 2006.

1982- The film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, premiered. Besides Ricardo Montalban as the badguy with the great pectorals, it features the Genesis Effect. This one minute sequence was a landmark of computer graphics effects. Done by the Lucas Graphics Group, who four years later would break off and become Pixar.

1984- Climaxing two years of fighting Sikh Nationalists, Indian forces are ordered by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi to storm the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. 1000 are killed. Later that year Mrs. Ghandi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in revenge.

1984-In Moscow, 29 year old Mathematics Professor Alexey Pajitnov invented the game Tetris.

1985- The body of Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele is located and exhumed near Sao Paolo, Brazil. Mengele was the Nazi Angel of Death, who conducted experiments on inmates of the concentration camps. The elderly nazi had a heart attack while swimming.

1991 - NBC announced Jay Leno would replace retiring Johnny Carson, winning out over David Letterman. Letterman moved to CBS.

2007- The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim California, named for a Disney movie, win the Stanley Cup after defeating the Ottawa Senators. It is the first Stanley Cup won by a west coast team since 1925.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What did in mean in Vietnam War slang when something cost boocoo bucks?

Answer: Boocoo comes from the colonial French beaucoup, meaning a lot.

Quiz: What did in mean in Vietnam War slang when something cost boocoo bucks?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is the origin of the phrase “ to blow smoke up someone’s ass?”
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History for 6/5/2014
Birthdays: Socrates, Pancho Villa, Thomas Chippendale -furniture maker, not male strip club owner, Igor Stravinsky, Little child archduchess Anastasia Romanov, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Dean Acheson, Bill Moyers is 82, Hopalong Cassidy, Tony Richardson, Kenny G., Lancelot Ware the founder of Mensa, Spaulding Gray, Ron Livingston is 47, Mark Wahlberg is 43

221BC - The Chinese poet Chu Yuan drowned himself as a protest of an unjust Emperor. His memory is remembered by the annual Dragon Boat Festival. People decorate boats like dragons and created dumplings to drop into the river to dissuade fish from eating the remains of the poet.

754AD-. Today is the feast of Saint Boniface, who chopped down the sacred tree of Thor at Mount Gundenberg in Thuringia.

1098- After the Crusaders starve the city of Antioch into surrender, an even bigger Saracen army led by Kerbogha the Emir of Roum trapped the Crusaders inside. Things looked real desperate boys and girls, luckily the Crusaders discovered the Holy Nail. But that's for a future story....

1305-"The BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY"- King Phillip the Fair of France makes a deal with a cardinal to help him become elected as Pope Clement V. The cost is Clement has to move the entire Vatican from Rome to Avignon in French territory. The Holy See stayed in France about 150 years.

1455- Poet Francois Villon gets thrown out of Paris again, this time for stabbing a priest in a bar fight.

1502- LEONARDO GETS A JOB- This day Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by Caesare Borgia as a military engineer. Borgia was the son of Pope Alexander VI and wanted to conquer Italy for the Church. The artist-scientist Leonardo had promised Borgia he could design horrific war making devices like tanks, flame-throwers and poison gas. Most of these things were impractical for the Renaissance but Borgia used him to map the topography of the lands he intended to conquer. After a few months Pope Alexander died, and the new Pope Julius exiled Caesare Borgia. Leonardo went on Renaissance Craigslist again.

1568- The Spanish Governor of the Netherlands the Duke of Alba invited the Dutch independence leaders to come and discuss their grievances with him. The leaders Egmont and Van Horn showed up, then Alba promptly had them executed. The other leader William of Orange escaped to lead the Dutch resistance.

1605-Battle of Fontaine Francaise- French King Henry IV defeats an entire invading Spanish Army with just 300 horsemen. One of France's most beloved kings, instead of staying in the rear of his army he always galloped into the center of a fight. He had a huge white plume in his helmet. On this day when asked what was his strategy for the battle he replied: "Just follow the white plume!"

1661- Isaac Newton admitted as a student at Trinity College Cambridge.

1805- The first tornado seen by white men in Tornado Alley, Southern Illinois.

1816- The Year Without a Summer- Volcanic explosions in Indonesia and the Caribbean threw so much ash into the atmosphere that large parts of the U.S. recorded winter temperatures throughout the summer months. This day in New England it was 83 degrees, then it plunged to 42, then the following day saw ten inches of snow. Still, Currier and Ives had more time to paint those cutesy sleigh ride scenes...

1854- The US Know-Nothing Party established. It's goal being the restriction of the immigration, especially Irish Catholics. Former President Millard Fillmore became one of their adherents.

1863- It was an open secret that Union General Ulysses Grant was a habitual alcoholic. His loyal aide Colonel Rawlins was determined to cure him because he had lost his own father to drink. On this day during the Siege of Vicksburg, Rawlins smashed an entire case of wine given him as a gift. So Grant reacted by jumping on a steamboat and going on a two day drinking binge, a nervous newspaper correspondent named Sylvanus Cadwallader in tow trying to keep him out of trouble. After two days Grant stepped nonchalantly off the steamer and soberly resumed the siege. Cadwallader was warned to write nothing, a promise he kept until after Grants death 1885

1876- At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, Americans first discovered an exotic new food- Bananas.

1884-Retired General William T. Sherman refused the Republican Convention's call to run for President. He was the first to say: " If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve." The "Hero of Georgia" hated politicians and newspapermen. When military governor of the Presidio in the 1850's he was offered the nomination of mayor of San Francisco. He refused by saying:" I do not feel qualified to enter politics-I never graduated from a penitentiary." Another time he commented: "I have a happy life. The day after I announced myself a candidate for office I would read in the newspaper how I poisoned my grandmother. I never knew my grandmother, but there the story would be, in full lurid detail!"

1915- Britain’s top general Earl Horatio Kitchener the Sirdar of Omderman drowned when the HMS Hampshire was sunk by a German mine in the English Channel. The British recruiting poster with the image of Kitchener pointing at you with fierce eyes fixed saying I WANT YOU! was later copied by American James Montgomery Flagg, substituting Uncle Sam. Kitchner was Secretary for War but by this time had lost much of his influence in government. P.M. Lord Asquith commented "the man makes a better poster than a leader". Traveling with Kitchener to his watery grave was his personal aide Col. Oscar Fitzgerald. Earl Kitchener was not fond of ladies and there was talk that he and Fitzgerald were … well... let’s just say Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell.

1916- Grand Sherif Hussein of Mecca launched the Great Arab Revolt against the Turkish Empire. We in the west don’t remember Hussein as much as his British military advisor, a moody young man named T.E. Lawrence or Lawrence of Arabia.

1940- The synthetic rubber tire invented.

1944-In London General Eisenhower received reports that the storm system over Europe would lighten slightly. If he postponed the Normandy invasion any further he risked losing the favorable tide conditions until September. Ike launched the largest amphibious invasion in history with the words: " I don't like it, but I don't see any other way.- Okay, let's go."

1963- BRITAIN ENTERS THE 60'S, BABY...The Profumo Scandal. Sir John Profumo was defense minister, protege of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and a rising star in Tory politics. This day Profumo resigned in disgrace and brought down the government, when it came out he was keeping a 19-year-old `party-girl' named Christine Keilor as his mistress. She was not only sleeping with married Sir John but was also dating a known Russian spy.

1964 - Davie Jones & King Bees debut "I Can't Help Thinking About Me," The group disbanded but Davie Jones went on to success after changing his name to David Bowie.

1967- The Arab-Israeli SIX-DAY WAR began. Egypt’s President Gamal Nasser sent tanks into the United Nations mandated Sinai Peninsula and cut off Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Tyran. Israel knew the coming war with its four neighbors was imminent. This day without waiting, Israel launched it’s own preemptive strike. Leaving only twelve jets to protect the entire country, at dawn they sent out their entire 300 plane air force to attack the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air forces on the ground. 400 planes were destroyed in two hours. Israeli commander Ytschak Rabin said by then, the war was already over. The Israeli tank division Ugdah Peled rolled into the West Bank and attacked Jordanian armor near Jenin.

1968- SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATED at 12:15 AM in the kitchen area of the Ambassador hotel in LA after winning the California Presidential primary. Depressed by the slaying of Martin Luther King in April, Bobby Kennedy had said: "The only thing between me and the Presidency is a gun." The assassin was a Palestinian waiter named Sirhan Sirhan. He picked the one-year anniversary of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War to do the deed. "Kennedy you son of a bitch!" he shouted as he fired two shots into the back of his skull. RFK lingered for a day.

He was 42. His eldest son watched his father get shot on live television and never got over it. He died of a drug/alcohol abuse several years later. Sirhan Sirhan is still in jail today and the Ambassador Hotel has been bulldozed for a High School.

1976- In a wine competition outside Paris, California wines won for the first time. Santa Magdelena Chardonnay for whites and Stags Leap Cabernet for the red. It marks the moment when the dominance of French wines was broken, and California wines went from being a joke to world class status.

1981- The U.S. Center for Disease Control published the findings of scientist Michael Gottlieb on the pneumonia’s of six L.A. patients to be something new called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Cases had been reported as early as 1975 and there is an ongoing argument whether Gottlieb or a French team at the Pasteur Institute discovered the disease first.

1989- Toronto’s Skydome Stadium opened. Home team Blue Jays lose to the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3.

1998- Walt Disney’s Mulan premiered.

1998- Reuters and ABC News erroneously reported the death of 96 year old Bob Hope. Arizona Congressman Robert Stump announced the comedian’s death on the floor of the House, to the great surprise of Bob Hope who was eating breakfast while watching TV at the time. Bob Hope lived four more years, dying at age 100.

2004- Ronald Reagan, The Gipper, the Great Communicator, The Teflon President, FBI informant T-10, Arrow Shirt model, SAG president, Forty Mule Team Borax salesman, Hippie bashing California Governor and the oldest living US president, died at age 93.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the origin of the phrase “ to blow smoke up someone’s ass?”

Answer: A tobacco enema was a real treatment the Dutch used in the XVII and XVIII centuries for a variety of ailments, including seeing if someone was truly dead. A long tube was inserted into the rectum and the doctor blew pipe smoke into it. Today it means someone urging you with false praise and promises to do something.

Quiz: What is the origin of the phrase “ to blow smoke up someone’s ass?”

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Which is larger? A heavy cruiser, a destroyer, or a battleship?
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History for 6/4/2014
Birthdays: King George III, Alvah Bessie, Rosalind Russell, Gene Barry, Dennis Weaver, Robert Merrill, Bruce Dern, Andrea Jaeger, Dr Ruth Westheimer, Freddy Fender, Rachael Griffiths, Noah Wylie is 43, Russell Brand is 39, Angelina Jolie is 39

Happy Saint John the Baptist Day.

1070- THE BIRTHDAY OF ROCQUEFORT CHEESE. Legend has it on this day in the town of Roquefort a shepherd found in a cave some cheese he had been saving but had forgotten about. He noticed it was covered with mold but he was hungry and ate it anyway, and lo and behold, it tasted much better than before...

1249-King Louis IX of France (St. Louis) arrives in the HolyLand on Crusade.

1259- Kublai Khan, the grandson of the Genghis Khan, was elected the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Kublai then shattered Mongol tradition by dividing the huge Empire into three pieces. His uncle Kaidu would rule the Mongolian homeland and Uncle Batu the Western section (the Golden Horde in the Crimea) while Kublai preferred to rule China as it's emperor. In doing this he was acknowledging the reality that the master plan of Genghis for world conquest was unfeasible. The empire, which extended from Korea to Budapest to Baghdad was unmanageable and would break up anyway. Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China would last. He was the Chinese Emperor who met Marco Polo.

1615- Osaka Castle fell to the forces of Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa.

1647-English troops storm into St. James Palace and arrest King Charles I. While the king had been gently stalling peace negotiations with Oliver Cromwell and the victorious Parliamentary army encamped at Putney, he was in secret talks with the Vatican Nuncio. King Charles promised toleration for Roman Catholicism in the British Isles if they would lend him an Irish army to beat Cromwell. At almost the same time he was promising the Scots that he would make all of England Presbyterian if they lent him an army. His attempts to restart the English Civil War was what labeled him "That Man of Blood" and got him beheaded.

1666- Moliere’s play "Le Misanthrope" premiered.

1717- FREEMASONS- The Grand Lodge of England was inaugurated in London on St John the Baptist Day. This is considered by some the birth of Freemasonry, but many alleged histories claim the practices of the Brotherhood of the Craft go back to ancient Egypt and was brought to England by the Knights Templar in the 1300’s. There is some validity to the reports of independent Lodges already existing in the 1630’s in England and earlier in Scotland. The Freemason movement spread throughout Europe and became an alternative to Christianity for many intellectuals in the 1700’s. Mozart, Haydn, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Casanova, Voltaire and many more were members.

1789- King Louis XVI was a kindly but weak king who never made a decision without consulting his beautiful Queen Marie Antoinette. But as the storm clouds of the French Revolution began to cover the land the Queen was taken out of the strategic decision making. Her sickly son the Dauphin had died leaving her broken with grief.

1797- English officers in India fighting the Maharatta rajahs pause to celebrate King George III's birthday in their words "with a most ripe debauch."

1798- While Europe was convulsed by revolutions and Napoleon, the elderly ladies man Giacomo Casanova died of old age. He had accepted the retirement post of librarian for a Czech nobleman.

1844- The last Great Auk killed by hunters.

1863- Robert E. Lee launches his divisions from their encampment at Culpepper, Virginia northwards towards Pennsylvania for the campaign that will climax at Gettysburg. Their movements were first sighted by the new observation balloons invented by Thaddeus Lowe. Gen. Custer had already gone for a ride, and the concept of lighter-than-air flight had captured the imagination of a young German military observer then attached to the Union Army, Count Von Zeppelin. Demonstrating the curious cross-currents of history, after the war Thaddeus Lowe moved his family to Pasadena California and his granddaughter Florence "Pancho" Barnes became a pilot who raced with Aemelia Earhart and was friends with Chuck Yeager and the Gemini astronauts.

1896-Henry Ford tests out his automobile with headlights in a nighttime drive around Detroit.

1912-The first minimum wage law passed, in the state of Massachusetts.

1916-THE HERO PIGEON OF VERDUN- During the horrific battle of Verdun the Germans had surrounded the French strongpoint of Fort Vaux. The fighting in the underground 15 foot high concrete tunnels of the fort was ghastly, men killed each other with hand grenades and flamethrowers at close quarters while groping through the blackness and gagging at the stench of rotting corpses. The French commander Captain Reynal, his telephone communications cut, sent his last carrier pigeon to get help. The pigeon, despite being badly gassed and perching on the roof of the fort for a little while, got through to the high command. Delivering his message like Phiddipides of Marathon he then fell over dead. Help never got through, and Captain Reynal had to surrender, but the dead pigeon was awarded the medal of the Legion d'Honneur. Go figure.

1916 - Mildred J Hill, one of the two Hill sisters who composed the song Happy Birthday To You, died at 56.

1919- The Women's Suffrage Act passes the Senate by one vote. A chorus of women in the visitor's gallery break into :"Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow". The deciding vote was cast by a Utah senator who wanted to please his mother.

1938- Date of the infamous Walt Disney Studio crew party to celebrate the success of Snow White. The young artists, released of tension and filled with booze, swapped bedrooms and galloped horses through the Hotel Norconian sending Walt and Roy fleeing the scene for fear of bad publicity.

1939- The Voyage of the Damned. The British ship SS Saint Louis was filled with 930 refugees, mostly Jewish families fleeing Hitlers persecution. Up until the war the Nazis allowed thousands of Jews to emigrate, but after the Evian Conference the western democracies announced they weren’t prepared to open their borders to so great a human flood. So the Saint Louis was refused permission to land her cargo of human desperation. The ship sailed from Florida to Havanna to Panama and finally back to Europe where most of the passengers died in the Holocaust.

1940- The last day of the Miracle of Dunkirk. British sea transports and small pleasure craft cross the English Channel and withdraw most of the British Army trapped against the sea. 280,000 British men and 100,000 allies were saved, 40,000 men go into captivity.

1941- While the Second World War raged, 82 year old Kaiser Wilhelm II Hohenzollern died peacefully of old age. He refused all offers of Hitler to return to Germany and stayed in exile in Holland.

1942- The BATTLE OF MIDWAY. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto committed the bulk of his carrier force to destroy the American Navy once and for all. Recent research of Japanese Imperial files reveal he considered this step a prelude to the invasion of the Hawaiian Islands, which he hoped would force America to negotiate peace. But the path of Yamamoto’s fleet was revealed by the breaking of the top Japanese radio codes and the American fleet laid an ambush for him. It was a battle of carrier-based planes where the opposing fleets never saw each other.

The famous suicide attack of TBY-8, was an attack of U.S. torpedo planes on the Japanese carrier fleet without fighter cover. Of 51 planes, 47 were shot down by faster more agile Zeros. But while the zeros were on deck getting refueled and rearmed a cloud of screaming Dauntless divebombers dropped out of the sky and blew Yamamotos four best aircraft carriers to bits- The Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Kaga. One American carrier the Yorktown was sunk.

The Japanese fleet would never mount an attack of this size again. Its defeat was seen by the U.S. Navy as the turning point of the Pacific War.

1942- Capitol Records opened for business.

1944- Original date for the D-Day Normandy Invasion. It was postponed until there was better weather. If the allies waited too long the tides would not be this good again until September.

1944- American armies at last enter Rome. An Allied beachhead had been established at Anzio last February only a few miles away and scouts had reported the Eternal City wide open, but the American generals Lucas and Clark hesitated until the Germans could bring up reinforcements and bog them down for weeks. But this day they entered the city to the cheers of the populace. A G.I. cartoonist named Vinny solicited laughs from the troops by appearing on Mussolini’s balcony on the Via Del Corso and doing a mock interpretation of Il Duce.

1947- The film "A Miracle on 34th St." opened. Starring Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwen and 8 year old Natalie Wood.

1951- The Supreme Court upholds the anti-Communist Smith Act. This act stated you could be fired from your job or jailed even on a suspicion that you were a communist, no proof required.

1951- Tony Curtis married Janet Leigh. The result was to produce Jamie Leigh-Curtis.

1965- The Rolling Stones release the single "Satisfaction".

1967- The television show "The Monkees" win the Emmy award for Best Comedy.
go figure... The producers of the Pre-Fab Four raise enough money and clout to fund later projects like the hit movie Easy Rider. This same ceremony saw Bill Cosby become the first African-American to win an Emmy, this for his role in the series I-Spy.

1972- UCLA political science teacher and black militant Angela Davis was acquitted of all charges of conspiracy and kidnapping by an all white jury in San Jose. Davis was arrested not for anything she did but just for her vocal support of more violent members of the Black Power movement. Her case, like almost all these kind of cases in the 60’s became a national cause-celebre. In 1980 Angela Davis ran for vice president as a candidate for the American Communist Party.

1977- The Apple II went on sale.

1989-THE TIENAHMEN SQUARE MASSACRE. Chinese army troops loyal to Premier Deng Zhao Peng crushed the student democracy movement in the center of Bejing. The demonstrations started around a funeral for Hu Yao Bang, a party premier who was ousted for his liberal democratizing policy. The crowds gathered in strength and militancy, students joined by workers and soldiers.

There was a hope China’s ruling elite would fall to a "people-power" type revolution that had overthrown Marco’s Philippines and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But Premier Deng brought in soldiers from the rural provinces and brutally cracked down.

No figures of total casualties exist but the figure ten thousand is thrown around as conservative. Incidentally this incident probably was the beginning of the world popularity of CNN news. Despite threats from commissars CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy remained at his post and continued to broadcast when all other news teams had fled. Deng Zhao Ping’s name was a pun on the word for "little bottle" so people showed their resistance by smashing dozens of small bottles out on the street.

1990- The New York Daily News quietly discontinued its long running comic strip Ching Chow. Besides being ethnically offensive, the little one panel strip of a stereotype Chinese man with a long hair queue saying silly Confucian platitudes, also was the source of racetrack and numbers racket tips.

2003- Martha Stewart, the self-made millionaire leader of a home recipe empire, was indicted for insider trading.

2004- THE HOMEMADE TANK- In the small town of Granby Colorado, a muffler salesman named Jim Heemeyer got so annoyed at the town, that he welded iron plates on to a large bulldozer to create a kind of homemade tank. While policemen fruitlessly shot at his tank, he razed to the ground most of the public buildings in town before shooting himself. If you can’t fight City Hall, bulldoze it.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which is larger? A heavy cruiser, a destroyer, or a battleship?

Answer: A heavy cruiser is larger than a destroyer, but smaller than a battleship.

Quiz: Which is larger? A heavy cruiser, a destroyer, or a battleship?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: In baseball, what does it mean to hit a natural cycle?
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History for 6/3/2014
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Jefferson Davis, Josephine Baker, King George V, Henry Shrapnel, Allen Ginsburg, Collen Dewhurst, Alain Renais, Curtis Mayfield, Paulette Goddard, Maurice Evans, Jack Oakey, Jan Peerce, Zoltan Korda, John Dykstra, Tom Arnold, Hale Irwin, Chuck Barris, Tony Curtis

1579- Sir Francis Drake, his ship the Golden Hind parked in Drake's Bay or Anchor Bay or wherever, claims California for England. He calls it Nova Albion. Early explorers thought North and South America was one big island. Magellan had found the way around the southern tip. Drake repeated Magellan's route around South America to attack Panama and the Peruvian treasure fleet. After which he sailed north trying to find the northern end of the island so he could sail around the top to get back into the Atlantic.

By Mendocino California Drake realized that this was one big mother of an island and it would be wiser to turn around and go home another way. The Northwest Passage isn't discovered until Canadian icebreaker does it in 1958.

1778- MOTHER ENGLAND OFFERS A DEAL- After the French, Dutch and Spanish decide to intervene in the American Revolution, and pile on Britain, The British Government under Lord North offered the rebellious American colonies all of their grievances, taxation, seats in Parliament. Everything short of full independence. The Continental Congress says too late, you're dealing with a separate country now.

1779- British General Sir Henry Clinton had a problem. He had just captured Charleston South Carolina and accepted the surrender of the largest number of American rebels- 4000, as many as his own army. Now orders from London were to leave Lord Cornwallis with a force to subdue the South and return to New York. But what about the prisoners? Today Clinton published an edict that all rebels who take an oath of loyalty to the Crown will be released. His subordinate grumbled:” Sir Henry doesn’t understand that these rebels swallow an oath to their King then an oath to their Congress with the same ease his Lordship swallows a plate of poached eggs!”

1800- President Adams arrived in the Washington D.C. area and took up residence at the Union Tavern in Georgetown while waiting for construction to be completed on the Executive Mansion, later called the White House. First Lady Abigail Adams and her suite got lost in the forest coming from Baltimore.

There were only then three thousand residents in DC, one fifth were slaves. Pennsylvania Avenue was “wide morass confused with alder bushes”. The only way to understand where the avenues were from the wooden pegs sticking in the mud. Secretary to the British Ambassador Augustus John Forster wrote to London forlornly that he was losing his sanity in this “absolute sepulchre, this rural hole.”

1846- General Stephan Kearny with his Army of the West forming in Texas received orders from Washington to invade the Mexican state of California.

1851- The American clipper ship Flying Cloud began her maiden voyage from Sandy Hook New York. She was so fast she could sail from New York around South America to San Francisco in 89 days, making her the most celebrated Yankee merchant ship, and with the British Cutty Sark the subject of numerous model boat kits.

1864- BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR- The Civil War battles between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant had settled into something resembling the trench warfare of World War 1. This day General Grant, mistakenly believing Lee was abandoning his impregnable Petersburg defense lines, launched huge frontal attacks near Cold Harbor.

Seven thousand men were cut down in 20 minutes. Before rising from their fortifications to the attack, Union men wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to their shirts so their bodies could later be identified. One Massachusetts private wrote in his journal: "June 3rd. I was killed today." He went out and was indeed killed. By the third assault the Yankee army was near mutiny. A captain reacted to the order to attack: "I won't go back out there if Christ Almighty himself came down and ordered me to!"

In two months battle Grant had lost 20,000 men, more than Lee had in his entire army. The newspapers started to call him “the Butcher”. But Grant knew if he held on, he would defeat the Confederacy, if only by sheer weight of numbers. Still, for the rest of his life he regretted his attack at Cold Harbor.

1875- Harper's Weekly Newspaper reported the Kansas Pacific Railroad was bowing to editorial pressure from back east and would no longer allow it's passengers to shoot at buffalo from their moving trains. It had become quite a tourist attraction.

1885- Feast of the Martyrs of Uganda- Ugandan king Mwanga got angry that too many Christian missionaries were running around his kingdom. One of the royal pages who had been converted even had the audacity to baptize Mwanga's son Kizito. So he ordered dozens of them burnt alive or chopped up. His chief steward Joseph said as he perished:" Mwanga has condemned me without cause, but tell him I forgive him from my heart."
Mwanga's persecution stopped when the British invaded later that year and turned Uganda into a colony until 1956.

1888-The poem: "Casey at the Bat" by Edward Lawrence Thayer published in the San Francisco Examiner.

1898- While Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders waited at Tampico Florida to embark for Cuba, an interesting meeting occurred. One of the U.S. army’s commanders was an ex-Confederate general named Fighting Joe Wheeler. Wheeler encountered another elderly retired rebel General James Longstreet. The two joked about Jubal Early, a hotheaded comrade of theirs. Longstreet said: “Joe, I hope I die before you do, because I want to get to Hell in time to hear Jubal Early curse you for wearing that pretty Blue Uniform !!”

1923- Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini gave Italian women the right to vote.

1924- THE FIRST D.J.- Moses Baritz, working for the BBC affiliate in Manchester England, started a radio program where he spun classical records and chatted in-between song cuts, inventing the Disc Jockey format.

1924- Writer Franz Kafka died in Keirling Austria. He left instructions to
Friends to burn all his unfinished manuscripts including the Trial, but
fortunately his friends did not.

1929- Movie stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr married Joan Crawford.

1928- General Chang Zhou Lin “The Old Marshal” was one of the last Chinese warlords to give in to the ascendant Kuomintang Nationalist front led by Chiang Kai Shek. Chang yielded his control of Peking on a promise he could retire in peace. But soon after boarding a train to Manchuria the Old Marshal was killed by a bomb. It was blamed on Japanese agents but no one is sure. The intrigue and internal chaos of the time inspired several films and novels like Shanghai Express, the Bitter Tea of General Yen and Lost Horizons.

1932- In a game against the Philadelphia A’s, NY Yankee hitter Tony Lazzeri hit “for the cycle” a natural cycle. This meaning his first at bat was a single, the second a double, his third a triple and his fourth at bat he hit a home run, a grand slam actually. In all 150 years of recorded baseball, only 14 batters have ever hit a natural cycle.

1937- King Edward VIII of England had abdicated his throne over his affair with American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Now as Duke of Windsor, he and Wally were married this day.

1939- Movie director Alexander Korda married movie star Merle Oberon.

1942- Japanese planes bomb Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, part of Alaskan territory. This attack was supposed to be the feint drawing attention from the main Japanese attack at Midway Island.

1943- First Day of the ZOOT SUIT RIOTS- In Los Angeles, Navy and Marine servicemen awaiting embarkation to the Pacific battlegrounds clashed with Hispanic gangs. Truckloads of off-duty servicemen drove up from San Pedro Harbor to enlarge the fight. The servicemen would choose who to beat up based on whether they were wearing a fashionable zoot-suit. They beat up two 13 year olds sitting in a theater watching a movie. Downtown L.A. became an urban war zone for several days.

1944- Meteorologists in Norway predict a storm system over Europe to last all week. German High Command was sure an invasion of Europe was imminent but that Eisenhower would need at least 4 days of good weather to launch an attack. The original date for D-Day was supposed to be tomorrow June 4th but this night Eisenhower canceled the go-ahead until June 6th. The tides would never be this favorable again until September. Field Marshal Rommel, deciding there would be no invasion that week, goes home to Germany for conferences and his wife's birthday, June 6th.

1946- THE BIKINI went on sale. Parisian designer Jacques Castel invented the two piece women’s bathing suit. Named the Bikini for the Atomic test in the Bikini islands, Castel said it would "hit the fashion world like an atomic bomb". The first model to wear it was a stripper, because the regular fashion models refused to parade around in 'Castel's flimsy straps'.

1946- A consumer study finds there are only 10,000 television sets in America.
A follow up study five years later finds the number at 12 million.

1948- The Hale telescope at the Mount Palomar Observatory in California dedicated. The 200 inch mirror had taken 11 years to polish and the observatory two decades to build. Called the “Giant Eye” it gave us out first looks at nebulae, black holes and doubled our depth perception of the size of the Universe.

1949 - Dragnet is 1st broadcast on radio ( KFI in Los Angeles ). Creator Jack Webb wanted to capture the dry, non-theatrical delivery he heard real cops use. He ordered his actors to “stop acting, just read the lines”. Webb wrote the scripts from real LAPD cases and starred as well.

1965- Edward White becomes the first American to walk in space in Gemini VII.

1967 - Aretha Franklin's "Respect" reaches #1. Sockittome, sockittome, sockittome.

1968- Artist Andy Warhol was shot in the gut three times by Valerie Solanas, author of the "SCUM Manifesto". Warhol barely lived. Solanas was institutionalized.

1971- The First artificial gene created.

1976 –Galileo-Galileo Fig-a-ro! Queen's single "Bohemian Rhapsody" goes gold.

1980- President Jimmy Carter announced the United States would boycott the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow because of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians boycotted the LA Olympics in 1984.

1982- Schlomo Argov, Israeli ambassador to Britain, was shot outside of a London Hotel. Tensions had been building up between Israel and the Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Org. based in South Lebanon. Defense minister Arial Sharon planned an invasion of Lebanon, and was waiting for one more incident to spark it off. In the cabinet meeting over the killing, Mossad tried to point out that the assassin was identified as an Abu Nidal terrorist, who were enemies of the PLO. Prime Minister Menachem Begin waved them off.” They are all PLO”. The Israeli tanks rolled two days later. The War in Lebanon dragged on for twenty years, splintering Israeli opinion.

1986- Attorney Roy Cohn was disbarred by a federal appellate court. It was a symbolic act because Cohn was dying of HIV/AIDS. In his career Cohn had prosecuted the Rosenbergs, helped Sen Joe McCarthy in his anti-Communist witchhunts and defended Mafia dons like John Gotti. Despite being gay himself, one of Cohn’s last acts was to lobby New York State legislators from his deathbed to defeat a Gay Rights Bill.
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Yesterday’s Quiz- In baseball, what does it mean to hit a natural cycle?

Answer: See above- 1932.

Quiz- In baseball, what does it mean to hit a natural cycle?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Of all the presidents who threw out the first baseball, only one ever threw a perfect strike. Who was it?
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History for 6/2/2014
Birthdays: John Randolph, The Marquis DeSade, Martha Custis Washington, Thomas Hardy, Hedda Hopper, Sir Edward Elgar, Johnny Weismuller, Charlie Watts, Disney animation story artist Dick Heumer, Lotte Reinniger Marvin Hamlisch, Barry Levinson, Jon Peters, Dana Carvey, Garo Yepremian, Jerry Mathers the Beaver of the old TV show Leave it to Beaver, Dayvid Haysbert is 60, Lasse Halstrom is 68

193AD- Shortly after he abdicated, Roman Emperor Didius Julianus was assassinated. As his bodyguard turned on him and raised his sword, Julianus cried” What evil have I done? Who have I killed?”

303AD- Martyrdom of St. Elmo. This guy has to win the endurance record. The Emperor Diocletian had him starved, beaten with clubs, flogged with lead balled whips, rolled in tar and set on fire, roasted again in an iron chair, and he finally died after having his intestines wound out around a windlass. He is the patron saint of seafarers. When the blue electrical phenomenon appeared on ship's masts during a storm, it is called "St. Elmo's Fire".

1453-At Breslau, Papal Legate John of Capistrano presided over the torture of six Jews. After they confessed to Jewish practices, he had them burned at the stake. After John died the Protestants dug up his bones and threw them to their dogs. John was canonized San Juan Capistrano in 1690. A century later Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra named the picturesque little mission in California after him. And the swallows do migrate there.

1502- 30 year old Caesar Borgia had conquered most of central Italy in the name of his father Pope Alexander VI. He attacked the town of Faenza that was stoutly defended by Astorre Manfredi and his brother. Caesar Borgia offered them generous terms and after the surrender treated the Manfredi Brothers quite courteously, until they got back to Rome where he clapped them in a dungeon. This day the bodies of the Manfredi Brothers were found floating in the Tibur.

1533- Pope Paul III banned the enslavement of Indians in the New World. Whether anybody listened to him is another matter.

1763- At the British Fort Michilimackinac near Lake Superior some Sauk and Chippewa Indians were playing lacrosse. While the British sentries were engrossed in the ball game Indian women gathered near the forts’ open gates. When one player hurled the ball up over the wall as a signal the women tossed concealed knives and tomahawks to the players who rushed the fort and massacred its garrison.

1780- THE GORDON RIOTS- Lord Gordon organized a public demonstration against a pending bill granting toleration of Roman Catholic worship in England. The mob marched on Parliament where went goes berserk and looted London for a week. Lord Gordon became the last nobleman executed in the Tower of London and Parliament passed the Riot Act. But his tactics scared Parliament from passing the bill. The Catholic Emancipation Bill would not be passed until 1834. From then on whenever an unruly crowd won't disperse shortly before the Authorities start shooting and clubbing people, they first read them aloud the Riot Act.

1781- Thomas Jefferson was a great American statesman and thinker, but he was not much at military matters. This day, he sighted the rampaging British Army approaching his mountaintop home of Monticello. He galloped away for his life, abandoning his household. The redcoats respected his home, but burned his barns and liberated 200 of his slaves. As Governor of Virginia Jefferson had compromised his states defenses when he refused to enlist Black soldiers in the Virginia militia, to make up the manpower lost to Washington’s army up north. In the mean time Royalist governor Lord Dunmore was offering freedom for slaves who fought under the King’s colors. Jefferson resigned as governor and nine days later, fellow Virginian Patrick Henry convened a committee to investigate Jefferson’s incompetence while in office.
Years later in 1820 when elderly Thomas Jefferson presided over a commemoration of Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans, Jackson cruelly joked: “Well I’m glad to see the old gentleman got up enough courage to even remember a Battle !”

1886- President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. She was the daughter of his former law partner and Cleveland became her legal guardian after his death. Despite her being half his age and his earlier reputation for fathering children out of wedlock they were much in love and she especially charmed the American public. At age 21 she became the youngest woman to be First Lady. Songs were written for her and their first baby was honored with a candy bar- the Baby Ruth.

1896- Gugielmo Marconi took out a patent on wireless broadcasting - radio.
At the time his device could be heard from almost 12 miles away !

1920- Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play Beyond the Horizon.

1920- THE WAR ON TERRORISM- Anarchists set off several bombs in the US, including at the home of the U.S. Attorney General. This year they also set off a bomb in a wagonload of scrap metal on Wall Street and a man tried to shoot banker J.P. Morgan. This sparked a large government crackdown called The Palmer Raids. Many innocent immigrants, suffragettes and union organizers were jailed or deported as criminals, including Emma Goldman. The progressive reaction to the crackdown was the birth of the American Civil Liberties Union. One junior member of Palmers investigator staff was J Edgar Hoover.

1924- Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all American Indians, whether they wanted it or not.

1928 - Velveeta Cheese invented.

1928- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek took the city of Peking (Beijing) from warlord Chang Zhou Lin, called the Old Marshal.

1932- The Screen Publicists Guild formed

1940- Will Eisner's "The Spirit" comic first appears.

1941- Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease at age 38.

1946- Italians vote in a postwar referendum to become a republic. The monarchy of the House of Savoy was in place all during the regime of Mussolini. So because of King Vitorio Emmanuele IV’s support of Fascism, he and the Royal House of Savoy were declared deposed.

1952 - Maurice Olley of General Motors began designing the Corvette.

1952- Queen Elisabeth II of England crowned. The date was set by meteorologists who predicted it would be one of the few days that year that would have bright sunshine. And-you guessed it... it rained all day.
It was also the first Royal Coronation to be seen on television.

1956- Elvis Presley introduced his song “ You Ain’t Nothin But a Hound Dog” on the Milton Berle TV show.

1958- An L.A. referendum allowed the county to buy Chavez Ravine from its inhabitants to build Dodger Baseball Stadium.

1961- Humorist writer George F. Kaufman died. He wanted on his headstone:
"Over My Dead Body!"

1973- London animator Richard Williams closed down his Soho studio for a month so his staff could be lectured by Hollywood animation legends Art Babbitt, Chuck Jones and Ken Harris.

1996- Roy Coombs, who took over the job as host of the TV game show Family Feud after Richard Dawson, hanged himself with his bed sheets at Glendale Adventist Hospital.

1999- Pope John Paul II blessed the new Vatican Parking garage!

2003- One secret to the American victory in Iraq was many in Saddam’s army heeded an appeal from the invaders not to resist and they would be taken care of. After the victory the occupation authority announced the Iraqi Army would be disbanded and all career soldiers lost their pensions and benefits. Today thousands of unemployed Iraqi soldiers demonstrated in front of American Occupation Headquarters in Baghdad demanding to be paid. It is the first time a defeated army demanded wages from their opponent.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Of all the presidents who threw out the first baseball, only one ever threw a perfect strike. Who was it?

Answer: George W. Bush