Question: What is an aphorism?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What does it mean to speak in a desultory manner?
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History for 11/2/2019
Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers, k.d. lang, David Schwimmer is 53

Today is Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It derives from the Aztecs, who believed the life you are now living is a dream. When you die, you awake to your real life.

472AD- Next to last Roman Emperor Olybrius died. Put in his place was the boy Romulus Augustulus, while the real power was his general, the barbarian chieftain Odoacer.

1164- Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, fled into exile over his dispute with King Henry II of England.

1483- Whether you believe Shakespeare’s portrayal of King Richard III as a hunchback usurper or modern revisionist scholars who call him a maligned monarch, this day Richard III shows his friend the Duke of Buckingham how much he appreciated his help in becoming king, by cutting his head off.

1541- Archbishop Thomas Cranmer handed King Henry VIII a spy’s report that his hot young wife Queen Catherine Howard was getting-it-on with at least three other men.

1783- The American Revolution now over, General George Washington published his final orders to his disbanding army, congratulating them for their courage and allowing them all to go home now to their farms.

1789- The French Revolution seized all Church property in France.

1789- President George Washington had borrowed two books from the New York City Public Library that were due this day. The Chief Librarian noted that they were still overdue, in April 2010. A total of $4, 577.00 late dues were owed.

1804- Pope Pius VII was brought by French cavalry from Rome on to French soil so he could crown Napoleon emperor at Notre Dame in Paris. Napoleon later had the Pope locked up from 1809 to 1814. His Holiness excommunicated him.

1830- American Methodist reformers opposed to bishops met in Baltimore to form the Protestant Methodist Church.

1889- North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted into the Union. They argued for twenty years the position of a joint state capitol. Finally they decided to go separately.

1904- London newspaper The Daily Mirror first published.

1915- Battle of Coronel. In World War I, German Admiral Max von Spee’s battle cruiser fleet defeated and sank a British cruiser fleet of the coast of Chile. This was very upsetting back home, since it marked the first British naval defeat in 100 years.

1917- Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, calling for a national home for Jews in Palestine. Sir Arthur Balfour was the British Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George. Britain once considered Uganda and Argentina for a Jewish homeland before settling on Palestine, then a sleepy border province of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

1920- The first US Radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began the nation’s first broadcasting with news of election results.

1921- On the fourth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration a huge mob of Palestinian Arabs attacked the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem. After the Great War, sporadic violence had been happening since Arab nationalism had arisen as well as increased Jewish immigration from Europe as a result of the Balfour Declaration. But for the first time the rioters were fought off in a pitched battle by an organized Jewish militia called the Hagannah. This force was formed by Av Avram, and made up of Jewish World War I veterans. The leader of the Palestinians, Al Husseini, would be later elected the Grand Mufti of Palestine. This was the first large clash of Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, and sadly, it would not be the last.

1928- The Little Carnegie Theater in New York opened. Until its closing in 1982, it was one of the premiere art-house cinemas.

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Halie Selassie I, Ethiopian Emperor. The Jamaican movement Rastafarians are named for him.

1932- Young star Katherine Hepburn first shines in the film A Bill of Divorcement, co- starring with John Barrymore.

1936- The School of Industrial Arts founded in New York City. In the 60s it became The High School of Art & Design, a magnet public school for commercial artists. It was my school 1970-1973.

1937- LaGuardia Airport opened. New York City’s first municipal airport.

1944- RAOUL WALLENBURG- The Jewish population of Budapest was driven off to Nazi concentration camps, but not after Swedish envoy Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands by granting Swedish (neutral) passports to them. Wallenberg once walked alongside an SS officer ordered to execute 25 people and pleaded for each person as they were shot. The SS officer finally tired of Wallenburg’s pleas and spared the last two. When Wallenburg’s aide asked him “What good did all that begging do?” He replied: “What Good? We just saved two human lives!” When Hungary was conquered by the Red Army, Raul Wallenburg was arrested and died in one of Stalin's gulag prison camps. Russia didn’t officially admit this until 1991.

1947- Howard Hughes pilots his monster wooden airplane, the Hughes H-1 Hercules, known as “The Spruce Goose" for it's only test flight, one minute over Long Beach Harbor. Two hundred tons, Eight engines, a wingspan longer than a football field, it was conceived as an aid to win World War II, but was not ready until long after it ended.

1950- Writer George Bernard Shaw died at 94. His last words were:" Oh well, it will be a new experience, anyway."

1963- South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were assassinated by a military coup of ARVN generals. President Kennedy was aware of the coup, and pledged the US would not interfere. Still, he was surprised that Diem was murdered.

1964- CBS television purchased the NY Yankees Baseball club. This is one of the dumber business deals in entertainment history. CBS thought they were buying the world champion Murderers Row team, if they had done their research they would have known most the Yankee top stars including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were scheduled to retire. Within a year of the deal the Yankees went from first to last place, and played bad until George Steinbrenner bought them in 1977.

1983- Yielding to nationwide lobbying, President Ronald Reagan created the Martin Luther King holiday in January. Arizona was the last state to officially celebrate the holiday.

2001- Pixar’s Monsters Inc. opened.

2005- The NY Times revealed the CIA was operating black sites in third countries like Poland and Thailand, where they could take Al Qaeda and Iraqi prisoners and torture them free of oversight.

2012- Walt Disney’s Wreck it Ralph opened in theaters.

2016- Ending generations of frustration, the Chicago Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in ten innings to win one of the more exciting World Series of baseball. The last time the Cubs won a world series was in 1908.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to speak in a desultory manner?

Answer: To speak and meander from topic to topic with no logic or forethought.

Question: What does it mean to speak in a desultory manner?

Question: Who said: “Washington, First in War, First in Peace, First in the hearts of his Countrymen.”..?
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History for 11/1/2019
Welcome to November, Roman Month #9-Novembrius.

Birthdays: Marie Antoinette, President Warren Harding, Stephen Crane, Marcel Ophuls, Benevenuto Cellini, Larry Flynt, Walter Matthau, Fernando Valenzuela, Lyle Lovett, Willie D, Rick Allen of Def Leppard, Jenny McCarthy is 47, Toni Collette is 47

To the ancient Romans this was the Feast of Pomona or Homona, Goddess of the Harvest. Her offerings were bright apples, a staple of the Roman diet. In the Early Christian Church they changed the name to the Feast of All Saints Day. The custom of bobbing for apples at Halloween comes from a pagan ritual.

333BC – BATTLE OF ISSUS- Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army met the main Persian army of Darius the Great King and defeated it. Alexander declared the Greek cities of Ionia (the western coast of Turkey) liberated. Persian power would not return there for 900 years. Alexander captured Darius’s family and household who he treated courteously. After the battle Darius offered Alexander 300 tons of gold to go away, but little Alex was just getting started.
Alexander’s warriors were the first Europeans to try bananas, but they gave them diarrhea so he told them to throw them away. Alexander’s men also learned the painkilling characteristics of opium, the herbal basis of morphine and heroin. They chewed opium bulbs “The Gift of the Gods” to recover from wounds and surgery.

307BC - Agathocles, Greek Tyrant of Syracuse, ran away abandoning his army and his sons in the middle of the Saharan Desert in front of the Carthaginian army, because things weren't turning out that well for him.

79AD- Erupting since last August and destroying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Mount Vesuvius finally calmed down and went back to sleep.

1290- This was the deadline King Edward I Longshanks set for all Jews to leave England. Many drowned in small boats crossing the Channel. Once in France, the French king told them they had to leave in one year. Jews would not be allowed to resettle in England until Oliver Cromwell’s time in the 1650s.

1478- THE SPANISH INQUISITION- At the request of Ferdinand & Isabella, Pope Sixtus IV promulgated a bull setting up the office of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. The royal couple tired of civil infighting among Moslems, Jews, Christians and converts in their country. As they united the land under their one rule, they wanted Spain united under one orthodox doctrine.
The Inquisition, also called La Suprema, dominated life and thought for centuries. Other offices for the Holy Inquisition were set up in Portugal and Brazil. The Inquisition was administered by the Dominican monks and supported by an elite group of nobles called the Santa Hermandad, or the Sacred Brotherhood. In 1709 King Phillip V broke with tradition by refusing to attend an Auto da Fe, a public festival featuring the burning of heretics. The Spanish Inquisition was stopped for awhile by Napoleon’s French invasion of 1808, but restored after liberation. It finally died out in 1819.

1503 –IL PAPA TERRIBLE- Giuliano Della Rovere was elected Pope Julius II. The Holy Father delayed his coronation until his astrologers told him the stars were right. Julius drove out Caesar and Lucretia Borgia and fought in armor more than he prayed. In his 10 year reign he commissioned the Sistine Ceiling, the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, Michelangelo's Moses, Raphael's "The School of Athens", created the Swiss Guard (uniform designed by Michelangelo), dug up the Laocoon, conquered most of Central Italy and left the Vatican a budget surplus for the first time in years. He was one of the greatest of the Popes, called "Il Papa Terrible'" the Terrible Father.

1512- Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling was open to the public for the first time.

1604- William Shakespeare's play "Othello the Moor of Venice" first performed.

1700- The War of Spanish Succession began. King Charles VI "The Mad" died of enteric fever, despite being fed milk with ground-up pearls, freshly killed pigeons placed on his head and the hot entrails of a deer laid on his belly -i.e., the best modern medicine could do. He died leaving daughters and many Catholic countries worked under the tradition known as Salic Law, that women can't inherit property themselves.

So the King of France claims the throne of Spain for his son Phillip D'Anjou, and the Emperor of Germany claims it for his son Maximillian. The English and Portuguese and Dutch all get involved, and they fight it out all over Europe for 14 years. The Spanish parliament (Cortes) made it's own choice, but it changed nothing. After all, this is the business of kings, who the heck asked the people to butt in? Even in the remote forests of the New World it was called Queen Anne’s War. Orders came across the Atlantic from Europe so South Carolina and Georgia were ordered to attack Spanish Florida and Massachusetts men fought French Canadians.

1755- THE GREAT LISBON EARTHQUAKE-85% of the city destroyed, 50,000 killed, gallows erected around the city to punish looters. The earthquake happened on a Sunday at 9:40AM so most people killed were in Church hearing high Mass when the roof collapsed on them. This irony was seized upon by humanist philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot. That an overwhelmingly Catholic city like Lisbon could be devastated in such a way while Paris, Venice and London went on their heretical, hedonistic ways. This said to them that the great earthquake was not God’s punishment, but a cold, impersonal act of Nature. This notion coupled with Sir Edmund Halley's recent discovery that comets are not a message from God, but just natural phenomena, led to the growing disillusionment with religion we call the Age of Enlightenment.

1776- Mission San Juan De Capistrano founded on the California coast.

1800- President John Adams, moved into the White House, first president to do so. First Lady Abigail Adams had her wash hung in the East Room because the walls weren't in yet, so it had a nice breeze. The first three buildings erected in Pierre L'Enfant's new federal capitol city are the House of Congress, the White House, and Conrad’s Tavern. The first business in Washington City that was not part of the government was a brewery. Pennsylvania Avenue was still dotted with tree stumps. Abigail Adams wrote that Georgetown was “The very dirtiest hole I have ever seen.”

1835- Davey Crockett, after losing his bid for re-election to Congress, told his Tennessee voters, "Y’all can go to Hell, I'm going to Texas!"

1848 -The Boston Female Medical School opened with 12 students. It merged with Boston University in 1874

1858- The British Crown takes direct control of India from the Honorable East India Company. The period known as "The Raj" begins.

1880- Pat Garrett elected sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory. This will bring him into conflict with a troublesome local named Billy the Kid.

1895- Emil and Max Skladowsky set up a Bioscope Projector in Berlin's Wintergarden. The Birth of German Cinema.

1911- During a little war between Italy and Turkey over Tripolitania (Libya) a dangerous new precedent was set. An Italian pilot reached out of his cockpit and dropped three small grenades on a Turkish oasis. The first aerial bombing. Guernica, Rotterdam, London, Dresden, Hiroshima, Hanoi and Baghdad to follow.

1913- Notre Dame quarterback Gus Doreias throws the first "Forward Pass" to center Knute Rockne. The forward pass was the solution to a request to the coach of Notre Dame from Teddy Roosevelt to do something to make the game more mobile and less bone crunching. Parents were complaining to him about the injuries to their sons.

1918- The Hungarian subjects of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire declared themselves to be the new independent nation of Hungary.

1920- The first issue of American Cinematographer.

1936- Benito Mussolini in a speech coined the term “The Axis” for his new alliance with Hitler’s Germany. “There is now an “axis of mutual interest between Berlin and Rome”

1938- At Pimlico in Maryland, this day was the famous horse race between War Admiral and Sea Biscuit, the two finest thoroughbreds of the age. War Admiral was sleek and aristocratic, sired from the blood of the great champion Man of War. Sea Biscuit by contrast looked ungainly and lame. But in the end The Biscuit won the race by three lengths. The race was heard live on nationwide radio by one in three Americans.

1939- Rockefeller Center in New York City opened.

1945- OPERATION OLYMPIC- If the Atomic Bombs had failed to end the war this was the planned date for the U.S. Invasion of Japan. Based on the casualty figures to take Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Gen. MacArthur estimated 100,000 U.S. soldiers would be killed or wounded to land on the beaches of Kyushu, another 50,000 to take Tokyo and a guerrilla war in the mountains possibly lasting until 1948. The Japanese had all that was left of their armies waiting on the beaches, stockpiled 2,200 kamikaze planes in mountain bunkers and had mobilized the civilian population to fight with spears for the Motherland. The Soviets were already in the Kurile Islands and had timed their mainland invasion for July. So the resulting actions would probably divide the island into a North Japan, South Japan situation. But things turned out differently...

1946- THE FIRST NBA BASKETBALL GAME- The first professional game was the New York Knicks 68, the Toronto Huskies 66. The first basket was scored by Ozzie Sheckmann.

1950- Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Coralzo and Griselo Torresola, tried to shoot their way to President Truman. Truman was staying at Blair House while the White House was being renovated. The two assassins were shot down by the Secret Service in a furious gun battle at the foot of his stairs. Secret serviceman Leslie Coffelt shot Collazo as he himself was killed. President Truman was awoken from a nap and went to the window to see what the noise was all about. The agents shouted at him, "Get down! Ya G-ddamn fool!"

1951- As part of their training, US soldiers were made to witness an atomic bomb test at Desert Rock Nevada, then marched into the radioactive field.

1952- The first U.S. Hydrogen Bomb vaporized the island of Elugelab. Once called the Super-bomb project, Dr. Edward Teller's brainchild was nicknamed-"Mike".

1954- Algeria began its uprising for independence. A French colony since 1832, the insurgency would be France’s version of the Vietnam War and last until 1962.

1959- Hockey goalie Jacques LaPlante became the first to wear a face mask during play. Before this many hockey goalies were missing their front teeth.

1968- To replace the outmoded Hays Commission Production Code, the Motion Picture Ratings System introduced-"G, M, R, and X"- Later PG, PG-13, R and NC-17".

1972- John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, who owned the Esso brand of gasoline, changed their name to the Exxon Corporation. Esso- S-O, Standard Oil, get it?

1976- The NY Times first ran a profile about a handsome young real estate entrepreneur named Donald J. Trump. That year Trump claimed he was worth over, $200 million, although papers revealed in 2018 that same year of 1976 he claimed in tax forms he made only $24,000.

1988- Jeff Goldblum married Gena Davis. They divorced several years later. They are both over 6 feet tall.

2001- Because of Watergate, The Presidential Records Act of 1978 ordered that all Presidential records be made public after 12 years. But not for Bush and Cheney. This day President George W. Bush signed an executive order that declared that the President and Vice President could keep their secret records sealed in perpetuity!

2003- Walt Disney’s feature Brother Bear opened in theaters.
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Question: Who said: “Washington, First in War, First in Peace, First in the hearts of his Countrymen.”..?

Answer: Old Revolutionary War veteran Gen. Lighthorse Harry Lee, at George Washington’s funeral. Lee’s son was future confederate leader Robert E. Lee.