History: What’s a coxswain?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is the gas Nitrous Oxide more commonly known as?
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History for 4/10/2019
Birthdays: Josef Pulitzer, Lew Wallace, George Arliss, Omar Sharif, Harry Morgan, Max Von Sydow is 89, Ken Griffey Sr, Claire Booth Luce, Chuck Connors, John Madden, Don Meredith, Paul Theroux, David Halberstram, Steven Segal is 68, Orlando Jones, Mandy Moore is 35, Haley Joel Osment is 31

Last day of the Roman Megaleasian festival in honor of Lunus the Moon god.

1500- The Renaissance Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, was betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries to his enemy, the French King Louis XII. This one time employer of Leonardo da Vinci was thrown in a dungeon at the castle of Loche, dying in 1508. He asked for nothing to take with him except his copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

1610- French King Henry IV of Navarre was as famous for his sexual appetite as for his statesmanship. He had many liaisons with many women but one of the most famous was Gabrielle d’Estrees. When a duke told him of her beauty, he galloped through enemy fire to sleep with her. They had a long affair but Gabrielle wanted more, she wanted Henry to divorce his queen and marry her!
Henry was thinking about it, when this day D’Estees died of infection after childbirth. Some said it was poison, but that sort of childbed fever was common then. Henry grieved: “I am destroyed. The Plant of Love is dead inside of me!” Two months later he had another girlfriend.

1741- Battle of Mollwitz- King Frederick the Great's first victory. His battalions of Prussian-disciplined infantry defeated the Austrians even after his cavalry had been driven off the field, with Frederick himself swept along in the panic. Later, he was drinking his sorrows away in a pub, when he got the news that he had won the battle.

The international fame of Frederick’s army created an unexpected side industry. A Coburg toy maker named Andreas Hippert began selling sets of toy soldiers modeled on his men. Flats made of lead and brightly painted, they were a big hit.
Toy soldiers go back to the Egyptians. But Hippert created toys for average children and started the retail toy industry.

1790- The U.S. patent office created.

1836- THE HELEN JEWETT MURDER- Helen Jewett was a beautiful, well-bred woman. But bad luck had brought her down to prostitution on the mean streets of New York. This night at a brothel at 41 Thomas St, she was murdered with an axe. Her boyfriend, shop clerk Richard Robinson was charged with the murder, but there was not enough evidence for a conviction. The Helen Jewett Case became the first Media-Sensation Crime in the USA. The press of the time held the public spellbound for weeks with salacious details, and lurid descriptions of the sad end of this soiled dove.

1841- Horace Greeley creates the daily newspaper the New York Tribune, which he builds into a national voice for the abolition of slavery. Greeley was the man who advised: “Go West, Young Man.” During the New York Draft Riots of 1863 Greeley defended his newspaper from looters with his own personal cannon in the lobby.

1848- THE CHARTISTS- A large working class movement broke out in England inspired by the industrial working class uprisings occurring that year throughout Europe. The English radicals wanted no less than a republic with universal voting rights. The demonstrations and threats of violence concerned young Queen Victoria so much that at one point she became hysterical with tears. This day the Chartists planned a rally of 200,000 to march on Westminster. Victoria and Albert fled to the Isle of Wight to avoid the confrontation. But the movement petered out of it's own lack of momentum. Only 23,000 showed up and their leader, a Mr. Fergus O'Connor, shook hands with the police chief and took a cab to Parliament to present his petitions alone. Universal voting rights in England didn't occur until the Twentieth Century.

1849- Walter Hunt invented the safety pin. Hunt sold the pattern for $100 bucks.

1865- The day after Lee surrendered his army to Grant ending the Civil War, many of Lee’s officers started going through the lines to visit old friends on the other side. Men who only the day before had been trying to kill each other today laughed and partied. One of the visitors to Grant headquarters was Lee’s second in command General James Longstreet. Before the war Old Pete Longstreet was best man to Ulysses Grants wedding.

1866-The ASPCA founded.

1868- Johannes Brahms A German Requiem debuted.

1877- Honoring a political deal that helped win his election, President Rutherford Hayes began withdrawing occupying troops from the Southern States of the former Confederacy. This ends the period known as the Reconstruction. The South was once the wealthiest part of the U.S., by then it was the poorest. And all the civil and voting rights for black Americans that Lincoln had planned for postwar America were nullified.

1903- King Alexander Obrenovic of Serbia had become increasingly autocratic. His suspending the liberal constitution of 1889, installing press censorship and revoking secret balloting had made him very unpopular.
This night a group of Serbian army officers broke into the Kings bedroom and murdered King Alexander and his Queen Draga. They hurled their naked bodies out of a window to smash onto the cobblestone courtyard below where more army officers proceeded to hack up the remains with their sabers.

Peter Karageorgevic’ was elected new king. Mainstream world media was shocked by the brutality of the killings, but the Head of the Serbian Church held a Thanksgiving Mass and there was a festive mood in Belgrade the rest of the week. One of the officers in the coup would later bankroll the Serbian terrorist group that assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and started World War I.

1906- O'Henry's story " The Gift of the Magi " first published.

1912- The White Star oceanliner RMS Titanic sailed from Southhampton on her maiden voyage. When one passenger expressed reservation to a porter, he replied:” Lady, God himself could not sink this ship!” Hints of sinister premonition was the fact that for some reason the Titanic was launched but never christened. The ship's cat was seen carrying her kittens off the ship when she made her last (above surface) landfall at Queenstown, Ireland. One of the crew (William Coffey) saw this, said "That cat knows something!" and hid himself amidst the mailbags, deserting the ship.

1919- Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata assassinated. Zapata went to see a Colonel Jesus Guajardo who said he was willing to change over to his side. The colonel ordered his men to raise their rifles as if to fire a salute, but on a given signal lowered them and blasted Zapata away. Guajardo got 52,000 pesos and a promotion to general. In recent times, Mexican-Indian guerrillas in Chiapas called themselves Zapatistas.

1923- Peeps invented. The sweet Easter marshmallow confection that is shaped like a yellow baby chick and can stick to most surfaces.

1925- F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" published by Scribners.

1941- First Battle of Tobruk. When Rommel's Afrika Korps pushed the British army across the Libyan desert, the port of Tobruk held out for three months in an epic siege.

1942-THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH- not one of the highpoints in U.S.-Japanese relations. The Japanese code Bushido stated warriors should prefer death to capture. So a soldier who surrenders is beneath contempt. When twenty thousand trapped American and Filipino troops surrendered to the Japanese, they were sent back through the steaming jungles of Bataan on a forced march without food or water, the guards shooting and bayoneting those who dropped from exhaustion. These men were already starving when captured, their conquerors gave them food after nine days. Only half survived the ordeal, 12,000 died.

1947- THE FBI PAY A VISIT to Screen Actor’s Guild president Ronald Reagan and actress-wife Jane Wyman. They accuse them of belonging to Communist Party front organizations. Ronnie agrees to become an informer on his own guild, and just about everyone else in Hollywood. Jane Wyman later divorced him.

1951- GENERAL MacARTHUR FIRED BY PRESIDENT TRUMAN- Douglas MacArthur had been used to being his own boss in the Far East and he found the politics of global nuclear brinksmanship puzzling. He thought you fought wars to win them, not to maintain a stalemate. Harry Truman was trying to keep the The Korean War from turning into World War III.
MacArthur had been ordered by Truman last December 4th not to make public statements about the Korean war without going through Washington first. So when against direct orders MacArthur issued his own ultimatum threatening the Communist Chinese with a nuclear firestorm on their cities and independently conferring with Chiang Kai Shek about his getting Nationalist Chinese armies into the war Truman had had enough. Truman ordered MacArthur home and replaced with General Matthew Ridgeway. Generals Eisenhower, George C. Marshall and Omar Bradley supported the president’s policy that the military must be subject to civilian authority.

MacArthur didn’t get the news until he heard it on the radio. The public outrage at the humiliation of America’s legendary soldier was enormous, but in time subsided. 60% of the Korean War’s battle casualties occurred in the two years after MacArthur’s dismissal. In 1964 the dying MacArthur sent a final message to President Lyndon Johnson advising him not to go into Vietnam.

1952-ELIA THE FINK-Film director Elia Kazan ( On the Waterfront, East of Eden,etc.) saved his career but earned the lasting hatred of Hollywood by testifying to the House Un American Activities Committee. He named 8 of his friends as Communists, including writers Clifford Odets and Lillian Hellman.
Unlike others who were forced to testify Kazan never expressed any regret for the pain he caused. Many see the irony of 'On the Waterfront' , in that the hero is a guy who does the right thing by turning informer. The film was written by Bud Schulberg, who also named names.
In 1999 the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar and caused a new firestorm of protest, when Kazan stood next to visibly uncomfortable Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorcese. There an estimated 40% of the audience did not rise or applaud, although on television it seemed louder. That year the American Film Institute preferred to confer it’s lifetime achievement award on Roger Corman, director of Attack of the Giant Crab Monsters.

1953- The Vincent Price film The House of Wax in 3d premiered.

1961- Singer Joan Baez entered the Greenwich Village club called Folk City and was accosted by a funny young man with a nasaly twang ;”Joan Baez! Here, I wrote a song for you!” His name was Bob Dylan. Baez and Dylan became friends and together changed the image of folk music.

1962- DON'T TRY TO DOUBLECROSS JFK! The U.S. Steel Corporation had made a deal with the Kennedy Administration that if the feds leaned on the steelworkers union for a favorable labor settlement, U.S. Steel promised not to raise wholesale prices which would hurt the U.S. economy. On this day chairman Roger 'Ben' Blough told John Kennedy they were reneging on the deal and raising prices anyway. Kennedy exploded- " My father always warned me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed him until now!" The Kennedy administration made things so hot for U.S. Steel that they cancelled the price increase.

1962- Stuart Sutcliffe was the bass guitarist of the Beatles until creative differences and a marriage made him drop out of the band in favor of George Harrison. This day Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage at age 21.

1962- The Los Angeles Dodgers play their first game at their new Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine. They lost to the Cincinnati Reds 6-3.

1969- Radical students of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) protesting the Vietnam War storm the administration buildings of Harvard. It takes 400 riot police and 197 arrests to drive them out.

1971- Rob Reiner married Penny Marshall.

1973- At Xerox PARC, Dick Schoups team of scientists created Superpaint, the first digital paint and surfacing system for CG images. The first picture on the computer was a photo of Dick holding a sign that read “ It works, sort of.”

1985- Madonna began her first tour, the Virgin Tour.

1992- Bill & Sue Kroyer’s Ferngully the Last Rainforest premiered.

1992- Raunchy comedian Sam Kinison was killed in a head on collision with a truck on the road to Laughlin Nevada. Ironically, the comedian who had glorified the wild sex, drugs and rock& roll lifestyle was sober at the time, and the other driver was drunk.

1997- The Jerusalem Post announced the birth of a red heifer at a kibbutz near Haifa. The birth of a red heifer is supposed to foretell for the coming of the Messiah and the End of the World. In 2003 the cow became beef brisket, and we’re still all here.

2010- Polish President Lech Krasczynski and most of the Polish government leaders were killed in a plane crash on the way to commemorate the 70th anniv of the Katyn Massacre.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the gas Nitrous Oxide more commonly known as?

Answer: Laughing Gas.

Quiz: What are espadrilles?

Yesterdays quiz answered below: “And the Caissons go Rolling Along…” What is a caisson?
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History for 4/8/2019
Birthdays: Gautama Buddha –as commemorated by Japanese custom-Kambutsue, Ponce De Leon, King Albert of the Belgians, Mary Pickford, Yip Harburg, Betty Ford, Sonja Henje, Catfish Hunter, Jacques Brel, Darlene Gillespie, Julian Lennon, Carmen McCrae, Shecky Green, Douglas Trumbull, Robin Wright is 53, Patricia Arquette

64AD- An advertisement found on a wall in Roman Pompeii: “ TWENTY PAIRS OF GLADIATORS sponsored by Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens, lifetime priest of Nero Caesar and TEN PAIRS OF GLADIATORS sponsored by Decimus Lucretius Valens Minor (his son) will fight on April 8th –12th, There will also be a suitable WILD ANIMAL HUNT. THE AWNING will be opened. “ I wonder what the Latin was for PayPal?

217AD.-The Roman Emperor Caracalla was stabbed in the back while taking a tinkle during the Moon God Festival. He got caught with his toga down. The assassin Martialis leapt on a horse and tried to gallop away, but he was brought down by a well-thrown javelin. The Praetorian Prefect Macrinus became Emperor.

1476- In Florence, Leonardo da Vinci was accused of sodomy with his 17 year old male model. He was acquitted in a preliminary hearing, but in his sketchbook he designed a lock-busting tool, just in case.

1520- on a beach somewhere in what would be Argentina, Fernand de Magellan
has three of his captains beheaded for trying to mutiny and turn back home. Of the 200 men and five ships in his expedition only one ship with 16 skeletal men will ever see Spain again.

1778- John Adams arrived in Paris to help Ben Franklin negotiate an alliance with the French Court. Their secretary Bancroft was a British double agent. The dour New Englander Adams was annoyed by Franklin’s superstar popularity among the French- Queen Marie Antoinette referred to him as Le Ambassadeur Electrique, as well as his habit of resting nude with the windows open -his “air baths”.

1793- CITIZEN GENET ARRIVES IN THE U.S.- The ambassador from the French Revolutionary Republic presented a dilemma for the George Washington Administration. The France that helped America win her independence was royal France, but Edouard Genet represented a fellow democratic republic, so far the only other one in the world. Common people in Philadelphia and New York danced and sang in the streets when they heard of the storming of the Bastille. The French Convention displayed a Stars and Stripes in their hall. A fashion started in America of calling each other “Citizen’ and “Citizeness”.

Secretary of State Tom Jefferson was pro French, John Adams and Hamilton were anti. Washington was pro-French until the Revolution had arrested his friend Lafayette. Rich Americans were afraid of the class anger the French revolutionaries were stirring up. Citizen Genet didn't help matters by openly trying to bribe American officials and publishing a list of all the prominent men of Boston whom he felt deserved to be guillotined.

Finally President Washington was asking for Genet's recall. Then Genet learned HE was next on Robespierre's list to be guillotined when he returned home! So Genet requested asylum and became a good American citizen.

1810- Admiral Thomas Cochrane, MP for Westminster, entered the British House of Parliament with a keg of gunpowder under his arm. The old Sea Wolf was trying to make a point in debate about defending his political allies.

1826- Congressman Henry Clay and Congressman John Randolph got so mad at each other they fought a duel. They popped away at each other with pistols not doing any harm.

1856- The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Company renamed themselves the Western Union Telegraph Company. In twenty years it became the largest corporation in the United States. Western Union stopped the personal telegram service in 2006.

1861- LINCOLN'S MOVE- Ever since Lincoln's election and the southern states declaring themselves an independent Confederacy, the thorny issue was the status of U.S. military bases on Confederate soil. The rebels sent commissioners led by Ex-president John Tyler to Washington to negotiate the peaceful transfer but Lincoln refused to meet them. The commander of Fort Leavenworth surrendered his post to Texas and Fort Pickens to rebel Florida. Only Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor South Carolina defiantly flew the Stars and Stripes. By now the U.S. garrison was running out of food and surrounded on all sides by hostile guns. Everyone wondered who would fire the first shot.

On this day Lincoln informed Governor Pickens of South Carolina that the U.S. government was sending a relief force to re-supply the fort. Jeff Davis had to make the decision to fire on the fort before the relief fleet could get there, thereby starting the shooting war. Davis recognized that Lincoln had deliberately outmaneuvered him into this situation, so as not to look like the U.S. would fire first.

1864- Battles of Pleasant Grove and Mount Pleasant. Union General Nathaniel Banks Red River operation was to try and take Shreveport Louisiana and invade East Texas. But he bungled his chance in two battles with Confederates under General Richard Taylor, an old lieutenant of Stonewall Jackson’s. Other commanders among the Texas volunteers was General Tom Greene who had fought under Sam Houston for Texas independence and Marquis Etienne du Polignac, a French aristocrat whom the Texas cowboys called “General Polecat”. The Red River Campaign failed so badly that the disgusted Yankee soldiers refused to even honor Banks with the title of General; they referred to him as “Mr. Banks”.

1865- LEE'S DECISION- The Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E. Lee had to abandon the Confederate capitol Richmond, and was now being pursued by two huge Union armies. At a small intersection named Appomattox Courthouse they found the last open road blocked by a third Yankee army. Lee had 10,000 starving effectives to put against 150,000 bluecoats. Grant was offering negotiations.

This night Lee held a last council of war to decide what to do. The younger officers proposed dispersing the army with instructions to rally in the Blue Ridge Mountains and continue fighting as guerrillas. But Lee dismissed this: "I'm getting too old for that sort of thing.' I must act on the wishes of the government. " General Gordon snapped: "Oh, to Hell with the Government! You are the Confederacy now !" All that's left of it is here!" After one more dawn attempt to break out of the trap, Lee concluded with a sigh:" I guess all that is left now is to go see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths."

1876- Amilicare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda debuted. The ballet portion is famous as the Dance of the Hours.

1879- Milk first sold in glass bottles.

1904- THE ENTENTE CORDIAL. Britain and France end centuries of open hostility and signed the first of a series of alliances. In every war since William the Conqueror, Germany and Britain were always allies against France. For several years British foreign minister Joseph Chamberlain had been trying to negotiate the same exact kind of alliance with the Germans. In Berlin in 1895 he gave the toast “ Our (England) natural enemy will always be France.”
Germany was shocked by the news. Kaiser Wilhelm exclaimed, "What would Wellington and Old Blucher think?" -the allies who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

1911-Vitagraph released Winsor McCay's short cartoon "Little Nemo" theatrically.

1913- The 17th Amendment passed that called for U.S. senators to be elected by popular vote instead of named by their state legislatures.

1933-The WPA- Works Progress Administration, later renamed the Works Projects Administration founded. It was the Franklin Roosevelt administration’s massive jobs program to heal the Depression by putting unemployed people back to work. They built bridges, dams, roads, federal buildings. The WPA arts projects employed artists like Grant Wood, Berenice Abbott and Thomas Hart Benton and put on plays with Orson Welles and John Houseman.

1942- The US government ordered all remaining heavy industry convert to war production for the duration of World War II. From now until 1946 no new automobiles were made, no tin toys, there were almost no labor strikes. Sugar, rubber and gas were strictly rationed. But any lingering unemployment of the Depression finally disappeared.

1945- Only days before his concentration camp would be liberated by allied armies, Lutheran theologian Deitrich Boenhoffer was hanged for his public opposition to Hitler.

1949- A three year old girl named Kathy Fiscus fell into a well in the little LA suburb of San Marino California. After a concerted effort by authorities to rescue her, she was found dead. What makes this sad incident memorable, was it was the first time a news event was followed by television cameras and reported live as it happened.

1952- A nationwide steel strike was going to cripple steel production in the President Harry Truman ordered the US government to take direct control of the steel mills and threatened the strikers that if they didn’t go back to work he would draft them into the army. While such drastic methods may have been necessary in wartime, Truman was dangerously overstepping his bounds as president by this action.

1966- Lenoid Brezhnev became Secretary General of the Communist party and leader of the Soviet Union.

1973- Pablo Picasso died at 91. His last words at a dinner with friends was a toast 'Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can’t drink anymore'. On his night table was a comic book drawn by former Disney animator Vip Partch.

1974- Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth's home run record of 714 home runs. Hammerin' Hank hits #715 off Dodger pitcher Al Dowling. Aaron had tied the Babe’s record at the end of the previous season and had to endure an entire winter of stress and racial threats before he could come up to bat again and break the record on opening day of the new season. His locker had sacks of vicious hate mail alongside it. Henry Aaron retired with a new record of 755, done without steroids. Pitcher Al Dowling joked: "I never say 7:15 anymore. I only say, 'It's a quarter after seven'."

1975- Frank Robinson becomes the first black manager in major league history as his Indians defeat the Yankees 5-3. The Tribe's new player-manager hits a home run in his first at-bat as the designated hitter.

1986- Actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of the town of Carmel, California.

1994- Chan Ho Park becomes the first Korean to play in the US major leagues as he makes his Dodger pitching debut.

1994- Grunge rocker Kurt Kobain’s body was discovered by a security system electrician three days after he blew his own head off with a shotgun.

1995- Disney’s A Goofy Movie premiered.
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Yesterday’s question: “And the Caissons go Rolling Along…” What is a caisson?

Answer: A caisson was an artillery wagon that carried ammunition and the cannon was tethered to.

Question: “And the Caissons go Rolling Along…” What is a caisson?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What do you mean when you call someone a Cassandra?
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History for 4/7/2019
Birthdays St. Francis Xavier, William Wordsworth, Mongo Santamaria, Walter Winchell, David Frost, Percy Faith, Daniel Ellsberg, Jerry Brown, Alan Pakula, Billie Holiday, Ravi Shankar, Irene Castle, Wayne Rogers, Stan Winston, James Garner, Olkirk Christenson-the inventor of Lego toys, Francis Ford Coppola is 80, Russell Crowe is 55, Jacky Chan is 65

Today is the Feast of Saint Jean Baptiste de LaSalle.

1732-STAND AND DELIVER! Dick Turpin was hanged. Dick Turpin was a highwayman who was the Jesse James of England. Many legends abound how he rode his trusty mare Black Bess from London to York in one day (impossible), and robbed the rich and helped the poor (he kept it all from himself). Finally, In York he was arrested for robbery, rustling, and shooting his neighbors chickens.

1805- Ludwig Van Beethoven premiered his Symphony # 3 Eroica at Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wein. It marks his break with the gentle styles of Mozart and Haydn and the evolution of his full mature sound. He originally intended to dedicate it to Napoleon but scratched out the dedication page when he heard Napoleon had renounced republican liberal values and made himself an emperor. Of all his symphonies it remained his favorite, despite the opinions of music critics at the time-“ Strange modulations and violent transitions… undesirable originality.”

1827- The first book of matches is patented.

1850 - The Nevada (California?) gold rush town of Rough n’ Ready declared itself an independent nation, complete with president, flag and constitution. It lasted about three months. When the miners went to buy liquor at a nearby town to celebrate the 4th of July, they were refused because they were now foreigners. So the miners voted to rejoin the USA.

1862-THAT DEVIL FORREST! The Second Day of the Battle of Shiloh. Union General Grant, reinforced overnight, counterattacked and recaptured his ground lost the day before by the rebel surprise attack. When General Lew Wallace met him with reinforcements Wallace said: ”If stupidity and hard fighting are what you want, here we are.” Grant said: “I’ve had plenty of both already.”
The last Confederate under fire was wild cavalryman Nathan Bedford Forrest. He led a charge at the Union Army to cover the rebel armies retreat. At one point the gray-clad horseman found himself cut off and alone in a sea of blue uniforms. The Yankees yelled: "Kill Him! Kill the G-ddamn Rebel! Knock him off his horse!" While Forrest slashed all around him with his saber, a bluecoat pushed his rifle into Forrest's ribs and pulled the trigger. The force of the blast lifted him momentarily out his saddle, but Forrest ignored the wound and kept fighting. To keep from being shot in the back as he galloped to safety Forrest pulled one hapless Yankee up on his horse and used him as a shield, then dropped him down when out of danger.

Forrest survived the Civil War " I personally killed ten Yankees and had eleven horses shot out from under me. I finished the war down one horse!"

1865- General Ulysses Grant opened a correspondence with Confederate General Robert E. Lee about the surrender of his army. After the capture of Richmond, Grant’s Yankees sensed final victory was close. This night at Farmville Virginia, Grants blue coated troops broke out in a spontaneous torchlight celebration. The sky was illuminated by multitudes of torches and as Grant received their cheers. The nearby rebels could hear as the night sky shook with the sound of “John Brown’s Body” sung by thousands.

1891- Showman P.T. Barnum died of old age. The last words of the man who invented kiddie matinees, the Greatest Show on Earth and coined the word “Jumbo” were "How were the box office receipts today?"

1927- An audience at the Bell Laboratory watched a three inch television screen broadcast a sound image of US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

1927- Abel Gance’s classic film Napoleon premiered at the Paris Opera. Gances active camera and wild editing were years ahead of their time, climaxed by a triptych of large images on three movie screens linked by synchronized projectors. One American man in the audience, Walter Wallin, was inspired to develop the Panavision wide screen lens, used in many modern movies.

1933- President Franklin Roosevelt began to dismantle the Prohibition laws by passing a law to allow the drinking of beer. My grandmother remembered jumping on a horse drawn beer wagon as they paraded down Fifth Ave. in New York City to cheering crowds. Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia and Mayor Jimmy Walker were there too.
The full repeal of Prohibition would take an amendment to the Constitution, ratified by December of that year.

1933- Hitler's regime passed the Professional Civil Service Restoration Act, which ordered Jews and other political undesirables fired from all government posts including university professorships, museum curators, and arts funded grants. The exile of Germany's intellectual elite began- Bertholdt Brecht, Billy Wilder, George Gropius, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, George Grosz, Michael Curtiz, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy, Max Reinhardt and Otto Klemperer -Colonel Klink's dad.

1939-"The Ugly Duckling" the last Disney Silly Symphony short cartoon.

1945-The SUICIDE MISSION OF THE BATTLESHIP YAMATO- The Japanese superbattleship had just enough fuel to sail into the midst of the American Navy around Okinawa, then it was to sell itself dearly. It never made it though. Because of Ultra, the cracking of the Japanese code, the Americans knew it was coming. The Yamato was bombed and torpedoed by swarms of U.S. planes and went to the bottom before it ever got within range of other surface ships.

1947- The Russians hanged Rudolph Hoess, Nazi commandant of Auschwitz, in front of the camp. His last words were Seig Heil.

1948- The World Health Organization created.

1949- Musical "South Pacific" debuts. Some Enchanted Evening…

1957- The last New York City trolley car shuts down. (Queens to Manhattan)

1966-The U.S. Air Force recovered one of the H-Bombs they lost over Spain.

1970- The film Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and John Voight won the Best Picture Oscar. The only x-rated film ever to do so. Walt Disney’s It’s Tough to be a Bird” won best animated short.

1971- In a taped Oval Office phone conversation, President Richard Nixon complained to Henry Kissinger that none of his cabinet had bothered to call and compliment him on a policy speech.” Well, screw ‘em! Screw all the cabinet!”

1972- Gangster "Crazy Joe" Gallo was machine gunned while celebrating his birthday at Umberto's Clam House in the Little Italy section of Manhattan. He had been disturbing the gang peace in New York set up by the council of the Five Families, under the leadership of Godfather Carlo Gambino. Crazy Joe’s headquarters was in the President’s Street section of Brooklyn where supposedly he kept a live African lion as a pet. Finally when Gallo had hit rival don Joe Columbo in broad daylight at a Columbus Day Italian Unity rally, the Five Families decided he had gone too far. Ownership of the restaurant was returned in 1994 by the city prosecutors office to the original owner Manny "the Horse" Ianello.

1990- The Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center opened a show of the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe that the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC cancelled. Mapplethorpe’s explicit depictions of gay and s/m lifestyles shocked neoconservative critics of the national endowments for the arts. A media debate on whether government should subsidize or censor art raged, and Dennis Barry the museum director was tried for obscenity. His acquittal was seen as a victory for free expression but the argument cast a pall on future funding of controversial art.

1998- Pop star George Michael was busted after exposing himself to an undercover policeman in a public park men’s room in Beverly Hills.

1998- Lead singer for the punk band The Plasmatics, Wendy O. Williams, committed suicide with a shotgun. The outrageously mohawked punk rocker was known for stunts on stage like destroying her amplifiers with a chainsaw, skydiving in the nude, autoeroticism with a sledgehammer, and crashing a burning school bus into a wall of television sets.

2155- According to the show Babylon 5 today marked the first contact between humans and the Centauri Alliance.
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Yesterday’s question: What do you mean when you call someone a Cassandra?

Answer: Casandra was a Trojan priestess who had been given the gift of prophesy, but also the curse that no one would believe her. She prophesied the fall of Troy. The original Debbie Downer. Some folks attribute the phrase, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!" to her. (Actually, that was said, according to the Aneid, by Laocoon, who was soon slain by the gods, his death ironically seen by the population as proof that the Trojan horse was seen a real prize.)

Today a Cassandra is a person who makes a prediction, usually unpopular and often outrageous, that no one believes but eventually proves to be true. (thanks FG)

Question: What do you mean when you call someone a Cassandra?

Yesterday’s Quiz: What is grapeshot?
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History for 4/6/2019
Birthdays: Raphael of Urbino, Sacajawea, Ram Dass, Butch Cassidy, Gustav Moreau, Lowell Thomas, Merle Haggard, Billy Dee Williams, George Reeves, Michelle Phillips, Andre Previn, Barry Levinson, Roy Thinnes, John Ratzenberger, Zamfir, Paul Rudd is 50, Zach Braff is 44.

46BC- Battle of Thapsus- Even after Julius Caesar defeated his chief rival Pompey, other enemies kept the Roman Civil War going. This day in Africa, Caesar defeated an army led by a coalition of senatorial foes including Cato the Younger. Caesars troops were angry that they had to fight again the enemies Caesar had pardoned after the Battle of Pharsalia. So after the victory, they went on a killing spree of most of the prisoners.
Cato the Younger declared he would spend the rest of his life eating his meals seated upright instead of lying down, which the Romans considered very bad for the digestion. Then he went on board his flagship at Utica and tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the belly. A doctor bandaged up his wounds. As Caesars officers arrived to arrest Cato, he pulled off the bandages, ripped open his wounds and pulled out his own intestines. “All is well with the General” Cato said and died.

1327- Italian poet Petrarch first saw the love of his life- Laura de Sade at the Church of Sants Clara in Avignon France. Even though Petrarch was a monk, and she was married, he loved her from afar and wrote some of the first Great Italian Love Poetry, preparing the way for the Renaissance. Laura de Sade was the distant ancestor of the famous sadist the Marquis de Sade, who will be born 400 years in the future.

1453-Turkish Sultan Mohammed II, planted his standard before the St. Romanus Gate, and began the great siege of Constantinople, capitol of the Byzantine Empire. The Turkish Army went to battle to the sounds of heavy percussion, drums and cymbals, reintroducing them into European music.

1520- Renaissance artist RAPHAEL of Urbino, died on his 37th birthday. Vasari wrote of the great artist: " He pursued pleasures and love affairs without moderation. On one occasion he went to excess, and returned home with a violent fever, whereof he died soon after." Michelangelo, Leonardo and Titian lived to great old age.

1621- After staying in the New World for the winter, the Mayflower weighed anchor to return to England. The Pilgrims were on their own.

1717- BACH BUSTED- Composer Johann Sebastian Bach was court organist for the Duke of Saxe-Weimar but he was frustrated that he couldn’t get the job of court composer- Kappelmeister. Even after the incumbent kappelmeister Johann Drese died instead of Bach, the post went to Drese’s son! When the court of the nearby German state of Anhalt-Coethen offered him a better job, he went to tell his boss Duke Wilhelm Augustus that he wanted out of his contract. The Duke responded by clapping Bach in prison! Johann Sebastian Bach cooled his heels in the slammer until December when the duke relented and let him go to his new gig. Your Highness, Fugue You!

1776- USN- When the American Revolution started the rebels had only a few lightly armed sloops and pirate ships to pit against the invincible British Navy. The three heaviest armed American warships carried 34 cannons, Britain had 120 ships of the line that boasted 74 cannon each. This day was the first fleet action of the U.S. Navy. Commodore Iziah Hopkins flotilla engaged the British frigate HMS Glasgow off the coast of Rhode Island.
The six little American ships could do little against the one British ship and after a lot of cannonballs flying the only British casualty was one man shot by a marine with a rifle.
Hopkins was cashiered out of the service and more daring captains like Nicholas Biddle and John Paul Jones took his place.

1808- JOHN JACOB ASTOR founded the American Fur Company. Almost on the tail of Lewis and Clark Astor established a line of fur trading posts to the Pacific and set the basis for the Astor Family fortune. A wily businessman, Astor had established Astoria on the Columbia River, the first Yankee settlement in the Pacific Northwest. When the War of 1812 broke out with England Astor knew nothing could defend this outpost from troops in British Granville- later renamed Vancouver. When a British man-of-war dropped anchor in Astoria bay to burn the town the captain was met with a man waving a bill of sale. Astor had sold the entire town to a Canadian company, thereby saving it.

1817- Princess Charlotte, the only child of the Prince and Princess of Wales, died in childbirth, creating a succession crisis. Mad King George III had many children, but they were all amazingly infertile, at least with their legitimate partners. HRH, soon to be George IV, hated his wife and was unlikely to have any more offspring, his younger brother William was childless and their three sisters were spinsters. Lucky for England the Duke and Duchess of Kent just had a new baby girl named Victoria. Later as Queen Victoria, she would visit Charlotte’s tomb and meditate on their strange paths of Fate.

1830- A Vermont man named Joseph Smith went to Fayette New York and filed papers to found a new Church he called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or the Mormon Church.

1830- The Mexican Government tried to stop any further American immigration into Texas territory by an edict this day. It also forbade trade contact with the US, and outlawed black slavery. Three issues destined to anger the Texans into demanding independence.

1832- The Black Hawk War began in the Illinois- Kentucky area. A young volunteer who didn't see much action was a tall gawky lawyer named Abe Lincoln.

1853- The town of Portland Oregon founded.

1862- BATTLE OF SHILOH- One of the bloodiest battles on American soil. At dawn the Confederate army surprise attacked the Union army of General Ulysses Grant at a small Tennessee riverboat landing. Orthodox military logic would say Grant should have retreated, however he fought back and won a great, if confused victory. More Americans were wounded or killed in this one battle than all the previous American wars rolled into one. Shiloh is Hebrew for:” Place of Peace”.

Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnston, who was said to be as brilliant as Robert E. Lee, was trying to stop his hungry soldiers from sitting down to eat the hot breakfast they scared the Yankees away from. Picking up a tin coffee cup, he told looting rebels 'This is all the plunder I want” He spent the day directing the battle waving his tin cup instead of a sword. He was shot down and bled to death while waiting for his personal doctor to finish treating some captured enemy wounded. A Lieutenant General, Johnston remains the highest-ranking American ever killed in action.

Other combatants were Welshman William Morton Stanley, who would someday go to Africa and find Dr. Livingston, and General Lew Wallace, who as Governor of New Mexico, when not pardoning Billy the Kid would write the novel Ben Hur. The first day of Shiloh went badly for the North. That night Sherman said in frustration:” Grant, today we’ve had hell to pay!” In the firelight Grant quietly whittled on a stick:” Yep......whip ‘em tomorrow.” he muttered. Which he did.

1868- Brigham Young married Anne Elizabeth Webb, his 27th wife.

1896- The first OLYMPIC GAMES of the modern era opened in Athens Greece. The last was closed by the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius in 391A.D as a pagan festival. The Games were revived as the idea of Baron Pierre Coubertin, who became the first president of the IOC. These games also saw the first modern Marathon race. Appropriately it was won by a Greek- Spyridion Louis.

1906 - Cartoonist James Stuart Blackton created sensation when Edison filmed him doing sequential drawings and they seemed to come alive. The film was The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Blackton made a fortune, lost it and was hit by a bus in 1940. But his animated antics paved the way for Mickey, Bugs, Bart, Gollum and Laura Croft.

1909- Commander Robert Peary and his African American assistant Matthew Henson claimed to have been the first to reach the North Pole. Their claim was challenged but confirmed by the US Government in 1911. Today scholars say they were slightly off.

1917-THE UNITED STATES ENTERED WORLD WAR I. Congress approved President Woodrow Wilson’s call for a declaration of war against Germany and her allies Austria, Turkey and Romania. In 19 months the war would cost 200,000 U.S. lives, cost $56 billion, and created dozens of millionaires. If you owned any stock in chemical companies like Dupont or gun makers like Remington, your stock went up 400%.
But it also generated a lot of great music, like the song Over There. It also created the fashion for trench coats, wrist watches, and calling weather systems Cold Fronts.
Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to ever sit in Congress, voted against war. In 1941, she was the lone vote against WWII. She lived long enough to protest the Vietnam War.

1929- Mahatma Gandhi and his thousands of followers complete their Salt March and make salt on the shores of the Indian Ocean in violation of the British State monopoly.
This was the Indian equivalent of the Boston Tea Party. Gandhi was arrested soon after.

1929- Louisiana senator Huey Long gained national notoriety when Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company tried to get the state legislature in Baton Rouge to impeach him. Long made a large part of the Louisiana legislature sign a pledge that hey would never impeach him, in return for sweetheart jobs and kickbacks. The impeachment scheme failed and Long- The Kingfish continued to be a rogue force in Third Party Politics.

1931- The Little Orphan Annie radio show premiered. Remember kids to drink your Ovaltine and get out your de-coder rings.

1933- the Screen Writer's Guild, later the WGA, formed. It took about seven years for them to unionize screenwriting in Hollywood. Jack Warner called them : "Communists, Radical Bastards and Soap Box Sons of B*tches !" David O. Selznick, who prided himself on running a writer-friendly studio, told them: “You put a picket line in front of my studio and I'll mount a machine gun on the roof and mow you all down!!" Despite these protestations, the Guild today represents all Hollywood writers.

1936- A scientist at Dupont invented Teflon.

1936- Episode One of the Flash Gordon series of movie serials premiered. This introduced Flash, Dale, and Emperor Ming the Merciless of the Planet Mongo. It made a star out of Olympic gold medalist Larry “Buster” Crabbe.

1941-The Nazis panzers invaded Yugoslavia and Greece.

1941- The British army entered Addis Ababa and drove Mussolini’s Italians from Ethiopia.

1945- OPERATION FLOATING CHRYSANTHEMUM- The Japanese attack the U.S. Navy around Okinawa with 355 Kamikazi suicide planes. The concept seems nutty today but it had effect. More U.S. ships were sunk at this battle than in any time since Pearl Harbor. Casualty rates of sailors were so high that the War Dept. ordered a news blackout. The navy actually discussed a withdrawal from Okinawa at one point. Before the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese High Command had 2,200 kamikaze planes hidden in mountain bunkers to await the US invasion of the Japanese home islands.

1951- Happy Birthday AstroBoy! According to the 1951 comic book by Osamu Tezuka, today Professor Elephant completed the little boy with the suction cup feet and pointed hairdo. Originally called Tetsuwan Atomo, he was named Astro Boy when Mushi Prod released the animated version in the US in 1961.

1956- Elvis Presley signed his first movie deal with Paramount Pictures.

1968- Two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, police attacked the Black Panther Party at their Oakland HQ. In the furious shootout a member named Billy Hutton was killed, Eldridge Cleaver wounded and Bobby Seale arrested. This incident seemed to prove the black militants claims of police harassment and caused a firestorm of civic protest. The Black Panthers forged an alliance with the Anti-Vietnam War white students, SDS, and later the Hispanic militants the Young Lords and AIM, the American Indian Movement.

1974- ABBA, a new disco phenomenon from Sweden is introduced to the world when they win a Eurovision song contest. Mama Mia!

1991- The first episode of Darkwing Duck premiered.

1994-The Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi are both killed when their plane crashed. It is never proved why the plane went down but violence broke out in the Rwandan capitol. The ethnic Hutu tribe began a systematic killing of the Tutsi people. It was one of the worst genocides since the Holocaust.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is grapeshot?

Answer: Grapeshot was an artillery round which included a casing inside of which a cluster of smaller projectiles, usually iron balls. When fired, the balls would spread out, causing maximum damage, much like a machinegun.

Quiz: What is grapeshot?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is kudzu?
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History for 4/5/2019
Birthdays: Plato, Swinburne, Booker T. Washington, Josef Lister, Bette Davis, Nadar, Jean Fragonard, animator Hicks Lokey, Nguyen Van Thieu, historian Robert Bloch, Gale Storm, Washington Atlee-Burpee the mail order seed king, Spencer Tracy, Frank Gorshin, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Greenaway, Gregory Peck, Roger Corman, Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA is 69, Colin Powell is 82, Pharrell Williams is 46.

To the ancient Romans this was the Feast Day of the Goddess of Good Fortune, Fortuna Virilis.

622 A.D.- BYZANTINE EMPEROR HERACLIUS began his military campaigns. Heraclius is one of the mysteries of history. He sat lethargic on his throne while the Persian Shah Chosroes II conquered the whole Middle East almost up to his doorstep. Then Heraclius got up, put on his armor and turned into Julius Caesar, Alexander and Rambo all rolled into one. In a lightning campaign he destroyed the Persian army, burned their capitol, sprinkled garbage on the grave of Zoroaster and chased them to the foot of the Himalayas. The Persians killed Chosroes just to make Heraclius go away.

Then Heraclius went back to his throne and did nothing for the rest of his reign. Moslem Arabs would soon appear from out of Arabia and wipe out both empires, which is why you probably never heard of him. Some speculate that his wife Empress Heracleonas was the real military genius but the scholars recorded the deeds all in the man’s name.

1242-" THE BATTLE ON THE ICE" Lake Pripous. Alexander Nevsky the Prince of Novgorod defeated the German monastic knights The Order of Sword Brothers. These warrior-monks had been sent by Rome to combat pagans in the Baltic lands but after everyone had become Christian they had switched their attention to "Greek Orthodox-Schizmatics". In 1939 Sergei Eisnestein did the famous film Alexander Nevsky about the battle with a musical score by Sergei Prokoviev.

1531- Richard Roose was boiled in oil for trying to poison the Archbishop of Canterbury.

1613- Princess Pocahontas, now baptized Lady Rebecca, married John Rolfe. She had been sold by her cousins to the Jamestown colonists as a hostage for a copper pot. Today many old families in Virginia claim a dynastic link to Pocahontas. John Rolfe is famous for inventing the American tobacco industry. The local Virginia weed was a bit too rough for Englishmen to puff on, so Rolfe had tobacco cuttings smuggled out of Brazil and planted in the James River delta. Since the English had found no gold-laden Aztecs, this settlement was at first viewed as a failure. But this tobacco crop made the Virginia Colony a success to profit hungry investors back home.

1614- King James I’s second parliament met. It was famous for enacting no laws, basically doing absolutely nothing. Britons rejoiced.

1759- A small Dutch fleet blown off course in a Pacific storm discovered a small island. Because it was Easter, they named it Easter Island.

1794- French Revolutionaries Danton and Camille Desmoulins were guillotined. They were arch-leftists but their old buddy Robespierre wanted them out of the way. So they were convicted of being treasonous counterrevolutionaries. When Danton mounted the scaffold he laughed:" When you take my head off, show it to the people. It will be worth it!"

1814- Now that Napoleon had agreed to abdicate, he wanted to assure his son would keep the throne of the French Empire. But the victorious allied monarchs in occupied Paris told Nappy’s emissary Caulaincourt that they refused negotiate with them any further. At the same time one of Napoleon’s generals and closest friends Marshal Marmont made his own deal and took his army over to the enemy. Marmont was the Duke of Ragusa and for the next few decades a Raguser became a synonym for traitor like Benedict Arnold or Quisling.

1815-the volcano Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia killing 12,000 and effecting weather patters around the world. Many quaint Currier & Ives ice skating prints come from this year without a summer.

1827- Englishman Joseph Lister born. Lister was not only the inventor of Listerine but of hygienic medical practices. Before Lister insisted on sterilization hospitals were known as death traps of infection where surgeons would sharpen their scalpels on the sole of their boots before making their incision. He once stopped an epidemic in a hospital by noticing that the interns would go from dissecting cadavers to delivering babies without washing their hands!

1840- Six drunken friends met in a tavern in Baltimore and pledged they would never drink again. They formed the Washingtonian Society, the earliest Temperance League.

1851- New York Mayor Ambrose Kingland proposed that a large park be built in Manhattan for health and recreation. Work on Central Park was begun in 1856.

1860- GARABALDI AND “THE THOUSAND RED SHIRTS” LAUNCH THEIR INVASION OF SICILY. Of the several Italian leaders struggling to unify Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi was the least patient. While the King of Sardinia Vittorio Emanuel and his minister Cavour tried quiet gentle diplomacy, Garibaldi and his "red shirts" launched a unprovoked assault on the Bourbon Kingdom of Two Sicilies and told Vittorio-"You come from the North, I from the South." They met at the middle at Magenta and unified the entire Italian peninsula for the first time since the Roman Empire.
While in the south, Garabaldi's Northern Italian men wrote home of a new dish they tried- pasta with tomato sauce!

1862- During the Civil War Union General George McClellan paused in his march through Virginia to attack the old Revolutionary War village of Yorktown. A small force under a rebel leader named MacGruder fooled McClellan into believing he was facing a large rebel army when he actually outnumbered them 20 to one. MacGruder marched his little force in circles, making multiple campfires and constantly blowing bugles, trying to look like a larger force than they actually were. When the Yankees finally overran the rebel fortifications they found the heavy cannon pointed at them were harmless logs painted black. They called them Quaker Guns.

1862- Meanwhile in Shiloh Tennessee, Confederate Beauregard and Albert Johnston’s rebel army was sneaking up to surprise attack Ulysses Grants army. But Beauregard was concerned that their undisciplined men were whooping and shooting their guns off and the element of surprise was now lost. Johnston ended speculation by saying:” I intend to fight them tomorrow even if they are a million strong!” Past midnight, Yankee General Sherman received reports of rebs skirmishing with his sentries. He told his adjutant to forget it and get some sleep, as there would be no battle that day. Shortly afterwards the entire Confederate Army attacked his camp.

1869- Daniel Bakeman, recorded as the last surviving soldier of George Washington’s Revolutionary army, died at age 109. A man who looked George Washington in the face lived long enough to be photographed by Matthew Brady. He married at age 12 and he and his wife stayed married for 91 years.

1874- Johann Strauss Jr.’s operetta Die Fledermaus premiered in Vienna.

1887- Lord Acton wrote: “ Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

1892- THE JOHNSON COUNTY WAR- By the 1890's many great Wyoming cattle ranches were owned by Eastern or European companies. When cattle herds were decimated by the great frost of 1888 a labor dispute arose between the distant employers and the laid off cowboys, many of whom resorted to rustling to make a living. By 1892 the friction became so bad the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association hired a private train and filled it with hired Texas gunfighters and enough ammunition to kill everyone in three states and sent it to Johnson County. This day they pulled out of Cheyenne with orders to shoot or string up any and all rustlers, revolutionists and troublemakers. After killing two men on their list the word got out to the citizens of Casper Wyoming. They gathered en masse and surrounded the Texans in a ranch house laying siege to it, throwing lit dynamite sticks from an armored wagon and shooting at any cowpoke who dared show his face in a window.
The hapless hit men were finally rescued by the U.S. Army, who granted all a general amnesty. The incident was the basis for the movie "Heaven's Gate".

1913- Ebbets Field opened in Flatbush. The Brooklyn Dodgers defeat the New York Highlanders (Yankees) 3-2

1915- Jess Willard knocked down Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion in a title fight in Havana Cuba. The older Johnson retired after the fight. He wouldn’t hold the title long though, on July 4th Willard lost to new kid Jack Dempsey.

1923- Lois Armstrong, King Oliver and the Creole Jazz Band took a train from Chicago to Richmond Indiana to record Chimes Blues. Satchmo’s first record.

1930 -James Dewar invented the Twinkie. Dewar ate two every day of his life and called them “The best darn-tootin idea I ever had!” As an experiment in 1996 five top French master chefs were given the assignment of trying to recreate a Twinkie using natural ingredients. They all failed.

1931- Fox Film Company dropped their option on young star John Wayne as a dud not going anywhere. Wayne eked out an existence doing cheap westerns for Republic and Monogram until John Ford made him a star in 1939’s Stagecoach.

1939- For German children, membership in the Hitler Youth corps became mandatory.

1945- The first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

1951- Republican Senator Robert Short read General Douglas MacArthur’s proclamation to the Communist Chinese on the floor of Congress. It read that if they didn’t withdraw from Korea, MacArthur would restart the Chinese Civil War and “Rain Nuclear Fire down upon their cities”.
MacArthur had no permission from the State Department to make such a rash statement, and it ruined all the behind the scenes maneuvers to get the Chinese to negotiate an end to the Korean War early. The previous December, MacArthur had been given a direct order from the President not to make any public statements about Korean policy, but the General chose to ignore it.
President Harry Truman concluded-“I’m gonna fire that pompous Sonofabitch!”

1951- The Atomic Spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for espionage.

1955- Elderly Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally retired. He was succeeded as PM by Anthony Eden. Churchill, already the author of several books, joked with his cabinet:” Gentlemen, History shall be kind to us, for I intend to write it!”

1963- The Lava Lamp invented by Dr. Edward Craven Walker.

1965- Julie Andrews had created the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But when filming the motion picture, the studio head Jack Warner decided she was not a big enough star, so he used Audrey Hepburn with a dubbed singing voice. But La Andrews had her revenge. At the Academy Awards this night My Fair Lady won Best Picture among a bunch of others, but Julie Andrews won the best actress Oscar for Mary Poppins. She famously said "I would like to thank Jack Warner for making this award possible!"

1969- Pope Paul VI abolished those silly big wide brimmed red hats (galeros) the cardinals wore.

1976- Eccentric Billionaire Howard Hughes died at age 76. Hughes had inherited his fathers oil rig tool company at 17, and built the mighty Hughes aircraft empire, and ran RKO pictures. But after surviving several test plane crashes, he became addicted to pain killers and became increasing withdrawn from the world. He died a strange shut in, long haired and living on a diet of drugs and saving his urine in mason jars.

1985- Singer David Lee Roth quit the rock band Van Halen to pursue a solo career.

1994- Grunge rock star Kurt Kobain shot himself. His body wasn’t discovered until two days later.

2003- Invading American forces began the Battle for Baghdad.

2030- FIRST CONTACT- According to Star Trek this is the day Professor Zephram Cochran adapted an old World War III ICBM missile and invented the Warp Drive, enabling the Earth to begin deep space exploration, and during whose maiden flight he made the first contact with an alien race- from the planet Vulcan.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is kudzu?

Answer: Kudzu was a species of SouthEast Asian vine that appeared in the Southeast USA and grew like a weed. Despite all efforts to eradicate it, kudzu spread at the rate of 150,000 acres a year.