Quiz: What is a denouement?

Yesterdays Quiz: What does it mean when you describe something as oneiric?
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History for 5/7/2021
Birthday: Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gary Cooper, Anne Baxter, Gabby Hayes, Ichiro Honda, Robert Browning, Marcus Loew of Loews Theater chain, Darin McGavin, Edward Land (inventor of the Polaroid lens and camera), Amy Heckerling, Traci Lords

Greek Festival of the Birth of Apollo.

401 B.C. SOCRATES. Contrary to modern perception not everyone in ancient Greece loved philosophy. The Greeks had the same conflicts we have now between faith, tradition and rational thought and science. The scientist Anaxagoras was run out of town for saying that the Sun wasn’t Phoebus in a chariot, but just a burning rock floating in space. Euripides the playwright also got into trouble for saying that the gods did not exist.

But Socrates pushed the argument to its most extreme conclusion. The Athenian conservatives convicted Socrates of blasphemy and subverting the public morals. All hoped Socrates would just shut up and pay a fine, but Socrates unrepentant stance forced the law to go all the way to the death penalty. He was ordered to commit suicide by being given a cup of Hemlock. Actually, it wasn’t a cup, the poison was held in a leaf of Romaine Lettuce, then called Lettuce of the Isle of Cos. As he drank, he said,
“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”

558AD- The dome of the great Byzantine basilica the Hagia Sophia collapsed under its own weight. The Emperor Justinian ordered it immediately rebuilt stronger.

1718- The FIRST BOATLOAD OF FRENCH COLONISTS LAND IN LOUISIANA- Sieur de la Moyne-Bienville established a fort and trading post on some low ground between the Mississippi and Lake Ponchartrain. He named the place New Orleans, for Phillip of Orleans, then regent of France in the name of the child King Louis XV.
The French and Dutch always had a problem with their American colonies, in that nobody wanted to leave home to move there. One solution the French thought up was sweeping the streets of all the hookers, cutthroats and riffraff, and shipping them all to America. Though it wasn't exactly "Pilgrim's Progress", this influx of card sharks and sportin' ladies helped New Orleans quickly establish it's reputation as one of the wildest towns of the New World.

1760- A British merchant ship named the Friendship arrived in Virginia from Barbados. On board for his first sea voyage, and his first sight of America was a young Scottish apprentice named John Paul, who we would know as John Paul Jones.

1763- Chief Pontiac attacked Fort Detroit. Angry over British treatment after the French and Indian War, Pontiac had united all the Great Lakes tribes with their French trapper friends to attack all the forts simultaneously from Illinois to Maine. He later took the fort’s fat commander Captain Cambell hostage and gave him to the allied Chippewas who tomahawked him and ate his heart. Yum!

1789- To complete the break with Mother England, the Church of England in America renamed itself the Episcopalian Church.

1795- Throughout the French Revolution one region of France, La Vendee’, stubbornly stayed loyal to the monarchy and waged a long guerrilla war. Several French generals were sent to pacify the province but were unsuccessful. This day young whiz kid Napoleon Bonaparte learned he had been posted to the Vendee’. He immediately protested the posting and requested duty elsewhere. He recognized this move would be bad for his career but beyond that Nappy never wanted to be part of a civil war. Even after Waterloo, when he could have stayed in power by enforcing military control he refused, because it would have meant fighting the people. “There is no honor in spilling the blood of other Frenchmen.”

1800- The US Congress divided up the Northwest Territories, separating Indiana from Ohio.

1847-American Medical Assoc. founded.

1863- Hard-fighting Confederate general Earl 'Buck' Van Dorn was killed, but not in battle. A Tennessee doctor named J.G. Peters made an appointment with the general, went behind him while he was at his desk, and shot him in the back of the head. Dr. Peters then calmly got back into his carriage and rode to Union lines. Peters wasn't a Yankee spy or assassin. He was expressing his disapproval that General Van Dorn was having an affair with his wife. William Faulkner alluded to his romantic exploits in books like Absalom Absalom.

1864-The WILDERNESS- LEE MET GRANT FOR THE FIRST TIME- Southern General Robert E. Lee lured Ulysses Grant's army into a dense tangled forest called the Wilderness and defeated him. The superior numbers of the Yankee troops became meaningless crawling about in the thick woods. At one point when the rebel line was in danger of breaking Lee rode to the front himself but was stopped by a Texas brigade. “Texan’s Always Move Them! “ Lee cried, and the inspired Texans threw back the enemy.
That night hundreds of wounded left on the ground burned to death because the cannons had started a brush fire. Grant suffered as many casualties as at previous Union defeats like Chancellorsville, yet instead of retreating to Washington to make excuses to Lincoln, he circled around and attacked again. The men cheered wildly when they saw Grant quietly sitting atop his horse directing the columns back around for another try. Grant exhibited an iron-like reserve in public, but that night alone in his tent he broke down and sobbed like a child. The two armies maneuvered for 60 days straight, until Grant penned Lee into his Richmond defense lines.

1896- Dr. H.H. Holmes hanged. One of the worst American serial killers, the doctor set up a practice during the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893. As tourists disappeared around the fair, the doctor offered new medical specimens to the local medical college. Called the Devil of the White City, authorities found remains of as many as 200 victims around his property.

1904 - Flexible Flyer trademark registered

1915- THE LUSITANIA- Off the southern coast of Ireland, the civilian ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. 1,198 drowned, including 128 Americans, almost all civilians. The Kaiser later gave a medal to the U-boat Captain Walter Schweige. These acts outraged American opinion and led us into World War I, despite many pro-German immigrants. It was revealed decades later that the reason Lusitania sank so quickly, just 18 minutes - even Captain Schweige was surprised- was that it's cargo hold was full of explosives.
First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill fought the German U-boat blockade by covertly transporting purchased American weapons on hospital ships, civilian ocean liners and let some British freighters illegally fly the flags of neutral countries. The German government knew that the Lusitania had been classified by the British admiralty a military cruiser. But regardless, the sinking of an unarmed ship without warning was considered a gross violation of international law. The German government apologized to the American government, and stopped the unrestricted U-boat campaign for two years, but the Lusitania shifted neutral U.S. public sympathy irrevocably to the Franco-English side.

1919- Defeated Germany learned just how bad the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were going to hit them. They expected bad times but were shocked at just how severe and steep the reparation payments were going to be. Millions were to be paid in indemnities and large areas of their industrial heartland would be under foreign occupation. The anger over this treaty did a lot to stoke the fires for revenge that would bring Hitler to power.

1926- Gangster Al Capone killed 3 men with a baseball bat over dinner.

1937-Nobel Prize winning writer William Faulkner hired by MGM Studios, earning $500 a week. He celebrated by going on a two week drinking binge. MGM's Head of Writing Sam Marx had him tracked down to an Oakie migrant camp in the Imperial Valley. He was dragged off, boozily whining: " Ah wanna write for Mickey Mouse!"

1939- Los Angeles Union Station opened. It was built on top of L.A's original China Town.

1941-Glen Miller records the "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" for RCA. the first gold record million seller.

1942- Battle of the Coral Sea-The U.S. Navy, suffering only defeats up till then, stopped a Japanese task force. This is the first engagement in which the two fleets never saw each other, but fought long distance with carrier launched airplanes. Veterans commented that one of the sadder losses was when the aircraft carrier USS Lexington went down, she took the fleet's supply of 6 Bugs Bunny cartoons down with her. War is Hell.

1945- Director Bob Clampett left Looney Tunes, now called Warner Bros Cartoons, to strike out on his own.

1945- German fighter ace Eric Hartmann celebrated the end of the war by going up in his Messerschmitt ME109f and shooting down one last allied plane. He caught the Ilyushyin Russian fighter doing a victory roll. Hartman was called the Black Devil of the Ukraine, because he shot down 352 enemy planes. After ten years imprisoned in a Siberian gulag, he went home to his farm in Holstein and lived peacefully.

1945- In a top secret test at Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project scientists detonated a single blast 100,000 pounds of TNT. This was to measure the effect of a blast that big and provide a control to gauge the effectiveness of the Atomic Bomb. 100,000 pounds of TNT became known as one Kiloton. The Hiroshima A-Bomb was 20 kilotons,
the largest thermonuclear device was 50 kilotons.

1950- The Carolwood Pacific Railroad. Walt Disney had grew up around and loved trains. Animator Ward Kimball got him interested in collecting model trains. Walt grew so enamored he built a miniature steam train big enough to take children on rides. The tracks ran all around the back of his Holmby Hills home. This day was the first running of his new hobby. The germ of his idea for Disneyland began here. After the home was sold, in the 1990s the Carolwood Barn and trains were moved to Griffith Park.

1966- “Monday Monday” by the Mammas and the Poppas becomes #1 in the pop charts.

1989- Police in Buenos Aires discovered the body of actor Guy Williams ( Zorro, Lost In Space) He had died of a brain aneurysm in his apartment. He was 65.

1996- Comedian Martin Lawrence went berserk and ran down a main intersection in Van Nuys Cal. raving and waving a pistol. When asked to explain himself, Lawrence blamed it on “Dehydration.”

1998- Apple Computers introduced the iMac.

2009- Decorated career soldier Lt. Dan Choi directly challenged the US military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ban on gay soldiers by outing himself on Rachel Maddow’s national news program. He was discharged by July, but his plea helped make the case for gay service-people. In Dec 2010, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed by Congress with overwhelming popular support.

2012- Vladimir Putin inaugurated for the umpteenth time as Russia’s president, premier, prime minister, or whatever. Last month he pushed through legislation so he could stay president until 2036.

2020- Due to the Coronavirus quarantine the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on a social networking program like Zoom. One of the justices did not leave on the mute button, so at one point the proceedings were interrupted by the sound of a toilet flushing.

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Quiz:What does it mean when you describe something as oneiric?

Answer: dreamlike.

Quiz:What does it mean when you describe something as oneiric?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below:Why are China Markers called China Markers?
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History for 5/6/2021
Birthdays: Maximillien Robespierre, Sigmund Freud, Rudolph Valentino, Orson Welles, Robert Peary, Willie Mays, Stewart Granger*, Bob Seger, Toots Schoor, Weeb Ewbank, Adriana Caselotti- the voice of Snow White, Ruben Hurricane Carter, Christian Clavier, Tony Blair, George Clooney is 60. Roy Nesbit.

*English actor Stewart Granger had to change his name to get into Hollywood movies. His real name was Jimmy Stewart.

1096- The Massacre of Mainz- As mobs of Crusaders massed to war on the Holyland, they deliberately chose a route of march through Central Europe. As they passed through cities like Prague, Wurms, Mainz and Spier they could vent their religious zeal by slaughtering the Jewish communities there.
Many well-meaning bishops like the Bishop of Mainz tried to stop them and hid Jews, but the pogrom was terrible. In some cities when faced with death or baptizing, hundreds of Jews committed suicide. When at the walls of Jerusalem the Crusaders saw the Jewish community fighting shoulder to shoulder with their Moslem-Arab cousins against them.

1527- THE SACK OF ROME- Pope Clement VII "the Medici Fox" played the diplomatic tango with the world powers a bit too clumsily and Emperor Charles V of Spain, Holland and Germany launched an army at Rome. Charles gave his general Charles De Bourbon a hangman's noose dipped in gold, a "Golden Rope to Hang the Pope"
The Vatican armies were led by the late Pope Julius's bastard son Maria Della Rovere who didn't like Clement, so he kept his army out of the whole war. The city of Rome’s defense was organized by the artist Benevenuto Cellini. He managed to get off one shot before escaping out the back door. That shot killed the enemy general Charles de Bourbon, so now a loot crazed mercenary army with no commander was running amok in the richest city in Europe. The troops pillaged for weeks, only the plague drove them out. Many of the troops were newly converted Protestants, so they looked forward to despoiling the Great Whore of Rome.

They entered the orphanage of Santo Spirito and slaughtered all the patients, then ran into St. Peters and massacred all the harmless people who sought sanctuary there. They dressed a donkey in cardinals robes, proclaimed Martin Luther pope, and made campfires in the Sistine chapel-which is why the fresco was darkened by smoke. 147 of the Pope’s elite Swiss Guard held off the rampaging enemy army until the Pope could escape. They were massacred to a man. Ever since, May 6th is the day new members of the Swiss Guard are installed at the Vatican.
Pope Clement escaped the golden rope, but the Vatican never regained the power it once had and popes actually started to concentrate on spiritual stuff!

1603- After a triumphal procession down from Edinburgh James VI of Scotland enters London as James I of England. Although the treaty of union was not formally signed until 1717 James can truly be called the first king not just of England but of Great Britain.

1682-THE GLOUCESTER DISASTER- The good ship Gloucester was carrying the Duke of York and his court back from Scotland when it struck a reef off Norfolk and sank. It was said the good Duke, who would soon be King James II, courageously stayed until it was almost too late then escaped in a longboat. Later the Duke of Marlborough revealed in letters to his wife that if James had left sooner instead of worrying about his image they might have been able to save more people. As it was James took the only longboat and filled it with his luggage, hunting dogs and a priest. He then posted guards with drawn swords to keep anyone else coming on board. James and only 40 people survived while 300 perished with the ship. Later as King James II he was overthrown and driven into exile with the help of the Duke of Marlborough.

1793- After a stay in Europe, American artist Gilbert Stuart arrived back home dead broke. In the age of Gainsborough, Romney and West, Stuart didn’t fare too well. He left America because he was tired of being pestered to do copies of his famous portrait of George Washington, the one that is currently on our dollar bill.

1833 - John Deere makes his first steel plow.

1840- Britain issued the Penny-Blacks, the first perforated adhesive postage stamps.

1862- Henry David Thoreau died at age 44. When his sister asked him :"Have you made your peace with God?" Thoreau replied:" I was unaware that we had ever quarreled."
His last words as he faded away were “Moose…Indian…”

1864- Ulysses Grant began moving his armies south towards Robert E. Lee in Virginia. One general cynically noted: ” The fourth act of our comedy has begun.”

1867- MORIARITY! American criminal Adam Worth stole a Gainsborough masterpiece The Duchess of Devonshire from a London museum. Years later he restored it to the authorities to collect the reward. In America he became friends with detective Alan Pinkerton, to whom he bragged about his adventures. He said that the London police had called him “ The Napoleon of Crime”.
Pinkerton later met fellow Scotsman Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, and related these stories to him. They gave Conan-Doyle the idea for Sherlock Holmes’ evil nemesis, Prof Moriarity.

1877- One year after Custer's Last Stand, Crazy Horse, "the Napoleon of the Plains", surrendered to U.S. authorities. They assassinated him later.

1882 -Congress passed the First Chinese Exclusion Act.

1903-A bronze plaque was attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. On it was a poem The New Colossus by a young Jewish immigrant woman named Emma Lazarus. She was disturbed by the Anti-Semitic violence in Russia and wrote this inspired by the symbol of the Statue. “Give Me your Tired, Your Poor..” The French creators had intended the Statue of Liberty to symbolize political liberty, but Lazarus’s poem had confirmed the Statue as“ The Mother of Exiles ”.

1915- Babe Ruth hits his first home run. He was a Boston Red Sox pitcher at the time. He will finish his career with 714 home runs, a record that held for decades until Hank Aaron.

1919- Seattle dockworkers go on strike refusing to load weapons destined to fight fellow workers in the Russian Revolution.

1919- Wizard of Oz creator L. Frank Baum died of heart disease at 62. He was trying at the time to buy real estate in Los Angeles for an Oz- theme amusement park.

1937-The Giant Zeppelin Graf HINDENBURG EXPLODED while landing in Lakehurst New Jersey. Despite the horrible film images 63 of the 90 passengers and crew escaped.
People to this day aren’t sure what happened, from an igniting from static electricity to an anti-nazi saboteur firing a flare gun into the hydrogen gas-bags. The explosion originated behind the large swastika on the tail.
The previous year a visit from a German luxury liner the S.S. Bremen caused a riot on the New York City docks as demonstrators fought police to tear the hated Nazi flag down. It was possible at that time to fly a dirigible with non flammable helium, but it was much more expensive than hydrogen and the worlds chief supplier of helium, the United States, was reluctant to sell Hitler that much of the strategic chemical.

The American ground crew wanted to give a gift to the German captain who was dying of 3rd degree burns, so they presented him with an engraved cigarette lighter! My grandparents told me they drove out to see the wreckage with a huge crowd. Even though it was still smoldering, people were prying chunks off for souvenirs.

Zeppelins were once supposed to be moored to the top of the Empire State Building but that never came about. By 1939 Goring ordered all remaining zeppelins and hangers scrapped for their valuable materials.

1937- THE FLEISCHER STRIKE-Cartoonists vote to strike Max Fleischers Studio after Max fires 13 animators for union activity and complaining about their 6 day work week.
The strike was settled several weeks later when parent company Paramount forced Max to concede. Strikers sang "We're Popeye the Union Man! We're Popeye the Union Man! We'll Fight to the Finish, Cause We Can't Live on Spinach! We're Popeye...etc."

1937- The Society of Motion Picture Art Directors formed.

1941- A friend of Bob Hope who was now in the service suggested the comedian come and entertain troops on their army post. Hope took the suggestion, and it became his signature event. Into his eighties he entertained servicemen around the world in five wars.

1945- Just as the exhausted GI’s in Germany were beginning to celebrate the end of the war in Europe, an announcement in Stars & Stripes newspaper gave them the bad news that they won’t be demobilized and go home until Japan was defeated as well! European armies were scheduled for the invasion of the Japanese home islands in November if the atomic bombs didn’t work.

1946- Curly Howard, was the most outrageous of the comedy troupe The Three Stooges.
While people laughed at his antics, he lived a wild Hollywood life, lots of clubs, drinking, smoking and girls. This day while filming the short Halfwits Holiday, he suffered a massive stroke. He was only 42. He survived 6 more years in debilitated health, moved from hospital to hospital by his brothers. He died in 1952 at age 48.

1949- In Cambridge University England, The computer EDSAC ran its’ first calculations. The first computer that could store data in its memory.

1954- Oxford student Roger Bannister ran the first Four Minute Mile. His time was 3:59.04.

1994- The Channel Tunnel or The Chunnel opened between Folkestone, England and Calais, France.

2001- Variety reported that the Walt Disney Company in promoting their upcoming summer film Pearl Harbor, had canceled plans for Pearl Harbor Happy Meals at McDonalds, as being in bad taste.

2003- A tornado destroyed the factory in Jackson, Tennessee that produced most of the world’s supply of Pringles Potato Chips.
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Yesterday’s Question:Why are China Markers called China Markers?

Answer: The Chinese kept the technique of making fine porcelain secret for centuries. When porcelain was imported European people just called them all China. A China marker was a special grease-wax pencil where you could mark an inventory or price number on a plate, and rub it off without damaging the finish.

Quiz: Why are China Markers called China Markers?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: Why is Delaware named Delaware?
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History for 05/05/2021
Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Michael Palin is 79, Jim Kelly, Pat Carroll, Patrick Ewing, John Rhys Davies is 77, Lance Henriksen is 81, Brian Williams, Floyd Gottfredson

In Mexico and parts of the US, this is Cinco de Mayo (see 1862 below)

In Japan this is a holiday known as Children's Day.

National Teacher's Day.

National Cartoonist's Day.

2,349 BC- According to Bishop Ussher, an XVI Century Flemish cleric who tried to calculate an actual date for every major event in the Bible, today is the day Noah’s Ark struck dry ground on Mount Ararat.

840- Louis the German, a son of Charlemagne, died of fright during a total eclipse of the sun.

1504 -Sir Anton of Burgundy, known as The Great Bastard, died at 82.

1534- King Henry VIII executed a nun named Elizabeth Barton, who claimed to have been instructed by God to condemn the King’s divorce. She claimed supernatural forces had shown her the place in Hell being prepared for King Henry.

1640- King Charles I dissolved Parliament after only three weeks for being uppity. It was called the Short Parliament. When they refused to grant him tax money to fight his wars the King levied a 1% property tax on everyone in England. If you didn’t pay it right away you could lose your ears and be branded on the cheeks with a hot iron. Bright ideas like this cost Charles his head, after losing the English Civil War in 1649.

1789- King Louis XVI reluctantly convened an Estates General, the French national parliament, to get the country out of a fiscal crisis. He had fired the Swiss financier Jacques Necker, the only man who seemed to be stopping the economy’s slide. Up to now Louis' understanding of fiscal policy was to cut the budget spent on the royal lapdogs. An assembly like this had not been convened since 1611. The Parliamentarians demanded permanent power and by refusing to adjourn when the Royal command came, set in motion the French Revolution. Napoleon said the French Revolution began when the king fired Necker.

1800- Shortly after winning his Federalist parties nod to run for re-election President John Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams” Tis a pity that politicians would sacrifice all that good men hold dear and sacred, just to win an election.”

1808- THE SPANISH ULCER- The Spanish Royal Family was having problems. King Charles IV, his chief minister Godoy who was also a lover of the Queen, the Infante Ferdinand VII and the Prince of Asturias were all trying to overthrow one another while Goya made funny portraits of them.
French Emperor Napoleon offered to mediate. After he lured them all to Bayonne on French soil, he told them: “ I’ve got an better idea. I’ll lock you up in this fortress, and my brother Joseph will be King of Spain.” Napoleon sent an army into Spain to enforce his idea but the Spanish people wouldn’t stand for it and fought first in the open, and then as “guerrillas”- little wars.
While Napoleon was trying to conquer the rest of Europe he had to constantly keep troops in Spain fighting the guerrillas and the Duke of Wellington’s English. Spain was finally liberated in 1814 and the Royal Family promptly went back to arguing.

200 Years Ago 1821"...le Armee'......Josephine....." Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St. Helena at age 52.

1827- In Tennessee a 17-year old tailor's apprentice named Andrew Johnson married 16 year old Eliza McArdle. Johnson was illiterate, so one of his bride's first chores was to teach him to read and write. Johnson became the 17th President of the United States.

1862- CINCO DE MAYO- Battle of Puebla-Mexican Juaristas under Zaragosa defeated a French invasion force sent by Napoleon III. One of the heroes of the battle was a soldier named Porfiro Diaz. After Benito Juarez’s presidency Diaz made himself dictator and reigned 38 years until being ousted in the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

1864-While Lee and Grant’s armies began to battle in the Wilderness, Sherman began his Atlanta campaign. Sherman told Grant:" You hold Lee down and give me enough troops and I can make Georgia howl!"

1889- THE PARIS WORLD EXHIBITION opened. This exposition was what the Eiffel Tower was built for: it was the centerpiece of this World's Fair to mark the centennial of the French Revolution.
Americans remembered it as the event where American painting first stood out on the world stage, despite being given a small gallery space between Bosnia and Denmark. The judging of the artwork was controversial. Here they are trying to show the world the uniqueness of American painting, yet with not a single Copley, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, or Winslow Homer was accepted.
James McNeill Whistler considered himself American although he lived most of the time in London. When the show was announced, he patriotically entered a dozen paintings but the American judges rejected them all. He angrily re-submitted them as a British artist and won a gold medal.

1891-Carnegie Hall in New York opened. One old musician told me the acoustics are so perfect that you can fart in the trumpet section and you'll be heard in the second balcony.

1920- Britain and France get the League of Nations to sanction their colonial takeover of the Middle East. France occupied Syria and Lebanon and Britain Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The League officially considered them 'mandates' to administer territory of the defeated Turkish Empire, but Britain and France held them in effect as colonial possessions.

1932- Charles Revson founded the Revlon Cosmetics Company.

1942- The last U.S. forces on the besieged Island of Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese. General MacArthur was ordered to escape to organize the defense of Australia, leaving his friend Jonathan Wainwright to lead his men into captivity. But when he was asked to recommend General Wainwright for the Congressional Medal of Honor, MacArthur refused. "The Medal of Honor cannot be awarded to a general who pulls down Old Glory and surrenders!". MacArthur had Wainwright at his side to sign the surrender documents on the U.S.S. Missouri in 1945.

1945- In a desperate plan to get at America, Japanese generals tried tying bombs to high flying atmospheric weather balloons that could catch the jet stream across the Pacific. This day the only World War II casualties on the U.S. mainland occurred when an Oregon woman Elsie Mitchell and her two children were killed by one of these strange bombs while picnicking.

1945- Happy Birthday Yosemite Sam! Hare Trigger, the first cartoon to feature the red mustachioed desperado premiered.

1953- Broadway Director Jerome Robbins was riding high after directing hits like On the Town and King & I, when he was labeled a Communist. To save his career, this day he testified before Joseph McCarthy’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee and named names. One actress he finked on, Margaret Lee said” I’ve just been stabbed by a wicked fairy”. Ironically, Jerome Robbins went on to direct two of his biggest hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Fiddler on the Roof using blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel, Beatrice Arthur and Jack Gilford, who all hated him. During a break in rehearsal on Fiddler, one actor said, “ I’d like to kick Jerry in the balls!” Beatrice Arthur said, “ Jerry has no balls.”

1960- Soviet Premier Khruschev announces to the world press the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia. President Eisenhower vigorously denied anything of the sort until Khruschev in a world news conference produced the plane wreckage and pilot Lt. Francis Gary Powers. The incident not only deepened the Cold War, but for the first time in modern history a U.S. President was caught lying his head off. But sadly, not the last time.

1961- Alan Shepard became the first American in space on board Friendship VII. The rocket took him 115 miles into space but not high enough to achieve an orbit. That was done one year later by John Glenn. Shepard was kept on the ground in his capsule for so long he had to pee in his suit. In the upside down position the fluid ran up his back and puddles in his helmet behind his head. NASA realized it needed to make modifications on the space suit….

1968- Albert Dekker, character actor and star of movies like Dr. Cyclops, was found dead kneeling in his bathtub, handcuffed, Noose around his neck, ballgag and wearing ladies lingerie. A narcotics needle was sticking in his arm. Someone wrote in red lipstick on his butt “ whip”. The police declared it an “ auto-erotic episode that had gone wrong."

1975- Anne Rice’s hit novel The Interview With The Vampire first published.

1981- Young IRA supporter Bobby Sands made himself a martyr in the Northern Ireland crisis by dying of a hunger strike while in jail. He went 66 days without food.

1983- At a regional Comicon, the first edition comic of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out and sold out within two hours.

1985- President Ronald Reagan started a firestorm of controversy among WWII veterans when he laid a wreath in Germany at a cemetery in Bitburg that contained graves of 49 Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. Some of them may have participated in the infamous Malmedy Massacre of US prisoners.

2006- Walt Disney Company formally acquired Pixar Studio.
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Quiz:Why is Delaware named Delaware?

Answer: It is named for Thomas West, Baron de La Warre, governor of Virginia when the river was being explored. The region was later settled by Caeclius Calvert, Lord Baltimore as a refuge for English Catholics.

Quiz: Why is Delaware named Delaware?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who were the Bobbsey Twins?
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History for 5/4/2021
Birthdays: Bartolomeo Christofori'-inventor of the piano, Alice Liddel 1852- the inspiration of Alice in Wonderland, Audrey Hepburn –real name Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, Roberta Peters, Maynard Ferguson, Pia Zadora is 68, Howard Da Silva ,Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Richard Jenkins

11BC- Dedication of the theater of Marcellinus in the Campus Martius.

1471-"Now are the Winter of our discontentment made glorious Summer by this Son of York"... TEWKESBURY, the deciding battle of the War of the Roses. Edward IV with his brothers Clarence and Richard the Hunchback defeat Lancastrian King Henry VI. The white rose vanquished the red.

1493- the Papal Bull Inter-Contrera and the Treaty of Tordesillas was announced. Pope Alexander VI Borgia divided up the entire world between Portugal and Spain- Spain could conquer everything west of the Cape Verde Islands like the Americas, and Portugal could have everything east like Africa and India.
Damned sporting of him! Columbus knew of this impending treaty when he sailed. So he may have deliberately falsified coordinates in his ship's logs to hide the fact he was violating Portuguese territorial waters to catch the current he counted on getting him across the Atlantic.

1521- Martin Luther had been invited under a safe passport by Emperor Charles V to come to the Imperial Court at Wurms and explain himself. This was still very dangerous. A generation ago Czech reformer Jan Hus was similarly invited, then burned at the stake. Shortly after Luther openly defied both Pope and Emperor, he was kidnapped and disappeared. Liberals like Erasmus and Albrecht Durer were shocked, but it was all turned out to be a charade. Luther’s protector Frederick the Wise of Saxony was concerned Luther would be arrested, so he arranged to spirit him away into hiding at the Wartburg Castle in Eisenbach until things cooled down. Martin Luther changed out of his monks clothes, grew a beard and called himself Junker Karl.

1626- Peter Minuit arrived at the settlement of New Amsterdam to be its first governor.

1715- A French inventor Jean Marius demonstrated the first lightweight folding umbrella. Parasols and sunshades go back to the Egyptians and Romans, but this was one of the earliest types of modern folding umbrella.

1776- Jumping ahead of the independence debate in the Continental Congress, the colonial assembly of Rhode Island renounced their allegiance to the Crown of England.

1776-While marching up the California coast, Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola came upon a Chumash Indian village on the shore of a big bay. It being Saint Monica's Day, he named the bay Santa Monica. St. Monica was famous for crying, she had a wicked son, who later reformed and became a Saint himself, Augustine. Portola was looking for water that dry year, and Tongva locals took him to a spring, still there, on the campus of Uni High. He named the area for her life giving tears, on her day.
A little further up the coast he found a little beach and lagoon the Indians called “ place where the surf is loud”, in Chumash- Malibu

1788 - Catherine the Great's chancellor Prince Potemkin appointed as Rear Admiral of the Russian Navy, Pavel Ivanovich Jones, or as we know him, John Paul Jones. Jones had gone to Russia to organize the Black Sea Fleet,

1799- The Assault on Seringhapatam- In India, the British army stormed the fortress of Sultan Tipoo Sahib the 'Tiger of Mysore' . Commanding General John Baird leapt up on the parapet and shouted over the scream of rockets, cannon and roaring elephants:" Up my brave lads, and show the world you are worthy of the title- British Soldiers!" Present at the battle was a young colonel named Arthur Wellesley who 16 years later would gain fame as the Duke of Wellington.
Tipoo Sahib was England's chief enemy in India and had been defeated a decade earlier by Lord Cornwallis, who made up for his loss to George Washington at Yorktown. After the battle among the plunder they found the Sultan's favorite toy- a life-size mechanical tiger clawing a man. The tiger had a set of organ keys that played a medley of roars and screams for Tipoo's amusement. It's in the Victoria and Albert Museum today.

1863-Final day of the Battle of Chancellorsville.- The day after Stonewall Jackson was shot made the Southern soldiers fight with all the fury of revenge. One Confederate officer wrote how he paused to attend to a young boy shot and dying. The boy said” Go tell my buddies that though the Yankees have killed me, they have not conquered me!” Union commander Fighting Joe Hooker was stunned when a shell struck a pillar he was leaning against. When he came to his nerves snapped and all he could think of was retreat. Robert E. Lee had been surrounded and outnumbered and had to fight both in front and rear. But he turned the tables on his enemy and won. Chancellorsville was Lee’s greatest tactical victory.

1876- THE ARREST OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER- General Custer almost didn't make his fateful ride to the Little Big Horn. He had gotten in big trouble with the Grant administration when he testified to Congress about waste and corruption in the War Department. He even implicated President Grant's own brother-in-law Orville as leading a graft ring and his testimony helped impeach Secretary of War William Belknap.

On May 4th when Custer stepped off a train in Chicago, he was met by two officers who told him he was under arrest, and should remain there to await orders. He defied this order and continued on to Fort Lincoln, where he tearfully begged Generals Terry and Sheridan to intercede for him to get his beloved Seventh Cavalry back. Terry's written pleas to Grant and Sherman worked. Custer was allowed to resume his command. Terry had drawn up a contingency plan for a Colonel Hazen to lead the Seventh to the Little Big Horn. So we almost had Hazen's Last Stand.

1886-The HAYMARKET RIOT. A defining incident in U.S. labor history. Striking workers demonstrating in Chicago for an eight hour workday confronted mass police and militia. Suddenly a bomb exploded among the police, who immediately opened fire on the crowd. The culprits are never identified, but authorities blamed the union leaders- The Haymarket Eight - who were all arrested. Despite an international outcry from celebrities like George Bernard Shaw and William Morris they were all convicted and hanged.
The Haymarket incident was considered damaging to the prestige of the union movement at the time but the union organizers hanged on circumstantial evidence became martyrs to the average working person. As the defiant Albert Parsons dropped from the gallows door he shouted: "Oh America, Let the voice of the People be heard!" A decade later a Chicago mayor re-examined the evidence and concluded they had executed innocent men. He lost his reelection. In 1968, a monument erected to the slain policemen was blown up by hippy radicals.

1891 –THE DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES According to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, this was the day Sherlock Holmes perished at the Reichenbach Falls grappling with sinister Prof. Moriarity- The Napoleon of Crime. Conan Doyle had tired of his eccentric detective and wanted to get on to other types of novels. But readers were horrified he had killed off the great sleuth. Conan-Doyle couldn’t take a walk down the street without someone stopping him:” Sir, How could you?!” When touring the U.S. he wanted to lecture about historical subjects and spiritualism, but people only wanted know about Holmes & Watson. Finally after a decade, Arthur Conan-Doyle gave in and began a new series called the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1897- GREATER NEW YORK- Governor Frank Black signed the act unifying the City of Brooklyn and the counties of Queens and Richmond (Staten Island) to New York creating the City of Greater New York, the five boroughs. The mayors of New York and Brooklyn immediately tried to veto the act, but the State legislature overrode them.

1897- In Paris during a charity cinematograph show the nitrate film catches fire and 200 die. Movie film before the 1940’s was made from a very unstable Nitrate mixture and could explode from the slightest contact with flame.

1927- The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences formed. Studio heads Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer originally conceived the Academy as an arbiter where studio artists could air grievances without fear of retaliation, thereby sidetracking the call for union representation. It didn't work. After the stock market crash the Academy supported the studio heads enforced employee salary cuts. Soon all pretense as an ombudsman was abandoned and AMPAS focused instead on being the arbiter of artistic achievement.
Writer Dorothy Parker commented: "Going to the Academy with your problems is like trying to get laid in your mother's house. Someone's always peeking through the curtains"

1940- The last British troops withdrew from Norway, leaving it to Nazis occupation.

1947- Paul Rafaelson, the only Jew ever convicted of Nazi war crimes was tried and hanged in Prague. As a concentration camp trustee he aided the Nazis in committing atrocities on the inmates of his own faith.

1948- Norman Mailor's first novel published: "the Naked and the Dead".

1953 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Ernest Hemingway for The Old Man & The Sea.

1957 - Alan Freed hosts "Rock n' Roll Show" 1st prime-time network rock music show.

1963- Nelson Rockefeller married Margaret Fitzler-Murphy, called Happy Rockefeller.

1967- The Big Mac hamburger is invented by Jim Delligatti at his MacDonalds franchise restaurant in Pittsburgh. Steelworkers weren’t eating at his McDonald’s. They often ate one big meal a day after double shifts and the tiny burgers at McDonald’s weren’t going to cut it. They preferred the hearty burgers and meal sizes sandwiched at eat’n park or Primanti Bro’s. So the only way he could compete was to double his burgers! 

1970- KENT STATE. Two days after Vice President Spiro Agnew told law enforcement associations that, “You should treat the student anti-war protesters as you would have treated the brown shirted stormtroopers" Ohio National Guard units opened fire on college demonstrators at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine. Two weren't even protesting but had just paused to watch.
Troops also fired on students at Jackson State a week later. These incidents and the fatal bombing of a science lab by militants at Wisconsin caused the public to recoil from increasingly militant rhetoric over Vietnam. Shortly afterward one friend recalled seeing President Nixon at an appearance in Akron mutter something to the effect that he wished more students had been gunned down at Kent State. President Nixon had called the anti-war protesters "bumbs". The grieving father of one of the slain students wrote him: "Mr President, my daughter was not a bumb!"

1975- Moe Howard died, the last of the original Three Stooges.

1991- Bing Crosby’s son Dennis Crosby put a shotgun to his head and ended his life. In 1989 his younger brother Lindsay had committed suicide in a similar fashion.

1999- Goldman-Sachs, a 130 year old Wall Street investment bank that had once sparred with J.P. Morgan, becomes the last great bank on Wall St. to go public. In 2008 it’s shady dealings helped bring about The Great Recession, but soon most of it’s former execs scored jobs in the federal gov’t.

2000- The Love Bug Computer virus ravaged the worlds commerce through Microsoft Outlook causing $10 billion dollars in damage and shutting down temporarily the e-commerce of large firms like Reebok. It was launched by a Philippine grad student as part of his thesis.

2001- Bonnie Lee Blakely, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was found in her car dead of a gunshot wound to the head outside of Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, Ca. They had just had dinner, and Mr. Blake had returned into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left at his table. In 2005 the actor was acquitted of his wife’s murder, but lost a wrongful death suit to Blakely’s family. No other suspect has ever been identified.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who were the Bobbsey Twins?

Answer: The Bobbsey Twins were the main characters in a series of children's novels, begun in the early 1904 and continuing for decades. They were penned by several authors under the common pseudonym Laurel Lee Hope. The stories featured two sets of fraternal twins from the same family, who have adventures and solved mysteries.

Question: Who were the Bobsey Twins?

Yesterday’s question answered below:Who said “Damn the Torpedoes? “

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History for 5/3/2021
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Bing Crosby, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70’s singer Englebert Humperdinck, Dule Hill


Happy World Press Freedom Day.

328 A.D.- Discovery of the True Cross- St. Helena the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine was the first person to make fashionable the collecting and revering of Christian relics. This day her archeologists in Jerusalem unearthed three old crosses on the Mount of Calvary. According to Medieval legend, she tested it out by crucifying someone on it who got up after three days. After all, it might have been someone else's cross! Ick!

Byzantine Emperors carried the True Cross around and into battle like a flag until it was thought to be too precious to lose. So it was broken up, and the wood distributed to the kings of Christendom. By Luther's time it was said so much of the Good Wood or Holy-Rood was around that if you got it all together you could build a nice house. The custom of saying "Knock on Wood" comes from touching the True Cross for luck.



1494- Columbus discovered the island of Jamaica. He called it St. Iago.



1536- Huron Indian chief Donnaconna noticed that the French explorer Jacques Cartier and the other white men got excited whenever he mentioned gold or riches. So Donnaconna made up fantastic stories about a powerful kingdom upriver called Sanguenay, about where present day Ottawa is. He said the people were fabulously wealthy and had no anus's so they could only drink fluids. Cartier not only swallowed the gag this but he was so impressed he had poor Donnaconna kidnapped and brought to France to tell his stories to the king. The old chief never saw his home again.



1559- At Perth Scotland, Presbyterian preacher John Knox delivered his first sermon openly calling for the Scottish Church to throw off the authority of the Vatican.



1675- Massachusetts Puritans passed a law that church doors be locked during Sunday services. Too many people were leaving during long, boring sermons.



1702- William Hyde, aka Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former Nieu Amsterdaam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an odd resemblance to England’s Queen Anne. He later explained he only dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like. Of course, nobody believed him.

There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society. It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack, which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.



1791- Polish Constitution of 3rd of May. This radical document was inspired by the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. But being situated in between autocratic monarchies Russia and Prussia who were unimpressed and crushed the Poles.



1812- A new poem called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."



1848- Working people of Saxony revolt against their king. Leo Bakunin the father of anarchism and the composer Richard Wagner were two of the leaders. The Prussian army was sent to help put down the workers and Wagner fled into Switzerland, but not before he had the pleasure of burning down the Leipzig Opera House.



1851- San Francisco burned down.



1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. O.O. Howard, the Union General in charge of that area wouldn’t believe the scouts reports of an imminent attack. When a German immigrant officer demanded he prepare, Howard accused him of being drunk. Then Jackson’s men burst out of the woods and sent the Yankees running.



The fighting lasted well into the evening and confusion reigned in the darkness. General Daniel Sickles division got into a vicious three way firefight with a Confederate division shooting at him from one side and his own reinforcements shooting at him from the other.



Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. General A.P. Hill called out " Don't shoot! Were Southerners! ". But the Mississippi colonel in charge had been surprised once already that night by enemy cavalry:" It's a Yankee trick! Pour it into them!" A volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.



1864- The day before his armies were set to move Union General Ulysses Grant laid out final plans for his campaign against the Confederacy. In a drawing room in Culpepper Virginia he told his staff that up till now union armies had acted independently like a bad team of horses that won’t pull together. He would now coordinate five armies attacking simultaneously from Washington to Atlanta to Shreveport Louisiana. Their goal would not be the taking of Richmond but the destruction of the main Confederate field armies like Robert E Lee’s. Grants plan was to hold Lee down near Richmond while the armies of Sherman, Banks and Butler completed the destruction of the Confederacy.



1888- The Poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer first published.



1906- British controlled Egypt seized the Sinai Peninsula from the Turkish Empire.



1917- The Great French Military Mutinies. During World War I, after three years of appalling conditions and being slain by the thousands in suicidal charges against machine guns, the average French "poilus" soldier nickname like G.I., had enough. Whole regiments refused to go to the front. The mutiny was so bad that to this day official records are vague as to just how many men were involved. A safe estimate is at least 100,000 men.



1931- E.C. Segar introduced Popeye’s friend J. Wellington Wimpy in his Thimble Theatre comic strip. “ I would gladly pay you Tuesday, for a hamburger today.”



1933- Fritz Lang’s movie M released in the US. It made a star of Peter Lorre.



1936- Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio first game for the New York Yankees. He got three hits.



1938- The Vatican recognized Generalissimo Franco’s fascist regime in Spain.



1941- Battle of Amba Alagi. Britain vs Italy for Ethiopia.



1948-THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theater chains had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature. Many people were starting to become interested in that new television machine, anyway.



1952, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the exact North Pole, the first known person to do so. Commander Robert Peary claimed to have reached the Pole in 1909 as did others, but modern scholars think they were all off by several degrees.



1963- Birmingham police attack Civil Rights marchers with attack dogs, clubs and high powered hoses. The brutality was captured on nationwide TV. The images shocked the nation and President Kennedy, who had been assured by Governor George Wallace by phone that everything was under control. JFK resolved to fast track the Civil Rights Act through Congress.



1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle government.

All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom. "The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". Conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit’s Jewish foreign background. This caused an even larger, angrier, march of Parisians shouting: "We are all Jews!"



1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.



50 Years Ago 1971- National Public Radio’s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first U.S. news program with women anchors like Susan Stanberg.



1971- President Nixon’s administration arrested 13,000 anti-war protestors in one week.



1973- Chicago’s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the tallest office building in the U.S.A.



1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time, so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once.



1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocer’s daughter called the Iron Lady, dominated British politics for the next twenty years.



1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule when Nancy would seek the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.



1991- Steve Jobs agreed to the deal between Walt Disney and Pixar to create the film Toy Story. He insisted the Pixar logo be at the head of the film, instead of in the back roll credits. The world needs to know that Pixar are the one’s making these movies, not them. It’s all about marketing. The public will soon know who we are, more than they are.” .



1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company James J. Morgan testified to a congressional committee that cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy.



1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.



2002- Spiderman, directed by Sam Raimi, and starring Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst.

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Yesterday’s Quiz:Who said Damn the Torpedoes?



Answer: Admiral Farragut at Mobile Bay. In the Civil War a floating mine was called a torpedo. When the fleet was pushing past Mobile’s shore batteries, the lead ship struck one and sank. This caused the ships to stop. Lined up they were sitting ducks for the enemy gunners. So Adm. Farragut pushed his flagship forward by shouting “ Oh, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” He gambled any remaining mines were duds, which they were.. And he won the battle.