Quiz: What well known Hollywood institution began life as The Egg Company?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is Zydeco music?
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History for 5/12/2021
Birthdays: Dolly Madison, Dante Rossetti, Frank Stella, Florence Nightingale, Tom Snyder, George Carlin, Wilfred Hyde-White, Emilio Estevez, Ron Zeigler, Farley Mowat, Ving Rhames, Bruce Boxleitner, Katherine Hepburn, Yogi Berra

1463B.C.- THE BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON- Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmoses III defeated a coalition of Canaanite princes at an outpost fort named Ha-Megiddo. This fort was the intersection of several trade roads that led south through the Lebanon Mountains into Palestine, so for centuries it was known for all the vicious battles and invasions that occurred there. When Saint John of Patmos wrote of the final battle in Book of the Apocalypse, he said it would be as terrible as one fought at Ha-Meggido or Armageddon.

1641- Thomas the Earl of Strafford was beheaded. In the rapidly deteriorating political climate between King Charles I of England and his Parliament, the Earl of Strafford advocated the king get tough with these rude peasants and rule dictatorially with an Irish army of occupation. So Parliament passed an act of attainment accusing the earl of treason and the terrified king signed it. Ironically the Earl was never tried for treason, he was 'legislated to death'. But the situation was deteriorating so rapidly even he petitioned the King to sign his death warrant to keep the peace. By June King and Parliament would declare the English Civil War.

1745- THE BATTLE OF FONTENOY- Britain and France fight (yet again) .this time the French under one-eyed illegitimate son of the King of Poland named Marshal De Saxe defeated British under the Duke of Cumberland who was the illegitimate son of King George II. Saxe was suffering from dropsy so he directed the battle from a wicker chair. It was also the last time a King of France and Dauphin appeared on a battlefield.
As the British army approached the French line an English Guards officer, Lord Charles Hay, produced a silver flask and toasted the enemy, declaring ' Lay on gentleman of France! We never fire first!" His French counterpart the Comte d’Antroche bowed and said "No. After you please!" They would have kept bowing and toasting all day until someone finally started shooting.

1775- During the American Revolution, a New York mob carrying clubs and torches broke onto the campus of King’s College determined to lynch president Miles Cooper, who was an outspoken loyalist. The mob was blocked on the steps of Cooper’s home by his student Alexander Hamilton. While Hamilton pleaded to spare him, Cooper watched from the second story window. Cooper was hard of hearing and he thought the Hamilton was the instigator of the mob. So while Hamilton begged the mob not to kill his professor, Cooper yelled down:” DON’T LISTEN TO HIM! HE’S A BLOCKHEAD!” Despite this curious strategy, Miles Cooper escaped unharmed and Kings College name was changed to Columbia University.

1776- France’s finance minister Turgot fell from power and resigned. Turgot tried to reform France’s almost medieval economy- While all the king could think of was to cut the budget for the Royal Lapdogs Turgot abolished outdated medieval tariffs, and subsidies to useless noblemen. He also began serious land reform. Many including Voltaire and Catherine the Great felt that if Turgot was allowed to be successful the French Revolution wouldn’t have happened. Frederick the Great agreed that “the Fall of Turgot presaged the collapse of France.”

1789- TAMANY HALL BORN- The first and oldest of U.S. political machines (clubs , pacts, lobbies, whatever ) Founded in Philadelphia and moved to New York it was named for a Chief Tamamend, the Delaware chief who welcomed William Penn. The Hall on 14 th street was nicknamed the Wigwam and the leaders called Sachems, the Algonquin word for chief.
Throughout the 1800's it was famous for buying and selling political offices, bribery and corruption. Boss Tweed and Slippery Dick Connolly, the first American to embezzle one million dollars, were Tamany Sachems. Tamany were the first to realize there was political power in mobilizing the mass of working class immigrants against the snooty New York power elite. Tamany Hall men would stand on docks welcoming immigrants with a voting card and a silver dollar to vote for their candidates. Another trick was for Tamany men to grow a full beard and vote, then go home, shave to a goatee, vote again, shave to a mustache, vote again, then clean shave and vote once more.
Tamany Hall was still influential into modern times. Bill O'Dwyer, a Tamany sachem was mayor of New York in the late 1940’s and in 1963 future Mayor Ed Koch became a congressman by unseating the last Tammany sachem Carmine DeSapio.

1796- Napoleon's French Army occupied the city of Venice and destroyed the last traces of the independent Venetian Republic 'La Serenissima" The Most Serene Republic. The Last Doge Daniele Manin was forced to abdicate, and his Byzantine crown and trappings of office were burned, along with his famous golden barge, the 'Boucintoro'. Venice, an independent city-state since 976AD was going to be part of Italy, whether she liked it or not!

1797- The Peace of Leoben- Napoleon forced a peace treaty on Austria by menacing Vienna. He went in French eyes from a popular general to a national figure. At one point when frustrated with negotiating with the Austrian diplomats he smashed a china tea set to the floor and shouted “ If you don’t submit to my terms I will break your empire like so much old crockery!” With this treaty France gets it’s first real peace since the Revolution started in 1789.

1809- Napoleon’s heavy cannon- called Napoleon’s Daughters- began bombarding the Austrian capitol Vienna. Beethoven hid in a cellar. A cannonball fell near composer Franz Josef Haydn’s house but the octogenarian composer comforted his friends:” Children don’t be frightened; Where Papa Haydn is, no harm can come to you.” When the city was occupied, the French officer in charge of the guard on Haydn’s house comforted the old composer by singing an aria from his oratorio The Creation.

1812- Czar Alexander signed a peace treaty with Turkey in order to free up troops to face Napoleon’s pending invasion. Napoleon encouraged the Sultan to declare a jihad on Russia and promised him Moldova and other lost Balkan provinces. But the Sultan knew a con job when he heard one and wouldn’t take the bait.

1846- The Donner Party wagon train left Independence Missouri to start its trek out west to California. They tried a new short cut proposed by a charlatan named Lansford Hastings to get to California. They crossing the burning alkaline deserts of Utah and were attacked by Paiute Indians. By Halloween heavy snow storms stranded the Donners in the High Sierra Mountains where the starving survivors resorted to cannibalism.

1858- At the Battle of Little Robe Creek, Comanche chief and medicine man Iron Jacket was killed. Chief Pohebits-quasho was called Iron Jacket because he rode around the prairie in some old armor from a Spanish Conquistador. He said he could blow away bullets with his breath. The armor worked pretty well against normal guns, but then some Texas Rangers pointed a heavy gauge buffalo rifle at him, and that brought him down.

1864- BATTLE OF SPOTSYLVANIA- After Lee whips Grant in the Wilderness, instead of retreating Grant wheels around and attacks again. This time winning a draw. The fighting was dreadful, reports of trees so thick you couldn't put your arms around cut down by bullets, and men hit with so many 68 cal. musket balls at one time that their bodies literally would fall apart.
At the fight in the center of the line called The Angle Yankees and Confederates crowded in so tightly they pressed against one another like a massive rugby scrimmage. Soldiers fought hand to hand with pistol butts, flag staffs, clubs, fists, some even took their empty bayonet muskets and hurled them into the throng like a spear. Nothing failed to cause injury.
One casualty was union general "Uncle John" Sedgewick, shot by rebel snipers. His last words were:" Aw, go on men! Them rebs couldn't hit an elephant at this dis......."

1881- Tunisia was made a colonial protectorate of France.

1915- THE BRYCE COMISSION- An English commission to study reports of German atrocities that was really a propaganda machine aimed at getting the United States into the Great War. America had the problem that if she chose the allied side in World War One, several million immigrant citizens of German, Hungarian and Austrian descent were sympathetic to the Kaiser. Add to them millions of English-hating Irish Americans, Jewish Americans who wanted the openly Anti-Semitic Russian Czar beaten, and many average Americans who felt the main reason their forefathers crossed the ocean was to get away from the kind of trouble that occurred back in Europe.
So you can see it was hard to get everyone up for intervention. The American yellow press printed all the British accounts without ever questioning their accuracy- they horrified the average reader with hair-raising stories of German troops raping and killing Belgian women, chopping the hands off of children and crucifying Canadian prisoners with bayonets through their hands and feet. Even though some atrocities stories were verified, like the needless burning of the medieval Library of Louvain -The German term was Shreiklichkeit- Rule by Fear- today it is acknowledged that most of these accounts were ginned up to get us to Hate the Hun!
Later the U.S. Office of War Information took over feeding these stories to the press. It was headed by a psychiatrist Edmund Bernays, a psychoanalyst nephew of Sigmund Freud. After the war he went into advertising.

1934- Hungarian scientist Dr Leo Szilard took out a secret patent on his concept of a chain reaction, being able to theoretically release energy from uranium on an atomic level. Enrico Fermi proved this and created the first controlled chain reaction in 1939.

1935- In Akron Ohio, in a cottage at the edge of a great estate, a conversation took place between two men, Akron surgeon Dr. Bob S. and New York stockbroker Bill W., that would create the organization Alcoholics Anonymous.

1936- John Maynard Keynes most famous work "the General Theory of Money, Interest and Work" was published. Today if a politician advocates government control in the business market, he is called a "Keynesian". Keynes once said: ' My only regret in life is that I did not drink more champagne."

1937-After the abdication of Edward VIII, his brother Bertie was crowned today as King George VI at Westminster. King George and Queen Elizabeth were the parents of the current Queen and were the first English monarchs to ever travel to America and eat hot dogs.

1938- “The Adventures of Robin Hood” starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia DeHaviland, Claude Rains and Eugene Paulette premiered. The swashbuckling film then cost a whopping $2 million dollars to make! The light brown mare Maid Marion rode in the movie was later bought by singing cowboy Roy Rogers and renamed Trigger.

1940- Despite being neutral, Switzerland mobilized its tiny army in anticipation of a Nazi invasion. It was never needed.

1943- Penned in at Tunis by English and American armies, Rommel's Nazi Afrika Korps laid down their arms. Rommel himself was hospitalized in Germany with diphtheria and would fight again. Besides desert and snows of Norway the Germans were so sure they would be active in all climates that after the war the allies found warehouses full of Tropical uniforms for action in some future African equatorial jungle.

1945- Reischmarshall Herman Goring drove to an American air base and surrendered himself and his family to USAAF commander General Spaatz. The former fighter pilot said he wanted to surrender to a fellow airman. Spaatz was reprimanded for being photographed toasting and celebrating the end of the war with war criminal Goring.

1948- In Palestine, the secret key cabinet meeting of Jewish leaders over whether to declare independence before the British evacuated on May 15th. Even the US was asking for a UN sponsored three month cooling off period. But Jewish leaders like David Ben Gurion felt any more delay would be fatal. They would declare independence on May 14th. The last problem was what to call their new country? After Zion, Zionia and Herzelania was suggested, they decided to go with the name of a local kibbutz using an ancient Biblical name- Eretz-Israel, or simply Israel.

1949- THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF WEST GERMANY BORN- Seventy German politicians free of a Nazi past meet in a schoolroom and create Germany's first ever democratic constitution. The Allied Military Governor General Lucius Clay announced he would close his office and return to America. In 1989, The Federal Republic or West Germany, reunited with the Democratic Republic, aka East Germany.

1962- First day shooting on Frederico Fellini’s film 8 1/2. When screened for American Producer Joe Levine, Levine took the cigar from his mouth and growled-” Frederigo, what da hell did that movie mean? ” Fellini shrugged –“I don’t know”.

1963- Folksinger Bob Dylan walked out of a taping on the Ed Sullivan Show. He objected to CBS censors wanting to cut his number making fun of extra Right-Wing extremists like the John Birch Society.

1971 - Rolling Stone Mick Jagger weds Bianca Macias at St Tropez Town Hall.
They later divorced and Bianca became a famous habitue’ of trendy discos and fashion magazines.

1971- Tor Johnson died of a heart attack at age 68. Swedish wrestler turned actor, Tor’s best known role was of the bald eyeless zombie in classics like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Bride of the Monster.

1977- A small Westchester radio station WENW hired a thin, gawky, college grad as a DJ- Howard Stern. US radio would never be the same.

1985- Philadelphia Police were trying to break into the headquarters of a militant anarchist group called MOVE. They were barricaded in a row house. Someone had the bright idea of dropping a bomb on the building. The explosion and fire killed 11 including some children and set off a conflagration that engulfed the neighborhood. Some people remember it as noteworthy in that it was the first time an air strike was used on an American city by American authorities

1999- The First Scottish Parliament in three hundred years and the first Welsh assembly since Owen Glendower in 1410 sat in session today.

2008- A powerful earthquake hit Chungdu in Sichuan Province in China, killing tens of thousands.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is Zydeco music?

Answer:Zydeco is the Creole music of Louisiana. Like the Creole population, the music has African, Caribbean, Spanish, French and native influences. Lyrics are often sung in French, with arrangements usually for guitar, accordion and rhythm (bass, drums, washboard, etc.).(Thanks FG). 

Question: What is Zydeco music?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Did Marylin Monroe ever have any children?
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History for 5/11/2021
Birthdays: Salvador Dali', Jean Jerome, Chang and Eng Bunker-the original Siamese Twins-1811, Baron Munchausen, Irving Berlin, King Oliver, Martha Graham, Dr. Richard Fenyman, Mort Sahl, Foster Brooks, Denver Pyle, Henry Morgenthau, Doug McClure, Randy Quaid, Natasha Richardson, Rev Louis Farrakhan, Albert Hurter, Margaret Kerry the model for Walt Disney’s Tinkerbell is 92

330 A.D. Constantine the Great founded his city of New Rome, called Constantinople on the site of an older Greek city called Byzantium. The Russians call it Tsargrad, the Turks Istanbul or "The City”.

1189- German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (red-beard) led 100,000 German Crusaders out of Regensburg towards the Holyland. Two thirds of them never came home, including Frederick.

1780- A RUDE SHOCK TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA. That was how it was described by a Tory minister back in London, when the British Army captured the last major American seaport- Charleston, South Carolina. George Washington’s best lieutenant, General Lincoln, and 2,500 troops laid down their arms. It was the largest surrender of Americans in the Revolutionary War. At one time during the Revolution all of the largest US cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston were under British occupation. The capture of Charleston also wiped out what there was of the little U.S. Navy. At this time, John Paul Jones was sitting on a beach waiting for a new ship.
Up till then the British strategy had been to wait out the bankrupt Yankees and concentrate on fighting the French and Spaniards in the Caribbean. George Washington recognized this strategy was working, since Congress was broke and his unpaid army was on the verge of mutiny. But their victory at Charleston encouraged the British to deviate from their plan and commit new armies to conquer America from the South. That decision led to the great British defeat at Yorktown.

1792- Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River in the Oregon territory.

1812- A British merchant named Bellingham who's business was ruined by the Napoleonic wars, walked into the lobby of the House of Commons, and shot Prime Minister Sir Spencer Percival. He was the only British Prime Minister ever assassinated.

1831- French writer Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States.

1858- Minnesota became a state.

1862- When their navy base was overrun by US troops, the Confederates had to blow up their ironclad warship the CSS Virginia, also called the Merrimac.

1864- JEB STUART FELL- Confederate commander of cavalry Jeb Stuart was a Beau-Sabeur who always rode into the thickest of a fight. This day one soldier shouted:” General, you must love bullets!” Stuart replied:” I don’t love bullets, but I can’t hide from them. I got a feeling I’m not going to survive this war.” Then he rode into battle with Sheridan’s cavalry at Yellow Tavern six miles north of Richmond.
A dismounted Yankee marksman spotted the familiar gray horseman with the black plumed hat and cape. As he rode by he emptied his carbine into him. Gutshot, Stuart still managed to ride a mile to the rear before falling insensible from his horse. He died shortly afterwards. He was 31.

1878-Young anarchist Erik Hymdel tries unsuccessfully to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm. People today fear ISIS, but in the "Gilded Age" it was the Anarchists- the stereotypical men in long black coats with smoldering round black bombs. They believed that society itself was the problem, and if it could be broken down, only then would everyone be truly free.

1894- The workers of the Pullman Railroad Car Company went on strike led by young crusading attorney Eugene V. Debs.

1927- Polar explorers Roald Amundsen, Michael Ellsworth and General Nobile fly over the North Pole in a dirigible called the Norge. They were preceded by several days by Commander Robert Byrd and Floyd Bennett in a fixed wing Fokker aeroplane. Norwegian Roald Ammundsen had already conquered the South Pole but on this flight he felt useless. He was offended when General Nobile celebrated in Fascist Italian jackbooted, Seig-Heiling style when they got back.

1934- The Howard Hawks screwball comedy Twentieth Century premiered with John Barrymore and Carol Lombard.

1943- US troops storm Attu island in the Aleutians. Japanese troops had occupied the Alaskan Aleutian archipelago in 1942 to draw attention from their attack at Midway. It was the only US soil under enemy occupation in World War II. The US forces were the Special Forces/10th Mountain Battalion once known as Darbys Rangers who fought in Italy. Their commander Col Darby was killed two days before the Nazi surrender in Europe.

1945- After Nazi Germany surrendered, the Nazi-collaborator governor of occupied Norway, Josef Treboven, committed suicide by sitting on a stick of dynamite. When Wiley E. Coyote does it, its funny. But Norwegian Nazis? Pretty messy.

1946- The first CARE package sent.

1948- After World War II, the cooperation between U.S. unions and management disappeared and the nation was paralyzed by nationwide steel and railroad strikes. President Truman, who had praised the labor cooperation the year before reacted by this day ordering the military to seize the railroads, and draft into the navy any strikers who objected.

1956 - Pinky Lee Show last airs on NBC-TV.

1968 - actor Richard Harris attempted a singing career, releasing the song "MacArthur Park".

1968- The Vietnamese give up their siege of the Marine firebase at Que Sanh. The siege had lasted since January.

1969- In Vietnam the 101st Airborne and South Vietnamese forces began their assault on Hamburger Hill. Originally called the Ap Bia mountain, it was nicknamed Hamburger because of the meat grinder loss of human life to capture it. It was taken May 20th with the 11th assault.

1972 -On the Dick Cavett talk show rock star and peace activist John Lennon said his phone had been tapped by FBI. It turns out it was, but at the time we all thought he was just paranoid from too many drugs.

1981- The musical play CATS opened in London.

1981- Bob Marley died of brain cancer at age 36. Marley and his group the Wailers, made Jamaican Reggae mainstream in pop music.

1992 - Carlos “ Danny” Herrera, bartender inventor of the Margarita, died at age 90- Margarita was supposedly invented in 1938 for Hollywood actress Margaret Sullivan who wanted to drink tequila and lime with the guys but couldn’t tolerate the strong taste. Herrera mixed the tequila and lime juice into an iced cocktail and put the salt along the rim. He mixed a batch whenever he heard the actress was in Tijuana, writing on the bottle- For Margaret- Por Margarita.

1992- Elizabeth McDonald, inventor of the detergent cleanser Spic & Span, died at 98.
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Yesterday’s Question: Did Marylin Monroe ever have any children?

Answer: Marylin Monroe was married twice, but never had any children. She had a blockage in her fallopian tube (endometriosis), that kept her from ever conceiving.

Quiz: Did Marylin Monroe ever have any children?

Yesterday’s Question answered below:What does it mean when you say, its kismet.?
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History for 5/10/2021
Birthdays: Fred Astaire, Phil Silvers, Nancy Walker, French royal minister Turgot, Marshal Jean Lannes, Marshal Nicolas Davout, John Wilkes Booth (assassin of Lincoln) Mark David Chapman (assassin of John Lennon), David O. Selznick, Mother Maybelle Carter, Ariel Durant, Jim Abrahams, Nancy Walker, Donovan, Homer Simpson, Gen. Lasalle*, Bono, Kenan Thompson is 43, Paige O’Hara the voice of Belle in Beauty & the Beast.

(*Lasalle was the dashing French cavalry leader who said " Tout hussard qui n'est pas mort à 30 ans est un jean-foutre!-Any hussar who's not dead by 30 is a coward!" In 1813, while leading an attack, he was shot through the head. He was 34.)

1650- The British take Jamaica from the Spanish. At this time Europeans were discovering the delights of a new condiment made on that island- sugar!

1726- Philosopher François Voltaire visited Britain.

1748- English slave trader John Newton’s ship was caught in a violent Mid Atlantic storm and was about to go down. Newton prayed to God that he would reform his life if he made it through this gale. Then the storm broke. John Newton not only stopped his slave trading ways, but he wrote a hymn, Amazing Grace: "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, That Saved a Wretch Like Me! I was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see..."

1774- King Louis XV of France died. Before he died, he muttered "apres moi, le deluge.." after me, the deluge. His grandson the Duke du Berry became King Louis XVI. He was the king overthrown and guillotined in the Revolution.

1775- FT. TICONDEROGA- Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen surprised the upstate NY fortress in the dead of night and captured the cannon George Washington needed to drive the British out of Boston. 20 years earlier the British took huge losses attacking that same fort from the French. All the British commander lost this time was his trousers, he was captured in his nightshirt. As Allen and Arnold woke him he scowled: "By who's authority do you do this?" Allen retorted: " In the name of Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!"

1796- THE BATTLE OF LODI- The Austrian Army in Italy attempted to slow Napoleons pursuit of them by blocking a bridge with 14 cannon and daring the French to cross. This is where the beginning of Napoleons legend among his men starts to form. He whips up the confidence of his men to the point where they enthusiastically rush across the bridge and overrun the cannon. Even though Napoleon is the army’s commander he is out in front sharing the danger from shot and shell sighting his cannon like a corporal. This is when men start to call him "The Little Corporal". He later told a friend’ They haven’t seen anything yet." An older general said:" You know, that little bastard scares me."

1815- Before any of the armies marched to Waterloo, Napoleon’s police minister and cousin Nicolas Fouche’ sneaked copies of all his battle plans to Wellington in Brussels. For this little act of treachery, after Napoleon’s defeat Fouche’ got a plum job in the post war Royal French Government.

1837- THE SEPOY REBELLION- Indian troops serving in the British army go on a rampage after they learn that their new rifle cartridges are greased with tallow made from pig and beef fat. To load your gun you had to bite the paper at the end of the cartridge, in effect tasting the fat, which is forbidden by the Hindu and Muslim religions. The Sepoy's thought it was a British trick to rob their souls and make them Christians. The British army withdrew the offending cartridges when they learned of the mistake, but it was too late. The mutinying Indian soldiers were soon joined by the Hindu Maharratas and Muslim Moghul sultan. It became the biggest armed revolt ever in the history of British India.

1837- The Wall Street Panic of 1837 began a seven year depression. The militia was called in to restore peace on Wall Street.

1861- First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln decided the White House looked shabby, and went off to New York to buy new furnishings. She was heavily criticized in the press for her lavish spending just as the Civil War was breaking out, but her habit of dealing with stress was to go shopping. She learned from a White House long timer how to pad and hide expenses in credit statements so her husband wouldn’t find out.

1863- Confederate General Thomas Stonewall Jackson died of his wounds after being shot by his own men in an accident during the Battle of Chancellorsville. His last words were" Lets us cross over the bridge and rest under the shade of the trees." Years after the Civil War ended Robert E. Lee once meditated on his big loss at Gettysburg: " If Jackson had been there we would not have lost Gettysburg."

1865- One month after Richmond fell, and Lee surrendered, in Georgia Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the remains of his cabinet were arrested by U.S. cavalry. One version says Davis was wearing a dress, and the first lady tried to pass him off to the Yankees as her mother.
An enduring mystery is the fate of the Confederate Gold Reserve. While the rebel government was on the run, several wagons in their train were carrying nine million dollars in gold bullion. Around Darien Georgia, the wagons disappeared from history...

1865- QUANTRILL FELL- William Clark Quantrill was a Confederate guerilla who was so brutal and uncontrollable that the Richmond government refused to admit he was ever in their army. Quantrill’s Raiders raised hell across Missouri and Kansas. One month after Lee surrendered to Grant, he was operating under an alias in Kentucky. Union authorities enlisted a vigilante posse led by Capt. Edmund Tyrell to kill him. Tyrell was as lawless as Quantrill, but he got the desired result.
In an ambush near Louisville, Quantrill was cut down in a hail of bullets. He lingered with a broken spine for a month before expiring. He was 27. On his deathbed he converted to Catholicism and left all his money to his girlfriend. The priest officiating at the burial encouraged people to strew garbage and defecate on his grave. Some of Quantrill’s junior soldiers went on to have even more famous careers: outlaws Jesse & Frank James, Cole & Bob Younger.

1868- Women's Rights advocate Victoria Woodhull declared she was a candidate for President of the United States, with black activist Frederick Douglas as her running mate. An advocate of Free Love, Socialism, and Spiritualism, Mrs. Woodhull had to campaign from jail where she was placed for distribution of pornography, i.e. birth control. She not as well remembered as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady-Stanton because the main women’s rights movement distanced themselves from her perceived outlandish opinions.

1869- THE GOLDEN SPIKE- At Promontory Utah the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific met, finally connecting the entire U.S. continent by rail. Before this when you wanted to go from New York to San Francisco you had to take a boat to Havana, then Nicaragua, take a mule train through jungle then get a third ship up the Pacific coast to California. The millionaire directors of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific came to Utah for the ceremony. The racing rail gangs had actually passed each other and had to correct a detour of 250 miles.

When the rich men were called upon to swing the large sledgehammers to drive in the golden spike both missed and hit the ground -one had a hangover. A workman had to actually accomplish the deed. The link completed an electric circuit to send telegraph news of the event simultaneously to New York and San Francisco. They celebrated by the synchronized firing of cannon east over the Atlantic and west out over the Pacific, symbolically telling the world to watch out! That America was now a continental power that has got its act together.

1869- CREDIT MOBILIER SCANDAL- The stock company that handled the transcontinental railroad's budgets, Credit Mobilier, billed the government $175 million dollars for the job when it actually only cost $86 million. When the figures were disputed gov't officials were given bribes to keep quiet.
When the scandal finally broke in 1872 many of Republican Pres. Grant's top officials were implicated. When Vice President Schuyler Colfax was asked about a deposit slip for $10,000 marked the same day as a Credit Mobilier payroll slip made out for the same amount, he remarked it was a political donation from a benefactor whose name he couldn't remember who died shortly after anyway. He said the check fell out of his morning newspaper at breakfast.

1885- Geronimo goes on the warpath. For the next 15 months he held off 5,000 U.S. troops with just 16 Apache warriors, 12 women and 6 children.

1893- The U.S. government declares the Tomato officially a vegetable and not a fruit.

1908- The First Mother's Day celebrated, it became a national holiday in 1914. The holiday was inspiration of a lady named Anna Jarvis, who spent the rest of her life trying to keep it from being commercially exploited. She died broke, and surrounded by store-made mothers day cards sent from well wishers.

1908- An article in the New York Times advised women to wash their hair every two weeks. The norm for women then was shampooing every three months!

1924- J. Edgar Hoover given control of F.B.I.- Hoover was the third director of what was up until then a small powerless division of the treasury dept that wasn't even allowed to carry guns until the late 1920's. He built up and dominated the bureau until 1972.

1928- General Electric started up WG4 Schenectady, the first T.V. Station.

1929- Yankee slugger Babe Ruth signs new contract that paid him more money than President Herbert Hoover. Babe replied, "Well, I had a better year than he had.”

1929- Walt Disney’s short Skeleton Dance premiered. Animated mostly by Mickey Mouse designer Ub Iwerks, it was a breakthrough in tightly done musical sync animation.

1933- Nazis Leader Josef Goebbels holds the first mass book-burning in Berlin. " We consign everything unGerman to the flames." 20,000 works by Thomas Mann, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Freud and Einstein are burned.

1940- THE BLITZKRIEG IN THE WEST BEGAN-Nazi Panzer tanks roll into Belgium and Holland in violation of their neutrality, beginning their massive offensive on Anglo-French forces. This ended the stalemate that existed for several months after the September declaration of war, nicknamed the 'Stitzkrieg', or 'sit-down war'. The French had spent millions building a complex system of underground mountain bunkers called the Maginot Line. The German tanks merely drove around them. Once flanked the bunkers discovered they couldn’t turn their guns around to shoot behind them.

1940- Old Kaiser Wilhelm was in exile in Holland since 1918. Today he refused to come home to Germany on Hitler's invitation, because he knew he'd be used for propaganda. He died peacefully that same year.

1940- British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned. Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister to deal with the war crisis. He told Britons "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." In the 1960’s, a rock band thought that was a great name for a band- Blood Sweat & Tears.

1941- THE STRANGE FLIGHT OF RUDOLPH HESS. Rudolph Hess was Adolf Hitler’s trusted right hand, and one of the top Nazis in the German Reich. This day at the height of Nazis power, Hess piloted a Messerschmitt fighter, and flew alone to England. He claimed to be on a secret mission to reach Churchill and negotiate peace. Allied leaders refused to meet with him, and Hitler declared Hess had lost his mind. After the war, Hess was sentenced to life in prison at Spandau. To eyewitnesses at the Nuremberg trial he did indeed appear deranged. Historians have always speculated what the secret message Hess was carrying from Hitler to Churchill. In 1991 on the 50th anniversary, historians expected the secret files to at last be declassified, but the British government put them under a new top-secret seal for another 100 years.

1948- Just five days before declaring independence Jewish diplomat Golda Meir slipped out of Palestine dressed in a hijab, to have a secret meeting with King Abdallah of Jordan. Abdallah had no use for the Palestinian leaders and tacitly supported the Zionists, but as subjects to his plan for a greater Jordan. Now the other Arab nations were pressuring him to join them in a war against the new Jewish state.

1963- On the advice of George Harrison and Little Richard, Decca Records signed a new teen band called the Rolling Stones to a recording contract.

1972- Over the skies of Vietnam, Navy pilot Randy “Duke” Cunningham had dogfights with enemy planes. This day he shot down three Mig 21s, and he dueled and shot down the top North Vietnamese ace, nicknamed Colonel Toon. Duke Cunningham parlayed his fame into a career in politics. He became a conservative Republican congressman who built a notorious record of taking bribes. He accumulated Rolls Royces, mansions, and a yacht he named the Dukester. He actually circulated a price list for his vote. Duke Cunningham did time in prison for bribery.

1977- Joan Crawford died of cancer and a heart attack. Once the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, now a neglected old recluse. She was 74. Soon after her daughter Christine published the memoir Mommy Dearest, in which she alleged years of abuse and neglect.

1993- 188 young women died in a fire in a toy making factory near Bangkok, Thailand. They were locked into the building by their employer like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire victims in 1911. They were making Bart Simpson dolls for America.

1994- Nelson Mandela inaugurated as first black president of South Africa.

1994- Former children’s party clown and serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Police found 28 children buried around his house. His last words: "Kiss My Ass!"

1996- DEADLIEST DAY ON MOUNT EVEREST- One dozen mountain climbers with their veteran Sherpa guides were caught on the summit by a hurricane-like blizzard. Pinned down by 100 mile an hour winds and a wind chill of one hundred degrees below zero. They soon run out of oxygen 29,800 feet above sea level. Eight die, two blindly walked off the South Escarpment and plunged 7,000 feet. Two had to have limbs amputated from frostbite. The group’s leader Rob Hall called his base camp on his cel phone. They connected him with his pregnant wife in New Zealand so he could say goodbye before dying. The climbers were doctors, lawyers and executives who paid $65,000 apiece, not counting airfare and Tibetan permits. Mount Everest would claim 11 more lives that spring. Recently, due to Global Warming, the retreating snows are revealing the remains of climbers who disappeared decades ago.
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Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean when you say, its kismet.?

Answer: Kismet is a Turkish word, that means fate or destiny. It is often used in a romantic context. "Our eyes met and we both knew it was meant to be. It was kismet!" 

Quiz: What does it mean when you say, its kismet.?

Yesterday’s Question:What does it mean to have “ Pie in the Sky”..?
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History for 5/9/2021
Birthdays: John Brown, James M. Barrie the creator of Peter Pan, Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Frank Frazetta, Glenda Jackson is 85, Billy Joel, Candice Bergen is 75, Mike Wallace, Pancho Gonzales, James L. Brooks, Rosario Dawson, John Corbett, Albert Finney
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To the ancient Romans this was the Lemuria, their Day of the Dead. Like the ancient Greek Anthesterion in February, the Lemuria was a deal made with the Underworld that the dearly departed were allowed to visit the surface world and you should leave your door open and leave out food for them. This way they won't haunt you, and so you'll have good luck all year.
At sunset tomorrow the head of the house (Pater Familias) walks through the house hitting a little bronze gong, he throws a handful of black beans over his shoulder and chants 'With These Beans I Redeem Myself and My Family. O Shades of My Ancestors Depart! Lemuria has Ended!'

310AD- This is the Feast of Saint Pachonius, the first monk to bring other monks and nuns together to live communally, instead of living in caves as solitary hermits.

1421- A fire destroyed part of the just completed Forbidden City in Beijing.

1503- Columbus sails home to Spain from his fourth and final voyage. He traveled down the Central American coast as far as Venezuela. Despite modern history extolling his genius, Columbus never stopped thinking he had discovered Asia. Because the Nicaraguan Indians told him there is another ocean just beyond the jungle, in his diary he confuses it with the Indian ocean, so he thinks he is in Vietnam. (Cochin China)

1662- London diarist Samuel Pepys noted today he first saw a Punch & Judy puppet show in Convent Garden.

1754- THE FIRST NEWSPAPER CARTOON- Ben Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette prints a drawing of a segmented snake with each piece named for a colony with the inscription: Join or Die. (Okay, it's not Calvin and Hobbs, but it's a start).

1775- LUMBERJACKS ATTACK THE ROYAL NAVY- One of the stranger engagements of the American Revolution. Captain Henry Mowat, RN, anchored his warship off Falmouth Maine (present day Portland) to reassert Royal authority on the Maine seacoast. Suddenly several little boats rowed out to his ship. At first he thought they were royalists come out to greet him. But when they scampered up on board he saw they were Maine lumberjacks wielding their huge double bladed axes. Mowat and his startled crew surrendered and were roughly taken into custody. It was the first time a warship was ever captured by axe.
The Maine men, not having any central authority or instructions about what exactly to do with prisoners, eventually let them go. Once back on his ship Capt. Mowat ‘s revenge was to haul off shore, and bombard the coastline with red-hot cannonballs, burning the town of Falmouth to the ground. The incident created a violent resentment in the colonies, many of whom were still hoping for reconciliation with the Mother England.

1785 - British inventor Joseph Bramah patents the beer-pump handle. So pull us a dram for a pint of pure.-i.e. I’d like a glass of Guinness Stout, please.

1812- Napoleon left Paris to begin his March to Moscow.

1844-THE PHILADELPHIA SECTARIAN RIOTS- in Philadelphia arguments between Irish and Protestant gangs over public funding of religious schools erupted into four days of rioting. 20 were killed, Catholic Churches were burned and the city placed under martial law. As news of the riots spread, the Irish Catholic Bishop of New York warned the mayor that if one church was harmed in New York, Irishmen would burn down the city. “We’ll make New York another Moscow!”- recalling that cities burning in 1812.
These are the first anti-immigrant fighting in U.S. history. Also it was the first time Americans would have to understand that some immigrants could be loyal Americans without assimilating into an Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. Anti-Irish anger would seethe until respect was won on the bloody battlefields of the Civil War.
Another fact about the Philadelphia Riot was newspapermen Will & Frederick Langeheim point their daguerreotype box camera out of the window and photographed the troops around City Hall. It was the first News Photo.

1865- In Gainesville Alabama, hard fighting rebel cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest received news of the fall of Richmond and the surrender of the armies of Lee and Joe Johnston. He and a friend went on an all night ride to meditate what to do. “If one road led to Hell and the other to Mexico, I would be indifferent as to which to take.”
Finally Forrest announced to his men his decision: they would not go to Mexico, and they would not continue on as guerrillas, they would surrender and go home. When the governor of Mississippi protested, Bedford Forrest growled: “ Any man who is in favor of further prosecution of this war is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum! The attempt to establish and independent confederacy has failed, we should now meet our responsibilities like men.”
And despite Sherman offering a price for Forrest ‘s head, saying “There can be no peace in the land until he is dead!” Nathan Bedford Forrest was allowed to go home in peace.

1887- Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show did its first performance in Europe. In London the English public, several European kings and writer Oscar Wilde thrilled to displays of trick riding, wild red Indians, cowboys and little Annie Oakley the trick shooter.

1896 - 1st horseless carriage show in London. It featured 10 models.

1919- Mustapha Kemal, called Ataturk, is ordered to disband his Turkish Army at Samsun in accordance with the armistice agreement ending the Great War. Instead he declared a revolt and resists the Greek invasion. It is the beginning of modern Turkey.
One of the interesting conflicts in Turkey today is the Islamic fundamentalist movements coming up against the legacy of strict church-state separation and state espoused by Ataturk. Today in Turkey it is a state crime to criticize Ataturk.

1919- Harlem bandleader James Europe had toured Europe while in uniform for World War I and had made the Old World wild for jazz. Europe was doing a triumphal tour of America with his doughboy band when his career was tragically cut short. In Boston, he argued with one hotheaded musician who stabbed him in the neck. He quickly bled to death. Had he lived, James Europe might have been as famous in Jazz history as Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington.

1926- Commander Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett left Spitzbergen Norway, flew over the North Pole in a Fokker monoplane called the Josephine Ford. He beat by two days Norwegian explorer Roald Ammundsen, who flew over the Pole in a dirigible built by Mussolini. Remember Lindbergh hadn’t flown across the Atlantic yet, and it was ten years before the Hindenberg disaster, so a dirigible was considered much safer than an aeroplane.
Commander Byrd won the Medal of Honor and became a household name. Modern scholarship based on his diary and testimony by Floyd Bennett now shows Byrd really didn’t go over the Pole but turned back 150 miles short because of an oil leak. He was too drunk to tell anyway. Although a former World War I pilot by now Byrd had grown skittish about flying.

1932 – London’s Piccadilly Circus first lit by electricity.

1935- The First Belch heard on nationwide radio. Melvin Purvis (the FBI man who killed John Dillinger) was doing an ad for Fleischmann’s Yeast when he committed the offense, which was dubbed “The Burp Heard Round the World”.

1937- ACTOR’S SHOWDOWN WITH L.B. MAYER- In a dramatic confrontation the heads of the Screen Actor’s Guild Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone go to MGM boss Louis B. Mayer’s beach house during a Sunday garden party. While IATSE-Capone mob gangster Willie Bioff stood by to give Mayer support, Montgomery told Mayer he had a 96% strike vote from the actors, so if Mayer didn’t recognize SAG as the sole bargaining agent for actors they would paralyze Hollywood Monday morning!
Mayer thought about it, then gave in. Bioff got from the actors a deal that the IA would back off if the actors would withdraw their support from a rival union to IATSE’s organizing the behind the scene’s technical artists. That night 5,600 actors and friends celebrated at Hollywood Legion Stadium. Next morning 200 waited in line to get their SAG cards including Garbo and Jean Harlow.

1937- Burne Hogarth began drawing the Tarzan comic strip. Hal Foster had been in contract negotiations with the syndicate over money and the right to his originals. He had created Prince Valiant as a bargaining chip when the syndicate called his bluff by giving the Tarzan job to Hogarth. Foster went on to greater glory with Valiant, but remained angry at Burne.

1942- Chuck Jones wartime comedy short “ The Draft Horse” premiered.

1950- The French Premier Schumann warned that more deadly world wars would occur in Europe unless Europeans started to unite as one country.

1950- Former Naval reserve officer and pulp science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, his book defining his new religion Scientology.

1955- Washington D.C. station WTOP put on a young Univ of Maryland grad named Jim Henson as filler before the TODAY Show. First called Sam & Friends, Hanson antics with his puppets, including a green frog called Kermit, fashioned from fabric cut out from one of his mothers old green coats. The Muppets were born.

1960- Dr. Gregory Pincus introduced the Birth Control Pill Enovid-10, aka The Pill.

1961- John F. Kennedy's newly appointed head of the FCC, Newton Minow, did his first major address to a luncheon of top television executives. In his speech he blasted them for TV’s mindless content and violence. He called television: " A Vast Wasteland."
What makes it historic is it's the first time anybody had noticed just how lousy TV is and how badly we are all addicted to it. In the show Gilligan’s Island, the boat they were on was named the Minnow for Newton Minnow.

1970- THE MORATORIUM DAY- Largest of the nationwide youth protests against the U.S. War in Vietnam and Cambodia. President Nixon was obsessed by the protests. He had a bunker command post built under the White House where video monitors observed the “long haired peaceniks” outside. When Nixon told his staff he was going to go watch some football, he meant he was going to brood over the monitors. Retired CIA director Bill Gates confessed in his memoirs that as a young operative he took the day off to go protest as well as did a lot of other CIA agents. In Chicago young student and future comic John Belushi was dragged off by friends after being struck in the chest with a fired tear gas shell.
In 2000 it was revealed that President Nixon was so depressed at this time, he was taking a mood altering prescription barbiturate named Dilantin. It was given him by Jack Dreyfus of the Dreyfus Fund without a doctor’s permission. He was so out of it that Secretary of Defense John Schlesinger ordered military and nuclear installations to ignore the orders of our stoned President, unless first cleared by the Defense Department.

1973- Soylent Green opened. Starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in his last movie role. Soylent Green takes place next year, 2022.

1978- Italian authorities found the bullet-riddled body of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in a car trunk. He had been kidnapped and murdered by a left wing extremist group called the Red Brigade. The cruelty of the act backfired on the brigade. They lost any public support they may have had and were soon gone.

1995- The Center of Disease Control published findings on a new deadly strain of virus appearing near Kinshasha Zaire. They called it the Ebola Virus.

2005- Columnist Arianna Huffington started the on-line newspaper The Huffington Post. Its liberal slant was considered a response to blatantly conservative media like Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report and Fox News.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to have “ Pie in the Sky”..?

Answer: The phrase meant stop wasting your time hoping for a better hereafter instead of trying to better your lot now. In 1911 folk-singing activist Joe Hill wrote the song mocking the Salvation Army theme “ In the Sweet Bye and Bye.” He wrote “ work and pray, live on hay. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die….”

Quiz: What does it mean to have “ Pie in the Sky”..?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What is a denouement?
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History for 5/8/2021
Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, Arthur Q. Bryan, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius, Enrique Inglesias, animator Bob Clampett, Don Rickles

1429- St. Joan of Arc lifted the siege of the City of Orleans. English armies were besieging the city from a string of powerful fortresses built around it. At one point in the battle for a strongpoint called La Tourelles, a big English knight stood in the breach in the wall, hewing down Frenchmen with his two-handed broadsword. He seemed invincible, until a knight named Jean De Montesclere brought up one of those newfangled hand held firetubes. From a safe distance, Jean put a stone bullet through the big Englishman. The unknown knight was the first man ever shot by a gun.

1587- THE LOST COLONY- The Roanoke settlers left England for Virginia. When a supply ship reached their colony three years later in 1590, the houses were intact, but the colonists had all disappeared, leaving no bodies, or signs of violence. Only a mysterious message, CROTOAN, carved on a tree. Their ultimate fate has never been successfully determined.

1776- While the American Congress was debating whether to declare independence or not, the British Navy reminded them what was at stake. This day two warships, HMS Roebuck and Liverpool tried to shoot their way up the Delaware River to Philadelphia. They were finally turned back by the Yankee shore batteries.

1778- Sir George Clinton arrived in occupied Philadelphia to relieve British commander Sir William Howe. Clinton’s instructions from London were that since the French had entered the American Revolution on the American side, he was to abandon the rebel capitol of Philadelphia and consolidate British forces in New York. Instead of being reinforced with more troops, he had to detach a few regiments for an attack on Saint Lucia in the Caribbean.

1824- Ludwig Von Beethoven performed his Ninth (Choral) Symphony and Missa Solemnis in concert for the first time. Even though he was stone deaf he was still in demand as a conductor. The orchestra trained themselves to ignore the Maestro's baton waving and follow the lead of the concert-master (first violinist). It was said when they finished and the audience was cheering, Beethoven was still flapping his arms about and moaning the melody, unaware of the sound of his own voice.

1874- Massachusetts adopted a ten-hour workday for women, down from 12-14 hours.

1878- David Hughes invented the Microphone while trying to get over bronchitis.

1910- Russian-Jewish immigrant glove salesman Schmuel Gelpfisch married Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville performer Jesse Lasky. Gelpfisch later changed his name to Sam Goldfish, then Sam Goldwyn. He and his father in law Jesse Lasky went into the new flicker business and started the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They soon moved to Hollywood.

1912- The movie studio Famous Players Lasky born. In 1914 they changed their name to Paramount Pictures.

1927- When Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic, there were other aviators who attempted the same feat. This day French daredevils Charles Nungesser & Francois Coli took off from Paris to fly to New York in their plane L’Oiseau Blanc. They were never seen again, and their remains were never recovered. Later that year, authorities noticed that the $30,000.00 in prize money that crooked NY Mayor Jimmy Walker was supposed to present them with had mysteriously disappeared as well…

1933- When the Rockefellers were building their huge office complex Rockefeller Center in New York City they decided to get one of the greatest living Mexican painter Diego Rivera to design the murals for the interior of the atrium ’Man at the Crossroads". This despite the fact that Rivera was well known as a radical communist.
Soon Nelson Rockefeller noticed Rivera was painting in the center of the mural a huge portrait of Lenin stepping on his father John D. Rockefeller’s face! Over Rivera’s protests Rockefeller ordered the mural painted over and no record of it’s existence ever kept. But on the night before the painting was to be destroyed Swiss art student Lucienne Bloch slipped a camera into her shirt. While Frida Kahlo distracted the guards, she took the only photos of the mural for posterity.

1943- Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"- Ooohh Wolfy!

1945- V.E. Day. Grand Admiral Doenitz, the successor to Adolf Hitler, officially surrendered the Third Reich to the allies. They repeated the ceremony to the Russians next day. Admiral Doenitz said after the signing:" I feel we shall not see our flag fly over a prosperous Germany in our lifetime." Well, not quite…
Nazi's repeat the surrender signing done for Eisenhower, now for the Russians in Berlin. The announcements were made, V-E day celebrations broke out around the world.

1945- As thousands of people mobbed Trafalgar Sq. and the Mall in London to celebrate the end of the war, future Queen Elizabeth and her girlfriends mingled in the crowds, dancing with boys and snatching sailors caps. That one night she was not a princess, she was just 2nd Subaltern Ordinary Elizabeth Windsor.

1947- Department store mogul Harry Gordon Selfridge died in poverty in Putney, a suburb of London. He was 89. Even though his store Selfridges made millions, in his old age he wasted so much money on gambling and women, his exec board stripped him of his power. In 1943 he was arrested for vagrancy for loitering in front of his own store.

1954- DIEN BIEN PHU- The Communist Viet Minh guerrillas decisively defeat the French in Indochina. The French strategy was to place a forward base in the heart of the guerrilla infested jungle to lure the Vietnamese into the open and defeat them. Instead they got a modern version of the Little Big Horn with the French soldiers going down under endless waves of attacking Vietnamese. The guerrilla forces had carried large howitzers in small pieces up mountaintops and assembled them to rain shells down on the French.

1962-"A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" opened on Broadway.

1962- Director Joe Mankiewicz shot the climactic spectacle scene of Cleopatra –Elizabeth Taylor, entering Rome through the Arch of Titus on a mobile sphinx surrounded by thousands of extras. The shot had been delayed six months after a stunt woman fell off an elephant, and then the light in the Forum had not been right. When Elizabeth Taylor appeared in the scene, the Italian extras were supposed to shout "Hail Cleopatra!, but instead they all shouted "Liz! Liz!"

1973-A.I.M. Indian movement surrendered Wounded Knee to the F.B.I.

1978- Postman David Berkowitz confessed to being "Son-of-Sam" or the "44 caliber killer", the serial killer who terrorized New York City by shooting to death teenage couples at random and toying with letters to journalist Pete Hamill. Berkowitz said he received his orders to shoot people from his neighbor's Labrador dog Sam.

1991- President Bill Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, propositioned waitress Paula Jones at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. With her legal bills financed by the Clinton-hating Neo-Cons, her case went as far as a Supreme Court. They decided to allow her to sue a President while in office. Clinton’s attorney didn’t help things with statements like :" Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and who knows who you’ll turn up. "She got a lot of publicity, an $850,000 settlement and a nude spread in Penthouse Magazine.

1996- South Africa adopted its first post-apartheid constitution.

1998- The impotence drug Viagra gained national prominence when retired Senator Bob Dole confessed on the Larry King talk show that he participated in the drugs test trials and the had "thoroughly enjoyed himself."
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a denouement?

Answer: Coming after the climax of a story, the denouement is the resolution of the plot. Sometimes the denouement is confused with an epilogue, which continues the story after the denouement, letting us know what happens after the resolution of the story. (Thanks FG).