Question: Which English king signed the Magna Carta?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Was Sam Adams, like the beer, ever a real person?
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History for 6/14/2023
Birthdays: Tomaso Albinioni, Fighting Bob LaFollette, Margaret Bourke-White, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sam Wanamaker, Cliff Edwards the voice of Jiminy Cricket, Dorothy McGuire, Burl Ives, Gene Barry, Jerzy Kosinski, Diablo Cody is 44, Donald Trump is 77.

451 A.D. Battle of Orleans- Attila the Hun was defeated by the combined armies of Theodoric the Visigoth and the Roman general Aetius. Attila was told by his shamans that a great king would die that day. But even though Attila lost, it was Theodoric who was killed. Attila was not killed in battle but died on his wedding night years later with wife #20. He was 45, she was 16. He was dead by morning.

1497- Giovanni Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI and brother to Cesare and Lucretzia Borgia, had dinner with his family, then disappeared on his way home. Next day his body was found in the Tiber River with nine knife wounds in it. No one ever found the murderer. Suspects included everyone from scholar Pico Della Mirandola to his own brother Cesare. Heart-broken, dad Pope Alexander told his cardinals "This is God’s punishment for our sins, I hereby promise to renounce Nepotism and Simony, and I shall reform the Church." But Alex soon got over it, and resumed his corrupt ways.

1645- Battle of Naseby- Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army defeated King Charles I army in the decisive battle of the English Civil War. After this, the King never again could field a large army. Charles had as one of his generals his German nephew Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Rupert rode into battle with a white poodle under his arm named Bobbie. He made declarations like: "We will strew the field with English dead!" Considering it was a civil war, that conclusion was inevitable.

1658- Battle of the Dunes- Oliver Cromwell's Ironside cavalry help the French fight the Spaniards in Belgium. Cromwell was born during the reign of Queen Elizabeth when Spain was England's chief enemy, but by this time his generals were much more worried about Louis XIV's France. They felt they were helping the wrong side, but the Old Lord Protector (Cromwell) overruled them.

1718- The later years of Czar Peter the Great’s rule were clouded by a feud with his son and heir Alexis. While Peter was dragging Russia forcibly out of medieval backwardness his son was educated by priests to hate his father’s new ideas. Alexis pledged to undo all his father’s reforms when he became Czar. At one point Alexis fled to Italy to escape his father’s anger but returned when promised amnesty. This day Peter went back on his pledge and had Alexis arrested. In the dungeon below Saint Peter & Paul fortress Alexis was beaten to death with whips. Papa himself administered the first blows.

1727- George II of England told by Sir Robert Walpole that his august father George I had died, and he was now king. At first George thought it was one of his dad's cruel jokes and said" Dat izt von big lie!"(they had German accents remember). He always resented his dad’s cruel treatment of his mom, like having her lover murdered while he kept a regular mistress. George I didn’t trust his English subjects and was always homesick for his birthplace in Hanover Germany. He was always visiting there. When he died and was buried over there, truth be said, nobody in England really missed him. While his grandson King George III’s death was cause for national mourning, George I’s death was only casually mentioned in the society newspapers.

Happy Flag Day -in 1777 The Continental Congress orders the Stars & Stripes flag to be the official U.S. flag. It replaced the Cambridge Flag (The Tree and Stripes) and the Snake and Stripes, and all those other things silly things and stripes.

1789- Capt. Bligh reached East Timor after floating 4,000 miles in an open boat. He and his followers were cast adrift by the Bounty Mutineers.

1800- Battle of Marengo- Napoleon defeated the Austrian army and conquers most of Italy. At first he was losing and his men were fighting so furiously against high odds that some could be seen urinating into their rifle barrels to cool them off. Just when things seemed lost, his regimental commander General Desaix, arrived in the nick of time, won the battle, and was conveniently killed in action so Napoleon didn’t have to share any of the credit. This led Napoleon to observe "The difference between victory and defeat can be 15 minutes."

1801- Old Revolutionary War traitor Benedict Arnold died in London of dropsy. He was living on an English major general’s half pay, but was shunned by polite British society, as he was despised by Americans. Legend has it that in his last days he had his wife Peggy help him back into his old Colonial uniform:" My country’s uniform! Woe to me that I ever put on another!" After his death, The London Post observed: Poor General Arnold departed this life, unmourned and without notice. A sorry reflection for other turncoats."

1807- Battle of Friedland -Napoleon does it again, this time to a Russian army.

1816- Writers Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Mary Shelley were spending the summer at the Villa Deodati on Lake Geneva. This day among the revels, drinking, partner swapping and opium taking, Byron suggested they all write a ghost story. They all failed except for 19 year old Mary, who invented a story of a Swiss scientist who created an artificial man. She called it Frankenstein.

1822- Charles Babbage presented a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society in London proposing to build a "Difference Engine" a machine that could calculate equations and print the results-i.e. a computer. His early machine required 8,000 moving parts. Countess Ada Lovelace wrote the first program for it. After ten years and a small fortune it never quite comes off, but today it is considered the ancestor of the computer. MIT’s Vaneavar Bush and Cambridge’s Alan Turing both used Babbage’s writings as their starting off point.

1832- A large French invasion force landed in Algiers. The Barbary Corsairs were so annoyed they took the French ambassador and shot him out of a large large cannon. It was tough being a diplomat in those days. France held Algeria as a colony until 1962.

1834- Isaac Fischer Jr. of Vermont invented sandpaper.

1846-THE GREAT BEAR REBELLION- U.S. citizens living in Spanish California led by a schoolteacher named William Ide and Ezekiel Merritt declared themselves an independent country, not knowing that back east the U.S. government had already declared war on Mexico and declared California annexed to the U.S. Remember information took months to get back East across Indian territory and burning deserts. The Anglo-Californians seized a Sonoma military post and arrested the owner of the largest hacienda in the area, a retired Mexican General named Mariano Vallejo. Ironically Senor Vallejo himself desired AltaCalifornia to have independence from Mexico City.
They chose as their flag for the new republic the grizzly bear and the polar star, which is now the state flag. It wasn’t well drawn. One Mexican woman watching the events thought the flag looked like “a large towel with a pig painted on it.” US Colonel John Freemont took over from the Great Bear settlers and raised the US flag over the Presidio in San Francisco on July 1st.

1865- A group of Englishmen climbed the Materhorn Mountain in Switzerland, inventing the sport of mountain climbing.

1934- Hitler met Mussolini for the first time for a conference in the city of Padua. They didn't trust any interpreters, and neither could speak the others language, so it wasn't much of a meeting. Il Duce's first impression of the German Chancellor wasn't impressive. He called Adolf " A comical little monkey."

1940- The German Army goose-stepped down the Champs Elysees into Paris. The Nazi propaganda that night broadcast from Radio Berlin declared" The decadent, democratic Paris of Jews and Negroes is gone, never to rise again!!" Marc Chagall and Jean Renoir (son of Auguste) fled the city on bicycles with their paintings strapped to their backs. German Jewish writers H.A. and Margaret Rey left on bicycles they had to repair from spare parts. In the basket of one bicycle was a manuscript for a new children’s book they had written. Curious George.

1941- President Roosevelt ordered all German and Italian assets in the U.S. frozen.

1942- A secret coded message sent by Moscow's intelligence service to all their agents in Germany, England and the U.S.A. showed that Russia was aware of these countries attempts to build an atomic bomb, and that Soviet agents should use all means to secure information about these programs.

1951- Univac I, built by John W, Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert Jr. of the Remington Rand Company to be the first U.S. commercial built electronic computer, went online for the census bureau in Philadelphia.

1954- The Eisenhower Administration ordered the adding of the words "Under God" to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.

1957- Nelson Mandela married Winnie Mandela.

1959- Three new rides are debuted at Disneyland in Anaheim. The first monorail the Disneyland-Alweg Monorail System, Matterhorn Mountain, and the Submarine Voyage.( the submarine ride had been running since June 5).

1962- The Boston Strangler killed his first victim.

1964- THE FIRST HIPPY BUS- Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, bought an old school bus, painted it psychedelic colors, took of troupe of 14 fellow free spirits called the Merry Pranksters and spent the next few months driving across the country taking LSD and staging Happenings in various cities and towns.
The Bus’s was name Further and its driver was Neil Cassidy, friend of Beatnik author Jack Kerouac. A book documenting the escapades of the "hippy bus" was "The Electric Koolaid Acid Test." Ken Kesey became interested in LSD when he volunteered for a college program to experiment with the drug, secretly funded by the CIA. The Merry Pranksters were invited in 1969 to be the security for the Woodstock Rock Festival.

1966- The Vatican abolished the Index of Forbidden Books.

1977- Skinny Carnaby Street fashion model Twiggy got married to Michael Whitney.

1983- The Pioneer 10 space probe left its orbit around Jupiter and headed off into deep space. NASA lost all contact in 1997. Pioneer 10 is expected to reach the solar system of the star Ross 246 in the Constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 AD.

1989- Elderly actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills policeman who was writing her a traffic ticket.

1990- Warren Beatty’s film “Dick Tracy” premiered at Disneyworld. And opened generally the next day.

1995- MP3. The researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits decided to use "mp3" as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. Development on this technology started in 1987. By 1992 it was considered far ahead of its time. MP3 became the generally accepted acronym as the popular standard for digital music on the on the Internet.

2001- The Oxford English Dictionary admitted the slang expletive of Homer Simpson "D’OH!" into its august pages.

2002- An asteroid the size of a football field bypassed the Earth by just 75,000 miles, about one fifth the distance to our moon. If it had hit us, the cataclysm might have rivaled the one that eliminated the dinosaurs. Little was said about it in the media because it came from the direction of the Sun and was undetectable until it was almost on top of us. So, sleep well tonight, modern science is on guard! Nyaaahhhh!!
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Yesterday’s Question: Was Sam Adams, like the beer, ever a real person?

Answer: Sam Adams (1722-1803) really was a brewer and patriot. An early radical in Boston who openly called for independence. He served as governor of Massachusetts. He was a second cousin of John Adams.

Question: Was Sam Adams, like the beer, ever a real person?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Which character is older? Sylvester the Cat, Garfield the Cat, Top Cat or Felix the Cat?
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History for 6/13/2023
Birthdays: Gnaeus Agricola- 40AD, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.B. Yeats, Red Grange, Basil Rathbone, Dorothy Sayers, Ralph Edwards, Paul Lynde, Tim Allen is 70, Darla Hood, Ally Sheedy, Simon Callow is 71, Christo, Ralph McQuarrie, Malcolm McDowell is 80, Stellan Skarsgard is 72, the Olsen Twins are 37, Chris Evans is 42.

313 A.D. Constantine, the Roman Emperor of the West, and Licinius the Emperor of the East published a joint edict throughout the Roman Empire granting religious toleration: "All men shall have the freedom to worship what Gods they will." This edict officially lifted the 250-year persecution of Christianity.

1381-THE ENGLISH PEASANT REVOLT OCCUPIES LONDON. -Wat the Tyner and his pissed-off peasants chase young King Richard II into the Tower of London and drag the Archbishop of Canterbury to Tyburn Hill to chop his head off. The Archbishop was in charge of economic policy and taxation for the young king, so he was the focus of the people's rage. They used a non-union executioner, so it took several chops to get the job done...

1777- British General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne began his invasion from Canada into New York State to smash the American Revolution once and for all. The Great North River, called the Hudson, was considered the jugular of America, because it divided militant New England from the moderate Mid-Atlantic and Southern States. Before Burgoyne left London, he had wagered politician Charles Fox 20 guineas that he would finish off the Yankees by Christmas.
Burgoyne immediately annoyed most of the senior British officers in America. He refused orders from Canadian Governor General Carleton or Lord Howe in New York. He declared that his was an independent command and so could not be ordered about by anyone but London.
By October, defeated, cut off, and surrounded by swarms of rebels at Saratoga, he got a letter out to Carleton “requesting You Lordships orders”. Carleton took this as a weenie attempt to shift the blame, so he ignored him. Burgoyne surrendered with his whole army and was prisoner exchanged. He did get home by Christmas, just without his army...

1777- Count Casimir Pulaski goes to join the American Revolution. Pulaski was a hotheaded Polish patriot who had fought Russians, served in the French and Turkish armies, made love to Catherine the Great, and had been in a conspiracy to kidnap the pro-Russian King of Poland. The American ambassadors trying to recruit European military experts found Pulaski in a Marseilles prison for non-payment of bills. Pulaski thought the Americans had paid his debts as part of his enlistment, but the truth was the French forgave his debts because they were just glad to get rid of him.
Count Pulaski became the Father of the American Cavalry and the only person to ever hold the rank in the U.S. Army of Commander of Horse. He was killed in battle outside of Savannah Georgia at age 31.

1793- Captain Napoleon Bonaparte relocated his family from Corsica to mainland France.

1807- Former Vice President Aaron Burr was on trial for treason because of his plot to create a new kingdom for himself in Mexican Texas. As part of his defense, this day Chief Justice Marshal subpoenaed President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson refused, citing the concept of Executive Privilege. That a President can’t be put under oath, for reasons of national security. So, Justice Marshal acquitted Aaron Burr for lack of evidence. Pres. Jefferson then considered arresting Chief Justice Marshal. The Executive Privilege concept was rarely used until Nixon used it for Watergate. Then Dick Cheney claimed it applied to vice presidents, too. Then in our own time Drumpf said it applied to everybody he gave orders to in the Executive Branch, and their little dog, too!

1858- THE BIG STINK- The population of metropolitan London had been outgrowing its sewage system. The Thames was London’s main sewer, as well as its source of drinking water. But nobody realized how bad it was until the unusually hot summer of 1858. Today the temperature reached the 90f, and the stink from the river got so bad it broke up a meeting of the Prime Minister’s cabinet. Ministers ran out of Parliament holding handkerchiefs to their noses.

1877- The Russo-Turkish War begins. Russia attacks into the Balkans after a Turkish governor commits a massacre of Bulgarian peasants. When the Russian armies get down to Istanbul the British and Austria threatens war if Russia goes any further.

1878-The CONGRESS OF BERLIN OPENS- German Chancellor Bismarck offered to mediate the argument between Russia and Britain and Austria over the Russo-Turkish War. It is the first world conference where all the great powers and statesmen convened not to divide conquered spoils but actually prevent a larger war from happening. As Bismarck joked in English to retired U.S. President Ulysses Grant, then vacationing: "Russia has bitten off a bit too much Turkey, and we must make him give some back.”

1905- The workers of the Russian city of Odessa go on strike and the Czar's troops shoot them down on the Odessa steps. This causes the Battleship Potemkin's sailors to mutiny. Twenty years later Sergei Eisenstein made a famous film of the incident.

1920-The US Government ruled Americans cannot mail their children through the Parcel Post System.

1927- Wall St. tickertape parade for Charles Lindbergh.

1941-The American Federation of Labor, the AF of L called for a nationwide boycott of all Disney products and films. This was to support the Disney Cartoonists strike.

1942- President Roosevelt by executive order created the Office of Strategic Services or the OSS. Under director Wild Bill Donovan its job was to coordinate espionage and intelligence gathering against the Axis powers in cooperation with its British counterpart, the SOE. On the agencies personnel roster were experts from spymasters William Gates and William Casey to tourist book author Eugene Fodor and chef Julia Child. Child for a time was an executive assistant to Donovan and transferred to India helped develop a shark repellent for downed fliers. Child recalled the OSS was nicknamed “Oh So Secret!” and “Oh, So-Social” for all the New York society High Society types in it. After World War II, the OSS became the CIA.

1944- The first Vengence-1 (V-1) Buzz Bombs hit London. Nicknamed “doodle bugs”, the first 21 launched missed most targets and one even spun around and landed close to Hitler. This is when the auto-destruct button was conceived. Of the ones that hit England the worst damage was to Bethnel Green tube station. Unlike bombers, these guided missiles were almost impossible to shoot down. By wars end 1,800 would hit London along with 5,000 V-2s and drive much of the population into the countryside.

1958- Frank Zappa graduated Antelope Valley High School.

1962- Three convicts, Frank Lee Morris, and the brothers Anglin, escaped from Alcatraz with a crude rowboat. They are the only prisoners to have ever successfully escaped from the Rock. Alcatraz was closed by attorney general Robert Kennedy later that year.

1967- President Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshal to the Supreme Court. Marshal was the first African American to sit in the nation’s highest court, and as an attorney successfully pled the 1955 case Brown vs. Board of Education that struck down school segregation.

1971 -The day after Tricia Nixon's wedding, the Washington Post and the New York Times began printing THE PENTAGON PAPERS. They were leaked by dissenting intelligence specialist Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was on the staff of Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara when McNamara ordered a fact paper drawn up explaining step by step just how the U.S. managed to get in as big a mess as Vietnam. The papers revealed damaging secrets as the U.S. had secretly been fighting alongside the South Vietnamese much earlier than the "Tonkin Gulf Incident" of 1965, all the while claiming neutrality.
The U.S.S. Maddox, the ship that was fired on in the Tonkin Gulf, was ordered to violate Vietnamese waters and provoke a Communist attack; and that the opinion of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs was that they knew the war was unwinnable as early as 1965, yet we kept fighting anyway until 1973.
The publication was very damaging to the Nixon White House, even though it was all about events taking place in the previous Democratic administrations. Robert McNamara said he himself never got around to reading the Pentagon Papers but kept a copy in his garage.

1978- Ford fired Lee Iacocca from the Ford Corporation. The creator of the Ford Mustang would later move on to run Chrysler. When asked why, Henry Ford II said: “Sometimes you just don’t like somebody.”

1982- Bill the Cat first appeared in the comic strip Bloom County.

1991- Boris Yeltsin became the first popularly elected leader of Russia.

2010- Pixar’s Toy Story 3 premiered.

Yesterday’s Quiz: Quiz: Which character is older? Sylvester the Cat, Garfield the Cat, Top Cat or Felix the Cat?

Answer: Felix the Cat was created in 1914.

Quiz: Which character is older? Sylvester the Cat, Garfield the Cat, Top Cat or Felix the Cat?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is Dressage?
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History for 6/12/2023
Birthdays: Egon Scheile, John Roebling the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, Uta Hagen, Chick Corea, Sir Anthony Eden, Jim Nabors, Vic Damone, David Rockefeller, Irwin Allen, Marv Albert, Arthur Fellig- better known as Weegee, Sherry Stringfield, George Herbert Walker Bush, Anne Frank, Clyde “Jerry” Geronimi, Richard Sherman of the Sherman Bros is 95

1192- After battling across Palestine for over a year, King Richard Lionheart stood on a hilltop overlooking the Holy City of Jerusalem. The other Crusader leaders had gone home, leaving him with too weak an army to take the city. He covered his eyes with his shield and refused to look, saying he could not bear to see the Holy City in chains. Saladin was having problems of his own with unruly vassals and lukewarm support for his Jihad. But when he got the news that the Christians were withdrawing to the coast, he knew The Third Crusade had spent itself, and Saladin had won.

1616- Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, landed in England with her husband and son Thomas.

1733- Prussian King Frederick William I had his son Crown Prince Frederick married to Princess Elizabeth Christine of Brunswick. Despite being gay, Frederick the Great did his royal duty and married, but he and his wife kept separate households. Later as King, when asked why he never spoke with the Queen, King Frederick replied:" You see, the problem is my wife has the intelligence of a duck."

1815- Napoleon left Paris for Waterloo.

1817- In Mannheim Germany, Karl von Drais invented something he called a “laufmachine”. Also called a “velocipede” or drasienne” “swiftwalker”, but we call the bicycle. In 1865 a Frenchman added the pedals.

1862- Dashing Confederate cavalry leader Jeb Stuart makes headlines by riding his horsemen completely around the back of the 105,000 man Union army. Among the pursuing Yankees he made look stupid was his own father-in-law, Gen. Phillip Saint-George Cooke.

1876- News reporter George Kellogg was invited by General Custer to accompany him on his next campaign against the hostile Siooux. Kellogg would be the only correspondent embedded with the 7th Cavalry as they rode to the Little Big Horn. He wrote a friend,” I go to ride with Custer and will be there at the death…”

1898- In Cavite, Nationalist leader Emilio Aquinaldo declared the Independence of the Philippines after 300 years of Spanish rule. Too bad the United States didn’t see it that way. During the war with Spain the U.S. gave lip service to Philippine nationalism but after the war annexed the Philippines and fought these same nationalists.

1912- Archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt uncovered the bust of queen Nefertiti, the beauty icon, and the wife of King Akhenaten more than 3,300 years ago. It was created by the artist Thutmose in Amarna around 1345 B.C. Ludwig Borchardt did not have permission to take it to Berlin. He downplayed its importance to Egyptian authorities, then smuggled it out of the country.

1936- Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame dedicated on the supposed 100th anniversary of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball. We now know that date to be fiction but it was a good party anyway. Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson were the first inductees. Doubleday was a Civil War general and the composer of the bugle call "Taps", first called General Doubleday’s Lullaby.

1937- Soviet leader Josef Stalin had eight of his top generals shot. Even Marshal Tuchashevsky, whose strategy had won the Russian Civil War. At his state funeral Stalin publicly praised Tuchashevsky’s talents as a leader even as he was having his mother shipped to a Siberian prison camp. When General Rokossovsky was interrogated, a secret policeman broke out his front teeth with a hammer. He wore steel dentures thereafter and would help win the key Battle of Stalingrad. By 1941 Stalin’s paranoid purges would kill 25,000 officers, 90% of the Red Army's general staff, just when they were about to be invaded by Hitler’s army.

1940- As German panzer tanks rolled towards Paris, French commander General Weygand ordered the military governor of Paris declare it an open city- meaning the French army would voluntarily evacuate it so no fighting or destruction would happen in its precincts. French General Weygand later said everything was Britain’s fault.

1942- On her birthday, Anne Frank was given a diary.

1949- The first LA parking ticket.

1952- Chief auto designer for Chevrolet Maurice Olley completed work on a sports car originally code-named the Opel, but later released as the Corvette.

1956- Singer/activist Paul Robeson testified to The House UnAmerican Activities Committee. He was called in after he refused to sign an affidavit that he was not a Communist. Robeson told the committee,” My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here and have a part of it, just like you. And no Fascist-minded people, just like you, will drive me from it. Is that clear?” They had earlier asked baseball star Jackie Robinson to denounce Robeson, but instead he denounced Jim Crow laws.

1962- Edward M. Gilbert, the "Boy Wizard of Wall Street," loses $23 million for his firm E.L. Bruce Flooring, then embezzles $2 million more and escaped to Brazil.

1962- In Modesto California, a teenage film student named George Lucas was almost killed in a car accident.

1963- Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a high powered sniper rifle in his own driveway in Jackson, Mississippi. His killer, Klansman Bryan del la Beckwith was not convicted until 1994.

1963- Twentieth Century Fox premiered the Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton epic CLEOPATRA. Costing $44 million, $400 million in modern money, four times more than the average film, it remains in comparable dollars the costliest disaster in movie history. The cast was put up at the swankiest hotels in Rome for months of shooting, and Liz Taylor had to have her chili from Chasens restaurant in Beverly Hills flown in. Director Joe Mankewicz said "Cleopatra was the toughest three pictures I ever made!" When Liz Taylor saw the finished film, she threw up.
Fox had to cut 2,000 jobs and almost went bankrupt. The area of LA known as Century City with its huge shopping mall used to be the Fox backlot before Cleopatra. On the plus side, Andy Warhol said Cleopatra was the most influential movie of the 1960s because suddenly every woman had to have heavy black eyeliner, light lipstick and Egyptian style straight bobbed hair and bangs.

1964- South African anti-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy and sabotage. He served 27 years and was released in 1990 to lead his country out of white minority rule.

1967- In the ruling Loving vs. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme court struck down all remaining state laws barring interracial marriages. The Lovings were a married couple who were both jailed by the State of Virginia, because they were guilty of being a different race.

1981- Steven Spielberg’s movie Raiders of the Lost Ark premiered.

1987- President Ronald Reagan did his famous Cold War speech in Berlin “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall!”

1991- In the Philippines, the volcano Mount Pinatubo erupted for the first time in 600 years.

1994- Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, pizza delivery guy Ron Brown, were savagely murdered in her home with a knife. Brown was returning Mrs. Simpson’s glasses from her dinner at Brentwood restaurant Mezzaluna. The only suspect seems to remain her estranged husband O.J. Simpson, actor, and Heismann Trophy winning NFL star. O.J. was acquitted in his murder trial, but convicted in a wrongful death suit brought by Nicole’s family. Another suspect has never been found.

1999- Disney’s Tarzan premiered. Directed by Chris Buck and Kevin Lima.

2016- The Orlando Massacre. A lunatic opened fire with a machine gun in a crowded gay bar named PULSE. 49 dead, and another 53 wounded before he was killed by police.
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Yesterday’s question: What is Dressage?

Answer: The highest form of horse-rider training turned into an equestrian sport. A competition of tightly choreographed maneuvers, forms of which have been practiced since the Greeks.

Quiz: What is Dressage?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who composed the first original film score?
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History for 6/11/2023
Birthdays: Ben Johnson, Richard Strauss, Jacques Cousteau, Nelson Mandela, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Joe Montana, John Constable, Gustav Courbet, Vince Lombardi, Adrienne Barbeau, William Styron, Chad Everett, race car driver Jackie Stewart, Gene Wilder, Hugh Laurie is 64, Shia LeBoeuf is 37, Peter Dinklage is 54

The ancient Roman festival of Mater Matuta- The Mother of the Dawn. Equivalent of the Greek Aurora.

1174- Crusader king of Jerusalem Amalric IV dies, he is succeeded by his son Baldwin IV the "Leper King of Jerusalem". That this disease afflicted Baldwin did not stop him from marrying (unconsummated) and fighting battles -no one would get close enough to fight with him. Ed Norton played him in the Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven.

1258-The "Mad Parliament"- In English history before Parliament sat on a regular basis, an eventful parliament was given a nickname:" The Rump, the Hochtide, etc." In this Parliament the barons of England fed up with King Henry III's arbitrary and spendthrift rule force him to submit his power to veto of a council of peers. These so-called "Provisions of Oxford" are the next great step after Magna Charter to creating a representative democratic government. But because historical chronicles are written at the King’s pleasure, this Parliament is known by the sobriquet Mad.

1644 -A Florentine scientist described the invention of a barometer.

1666- THE FOUR DAYS BATTLE (Vierdaagse Zeeslag) in the Channel the British Navy of 80 ships tangled with the Dutch Navy of 100 ships to see who would be masters of the sea. After amazing slaughter, Dutch Admiral De Ruyter claimed victory. He had brooms tied to his mainmasts symbolizing he intended to sweep the English from the seas, but by August, England was back with another fleet. De Ruyter was a naval genius who bedeviled the British for years. A French admirer said, "De Ruyter had the plain simplicity of a Biblical patriarch. Just four days after fighting this great sea battle, he was back home sweeping his own floor, and feeding his chickens."

1685- MONMOUTH'S REBELLION- The Duke of Monmouth, the son of English King Charles II felt he should be king instead of his lame Catholic Uncle, King James II. Being illegitimate was to him a mere technicality. This day The Duke of Monmouth landed in the U.K. and raised the banner of revolt. He got some of Oliver Cromwell’s old roundheads to join him, but they were soon crushed by the regular army. Monmouth was executed and many of his men shipped off to be slaves on the sugar plantations of Bermuda and the Bahamas by the infamous Judge Jeffries during the Bloody Assizes. The novel Captain Blood is about one such slave-survivor of Monmouth’s Rebellion.

1727- Coronation of King George II of England. Not much is remembered about this ceremony but that the English public began to see that Mr. George Fredrich Handel fellow his dad brought from Germany could really write some good music! This included Zadok the Priest, now customarily played at every royal coronation.

1742 - Benjamin Franklin invents his iron Franklin stove.

1775- 32-year-old Virginia planter Thomas Jefferson left Monticello to ride to Philadelphia, where the representatives of all the colonies were gathering to decide how to respond to the violence lately broken out between colonists and British troops around Boston.

1790- In Hawaii this is King Kamehameha Day in honor of the king who united all the Hawaiian Islands under one rule.

1809- The Pope excommunicated Napoleon. "Good," he said, "This will bring me even more followers."

1878- At a small track at the Palo Alto Stock Farm, English photographer Edweard Muybridge did the first of his Animal Motion Studies. He lined up 25 cameras and filmed California Governor Leyland Stanford’s favorite mare Sallie Gardner at a full gallop. He invited the press, so none could accuse him of doctoring the photos later. They proved that when a horse was in full gallop, all four hooves leave the ground.

1913- Turkish Grand Vizier Shevket Pasha was assassinated by revolutionaries. The Young Turk officers had the conspirators rounded up and hanged.

1927- Charles Lindbergh Day. After his historic flight, the young aviator was welcomed home to America by President Coolidge and huge throngs of well-wishers at Washington’s Navy Yard. Battleships boomed, bands blared and two dirigibles floated overhead. The radio announcer covering the event did one of the very first coast-to-coast broadcasts. He reached thirty million people.

1928 - Alfred Hitchcock's 1st film, "The Case Of Jonathan Drew," is released

1934- the first Mandrake the Magician comic strip.

1936- Shy, quiet, 30 year old Texas writer Robert E. Howard had created the powerful warriors Conan the Barbarian, Kull and single-handedly defined the genre we now call Sword & Sorcery. This day after he learned his mother was dying and would never regain consciousness, he went into his garage and blew his brains out. Some say he had an Oedipal fixation, others that he always intended to end his life and was waiting to spare his mother the pain. On his typewriter he left a short message: "All fled, all done, so lift me upon the pyre. The feast is over and let the lamps expire."

1937 –" Getta’ yu tutsie-frutsie Ice Cream!" the Marx Brothers' "A Day at The Races" premiered.

1939 – President Franklin Roosevelt hosted King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the White House. There, the rulers of the British Empire ate Hot Dogs for the first time.

1941- Bir Hakim surrendered. Free French & Foreign Legion forces under Col. Koenig held out in an epic siege against Rommels’ Afrika Corps. After weeks of terrible bombing today they surrendered, buying critical time for the British Eighth Army.

1944- The Allied forces who landed at D-Day at five separate beaches and several drop zones link up their forces into one continuous front.

1948- Col. Eddie Marcus was a career US Army officer who spent World War II on General Eisenhower’s staff planning the major campaigns in Europe. Eddie Marcus was also Jewish. When the new state of Israel needed military experience, Marcus volunteered and was made the commanding General of the Jerusalem Front. He was given the name Mickey Stone as a code name. After furious fighting against Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi forces, the UN ceasefire went into effect.
This night when Eddie Marcus stepped out of his tent during a curfew to relieve himself, he was accidentally shot and killed by a young Israeli sentry. The boy only spoke Hebrew, and Marcus only spoke English. He was also wrapped in his bedsheet, and the boy thought it was Arab dress. Eddie Marcus’ body was flown back to America and interred at West Point. The incident was made into a film with Kirk Douglas called "Cast a Giant Shadow."

1955- The deadliest day at Le Mans. During this running of the famous 24 hour car race a Mercedes crashed into an Austin Healy at high speed and the cars disintegrated, spewing flaming metal debris into the dense crowd of spectators. 85 died and 100 more were hurt.

1959 – The US Postmaster General banned D H Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover as pornography. He was overruled by US Court of Appeals in March 1960.

1963- Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door and refused to allow two black students to integrate Alabama University. He eventually stood aside before federal troops but his stand made him a national figure. Ironically Wallace was originally a liberal judge but after being defeated for Governor in 1958 changed his tone to conservative racism.

1964 - Chicago police break up a Rolling Stones press conference.

1964 - Manfred Mann recorded Do Wah Diddy Diddy.

1966 - "Paint It, Black" by The Rolling Stones peaks at #1

1966 - Janis Joplin played her 1st gig in San Francisco.

1968- After the carnage of the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Que Sanh, General William Westmoreland stepped down as commander of all US forces in Vietnam. Unlike Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, General Westmoreland remained unrepentant for the rest of his life. He blamed his failures in Vietnam on the media, hippies, and the racial mixing being ordered in his army.

1972- THE MOST PROFITABLE FILM IN HISTORY. The film Deep Throat premiered. The first full length blockbuster porn film. The film was shot in just three days, by an ex-hairdresser turned director. It cost $22,500 to make and grossed $600 million. Most of that money disappeared into the coffers of the Mafia. It became a counterculture cause celebre. Jacky Kennedy saw it. Frank Sinatra screened a print for Vice President Spiro Agnew. Star Linda Lovelace later disavowed her career and claimed she did the sex scenes under duress from her husband Chuck Trainor. She died in a car accident in the 1982. Today the term Linda Syndrome denotes former porn actresses who denounce their past.

1977 - Main Street Electrical Parade premiered at Disneyland.

1979- John Wayne died after a long struggle with cancer. He was 73. Many believed his condition began as a result of filming the movie "The Conqueror" near the Nevada Atomic Test site. Half the crew of that film including all the stars and director died of cancer. When Wayne made a final appearance at the Academy Awards two months earlier, he purchased a small size tuxedo to hide his emaciated frame, but he was still too thin even then. So, he filled it out by wearing a scuba wetsuit underneath.

1984- In the freewheeling economy of the 1980’s tycoons conducted hostile takeovers of companies by buying most of their stock on margin. When Wall Street corporate raider Saul Steinberg announced he intended to target the ailing Walt Disney Company for takeover, CEO Ron Miller paid him $23 million just to make him go away. The Disney shareholders are outraged at this payment of "greenmail’ and demanded Miller’s resignation, which some say was exactly what Roy Disney had planned.

1987- Britain noted the first outbreak of Mad Cow Disease.

1993 –Steven Spielberg’s "Jurassic Park" opened. The film set a box office record of $931 million. It was begun with modelers and puppeteers about to do the dinosaurs with go-motion and clay. But after seeing tests using the new 3D CGI –computer graphic imaging software, Steven ordered all of ILM to do it digitally. Jurassic Park was the Jazz Singer-type event that clinched the digital takeover of Hollywood and set the standard for future special effects films.

2002- Fox TV’s show American Idol premiered.

2002- Lilo & Stitch premiered.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who composed the first original film score?

Answer: Camille Saint-Saens composed the score to The Assassination of the Duc de’Guise 1917. It was a silent film so it was played by a live orchestra in the theater. The first movie to have a complete music soundtrack synched to the film was King Kong in 1931.



Quiz: Who composed the first original film score?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What was Coulomb’s Law?
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History for 6/10/2023
Birthdays: Charles James Stuart “The Old Pretender”, Yamaoka Tesshu (1832- Japanese swordsman), Judy Garland, Saul Bellow, Hattie McDaniel, Frederick Loew (of Lerner & Loew), Howlin’ Wolf, Maurice Sendak, Dorse Lanpher, Harald Sieperman, Gina Gershon is 61, Leilee Sobieski is 40, Jean Triplehorn is 60, Jurgen Prochnow, Elizabeth Hurley is 57, Britain’s Prince Phillip Duke of Edinburgh.

1190- Emperor Frederick III Barbarossa (red-beard) died. Barbarossa (not to be confused with the Algerian-Barbary pirate Nur Al Din in the 1700's) was the great Hohenstaufen German Emperor who decided to go on Crusade at the same time as Richard Lionheart and Phillip Augustus of France. Frederick was very old but insisted he make the trip. This day while crossing a stream in Turkey, Frederick Barbarossa had a heart attack and fell into the water. His men, never being that thrilled about the whole thing and taking their king's death as the clincher, all immediately turned around and went home.

1682- English colonists in Connecticut observed a unique weather phenomenon, a dark windstorm taking the form of a funnel. The first recorded Tornado in America.

1688- THE BABY IN THE WARMING PAN- King James II of England and his wife Mary of Modena have a son named Charles James Stuart. The anger of English society that their King and head of the reformed Anglican Church, namely James, was a Catholic, was pushed past the point of endurance by his having a son who would become in all probability be another Catholic king. The lords of England began to openly plot to bring James' protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William of Orange over to overthrow the King. A rumor created to support this effort was that James' child was born dead and switched with a baby smuggled in a warming pan. XVII Century Internet conspiracy theories.

1720 – Mrs. Clements of England markets the 1st paste-style mustard.

1750- Francois Voltaire accepted the invitation of King Frederick the Great of Prussia to come live at his court. French King Louis XV laughed: “Now there will be one less nut in Versailles and one more nut in Berlin.” The friendship between Frederick and Voltaire is fascinating- night after night over dinner, the enlightened gay despot matched wits with the commoner who was the greatest philosophical mind of his time. When Voltaire argued that the world would be better off with no religion or belief in God, King Frederick retorted:” But my dear Voltaire, if you did away with God, then common people would raise statues to you and pray to them.” At times Voltaire’s arguments would get Frederick so angry that the Frenchman would flee fearing for his life. Frederick ordered the borders closed and sent a troop of cavalry to drag him back, so they could finish their argument.

1752- BEN FRANKLIN FLIES HIS KITE- The wizard of Philadelphia was not the actual discoverer of electricity, Leyden Jars and Volta's experiments predate him. He did make the connection between lightning and electric currents, and created the lightning rod, and the first electric battery. He didn't tell anyone about the kite experiment until 15 years later for fear people would think him a silly fellow. There’s a famous painting of Ben with his kite being assisted by his young child William. In actuality William was about thirty at the time. During the American Revolution, William became a royalist and hated his old man.

1776- The great English actor David Garrick went on stage for the last time, playing in a benefit for The Decayed Actor’s Fund.

1776- The Continental Congress appointed a committee of Ben Franklin, John Adams ,William Rutledge and Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. Most of the hard work devolved upon Jefferson. Franklin glibly noted:` It has been my practice to avoid being the author of any paper which would be reviewed by a public body. Tom Jefferson borrowed much from enlightened European writers like Burke and Montesqiou. There were 46 revisions before the final draft was voted on, including taking out any references to outlawing the slave trade. Yet Jefferson’s great prose put it perfectly “All Men are Created Equal, endowed by their Creator with certain Inalienable Rights, among them Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Ever since these words were thrown at tyrants and inspired leaders as diverse as Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro.

1782- John Adams negotiated a huge loan from the States General of Holland to get the rebellious American colonies out of bankruptcy. At the time this was seen as important as winning a battle.

1801- The Barbary Pirates of Tripoli declared war on the little nation called the United States. These Mediterranean buccaneers would extort tribute money from countries whose ships passed through their waters. So long as Yankee shipping was protected by the British Navy this wasn't a problem, but America was on its own now and the Dey of Algiers demanded payment. One senator's famous cry was Millions for Defense, but not one cent for Tribute!

1847 –The Chicago Tribune begins publishing

1854- First graduating class at Annapolis Naval Academy. The first commandant of the Academy Captain Brown later joined the Confederacy and became the commander of the rebel ironclad Arkansas in the Civil War.

1860- The Comstock Lode- Near Virginia City Nevada, Old Pancake McGaughlin hit a vein of silver so big and pure that it will eventually yield $300 million dollars worth of ore and make millionaires of men like William Randolph Hearst's father.

1865- Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde premiered in Munich. To meet the demands of Wagner’s music the orchestra needed to be so much larger than usual that they had to take out the first two rows of seats to enlarge the orchestra pit. Conductor Franz Von Bulow, whose wife Cosima was busy schtupping Wagner at the time, committed a brilliant blunder when he announced within earshot of reporters:" Take out the seats! One or two extra schweinhunds won't matter!" Not the way to get good reviews…

1865- Surrendered Confederate leader Robert E. Lee was indicted for treason by the United States district court in Norfolk Virginia. Ulysses Grant was told and immediately sent a note threatening to resign the army and start a public scandal if Lee’s indictment wasn't dropped. Once Grant had considered all rebels to be traitors, but he had promised Lee in his surrender terms at Appomattox that no one would be subject to further penalties from federal authorities. The indictment was put aside but never formally dropped, and Lee’s request for his restoration of full U.S. citizenship was never granted. In 1995 Republican Senate leader Trent Lot tried unsuccessfully to get Robert E. Lee’s citizenship restored.

1881- Count Leo Tolstoy, the author of War & Peace and Anna Karenina, disguised himself as a peasant and went on a pilgrimage to the monastery of Optina Pustyn. He was having a spiritual conflict of whether to remain a nobleman landlord, or renounce his possessions and live an ascetic life. He opted to remain a noble.

1892- Republican Benjamin Harrison nominated for President. When Harrison was in office the White House was wired for Electric Lights. However Harrison and the First Lady were so terrified of electrocution that if a butler neglected to shut them off at bedtime, the Harrisons would quiver in bed all night rather than touch the switch.

1902 - Patent for the window envelope granted to H F Callahan.

1905- Japan and Russia accept the offer of peace talks to be mediated by American President Teddy Roosevelt. For helping end the Russo-Japanese War Roosevelt received the first Nobel Peace Prize.

1910- The first Krazy Kat comic strip- Cartoonist George Herriman was doing a strip for Hearst called "The Family Upstairs". He was amused at the idea of a friendship between a cat and a mouse. So, Herriman put them in the corner playing marbles while the family quarreled. First an office boy and later editor Arthur Brisbane suggested they have their own strip. The immortality of the denizens of Coconino County follows, loved by the likes of H.L. Mencken, e.e.cummings, and Jacques Kerouac. Krazy herself explains:" It's wot's behind me that I am."

1921- Babe Ruth became top HR champ with #120 runs passing then champ Gavy Cravath. But the Bambino was just getting warmed up.

1924- Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Mateotti was kidnapped and murdered by Mussolini's fascists.

1926- Artist Antonio Gaudi was run over by a streetcar while crossing in front of his famous cathedral in Barcelona. Construction begun in 1886, The Cathedral Sagrada Familia is still scheduled for completion in 2026.

1935- A New York stockbroker Bill W., and an Ohio physician Dr. Bob S, both recovered alcoholics, invented a twelve step recovery program called Alcoholic's Anonymous. This day was their first meeting.

1939 - Barney Bear, cartoon character by MGM, debuted.

1940-With Hitler’s blitz of France almost complete and English armies escaped across the channel, Mussolini decided the time was right and declared war on England and France. Italian forces crossed the border and occupied Nice.

1942- LIDICE- In occupied Czechoslovakia the Czech underground scored a big victory when they assassinated the Nazis occupation Gauleiter or governor Richard Heydrich, a personal friend of Hitler. Hitler ordered in revenge a Czech village selected at random and destroyed. The SS surrounded the village of Lidice and shot the whole population of 1,300, then burned and tore down the buildings.

1944- A USO troop was entertaining soldiers in Normandy from the back of a truck but they lacked a piano player. They called out to the G.I. audience if anyone could play. A shy cattle rancher’s son from Modesto California came up and played. He did so well his colonel ordered him out of the line and told him to form his own G.I. band. Dave Brubeck’s jazz career began.

1945- General Eisenhower was given a massive ticker tape parade down Broadway in New York City. Looking down on Ike from an office building 20 floors up, was a rumpled Navy Reserve Second Lieutenant named Richard Nixon.

1947- Sweden’s Saab motorcar company introduced its first model car. Saab in neutral Sweden had made planes and tanks for World War Two, but after the war was over they recognized that combat was not a growth industry and they switched to autos.

1948- THE JOHNSON CITY WINDMILL- Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson was trying to win a senate seat from Texas but he was lagging far behind a popular ex-governor named Coke Stevenson. So he hit upon a novel way of campaigning. He hired a helicopter and barnstormed the rural towns and districts of the Texas hill country. People came out just to see the newfangled flying machine land and take off, and this gave Johnson a captive audience. They nicknamed it the Johnson City Flying Windmill. Johnson also mounted a massive outlay of posters and pamphlets. He told his staff:” Ah don’t want a voter to wipe his ass with a piece of paper that ain’t got my face on it!” He pulled even to Stevenson and with a little extra ballot box skullduggery won the election.

1957- “Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog” cartoon debuted on the Captain Kangaroo show.

1967-The Arab-Israeli Six Day War ends. Israel defeated five Arab countries at once and occupied all of Jerusalem, the West Bank, Sinai, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

1980- Comedian Richard Pryor had been doing so much cocaine even his dealers were worried about him. This day, while trying to freebase he exploded, and ran screaming down his street on fire. Another version of the story said he tried to commit suicide by pouring tequila on himself and setting it alight. During his long recovery in the Sherman Oaks burn unit, his nurse once put on the news and he watched CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite report his death. `He thought to himself: "If Walter Cronkite said I died, it must be true! Ahhh!" He recovered but suffered from Muscular Dystrophy until he died in 2005.

1995-110,000 people jam Central Park in New York to see Disney's Pocahontas, up to then the largest audience ever to attend an animated movie premiere.

2014- A radical new Sunni guerrilla group captured the key Iraqi city of Mosul and declared a new Caliphate. They called themselves ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. They take advantage of the chaos of war-torn Iraq and Syria to amass power and property and eclipse Al Qaeda as the West’s number one threat for several years. By 2018, their leader Al Bagdhaddi was killed and they were pretty much destroyed.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was Coulomb’s Law?

Answer: The law states that the magnitude of the electrostatic force of attraction or repulsion between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Got dat? Easy-peasy.