Quiz: What is a chauvinist?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Charles Perrault wrote stories under a more famous pen-name. What was it?
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History for 2/16/2023
Birthdays: The Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia, Henry Adams, Charles Taze Russell founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Edgar Bergen, James Baskett, Sonny Bono, John McEnroe, Frank Welker, John Schlesinger, Faith Hubley, Katherine Cornell, John Corligiano, Kim Jong Il, Levar Burton is 66, Ice-T is 65, Elizabeth Olsen

In ancient Rome it was the Festival of Quirinalia- when Romulus the founder of Rome was taken up into the sky to become the god Quirinus.

304AD- Today is the feast of St. Juliana of Nicomedia, who was tortured by both her father AND her boyfriend. I know a lot of you ladies out there can relate. She also liked to wrestle winged devils in her spare time.

1804- To the shores of Tripoli....The U.S. Navy went to North Africa to try and get the Barbary Pirates to leave Yankee merchant ships alone. The Barbary Pirates had been extorting money from Mediterranean shipping for hundreds of years, but they weren’t a problem while American ships were under British Royal Navy protection. But now the little republic was on it’s own. When the Bey of Algiers demanded his usual payoff, the U.S. Congress said: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for Tribute!" So the US Navy was sent.
The frigate U.S.S. Philadelphia was sent to Tripoli harbor to threaten, but only managed to get stuck on a sand bar and her entire crew became hostages. On this day Captain Stephen Decatur slipped into Tripoli harbor and burned the Philadelphia. British Admiral Nelson called it "one of the boldest actions of the age. "Actually, more valuable was when Decatur landed a small force of U.S. Marines and Greek mercenaries who overland surprised the largest Algerian fortress at Dara and compelled the Bey of Algiers to make peace.

1808- Napoleon invaded Spain. After he defeated the Spanish Army and occupied Madrid, the Spanish people didn’t roll over quietly like other nations. They fought on as Guerrillas, little wars. The violence in what the French called the Spanish Ulcer raged unabated until they were driven out by Wellington in 1814.

1848- Frederic’ Chopin played his last concert in Paris. Slowly dying from incurable tuberculosis, the 38 year old retired to the isle of Majorca, and died a year later.

1860- British General Charles Gordon took command of the Ever-Victorious Army in China to combat the Taiping Rebellion. The Ever-Victorious was a force of mercenaries recruited by an American named Frederick Ward to help the Qing, Manchu Emperor defeat his enemies western style. The leader of the Taipings, Hong Xiuquan, had told his followers he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ come to Earth and called the territory he conquered around Nanjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Grand Peace. Gordon’s army helped destroy the Taipings, and Hong committed suicide by eating as much gold leaf as necessary.

1862- FORT HENRY & DONELSON. Confederate strongholds Fort Henry and Ft. Donelson surrendered to a new Yankee general named Ulysses S. Grant. Rebel cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest on his own initiative cut his way out of the encircling bluecoats rather than surrender. Southern commander Simon Bolivar Buckner was a personal friend of Sam Grant before the war and even lent Grant money when he was broke. Buckner now expected favorable terms, but Grant bluntly demanded Unconditional Surrender! The initials matched his name and the little cigar smoking souse became a hero to a demoralized North. But Simon Bolivar Buckner never forgave him and never spoke to him until Grant was on his deathbed in 1885.

1863- THE DRAFT- U.S. Congress passed the National Conscription Act. The Confederates had started drafting the year before. Riots broke out in Northern cities whenever the draft board set up. Rich men could buy their way out for $300. John Rockefeller, Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt’s father took that way out. There was a popular song of the era called "We are Coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More" which was changed by wags to “We are Coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Dollars More."

1923- Bessie Smith made her first recording-"Downhearted Blues".

1937- Chemist Wallace Caruthers working for the Dupont Company received the patent for Nylon. He was trying to find something to replace horsehair bristles for toothbrushes. What he got was a fabric that could replace expensive silk. By World War II nylon stockings for women were so popular that limited by shortages for parachutes, resourceful women would draw a seam in pencil down their bare leg to impersonate the effect.

1942- Operation Drumroll- Hitler sent a wolfpack of 5 large long-range U-Boat submarines to sink ships along the American east coast.

1949- NBC premiered The Camel News Caravan with John Cameron Swayze, the first all news TV program. Camel Cigarettes was the sponsor. In 1956 NBC replaced it with the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

1959- Fidel Castro takes the oath as President of Cuba.

1978- The first computer bulletin board goes on live. Two guys from Chicago named Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss built a Computerized Bulletin Board System that was an S-100 motherboard and CP/M, and a Hayes 300 band modem. It still runs today, but the Internet has taken the place that BBS's used to have.

1982- In Houston, three friends from Texas Instruments, Rod Canion, Bill Murto, and Jim Harris got together and formed the company COMPAQ. They designed their first portable computer on a back of a House of Pies placemat. Made with off the shelf components, and compatible with all IBM programs, it was a tremendous success.

1987-"Family Dog" episode on Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories show. The first direction by Brad Bird.

1994- Apple announced the introduction of the Apple Quicktake digital camera, the first camera that needed no film but could load images directly into a computer. They added it to the iPhone in 2007. Within ten years Polaroid and Kodak were filing for bankruptcy.

2018- The Black Panther opened in theaters. Directed by Ryan Coogler, and starring Chadwick Boseman.
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Question: Charles Perrault wrote stories under a more famous pen-name. What was it?

Answer: Mother Goose.

Question: Charles Perrault wrote stories under a more famous pen-name. What was it?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What does it mean when something is viscous?
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History for 2/15/2023
Birthdays: Galileo Galilei, Frederick Douglas, French King Louis XV, Michael Praetorius, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Tiffany, John Barrymore, Jane Seymour, Cesar Romero, Gale Sondergard, Melissa Manchester, Chris Farley, Claire Bloom, Chris MacDonald, Art Spiegleman is 75, Marissa Berenson is 76, Matt Groening is 69

980AD- Today is the Feast of Saint Sigfrid, an Englishman who became the patron saint of Sweden. At the invitation of Viking King Olaf Tryggvason, Sigfrid came north from Glastonbury and baptized Swedish King Olaf the White. Once when Sigfrid was away and his nephews minding his church, the pagans grabbed them and cut their heads off. Saint Sigfrid made the decapitated heads preach to the pagans about the coming Judgement Day. Musta scared the beejeezus out of them.

1720- Young Francois Voltaire had begun a career as a successful playwright with his first play Oedipe. But his second play Artemire was booed as loudly as his first play was cheered. The irate playwright ran up on stage and argued with the audience for over an hour, but the audience still thought his play stunk.

1764-The town of Saint Louis, Missouri was established by French fur trappers (les voyageurs) up from New Orleans, led by Pierre Laclede Ligueste.

1793- Revolutionary France adopted the tricolor flag. After Waterloo, royalists tried to go back to the white with gold Fleur du Lys banner. But from 1848 on the Tricolor remained the national banner of the French nation.

1815- Things on the Island of Elba had gotten so quiet that the British officer in charge of Napoleon's exile, Sir Colin Campbell, informed his prisoner he was going on holiday to see his girlfriend in Italy. Napoleon asked, “Will you be back by the 28th? “Yes, why?” Oh, nothing. it's just my sister Princess Pauline is planning a party and we'd hate for you to miss it." But Napoleon was actually plotting to escape to France and re-conquer Europe. Pauline had her party on the 25th. Sir Colin Campbell returned to find his prisoner, and his career, had flown the coup.

1836- The Mexican Army of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande into the rebellious state of Texas. Santa Anna had mortgaged his own lands back home and put his field hands into uniform to bolster up the ranks of his army.

1861- When Texas joined the Confederacy, US frontier fort commanders worried about how to proceed. This day without waiting for orders, General William Twiggs surrendered all his army posts and war material of the Department of Texas to the new Confederate Government. The rebels gained tons of munitions and guns, and even some Egyptian camels from a failed experiment to introduce them to American deserts. President Elect-Abe Lincoln called Twiggs a traitor, and Twiggs responded by trying to unsuccessfully challenge outgoing President Buchanan to a duel.

1862- Battle of Valverde New Mexico- Pro Confederate Texans fought Pro-Union Colorado and New Mexico militia in a sleepy adobe village. Texans captured 4 Yankee brass cannon and dragged them back to San Antonio. The Valverde Guns became a famous Texas unit.

1879- President Rutherford Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases in U.S. law courts, even though they still were not allowed to vote.

1898- The U.S.S. Battleship MAINE EXPLODED in Havana Harbor, killing 252 sailors. The cause was never confirmed, it may have been a spontaneous igniting of fumes in the gunpowder magazine, but the American public was urged to blame Spanish sabotage.
The next day a motor launch out to the site of the disaster rescued the ships cat clinging to the mainmast protruding from the water. U.S. public opinion against Spain was pushed by "yellow journalists" like William Randolph Hearst and Josef Pulitzer. Hearst said “ The Maine is a wonderful thing.” When Pulitzer’s correspondent, artist Frederick Remington reported home, “There is no war down here.” Pulitzer responded, "You supply the pictures, I'll supply the war."
American expansionists had been planning a war with Spain since 1896 and had tried to pick a fight over Cuba in 1871 and 1874. President McKinley, who Teddy Roosevelt described as having:"no more backbone than a chocolate éclair" gave in and declared War on Spain to cries of "Remember the Maine!". More Americans were killed on the USS Maine than in the entire Spanish American War, which was fought and over by December of that same year. America emerged as a power player on the world stage.

1903- British Major General Hector MacDonald was one of the most famous soldiers of the Victorian Era. “Fighting Mac” had laughed in the face of fierce Afghan tribesmen, Boer bullets, and Dervish’s spears, and always triumphed.
But he had a secret. The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name. He married young but abandoned his wife and son, and now sought only the company of men. This day while serving as military commander of Ceylon, a leading cleric and several boys accused General MacDonald of homosexuality. Gays in the British Empire were not uncommon- Gordon of Khartoum, Cecil Rhodes of South Africa, even Earl Kitchener of Omdurman were known to prefer men to women. But never in the open. MacDonald tried to flee to England on medical leave, but the General Staff ordered him to return and clear his name in a court martial. MacDonald instead went into his office and put his service revolver to his temple. All Edinburgh turned out for his funeral.
Still friends and admirers refused to admit he was gone. There was a rumor that a successful World War I German General von Mackensen was actually MacDonald under an alias, since von Mackensen stayed in the Balkans and never faced English troops in battle.

1933- ATTEMPTED ASSASINATION OF FDR- In Miami, unemployed anarchist Giuseppe Zangara shot a pistol at President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a rally in Chicago. He missed FDR but killed the Mayor of Chicago Anton Czermak. Giuseppe
Zangara was tried and sent to the electric chair by the following month.

1942- Japanese troops captured Singapore. The British were confident the Japanese couldn't get an army through the thick Malaysian jungle, so they concentrated their heavy guns facing out to sea. Gen. Yamashita, the "Tiger of Malaya" put his army on bicycles and with light tanks burst through the jungle and breached the cities defenses from the weaker land side. The “Gibraltar of the East’ fell with depressing speed – Prime Minister Winston Churchill admitted he was humiliated. He felt the defeat had shown the world just how old and brittle the British Empire had become.

1947- The British had administered the Palestinian territories like a colony of the Empire since the end of World War I. But faced with a shattered post World War 2 economy, fed up with Arab-Jewish terrorism and the mortification of having to put Jewish Holocaust survivors back into camps, this day the British Government announced it was going to leave the Palestine Mandate. The new United Nations could have the whole Arab-Israeli mess and bugger off!

1947- During the anti-Communist witch hunt, the FBI revoked the visa of famed documentary filmmaker and founder of the National Film Board of Canada, John Grierson because they thought his personal politics were too lefty.

1950- Walt Disney’s Cinderella opened in general theater release.

1954- Future President and b-movie star Ronald Reagan tried doing a stand-up act at the Las Vegas Ramona Room with the "Honey Brothers", a comedy troupe similar to Abbot & Costello.

1965- Canada adopted the Maple Leaf flag. It did not completely replace the Dominion Flag until 1979.

1973- Actor and animation voice Wally Cox was found in his LA apartment dead of a heart attack. He was 48.

1984- Touchstone Pictures created, so the Walt Disney Company could do more adult PG movies. Their first film was Splash, starring a tastefully topless mermaid Darryl Hannah.

1989- The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan.

1991- In a speech, President George H. W. Bush invited dissidents in Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He declared, “The Day of the Dictator is Over!” Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Marsh Arabs rose in revolt, confident the US would back them. The US instead ignored them and left them to be bombed and nerve-gassed by Saddam’s Republican Guard. Thousands died, and the dictator remained for another ten years.

1994- After months of insane bidding, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone beat out QVC’s Barry Diller to buy Paramount Pictures. The cost was $20 billion, although the studio’s net worth was estimated at $8 billion. When asked, Diller replied: “What’s done is done. Next.”

2002- Scientists announced the first discovery of fossilized dinosaur vomit.

2003- Millions of protesters march in cities from Hollywood to New York, Kyiv to Capetown to Tokyo to protest US plans to attack Iraq. Nearly a million and a half people marched in London alone. Pres. Bush invaded anyway.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean when something is viscous?

Answer: sticky.

Quiz: What does it mean when something is viscous?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Why do English Queens always seem to marry foreign princes from small German states or Denmark?
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History for 2/14/2023
Birthdays: Joshua Norton aka Joshua I Emperor of the United States 1819, Jack Benny- real name Benjamin Koubielsky, Frederick Douglas, Christopher Latham Scholes- inventor of the typewriter, George Washington Ferris inventor of the Ferris Wheel, Pier Francesco Cavalli, Jimmy Hoffa, Vic Morrow, Skeezix Wallet (character in Gasoline Alley comic strip), Gregory Hines, Ignaz Friedman, Thelma Ritter, Carl Andersen, Hugh Downs, Jim Kelly, Florence Henderson, Meg Tilly, Alan Parker, Simon Pegg is 52,
Margaret Knight the inventor of the flat bottom paper bag. The character Lara Croft, is 55.

Happy Valentines Day!

This holiday was originally the Roman fertility festival LUPERCALIA, when the young men of Rome wearing nothing but olive oil, would run through the streets waving oak branches over the heads of young girls to inspire fertility. They also spanked each other with little leather whips. Then they would all go to the orgy.
Keeping with the custom of the early Church to sanctify pagan holidays with saints days, Pope Gelasius I decided to rename the holiday for St.Valentine, who was martyred by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus in 295 A.D.. The olive oil, whips and orgy were out, but tradition has it that Valentine in prison kept communicating with his flock by writing little notes and tossing them through the bars. The notes were written on little leaves (silphium) that are the familiar heart shape we use today (which looks nothing like an anatomical heart.). These notes or "Valentines" fused with the romance notion of the old Roman party and became a custom for lovers as early as the 14th century.

44BC- After years of Civil War Gaius Julius Caesar was now master of Rome. He kept most of the institutions of the Roman Republic but declared himself Dictator and Consul for life like his mentor Sulla had done. He had been heard to say “the Republic is just a word, without real substance”. People wondered if he was out to make himself king. The concept of a King was hateful to most Romans, regardless of their political party.
This day at a Lupercalia celebration one of his biggest brown-nosing lieutenants, Marc Antony, publicly tried to put a crown on Caesar’s head. Caesar refused it twice. Instead of popular enthusiasm, this gesture alarmed many. A conspiracy formed to kill Caesar led by Marcus Brutus, a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the republic, and Gaius Cassius Longinus, who had fought for Pompey against Caesar.

Today in the Orthodox calendar is the Feast of Saint’s Cyril and Methodius, the “Apostles to the Slavs”, who created the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet out of Greek and Hebrew characters.

1779- Captain James Cook was killed by angry Hawaiian natives after an argument over hostages. Despite heavy attack the shore party rallied and fought their way back to the longboats thanks to their second in command, ensign William Bligh, the future Captain Bligh of the Bounty.

1797- Battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British Navy under Admiral Jervis defeated a Spanish fleet off the coast of Portugal. Admiral Nelson was there in support.

1814- Battle of Vauchamps. Napoleon beats Marshal Blucher and his invading Prussian army. Blucher was called Old Fowvarts (Forward) because that was his favorite order.

1824- KING CAUCUS- Just in case you wished for a more innocent time in American politics, consider this election. A group of powerful Congressmen of the dominant Whig party tried to predetermine that the next president would be easy to control by nominating William Crawford, who was blind and paralyzed from a stoke. Remember in those days of poor communications most citizens would never even see a President except for an artist's picture in a newspaper.
The scheme was foiled and John Quincy Adams was elected president, even though more people voted for Andrew Jackson. This was done via another scheme hatched with Henry Clay that had manipulated entire states into his camp when not one soul had voted for him, then traded them to Adams for the Secretary of State job.
The later angry public outrage over "King Caucus" led to liberalization of the election process. Jackson easily defeated Adams re-election bid in 1828.

1848- President James Knox Polk is the first sitting president to sit for a photograph. The daguerreotype was taken by a young Matthew Brady. John Quincy Adams was the earliest former president to be photographed.

1859- Oregon became a state.

1870- The first elevated commuter railway was inaugurated in New York City at Greenwich and 9 Ave.

1876- THE TELEPHONE- One of the strangest coincidences in technology history was that two men invented the same device at almost the same moment.
Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell in Boston and Elijah Gray in Chicago were both working on a device to transmit human voices instantaneously over electric wires. Each knew of the others work and labored furiously to be the first. When Bell was able to get a weak sound of his voice over the wire his sponsor and future father in law Robert Hubbard wanted to file the patent. But Bell procrastinated until he felt it was perfect. Exasperated, Hubbard took the schematics and went himself to the office to file the patent. What he found out later, was he filed the patent barely two hours ahead of Gray in Chicago! Bell’s patent was granted on March 7.
Gray tried to challenge the patent. US courts decided that since Grays attorney had filed a “caveat” to a patent- which meant I’m working on an idea” while Hubbard & Bell filed a patent “I’ve invented the idea”, they awarded the patent to Bell. Elijah Gray still went on to invent more things, founded the Western Electric Company and grew very rich. But Alexander Graham Bell got the immortality as inventor of the telephone.

1884- 25 year old Teddy Roosevelt was an up and coming member of the New York State legislature. On this day he received a double shock - both his mother and young wife died on the same day. Shattered, he abandoned his political career and fled to the Badlands of North Dakota to be a rancher and deputy sheriff. He said the landscape was so bleak it "looked like the personification of a poem by Edgar Alan Poe." He became President at age 41.

1886- Los Angeles began to export its first trainload of oranges back east.

1887- Several leading French intellectuals including Honore’ Balzac, and Charles Gounod published a letter to the President of the Republic begging him NOT to build the Eiffel Tower. "A Useless Monstrosity, which even America with it's crazed passion for commerce has the sense to reject! And what if it lasts 20 years?" There were plans to pull down the Eiffel tower 1907, but by then it had gained a new purpose as a radio antenna.
Novelist Guy de Maupassant, hated the tower but still went to its restaurant every day. When asked why, he said, "Because it is the only place in Paris where I cannot see it".

1907- Golden Books incorporated. One of their artists was Gustav Tennegren, who would become a key stylist of Walt Disney's Snow White and Pinocchio.

1917- I.A. Lilly became the first female N.Y. subway train conductor.

1919- THE SPARTACISTS- The government offices in Berlin are seized by Communists. Inspired by the Revolution in Russia they try to declare the Soviet Republic of Germany. They called themselves Spartacists after Spartacus the leader of the slave rebellion against ancient Rome. Right-wing paramilitary private militias called frei-korps led by former Imperial officers entered the city and battled the Bolsheviks for control of the streets. One of the reasons why businessmen in the west were later so cozy with Hitler was their relief that Germany didn’t turn into another Soviet Union.

1920- The League of Women Voters formed.

1927-Alfred Hitchcock’s first suspense film “The Lodger” opened in London.

1929- Dr. Fleming discovered penicillin.

1929- the ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE- Scarface Al Capone's men dressed as Chicago police rounded up a bunch of Bugs Moran's hoods at the S.M.C. Cartage Company garage at 2122 North Clark Street and blew them away with tommy guns. Capone subcontracted the job to Detroit’s Purple Gang. The seven men had 200 bullets in them. They even shot their dog. Dr Reinhardt Schwimmer, one of the men killed, wasn’t even a mobster but an optometrist who liked to hang out with gangsters to experience life on the edge. When Bugs Moran was asked who he thought had done it, he replied: ”Only Capone kills like that.” Big Al himself was in Key Biscayne Florida having lunch with the Dade County District Attorney.
One of the triggermen was Machine-gun Jack McGurn, but when questioned by police his girlfriend testified he had been in bed with her all that day. Newspapers called her his 'Blonde-Alibi". Machine Gun McGurn was bumped off shortly after.
At the massacre site amazingly one gangster- Joe Duesenberg- lived long enough for police to question. But to the end he wouldn't spill the beans. When asked who shot him full of bullets, he replied:" Nobody!" and died.

1931- Tod Browning's film of the play Dracula, starring Hungarian actor's union organizer and recreational morphine addict Bela Lugosi, premiered.

1939- The German battleship Bismarck christened in Kiel harbor.

1941- Mickey Mouse cartoon The Little Whirlwind, was released.

1942- Japanese forces attacked Sumatra.

1943- Battle of the Kasserine Pass began- Rommel the Desert Fox gave the U.S. Army in Africa it's baptism by ambushing it in the narrow Kasserine Pass. The only time in WW2 American troops broke and ran in panic.

1946- John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert unveil the ENIAC, the first all electronic circuited computer, started up at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator.

1949- The United States charged that the Soviet Union had as many as 14 million people in prison camps in Siberia, called Gulags.

1962- First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave a tour to network television cameras of the private living quarters of the White House. It’s the first time most Americans had ever seen the inside of the Executive Mansion. She worked mostly without a script, adding her own details as she went along. The day after the broadcast, Pres. Kennedy called the FCC just to see how her Nielsen ratings were. They were much higher than his speeches ever were.

1965- The Detroit home of black activist Malcolm X was firebombed.

1967- Former kinky pinup model Betty Page married Harry Lear and became a born-again Christian.

1968- Part of the Vietnamese Tet Offensive was the Communists overrunning the old Imperial Capitol of Hue. This day US Marines finally recaptured the cities Imperial citadel after weeks of bitter street fighting. The Communist command center was set up in a throne room called the Place of Perpetual Peace.

1979- Digital music composer Walter Carlos, who scored the film A Clockwork Orange, announced he had undergone a sex change and was now Wendy Carlos.

1989- Iranian Imam Ayatollah Khomeni issued a 'fatwah' -death sentence against Pakistani born novelist Salman Rushdi because he considered parts of his book "The Satanic Verses" to an insult to the prophet Mohammed. The fatwah was finally revoked in 2000 by the Supreme Islamic Council (Iran's equivalent of the Supreme Court).

1990- As the Voyager 1 spacecraft was leaving our solar system, Dr. Carl Sagan had the spaceship look back and take a family photo of our planet system, 3.7 billion miles away. A few faint dots on a distant sunbeam.

1991-Meg Ryan married Dennis Quaid. The divorced a few years later.

2005- Steve Chen, Chad Harley and Jared Karan started You Tube.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why do English Queens always seem to marry foreign princes from small German states or Denmark?

Answer: After the wars of the Reformation, England passed a law that a Catholic can never sit on the throne, even the spouse. So that rules out royalty from France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Hungary. That leaves Scandinavia, Holland and the smaller German states for the royal dating game.

Quiz: Why do English Queens always seem to marry foreign princes from small German states or Denmark?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: In 1988 unsuccessful presidential candidate Mario Cuomo joked:” The American people would never elect a president whose name ended in a vowel”. We know about Barak Obama. Have any other U.S. Presidents had a name that ended in a vowel?
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History for 2/13/2023
Birthdays: Giambattista Piazzetta, Bess Truman, Grant Wood, Lord Randolph Churchill, Fyodor Chaliapin, Peter Tork, Oliver Reed, Chuck Yeager, Woody Hayes, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Carol Lynley, Kim Novak is 91, George Segal, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Springer is 77, Stockard Channing is 79, Kelly Hu, Mena Suvari

Happy International Radio Day!

1503- This day during the endless wars of the Italian Renaissance, outside the town of Barletta things were interrupted by a unique event. Angered by a French captain who said that all Italians were sissy-girlie-men, thirteen Italian knights challenged thirteen French knights to single combat. Both armies lined up and cheered like a sporting event. The knights fought until all thirteen Frenchmen were down.

1542- Catherine Howard, the 5th wife of Henry VIII was beheaded. The execution was held on the exact spot where wife Number 2 Anne Boleyn was beheaded six years before.

1635- The Boston Public School for Boys opened, the oldest public school in North America.

1692- THE GLENCOE MASSACRE. Pro-English Scottish forces tried to make the Highlands accept King William of Orange, and renounce allegiance to the Stuart dynasty by singling out a particularly rowdy clan for annihilation. The MacDonalds of Glencoe were smaller than the MacDonalds of Keppoch, so they were to be the example. Ironically the leader of the clan was trying to get King James in exile to release him from his oath of obedience, when the soldiers of Clan Argyll and Campbell came visiting.
The soldiers used the highland tradition of hospitality to gain entrance into the MacDonald hall, then started slaughtering everyone just when their hosts were bringing out the wine. This blatant betrayal of hospitality and the magnitude of the massacre backfired on the perpetrators, and made Glencoe a bitter symbol of Scottish Nationalism.

1693- The Virginia College William & Mary founded.

1742- After ruling for 20 years, the first English Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, resigned when his Tory government lost its majority.

1765- Dr. Benjamin Franklin stood up in the British House of Commons and argued the justice of the American protest of the Royal Stamp Act, against all the government MP’s. He won and the hated Act was repealed. This probably delayed the American Revolution for a decade.

1820- Five years after Waterloo, and twenty-five after the French Revolution guillotined his great uncle, the Duc de Berry, the heir apparent of France was assassinated outside of the Paris Opera by a republican terrorist. The Bourbon family’s survival would now depend on the minor branch, the House of Orleans.
In the meantime, Napoleon was sitting in exile on the equatorial island of St. Helena. If you are a fan of the "Napoleon was poisoned theory", modern scientists doing radioactive analysis of hair samples noted that after this incident the arsenic content in Napoleon's body goes up 150%.

1863- President Lincoln hosted a wedding reception at the White House for P.T. Barnum star attraction General Tom Thumb and his bride. Lincoln was heavily criticized at the time for having such a frivolous party during the depths of the Civil War.

1866-The first daylight bank job. In Missouri, the Clay County Savings Bank is robbed of $60,000 by a young ex confederate guerrilla named Jesse James.

1867- The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss Jr premiered in Vienna. Brahms was a personal friend of Strauss. An anecdote from the time is that Strauss's stepdaughter approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan. Brahms inscribed a few measures from the "Blue Danube," and then wrote beneath it: "Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms."

1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigned in disgust his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art when he was criticized for having women students in his art class drawing male nudes. At that time the men still were not fully nude, but wore a kind of thong with a pouch covering their junk.

1914- ASCAP founded.

1917- Mata Hari, was arrested in Paris. Known in Berlin as agent H-21.

1932- Free Eats, the first Our Gang short comedy to feature Spanky MacFarland.

1933- comic strip character Blondie married Dagwood Bumstead.

1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in after completing The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that the film needed an action director. About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. Victor Fleming loved Gable, but didn't get along with Vivien Leigh and came to hate the controlling Selznick. David O. brought in Sam Wood to direct second unit when Fleming fell behind.
At the end Victor Fleming had one more tantrum when Selznick proposed giving Wood and Cukor equal co- screen credit. This was all before DGA contract credits were established. Today, Victor Fleming is recognized the director of record. Yet despite it all, Gone with the Wind became a box office success. For many years critics and polls declared the greatest Hollywood movie ever made. A decade after its release, Clark Gable went up to David O. Selznick at a party and said: "Maybe I'm wrong about disliking you David, 'Gone With the Wind' keeps getting re-released and keeps me a star."

1935- German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptman found guilty of the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby and electrocuted. Up until the end he kept declaring his innocence. The chief of police in the town of Bergen New Jersey where the murder occurred was the father of Desert Storm General Norman Schwarzkopf.

1937- Hal Foster's comic book hero Prince Valiant first appeared.

1945- THE FIREBOMBING OF DRESDEN. Some experts say the annihilation of this militarily defenseless city was an act of revenge for Rotterdam and Coventry, the fact was at the Yalta conference several days earlier Stalin had asked that the major German cities on his eastern front be bombed by his Anglo-American Allies to delay Nazi divisions withdrawn from Norway and Holland to be used to slow the Red Army 's advance. Dresden was to be a major assembly point for these new reinforcements. Still, it's a legacy the Allies find troubling.
On this day in the early evening, 845 British bombers followed by 700 American dropped thousands of tons of incendiary bombs in a pattern calculated to cause a firestorm. The temperature reached 800f degrees, the church bells melted and the oxygen was literally sucked out of the air by cyclonic winds. By conservative estimate 35,000-100,000 people were killed. Young American P.O.W. Kurt Vonnengut was in a group made to help dig out bodies. The experience changed his life, and he later wrote his accounts in the classic anti-war novel "Slaughterhouse-5"

1959 -Happy Birthday BARBIE! Mattel introduced the plastic nymph, from a German doll named 'Bild Lilli" based on a character in a comic strip by Reinhard Beuthin. Mattel co-owner Ruth Handler had it re-designed and changed to 'Barbie" after the nickname of her daughter Barbara.

1964- The Invention of Cool Whip.

1972-“ Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome….” The movie Cabaret with Liza Minelli and Joel Grey opened in theaters.

1996- The off-Broadway musical Rent by John Lawson premiered. Lawson spent years working as a waiter, living in poverty in a cold water flat in lower New York. Hoping for his big break. 36 year old John Lawson died of an aneurism just three months before Rent opened. It made him world famous, earned Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, and made $250 million. His story was told in the 2022 Lin Manuel Miranda film tik-tik-Boom.

2016- Disney’s Zootopia premiered in Brussels. Directed by Rich Moore and Byron Howard. It opened un the U.S. on March 4.
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Yesterday’s Question: In 1988 unsuccessful presidential candidate Mario Cuomo joked:” The American people would never elect a president whose name ended in a vowel”. We know about Barak Obama. Have any other U.S. Presidents had a name that ended in a vowel?

Answer: Super Mario may have been hinting in so many words that almost all US presidents have been WASPs except Kennedy, Obama and Biden, but there were four presidents who’s name ended in a vowel. James Monroe, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore and Calvin Coolidge.

Quiz: To be on The Road to Perdition. What does that mean?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: During wars, US soldiers would refer to their enemy with derogatory nicknames. In WWII, the German enemy was called “Krauts”. During the Vietnam War, the Vietcong was referred to as “Charlie”. What did Yanks call the Iraqi fighters during the 2001-2021 Iraq War?
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History for 2/11/2023
Birthdays: Thomas Edison, Leslie Nielsen, Eva Gabor, Rudolph Firkusny, Joe Mankiewicz, Sidney Sheldon, Burt Reynolds, Sergio Mendes of the band Brazil 68, Al Eugster, Brandy Norwood, Bobby Picket -who recorded the Monster Mash, Tina Louise-Ginger on Gilligan’s Island is 89, Jennifer Aniston is 54, Sheryl Crow is 61

11AD- In order to become his heir, Augustus’ stepson Tiberius had to marry Augustus’ only daughter Julia. Tiberius was angry he had to divorce his wife Druxilla whom he actually loved. Julia despised Tiberius and scandalized her dad with her affairs.

1759- A Danish importer on the Caribbean Island of Saint Croix named Johann Michael Lavien filed for divorce against his estranged wife Rachael Faucette. She had been living on the isle of Nevis with a Scot named James Hamilton and had two children with him. Johann Lavien asserted in the court papers that his wife was a Scarlet Woman, and so her spawn were "Whore-Children". The divorce was granted and James Hamilton abandoned his little family. One of the little ‘whore-children" was Alexander Hamilton- future American patriot, and the hottest ticket on Broadway.

1789- In Italy, American consul William Short wrote his friend Thomas Jefferson that as per his request he had obtained for him a pasta mold. The first known introduction of pasta in America.

1801- THE FIRST DEADLOCKED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION decided in the House of Representatives after 35 separate votes were held. Upstart Aaron Burr managed to come out of nowhere and put together enough anti-Jefferson and anti-Adams votes to tie the election with Thomas Jefferson. President John Adams and Senator Charles Pickney were a distant 3rd and 4th. Former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton was furious that fellow New Yorker Burr threatened to eclipse his power. New York and Pennsylvania were the swing votes in any deal between Yankee New England and the South. Since foreign born Hamilton could never be President, he liked to play kingmaker.

So in retaliation Hamilton gave Adam's 36 electoral votes to Thomas Jefferson, not out of any love for him, but just to screw Burr. Cranky old John Adams was furious that he was rejected by the public: "Damn Them! Damn Them! Anyone can see this elective government won’t work!" He took his sweet time moving out of the White House, making the president-elect wait in a tavern. All this political chicanery doomed the Federalists, the first American political party, and Burr would get his revenge on Hamilton with pistols in 1804.

1812- Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting act that divided up his state into politically convenient if geographically tortuous congressional districts. In England such juggling of the voting populace to ensure your candidate’s election was called a "Rotten Borough", in America it became named for this governor- Gerrymandering.

1814- Battle of Montmiral. During the battle Napoleon saw a cannon emplacement in such a dangerously exposed position that all it's crew was dead or wounded. He dismounted his horse and proceeded to aim the guns himself under heavy enemy fire until help arrived. Whether or not he was hoping for a death on the battlefield he later says publically: "The bullet that gets me has not been cast yet!" But privately: "It's no use, I'm fated to die in bed."

1929- Benito Mussolini signed the Lateran Concordat that recognized the sovereignty of Vatican City within Italy, while the Pope blessed his Fascist regime. The threat of godless world communism scared the Holy See into a number of questionable relationships with right wing extremists like Hitler, Franco and the Eustache in Croatia.

1933- 19 year old Japanese schoolgirl Kiyoko Matsumoto committed suicide by jumping into the thousand foot crater of a volcano on the island of Oshima. This act started a bizarre fad in Japan, and in the ensuing months three hundred young girls did the same thing.

1936- Famed German Expressionist animator Oscar Fischinger escaped Nazi Germany for the U.S. Paid for by Hollywood director Ernst Lubitsch.

1937- General Motors settled a bitter strike and becomes the first major plant to recognize the United Auto Workers union.

1938- Donald Duck cartoon Self Control was released.

1945- Yalta agreement signed. If you were a Czech. Pole or Hungarian, it meant Roosevelt and Churchill had just traded you to Stalin for the next fifty years.

1948- Famed Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein died of a heart attack.

1963- Bell Jar author Sylvia Plath laid out bread and butter and two glasses of milk for her children, then stuck her head into an oven and committed suicide. Her poet-laureate husband Ted Hughes was in bed with another woman when he got the news. Hughes wrote stories for his children like The Iron Giant to explain death and loss.

1975- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead the Tory Party in England. The green-grocers daughter from Finchley became the Iron Lady and dominated British politics until 1990.

1976- Chuck Jones TV special "Mowgli’s Brothers."

1979 - The Iranian Revolution Day. With Shah Reza Pahlevi fled, the fundamentalist Shiite mullahs led by Ayatollah Khomeni declare Iran to be an Islamic Republic.

1990- Nelson Mandela was freed by South African authorities after 27 years in prison. He was jailed in 1962 for a life sentence and became the conscience and symbol of the black resistance to white South African rule, called Apartheid.

1995- Disney Studios planned neighborhood suburban community Celebration opened.

2000- Disney’s The Tigger Movie premiered. Directed by Jun Falkenstein, one of the first animated features written and directed by a woman.

2003- A small satellite named U-Map, while studying the faint glow at the center of the Universe, calculated the exact age of our Universe to be 13.7 billion years old. That stars first appeared at 200 million years after the Big Bang, and that the Universe will ultimately expand forever, not crunch back in on itself or explode in one big cataclysm.

2005- Playwright Arthur Miller died at 90.

2006- While hunting for quail, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting partner. After being treated for buckshot in his face, the victim, an attorney named Whittington, went before the press and apologized to the Vice President. In 2009, out of office, it was admitted that Whittington was not a close friend of Cheney, and that his wounds were more life threatening than first reported. Dick Cheney became the first Vice President since Aaron Burr in 1804 to shoot someone while in office. Nothing happened to Burr either. Whittington just died of old age last week.

2012- Singer actress Whitney Houston was found dead in her bathtub. She was 48, She was preparing for the Grammy Awards when she had a heart attack and drowned in the water.

2016- A Wrinkle in Time. While studying two black holes colliding in deep space, scientists announced they discovered Gravity Waves. It was one of the last unproven theories in Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity in 1905. That space and gravity ripples.
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Yesterdays Question: During wars, US soldiers would refer to their enemy with derogatory nicknames. In WWII, the German enemy was called “Krauts”. During the Vietnam War, the Vietcong was referred to as “Charlie”. What did Yanks call the Iraqi fighters during the 2001-2021 Iraq War?

Answer: Hajii’s, or Hadji’s. In Arabic culture, a person who had completed the pilgrimage to Mecca (the Haj) is called a Hajii. But in this case it was more probably named for the little boy in the turban in the TV cartoon Johnny Quest.