Question: There have been two movies about a character called Dolomite, but Dolomite is a place, too. Where are the Dolomites?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a pyrotechnician?
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History for 10/30/2023
Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,
Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler is 76, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon,
Claude Lelouche, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Herschel Bernardi, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona, animator Isao Takahata, Ivanka Trump is 42

1270- The Pope declared the 8th Crusade to try to save the city of St Jean D’Acre, the last Crusader hold in Palestine. Acre surrendered to the Saracens two years later.

1501-THE BALLET OF THE CHESTNUTS, or His Holiness throws an orgy.
One of the most notorious incidents in pre-Reformation Rome. Pope Alexander VI Borgia, with his children Cesare and Lucretia Borgia, throw a wild party at the Vatican. The revelry was highlighted by a race of nude prostitutes on hands and knees through an obstacle course of silver candlesticks, gobbling up chestnuts. The pope later gave prizes to the courtiers and ladies who demonstrated the greatest sexual stamina. This was the kind of holy hedonism that drove the Protestant reformers nuts and caused the final rift in the Christian world.
One participant in these revelries was the chef of the French ambassador. He was intrigued to see the pope’s guests not wasting time to be served dinner, but just getting their own plates of food from large tubs set in a row along the wall. He thought this was a neat way to serve food. His name was Pierre Buffet.

1628- The French City of LaRochelle had been acting as the capitol of an independent
Huguenot nation- electing officers and collecting taxes independent of Catholic
Paris. But France was now in the hands of the wily Cardinal Richelieu. Although a Catholic priest, Richelieu really didn’t care a figgy about Protestants, but that independence thing had to go. The Cardinal had LaRochelle under siege for months.
When the starving citizens finally surrendered it was the Cardinal who entered the city in armor on a white charger. But rather than sack the city, and burn the heretics, Richelieu
had his men distribute bread and medicine. He granted freedom of worship to all.

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published.

1864- Gold miners founded the boomtown of Helena Montana.

1891- Henri Boulanger, a French general who dreamed of Napoleonic power before falling into disgrace, shot himself over his mistress’s grave.

1905- THE OCTOBER MANIFESTO- Trying to calm his rebellious subjects, Czar Nicholas II issues an imperial ukase (edict) transforming Russia from a completely autocratic state to a semi-constitutional monarchy. He created the Duma, Russia's elected
parliament. However all didn't go well. When the elected representatives called
for more freedom, release of political prisoners and dismissal of all government
officials not approved by the Duma, Nicholas shut it all down.

1918- The Empire of Turkey signed an armistice at Modras with Britain, France and
America to get out of World War I.

1918- While the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl desperately tried to hold his
disintegrating empire together, today even his German speaking subjects declared
themselves to be the new Federal Republic of Austria.

1918- Kaiser Wilhelm moved his staff from riot-ravaged Berlin to Spa on the Belgian
frontier to prepare for the armistice to end the Great War. Socialist leader Franz
Ebert told Chancellor Prince Max of Baden the Kaiser may have to abdicate to avoid civil
war. But Wilhelm still imagined that after making peace with the Allies, he could
turn the German army around and put down his own unhappy subjects. But after
four years and two and a half million dead, all the German army wanted to do was
go home. Whole regiments were throwing away their weapons and walking away.

1931- first day shooting on the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic Gold Medal swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller.

1936- London publishers George Allen & Unwin had received a manuscript from an Oxford ancient languages professor named J.R.R. Tolkein. The publisher gave it to his ten-year old son Rayner Unwin, to read. Rayner read it and made a report, “This book will be a very good read for children from ages 5-7.” For his troubles, the young lad was paid a shilling. Based on his recommendation, they published “The Hobbit”.

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast on CBS a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, one million people across the U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New Jersey.
In Hollywood, famed actor John Barrymore, very drunk, went over to his
kennel of prize winning racing greyhounds and open their cage doors, saying: "Fend
for yourselves!" Interestingly enough, the broadcast was only #2 in the ratings. More people listened to the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show.

In 1949 Ecuador, and 1969 Buffalo NY, radio stations did updated versions of the broadcast, and they also started panics.

1941-The REUBEN JAMES INCIDENT-Five weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack, the neutral U.S. destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German U-boat, drowning dozens of American sailors. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill thought this would be the incident to anger Americans enough into getting into World War II like the Lusitania did a generation earlier. Woody Guthrie sang: "Oh tell me what were
their names, tell me what were their names? Did you have a friend on the good old
Reuben James?" However Adolf Hitler apologized and offered immediate monetary
reparations. Popular anger cooled. Roosevelt told his cabinet:" I think I can keep us out of this war for one more year unless Germany or Japan does something stupid."

1947- Bertoldt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and The Threepenny Opera,
testified to the Hollywood HUAC committee. He smoked a large cigar through the whole
session. Next day, as he had once fled Hitler’s Germany, he fled the U.S. and resettled in East Germany.

1961- Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has his old boss Stalin’s body removed from
its glass case pickled next to Lenin, and has it buried in a simple grave in the back.

1963- The first Lamborghini 350GTV went on sale.

1966- An inventory done at the National Archives revealed that medical evidence
of John F. Kennedy's assassination autopsy were missing. This included JFK’s brain.
They have never been found. Kennedy’s brother Robert was still attorney general
at the time. Some historians think he hid evidence of conspiracy to hide his
brothers mob connections, and so preserve the purity of the Camelot myth.

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air. I can’t write them because Facebook would put me in jail, but you all know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

1975- After the death of the dictator Franco, King Juan Carlos assumed the throne in the restored monarchy of Spain.

1991- Middle East Peace Conference began in Madrid Spain. These first days about
the only thing the Arabs and Israelis could agree upon was to politely refuse the
lunch the Spaniards had set out for them- ham sandwiches.

1992- QUANTRILL’S HEAD- William Clark Quantrill and his raiders were infamous during the Civil War for their depredations in Kansas and Missouri. A vicious racist killer, after being shot dead in 1865, an admirer dug up his bones and kept them. For the next 150 years the bones passed through several hands. They were put up for sale, displayed in a glass case and even used by Ohio State fraternities for their initiation rituals. Quantrill’s skull was finally discovered in a refrigerator behind the tuna sandwiches and Coke in the Dover Historical Society. A forensics student was putting clay on it to see what he looked like in life. This day the reassembled remains were finally laid to rest in his birthplace of Dover Ohio.

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.

2005- The Disney feature Chicken Little premiered.

2012- The Walt Disney Company announced it was buying out George Lucas holdings (including the Star Wars franchise) for $4.05 billion.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a pyrotechnician?

Answer: Pyrotechnicians design and control explosions, especially fireworks, but also other types of blasts. (Thanks CS)

Question: What does a pyrotechnician do?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean when you roll snake-eyes?
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History for 10/29/2023
Birthdays: James Boswell, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Keats, Sir Edmund Halley, Louis Blanc, Fanny Brice, Joseph Goebbels, Zoot Sims, Winona Ryder, Jesse Barfield, Kate Jackson, Bill Mauldin, Akim Tamiroff, Rufus Sewell, Neal Hefti-composer of the theme song for TV shows like Batman and the Odd Couple. Richard Dreyfus is 76, Ralph Bakshi is 85, Dan Castellenata, the voice of Homer Simpson.

1618- Sir Walter Raleigh celebrated his birthday by being beheaded. Raleigh was once Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, but by now he was getting on King James nerves, by opposing the Kings peace overtures to Spain. Also Raleigh was implicated in a plot to keep James from attaining the throne. The king had him dangling on a commuted death sentence for treason for 15 years. Finally when Raleigh attacked Spanish settlements in Brazil against direct orders not to, that was enough. Off with his head! On the scaffold Raleigh thumbed the axeman’s blade. He joked:" This is sharp medicine, but it cures all ills." The man credited with introducing tobacco to Northern Europe, he puffed his pipe for one last time before putting his head on the block. His wife kept the severed head in a cabinet for the rest of her life.

1762- Battle of Freiburg. Frederick the Great’s brother Prince Henry defeated the Austrians in the final major battle of the Seven Years War.

1764-The Hartford Current debuts. The U.S.'s oldest continuously running newspaper.

1776- During the American retreat from the British across New Jersey, General George Washington is accidentally handed a letter from one of his officers to another. He read it and it accused him of incompetence: "The only thing worse than a Blundering Commander is an Indecisive one!" Up till then Washington had thought that the writer, Thomas Mifflin, was a friend of his. Washington passed on the note without any comment other than an apology for having opened it.

1787- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera DON GIOVANNI premiere in Prague. Mozart had partied the night before and after midnight sat down and wrote the overture. As the musicians were sitting down he ran from stand to stand handing out the music. Goethe and Schiller loved it. Giacomo Rossini called it “the Greatest of All Operas”. After Don Giovanni, his lyricist Lorenzo da Ponte left Europe for America and settled down in New Jersey. His niece had an affair with the son of Francis Scott Key and married a general Dan Sickles, who fought at Gettysburg.

Oct. 29, 1795- NAPOLEON MET JOSEPHINE- After quelling anti-government riots in Paris, General Bonaparte ordered the citizens to turn in all weapons. Beautiful socialite Josephine de Beauharnais came this day to thank the young General for allowing her son to keep the sword of his guillotined father.
Napoleon was at once smitten, and their romance became legend. He would write her letters from the battlefield like “Don’t send me your kisses, they burn my blood!”,
And “I shall be home in a week, please don’t bathe until then, I want to smell you!”

1796- The SS Otter out of Boston under Captain Ebeneezer Dorr entered Monterrey Bay, the first American visitor to Spanish Alta-California.

1825- In Dublin, British Marquis de Wellesley married American socialite Miss Margaret Patterson. What makes this society wedding memorable was Miss Patterson's sister Betsy was married to Napoleon's younger brother Lucien Bonaparte. The Marquis of Wellesley was the older brother of the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon had died in 1821 but had he still been alive he would have had his Waterloo opponent Wellington for a brother-in-law! It would have made for some interesting family gatherings.....

1836- The young nephew of Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, tried again to overthrow the French Government the way his famous uncle did. Instead of cheering, people chased him through the streets of Strasbourg yelling :"Shut Up you Blockhead!" He will eventually become Emperor Napoleon III.

1936- The resolutions of the First Geneva Convention announced. It attempted to regulate the treatment of civilians and prisoners in wartime. It was set up by Henry Dunant, who also helped found the International Red Cross. More Geneva Conventions would be signed by nations in 1925 and 1949.

1901- Leon Czogolsz was electrocuted for the assassination of President William McKinley. Immigrant anarchist Czogolsz had a nervous breakdown, and became so crazy, that even other anarchists avoided him.

1904--Mayor MacClellan opened the New York City Subway System. For 5 cents you could go 722 miles of tunnel, under 30 square miles, the largest system in the world. The Mayor was given a solid silver ceremonial throttle, took controls of the first train and drove it around himself. When asked to hand the controls back he refused “Go away, I’m running this train now.” He went full throttle from Bleecker St to 146th. Later that day after the VIP’s concluded the party, the subway was opened for the first commuters.

1923-General Mustapha Kemal abolished the Ottoman Sultans and declared Turkey a secular Republic. For this he was named Ataturk, or "Father of the Turks". Today in Turkey is National Day.

1923- The musical Running Wild opened on Broadway, introducing the dance craze the Charleston.

1929- BLACK TUESDAY-THE STOCK MARKET CRASH AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS. The falling stock crisis which had been gaining momentum since early September finally culminated in the greatest ever one day collapse of the U.S. Economy. Millions of people who weren't ruined by last Thursday’s crash were ruined today. One third of all U. S. banks failed- 2,500. Eyewitnesses to that day all remember the strange low roar echoing through the glass canyons of Wall Street, it was the continuous moans of thousands of investors being simultaneously ruined. Businessmen jumped to their deaths from windows. Two executives held hands as they jumped because they had a joint account. The chairman of General Motors William Durant finished his life managing a bowling alley in Chicago.

The Union Club wallpapered it's bar with worthless stock certificates. Venerable firms like Morgan and Lehman Brothers allowed 'apple-breaks' for their brokers to go out on the street and supplement their income by selling apples. By years end all U.S. industry was working at 17% of capacity and unemployment would soon soar to 55% in many major cities. The newl Empire State Building was nicknamed the "Empty State Building".

The Hoover Administration, which espoused the traditional Republican hands-off attitude towards Wall Street, watched in horror as every trick known to financial wizards like Rockefeller and Lamont failed to stop the slide. People questioned whether capitalism itself was now a failure. Hoover's Vice President Charles Curtis, (for whom the nickname "Goodtime Charlie" was invented) continued to party while things collapsed. He responded to hungry, unemployed people protesting during his speech that they were all "Too damn dumb" to understand economics. His sister socialite Dolly Curtis said that she felt that the Depression, such as it was, maybe was already ending. This prompted one newspaper to run the headline:' DOLLY CALLS IT OFF!"

1936- Ella Crawford-Smith was a real estate magnate whose first husband was killed in a gangland hit. She had the Hollywood bungalow where the murder occurred torn down, and brought in Arte-Moderne architect Robert Derrah to create something unique. Today the project, Crossroads of the World, was dedicated. It was an early form of open-air mall, designed to look like an ocean liner coming into port. It is still there today.

1938-"SALUD CAMERADE!" The Farewell Parade in Barcelona of the International Brigade. 40,000 men-young intellectuals, German and French anti-fascists groups all united to help in the Spanish Civil War. The losing Spanish Republic had gambled that if they sent the International fighters home Franco would remove his Nazis and Italian allies. It didn't work. Their story was glamorized by writers like Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. Ironically many Americans who fought in the Lincoln Brigade were denied advancement in the U.S. Armed forces when World War II began. The army labeled them "Premature Anti-fascists".

1956- SUEZ WAR-Britain and France were mad at Egypt over the nationalizing of the Suez Canal. They hatched a plan with Israel to start a war with Egypt then reoccupy the canal. This day the first phase went into effect when Israeli forces rolled into Sinai, preceded by a daring stunt. A flight of six Israeli P-51 Mustang fighters flew a top speed barely 12 feet off the ground slicing Egyptian telephone wires with their propellers.

1956- NBC TV upgraded its evening news show The Camel News Caravan with the Huntley-Brinkley Report. President Eisenhower disliked the change.

1957- A lunatic lobbed a hand grenade into the Israeli Knesset, wounding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.

1957- Louis B. Mayer died. His last words were: "Nothing Matters..." The head of MGM Studios lorded over Hollywood like a monarch, made and broke moviestars, ordered Judy Garland fed a steady stream of narcotics and had his office redesigned all white to resemble Mussolini’s, whom he admired. Humphrey Bogart was at the funeral. When asked if he was close to Mayer, Bogie replied: Nah, I'm just here to make sure he's dead!

1959- Goscinny and Uderzo’s comic character Asterix first appeared in Pilote magazine.

1968- The Lion In Winter, with Katherine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole and Anthony Hopkins opened. When filming wrapped on this movie, Hepburn said to O’Toole: When I started off in this business my agent said to me, never act with children or animals. But you Peter, are both.”

1969- At the trial of the Chicago 7, Judge Hoffman ordered Blank Panther leader Bobby Seale to be bound and gagged in his seat, for outbursts in the courtroom.

1969- THE INTERNET- After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Defense Department asked the Rand Corporation to create a communication system that could survive Russian atomic bombs. They developed an idea by British scientist Paul Baran of a “net” of computers all in communication with another around the world. Because there was no center, a bomb could not knock out the entire system.
At 10:30PM In the basement of UCLA’s Boelter Hall, J.C. “Lick” Licklider, Leonard Kleinrock, Vin Cerf, Robert Kahn, Larry Roberts and Bob Taylor set up the first call to Stanford. “ We typed the “L” and we asked on the phone “ Did you see the “L”? “Yes, we see the “L,” was the response. Then we typed O and asked Did you see the O?” Yes, we see the O” was the response. Then we typed G, and then the system crashed!” But when they rebooted, and the system sprung to life again. The people at UCLA were able to type in LOG, to which the Stanford folks replied IN.
They called it ARPANET- Advanced Research Projects Agency-NET, a few years later Internet. By 1978 the Defense Department didn’t want to run the thing anymore so they offered to turn over the entire Internet to AT&T for free. AT&T said no thanks, we just don’t see the value in it. In 1992 the US government made the Internet public and the gold rush was on.

1975- Years of bad fiscal management had brought New York City close to bankruptcy. This day President Gerald Ford announced that the United States Treasury would not help New York City out of it’s fiscal problems with any emergency loans. Although he reversed his position soon afterward, New Yorkers remembered his attitude. The New York DAILY NEWS papers headline “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD!” remained in people’s minds as they voted overwhelmingly for Jimmy Carter.

1993- Tim Burton’s fantasy A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick, opened across the US.

1994- An emotionally disturbed Colorado upholsterer named Francisco Duran fired a Chinese AK-47 machine gun at the White House. He told authorities a multi-colored Alien told him to kill President Clinton in order to disperse a cosmic mist that had been over the White House for a thousand years. Pretty amazing mist, since the White House is only 200 years old. Bill Clinton was oblivious, watching football on TV.

1999- “Being John Malkovich”, quirky movie by Spike Jonze.

2012- Superstorm Sandy –a late season hurricane the size of Europe collided with a storm front coming from the west, and a cold front from Canada, and it all slammed into the mid Atlantic coastline. 233 killed, 6 million without power and the Wall St area flooded, The Atlantic City boardwalk, Asbury Park and the Jersey Shore were destroyed.

2012- Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph premiered.

2016- Federal guidelines say the FBI should not insert itself into an election thirty days before election day. A week before the election this day FBI director James Comey announced he was reopeni their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail use. The news of an equal investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign was suppressed by the media. They never found anything, but the fake news helped defeat Hillary in favor of Trump, who then fired FBI Director Comey. To this day he maintains the criticism of him is unfair.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean when you roll snake-eyes?

Answer: In playing dice, when you throw the dice and they both turn up on the one. The lowest possible score. The phrase means you’re completely out of luck.

Question: Many old books about supernatural incidents would mention something called ether. What exactly was ether? (hint: not the ether that made you sleepy)

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What kind of job did these people do? Jerry Goldsmith, Basil Poledouris, Rachel Portman, Thomas Newman?
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HISTORY FOR 10/27/2023
B-Days: Captain James Cook, Theodore Roosevelt, Dylan Thomas, Nicolo Paganini, Gerhard Von Gneisenau, Sylvia Plath, Roy Lichtenstein, John Cleese is 84, Freddy De Cordova, Ruby Dee, Roberto Benigni, Bernie Wrightson, Dr. Stamen Grigorov 1878, Bulgarian microbiologist who discovered the bacillus that made natural yogurt.

1553- In Geneva, after a trial prosecuted by the great religious reformer John Calvin, the Protestants burned at the stake fellow Protestant theologian Michael Servetus. His doctrines about Christ were too radical even for them. Servetus argued that Christ may have been just a powerful prophet but not God, and the Greek text speaking of Mary could have mistranslated Young Woman to Virgin. Servetus was refused a quick death. With his books chained to his chest he was slow burned, taking a half an hour of agony to die.

1560- Berserk conquistador, and Amazon explorer Aguirre, who called himself the Emperor of El Dorado, and we know from a movie as Aguirre the Wrath of God, was killed in Venezuela by Spanish loyalists.

1788-THE FEDERALIST PAPERS- While the new American republic was still trying to decide what kind of government it wanted, this day the first in a series of editorial letters appeared in American newspapers. The 85 essays argued the case for a strong federal government and judiciary, superceding the authority of individual states. Under the pseudonym "Publius". The essays were written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. Today they are called collectively the Federalist Papers.

1806- After defeating the Prussian Army at Jena, Napoleon’s French army marched into Berlin, all bands blaring Le Marseillaise. Part of his sightseeing Napoleon went to Potsdam and visited the tomb of Frederick the Great, the previous generation’s military genius.

1864-"BLOODY BILL" ANDERSON BUSHWHACKED-Among the Missouri bandits who called themselves Confederate guerillas like Quantrill and Jesse James, Bill Anderson was one of the worst. A complete psychopath, he had union soldier' scalps hanging from his horses bridle, and to avenge his sister’s death he made a knot in a silk cord every time he killed a Yankee. He rode into battle tearfully shouting her name. By the time the Yankees finally killed him and stuck his head on a telegraph pole, the silk cord had 54 knots in it.

1886- Musical fantasy "A Night on Bald Mountain" premiered in Russia. Composer Modest Mussorgsky worked as a florist during the day and wrote music at night. He was convinced he couldn’t make a living otherwise.

1916- The entertainment trade magazine Variety has the blurb: "Chicago has added recently to it’s number of so-called Jazz bands." Now jazz had been around in black neighborhoods for years, but the form was labeled Ragtime or Syncopation. This is the earliest known use in print of the word Jazz.

1919- New Orleans, Louisiana was unique because it governed itself using French law. This day saw the last execution of a criminal by axeman in the Big Easy, twenty years after most of America had gone from hanging to the electric chair.

1941- The Chicago Tribune announced in an editorial that there was no chance that the US would go to war with Japan.

1947- The "You Bet Your Life" quiz show premiered on radio. "Say the Secret Word and Win Fifty Dollars". Comedian Groucho Marx had struggled after his brothers act the Marx Brothers broke up. During a live radio program with Bob Hope at one point Hope dropped his script. Before he could pick it up Groucho stepped on the pages, threw his own away and the two improvised their conversation. The result was much funnier that anything anybody had written. The producer of the show was so impressed he hired Groucho and built a quiz show around him.

1954- Benjamin O. Davis became the first black general in the US Army.

1954- The" Disneyland" television show premieres. Up until then the major Hollywood Studios were all boycotting the new upstart medium of television, then mostly done in New York by blacklisted stage actors and writers. MGM Production head Dori Schary called TV “ the Enemy”. Walt Disney is the first to break ranks with the major film studios and get into television production. He even filmed the show in Technicolor, figuring television will develop color broadcasting eventually.

1962- THE DAY THE WORLD ALMOST ENDED- Black Saturday, the darkest day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, The US and Russia had enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on Earth 23 times over, and this day they came closest to doing just that.
Soviet and American battle fleets were faced off in the ocean. At the Berlin Wall tanks were muzzle to muzzle, some with nuclear artillery shells. All B-52's were in the air, waiting for the signal to enter Russian air space. Russian subs off the U.S. coast with nuclear missiles trained on American cities. All code Red, DEF CON-2- TOTAL WAR status. At a signal from The White House, the U.S. was poised to drop 7,000 nuclear weapons capable of killing 100 million people in an instant. The Russians had 64 hydrogen bombs operational in Cuba, mounted on missiles that could hit Washington and New York in just five minutes. Also 9 tactical nukes were under the direct control of two Soviet generals in Cuba, the only time that permission has ever been given.
Then suddenly a Cuban anti-aircraft missile shot down an American U-2 spy plane, killing the pilot. Pres. Kennedy complained to his staff:" Khrushchev doesn't think I have the guts to push the button!" Attorney General Robert Kennedy almost in tears from the strain, cried to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin: " Things are moving beyond all human control!"
The Kremlin got a secret telegram from Fidel Castro in his underground bunker begging them to fire the nukes immediately, saying Cuba is proud to sacrifice itself on the ramparts of Socialism (Fidel sent it from an underground bunker). KGB director Yuri Andropov passed Castro's note on to Khrushchev after he penciled red question and exclamation marks all over it.( !!!??!?!? ) Khrushchev also later mentioned that he received an appeal from philosopher Bertrand Russell that he credited with helping him make up his mind to send Kennedy the offer of a compromise.

1964- Sonny & Cher married. I got you babe!

1964- The “You Choose” speech. Actor, SAG President, and TV pitchman Ronald Reagan made his maiden political speech at a fundraiser for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. He had made political speeches in the past, but this one marks his shedding his acting and union careers to become a full time conservative politician.

1966- Bill Melendez's Peanuts TV special "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown'.

1967- the Worlds Fair in Montreal called Expo 67 closed.

1967- Anti-Vietnam War protesters in Baltimore broke into the Selective Service offices and poured human blood on draft files and records.

1981- Former UN ambassador and presidential aide Andrew Young was elected Mayor of Atlanta Georgia. The first African American mayor of that city.

1986- The NY Mets defeated the Boston Red Sox to win the baseball World Series.

1989 - World Series play resumes between Oakland and San Francisco after a ten day delay from the 1989- Loma Pietra Earthquake.

2004- After not winning it for half the history of baseball, since 1918, this day the Boston Red Sox swept the Saint Louis Cardinals to finally win a World Series. They go on to win several more.

2018- The LA Dodgers defeated the Boston Red Sox 3-2 in the longest World Series game in history. 18 innings, 7 ½ hours, ending at 12:30am.
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Yesterday’s Question: What kind of job did these people do? Jerry Goldsmith, Basil Poledouris, Rachel Portman, Thomas Newman?

Answer: They were (and are) movie composers.

Question: What kind of job did these people do? Jerry Goldsmith, Basil Poledouris, Rachel Portman, Thomas Newman?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: The Greek god Aphrodite was the Roman god Venus. The Greek god Poseidon was the Roman god Neptune. The Greek God Hephaestus was…?
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History for 10/26/2023
Birthdays: Danton, Leon Trotsky, Francois Mitterand, Domenico Scarlatti, Charles W. Post of Post Cereals, Bob Hoskins, The last Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Mahalia Jackson, Clive Barker, Bootsie Collins, Marla Maples, Count Helmuth von Molkte the Elder -German strategist of the Franco-Prussian War, Dylan McDermott, Cary Elwes, Jaclyn Smith, Hilary Rodham Clinton, Jon Heder, Seth McFarlane is 50, and Pat Sito.

Feast of Saint Evaristus, a Hellenic Jew who was made pope during the Roman persecutions. He is counted as a martyr even though there is no evidence that he did die that way. It's just assumed that all those early popes became toast sooner or later.

901 AD- English King Alfred the Great died. One of two English kings ever to be called The Great. (the other being the Danish Canute). He drove the Vikings from England and unified most of the island under his rule. ( The parts that weren’t Welsh or Scottish.

1326- Hugh Despenser, the boyfriend of King Edward II, was hanged on orders of Edward's wife, Queen Isabella the" She-Wolf of France". Before he died, she had him castrated and let him watch his nads being burned.

1440- French nobleman Gilles de Rais beheaded. If the concept of "medieval justice" always seemed like an oxymoron, the case of Gilles De Rais was a notable exception.
Baron de Rais was a powerful warlord of Joan of Arc, who went bizarrely wrong in his later years. He was so paranoid about losing his fortune, he listened to a sorcerer who told him the Devil would help if Gilles sacrificed some children to him.
When children began disappearing in large numbers from around his castle, even the Royal court couldn't ignore the outcry. The knight was tried, beheaded and his remains burned without Christian rites. His castle Chevrenault outside Tours was leveled, so no memory of the horrible episode would remain. Gilles De Rais is sometimes called Bluebeard, a name also given to the insurance murderer Nicholas Landru in 1928.

1555- After being given the kingdom of the Netherlands by his father Charles V, this day King Phillip II of Spain pledged to respect Dutch freedom. But his Catholic zeal was offended by the rising conversion rates to Calvinist Protestantism. Phillip soon unleashed the Dukes of Alva and Parma to tortured and executed thousands. The Dutch responded with revolutionary force and after an 80 year struggle, won their independence.

1825-THE ERIE CANAL COMPLETED, on budget and ahead of schedule. Governor Dewitt Clinton poured a ceremonial bucket of Great Lakes water into the Hudson River. Once called Clinton’s Big Ditch, even elderly Thomas Jefferson thought the plan was madness. The 350 mile Erie Canal tied the Midwest interior of America to its Atlantic coast and made New York the economic capitol of the nation. It also set off a boom in canal boat building. Remember at this time trains weren’t invented yet and roads were so poor, it took Jefferson two weeks to travel from Washington to Charlottesville Virginia, a distance today driven in two hours!

1858- The rotary drum washing machine patented by H. E. Smith of Philadelphia.

1863- The English Football Association formed to standardize the rules for soccer.

1863- We all know the Transcontinental Railroad was completed when the Golden Spike was driven in, on May 10,1867. Well today the first nails of that four year, 800 mile track were hammered in ceremonies in Missouri in the East and Sacramento California in the West.

1881-The GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL- The grudgefight between the Earp Brothers and the Clantons only lasted about 90 seconds but remains the most famous gunfight of the Old West. The fight may have actually happened in an alley beside McFly's Photo-Parlor, but the Tombstone Gazette decided the OK Corral, a block away, sounded more macho. Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp lived until 1929 and told so many different versions of what happened that he's totally discredited as a witness today.

1918- As the German front in World War I was falling apart, the Kaiser’s government sent a request for a ceasefire. Everyone knew this meant defeat and General Erich Ludendorf was having none of it. He denounced liberal Chancellor Prince Max of Baden’s peace efforts and vowed to fight on. Prince Max went to the Kaiser and said" He’s got to go. It’s Ludendorf or me!" Kaiser Wilhelm reluctantly ordered Ludendorf to submit his resignation.
Ludendorf refused a limousine; he walked alone to his house and sat silent in his parlor chair in the dark for several hours. Finally, he emerged and said to his wife:" In a fortnight we shall have no more Empire and no more Emperor. You will see." He was right to the day. Kaiser Wilhelm II and his dynasty fell on November 9th.

1929- Henry Ford invited President Herbert Hoover out for a picnic at Greenfield Michigan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the invention of Electricity. Greenfield was a theme park recreation of a pre-industrial American farm town Ford's innovations had done so much to change forever. Other guests included Thomas Edison, William Dupont, Henry Firestone and Madame Curie. During their picnic the President received a confidential message of the growing crisis on Wall St. Hoover told Ford not to worry, then quietly ordered his broker to sell all his personal stock. Three days later the Stock Market crashed.

1935 Disney short “Three Orphaned Kittens” premiered. Directed by Dave Hand. It won an Oscar.

1942- Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands- American and Japanese planes dogfight for supremacy in the fourth carrier battle of the Pacific War. The carrier USS Hornet was sunk but the damaged Japanese fleet had to draw off and give up plans to re-supply their troops on Guadalcanal. In a strange bit of bad luck a torpedo rigged under the wing of a damaged PBY Catalina flying boat accidentally dropped into the ocean and after several mad circles sank the destroyer USS Porter.

1944- End of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

1947-HOLLYWOOD FIGHTS BACK- Members of Hollywood's progressive elite tried to answer the McCarthy hearings and the blacklist with a nationwide radio broadcast "Hollywood Fights Back” -Starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, John Huston, Gene Kelly and Edward G. Robinson.
The event was a public relations fiasco. Nobel laureate Thomas Mann used his airtime to launch into a longwinded intellectual defense of Communism. When word reached them that some of the Hollywood writers they were defending really were communists Bogart and Bacall felt they had been hoodwinked. "As politicians we stink!" quote Bogie.

1951- Despite being past his prime famed heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis The Brown Bomber came out of retirement to attempt a comeback and pay off back taxes. This day he was knocked out by young champ Rocky Marciano. Growing up, Marciano had idolized Louis and afterwards apologized to him.

1952- The TV documentary Victory at Sea, first premiered, with its majestic soundtrack by Richard Rogers. Scoring by Robert Russell Bennett.

1955- The Greenwich Village Voice, later called simply The Voice, first published. It ended in 2018.

1955- Ngo Dinh Diem declared himself the first President of the Republic of (South) Vietnam.

1957- Vatican Radio began broadcasting.

1958- The movie Bell, Book and Candle came out. Starring Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. The film inspired the 60s TV series Bewitched. Roy E. Disney liked the movie so much his car licenseplate was Piewacket.

1962- THE LUNCH THAT SAVED THE WORLD- During the tense standoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this day at a quiet Washington DC Chinese restaurant, a KGB man Alexander Feklisov, code name Fomin, met John Scali, an ABC White House correspondent. He gave the newsman a letter containing an offer from Khrushchev to take to the Kennedy that would end the superpower standoff. No personal emails, tweets or texts then. What happened? Wait for tomorrow

1965- The rock band the Beatles received MBEs (most excellent Member of the British Empire) medals at Buckingham Palace. John Lennon later returned his as a protest.

1970- Yale law graduate Gary Trudeau was convinced by his classmate Jim Andrews, now an editor at Universal Press syndicate, to recreate the funny comic strip he did in their campus newspaper. Its original name was 'Bull Tales". He renamed it Doonesbury.

1972- Nixon advisor Dr Henry Kissinger announced "Peace is at Hand" in Vietnam.

1979 - Kim Jae-kyu, head of the South Korean intelligence agency, blew away their country's President, Park Chung-hee with a machine gun at a state banquet. Park had been president/dictator since 1961. The assassin was executed some months
later. He claimed it was an accident.

1984-" I’LL BE BACK…" James Cameron’s sci-fi thriller THE TERMINATOR first released. Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered a Hollywood joke before this film made him a major star. An interesting what-if, was that before Arnold was cast in the role of the cyborg assassin, the producers were first considering O.J. Simpson.

1985- The original date Marty McFly time travels from in the film Back to the Future.

2001- President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act, which gave him power to read your mail, tap your phones, bypassing all the safeguards demanded by Congress and the Bill of Rights, even the Magna Carta.

2015- The Supergirl TV show staring Melissa Benoist premiered.

2028- Asteroid 1977 FX11 will pass within 600,000 miles of the Earth. In 1998 The Smithsonian announced the asteroid would hit the planet or maybe pass closer than the moon's orbit 30,000 miles, causing global meteorological convulsions. The following day the Jet Propulsion Lab and Mount Palomar Observatory announced a correction of the calculations to prove it will miss us by a wide distance. So stick around, we're going to find out.
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Yesterday’s Question: The Greek god Aphrodite was the Roman god Venus. The Greek god Poseidon was the Roman god Neptune. The Greek God Hephaestos was…?

Answer: Vulcan.

Question: The Greek god Aphrodite was the Roman god Venus. The Greek god Posiedon was the Roman god Neptune. The Greek God Hephaestus was…?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: The North African coastline used to be called The Barbary Coast, for the Muslim pirates who raided European shipping. But there was also a Barbary Coast in America. Where was it?
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History for 10/25/2023
Birthdays: Pablo Picasso, George Bizet, Johann Strauss Jr., Bobby Knight, Helen Reddy Minnie Pearl, Whit Bissell, Lyle Lovett. Leo G. Carroll, Bill Barty the famous Little Person actor, John Matusak, Tyrus Wong, Katie Perry is 39, Nancy Cartwright the voice of Bart Simpson is 66.

Today is the Feast of Saints Crispin and Chrispinian- the patron saints of leatherworkers. They were supposedly so holy, that when the Roman prefect of Soisson saw his tortures were having no effect, he drowned himself. Another case of low job satisfaction.

1555- Emperor Charles V was called the Man who Married Europe- The Prince of the Netherlands was also King of Spain, which meant all of the Americas and Italy, and he was Emperor of Germany-which meant everything from Denmark and the Rhine to Turkish held Hungary. He assumed all this power at 19, fought wars, tried to stop the Protestant Reformation, sacked Rome and imprisoned the Pope and wielded power with gusto. But by 45 he was exhausted, sick with asthma and arthritis.

So, this day at the States General of the Netherlands, Charles V announced his resignation of all his offices and retirement to a monastery in Spain. He named his son Phillip II to be King of Spain and the Netherlands and his brother Ferdinand to succeed him as German Emperor. Charles wasn’t a great monk though, his monk’s cell had rooms for 50 servants, and he insisted on keeping his favorite Titian paintings with him. A master of languages, Charles once said “Speak Italian to Ladies, German to enemies, French to friends and Spanish to God.”

1760- King George II died of constipation, his grandson George III becomes King. Old George II completed his 33 year reign with this final opinion of English politics:” I am sick to death of all this foolish stuff, and wish with all my heart that the Devil may take all your bishops, and the Devil take all your ministers, the Devil take your Parliament and the Devil take this whole Island, provided I can get out and go home to Hanover!”

1769-Young Massachusetts lawyer John Adams married Abigail Smith.

1795- The last king of Poland, Stanislas II Poniatowski, abdicated under pressure from his old girlfriend, Catherine the Great. Poland as a nationstate disappeared until 1919. As King, Stash was a loser but his family did pretty well in later years. A Poniatowski was a general under Napoleon, and in recent years the family was big in French-Gaulist politics. Helena Poniatowska is a writer in Mexico who wrote a prize-winning book about Diego Rivera.

1810- King George III celebrated his golden jubilee ruling Great Britain. Even though at the time he was elderly, almost blind and slipping into his final insanity. His youngest daughter Princess Amelia was also dying of tuberculosis at age 27.

1854-THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE- BALACLAVA- the climactic battle of the Crimean War in which Britain and France sent armies to help Turkey fight off Russia. During the battle Lord Raglan watched from his mountaintop the Russians on another mountaintop (their army was arranged on the hillsides like a fork with it's prongs pointed at the English and French). They were trying to pull some field artillery out of the way of the advancing Brits. So Raglan sent Lord Cardigan orders to send the Light Brigade to capture these few cannon before they got away. Lord Cardigan (who always insisted his officers drink champagne for breakfast) wasn't on a mountaintop but deep in a valley and all he could see was the whole heavily fortified Russian army in front of him. Then he got Raglan's command: "-Charge the Guns!" To cap matters the messenger Captain Nolan was angry with Cardigan so he refused to explain the order.

So the 600 of the Light Brigade charged right into the whole Russian Army alone. The entire attack all took about 8 minutes. One survivor recalled seeing a Sergeant Talbot get his head struck off by a cannonball but his body stayed galloping in the saddle another 30 yards, lance still positioned under his arm. Lord Cardigan led his brigade through the first line of guns then immediately turned back “It is not the job of commanders to grapple with common soldiers.” Fired on from three sides the Light Brigade took the first lines of cannon and could have pierced the Russian center if they had been followed by reinforcements, but everyone just watched in stunned silence. The French commander gave orders for his Chausseurs d'Afrique to storm one other position which was the only positive result of the day. One problem the Light Brigade had that never made it into any movies was when they finally reached the Russian gunners, they were wearing their heavy wool winter coats that were too thick for sabers to slash. The horsemen slapped their swords harmlessly against their shoulders and backs.

The Light Brigade staggered back accomplishing nothing, 3/4 of their men killed. The 17th Lancers went in with 250 and came out with 17 men. But it did inspire a really nice poem by Tennyson. In a delightfully British moment, the 2nd in command, his clothes torn up by bullets, blackened with gun smoke and a horrible saber gash across his face, said to Lord Cardigan: "Sir, shall we have another go?"

1864 Battle of Mine Creek, Missouri. The last major Civil War battle in the Trans-Mississippi-Western Theater. Yankee cavalry charged and destroyed a Confederate army under General Sterling Price. Price’s army had invaded Missouri hoping to capture St, Louis and cause enough of a sensation so Lincoln would lose re-election and the new government would make peace with the Confederacy. Price’s army had taken in many Missouri desperadoes like Quantrill’s Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson. On the Yankee side a cavalry brigade was commanded by Major Frederick Benteen, who would be known as the commander of Custers reserves in the Little Big Horn massacre in 1876.

1891- THE SECRET OF THE LOST DUTCHMAN MINE- An old German (Deutsche) immigrant miner named Jacob Walsh lay dying after a lifetime digging in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona. Before he died, he told those around him he had discovered a fabulously rich gold mine and killed his partners to keep the secret. As proof he gave them the 45 pounds of pure gold in his trunk and said there was ten times that amount in the mine. He died leaving tantalizing vague clues like " I can see the military road from my mine, but those on the military road can't see me.." 125 people died or went mad looking for the Lost Dutchman Mine. To this day it has never been found.

1903- New York’s New Amsterdam Theater opened with a gala performance of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. The New Amsterdam boasted all Art Nouveau decoration, the first theater in a steel girder building and a new style of floating balcony that didn’t obstruct the view with support pillars, an effect to be copied by movie houses throughout the world. The Great Ziegfield staged his great Follies there, and in the rooftop garden theater for only the cream of New York society. The theater fell into decay and in the 1970’s was a porno house, but the Walt Disney Company restored it to its Gilded Age glory in 1996.

1917- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, in a lecture announced his firm belief in spiritualism, divination, and communication with the dead. He called it The New Revelation. “The chasm between this life and the next is not insurmountable.” Other British intellects thought Sir Arthur had gone a bit potty.

1920- King Alexander of Greece died from blood poisoning after being bit by his pet monkey.

1921- Bat Masterson, Quebec born gunfighter, marshal of Dodge City, gambler, Indian fighter and outlaw, died of a heart attack over a typewriter as a sports reporter for the New York Morning Telegraph, while covering a championship prize fight. He was 67.

1924- The Zioniev Letter. Four days before the British General Elections the Tory opposition to the Labor Government of Ramsay MacDonald produced a letter purporting to show a cozy relationship between the Labor Party and the radical Bolshevik revolutionaries of Russia. Ramsay MacDonald’s party lost the elections. Later it turned out the letter was forged. Fake News!

1944- Battle of the Leyte Gulf. The combined forces of General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz destroyed the last remaining tactical Japanese fleet. Four carriers, three battleships and assorted other craft sunk. After Leyte, the Japanese Navy ceased to be a factor for the rest of the war. In that same battle, the first Kamikaze planes attacked American ships.

1946- President Harry Truman declared a postwar “Housing Emergency” that led to the development of the suburban track house.

1957- Vicious Mafia killer Al Anastasia, the head of "Murder, Inc." walked into Arthur Grosso’s Barbershop in the Park Sheraton Hotel for his usual shave and haircut. He trusted Arthur enough to allow him to cover his face with a hot towel. While he was relaxing this way, Grosso backed away and two hitmen sent by Vito Genovese came in and shot big Al full of bullets. The murderers were never found.

1960- The Bulova Acutron Watch went on sale today. The first watch using an electronic power cell instead of a wound mainspring.

1964- At a football game Minnesota Viking defensive back Larry Marshal scooped up a fumble and ran 66 yards into the end zone. Except, it was his own goal line. DOH!

1983- President Reagan sent thousands of US Marines to invade the tiny island of Grenada, ostensibly to save a few American medical students from some fat Cuban construction workers and secure the US strategic supply of nutmeg.

1993- Long time Hollywood horror movie star Vincent Price died at age 83.
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Yesterday’s Question: The North African coastline used to be called The Barbary Coast, for the Muslim pirates who raided European shipping. But there was also a Barbary Coast in America. Where was it?

Answer: In the 1800s, the waterfront of San Francisco was called the Barbary Coast, because of its wild, lawless inhabitants. The Gold Rush in California and the Yukon made it a boomtown on the water. San Francisco’s Barbary Coast was completely destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, and they rebuilt it much more cleaned up.