Quiz: What was a wigwam?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: A mace was a medieval weapon, a spiked club. But mace was also an ingredient in food. What was it?
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History for 5/12/2023
Birthdays: Dolly Madison, Dante Rossetti, Frank Stella, Florence Nightingale, Tom Snyder, George Carlin, Wilfred Hyde-White, Emilio Estevez, Ron Zeigler, Farley Mowat, Ving Rhames, Bruce Boxleitner, Katherine Hepburn, Yogi Berra, Joy Batchelor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1864- BATTLE OF SPOTSYLVANIA- After Lee whips Grant in the Wilderness, instead of retreating Grant wheels around and attacks again. This time winning a draw. The fighting was dreadful, reports of trees so thick you couldn't put your arms around cut down by bullets, and men hit with so many 58 cal. musket balls at one time, that their bodies literally would fall apart.
At the fight in the center of the line called The Angle Yankees and Confederates crowded in so tightly they pressed against one another like a massive rugby scrimmage. Soldiers fought hand to hand with pistol butts, flag staffs, clubs, fists, some even took their empty bayonet muskets and threw them into the crowd like a spear. Nothing failed to cause injury.
One casualty was union general "Uncle John" Sedgewick, shot by rebel snipers. His last words were:" Aw, go on men! Them rebs couldn't hit an elephant at this dis......."

1881- Tunisia was made a colonial protectorate of France.

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

1934- Winnie, a Canadian black bear who had been living at the London Zoo, passed away at the ripe old age of 20. She had been at the Zoo since 1915. She was a favorite of young Christopher Robin Milne, the son of author a.a. milne. Winnie was the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2008- A powerful earthquake hit Chungdu in Sichuan Province in China, killing tens of thousands.
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Yesterday’s Question: A mace was a medieval weapon, a spiked club. But mace was also an ingredient in food. What was it?

Answer: It is a yellowish-brown spice similar to nutmeg but milder.

Quiz: Why are the indigenous tribes of the Americas called Indians? They do not ride elephants or speak Hindi.

Yesterday’s Question: Where is The Sea of Tranquility?
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History for 5/9/2023
Birthdays: John Brown, James M. Barrie the creator of Peter Pan, Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Pedro Armendariz, Frank Frazetta, Glenda Jackson is 87, Billy Joel, Candice Bergen is 77, Mike Wallace, Pancho Gonzales, James L. Brooks, Rosario Dawson, John Corbett, Albert Finney
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To the ancient Romans this was the Lemuria, the Day of the Restless Dead (Lemures). Like the ancient Greek Anthesterion in February, the Lemuria was a deal made with the Underworld that the dearly departed were allowed to visit the surface world. You would leave your door open and put out food for them. This way they won't haunt you, and so you'll have good luck all year.
At sunset tomorrow the head of the house (Pater Familias) walks through the house hitting a little bronze gong, he throws a handful of black beans over his shoulder and chants 'With These Beans I Redeem Myself and My Family. O Shades of My Ancestors Depart! Lemuria has Ended!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1896 – The first horseless carriage show in London. It featured 10 models.

1914- An Italian immigrant chef arrived at Ellis Island named Ettori (Hector) Boiardi. He joined the kitchen staff at the Plaza Hotel and quickly rose to become head chef. In the 1920s Boiardi and his brother opened a restaurant and catering service in Cleveland. The soon expanded to selling pre-cooked Italian food in cans to groceries and markets. He even figured how to get pasta with meatballs in a can. It was marketed under his name Chef Boyardee. During WWII he was awarded a medal for creating rations for Allied troops.

1919- Mustapha Kemal, called Ataturk, is ordered to disband his Turkish Army at Samsun in accordance with the armistice agreement ending the Great War. Instead, he declared a revolt and resisted the Greek invasion. It is considered the beginning of modern Turkey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2005- Columnist Arianna Huffington started the on-line newspaper The Huffington Post. Its liberal slant was considered a response to blatantly conservative media like Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report and Fox News.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Where is The Sea of Tranquility?

Answer: It is on the Moon. Where the Apollo Moon Landing occurred in 1969.

Quiz: Where is The Sea of Tranquility?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Where are your Sebaceous glands?
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History for 5/8/2023
Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, Arthur Q. Bryan the voice of Elmer Fudd, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius, Enrique Inglesias, animator Bob Clampett, Don Rickles, Saul Bass

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1945- As thousands of people mobbed Trafalgar Sq. and the Mall in London to celebrate the end of the war, 19 year old future Queen Elizabeth slipped out a side door of Buckingham Palace. She and her girlfriends mingled in the crowds, dancing with boys and snatching sailor’s caps. That one night she was not a princess, she was just 2nd Subaltern Ordinary Elizabeth Windsor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answer: In your skin. They are the glands near the hair folicles that secrete oils to keep your skin soft and pliable.

Quiz: Where are your sebaceous glands?

Yesterdays’ Quiz: What is a jackanape?
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History for 5/7/2023
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, Disney director Jun Falkenstein

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 really 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 Pontchartrain. 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 its 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 his back 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.

1901- The actions of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, takes place this day.

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 military explosives.
First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill fought the German U-boat blockade by covertly transporting purchased American munitions 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 Ilyushin 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 was inaugurated for the umpteenth time as Russia’s president, premier, prime minister, or whatever. In 2021 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 the social networking program Zoom. One of the justices excused himself, but 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 is a jackanape?

Answer: A hoity-toity way to call someone rude and impertinent. A young punk.

Quiz: What is a jackanape?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Which Hollywood actor never served in the military in WW2? A. Clark Gable, B. Jimmy Stewart, C. Ronald Reagan, D. John Wayne.
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History for 5/6/2023
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, Roy Nesbit.
Tony Blair, George Clooney is 62.

*English actor Stewart Granger had to change his name to get into Hollywood movies. His real name was Jimmy Stewart. A nice name, but already taken

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 then skipped the country before they figured out he was the thief. Back in America he became friends with detective Alan Pinkerton, to whom he bragged about his adventures. He said 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 Lady Liberty 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 great 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 Air Marshal Goring ordered all remaining zeppelins and hangers scrapped for their valuable materials.

1937- THE FLEISCHER STRIKE-Cartoonists voted to strike Max Fleischer’s Studio after Max fired 13 animators for union activity and complaining about their 6 day work week.
The strike was settled several months 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 base. Hope took the suggestion, and it became his signature event. For decades, 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: Which Hollywood actor never served in the military in WW2? A. Clark Gable, B. Jimmy Stewart, C. Ronald Reagan, D. John Wayne.

Answer: D. John Wayne never served. Reagan was a captain in the reserves, but never went overseas. He stayed in Hollywood. Gable and Stewart both served in combat.