Quiz: In the 1930s Jazz musicians referred to all black venues as The Chittlin Circuit. Because at times the owner paid the musicians in chittlins. What are chittlins?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: June Foray (1917-2017) was a famous voice actress who voiced Rocky the Flying Squirrel for Jay Ward and Witchy Hazel for Chuck Jones. But she did a voice in a Disney film as well. What was it?
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History for 8/20/2023
Birthdays: President Benjamin Harrison, Sukenoba Nishikawa, Bernardo O’Higgins, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, H.P. Lovecraft, Art Tatum, Issac Hayes, Connie Chung, Jacqueline Susanne, Rajiv Ghandi, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Joan Allen is 67, Fred Durst, Alan Reed -the original voice of Fred Flintstone, Slobodan Milosovic’, Amy Adams is 49

Feast day of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

480 B.C. -THE THREE HUNDRED SPARTANS- When Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece the King of Sparta Leonidas decided the best place to try and stop him was in the narrow pass of Thermopylae. But the Spartan senate and other allied Greek states refused to send troops until they completed the Olympiad festival. It was forbidden for Greeks to wage war during the Games. So. Leonidas went with the 300 Spartans of his bodyguard, and a thousand more allied troops, to try and stall ten times their number. After repulsing several attacks a traitor showed Xerxes a goat path around the Spartan position. Leonidas could still have retreated but he, his three hundred and some other Greek allies decided to stand and fight to the last man. They were wiped out, but they bought enough time for the Greeks eventual victory.

Later a monument was erected over their bones: O xein angellin Lakdaimoniois hoti tede keimetha tois keinon rhemasi peithomenoi- which means "Go Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that True to their Command, Here We Lie."

636 A.D. Battle of Yarmouk- The Arab armies led by their General Khalid bin Walid defeated the Byzantines and captured Palestine and Jerusalem. Caliph Omar received the defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanus Diogenes with a cup of fruit flavored ice called sherbat or sorbet. The custom was for high-born prisoners like an emperor to be ransomed back. But the Byzantine court was so angry, they said keep him!

1191- At the siege of Acre, Richard Lionheart had 3,000 Arab people and their families slaughtered in front of Saladin just to piss him off.

1619- A Dutch ship anchored at the English colony at Jamestown Virginia and landed the first African slaves. Twenty people. By the American Revolution, three million African people had been forcibly brought to America. There was slavery of the Indians and white slavery as well in the form of indentured servitude, but that had mostly died out by the American Revolution. In 1809 when an international treaty was signed to outlaw the overseas slave trade, even though despots like the Czar of Russia signed it, the only nation that refused was the United States.

1648- Battle of Lens, the last battle of the Thirty Years War. Archduke Leopold defeated somebody or other. The Thirty Years war went on so long that all those who started the war in 1618 had died and by 1648 nobody remembered how the whole damn mess got started in the first place.

1672- THE DAY THE DUTCH ATE THEIR PRIME MINISTER. Jan DeWitt had governed the Netherlands as Grand Pensioner of the Republic for four terms. But by now many Dutch hated him for his weak handling of wars with England and France. They wanted the more resolute leadership of young William III of Orange. Jan De Witt resigned his offices and when his brother Cornelius was imprisoned, Jan went to his aid. A mob broke into the Gevangenpoort jail. As unsympathetic guards looked on they beat Jan and Cornelius to death and hung their bodies from a lamp-post. Some reports say the mob tore strips of flesh from their bodies and ate them.

1741-VITUS BERING DISCOVERED ALASKA and helps colonize California. Well, he didn't actually help, but for 200 years Spain had ignored it's Southwest colonies because there were no more gold-rich Inca empires there. But when Berring opened the Pacific coast to Russian colonization, the King of Spain freaked and ordered towns and missions built up the California coast. Britain also rushed its’ claims to Washington State and British Columbia. This is why Juan De Cabrillo explored the California coast in 1542, but cities like L.A. and San Francisco weren't founded until 1776.
Bering was a reluctant explorer. The Dane had heard Czar Peter the Great was giving cushy salaries to skilled European sailors. But when Bering arrived in Russia the Czar ordered him to travel 3,700 miles to Siberia, build a fleet and explore the arctic because the Czar had always wondered if America and Russia are connected. He went off and fooled around in the Arctic Sea for awhile, then went back and said it wasn't. The Czars scientists said that wasn't good enough, go back and do it again! Finally, he discovered his Bering Straights, but died of scurvy in the Aleutians before he ever got paid.

1794- Napoleon Bonaparte was released from prison at Caps d’Antibe. He was arrested with the leading Jacobins when Robespierre was overthrown. Nappy was friends with Robespierre’s brother.

1794- BATTLE OF FALLEN TIMBERS, American General Mad Anthony Wayne defeated the Shawnee and Miami Indians under Chief Blue Jacket and Little Turtle. By treaty signed after the victory, the Indians agreed to withdraw to the West, opening up the Ohio Valley to white settlement.

1862- SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN or MANASSAS. Robert E. Lee maneuvered the larger Union army of General George Pope back onto the old Bull Run battlefield and smashed it, sending thousands of bluecoats running back to Washington, -again. Pope considered himself a man of action and bragged "From now on my headquarters are in the saddle!" To which one wag wrote :"It's not the first time that a general had his Headquarters where his Hindquarters should be!' Confederate General James Longstreet was nursing a foot wound so he directed the decisive attack wearing bedroom slippers instead of boots.

After three spectacular Yankee defeats in just two months, the Confederate cause was looking pretty good. In London, Prime Minister Palmerston wrote Lord Liverpool the foreign secretary that Washington or Baltimore would soon fall into rebel hands and a special steamboat was kept waiting at the navy docks to rush President Lincoln and his cabinet to safety when the capitol fell. The time may have arrived for England to offer her mediation to negotiate a ceasefire. Emperor Napoleon III of France was also offering Paris as the site of an international peace conference to oversee the final separation of North and South.

1866- One year after the Civil War ended President Andrew Johnson declared the great insurrection officially over and rescinded all remaining wartime regulations and edicts, reinstating Habeas Corpus, etc.

1882 -Peter Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" premiered in Moscow. The composer said of all his works the two pieces he liked the least were the 1812 Overture and the Nutcracker Suite. Overture 1812 was Richard Nixon’s favorite classical piece.

1896 – The Dial telephone patented. It was nicknamed the Gravediggers Dial because it was invented by funeral director Almon Stroweger. His inspiration to create the automated switching system was the local telephone operator was the wife of his competitor in the funeral business. She kept sending all inquiries for an undertaker to her husband. The rotary dial and Strowger switching system was the world standard until replaced by the touchtone button system in the 1980s. Even though the dial phone is a memory, the words remain when we speak of dialing a phone number.

1913- The first successful parachute jump. French balloonists experimented with parachutes in the 1790's but this is the first practical one.

1940- In Mexico City exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky was assassinated. While writing at his desk he was hacked in the skull with a mountain-climbers pick. His murderer Ramon Mercador- alias Jules Antoine, alias Jackson, was paid by Stalin's agents. He got into Trotsky's household by dating one of the maids. It was rumored that part of the Stalinist cell in Mexico was famed painter David Siqueiros. Trotsky was having an affair with painter Frida Kahlo. Leon Trotsky predicted Stalin would try to get him while the world's attention was distracted by the Hitler War in Europe. When Mercador was released from a Mexican prison, Stalin presented him with a medal, the Order of Lenin.

1940- In a radio speech Winston Churchill praised the efforts of the Royal Air Force in fighting Hitler's bombers-"Never have so Many, owed so Much, to so Few.'

1953- The Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in Women first published. Alfred & Clara Kinsey’s study proved to the conservative American public that 50% of women had premarital sex, liked sex for more than just procreation, and 25% had an extramarital affair. This document following their 1948 report on sexual behavior of men revolutionized social attitudes towards sex and feminism.

1954- President Eisenhower’s intelligence chief Allan Foster Dulles presented a paper on Far East Policy in which he urged that the US support be given to the post-colonial government of South Vietnam in opposition to communist Ho Chi Minh.

1971. FBI documents prove this day the Nixon White House began to covertly investigate journalist Daniel Schorr because of his anti-war editorials. President Richard Nixon kept an enemies list of people he imagined to be opponents to his administration. It began with obvious liberals like George McGovern and Ted Kennedy, then expanded as far as June Foray the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

1972- Top Hollywood directors Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin announced a partnership in a new production company called "The Director's Company". Youngsters Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were also signatories. The partnership lasted two years then collapsed.

1982- Ralph Bakshi's film Hey Good Lookin'.

1982- President Reagan sent the Marines into civil war torn Beirut Lebanon.

1985- Israel shipped 96 American-made shoulder held missiles to the radical Ayatollahs of Iran. This was part of the Iran-Contra scheme. When Congress had forbidden the Ronald Reagan White House to send any money to Anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua, Reagan’s people cooked up this scheme to sell the Iranians weapons for covert funds for the Nicaraguan Contras.

1989- George Adamson, who with his wife Joy were the naturalists who inspired the book Born Free, was murdered with machetes by Somali poachers in Kampi Ya Simba Game Preserve.

1994- Studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg resigned from the Walt Disney Company.

1998- THE WAG THE DOG ATTACKS- After the Al Qaeda terrorist organization bombed US embassies in Africa, the Clinton Administration looked for an opportunity to hit back. This day the CIA got word that senior Al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden were gathered in a remote Afghan camp for a meeting. President Clinton ordered a spread of cruise missiles launched to kill them. The missiles hit their target, but Osama got away. In Washington, the hostile Conservative press had a field day accusing Clinton of making the strikes only to distract public attention from the Monica Lewinsky Sex Scandal. It alluded to a popular movie out at the time called Wag the Dog, where a scandal ridden president rigs a phony crisis to distract public attention. Bill Clinton was stymied in any further efforts, and Osama bin Laden lived on to plan 9-11.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: June Foray (1917-2017) was a famous voice actress who voiced Rocky the Flying Squirrel for Jay Ward and Witchy Hazel for Chuck Jones. But she did a voice in a Disney film as well. What was it?

Answer: She voiced Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella, an old Indian woman in Peter Pan as well as a Mermaid, and Lena Hyena in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Quiz: June Foray (1917-2017) was a famous voice actress who voiced Rocky the Flying Squirrel for Jay Ward and Witchy Hazel for Chuck Jones. But she did a voice in a Disney film as well. What was it?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: In Soccer (football) what does it mean when a ref holds up a yellow card?
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History for 8/19/2023
B-Days: Roman Emperor Probus (232AD), Orville Wright, Ring Lardner, Ogden Nash, Alfred Lunt, George Enesco, jockey Willie Shoemaker, Malcolm Forbes, Tipper Gore, Gene Roddenberry, Colleen Moore the It Girl, Jill St. John, Ginger Baker, Dawn Steel, John Stamos, Peter Gallagher is 67, Kyra Sedgwick is 58, Matthew Perry, Jonathan Frakes is 71, Bill Clinton is 77

480 B.C. THERMOPYLAE- The Spartan King Leonidas had gone on ahead of other Greek allies to try and slow down the gigantic Persian invasion force of Xerxes The Great King. He chose to stop them at a narrow mountain pass in Thessaly called Thermopylae or Hot Gates. He had only 300 Spartans of his royal guard and 7,000 other Greek allies to fight off 200,000 Persians.
After repulsing several assaults, this night spies told Leonidas a Greek traitor named Ephialtes had shown Xerxes a way behind his position. If he did not retreat, he would be surrounded. Their priest Meistias saw in the sacrificial entrails nothing but death.
But Leonidas decided the best way to gain time, and create an example for all Greece to rally, was to stay and fight to the last man. He allowed his allies to withdraw, but 1500 warriors including his 300 Spartans stayed with him. Meistias sent away his only son to be saved, but he stayed to fight.
This night before the last battle the Spartans spent most of their time combing and oiling their hair and beards, for they did not want to enter the next world looking shabby. One Spartan warrior named Dieneces, was told when the Persian army fire their arrows, they black out the sun. Dieneces replied: “Good, then we can fight them in the shade.”

14 A.D.- Elderly Emperor Augustus died after ruling the Roman Empire for 44 years. The Empress Livia had ordered the imperial villa surrounded with troops so no one but her saw his end. She said his last words were:" Have I played my part well in this great comedy called life?" But the historian Tacitus suspected Livia might have aided his shuffling off this mortal coil before he had second thoughts about leaving the empire to his stepson Tiberius, He may have said something more like: " Honey, I don't feel so good. What did you put in these figs?"

1274- King Edward I Longshanks and his Queen Eleanor of Castile crowned at Westminster Abbey. Edward was called Long-Legs because he was over 6 foot, and his constant wars and blood conquest earned him nicknames like The Hammer of the Scots, and the Great Plantagenet after his family name.

1399 - King Richard II of England surrendered his throne to his cousin Henry Bollingbroke, who became King Henry IV. Richard II is not remembered for much else, but the Shakespeare play and inventing the pocket-handkerchief.

1561 - Mary Queen of Scots arrives in Leith Scotland to assume her throne after spending 13 years in France. She was raised at the extremely Catholic court of Queen Catherine de Medici and had little in common with her increasingly Presbyterian Scots subjects.

1599- Spanish conquistadors capture Acoma pueblo in New Mexico, east of modern Albuquerque. The Indian village on the sheer tabletop mountain reminded the Spaniards of attacking castles back in Europe. After their victory they enslaved the population and burned the Indian chief at the stake as a heretic. According to monk Bartolomeo de Las Casas, as the chief was roasting, Las Casas started to feel guilty, so he urged the chief at his last moments to accept baptism. The chief called out through the flames:" No thank you, because then I would go to the Christian Heaven and meet even MORE of you people!"

1692- Salem Mass, The pilgrims executed four people as witches. One was a senile old woman who just looked scary like a witch, and another was a Caribbean servant named Tituba who liked to tell children ghost stories. Another hanged, Rev George Burroughs, was a distant ancestor of Walt Disney.

1745- THE GATHERING OF THE CLANS- At Glenfinnin in the Scottish Highlands, to the thunder of drums and the skirl of massed bagpipes, Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his banner of revolt and called all Scottish clans to rally to him. Some clans stayed aloof but Clan MacDonald and Cameron wholeheartedly swelled his ranks, as did his family clan the Stuarts. His men were paid in oatmeal.

1781- George Washington started his Continental army marching from Yonkers, New York to attack Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia. At Dobbs Ferry he started ferrying his troops across the Great Northern River, as the Hudson River was known then. He was amazed that the British army was only twenty miles away in New York City, yet they never tried to stop him.

1787 – British astronomer W. Herschel discovers Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Herschel also discovered Uranus and other celestial bodies.

1812- OLD IRONSIDES- During the war of 1812 The USS Constitution pounded it out with the frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia. The British captain complained his cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the Constitutions heavy New Hampshire oak hull as though it was made of iron. The nickname stuck and today Old Ironsides is the oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy. In 2012, the same USS Constitution was taken out for a cruise around Boston Harbor.

1814- THE ASSAULT ON WASHINGTON BEGAN. A huge British battle fleet of 14 Ships of the Line landed an invasion force at the town of Benedict on the Pautuxent River in Maryland. Admiral Cockburn’s intent was to march on Washington D.C., and “give the Americans a Good Drubbing!” The soldiers were all hardened British regulars, fresh from defeating Napoleon in Spain. The Duke of Wellington had turned down the American expedition. He called it " Fruitless, and a waste of time".
Most of the American armies were on the frontier or north trying to invade Canada. To defend the American capitol were only some Maryland militia and a few Marines from two armed schooners hiding in the shallows of the Chesapeake.
U.S. Secretary of War Armstrong was convinced the British were faking, and their real target was Baltimore. President James Madison sent contradicting orders to Armstrong and the field commanders. Secretary of State James Monroe, a veteran of the Revolution, personally galloped about alone under British gun fire bringing the only reliable scouting reports.

1848- The New York Herald published a story that President Polk confirmed that gold had indeed been discovered in California.

1886- Joseph Conrad got his British citizenship. The author of Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim was born in Poland as Jozef Konrad Korzenieowski, but he went into exile when his patriot father was arrested by the Czars police and sent to Siberia.

1891 - William Huggins described the astronomical application of the spectrum.

1892- New Jersey pharmacist Charles Elmer Hires introduced the first commercially produced bottles of a new drink he dubbed “Root Beer”. Root Beer from sassafras root had been a traditional recipe since colonial times, but Hires was the first to market it.

1895- John Wesley Hardin was one of the more famous gunfighters of the Old West. His business card read J. Wesley Hardin, Shootist. He once shot a man for snoring. Hardin did 17 years in prison for murder, got released and studied law and theology. This day in El Paso at the Acme Saloon, lawman John Selman came up behind Hardin and shot him in the back of the head. After he collapsed on the floor he pumped a few more rounds into him to make sure he was dead. John Wesley Hardin was 42.

1909- The Brickyard is born. The first Indianapolis 500 auto race.

1929- The Amos & Andy show premiered on radio.

1933 The Walt Disney short Lullaby Land released. Directed by Wilfred Jackson.

1942- The Dieppe Raid- Allied commanders were under pressure from Stalin to prove that they were doing something to open a second front in the west to take the pressure off Russia. So they sent a Canadian division in what amounted to the largest commando operation of World War II. These Canadians had to attack a large U-Boat base on the channel and ram a destroyer full of explosives into the dry docks. The Germans were waiting and it became a suicide mission. The Canadians suffered over 60% casualties.

1945- Four days after the Japanese surrender, in IndoChina, Ho Chi Minh declared the Republic of Vietnam. Uncle Ho had been supported by the CIA’s forerunner the OSS in his struggle against the Japanese. This day Ho ordered a reading aloud of his declaration, inspired from the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Even though FDR's personal representative Avril Harriman advised that the U.S. recognize Ho's government, we decided to support the French and British in trying to keep their tottering colonial empires. The British flew in French paratroops, and the stage is set for the Vietnam wars of the next 30 years.

70 Years Ago 1953- Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown and Shah Reza II Pahlevi assumed absolute power. All with the cooperation of the American CIA. The popular Mossadegh was trying to steer Iran into a nonaligned status between the cold war superpowers and had nationalized the Iranian oil industry. So, to Washington he was a threat. Eisenhower advisor Allen Foster Dulles considered Mossadegh a dangerous lunatic for not wanting American support. The Shah Reza Pahlevi II ruled for the next 25 years until overthrown by the Moslem fundamentalists under the Ayatollah Khomeni. The CIA did not admit their role in this until 2011.

1953- The Israeli Knesset voted to create a huge memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust called Yad Vashem.

1955 - WINS radio, announces it would not play "copy" white cover versions of black R&B. DJs must play Fats Domino's "Ain't It A Shame," not Pat Boone's. In 1957 Little Richards “Tuttie-Fruitie” never got higher than 17th in the Billboard Charts, while Pat Boones version, by his own admission awful, went to number one.

1957- The NY Giants baseball team voted to move to San Francisco.

1960- The Russians launched a Sputnik capsule into space with two dogs- Belka and Strelka, 2 rats and 40 mice. They recovered this orbiting zoo the next day. The first sending of life into space and returning them safely.

1973 - Kris Kristofferson wed Rita Coolidge.

1977- Groucho Marx, the last surviving Marx Brother, died at age 86. In his final years Groucho had rewrote his will in favor of his young personal secretary Erin Fleming. This spawned a furious legal battle between Fleming and the Marx family.

1988- The Iran-Iraq war ended after 8 bloody years.

1989- The Polish Communist regime resigned and turned over power to the Solidarity trade union movement. Poland is the first Communist Warsaw Pact government to collapse.

1991-THE AUGUST COUP. Communist hardliners in a final attempt to stop the fall of the Soviet Union, try to overthrow leader Mikhail Gorbachev. They try to do it the way they did it to Nikita Khruschev in 1964, arresting Gorbachev while he was at his vacation dacha or cottage. The coup failed several days later when Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin climbed on top of a tank and called for a "people-power" style rising to support the democratic elements of the government.

2000- Scientists report water at the North Pole for the first time in 50 million years.

2004- Google stock first went public on the stock market.

2012- Director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Days of Thunder) jumped to his death off a bridge in Los Angeles. He was 68.

2335 – According to Star Trek the Next Generation, this is the birthday of William T Riker, in Valdez Alaska, first officer of the Enterprise.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: In Soccer (football) what does it mean when a ref holds up a yellow card?

Answer: When a foul is committed the referee will show a yellow card, play is stopped and the player who has been fouled gets a free kick. If a player gets a red card, the foul is determined to be more egregious and the player must leave the pitch, suspended for the remainder of play. Two yellow cards called on an individual player in a single game can also mean the player gets a red card. A red card for a particularly bad foul can lead to suspensions for additional games. (Thanks FG)

Quiz: Phil Collins returned for a concert tour with his original band Genesis. What band was Sting originally part of?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Driving around the U.S. Southeast you see the name Dekalb a lot. Dekalb township, DeKalb County, etc. So, who was DeKalb?
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History for 8/17/2023
Birthdays: Davy Crocket, Mae West, Marcus Garvey, Sam Goldwyn- born Schmuel Gelbfisz, Harry Hopkins, Monte Wooley, Boog Powell, Belinda Carlisle, Guillermo Vilas, V.S. Naipul, Jim Courier, Donnie Wahlberg, Belinda Carlisle, Maureen O’Hara, Sean Penn is 63, Martha Coolidge is 78, Robert DeNiro is 80

1661- THE PARTY. Nicholas Fouquet, the first minister of Louis XIV (the Sun King), had his coat of arms read "To what heights may I aspire?" He decided to throw the ultimate party for his royal master. Fouquet's chateau Vaux le Vicomte was so lavish, the dinner for 6,000 guests so exquisite, the gardens so beautiful and the entertainment was provided by the playwright Moliere. Everything was so all around superior, that the King wanted Fouquet thrown in a dungeon. It seems King Louis didn't like being upstaged by his servants. But the king’s mother didn’t want to spoil such a nice party. So the King waited two weeks, then sent his chief of musketeers, D’Artagnan, to arrest him. The king's new minister Colbert, was much more discreet in his entertaining.

1676- In Massachusetts, the conflict ended between the Pilgrims and local Indians called King Phillip’s War. This day Pilgrims placed the severed head of Wampanoag Chief Metacomet, or King Phillip, on a pole in front of the Plymouth settlement. Metacomet’s father Massacoit was the one who saved the Pilgrims from starving and celebrated the first Thanksgiving.

1806- After two years trekking across the Rockies to the pacific coast and back, Lewis and Clark finally returned to their starting point at the mouth of the Missouri. Just before they landed, Lewis was shot though both buttocks by Pierre Cruzatte, who had bad eyesight and thought he was an elk. This day they paid off and said goodbye to guide Jean Charbonnau and his wife Sacajewea. That same day Private John Colter asked to be released early from service. He desired to go back and explore some more. So while Lewis and Clark continued east to Washington City, John Colter went back into the Rocky Mountains to become the first American “Mountain Man”. Colter would discover Yellowstone Park. Captain Clark’s black slave York asked for equal wages as the other men because he shared all their labor and dangers. Captain Clark not only refused, he told him to never bring that up again, else he’d sell him.

1870- Battle of Gravellotte-St. Privat- The French and Prussians battle to a draw, but the French Marshal Bazaine retreated anyway, to the amazement of the enemy.

1876- Richard Wagner’s 4 hour opera Gotterdammerung- the Twilight of the Gods, premiered.

1877- Billy the Kid killed his first man.

1908- D.W. Griffith signed a contract to begin directing movies for Biograph Pictures. He was paid $50 dollars a week plus royalties.

1908- The premiere of the first fully animated film, Emile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie".

1914- Battle of Tannenburg. The Russian steamroller was stopped by Gen. Paul von Hindenburg in East Prussia. Hindenburg and his brilliant aide Ludendorf divided the Russian army into two pieces separated by a salt marsh and defeated each piece in turn. The fighting was so fierce that German gunners aimed their cannons by looking right through the barrel and firing directly into the thick masses of Russian soldiers. After the battle, Russian commander Gen. Samsonov walked off into the forest and shot himself.

1941- EL GRUPO- Walt Disney and his artists arrive in Rio on a ten-week goodwill tour of South America, underwritten by a $70,000 government grant. President Franklin Roosevelt was worried that some South American countries might be sympathetic to the Nazis, forcing the U.S. to worry about her backdoor. So FDR sent Nelson Rockefeller to give the Latin American countries whatever they wanted to keep them out of the world war. One of the things they wanted was Donald Duck. Back in LA the federal mediator Stanley White had worked out with Roy Disney that if they got Walt out of town, they could settle the Disney animators strike. The name comes from hotel footmen in Buenos Aires paging the artists as “ El Grupo Disney! Your bus is here.” The Three Caballeros and Saludos Amigos result.

1942- Carlson’s Raiders attacked Japanese held Makin Island. Before the war, Marine Lt. Colonel Evan Carlson served as an observer of Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist army. He was impressed with General Chu Teh’s development of partisan-guerrilla tactics. Carlson became such a fan of their tactics, he was nicknamed “Commie-Carlson”.

1943- General Patton and his Seventh Army won the “Race to Messina” and completed the conquest of Sicily.

1945- This was supposed to be the scheduled date for the Japanese Navy to attack the Panama Canal. The Japanese had built a fleet of new I-400 class long-distance submarines that could carry 3-5 kamikaze bombers each. The crews trained to surface and get their planes in the air in 17 minutes. They targeted a key lock in the canal, that once destroyed would paralyze the entire system. But when the Japanese home islands were under threat of invasion, the Imperial High Command canceled the plan.

1945- Upon hearing of the Japanese surrender, Sukarno declared the Independence of Indonesia from Holland.

1954- Walt Disney’s True Life Adventure, “The Vanishing Prairie”, directed by James Algar, opened in theaters.

1960- Georg Pal’s The Time Machine opened in NY.

1962- The Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. One of the reasons they decided on Ringo was that he came with his own car.

1979- Monty Python’s The Life of Brian premiered. Directed by Terry Jones. Just before principal photography was due to begin, a key sponsor got cold feet about the dodgy religious connotations and withdrew their funding. At the last-minute Beatle George Harrison stepped in and donated $3 million of the $4 million dollar budget. He said he just wanted to see it. “ It is the world’s most expensive theatre ticket.”

1984- The Walt Disney Company executive board informed its chairman Ron Miller that they wanted his resignation. Disney had fallen to 14th in film box office by then. Miller had been Walt’s son-in-law and he was he was once a tight end for the LA Rams. Within two years of Michael Eisner taking power Disney was number one.

1985- The Hormel Meat Packing Strike, severely threatening the world’s supply of SPAM.

1986- Pixar short Luxo Jr, premiered at Siggraph ’86 Dallas.

1987-Nazi Rudolph Hess found hanged in his cell by an electric light cord. He was 93 years old and had been in prison for 46 years. His body was burned and his prison Spandau was leveled, to prevent it from being made a shrine by Neo-Nazis.

1988- Mohammed Zia Al Haq, the president of Pakistan, died in a plane crash.

1992- Famed film director Woody Allen admitted he was having an affair with Soon Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his longtime lover Mia Farrow. He was 60 and she was 21. But as the unrepentant Allen states: “The Heart wants what it wants.” They’ve been together ever since.

1994 The Great Baseball Players Strike- canceled out the season and the 1994 World Series. It was the longest strike in sports history until the NBA lockout of 1998.

1998- President Bill Clinton admitted to a grand jury that he had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. This is only the second time in history that a sitting President allowed himself to be put under oath. The precedent was set by Ronald Reagan testifying he “couldn’t recall” anything about Iran-Contra. But this session is when Clinton, aka Slick Willy, defended his infidelity with the amazing argument that oral sex was not intercourse in the truest sense, and therefore he did not lie when he said on nationwide television that he did not have sex with Ms. Lewinsky. Part of his legal wriggling was a dissertation on the meaning of the word “is”.

2009- Police arrested Albert Gonzales for hacking into credit card company computers and stealing 134 million credit card numbers! He was an informant for the FBI on credit card crime, and was playing a double agent, still committing crimes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Yesterday’s Quiz: Driving around the U.S. Southeast you see the name Dekalb a lot. Dekalb township, DeKalb County, etc. So, who was DeKalb?

Answer: Baron DeKalb was a German nobleman who like Lafayette and Kosciuszko came to aid the American cause. He was killed in battle in 1779.

Quiz: Driving around the U.S. Southeast you see the name Dekalb a lot. Dekalb township, DeKalb County, etc. So, who was DeKalb?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is spumoni?
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History for 8/16/2023
Birthdays: Fess Parker, Karl Stockhausen, George Meany, Charles Bukowski, Menachem Begin, Otto Mesmer the creator of Felix the Cat, Myron Grim Natwick the creator of Betty Boop, Hal Foster the creator of Prince Valiant, Kathie Lee Gifford, Edie Gorme, Bill Evans, Leslie Ann Warren, Angela Bassett is 65, Julie Numar is 90, Robert Culp, James Cameron is 68, Bruce Beresford, Steve Carrell is 62, Madonna, aka Louise Ciccone of Bay City Michigan, is 65

Today is the Feast of St. Roch, who had a heavenly inspired dog to lick his sores and cure him of the Black Plague. It was thought dog licks cured plague.

1521- Cuauhtémoc (guatemoc) was the last fighting Aztec emperor. After Montezuma died, he led the resistance to Cortez and his conquistadors. After 80 days of brutal house-to-house fighting across Tenochtitlan, he finally surrendered. The Spaniards tortured Guatamoc for three days trying to get him to reveal where the secret treasure of Montezuma was. As they poured boiling oil on his feet he laughed:” Ah, am I standing on a field of rose petals?” Today they hanged him. He never revealed where the Treasure of the Aztecs was.

1777-Battle of Bennington- It actually occurred in Walloomsac, ten miles from Bennington Vermont. General of Volunteers John Stark defeated a large contingent of Hessians sent by Burgoyne to get help for his redcoats trapped at Saratoga. Stark inspired his men before the battle with words like these: “Men, yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds ten pence a man. Are you worth more than that? Tonight the American flag will fly atop that hill, or Molly Stark will sleep a widow!” The flag few atop the hill and Stark went home to his wife a hero.

1780- Battle of Camden, South Carolina- Colonial General Horatio Gates excelled at backroom politics almost more than at military accomplishments. He finagled the northern army command away from its creator General Phillip Schuyler, then later took full credit for the great American victory of Saratoga even though the hard work was done by Benedict Arnold. Yet he was considered a serious rival of George Washington for leadership of the American armies. But on this day his humiliating defeat at the hands of Lord Cornwallis extinguished his ambitions. Gates leapt on his horse and abandoning his retreating army, galloping alone 30 miles to safety. Then citing ill health, he resigned from the service. Also at the battle, Baron DeKalb was wounded when his horse was shot under him, Then he was shot three more times and bayonetted by redcoats. He died shortly after.

1805- In the camp at Boulogne Napoleon held a grand military ceremony for his Grande Armee’. To the thundering beat of 1,300 massed drums, he personally awarded medals to worthy common soldiers. The secret to Napoleons leadership was a special bond between him and his men that was unique to his time. In a world of aristocrats who considered the common people scum, Napoleon walked casually among his soldiers like an equal, stopping to share a roast potato or a dirty joke in rough soldiers’ language. He called them his children. They treated him as though emperor was just another army rank. He had an uncanny memory and read the personnel rosters of his 350,000-man army once a month to update himself on his men’s achievements.

1812- Napoleon’s army stormed the burning Russian city of Smolensk. Marshal Murat, almost sensing the disaster this Russian invasion was going to bring, walked casually out in the open in front of the Russian cannons, almost inviting them to kill him. He was finally tackled out of harm’s way.

1812- American General Hull surrendered most of Michigan territory, including the settlement of Detroit, to British General Issac Brock.

1819- THE PETERLOO MASSACRE- At Saint Peters’ Fields in Manchester thousands of factory workers and their families gathered to protest for better working hours, minimum wages and the right to vote. The response of the local magistrate Sir Simon Burley was to send in the Royal Horse Cavalry to ride them down and saber them. The incident was called Peterloo because most of this same cavalry were also at the battle of Waterloo four years earlier. People referred to Sir Simon Burley’s actions with a pun from Shakespeares MacBeth, hurley-burley.

1858- Queen Victoria sent the first transcontinental wire message to President James Buchanan via Cyrus Field's incredible UNDERWATER TRANSCONTINENTAL CABLE, stretching from London to New York. After great fanfare about progress and a new era in communications it broke down, as well as the next several tries to fix it. Just hours after the first message a fisherman pulled it up in his net, thought it was the tail of a sea serpent and cut off a chunk to take home and brag to his friends. Other attempts were ruined when technicians tried to correct the faintness of the signal by boosting the voltage beyond the safety range of the insulation-Zapp!
Direct transcontinental communications didn't really become a reality until wireless broadcasting. But the who-ha over this scientific marvel did inspire author Jules Verne to write "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

1877- BIRTHDAY OF THE WORD-"HELLO". In a letter dated today Thomas Edison wrote to the first president of AT&T about how people should initiate conversation on the new telephone machine. A genteel Victorian would think it impolite to speak until spoken to. Alexander Graham Bell, an old navy man, always thought the right way to start a phone conversation was to say "AHOY!" Edison explained that the results of sonic tests proved the old English fox hunting call "Halloo!" was most audible over great distances. In most languages around the world the word hello is the same. It was the only English word Sioux Chief Sitting Bull ever learned. He loved to grab your hand and pump it vigorously while saying:" HELLO, HELLO!”

1896- THE YUKON GOLD RUSH. Four miners find gold in Bonanza Creek in the Klondike region of the Yukon Territory. When a boatload of gold was brought down to Seattle and San Francisco, it caused a stampede of prospectors north. Prospectors included poet Robert Service, Wyatt Earp, and Donald Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump.

1930- Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process called Harriscolor. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.

1938- In Three Forks Mississippi, Blues legend Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband.

1942- Happy Birthday Mighty Mouse. Terrytoon's short: "The Mouse of Tomorrow".

1954- First issue of Sports Illustrated.

1965- The AFL, American Football League offered it’s first expansion franchise to a new team called the Miami Dolphins. The AFL merged with the NFL in the 80s.

1969- “ Hey Man, we’re gonna serve breakfast in bed for 500,000” So was hippy Wavy Gravy’s announcement at dawn on the second day of the Woodstock Rock Concert. Toasted oats in hot water was ladled out en-masse in paper cups. Wavy declared this was the day Americans learned first learned about Granola.

1974- The Ramones play their first gig at the NY club CBGBs. Hey-Ho, Lets Go!

1977- E-DAY in Memphis. Elvis Presley, donuts and Pizza Hut box in hand, died of a heart attack while sitting on the toilet. He was reading a book-the Historic Search for the Face of Jesus. He was 42.

1985- On her birthday, Madonna married Sean Penn. They divorced shortly after.

1987- The Harmonic Convergence- Another one of these celestial events that the mainstream media trumpeted as the end of everything. All nine planets of our solar system were in perfect alignment and the subsequent gravitational forces were supposed to knock the Earth into the Sun or something or other that would send us to Hell in a Handbasket. Lots of New Age types flocked to occult sites like Mt. Shasta and Stonehenge to meditate on the End of All Things.
So, what happened? Nothing.

1991- The original Shamu the Whale died of respiratory failure at age 16.

2005- Top Pixar story-artist Joe Ranft was killed in an auto accident. He was 45.

2019- Animator Richard Williams died at age 86.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is spumoni?

Answer: An Italian ice cream specialty, usually with added jellied fruits and nuts. A brick of three flavors combined, Pistachio, Cherry (Strawberry), and Vanilla or Chocolate.

Quiz: What is spumoni?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is The Natchez Trace?
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History for 8/15/2023
Birthdays: Napoleon Bonaparte, Leon Theremin- inventor of that weird electronic musical instrument that is in all those 1950s flying saucer movies, Samuel Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, King Frederick Wilhelm I of Prussia 1685, Lawrence of Arabia, Ethel Barrymore, Huntz Hall, Bill Baird, Edna Ferber, Sir Robert Bolt, Rose-Marie, Linda Ellerbee, Gene Upshaw, Oscar Peterson, Shimon Peres, Mike “Mannix” Connors, Nicholas Roeg, Animator Dick Lundy, Julia Child, Anthony Andrews, Ben Afleck is 50, Debra Messing is 54, Jennifer Lawrence is 32.

778 AD Battle of Roncevaux or Roncesvalles. Legendary battle where Charlemagne's top knights -the Paladins: Roland waving his sword Durandel, Oliver, and Ogier the Dane fought to the last against overwhelming odds. In reality the battle was probably a small rearguard border skirmish with hostile Basques tribesmen in the Pyrenees Mountains.
But a poem about the incident called the Song of Roland inflated it into an epic Christian battle against the Muslim Moors, wizards and devils. The Chanson du Roland became the Sgt. Pepper of the Middle Ages, read and enjoyed throughout Europe. When William the Conqueror's Normans went into battle at Hastings in 1066, William’s minstrel Vailletan sang the Song of Roland at full gallop while tossing his sword into the air and catching it like a parade drum major.

1057-Scottish king Macbeth was defeated and killed by Malcolm III Canmore at the Battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. But did Burnham Wood move to Dunsinane?

1097- DEUS VOLT! GOD WILLS IT! The First Crusade was announced at Clermont by Pope Urban II. Christian Europe decided that the Holy places in Jerusalem should not be in Muslim hands. In his sermon the Pope addressed the assembled knights in their native French: "Christian warriors who continually seek pretexts for war and rape Rejoice! If you must have Blood, then bathe in the Blood of the Infidels, and Christ will count you among his Warriors! Soldiers of Hell, become Soldiers of the Living God!”
They sewed small strips of red cloth in a cross on their left shoulders and began with a massacre of any Jews they could find. History is at a loss to find any comparable social phenomenon. It took Islam a generation to understand that this was a Christian Jihad (Holy war) declared on them. The Muslim Emirs were just as feudally divided as the European warlords, until they united under Saladin.

1100s-1400s- PAX DEI- The Medieval Church tried to limit the carnage of knights fighting and feuding by declaring a Truce of God between Lent and this, the beginning of the harvest season. It sometimes worked, but slaying infidels was still okay year-round.

1261 Byzantine Emperor Constantine VIII came from Nicea and recaptured his capitol Constantinople from the Crusader knights who had occupied it since 1209.

1457 – The earliest dated bound book, The "Mainz Psalter," completed.

1519- Panama City, Panama founded.

1535- Ascension Paraguay founded.

1549- First Christian missionaries arrive in Japan. A band of Spanish Jesuits led by Father Francis Xavier landed in Kagoshima on the island of Kysuhu.

1598- Irish Earl Hugh O’Neill of Tyrone defeated an English Army at Yellow Ford.

1649- THE IRONSIDE CONQUEST- Oliver Cromwell brought his New Model Army over to Ireland to crush the Irish rebellion. His depredations wreaked upon the population of Ireland are still recalled as the Curse of Cromwell. Mass death of this kind would not visit the Emerald Isle again until the Great Potato Famine of 1846.

1794- The first U.S. coin minted in the United States, a silver dollar. Minting of colonial and state currencies had been going on in America for years, Continental Eagles and such. There was a phrase then for something of no value, “ Not worth a Continental.” The word Dollar is derived from Thaler from JacobsThaler, meaning from the Gift of St. Jacob, a Czech mountain valley where there were rich silver deposits.

1806- For his birthday, Napoleon dedicated the cornerstone for the Arc de Triomphe.

1812- English General Issac Brock turned back a U.S. invasion of Canada, and captured the Yankee settlement of Detroit.

1824- The Marquis de Lafayette, now retired, returned to America for a grand tour of the new nation he did so much to create. A lot of towns in the South were named Fayette, Lafayette and Lafayetteville from this tour.

1843- Tivoli Gardens opened in Copenhagen. One of the oldest amusement parks in the world. King Christian said. “When people are amused, they don’t worry about politics.” Hans Christian Andersen was a frequent visitor. One hundred years later, Walt Disney visited to get inspiration for his Disneyland.

1848 - M Waldo Hanchett patented the dental chair.

1885- Sir Richard Burton completed his translation from medieval Persian of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. There had been earlier attempts like a French edition in 1809, but Burton’s edition introduced the west to Aladdin and his magic lamp, Sinbad the Sailor and Scheherazade.

1911- Proctor & Gamble introduced Crisco shortening.

1914- After ten years labor, the Panama Canal opened for regular service.

1935- Humorist writer Will Rogers and his pilot Wiley Post were killed when their small plane crashed in Barrow, Alaska.

1936- Disney animator Ward Kimball married painter Betty Lawyer-Kimball.

1939 - In 1st night game at Comiskey Park, Sox beat Browns 5-2.

1944- Operation Dragoon. To support the Normandy beachheads landings a second landing was made by allied armies on the southern French beaches near Marseilles.

1945- The US officially ended wartime gasoline rationing.

1946- Disney’s Make Mine Music, featuring Blue Bayou, All the Cats Join In, and Willie the Operatic Whale.

1947-"The Stroke of Midnight" India and Pakistan, the Jewel in the Crown, got their freedom from Britain after 200 years. The end of the Raj.

1948- Syngmun Rhee elected first president of the Republic of South Korea. The Russians saw this as a direct challenge to their hold over the North and quickly choose communist Kim Dae Jung as the leader of North Korea. What began as a postwar temporary partition of the Korean peninsula was made complete.

1958 - Buddy Holly wed Maria Santiago.

1960- The Congo (Brazzaville) declared independence from France. It had been renamed Zaire for a while, but is back to the Republic of the Congo today.

1965- The Beatles play their largest U.S. concert yet, at New York's Shea Stadium.

1968- The pirate radio station Radio Free London began transmitting.

1969- WOODSTOCK-Three Days of Peace and Music- The rock concert of the 20th Century opened. The promoters, one of whom was heir to the Polident Denture Cream fortune, were hoping to host 50,000 people and launch a recording studio in the quiet New York farming town. What they got was 500,000 young fans and the social phenomenon that defined an age. At one point the more conservative elements of the community got a court order to block the land to be used, but farmer Max Yasgur offered his cow farm for the site.
Up till then in the tumultuous 1960’s, any gathering of young people that big meant violence and riot, and at one point New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller offered to send in the National Guard. But the magic prevailed and there was no violence outside of 200 bad acid trips and one heroin overdose.
Richie Havens was the first act to play, he did six sets and kept stalling because the crowd was so immense, they had to bring in the other bands by helicopter. When he ran out of songs to sing, Havens started riffing anything he could think of. This way Havens created his most famous tune “Freedom” with added in spirituals like “Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child”. After his death in 2013, his ashes were scattered at the Woodstock site.

1971- President Nixon announced a sweeping economic package including taking the U.S. dollar off the Gold Standard. The world's most stable currency being so transformed created the wildly free-flowing currency market we have today. When warned of this consequence, President Nixon is supposed to have replied: "I don't give a sh*t about the Lire."

1971- Bahrain declared independence from Britain.

1973- Westworld with Yul Brynner and Richard Benjamin opened.

1977- THE WOW SIGNAL- Project SETI- Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence- heard something. It sounds like static to us, but it was a strong electromagnetic signal on a regular narrow band AM radio frequency emanating from deep space. So far, it has never been adequately explained away or repeated. SETI scientist Jerry Ehmen noted in his log for that night “….wow!”

1979- Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now” opened. Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, young Harrison Ford and even younger Lawrence Fishburne. Pixar director Ronnie Del Carmen (Inside Out) got his first job as a student painting scenery.

1984- “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” opened nationwide.

2021- Twenty years after being driven out of power by an American led coalition, the Taliban re-captured the Afghan capital Kabul. Called The Graveyard of Empires, the Afghans have only completely submitted once, to Alexander the Great.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is The Natchez Trace?

Answer: A forest trail in Tennessee. Since the Ice Age, used by animals, then Indians, then early white settlers. The Trace went from where Nashville would one day be , and wound its way through the dense forests, down to Natchez Mississippi. Connecting the Cumberland, Tennesssee Rivers with the Mississippi. Steamboats and railroads eventully made the Natchez Trace obsolete. But the trail is a beautiful place to hike today.