Question: An early American superhero was named Nattie Bumpo. In what book did he first appear?

Question: Which character was developed first? Captain Ahab, Sherlock Holmes or Cyrano de Bergerac?
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History for 11/10/2023
Birthdays: Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Claude Rains, Carl Stalling, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho Marx’s TV announcer, Enrico Morricone, Tracey Morgan is 54, Neil Gaiman, Animator Sue Kroyer

Today is the feast of Saint Leo the Great, the Pope who scared Attila the Hun away from Rome by playing on his superstitions about the invisible power of the Christian’s god.

1610- THE NIGHT OF DUPES- Cardinal Richelieu ruled France with a centralized authority that made him admired by King Louis XIII, but hated by just about everyone else. When the king was gravely ill, the Queen Mother nursed him back to health. In return she asked as her payment, the Cardinals head! She wanted him replaced by keeper of the seals Jean de Mariac. This day in the Luxembourg Palace, Mom told Louis "It’s either Richelieu or me!" On cue, the gaunt cardinal emerged from a secret door. The King made his choice- Bye Bye Mommy. Oh and uh.,. Jean de Mariac was beheaded.

1766- In New Brunswick New Jersey, The Queens College was founded. It later changed its name to Rutgers University.

1770- Voltaire said:" If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

1775- The U.S. Marine Corps founded by Congress. Marines were originally the sharpshooters who climb up ships rigging during a sea battle and shoot down on the enemy decks. They got the nickname Leathernecks because part of their early uniform was a stiff leather collar worn under their cravat to ward off cutlass blows and "keep in the head up in a good military bearing."

1778- John Paul Jones had been beached in France for nine months. At the height of the American Revolution he had been told to send away his ship USS Ranger to await a bigger, better one from the French. But delay and red tape was making him crazy. Today his agents found him a new command- an old, run down tub named L’Duc du Durras. John Paul Jones fixed it up and renamed her the USS Bonhomme Richard after Ben Franklin’s bestselling book. The USS Bonhomme Richard became the most famous ship in the young American Navy.

1782- English King George III wrote his Prime Minister Lord Shelburne about the recently lost American Revolution: " I should be miserable indeed if no blame for the dismemberment of America from this Empire not be laid at my door. However, knowing that Knavery is a striking feature of it’s Inhabitants, it may Not in the end be such an Evil that they are now aliens to this kingdom."

1793- FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESS OF REASON- The radical French Revolutionaries had done away with the Catholic religion as a collaborator in tyranny, but they knew the common people wanted the consolation of religion. So they tried the worship of Reason in its place. Today was the first festival of the Goddess of Reason held at Notre Dame, with an actress personifying the new deity and chants and hymns and such silliness. It didn't last, it's inventor Pierre Chaumette was guillotined for not being radical enough. When Napoleon came to power he restored normal Catholic worship, although the French army permitted no chaplains.

1865- During the Civil War, Swiss immigrant Henry Wirz was the Confederate commander of the infamous prison Andersonville where thousands of Yankee prisoners starved and perished. On this day he became the first military officer ever hanged for war crimes. He was also the first person to use the excuse "I was only following orders."

1871- STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTON- No one in England had heard from the famous African explorer-missionary Dr. David Livingston for three years and he was feared dead. Henry Morton Stanley undertook the expedition partly as a publicity stunt funded by the Josef Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper. After one year of wandering through the jungle, Stanley came upon the old missionary on the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Ujiji. Stanley introduced himself by saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley also proved Speeckes theory of the source of the Nile River as Lake Victoria Nyanzaa.

1880- Old Civil War general and New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace got his first novel published, and it came out pretty good- Ben Hur.

1885- Gottfried Daimler invented the first motorcycle.

1917- The Voting Rights for Women Movement or Suffragettes began a dramatic all day protest in front of the White House. Every time a protester was arrested and dragged off another would take her place. By the days end 41 women were arrested.

1918- After abdicating the throne, Kaiser Wilhelm decided he didn't want to stick around and end up executed like his cousin Nicky the Russian Czar. So, in the middle of night the German Imperial family slipped away by secret train and crossed the border into neutral Holland. The Hohenzollern Dynasty, which had ruled Germany since 1685, was now gone. Wilhelm’s first words when reaching the Castle of Daun were: "I should now like a strong hot cup of English tea."

1918- Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and Empress Zita abdicate. Ancient Emperor Franz-Joseph II helped start World War I and then he conveniently for him, he died. His young grandnephew Karl tried to handle a bad situation he had no control over. He even attempted a peace overture behind the Kaiser's back as early as 1916. Ironically the Austro-German High Command helped to fund Russian revolutionaries like Lenin. German money paid the printing costs for Pravda.
After taking power in Petersburg Lenin immediately had soviet-style revolutionary cells set up in Vienna and Berlin. Like in Germany riots convulsed Austrian cities and whole regiments were throwing away their weapons and walking home. The Imperial Hapsburg family, which had reigned in Europe uninterrupted since 1265, piled into limousines and sped off for Switzerland before the Viennese Workers Soviet Committee could arrest them. Like the Kaiser, they too had heard how the Russian Czar and his whole family had been put up against the wall and shot. So they preferred not to suffer a similar fate. The Republics of Austria and Hungary were declared. In 2004 Pope John Paul II made Kaiser Karl I a Saint. Their son Crown Prince Otto lived to age 98 and died in 2011.

1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

1951- The first long distance telephone call without needing an operator to make the connection.

1953- Disney’s short “ Toot Whistle, Plunk and Boom” released.

1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.

1971- The US table tennis team arrived in Red China for a tour. Ping-Pong became an unlikely diplomatic tactic to begin the warming of relations between China and the US.

1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 1970's folk song to happen.

1977- Pope Paul VI announced that Catholics who remarried or married Protestants were no longer automatically excommunicate.

1981- Pioneering French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen 1925 epic movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. At Radio City Music Hall, Brownlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the NY audience.

1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall designed by Maia Lin opened to the public in Washington D.C,

1991- Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast premiered at the El Capitan. Directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale.

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many hits like Terminator 2 Judgement Day, Rambo, Basic Instinct, and Total Recall declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island".

2008- Two days after Barack Obama was elected president, Georgia Republican congressmen Paul Broun was already calling him a “Marxist-Nazi.” This set the tone for the partisan hatred of the first black president that bordered on hysteria, and continued long after he left office.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which character was developed first? Captain Ahab, Sherlock Holmes or Cyrano de Bergerac?

Answer: Captain Ahab 1851. Sherlock Holmes in 1887, and Cyrano in 1897.

Question: When Abe Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater, what play was he watching?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When tallying up your finances, is it better to finish in the red? Or in the black?
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History for 11/8/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nerva, Bram Stoker, Sir Edmund Halley, June Havoc, Margaret Mitchell, Joe Flynn- Captain Binghampton in the 60’s TV sitcom McHales Navy, Ricky Lee Jones, Bonny Raitt, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Ester Rolle, Katherine Hepburn, Parker Posey is 55, Gretchen Mol is 51, Tara Reid, Norman Lloyd, John Musker is 70

393AD- Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius banned any further worship of the old pagan gods and closed their remaining temples. He stopped the Olympic Games, not to return until revived in 1895.

641 A.D.- Cyrus the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria surrendered Egypt to the Arab army of Caliph Omar. Egypt had been a Byzantine province and the emperors in Constantinople had been persecuting their national church, the Coptic Rite, as a heresy. So the Egyptians opened their gates to the Muslim conquerors. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius appeared at the port of Alexandria with a large fleet. But after removing some of his personal stuff, he abandoned the Paris of the Ancient World without a fight.

1519- Spanish Conquistador Hernan' Cortez first met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II. Cortes was guided by Malinche', the "Pocahontas of the Aztecs". This noblewoman guided Cortez's little band into the heart of the empire. Eyewitness Bernal Diaz described how after dinner the Spaniards were given tobacco pipes to smoke, but a special pipe with different tobacco was given to Montezuma, after smoking it "The Emperor became merry, as we do when drunk with wine." Cortez was also offered a cup of chocolate, then a bitter brew called Xocoatl.

1620 -Battle of White Mountain- Austrian Catholic armies crush the Czech rebels and their leader Frederick of the Palatinate, who is nicknamed: "The Winter King" for his brief reign. Unfortunately, the Thirty Years War was only beginning. French philosopher Renes Descartes was a young soldier in the ranks. Although Frederick was married to the daughter of the English King, James wisely refused to get England embroiled in this European war. Frederick’s son Prince Rupert of the Rhine later traveled to England and got involved in the English Civil War.
The Czech Protestant rebels mostly came from the province of Bohemia and their wandering exile in the cities of Europe caused the word "Bohemian" to become synonymous with a rootless lifestyle.

1789- Elijah Craig first distilled whiskey from Indian corn and strained it through a wool blanket. He lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, so the stuff soon became popularly known as Bourbon. Abe Lincoln called Bourbon, “the most American of drinks.”

1805- Lewis and Clark first stand on the sand at the Pacific Ocean near the mouth of the Columbia River.

1821- Missouri became a state. The first American state on the west bank of the Mississippi.

1864- Abraham Lincoln was re-elected president over Democrat challenger George McClellan. It was the first U.S. election ever held during a war, and set the custom that Presidents in a war year never lose. Even most of the army voted for Old Abe. The inmates of the notorious Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp cast ballots, even if they had no way to send them to Washington.

1880- Famous actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in La Dame aux Camelias. She made a further ten tours of the US, all billed as Farewell Appearances.

1887- Gunfighter-Dentist Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis. He knew he had it for a long time, and in the 1800's it was as irreversible as AIDS used to be. So some say this knowledge is what made him such a bold pistolero. But unfortunately for him, he won all his gunfights and died in bed in a hospital anyway. His last words after taking a shot of whiskey were:" Well, I'll be damned!" Another version said his last words were “ This is funny…” He was 35.

1889- Montana became a state.

1908- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were both killed by soldiers in San Vicente Canton, Bolivia. There is a theory that they faked this story and slipped back into the US to live out their lives quietly. Sundance under the name William Henry Long, died in Utah in 1936. In 2008 a DNA analysis was done on the remains and compared to the DNA of a distant relative of Sundance. They did not match.

1910- Patent for the first insect electrocutor. FHZZZZITT !

1910- Congressman Victor Berger of Wisconsin became the first Socialist to be elected to Congress. In the first decades of the 20th century a number of big city mayors and congressmen were socialists. In the 1912 presidential election when Woodrow Wilson won by a slim one million votes, third party socialist Eugene Debs polled over a million votes.

1918- German and Anglo-French negotiators began meetings in a railroad car in the remote Compiegne forest to negotiate an end World War I. Meanwhile the Kaiser’s government continued to collapse from within. Today revolutionary German sailors seized the town hall of Cologne and declared a workers state.

1923- When it sounds like they would be found out early, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler put into motion his attempt to overthrow the Weimar government. Because they started in a beer hall in Munich the coup is called the Beer Hall Putsch.

1926- New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote the hit song: "Will You Love Me in December like You do in May? ", met chorus dancer Betty Compton at the Gershwin musical "Oh Kay!" and fell in love. Politically, Walker was “ as crooked as a dogs leg”, but it was his romancing his mistress openly in front of New York society, not to mention in front of his wife, that was the scandal of the Roaring 20's.
Forced to resign as mayor after a probe unearthed massive corruption in his administration, Jimmy tried once more to run for mayor against Fiorello Laguardia in 1933. But he was blocked by the Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York and NY Governor Franklin Roosevelt. He had just become president and found Walker an embarrassment. Jimmy Walker and Betty Compton lived in Europe for the next ten years. In 2000 married NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost his chance to run for the US Senate in part because he made open appearances at shows and dinners with his girlfriend, even entertaining her in Gracie Mansion while his family was in an adjoining wing. She later became his 3rd wife.

1929- New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened.

1932-Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s second wife Nadehzda Alleyuieva shot herself, or so the official story said. It may have been the KGB, on orders of Stalin himself. Their daughter Svetlana later escaped to the U.S. and lived the rest of her life there.

1933- King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan was assassinated by Abdul Khallig.

1939- Pinks Hot Dogs in LA started by Betty and Paul Pink.

1942- Operation Torch- Anglo-American soldiers began mass landings on the beaches in French North Africa. The first action of American soldiers in World War II in Europe. The pro-nazi Vichy French fired on the Allies, until a deal was made with their commander Admiral Darlan. Charles DeGaulle was furious that fighting began before he could try to convince the French not to resist. But Eisenhower, FDR and Churchill were not yet ready to admit that the big nosed Colonel was now the de facto leader of Free-France.

1943- The first one man show of American abstract painter named Jackson Pollock. Pollock later created his brushless dripping form of painting that earned him the nickname:” Jack the Dripper”.

1950- In Korea, two Chinese MIG fighters tangled with US Sabre jets. The first jet-to-jet dogfight.

1952- The Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that Baseball a sport, not a business. Therefore it is exempt from anti-trust laws.

1956-The Ten Commandments opened in theaters. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Much of the animated effects like the pillar of fire were done by freelancing Disney effects animators like Joshua Meador.

1965- The Days of Our Lives soap opera first premiered on TV.

1966- Former actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan elected Governor of California trouncing two-term incumbent Pat Brown. Uber-Conservative Reagan declared a tough line with the hippies of Haight Ashbury and Berkeley.

1966- Doctors at St. Josephs Hospital removed one of Walt Disney’s cancerous lungs, but discovered the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and liver. They determined he did not have long to live.

1973- Walt Disney’s animated Robin Hood premiered.

1994- Marion Barry was re-elected Mayor of Washington D.C. despite serving jail time for smoking crack. Comedian Chris Rock wondered:” Who did he run against that was so bad that you’d rather vote for a crackhead?”
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Yesterday’s Question: When tallying up your finances, is it better to finish in the red? Or in the black?

Answer: Hundreds of years ago when businesses tallied up gains and losses, accountants recorded profits in black ink and losses in red ink. So being in the black is more desirable to being in the red.

Question: When Abe Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater, what play was he watching?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When tallying up your finances, is it better to finish in the red? Or in the black?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/8/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nerva, Bram Stoker, Sir Edmund Halley, June Havoc, Margaret Mitchell, Joe Flynn- Captain Binghampton in the 60’s TV sitcom McHales Navy, Ricky Lee Jones, Bonny Raitt, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Ester Rolle, Katherine Hepburn, Parker Posey is 55, Gretchen Mol is 51, Tara Reid, Norman Lloyd

393AD- Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius banned any further worship of the old pagan gods and closed their remaining temples. He stopped the Olympic Games, not to return until revived in 1895.

641 A.D.- Cyrus the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria surrendered Egypt to the Arab army of Caliph Omar. Egypt had been a Byzantine province and the emperors in Constantinople had been persecuting their national church, the Coptic Rite, as a heresy. So the Egyptians opened their gates to the Muslim conquerors. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius appeared at the port of Alexandria with a large fleet. But after removing some of his personal stuff, he abandoned the Paris of the Ancient World without a fight.

1519- Spanish Conquistador Hernan' Cortez first met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II. Cortes was guided by Malinche', the "Pocahontas of the Aztecs". This noblewoman guided Cortez's little band into the heart of the empire. Eyewitness Bernal Diaz described how after dinner the Spaniards were given tobacco pipes to smoke, but a special pipe with different tobacco was given to Montezuma, after smoking it "The Emperor became merry, as we do when drunk with wine." Cortez was also offered a cup of chocolate, then a bitter brew called Xocoatl.

1620 -Battle of White Mountain- Austrian Catholic armies crush the Czech rebels and their leader Frederick of the Palatinate, who is nicknamed: "The Winter King" for his brief reign. Unfortunately, the Thirty Years War was only beginning. French philosopher Renes Descartes was a young soldier in the ranks. Although Frederick was married to the daughter of the English King, James wisely refused to get England embroiled in this European war. Frederick’s son Prince Rupert of the Rhine later traveled to England and got involved in the English Civil War.
The Czech Protestant rebels mostly came from the province of Bohemia and their wandering exile in the cities of Europe caused the word "Bohemian" to become synonymous with a rootless lifestyle.

1789- Elijah Craig first distilled whiskey from Indian corn and strained it through a wool blanket. He lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, so the stuff soon became popularly known as Bourbon. Abe Lincoln called Bourbon, “the most American of drinks.”

1805- Lewis and Clark first stand on the sand at the Pacific Ocean near the mouth of the Columbia River.

1821- Missouri became a state. The first American state on the west bank of the Mississippi.

1864- Abraham Lincoln was re-elected president over Democrat challenger George McClellan. It was the first U.S. election ever held during a war, and set the custom that Presidents in a war year never lose. Even most of the army voted for Old Abe. The inmates of the notorious Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp cast ballots, even if they had no way to send them to Washington.

1880- Famous actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in La Dame aux Camelias. She made a further ten tours of the US, all billed as Farewell Appearances.

1887- Gunfighter-Dentist Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis. He knew he had it for a long time, and in the 1800's it was as irreversible as AIDS used to be. So some say this knowledge is what made him such a bold pistolero. But unfortunately for him, he won all his gunfights and died in bed in a hospital anyway. His last words after taking a shot of whiskey were:" Well, I'll be damned!" Another version said his last words were “ This is funny…” He was 35.

1889- Montana became a state.

1908- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were both killed by soldiers in San Vicente Canton, Bolivia. There is a theory that they faked this story and slipped back into the US to live out their lives quietly. Sundance under the name William Henry Long, died in Utah in 1936. In 2008 a DNA analysis was done on the remains and compared to the DNA of a distant relative of Sundance. They did not match.

1910- Patent for the first insect electrocutor. FHZZZZITT !

1910- Congressman Victor Berger of Wisconsin became the first Socialist to be elected to Congress. In the first decades of the 20th century a number of big city mayors and congressmen were socialists. In the 1912 presidential election when Woodrow Wilson won by a slim one million votes, third party socialist Eugene Debs polled over a million votes.

1918- German and Anglo-French negotiators began meetings in a railroad car in the remote Compiegne forest to negotiate an end World War I. Meanwhile the Kaiser’s government continued to collapse from within. Today revolutionary German sailors seized the town hall of Cologne and declared a workers state.

1923- When it sounds like they would be found out early, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler put into motion his attempt to overthrow the Weimar government. Because they started in a beer hall in Munich the coup is called the Beer Hall Putsch.

1926- New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote the hit song: "Will You Love Me in December like You do in May? ", met chorus dancer Betty Compton at the Gershwin musical "Oh Kay!" and fell in love. Politically, Walker was “ as crooked as a dogs leg”, but it was his romancing his mistress openly in front of New York society, not to mention in front of his wife, that was the scandal of the Roaring 20's.
Forced to resign as mayor after a probe unearthed massive corruption in his administration, Jimmy tried once more to run for mayor against Fiorello Laguardia in 1933. But he was blocked by the Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York and NY Governor Franklin Roosevelt. He had just become president and found Walker an embarrassment. Jimmy Walker and Betty Compton lived in Europe for the next ten years. In 2000 married NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost his chance to run for the US Senate in part because he made open appearances at shows and dinners with his girlfriend, even entertaining her in Gracie Mansion while his family was in an adjoining wing. She later became his 3rd wife.

1929- New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened.

1932-Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s second wife Nadehzda Alleyuieva shot herself, or so the official story said. It may have been the KGB, on orders of Stalin himself. Their daughter Svetlana later escaped to the U.S. and lived the rest of her life there.

1933- King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan was assassinated by Abdul Khallig.

1939- Pinks Hot Dogs in LA started by Betty and Paul Pink.

1942- Operation Torch- Anglo-American soldiers began mass landings on the beaches in French North Africa. The first action of American soldiers in World War II in Europe. The pro-nazi Vichy French fired on the Allies, until a deal was made with their commander Admiral Darlan. Charles DeGaulle was furious that fighting began before he could try to convince the French not to resist. But Eisenhower, FDR and Churchill were not yet ready to admit that the big nosed Colonel was now the de facto leader of Free-France.

1943- The first one man show of American abstract painter named Jackson Pollock. Pollock later created his brushless dripping form of painting that earned him the nickname:” Jack the Dripper”.

1950- In Korea, two Chinese MIG fighters tangled with US Sabre jets. The first jet-to-jet dogfight.

1952- The Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that Baseball a sport, not a business. Therefore it is exempt from anti-trust laws.

1956-The Ten Commandments opened in theaters. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Much of the animated effects like the pillar of fire were done by freelancing Disney effects animators like Joshua Meador.

1965- The Days of Our Lives soap opera first premiered on TV.

1966- Former actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan elected Governor of California trouncing two-term incumbent Pat Brown. Uber-Conservative Reagan declared a tough line with the hippies of Haight Ashbury and Berkeley.

1966- Doctors at St. Josephs Hospital removed one of Walt Disney’s cancerous lungs, but discovered the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and liver. They determined he did not have long to live.

1973- Walt Disney’s animated Robin Hood premiered.

1994- Marion Barry was re-elected Mayor of Washington D.C. despite serving jail time for smoking crack. Comedian Chris Rock wondered:” Who did he run against that was so bad that you’d rather vote for a crackhead?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday’s Question: When tallying up your finances, is it better to finish in the red? Or in the black?

Answer: Hundreds of years ago when businesses tallied up gains and losses, accountants recorded profits in black ink and losses in red ink. So being in the black is more desirable to being in the red.

Question: What does it mean to moon someone?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What was the device called the wireless?
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History for 11/6/2023
Birthdays: Sophocles 495 BC, Joanna La Loca (Crazy Joanie 1479), John Phillip Sousa, Joseph Smith the founder of LDS, Ignacz Paderewski, Charles Dow of Dow Jones, Adolphus Sax inventor of the Saxophone, James Naismith the inventor of Basketball, Mike Nichols, Edsel Ford, animator Eddie Rehberg, Ray Coniff, John Olsen of the comedy duo Olsen & Johnson, Harold Ross the founder of the New Yorker magazine, Jonathan Harris, Maria Shriver is 67, Thandie Newton, Stephen Bosustow, Elmer Plummer, Sally Field is 77, Emma Stone is 35

Today is the Feast of Saint Leonard of Noblac, the Patron of Women in Labor and Prisoners of War. -is there some connection here..?

1528- Conquistador Alva Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked on the coast of Texas. The first white European to set foot in Texas. Cabeza de Vaca means Head of a Cow.

1730- King Frederick William I of Prussia has Lt Hans Hermann von Katte, the gay lover of his 18 year old son Crown Prince Frederick, beheaded by saber. He even forced his horrified son to watch the execution from his window. The king referred to his son as “ An effeminate fool.” Frederick William I was the originator of mechanically strict Prussian discipline that made the German Army infamous. He wanted his men to be more afraid of their drill sergeants than of the enemy.
He was so feared by his subjects that they used to run away when he arrived. The king once caught one wretch in a doorway, and drubbed in the face with his cane, shouting: "WHY ARE YOU AFRAID? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME! YOU SCUM!"
When the old sadist finally died, and Prince Freddy became King Frederick the Great, he slept with whomever he liked.

1793- The youngest brother of King Louis XVI of France, the Duc d' Orleans, tried to survive the Revolution by repudiating his birthright, changing his name to Phillipe Egalitie', he even voted to execute his own brother. Well, it didn't work. Today he too went to the guillotine. His son would rule France in 1830-1848 as King Louis Phillipe. His palace, the Palais Orleans also known as the Palais Royale went from private ownership to property of the nation.

1806- The news reached London of the great naval victory of Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson. Englishmen great and small fell into extreme grief over the death of their naval hero. Samuel Coleridge wrote: 'When Nelson died, it seemed as if no man was a stranger to another, for all were made acquaintances in the rites of a common anguish."

1810- A few days after his youngest daughter Princess Amelia died of tuberculosis at age 27, old King George III lapsed back into the insanity he suffered earlier in his reign. For the remaining 8 years of his life, he remained a blind shut-in.

1812- On this day during Napoleons Retreat from Moscow, it first began to snow.

1844- Spain granted independence to the Dominican Republic.

1850- The first fire brigade formed in Hawaii.

1860- Abraham Lincoln of Illinois won the presidency of the United States. The first Republican to win an election.

1869- Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first college football game.

1893- Famed Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died at age 53. Just a few days before the premiere of his 6th Symphony. The cause of death for the composer was declared to be cholera from drinking un-boiled water in a local St Petersburg restaurant. Recent scholarship floated a different theory. Tchaikovsky was a closeted gay man afraid of being exposed. He had tried marriage to a woman, and hated it so much he tried suicide two weeks later. By this time he had formed an infatuation over his nephew. This allegedly caused a secret "Court of Honor" of alumni of his old civil service academy to confront him and threatened him with exposure and scandal. They threatened to even go directly to the Czar to expose him. So he may have taken poison and it was blamed on cholera which was prevalent in the city then. Fellow composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov though the inquest more oddly rushed and confused than usual. We may never really know.

1916- Elderly Buffalo Bill Cody made his last public appearance in El Paso Texas. El Paso had been as wild a frontier town as Deadwood or Tombstone, but now it was a quiet modern city. Telephone and electricity wires crisscrossed overhead and streetcars clattered down the streets where gunfighters once shot it out. Buffalo Bills parade seemed to make plain to all the final passing of the Old West to the New. The wild cheering brought tears running down the old scout's white mustaches. It was a fitting final bow. Bill Cody died of prostate cancer a few weeks later.

1917- After three months of murderous fighting, Canadian troops finally took the Belgian village of Passchendaele. Also called the Third Battle of Ypres.

1924- Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister of England. Winston Churchill, who had deserted the Conservative Party for the Liberals, now decided to switch back to the Tories and became Home Secretary.

1936-The Screen Children's Guild chartered.

1941- In an evening nationwide radio broadcast, Josef Stalin told the Soviet people that although their losses were heavy, the Germans had already lost 4.5 million men, and were on the run. It was all pure fiction. In reality Leningrad was surrounded, Moscow was threatened and almost 40% of Russia’s population was under Nazis occupation.

1942- German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel began withdrawing his shattered army from the defeat at El Alamein. He then got a direct order from Adolf Hitler to stop the retreat and fight on to “Victory or Death!” Rommel ignored him, and withdrew his men anyway.

1944- Lord Moyne, the British Resident in Cairo, was assassinated by two young Israelis who were members of the Stern Gang, a terrorist organization. Ironically at this same time in London Prime Minister Winston Churchill was assuring Jewish leader Azer Weissman that Lord Moyne was sympathetic to the Zionist cause.

1947- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization- NATO created.

1962- Ted Kennedy first elected to the Senate from Mass. Called The Lion of the Senate, he remained in office until his death in 2009.

1966- A great flood hit the City of Venice. An international effort was mounted to save her priceless artifacts. Venice never suffered bad floods until the end of the nineteenth century when a deep channel was dug in the Venetian lagoon to accommodate modern heavy shipping. That imbalance messed up her natural flood cycle from the Adriatic. Added to that the whole city is resting on thousands of wooden pilings pounded into a sand bar when Attila the Hun was still running around. Venice is still sinking a few inches each century, and still suffers a terrible flood every few years.

1973- Abe Beame became the first Jewish man to be elected Mayor of New York City.

1975- First appearance of the band the Sex Pistols.
=================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What was the device called the wireless?

Answer: Wireless was an early name for the radio. Telegraphs used wires. Radio was the wireless telegraph, then wireless. (thanks NB)

Question: What was the device called the wireless?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Scientists named the planets for Greek and Roman gods, except Earth. Why?
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History for 11/5/2023
Birthdays: Gen. Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, Eugene V. Debs, Art Garfunkel is 82, Roy Rogers, Tatum O'Neill, Elke Sommer- born Baroness Elke von Shletz is 83, Ike Turner, Vivien Leigh. Will Durant, Joel McCrea, Sam Shepard, Yoshiyuki Tomino, John Berger, Robert Patrick is 66, Tilda Swinton is 63, Disney animator Mike Gabriel

1414- THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE- Since 1378 the Catholic Church had rent itself in pieces over politics, with no less than three Popes claiming the loyalty of Christians. This day the German Emperor Sigismund made Pope John convene at Constance the largest church conclave since the Roman Emperor Constantine. Five thousand priests, bishops, cardinals, patriarchs, princes with an army of servants, secretaries and retainers. Even fifteen hundred prostitutes.
The published the declaration Sanctissima " This Holy Synod of Constance represents the true Church Militant, and has it’s authority directly from Christ, and everybody of whatever rank, including the Pope, is bound to obey." They healed the schism by deposing all three Popes and electing one acceptable to all sides. They also pledged to reform the Church. Then after accepting a promise from new Pope Martin V that he would do so, they dissolved. Martin did no such thing and future Popes worked to ensure a council would ever get that powerful again. Too bad, if the Council of Constance had reformed the Church maybe the Reformation and all the terrible religious wars could have been avoided. The council also confirmed the right of Christians to claim any lands occupied by heathens (non-Christians) in foreign lands.

In Jolly Old England it is
HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY! in -1605 Sir Guy Fawkes, a Catholic nobleman, was caught digging a tunnel under the English Parliament and filling it with gunpowder. His goal was no less than blowing up the King and the entire blinkin' government! Sir Roger Catesby was actually the mastermind of the plot, but Sir Guy gets the fame.
Modern day Brits commemorate this as a kind of April Fools Day with bonfires and merrymaking. Children go from door to door asking : "A penny for Sir Guy, please."
Many English folks I know told me they celebrate the day they tried to blow up the government because wouldn't things have been lovely if he had succeeded!

1688- William and Mary of Orange land in England from Holland to start the 'Glorious Revolution' against her dad King James II.

1699- According to Jonathan Swift, this is the day Lemuel Gulliver was shipwrecked on the isle of Lilliput.

1757- Battle of Rossbach- Frederick the Great defeated a French invasion led by two generals Marquis de Soubuise and Hildeburghausen, whose only qualifications were that they were lovers of Madame De Pompadour. King Frederick referred to La Pompadour as Mademoiselle Poisson- Miss Fish.

1805- The Royal Spanish Governor of New Mexico, Joaquin del Real Alencaster, dispatches a cavalry troop under Don Pedro Vial on a secret mission. On this day Vial's force was attacked by hostile Commanches on the Arkansas River. Vial drove off the natives, but his command was left too battered to continue and had to return, their mission aborted. What was their mission? To kill or capture the American explorers Lewis and Clark. The Spanish government in Madrid knew full well the object in the American President Jefferson’s mind in sending this "scientific" expedition to plot a land route to the Pacific, over territory Spain claimed as theirs, despite the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark, at this point in the Columbia River Gorge, were unaware of the drama around them.

1820- Old British sea dog Lord Thomas Cochrane had joined the Latin Americans fight to gain independence from Spain. He decided the best way to do that was to capture the flagship of the Spanish Pacific fleet, the 44 gun Esmerelda. This night Cochrane with 80 Chilean sailors rowed up to the frigate and captured her after a brief but violent hand to hand struggle. As they rowed silently past the neutral USS Mendocino they were almost given away by the American sailors cheering them.

1857- Oxford professors at a dinner hear Sir William Trench call for a new Dictionary of the English Language, this time not just a sampler of difficult words but an attempt to inventory all the words used in English at the time. The OED, the Oxford English Dictionary took 70 years to write and was the biggest effort since Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of 1755.

1872- Susan B. Anthony was arrested and fined again for trying to vote in a presidential election.

1895- Invention of the Car Clutch.

1913- William Mulholland's great aqueduct starts bringing water 200 miles from Northern California to L.A. by the force of gravity alone. Without the extra water L.A. would never have grown any larger than 180,000 people. (L.A. Times estimate.) His address to the people of LA at the dedication concluded, “There it is. Take it.”

1917- After the collapse of the Czar’s government, the council of the Russian Orthodox Church reinstated the office of Patriarch, suppressed by Peter the Great in 1700.

1937- Disney's silly symphony The Old Mill debuted. The first film featuring the multiplane camera technique.

1938- Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings premiered.

1940- President Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented 3rd term. His defeated Republican opponent- Wendell Wilkie, who became the butt of jokes in many Looney Tunes.

1946- Two punk kids fresh out of the Navy were elected to the US House of Representatives- John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

1954- THE WRONG DOOR RAID- Baseball great Joe DiMaggio was fuming over the collapse of his marriage to sexy movie star Marilyn Monroe. He was very jealous to idea that she was now seeing other men. This night Joltin’ Joe was having dinner with Frank Sinatra and a few friends when a detective brought him a report that Monroe’s car was spotted parked in front of an apartment on Kilkea Dr. in West Hollywood. Enraged, DiMaggio, Sinatra and friends drove out to the building and kicked in the back door hoping to catch her in-flagrante-delicto. Marilyn was actually upstairs spending the night at a girlfriend’s apartment. This apartment was the home of a terrified old widow named Mrs. Florence Klotz. We don’t know what she thought about her door suddenly kicked in by Joe DiMaggio, and the Rat Pack, but the press had a lot of fun with it.

1955- This is the date in 1955 that Marty McFly travels to in the film Back to the Future.

1956- SUEZ CRISIS ENDS. The United States and Soviet Union bring heavy pressure on Israel, France and Britain to stop their war with Egypt. Egypt kept the Suez Canal, Israel no longer looked like a pathetic little country about to get stomped, and the world now saw that the only countries who’s opinion now mattered were Russia and the U.S.. British historian Jan Morris called it the official end of the British Empire. Israeli diplomat Chaim Herzog was touring Mount Sinai when he got the cablegram to come to New York for the peace talks. He joked:" I am only the second Jew in history to receive a message on Mount Sinai."

1968- After losing to John Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon ran for governor of California and lost that too. He was thought politically finished. Today Richard Nixon capped an amazing comeback by being elected President. He won over a democratic majority badly divided over Vietnam, and third party racist George Wallace.

1975- Mormon lumberjack Travis Walton was abducted by aliens and experimented on for five days, then returned to his home in Snowflake, Arizona. The encounter was seen by seven adult men, who were his co-workers. Walton published a bestseller Fire in the Sky, that was made into a movie.

1977- George W. Bush married Laura Welsh. Laura was once a Democrat who campaigned for liberal George McGovern in 1972.

1979- National Public Radio’s news show Morning Edition started.

1990- In New York City, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was assassinated at the NY Marriott by a man dressed as an orthodox student. The JDL was an extremist organization in America, that advocated violent responses to Arab extremism. Even though he was elected to the Israeli Knesset, Meir Kahane was refused a seat because of his racist views. So no one was too surprised that he was a target. But what was surprising was that the assassin, El Sayyid Nossair, was a member of a terrorist cell operating in the US. His apartment was a "treasure-trove of information" according to NYPD detectives. They found terrorist manuals written in Afghanistan, bomb making instructions and plans to NY city landmarks like the World Trade Center. The NYPD turned over all this intelligence to the FBI, who filed it away and forgot about it.

1994- Retired President Ronald Reagan gave his last public speech. He confirmed he had Alzheimer’s Disease. He gently faded away from public view and died in 2004.

1994- 45-year-old fighter George Foreman capped off an amazing comeback by becoming the oldest person ever to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

1999- A man was arrested in Minneapolis for stealing and keeping 150 shopping carts in his apartment.

2004- Pixar's The Incredibles, directed by Brad Bird premiered.

2009- Army Major Hassan went mad and shot 13 other soldiers in Ft. Hood, Texas. Major Hassan’s job was as a psychiatrist who helped other soldiers with their emotional stress.
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Yesterday’s Question: Scientists named the planets for Greek and Roman gods, except Earth. Why?

Answer: They didn’t name it as a planet because back then nobody believed the Earth was a planet floating in space like all the others. Earth was from old Saxon Erda, meaning the ground you are standing on.