TomSito.com - TOM'S BLOG

History: What is a zephyr?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below:Which one never did a voice in an animated film? A-Max Fleischer, B –Walt Disney, C-Tex Avery, D- Brad Bird
----------------------------------------------------------------
History for 4/10/2021
Birthdays: Josef Pulitzer, Lew Wallace, George Arliss, Omar Sharif, Harry Morgan, Max Von Sydow, Ken Griffey Sr, Claire Booth Luce, Chuck Connors, John Madden, Dandy Don Meredith, Paul Theroux, David Halberstram, Steven Segal is 70, Orlando Jones, Mandy Moore is 37, Haley Joel Osment is 33

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 heavy 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 mistress.

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 actually had won.

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 regiments. 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 ocean liner RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton 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 chic, 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 was 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 SAG, 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 Schoup’s team of scientists created Superpaint, the first digital paint and surfacing system for computer images. The first picture on the computer was a photo scanned 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.

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 brisket, and we’re all still 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.

2019- The first photo evidence of a Black Hole in space. Young MIT grad student Katie Bouman led the creation of an algorithm that allowed scientists to capture the first-ever black hole photo. Proving Einstein was correct.

===============================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: Which one never did a voice in an animated film? A-Max Fleischer, B –Walt Disney, C-Tex Avery, D- Brad Bird

Answer: Max Fleischer appeared as himself in short films, but he never did a voice for a character.

Quiz: Which one never did a voice in an animated film? A-Max Fleischer, B –Walt Disney, C-Tex Avery, D- Brad Bird

Yesterdays quiz answered below: What is a fait’ accompli?
----------------------------------------------------
History for 4/9/2021
Birthdays: Tamerlane, Lenin, Paul Robeson, Jean Paul Belmondo, Ward Bond, Seve Balesteros, Carl Perkins, Michael Learned, Tom Lehrer, Paula Poundstone, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Hefner, Dennis Quaid is 67, Elle Fanning is 23

192AD- Septimius Severus hailed Emperor of Rome by the African Legions.

641AD- Babylon falls to the advancing armies of Arab Islam. Moslems saw their two greatest enemies to be the Christians and the Persian Mithraists, the philosophy of Zoroaster and the Magi. Even today in Iran there is a small Zoroastrian minority.

999 AD. Sylvester II made pope, the first Frenchman. He reformed the way Popes were selected by organizing the College of Cardinals. Before that Popes were selected out of infighting between several leading Roman noble families. Tradition also says Sylvester was a sorcerer because he experimented with the medicinal properties of herbs, and he is credited with inventing the modern pendulum clock.

1241- BATTLE OF LEIGNITZ- Ogodai, the son of Genghis Khan, wanted to complete his father’s plan for world conquest. To do this he dispatched four armies –one to China, one to Korea, one to Europe, the fourth was pushing south through Baghdad, Egypt and Palestine. This day the Mongol horde of Subotai, Vuldai and Paidar clashed with the cream of East European knighthood on a plain in Poland. This was the first meeting of the Mongols and Western Knights.
The Mongols slaughtered them all easily. Paidar sent back to his overlord Batu Khan in Kiev nine sacks of left ears taken from the slain, and King Henry of Bohemia’s head on a spear. The only reason the Mongols didn’t continue on to Paris and London as planned was back in Mongolia the Great Khan Ogodai died. Since the Mongol Empire was never more than an enlarged tribal system, custom decreed all Mongol elders had to stop everything they were doing and return home to Karakorum for a council -the Grand Kurlutai. The Mongols rode away from Europe as mysteriously as they had arrived.

1553- French comic writer Francois Rabelais died. His last words were: ” I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

1682- Explorer Sieur De Lasalle claims Louisiana and the Mississippi for France.

1747- Famed British actor David Garrick signed a contract to take over the management of London’s Drury Lane Theatre.

1778- In Paris the philosopher Voltaire is initiated into the Masonic Order of the Nine Sisters on the arm of his friend, Benjamin Franklin.

1780- George Washington wrote the American emissary in Paris, Richard Lawrence, about our chances of winning the American Revolution:” We here are at the end of our tether. If we do not receive help soon, all will be lost.”

1812- THE SACK OF BADAJOZ-The Duke of Wellington’s English army storms into a Spanish city held by Napoleons French forces. The battle typified the ferocity of the war in Spain. The French and pro-French Spaniards dropped explosives and rocks on the heads of the attacking English and lined the tops of the city walls with broken glass and knife blades. The loss of life was so ghastly that when the redcoats finally breached the cities defenses they went berserk- looting, raping, and killing the civilian population.
This is when Wellington called his men scum.
Wellington always went through a depressed state after a battle, even his victories. At one point, tough old General Sir Thomas Picton noticed Wellington was openly weeping. He reacted: ”My God Arthur, what the devil are you blubbering on about?”

1859- Mark Twain received his Mississippi riverboat pilot’s license.

1865- APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE, THE END OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Robert E. Lee surrendered the remains of his army to Ulysses Grant (11,000 men to Grant’s encircling 150,000). Grant had had a migraine headache all morning until he received the note from Lee requesting terms. Grant’s staff understood that Lee’s note meant the end of the greatest cataclysm in U.S. history. One staff officer called for three cheers but the men could only manage one weak hurrah, then they all broke down in soft weeping. All realized that at last the killing was truly over.
Lee arrived wearing his best dress uniform, Grant rode in from the field wearing an old muddy private’s jacket. Grant recalled when they met during the Mexican War but Lee didn’t remember him. Grant was happy to make small talk until Lee brought them back to the business at hand. Grant’s secretary was a Seneca Indian named Captain Ely Parker. Lee paused to say ”I’m glad there’s at least one real American here.”

The house they met in was owned by a man named Wilbur McClean, who moved his family from Bull Run to Appomattox to get away from the fighting. He managed to keep his belongings safe for four years of war. Now, after Lee and Grant left the historic meeting, Yankee officers looted the place for souvenirs, George Custer riding off with the little surrender table perched on his head.

1914-THE TAMPICO INCIDENT- In the port of Vera Cruz a shore party from the USN gunboat Tampico was arrested by Mexican authorities while getting supplies. They were soon released and the Mexican Government apologized. But the US Admiral Mayo then demanded the Mexicans give the Stars & Stripes a 21gun salute. The Mexican army said they would if the USN did the same salute to the Mexican flag. Washington didn’t want to do this because it would have meant the US recognized the dictatorship of General Huerta, who had overthrown the legally elected President Madero.
So the US attacked Vera Cruz on April 21st, 20 Americans and 200 Mexicans killed. A newspaper at the time commented:” I can’t believe we almost went to war over some points of diplomatic etiquette!”

1914- The first all color film” The World, The Flesh and the Devil” premiered in London.

1917- Shortly after declaring war on Germany President Woodrow Wilson was confronted by old former President Teddy Roosevelt. TR volunteered to lead a new regiment of Rough Riders into the World War I trenches. Wilson said thanks, but no thanks. He said of Teddy, “ He is really a great big boy. You can’t help but like him.” At the same time he also declined an offer from Annie Oakley to lead a company of lady sharpshooters into the trenches “Oakley’s Amazons”.

1921- The Fly-In Lunch Party. Leslie Brand was a millionaire who developed Glendale California north of Los Angeles. This day he invited guests to a special garden party provided they call arrived in their own airplanes. The was in the time before municipal airports, where you just landed your plane wherever you saw open ground. The little biplanes parked all around his property, today known as The Brand Library.

1938- In an interview with Liberty Magazine, Walt Disney said he, “ had plans to put animation to various well-known pieces of music, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being only the start.” He was beginning to think of expanding the short into a concert feature. The result of which would be Fantasia.

1940- Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. Innocent looking civilian German freighters holed up in Danish and Norwegian ports suddenly disgorged hordes of steel helmeted Nazi soldiers. Copehagen, Oslo and Trondheim were quickly overrun. Mysteriously the British Navy didn’t use its superiority to stop the Germans crossing the Baltic. The admirals were worried about the German divebombers. It showed the world that Sea Power had finally bowed to Airpower.

1942- Black opera star Marian Anderson gives her concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to an audience of 75,000. She was snubbed from giving a recital at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall which caused a furious Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the DAR and arrange this concert.

1943- A U.S. Patents court concluded that Gulgielmo Marconi had used several of Nichola Tesla’s patents to create Wireless Broadcasting. So in effect, Tesla was the real inventor of radio broadcasting. Vindication came too late. Marconi died a rich Nobel-Prize winner, and Tesla died alone, penniless and crazy.

1943- First battle of the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews revolt in a desperate struggle against the conditions the Nazis held them in. All guns and supplies were precious. One character of the street fighting was nicknamed Moishe the Bolshevik, who ran from corpse to corpse under heavy fire dragging bandoliers of bullets, grenades and several helmets on his head.

1948- Variety columnist Lee Mortimer had been needling Frank Sinatra for his advocacy of liberal causes. He accused Old Blue Eyes of draft-dodging, and hinted maybe he had pro-Communist sympathies. This day as Sinatra passed Mortimer in front of Ciro's restaurant on Sunset Blvd. he heard Mortimer call him a “dirty Dago”. Frank went at Mortimer and punched his lights out.

1948- Massacre of Deir Yasin- During the Israeli war of Independence a rogue Jewish militia called the Irgun on orders from Likud founder Menachem Begin entered a Palestinian village and shot 150 men women and children. Israeli leader David Ben Gurion apologized for the massacre and ordered the Irgun and other independent units merged into the Israeli Army. But the massacre helped trigger the mass exodus of Palestinian Arabs into exile.

1951- The day before he fired General Douglas MacArthur- President Harry Truman secretly sent to Korea five unassembled atomic bombs. These were to be armed and used if only the situation looked totally hopeless. They were never used.

1952- The quiz show “I’ve Got A Secret” hosted by Gary Moore premiered on the Dumont Network and ran for 15 years.

1953- The first issue of the T.V. Guide.

1959- NASA introduced the first seven astronauts to the public, The Mercury Astronauts: Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, Leroy Cooper, and Malcolm Carpenter- all military test pilots instead of scientists.

1965- Mickey Mantle hits the first indoor home run as the Astrodome opens with an exhibition game with the Astros hosting the Yankees. President Lyndon Johnson was supposed to throw out the first pitch but arrived late. Phillie catcher Bob Boone commented about the Astrodome "This is a tough yard for a hitter when the air conditioning is blowing in.."

1966- actress Sophia Loren married producer Carlo Ponti, with whom she had been living with for a decade but not allowed to marry because Catholics did not allow divorce from their previous spouses.

1974- Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds Restaurants was the owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team. After yet another sorry performance, losing 8-0, Kroc stormed over to the broadcast booth, grabbed the mike and out shouted ” You Guys Stink!” Despite this morale booster, the Padres eventually did win championship pennants and get to the World Series.

1975- As North Vietnamese armies approached the South Vietnamese capitol of Saigon, President Gerald Ford issued an advisory to all Americans to evacuate the country.

1991- The last Horn & Hardardt Automat was closed on 42nd St in Manhattan. Philadelphia restaurateurs Joseph Horn and William Hardart saw German experiments in mass market automated restaurants, and imported the equipment to start one in Philadelphia in 1902.

1999- American planes flying for NATO bombed the Serbian factory that made the economy car the Yugo. Car enthusiasts rejoiced.

2003- Baghdad fell to invading US and British armies.

2004- Archaeologists in Cyprus discover a 9,000 year-old grave of a New Stone Age man. In his arms were the remains of a kitten. This is the oldest evidence of man domesticating cats. So rest in peace- Gronk and Fluffy.

2005- Prince Charles wed Lady Camilla Parker-Bowles, his mistress of thirty years. They were not allowed to marry in Saint George’s Chapel in Windsor, the Queen avoided the ceremony and his father didn’t feel like interrupting his trip to Germany; and because of a delay to respect Pope John Paul II’s funeral, all the commemorative cups and dishes have the wrong date on them. Among the thirty invited guests, were Mrs. Bowles divorced husband.

2008- Stuntman Rupert MacDonald built a full-size Viking ship out of 15 million popsicle sticks.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a fait’ accompli?

Answer: A thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it.

Quiz: What is a fait d’ accompli?

Yesterdays quiz answered below: The Walt Disney movie Frozen was based on what original story?
------------------------------------------------------
History for 4/8/2020
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 55, 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.
===============================================================
Yesterday’s question: “The Walt Disney movie Frozen was based on what original story?

Answer: Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen.