Quiz: There is painting, and there is plien-air painting. What is the difference?

Yesterday’s Question: Last week I asked which movie came out first? Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Now I’m asking what BOOK came out first? (Thanks Chaz)
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History for 8/2/23
Birthdays: Pierre L’Enfant- the designer of Washington DC, Jack Warner, Myrna Loy, Sir Arthur Bliss, James Baldwin, Carrol O'Connor, Pete Sampras, Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster), Bill Scott the voice of Bullwinkle, Bob Beamon, Wes Craven, Edward Furlong, Peter O'Toole, Kevin Smith is 53, Joanna Cassidy, Marie Louise Parker is 59

National Ice Cream Sandwich Day.

47BC- The Battle of Zela. Pharnaces the King of Pontus- a land today in central Turkey, decided he could take advantage of the Roman civil wars by rising in revolt. He called for all the eastern provinces throw off the Roman yoke. This day Julius Caesar took time off from Cleopatra, and hurried up to Pontus, where he defeated Pharnaces in one large battle. Caesar then sent his famous three word report to the Senate: “VENI VIDI VICI- I came, I saw, I conquered.”

1100- King William II Rufus (the Red), son of William the Conqueror, was shot with a poisoned arrow while hunting in the New Forest. His son Henry I became king. Truth be told, nobody liked Rufus very much, so it was probably not an accident.

1589- At the palace of St. Cloud, French King Henri III de Valois was stabbed in the guts by a demented Dominican, Brother Jacques Clement. He thought the King wasn't doing enough to stamp out heresy. The kings dying words were: "That little bastard has killed me. Kill him!"
The next king, Henry IV de Bourbon became one of Frances most beloved rulers. The children's song "Frere' Jacques" is about this assassin. "Brother Jacques, Why are you sleeping?" another bad ruler needs stabbing, in other words.

1803- The British in India declare the Second Maharaja War against Skindia and Bousla, pro-French Rajahs in the Deccan peninsula.

1815- After Waterloo, a pro-royalist mob lynched a veteran general named Brune. Brune was a radical even before Napoleon promoted him. He still had Death to Tyrants tattooed on his chest from his days as a revolutionary. As the rope went around his neck Brune called out:" To stand on a hundred battlefields and die like this!"

1858 –As a result of the Sepoy Rebellion, the Government of India was transferred from the Honorable East India Company to direct Crown control.

1858- The first public mailboxes installed on Boston & NYC streets.

1865- The Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah, after sinking a dozen U.S whaling ships in the Bering Sea off Alaska, was told by a passing British merchantman that the American Civil War ended four months ago. Captain James Waddell refused to believe it until shown some newspapers. Yes it’s really over. Whoops! Instead of putting in at an American port, Capt. Waddell sailed all the way back to Liverpool England, where the ship was built. This further strained diplomatic relations.

1876- In Deadwood South Dakota at Nuttall & Manns No.10 Saloon, gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back and killed while playing cards. He was 39 years old. He was holding the "Deadman's Hand" aces & eights all black, and a jack of hearts. His assailant 'Crooked Nose" Jack McCall was found hiding in a butcher’s shop. McCall had been cleaned out by Hickok in an earlier card game, yet after the murder he bragged about how much money he had. Which led some to speculate he was paid to murder Hickok. Acquitted in an initial trial in Deadwood, he was retried in Yankton S.D. and hanged. An eyewitness said:" It was very sad. Bill had won the hand too."

1877- The San Francisco Public Library dedicated.

1909- The US issues the first Lincoln head pennies.

1914- THE GUNS OF AUGUST-General mobilization began throughout Europe for World War I. Large armies moved towards their frontiers amid hysterical street demonstrations of patriotism, Jubilant mobs shouting "A Berlin!" "Nach Paris!" ring out as Europe prepared to destroy itself. In Russia, Czar Nicholas II in a solemn religious ceremony took the oath his ancestor Alexander I had taken to drive out Napoleon. In Berlin, a torchlight parade stopped under the Japanese Embassy to salute their friends. They were unaware that Japan had already decided to join the other side. The terrified diplomats thought the crowd was there to lynch them. Diplomats stood around stunned that all their efforts could not stop the catastrophe.
In Berlin, German foreign minister Von Bethman-Holveig mumbled: "How did this all happen? If only I knew..." In London, Lord Grey watched the lamplighters on the street and reflected-" The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

1914- Holland and Switzerland declared their neutrality in the coming Great War, closed their borders and mobilized their forces.

1920- Marcus Garvey addressed a rally of 25,000 African Americans at Madison Garden New York. He called upon Black Americans not to assimilate with white society but to work for economic self-sufficiency and an eventual return to Africa. Garvey told biographers he was never born, he had “combusted himself” on the corner of 125 & Lennox in Harlem.

1923- President Warren Harding died suddenly in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. He was touring the country to get away from the 'Tea Pot Dome'' corruption scandal in Wash. The official cause of death was listed as “a stroke of apoplexy”. It was rumored he may have committed suicide or had eaten bad crab meat. A popular idea was that First Lady Florence “Flossie” Harding had poisoned him. Harding was a womanizer and Flossie was well aware of his indiscretions; She refused an autopsy and had him quickly buried. She controlled all media coverage. To the press she was the Duchess. Nan Britton, one of Warren Harding’s tootsies, immediately sued for $50,000 for the daughter she bore Harding. She lost but wrote a best-selling book called the President’s Daughter in 1927. “Silent Cal” Coolidge became President.

1934- Elderly President of the German Republic Paul von Hindenburg died, leaving Chancellor Adolf Hitler alone in charge of Germany. Hitler had waited for the old man to croak before dispensing with the parliamentary niceties. Hindenburg’s death signaled the official end of the Weimar Republic. Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor and becomes Der Fuehrer- the Leader.

1939- Albert Einstein then living in New Jersey, wrote a famous letter to President Franklin Roosevelt describing the potential power of atomic energy. That the US must develop atomic bombs before the Nazis do. The Manhattan Project was the result. In later years Einstein described this letter as “one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”

1940- King Gustav of Sweden sent a note to both Adolf Hitler and King George VI offering to be the go-between to start talks to end World War II. All sides refused.

1961 - Beatles 1st gig as house band of Liverpool's Cavern Club.

1962- If you are a fan of the “Marilyn Monroe was done in by the Kennedy’s ” conspiracy theory, a CIA document dated this day mentioned that Marilyn’s bungalow was under electronic surveillance. Also that she kept a “red book” diary. The diary disappeared after her death, two nights from now.

1971- President Nixon acknowledged for the first time that the CIA was maintaining 30,000 troops secretly fighting in Laos.

1979- the song Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang released by a St. Louis radio station. While not the first song with rapping in it, it brought the idea mainstream. People who did not remember the songs name Rappers Delight would ask “What’s that song that goes “ Hip-hip, the hip-hop hopper to the hiphop..?” So, the musical became known as HipHop.

1979- Yankee baseball star catcher Thurmon Munson died when he crashed his private plane near Akron Ohio. He was 32.

1985- John Hughes Weird Science opened, with Kelly LeBrock. Two nerdy boys create the perfect woman using this new thing called Computer Graphics.

1990 –After Kuwait refused to forgive Iraq’s outstanding debts. 100,000 troops of Saddam Hussein’s army invaded Kuwait.

1991- Hyperion’s “Rover Dangerfield” premiered. Directed by Jim George and Bob Seeley.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Last week I asked which movie came out first? Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Now I’m asking what BOOK came out first? (Thanks Chaz)

Answer: Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726, Snow White in Grimm’s Faerie Tales came out in 1812. The Wizard of Oz came out around 1900.

Question: Last week I asked which movie came out first? Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Now I’m asking what BOOK came out first? (Thanks Chaz)

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In art, what does it mean to work chiaroscuro or chiaro-scuro?
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History for 8/1/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Claudius, Emperor Pertinax, Francis Scott Key, William Clark of Lewis & Clark, Herman Melville, Robert Todd Lincoln, Geoffrey Holder, Yves St. Laurent, Giancarlo Giannini, Dom Deluise, Jerry Garcia, Coolio, Sam Mendes, Jason Mamoa is 44.

31 B.C. Marc Anthony fell on his sword. It wasn't an accident, that’s how they did themselves in back then. Most people felt the final showdown between Marc Anthony and Augustus would be much bloodier than the war between Caesar and Pompey. But after the naval defeat of Actium, Anthony’s supporters melted away and he was alone.

14 A.D. The Roman Senate voted to change the name of Sextilis Mensis (month number 6) sacred to Ceres (Demeter) to the Month of the deified Caesar Augustus, or August.
Except for February, the calendar system of Julius Caesar alternated one month at 30 days with the next month at 31. But the family of the emperor Augustus did not like that Julius Caesar's month July had 31 days, while theirs had only 30! So, they ordered the Senate to borrow a day from February, a month nobody liked anyway, which went down to 28.

1096- Peter the Hermit's Crusade, an enormous horde of chanting, bloodthirsty peasants, arrived at Constantinople. Their nominal leaders were the monk Peter and Walter Sans Sou or Walter the Penniless. They had spent the march through Europe looting and massacring Jewish enclaves in many cities, and the Byzantine Emperor Alexius didn’t want them turning his city into a war zone. So, he had them ferried them over to Asia without allowing them to enter his gates. They were soon destroyed by the first large Saracen force they encountered. The real First Crusade army arrived months later.


1291- SWITZERLAND BORN- The rebellious peasants of three Helvetian cantons gather on Rutli meadow and pledged to unite in an everlasting league against foreign oppression. The Rütlischwur. Some say William Tell was there, some say no. Some say this happened in November. Some say no. Some say nothing happened on Rutli meadow other than cows grazing, but it’s a good story anyway.

1485 - Henry VII Tudor’s army invaded England to overthrow King Richard III.

1690- The besieged city of Londonderry was rescued by the army of William of Orange.

1714- George Louis/Ludwig, German Elector of Hanover, became George I King of Great Britain upon the death of Queen Anne, last of the Orange dynasty. He never trusted his English subjects, they had too many revolutions, too many confusing Parliamentary checks and balances and had once beheaded their king. George spoke no English ”The English asked me to Rule them, not to Speak to them!”.

1716- The first sculling race, down the Thames from London to Chelsea. Stroke! Stroke!

1740- Thomas Arne's song "Rule Britannia" is performed for the first time.

1744- British chemist Joseph Priestley isolated oxygen, first calling it "dephlogisticated air". His contemporary in France, Lavoisier, had reached a similar conclusion. Before this, doctors knew how the heart, lungs and blood operated, but no one was sure why. Sir William Harvey discovered the circulatory system, but thought it brought only nutrients from food. Some thought the heart was a little furnace that kept the blood warm, others thought it sifted blood as it passed through the ventricle walls like a cheesecloth. Leonardo da Vinci accurately drew the chambers of the heart, but he didn’t know either. Priestley is also credited with inventing the TimeLine of events.

1793 – Revolutionary France became the 1st country to use the metric system.

1797- According to C.S. Forrester, his British naval hero Horatio Hornblower received his captain's commission today.

1798- BATTLE OF ABU KIR or ABOUKIR BAY. Also called THE BATTLE OF THE NILE so it doesn’t confuse it with a land battle of Aboukir happening at the same time. The Nile itself is 20 miles away from Abukir Bay, but it sounds better in dispatches. British Admiral Horatio Nelson caught Napoleon's fleet in an Egyptian harbor and destroyed it in a spectacular night battle.
Nelson bore down upon the French ships even though it was already past 4 p.m.. The furious cannonading lit up the evening sky and caused the windows to rattle in nearby Alexandria. The English ships each had four lanterns hung on their stern rails so they could tell each other apart in the dark. The French complained about the English sailors disconcerting habit of cheering like a football match whenever an enemy ship went down or was dismasted. The French Admiral Brousse', his legs blown off by a cannonball, was propped up in an armchair on his poopdeck and died directing the fight. Nelson was wounded in the head by flying splinters and was temporarily blinded by his own blood.
Fighting was over by dawn as the exhausted sailors dropped from their guns dead asleep. The victory ruined Napoleon's efforts to destroy the British Empire through Egypt and Turkey and link up with Indian Maharratta Tippoo Sahib in India.

1805- Aaron Burr has dinner with Gen. Andrew Jackson in Nashville. The former Vice President was still wanted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton, and was plotting a mercenary invasion of the northernmost territory of Spanish-America called Texas. After President Jefferson had Burr arrested for treason, Jackson denied this dinner ever happened. Twenty-five years later, when Andy Jackson was president, the elderly Aaron Burr tried to greet him in public in New York. It was reported when Pres. Jackson saw Burr, “He turned pale, and recoiled as though he had been shot."

1861- The Empire of Brazil became one of the few nations to recognize the independence of the Confederate States of America.

1873 - San Francisco's first cable cars begin running, operated by Hallidie's Clay Street Hill Railroad Company.

1876- Colorado became a state. Because it happened in the year of the American centennial, Colorado calls itself the Centennial State.

1881- Angel Island in San Francisco Bay was established as a US gov quarantine station. Soon it was converted into an immigration station to control the influx of newcomers from China and Japan. Angel Island became the Pacific version of Ellis Island.

1893 - Henry Perky & William Ford patented Shredded Wheat cereal.

1914- Count Friedrich von Portales, the German ambassador to Russia, suffering from nervous exhaustion after a sleepless week of negotiations, appeared in the office of the Czar's foreign minister Nikolai Sazonov. He asked if Russia had reconsidered Germany's ultimatum that Russia demobilize. Sazonov said they did not. Whereupon Portales pulled a paper out his pocket and read the Declaration of War: "His Majesty the Kaiser, my august sovereign, accepts the challenge in the name of the empire and now considers himself at war with Russia!"
Portales then burst into tears and was comforted by his old friend Sazonov. Late that night Czar Nicholas II was lowering himself into his bathtub with a glass of tea when a final telegram pleading for peace came from Kaiser Wilhelm. "Silly man! Hadn't he just declared war on me?" Nicholas remarked. He wrote he slept soundly that night.

1917- Frank Little, native-American union organizer for the I.W.W. (the Wobblies) was beaten by a mob and hanged from a railroad trestle. His murder had originally been offered to new young Pinkerton detective named Dashell Hammett, who refused.

1919- In the postwar chaos of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bela Kun seized power in Budapest and tried to set up a Soviet regime like Lenin in Russia. This day he was deposed and Admiral Horty began a purge of all leftists. The violence in Hungary inspired young scientist Dr Edward Teller to be a livelong opponent of Communism. Teller developed the Hydrogen Bomb. Bela Kun fled to Moscow where Josef Stalin had him shot.

1924- Six months after his death, Russian Leader Nikolai Lenin’s mummified body is unveiled in his great tomb in Red Square. After the USSR fell in 1991, there were many calls to finally bury the Commie-Under-Glass, but in 2001 the decision was made to leave him as is.

1933- The WPA Arts Project set up to employ starving artists on large public works projects like murals for libraries and bridges, etc. Artists like Grant Wood, Andrew Wyeth, Dorothea Lang, Jackson Pollock, Orson Welles and Bernice Abbott got commissions.

1936- Carl Stalling first day as music director for Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes and Merry Melodys. Stalling became famous for blending classical music seamlessly with modern swing tunes. Many young people say it was their first exposure to classical music.

1936- The opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Berlin. The first Olympic torch lighting ceremony. United States was the only nation to refuse to dip their flag in salute to the host head of state- Adolf Hitler. Filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl was given unlimited access to document the Games. She pioneered the use of slow motion, tracking shots and closeups to revolutionized the way modern sports was filmed.

1940- Hitler released War Directive #17, calling for increased air and sea operations against the British Isles. Operations were to commence August 5th which der Fuehrer called “The Day of the Eagle”. We call it the Battle of Britain.

1943- Late at night off the coast of Borneo the little torpedo boat P.T. 109 was rammed and sunk by the Japanese destroyer Amaqiri. Lieutenant John F. Kennedy and his crew swam to an uncharted island. They will be rescued when a native in a canoe delivers a message from Kennedy scrawled on a coconut. “Naru Is. Native knows it. 11 alive, need small boat.” When President, Kennedy had the native man to the White House and kept the coconut on his desk in the Oval Office. In June 2002 Dr. Robert Ballard, who had discovered the Titanic, found the wreckage of the PT 109 on the ocean bottom.

1946- Congress authorized all the leftover World War II army surplus to be sold off and the money given out as educational scholarships. The Fullbright Scholarships. This is when every small town had an Army Surplus store.

1946- Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act. It nationalized atomic energy research but created a civilian commission to review peacetime uses of atomic energy.

1946-The first drive-in bank teller opens in Chicago.

1952- The first Mad Magazine hit the newsstands.

1953- The Alan Ladd movie Shane released.

1960 - Chubby Checker released "The Twist" and started a worldwide dance craze.

1960 –A young Baptist preacher’s daughter who had sung nothing but gospel went into a recording booth to try her hand at R & B. Aretha Franklin’s career began.

1966- TEXAS TOWER WHITMAN- Lunatic Charles Whitman barricaded himself into the high steeple of Texas University and shot 44 people at random during a day long gun battle with police. The tragedy reached comic proportions when Texas recreational gun owners hauled out their pieces and blazed away alongside the police. Whitman's Marine training was cited for his excellent marksmanship and his eccentric behavior, like constantly polishing his shoes during the day long battle.

1970- The first San Diego Comicon. Shel Dorf, Richard Alf, and Ken Keuger’s idea of a national comic book & fantasy fan convention. The SDCC has run continually ever since and had brought in the Hollywood studios. There have always been other comicons in other cities, but San Diego’s has become the premiere event, averaging hundreds of thousands of attendees.
. Special guests for the very first convention were comic book artist Jack Kirby and science fiction authors Ray Bradbury and A.E. van Vogt.

1971- The Rock Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison. The first charity-fund raising rock-concert.

1971- The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour debuted.

1971- PBS started a new television series called Masterpiece Theater hosted by Alastair Cooke. It’s first presentation was The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The high-quality BBC and Thames Television programs became so popular in the USA, that people said PBS stood for Preferably British Shows.

1972- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s first articles in The Washington Post exposing the depths of the conspiracy in the Watergate Scandal. The two journalists claimed they were fed information by someone very high in the Nixon White House who would only give his name as Deep Throat. In 2005 his identity was at last revealed as W. Mark Felt, the assistant head of the FBI. Their story was dramatized in the film- All The Presidents Men.

1972- 187th Tactom Flight Group of the Air Texas National Guard suspended the flight privileges of Lieutenant George W. Bush for failing to take a drug test. The future US president went AWOL (away without leave) from May 1972-to May 1973 to work on his dads’ congressional campaign. It was well known then that some National Guard units were an easy way for rich kids with connections to avoid being sent to the real combat in Vietnam. His unit was called a Champagne Unit.

1973- With the tag line “Where were you in ’62?” the film American Graffiti opened in theaters. The hit made skinny young director George Lucas a player in Hollywood, and made stars of kids like Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, and Susanne Somers.

1975- Billy Martin became manager of the New York Yankees. The hard-drinking, bad tempered Martin became one of the more colorful managers to lead the pinstripe crew.

1976- Elizabeth Taylor had married Richard Burton a second time. Today she divorced Richard Burton a second time. This was her 6th marriage.

1976- The expansion team The Seattle Seahawks play their first NFL game. They lost their preseason opener to the SF 49ers 27-20.

1981-I WANT MY MTV! MTV goes on the air, rock videos 24 hours a day. The idea was funded by a consortium of investors including Mike Nesmith of the Monkees, then on the board of 3M Paper company. If you put on the TV this day you saw a slide of an astronaut for several hours, then finally a voice said:” Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Rock & Roll.” The first rock video played was by a British New-Wave Band called the Buggles entitled “Video Killed the Radio Star.” followed by a Pat Benatar single.

1986- Howard the Duck premiered. George Lucas’ first major flop.

1991- Elderly movie queen Heddy Lamarr was busted in Tampa Florida for shoplifting.

1994- NASDAQ stock trading on Wall Street was halted for 35 minutes because a squirrel gnawed through a main fiber optic cable at the organization’s computer center in Connecticut.

2007- THE MINNEAPOLIS BRIDGE COLLAPSE. The I-35 Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi through the center of Minneapolis, collapsed during the afternoon rush hour, plunging 113 cars into the river. It killed 13 people and injured 145. The tragedy was a wake up call to America’s neglected infrastructure. Most American bridges were 40-70 years old and built only intended to last 75 years. In Los Angeles in 2014, a ninety-year old water pipe burst spilling 12 million gallons, this during a drought. Chunks of the Brooklyn Bridge keep falling off into the East River. In 1958 the U.S. spent 12% of the Federal Budget on infrastructure, in 2007, 2%.

2014- Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy opened in theaters. I am Groot.

2018- The NY Mets lost to the Washington Nationals by a score of 25-2, a team record loss.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: In art, what does it mean to work chiaroscuro or chiaro-scuro?

Answer: It means dark-to-light. To contrast your figures in dramatic dark shadows. Most famous artist doing this was Carravaggio.