Question: What is a Jumping the Broom ceremony?

Yesterday’s Question: “Klaatu! Barrata, Nickto.”
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History for 3/15/2024
Birthdays: Andrew Jackson, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg is 82, Eva Longoria is 49, David Silverman is 67

508BC-525AD- In the Roman Republic this was the traditional day the newly elected Consuls and Senate assumed their offices and began governing. It was the beginning of the ancient Roman calendar year.

44 BC -BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH- While attending the first day of the new Senate, Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by radical senators beneath the statue of his old rival Pompey Magnus. Two of the murderers, Brutus and Cassius were former officers of Pompey to whom Caesar granted amnesty. Marcus Brutus was a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the Roman democracy. Like a descendent of George Washington. He was even rumored to have been Caesar's illegitimate son, since his mother Servilla had an affair with Jules.
Even though Caesar was stabbed 23 times, it still took him several hours to die, left alone lying on the floor. Unlike Shakespeare, Julius Caesar never said "Et Tu Brute'" Even you, Brutus? in Latin. His last words were the equivalent in Greek-"Touto kai teknon mou" which translates, "Even this my son?". Greek was to the Romans like French is to us.

1079- The Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan assassinated by followers of his old Vizier, Nizam Al Mulk. The vizer had been killed by the Assassins, the original terrorists of the Islamic world, hired by Alp Arslan. Witness to all this was Omar Al Khayyam, poet, mathematician and astronomer. Legend said Alp Arslan had mustachios so long he had to pin them up on his turban so he could shoot his bow. Arslan’s successor was Gelalladin or the Malik Shah. His reign was considered the high point of Seljuk civilization.

1493- Columbus returned to Palo, Spain from his first voyage to America. The Santa Maria had broke up on reefs in America and Captain Pinzon had taken the Pinta on ahead to take credit for himself, or so Columbus worried. He himself got home in the little bark the Nina and at one point had to put in at a Portuguese port where he and his men were impounded for a few days. Captain Pinzon did reach home first, but fortunately King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella refused to listen to him. When Pinzon got his own voyage to the New World, all the credit went to his navigator- Amerigo Vespucci.

1517-Pope Leo X was left a full treasury by his predecessor Pope Julius II. But being a major party animal he quickly blew it all. This day he decided to pay his bills by ordering a new campaign to sell indulgences. Indulgences were sort of "after-life insurance" By paying a donation the bearer could be forgiven some sins and time in Purgatory. Leo extended it to forgive sins you may intend to commit in the future. You could also buy a reprieve to someone already dead. When this refinance scheme reached Germany it was the provocation that sent Martin Luther to pin up his 95 Theses challenging the authority of Rome and start the Reformation.

1582- WILLIAM OF ORANGE ASSASSINATED. The Spanish Viceroy of the Netherlands the Duke of Parma didn’t know how to cope with the Dutch Independence movement led by William of Orange, also called William the Silent. They defeated him in battle but they could never capture him or destroy his forces. Finally Parma came up with a solution. He published a decree declaring William "A criminal and outcast from God and Society" That anyone who killed William would receive 25,000 gold pieces and be made a noble. Such a deal!
Within three days a man shot William in the head, but he recovered. Then a year later this day Belgian Bartholomew Girard shot William three times and killed him. Girard was executed, but his family received the reward, and his severed head was displayed in Cologne Cathedral like a holy relic. For year afterwards and German Catholics tried to get Girard made a saint. William of Orange was dead but his 12 children carried on the fight for Dutch Independence and his family still rules Holland today.

1780- BATTLE OF GUILFORD COURTHOUSE, Virginia. Colonial General Nathaniel Greene battled British Lord Cornwallis to a draw but Cornwallis had to withdraw to Yorktown for supplies. At one point Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire into his own redcoats to get through to the rebels- not exactly a great morale booster. Back in London, Sir Horace Walpole remarked: " Lord Cornwallis has conquered. He has conquered his troops out of shoes and provisions, and conquered himself out of troops."

1783-THE NEWBURGH CONSPIRACY- The closest the United States ever came to a military dictatorship. George Washington's officers were fed up with the indecision of their bankrupt Congress. The Revolutionary War fighting was over, but the army hadn’t been paid in months. Like Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army in Britain a century before, there were loud calls to march on the Congress and chuck the rascals out! They talked of establishing a junta of generals to run the United States! But what of their commander? The ringleaders assured: "we can handle the old man."
This day General Washington called a staff meeting at his HQ at Newburgh, New Jersey and faced down his angry troops. At first, he announced he would not attend, then surprised everyone by showing up. He appealed for understanding and patriotism. Tears were shed when he put on his spectacles, implying he'd broken his health and had aged prematurely in the service of his country. He was only 49, yet he looked much older. That won them over. George Washington not only wasn’t "handled", but convinced his sulky soldiers to go back their farms peacefully, paid with nothing but a paper IOU.

1782- The English House of Commons, fed up with his bungling of the American Revolution and the heavy-handed style of Lord North’s government, voted the first ever vote of no-confidence. The Lord North government resigned five days later.

1820- Maine became a state.

1865- Confederate guerrilla Sue Mundy was hanged in Kentucky. Long haired soldier Jerome Clark once passed out drunk, and for a gag his buddies put him in a dress and declared him Queen of the May. Instead of being insulted, Clark liked dressing like a woman, and ravaged the countryside as the guerrilla leader Sue Mundy. Until the Yankees caught him no one was quite sure whether he was a man or woman.

1869-The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team. Players had been taking payments under the table for years to concentrate on their skills, now it was out in the open. Still some newspapers accused them of being "Shiftless young men debasing the game with their greed."

1890- Kaiser Wilhelm II forced Chancellor Otto von Bismarck into retirement and decided to run Germany himself. Bismarck "the Old Pilot" who had unified Germany had set up a highly centralized autocracy that he ran from behind the throne. His relations with the other statesmen like Disraeli assured Europe had thirty years of complete peace. He never imagined he would be sacked by the young, emotionally unstable grandson of his old friend Wilhelm I.

1892- The first voting machines in the US went into service. After 1972 metal voting machines were phased out in favor of the cheaper punch card system but the controversy over presidential elections fraud continues to cause new change.

1909- Harry Gordon Selfridge, formerly a manager of Chicago’s Marshal Fields, opened Selfridges, London’s first Department Store. Selfridge invented the Bargain Basement, the Annual Sale, and the motto “ The Customer is Always Right.”

1913- President Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential news conference.

1915- Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming. He used so many of his relatives in production that Ogden Nash quipped: "Carl Laemmele has a very large Faemmele." Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as its birthday.

1917-CZAR NICHOLAS II ABDICATED THE THRONE OF RUSSIA with a note scribbled in pencil. He had tried to abdicate in favor of his younger brother Archduke Michael as regent for his son Alexis, and save the dynasty. But Michael wanted none of it and the revolutionary forces tearing at Russian society. He ignored his pleas. After 303 years, the Romanov Dynasty was at an end.

1919- American veterans of World War I founded a veteran’s society based The Civil War vets Grand Army of the Republic. They called it the American Legion.

1929- Scarface Al Capone was called before a Chicago grand jury to explain his involvement in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Big Al’s alibi was he was in Key Biscayne Florida at the time having lunch with the Dade County prosecutor. They couldn’t pin nothing on him and no one was ever charged with the massacre.

1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes cartoon studio. He was made a director in 1938.

1941- The daughter of Cecil B. DeMille, Katherine DeMille, had married actor Anthony Quinn. This day tragedy struck the family. On a visit to Cecil B.’s estate, the couple’s three year old son Christopher walked off into neighbor W.C. Fields yard where he fell into Fields unsupervised swimming pool and drowned. The parents were so shattered they divorced afterward. Anthony Quinn refused to talk about the rest of his long life. Fields was so depressed he had the pool filled in and landscaped so no reminder of the tragedy would remain.

1944- The DeHAVILAND CASE- A judge ruled actress Olivia DeHaviland free of her exclusive seven year personal contract to Warner Bros. For years movie stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney had been fighting in court the system of exclusive contracts the studios used to keep them under control. They had no choice in the type of films they did, no residuals, and studios could lend them out to other studios for higher fees, and keep the money.
If the actor complained they were put on disciplinary leave by the studio, without pay, and the penalty time added onto the end of their contract. Garbo called it the closest thing to White Slavery. Some contracts even ordered some stars not to get married for fear it would erode their sex appeal. The DeHaviland Case broke that system and allowed actors to make their own deals. Olivia DeHaviland died in 2020 at age 104.

1956- Lerner & Lowe’s stage musical "My Fair Lady" premiered.

1956- The film Forbidden Planet premiered in theaters. Considered the granddaddy of Sci-Fiction blockbusters

1962- The discovery of anti-matter.

1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time.

1964- The book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan first published. The first major book to point out women were unhappy with their second class roles. And it coined the term Feminist.

1969- Worst clashes between Soviet Russia and Red China across their long mutual border. While the free world feared a monolithic global Communist conspiracy, the fact was the animosity between Russia and China got so bad it threatened to go nuclear.
During a lighter incident the Chinese People’s Liberation Army showed what they thought of their Russian comrades by lining up along a river bank, dropping their trousers, bending over and giving them a mass-mooning. The next time the Chinese did it the Russians were ready. As their butts went up the Russians held up portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader. The mooning stopped.

1969- Two young heirs to the Polydent false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.

1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.

1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show?

1985- THE SAVINGS & LOAN SCANDALS- The Reagan White House’s policy of removing all business regulation played havoc within the savings & loan system. The problem became a public issue when this day Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio suspended business in thrift banks in his state to stop the complete collapse of the system. One of the most underreported and little understood stories of the 1980’s was the cost of the Savings & Loan mess. It came out to be near $28 billion dollars, double the total cost to win World War II. Scores of crooked Savings & Loan execs like Charles Keating and Neil Bush accumulated vast fortunes, leaving you and I to pay the bills.

1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered private domain site on the Internet.

2002- Blue Sky’s hit animated film Ice Age premiered. The studio was being scaled down to be actioned off when the film was a massive hit. Out doing the Best Picture Oscar winner A Beautiful Mind.

2004- Cal Tech Scientists announce the discovery of Planet Xenia, the tenth planet orbiting our Sun, beyond Pluto. Some want to call it Sedna, an Inuit goddess who lived under the ice.

2011- The Syrian Civil War broke out. For over fifty years the Assad Family ruled Syria as absolute dictators. This day the reforming wave of the Arab Spring protests tried to bring about change, and was met with a brutal response, including chemical weapons. Further complicating the issue was that secular dictator Bashir al Assad was being challenged by rebels who were Muslim fundamentalists formed into a rogue state called ISIS. The US, Iran, Turkey, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia soon became embroiled.
Today after ISIS was destroyed along with much of Damascus, Bashir Assad is still president.
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Yesterday’s Question: “Klaatu! Barrata, Nickto.”

Answer: In the 1951 Sci-Fi classic film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” those were the instructions Klaatu told Patrica O’Neal to say to the guardian robot Gort, so he wouldn’t destroy the world.

Quiz: What do these things have in common? Pete & Gladys, Bachelor Father, My Mother the Car, The Life of Riley, Dobie Gillis

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In Greek Mythology, who was Hecuba?
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History 3/13/2024
Birthdays: Hugh Walpole, Charles 2nd Earl Grey 1764- English Prime Minister whom the tea blend 'Earl Grey Tea " is named for, Pope Innocent XII (1615), Abigail Powers Filmore- First Lady of Millard Filmore, Hugo Wolf, Ted Sears, Sammy Kaye, Danny Kaye, Neil Sedaka, L. Ron Hubbard, Dick Katz, Annabell Gish, Joe Ranft, Al Jaffee, William Macy is 73

27BC- AUGUSTUS BECAME THE FIRST ROMAN EMPEROR- For several decades the Roman Republic had become a football contested for by powerful rich politicians- Marius & Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony and more. Julius Caesar said that Rome was now a Republic in name only. Since vanquishing Anthony & Cleopatra, Caesar Octavian had been the first man in Rome (Princeps), yet he needed to solidify his hold on power. But Romans hated the title of King.
So this day in a carefully staged bit of political theater, Octavian told the Senate he was tired of responsibility. He would resign all his offices and retire. Senators shouted for him to reconsider. They voted him the title GAIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS, IMPERATOR- PRINCEPS. Imperator used to be the name for a general’s military authority, and we get the word Emperor from it. Augustus meant Father of His Country- with all the absolute power a father had in his family. Princeps meant first citizen. Rome had emperors until 476AD and continued on at Constantinople until 1453.

4 B.C.- King Herod the Great died in Jericho. The dynamic king who guided Israel through Rome’s Civil Wars, and rebuilt the temple of Solomon and Caesarea, had aged badly. He became increasingly paranoid. When a bastard son convinced him his legitimate offspring was trying to kill him, he had them executed. This may explain why he could order the infamous Massacre of the Innocents. Herod died slowly of a putrefying disease known only as Herod’s Evil. On his deathbed Herod ordered village elders across Israel rounded up and killed when he died. " I know I am hated, so I want all Israel to mourn". After his death, his family ignored the order and released everyone.

1639- Richard Burbage died. Burbage was the famed Elizabethan actor and friend of William Shakespeare. On his tombstone was a simple epitaph- EXIT BURBAGE.

1757- BATTLE ON THE SNOWSHOES-Col. Robert Rogers with "Roger's Rangers" American colonial frontiersmen in British service, was ambushed by a large French allied Huron Indian war party. The leathershirts scattered, and Rogers eluded his pursuers by walking with his snowshoes turned backwards from the edge of a cliff. When the Indians saw his tracks ending into thin air, they decided the Hipi-Manitou Spirit was with him, so they gave up the pursuit.

1778- The French ambassador informed the British Government that France had recognized the independence of the United States and had made an alliance with them.

1781- The discovery of the planet Uranus by British astronomer William Herschel. The first planet discovered since prehistoric times. Galileo and Kepler used their early telescopes to spot the rings and Saturn and moons of Jupiter, but no other planets. Herschel wanted to call his discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III, but other astronomers convinced him to keep to the pattern of naming planets after Roman gods. Hershel emigrated from Germany and played violin in several symphony orchestras before becoming interested in astronomy. He brought his sister over, and she became an opera singer, as well as observing and naming 5 comets.

1848- The working-class poor of Vienna rose up in rebellion against their Kaiser. After weeks of street fighting the rebellion was put down.

1865- With the South overrun by Yankee armies, at the request of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Congress finally authorized the enlistment of black soldiers to fight for Old Dixie. They got 367 volunteers. On the Yankee side, 180,000 enlisted, almost 80% of the eligible population of free black men.

1881- Czar Alexander II assassinated. -He was the Czar-Liberator that freed the Russian serfs but he was still seen by patriotic movements as a symbol of oppression.
On this day young revolutionaries of the People’s Will movement had already hurled one bomb at the Czar's armored carriage but it harmed no one. The Czar was getting out when another revolutionary (this one was Polish) stepped forward shouting "It's too early to thank God!" And threw a bomb which blew Alexander to bits. Later in the spring thaw St. Petersburg housewives were finding little bits of Alexander on their rooftops when they cleaned.

1884- Chester Greenwood of Maine invented ear-muffs.

1920-THE KAPP PUTSCH - In postwar Berlin after the Kaiser fled anarchy reigned as Bolshevik and right-wing paramilitary groups fought in the streets for control. On this day the Kaiser's former army officers marched on Berlin and tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic and restore the monarchy. They failed, but the weak government could do no more than let them march away scot free. They even paused to fire into a jeering crowd of civilians. After this rebuff the old Prussian aristocratically-led German Army would remain aloof from politics until getting behind Hitler's Nazi Reich in the late 1930’s.
One of the central conspirators of the Putsch was a bizarre figure named Ignaz Trebitsch Lincoln, a Hungarian Jew who moved to England, ran for Parliament and won, was a German spy during the World War I, and finished his life as a Lama in Tibet named Chao-Kung.

1921- Mongolia declared its independence from China.

1928- In New York City, Walt Disney sent a telegram to his brother Roy back in California, informing him of his disastrous meeting with producer Charles Mintz. That Mintz had exercised a clause in their contract to take the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit away from them. He cabled “ Leaving Tonight, stopping over KC. Arrive Sunday Morning. Don’t Worry. All Will be Well.” Later on the train home, Walt with Ub Iwerks and his wife Lillian came up with a new character named Mickey Mouse.

1929- The White House never had much security. When you rang the bell, President Thomas Jefferson himself answered the door in his robe and slippers. Abe Lincoln had one bodyguard, and after the Civil War the one soldier guarding the front door was removed. Presidents like Grant & McKinley would take a stroll at night down by the Potomac with no guards. Children played baseball and sheep grazed on the White House lawn.
This night President Herbert Hoover was having dinner with Hollywood producer David O, Selznick when a homeless man wandered into the room and asked the president for a job. He just walked right through the front door, while the butler was preoccupied. The next day by Executive Order, the Secret Service took over direct control of the White House security and could command the D.C. Metro police.

1938- At the height of Stalin’s purges top Bolshevik Nicholai Bukharin was shot.

1939- Hollywood recognized the Screen Director’s Guild, later called he DGA. After a nasty battle lasting several years Guild President Frank Capra signed the contracts representing 80% of movie directors. They also contractually ensured the custom of the director’s credit being the last one seen at the opening title sequence of a film.

1943- Radio station WNYC goes on the air.

1944- Abbot & Costello copyrighted their baseball routine ‘Who’s on First?"

1945- After systematically destroying the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Nagoya, this day the hundreds of massed B-29 bombers reduced the city of Osaka to burning rubble.

1946- The UAW struck General Motors. In 1936 businessmen had asked the Rand Corporation to come up with a solution to workers labor unions. The Rand Group came up with a pamphlet called the Mohawk Valley Rules. It said the way to defeat unions was not in the streets with vigilantes and tear gas but in the press. Make their union arguments seem unAmerican and subversive. All sides took a hiatus to win World War II so this was the first major strike where the Mohawk Rules were put into practice. So even though the union won concessions in the settlement they lost popular support. People blamed unions for the higher car prices and Communistic activity while the heads of GM and other defense corporations made 400%+ profits from the war. Today people still think unions are not important even though wages have not risen in 20 years, and CEO salaries have jumped 1,400 %.

1947- MGM Tom & Jerry’s Cat Concerto won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

1957- The F.B.I. arrested Teamster’s Union President Jimmy Hoffa on bribery charges.

1964- The Kitty Genovese murder. A sad moment in urban history when a New York cocktail waitress was jumped and murdered in front of her Queens apartment complex. 38 of her neighbors heard her screams "He's stabbing me! He's killing me!" They watched from their windows but no one bothered to come down to her aid.

1969- Disney’s comedy about a Volkswagen beetle, "The Love Bug" premiered. The reason the Volkswagen has the race car number 53 painted on it was because producer Bill Walsh was a big fan of LA Dodger hitter Don Drysdale. His player number was 53.

1970- Under pressure from U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger, Cambodian Prince Siahnnouk asked the Vietcong and Khmer Rouge to please get out of his country. The civil war in Cambodia immediately grew from a lukewarm insurgency to a full-scale holocaust, resulting in the government’s defeat, and the Killing Fields of 1975.

1983- The Larry King Show debuted on HBO, later moving to CNN. King retired that show in 2010, but kept doing cable shows until his death from covid in 2020.

1986- Microsoft made its first public stock offering. A share went for $21.

1987- Raising Arizona, directed by the Cohen Bros opened.

1988- Overly endowed porn star John Holmes, also called Johnny Wad, died of HIV/AIDS. He claimed to have had sex with 14,000 women and a few men in his career, but that he contracted the disease through intravenous drug use. He also got involved with some drug dealers and was implicated in a murder. The film Boogie Nights was based on his career.

1997- In Malaysia, a man named Hassan Abdallah had his penis cut off by his wife in his sleep. She claimed she was sleep walking, and dreamed she was only strangling him.

2002- After building up 9-11 terrorist leader Osama bin Laden to be the most dangerous supervillain since Lex Luthor, this day in a national press conference President George W. Bush casually mentioned he did not know where Bin Laden was, and that he no longer cared much about him.

2013- Pope Francis I elected, aka Pope Frank. The first Argentine Pope. The first pope from the New World.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Greek Mythology, who was Hecuba?

Answer: She was the wife of Priam and Queen of Troy during the Trojan War. She saw her city destroyed, her family killed and was made a captive to Greek King Agamemnon. To “Weep the tears of Hecuba” is to experience the extreme grief of a mother in time of war.

Question: In Greek Mythology, who was Hecuba?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Is a marsupial a mammal?
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History for 3/12/2024
Birthdays: Jack Kerouac, Billy "Buckwheat "Thomas, Darryl Strawberry, Edward Albee, Andrew Young, Joan Kennedy, Eugene Ormandy, Gordon McCrae, Liza Minelli is 80, Courtenay Vance, James Taylor, Frank Welker, Al Jareau, Maurice Evans, Barbara Feldon- agent 99 in Get Smart is 91, Frank Welker, DeWitt Bodeen- writer of the 1942 film Cat People. Aaron Eckart is 56

To the Zoroastrians of Persia, this was the Festival of Marduk, the God of Storms.

81 BC- Roman dictator Sulla granted his general Pompey the right to hold a triumph to celebrate his victories. A triumph was the grand parade through the streets of Rome, hero in his chariot and all that, like in the movies. Pompey is the guy we get the term "pompous" from. As a young man he already insisted people refer to him as Magnus- The Great. Instead of his gold chariot being borne by the traditional four milk white horses, he wanted four milk white elephants! Sulla felt Rome’s arches and streets weren't of sufficient width, so Pompey reluctantly had to settle for one white elephant.

222AD- The Roman Emperor Elagabulus was assassinated. Elagabulus was a sicko-tyrant like Nero and Caligula. When his guards turned on him he first hid in a toilet but was found and stabbed. His body was dragged behind a chariot in the Circus Maximus to the cheers of the crowd, then dumped in the Tiber River. General Severus Alexander took over the Empire.

1507-After being run out of Rome after his father Pope Alexander VI 's death, Caesare Borgia became a petty mercenary in Navarre. This day during a battle, he spurred his horse into the thickest of the foe, and on a pre-arranged signal none of his men followed. Ouch! He was cut to pieces.

1579- The Duke of Ferrara Ludovigo D’Este had a problem. He was the patron of a poet named Torquato Tasso, and Tasso loved one of his daughters. But Tasso was mentally unstable, probably schizophrenic from venereal disease.
This day, in the midst of a ceremony celebrating the Dukes third marriage, Tasso began raving and screaming and had to be dragged off to a mental hospital. At the same time Tasso’s greatest poem JERUSALEM DELIVERED was published. The poem became world famous – Montaigne, Cervantes and Queen Elizabeth of England all loved reading it. Christian Europe felt they finally had an epic poet to rival the pagans Virgil and Homer. Musicians like Handel and Monteverdi made operas of its characters, Armida, Tancredi and Reynaldo.
And Duke Ludovico? For all his trouble, all he got was grief for his perceived bad treatment of Italy’s greatest poet since Dante.

1773- The Virginia Legislature voted to make common cause with the other American colonies and establish regular communications, particularly with Massachusetts who was having the most trouble with the government in London at that time. Up to now even progressive thinkers like Ben Franklin doubted all the various American colonies could ever all agree on anything.

1781- In one of the more desperate schemes of the American Revolution, a letter signed this day by General George Washington gave permission to a plan for secret agents to kidnap Prince William, the Duke of Clarence, a younger son of King George III. He was then visiting British forces in occupied New York City. The letter insists the Royal hostage should be treated properly. The plan never was carried out. Forty years later, when William, now King William IV, was told of the scheme, he commented: "I thank Mr. Washington for his kind intent while being thankful I was never made subject to his hospitality!"

1796- After a two-day honeymoon at her place, Malmaison, Napoleon leaves Josephine
to go conquer Italy.

1877-In Philadelphia, Sam Wanamaker was unsure just what kind of retail he wanted to go into, he just wanted his business to be big. So he opened a large building with different types of goods sold in separate departments. Wanamakers became the first true Department Store.

1884- The Dervish army of El Mahdi completed its surrounding of the Sudanese capitol of Khartoum, defended by British General Charles Gordon. They would finally break into the city and kill him by January. Yet despite the hopelessness of his situation Gordon was in merry spirits. Gordon was a religious zealot who prayed and preached at length. English society considered him something of a Missionary Saint. He never married but had a Victorian penchant for picking up poor street boys, bathing them and photographing them...ahem.

1912-The Girl Scouts was founded in Savannah, Georgia, by Juliet Low, a friend of Sir Anthony Baden-Powell, English founder of the Boy Scouts.

1928- THE SAINT FRANCIS DAM DISASTER- The second worst disaster to hit California after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
Following up his triumph bringing water to Southern California by aqueduct, William Mulholland had designed several dams and reservoirs north of Los Angeles in the Santa Clarita Valley. On this night at midnight the largest of them exploded from structural weakness, and sent a wall of water 30 feet high across the rural towns of Santa Paula and Fillmore down to Oxnard and the Pacific. 400 people drowned in their beds without any warning.
Mulholland took full responsibility for the disaster and resigned all his city offices. "I envy the dead", he said. He died a few years later. Today when driving around the Valencia-Newhall area you can still see huge boulders with steel retaining rods sticking out of them. They are not natural rocks, but chunks of the dam carried miles by the raging torrent of water.

1930- Mohandas K Ghandi, of India, called the Mahatma or The Great Soul, began his Salt March. This gesture of defying the British Empire's monopoly on salt production was a gesture akin to throwing tea into Boston Harbor. He set out from his ashram with 78 followers and a lot of press coverage; by the time he reached the Indian Ocean his followers had become tens of thousands and was famous around the world.

1932- Disney short "Mickey’s Revue" featuring Dippy Dog, now turned into a new character named "the Goof" or Goofy.

1933-THE FIRESIDE CHATS- Just 8 days after taking office President Franklin Roosevelt began a series of national radio broadcasts detailing his plans to fight the economic problems of the country, called by newsman Robert Trout his Fireside Chats. FDR amazed the American public by speaking quietly and candidly, instead of using the bombastic political oratory of the day.

1939- While war clouds grew in Europe, Eugenio Pacelli was crowned Pope Pius XII. Pius’ authoritarian style dominated Catholic thinking into the 1950’s. He was nicknamed "Hitler’s Pope" for his cozy relationship with the Fascists and Nazis, never speaking out against the Holocaust even when the Jews of Rome were being dragged away under his window. But he did censure American anti-Semitic radio star Father Coughlin. In the 1950’s he threatened with excommunication any Catholics who became Communists, or even worse, who married Protestants!
For short trips he liked to be driven around in a Cadillac with a throne built into the backseat. He died in 1958 and his successor Pope John XXIII instituted the liberal reforms known as Vatican II.

1945- Anne Frank died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age 15.
Her father discovered her diary after the war.

1945- The Japanese military ordered every child over the age of seven to enter the military, or factories, to fight the coming American invasion.

1945-THE WAR OF HOLLYWOOD BEGAN-Throughout the 1930’s and 40’s several national unions battled studios and each other to represent Hollywood film workers. The Teamsters, the FWPC, the Brotherhood of Electricians.
By 1945 only two remained, the IATSE and the CSU.(International Alliance of Theater and Screen Engineers and the Conference of Studio Unions) IATSE had a reputation of gangsterism and making cozy deals with the studio heads. The CSU, a much more militant group with past ties to communist organizations, was headed by a charismatic scenery painter named Herb Sorrell who had helped win the Disney strike for the cartoonists in 1941. Sorrel called several citywide strikes that paralyzed Hollywood in 1945, 46 and 47. President Richard Walsh of IATSE fought them and rioting in front of the studios was commonplace.

1947-THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE- In a speech to Congress, President Harry Truman called for millions in aid to Greece and Turkey to stop them from going Communist. This speech was the de-facto declaration of the Cold War. Truman stated that it would be the policy of the United States to aid "any minority fighting Communist coercion".

1948- The Hell’s Angels motorcycle club formed in Oakland Cal. Instead of boozy teenagers, the first motorcycle clubs were formed by former World War II fighter pilots who missed the thrill and camaraderie of flying together in formation. During the war, motorcycle scouts kept their bike engines un-muffled and loud to scare German snipers into thinking a tank or some other big ordnance was coming. The long handlebars and low seat of the chopper was evolved as a defense against booby trap wires strung across a road at a height to decapitate a hapless scout.

1951- Former Disney assistant animator Hank Ketcham was trying his hand as a print cartoonist. He had some success selling gags to the New Yorker Magazine. His baby son Dennis was a precocious infant. Once after she caught the child smearing the contents of his diaper around the house, his mother exclaimed to Hank-“ Your son is a Menace!” That gave Ketcham an idea. Today the first Dennis the Menace comic strip was published.

1955- BIRD DIED- Innovative Jazz great Charlie "Bird" Parker had a chemical addiction since getting out of the army. After the death of his infant daughter earlier that year, his drug use spiraled out of control. He was sleeping on the couch in the NY apartment of the Baroness du Rothschild-Konigswarter, a jazz supporter. He awoke to watch TV. While laughing at a juggler on the Dorsey Brothers Variety Show, he died. The coroner said death was by heart failure, cirrhosis and pneumonia. He estimated Parker’s age at 65. He was really 34. When his band heard of his death they paused between sets to shoot up with heroin in his honor. "Seems silly now, come to think of it." Said one musician later.

1964- Malcolm X announced his break with the Nation of Islam in the US. Since returning from Mecca he was disillusioned with founder Elijah Mohammad’s leadership.

1969- Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson –a song written by two young folk singers named Simon & Garfunkel, won a Grammy award.

1969- Paul and Linda McCartney married.

1978- Meryl Streep and John Cazale were tops in the acting world and madly in love for two years. Cazale had Oscar nominations for The Godfather and Dog Day Afternoon. Just as they were completing Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, John Cazale was taken down by an aggressive cancer. This day he died. Meryl sobbed and pounded on his chest. He revived long enough to say to her, “ Its allright, Meryl.” Then died. Meryl Streep’s career was breaking out as the top in her field, just as she lost the love of her life.

1989- Tim Berners-Lee flicked a switch and the World Wide Web became operational, connecting several regional web systems into a global network.

1992- Warren Beatty married Annette Benning.

2000- Pope John Paul II officially apologized on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for the Crusades, The Inquisition, 2000 years of Anti-Semitic persecution, the Fires of Smithfield, Bloody Mary, burning at the stake Jan Hus and Giordano Bruno, Silencing Galileo and Copernicus, the Thirty Years War, The forced conversions of indigenous peoples, ignoring the Holocaust, etc, etc. In response, comedian John Stewart said Judaism officially apologized for the Barbara Streisand movie "Yentl."

2003 –The female vocal group the Dixie Chicks were tops of the country-western world. They had preformed at last years Super Bowl. But in an interview during a concert in Britain, singer Natalie Maines expressed her sadness over America’s invasion of Iraq. “ Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." The conservative backlash from this comment damaged their careers, even though conservative stars like Kid Rock did fine. They made a documentary about their situation in 2006 entitled, “Shut Up and Sing.”
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Yesterdays’ question: Is a marsupial a mammal?

Answer: Yes. Marsupials like Kangaroos are warm blooded, born like mammals and make milk for their young.

Quiz: Is a marsupial a mammal?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is agitprop?
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HISTORY FOR 3/11/2024
Birthdays: Torquato Tasso, Marius Pretipa, Raoul Walsh, Charlie Ruggles, Lawrence Welk, Samuel “Shemp” Howard, British PM Harold Wilson, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Bobby McFerrin, Sam Donaldson, Antonin Scalia, Jerry Zucker, Vannevar Bush- MIT scientist who in 1945 predicted the personal computer. Joey Buttafuco, Jules Engel, Douglas Adams, Rupert Murdoch is 93, Rob Paulsen is 68, Terence Howard is 55

In ancient Rome, today was the Festival of Hercules

1513- Giovanni de Medici, a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was elected Pope Leo X.
He was ordained a priest two days later- hey, details, details! Leo was the quintessential Renaissance Party-Pope. In a few short years he blew the Vatican treasury on lavish entertainment, employing many artists, poets and buffoons. He was quoted as saying:” God has given us the Papacy, so let us enjoy it.”

1669- Sicily’s Mt Etna erupted and killed 20,000 people.

1801- Russian officers dragged Czar Paul I out of his bed, beat him up and strangled him. It had been said the Czar was showing signs of mental instability. Others historians say that story was circulated by the nobility who were against the Czars land reform for peasants. The murder had the approval of his son Alexander who then became Czar.
In 1812 after Napoleon's invasion was driven out, one of the top French generals, Dominique Vandamme, was captured. When Vandamme was reproached by Czar Alexander for invading Russia, the Frenchman shot back," Well Sire, at least I didn't murder my own father!"

1810- Prussian Chancellor von Hardenburg granted civil rights to the Jews of Germany.

1829- BachMania!-The Rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach-. Bach was little known in his time and after his death in 1750 was soon forgotten. Even his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach though his dad’s music old-fashioned. But a century later the stirrings of German nationalism led to the re-examination of this obscure organist. This night at the Singakademie in Berlin, musical superstar Felix Mendelsson performed “The St. Matthew Passion” and other Bach works. The musicians performed for free. The concert caused a sensation and Bach is soon being played all over Europe and influencing everyone from Berlioz to Wagner. Goethe and Hegel declared him a genius.

1851-Guisseppi Verdi's grand opera" Rigoletto "debuts. Considered Verdi's first mature work, it made him an international star. Based on Victor Hugo's "L'roi's amuse", originally about the lustful abominations of King Francois I of France, Verdi changed it to the Duke of Mantua and steered away from the class politics to a family melodrama. Victor Hugo didn't like it.

1861- the seceded southern states adopted a constitution based on the old Articles of Confederation passed in 1778, hence the name the Confederate States of America. It provided for a President with a six-year term with no eligibility for a second term.

1888- THE YEAR OF BLUE ICE- The Great Blizzard of '88. In New York and Boston 40 inches of snow fell in 36 hours. Record low temperatures, 80 mile an hour winds and ice storms so severe that all the telephone and telegraph wires between New York and Boston snapped. To contact anyone you had to be routed through London England. 400 people died in New York City alone. Policemen set up frostbite checkpoints to rub the ears of pedestrians as they walked by.
Out West so many head of cattle died that a serious beef shortage the following year created a labor problem with unemployed cowboys that led to the Johnson County Wars of 1890. Teddy Roosevelt was a Dakota rancher at the time and he saw cattle freeze to death where they stood. Later in the spring thaw, these "cowsickles" would be bobbing up and down in the Dakota River with the ice flows.

1889- The California Legislature split Orange County from LA County.

1917- Czar Nicholas called out the army garrisoned in Petrograd to put down the rioting strikers in the streets. Although some shoot at the demonstrators, most of the soldiers broke ranks and joined them.

1918- THE GREAT SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC- This day the first noticeable rise in a strange new flu occurred at Camp Funston Kansas. It was called the Spanish flu because even though it broke out all around the world, Spain did not have wartime press censorship, so they reported it first.
In only one year this new flu virus killed 21 million people around the Earth, 640,000 in the U.S. alone- everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to young Walt Disney got sick. In places like China, India and Russia thousands died. The epidemic killed as many people as the just concluding World War I. Then it disappeared as rapidly as it appeared. Experts believed it mutated into less lethal versions. Covid-19 which emerged in 2020 has killed 6 million, in the USA is close to 2 million.

1926- Eamon De Valera renounced his opposition to Irish government politics and resigned from Sinn Fein. In 1933 he was elected first president of the Republic of Ireland, a job he held off and on until 1973.

1927- The first Roxy Theater opens at 50th st. & Seventh Ave. in New York. Roxy was a nickname of theater owner Samuel L. Rothafel who pioneered the movie palace and is called the father of De-Luxe presentation. There were soon Roxy theaters in cities from Hollywood to Sydney Australia.

1938- ANSCHLUSS- The Nazi takeover of Austria. Hitler had been organizing a covert takeover of the Vienna government by Austrian Nazis until the Austrian Prime Minister Schussning declared they would put the issue of uniting with the German Reich to a public plebiscite. Rather than risk asking the public Hitler ordered his tanks to roll. Gen. "Panzer Heinz" Guderian had his men adorn their tanks with flowers act like it was more of a German family reunion than an invasion.
Viennese intellectuals like Albert Einstein had to flee. Sigmund Freud was not allowed to leave until he signed a note saying he was treated well-" I'd personally recommend the Gestapo to anyone". Painter Alphonze Mucha wrote a letter to his friends in America saying he was in the care of the Nazis and that he was fine. He died shortly afterward.

Eric Wolfgang Korngold was in Hollywood debating whether to score the latest Errol Flynn picture for Warner Bros.- "The Adventures of Robin Hood" or return to Vienna to produce his opera- "Die Kathrin". When he heard his Vienna apartment was one of the first the Gestapo raided he decided to stay and do the Flynn picture. He later inscribed the music score to Jack Warner; "to Jack. Thanks for saving my life."

1939- The Nazis take over the rest of Czechoslovakia that they didn't absorb through the Munich Pact. This leads Britain’s Prime Minister Chamberlain and France’s Premier Daladier to declare any attempt on Hitler’s next target-Poland, would be met with force.

1941- The U.S. enacted the Lend-Lease program to send valuable military equipment to Britain without getting directly involved yet in World War II.

1943- The Broadway musical team of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened their first collaboration “Away We Go!”

1958- The U.S. Air Force accidentally dropped an H-Bomb on South Carolina near Mars Bluff. The safety catches insured it wouldn’t go off. The incident was kept top secret.

1971- Philo Farnsworth died of pneumonia at 64. The young Utah native in 1922 had invented the television set, but by the 1960’s he was forgotten, broke and addicted to painkillers. The only recognition he got in his lifetime was as a contestant on the quiz show I Got a Secret. He won a check for $80 and a carton of Winston cigarettes. Today Farnsworth is considered the father of television, along with John Logie-Baird.

1971- THX 1138- Frances Ford Coppola convinced Warner Bros to release a fleshed-out feature version of a USC college thesis film by a young guy named George Lucas.

1977- Film director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home after he got her stoned on quaaludes. Polanski was charged with statutory rape. He jumped bail and fled Hollywood for exile in Paris. LA courts have been trying unsuccessfully to get him extradited ever since.

1984 - NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, adapted and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was released in Japan. When the Walt Disney company agreed to distribute the film, they released it in Europe with time cuts, about ten minutes. Miyazaki sent the studio a beautiful antique samurai sword. On the blade he engraved, “ No Cuts”.

1985- Since the death of Lenoid Brehznev the Soviet Union’s Central Committee was having a problem: every elderly Bolshevik they named as Soviet Premier -Yuri Andropov, Constantin Chernenko, had quickly died themselves of old age. On this day they selected the youngest member of their ranks to the leadership. He would be the last Premier of the Soviet Union- Mikhail Gorbachov.

1990- Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare its independence. This day their parliament approved The Act of the Reestablishment of the State of Lithuania. By 1991 the unwieldy Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had fallen to pieces and the Russian Federation was formed in its place.

2004- Al Qaeda terrorists set off ten bombs in Madrid commuter trains at the height of the morning rush hour. 200 dead, 1500 hurt.

2011- FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI- The northern coast of Japan was struck by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The quake sent a tsunami wave that erased whole towns and killed 20,000. A ripple wave went across the Pacific and sank boats in harbor at Santa Cruz, California and Oregon. The tsunami also damaged 5 reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, sending clouds of radioactive steam into the atmosphere and water.

2020- The World Health Organization (WHO) declared covid 19 a global pandemic. Pres. Trump responded by denouncing the WHO and cutting their funding.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is agitprop?

Answer: Agitprop is the spreading of political ideas or arguments expressed through plays, art, books, etc. Agitation + Propaganda.

Question: What is agitprop?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Some people watching Sen Katie Britt’s State of the Union speech called her a Stepford Wife. What is a Stepford Wife?
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History for 3/10/2024
Birthdays: Lorenzo da Ponte -librettist of Mozart's operas, Barry Fitzgerald, Claire Booth Luce, Heywoud Hale Broun, James Herriot, Pablo de Sarrasate, Osama Bin Laden, Robert Abel, Chuck Norris is 84, Shannon Tweed, Sharon Stone is 66, John Hamm is 53

241 B.C.- NAVAL BATTLE OF AEGATES ISLANDS- Romans under Gaius Lutatius Catullus defeated the Carthaginians under Hamilcar Barca (The Thunderer) to win the First Punic War. The Carthaginians were much better sailors than the Romans, so Catullus lashed his ships side by side and laid planks over the decks. This way his legions could fight infantry style. The Romans developed another tactic of taking clay beehives filled with angry hornets and shooting them by catapult onto enemy ships.
The Romans won Sicily. Hamilcar taught his son Hannibal that Romans were not nice people.

1661-King Louis XIV of France "the Sun King" tells his guardians to take a hike because he was now old enough to rule alone. He kept his old regent Cardinal Mazarin around a few more years, but this is the beginning of his Divine Right Rule.

1697- PETERS TRAVELS- Young Czar Peter the Great was so hungry for the knowledge of the West, that this day he shocked Russian society by leaving the country to travel through Europe. He was the first Russian Czar to ever go outside his country.
The 6 foot 8 inch monarch spent 18 months personally studying economics, architecture and chemistry. Peter lived in a small wooden cottage in Zaandam Holland and studied boat building. He drank in local pubs with workers and even made love to a local waitress. He learned to make his own shoes, mend clothes and even learned to pull teeth, which he loved to practice on unwilling nobles of this court.
After arriving in England, Peter surprised English society by shouldering an axe every morning, and pipe in teeth, walking down to the docks to work among the ship builders.
He returned to Russia filled with the desire to rebuild Russian society in the modern western European model.

1791- Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who fancied himself an amateur scientist, presented a paper to the American Philosophical Society about the discovery of the fossils of a cow sized sloth called Megalonyx. The future sciences like Geology and Paleontology were referred to in those times as “Natural Philosophy”.

1842-Vigilantes of Virginia City, Montana hanged a tough hombre named Jack Slade. Accounts say Slade was "More feared than God, but all in all a good citizen."

1862- FIRST U.S. GREENBACK PAPER DOLLARS ISSUED- "Dollar" is a corruption of Jacobsthaler- named for silver coins minted in St. James valley in Czech lands, which became 'Thalers' then 'Dollars'. Lincoln was originally annoyed that Secretary of the Treasury Samuel Chase put himself on the one-dollar bill while he was on the five. Lincoln thought Chase wanted some cheap advertising for a presidential bid in '64. Lincoln made him Supreme Court Justice to get him out of the way. The money was printed with green ink because it was then cheap and plentiful.
When issued the new money instead of silver or gold, Union troops promptly rioted. People nicknamed the fat bills“ Chase’s Shinplasters ”. After the Civil War, when the U.S. Treasury tried to recall the paper currency and go back to coins, people complained again that they were now used to the stuff. In 1924 the US changed to the smaller sized bill we all use now.

1864- Lincoln gives Ulysses Grant overall U.S. command to finish the Civil War. The shy little general arrived late and unannounced at the White House party given in his honor. Because the crowd was so thick he stood patiently in the hallway until Lincoln spotted him. "There he is!" He made Grant stand on a stool, so everyone could get a good look at him.
Lincoln was a constant nag on his generals, but after choosing Grant he backed off giving Grant independent command, a custom maintained by presidents to this day. Grant's successful though unorthodox approach disgusted more traditional strategists. Gen. Henry "Old Brains" Halleck, after running out of criticisms to hurl at Grant, said: "And on top of everything else, The man's a drunkard!" To which Lincoln replied: "He is? Find out what brand he drinks and send a barrel of it to the other generals!"

1864- King Maximillian I died, his son Ludwig II 'the Mad' becomes king of Bavaria.

1876- THE FIRST TELEPHONE CALL. Alexander Graham Bell had applied for the phone patent several weeks before but he still couldn’t get the signal clear enough to be understood. He even had a surgeon send him a human ear from a corpse to study. This day when trying a new variation, Bell spilled acid on his lap and called out over the wires " Watson ! Come Here! I Need You!" Watson heard it clearly and rushed to his aid.
Some say Watson made up the story of the acid later to explain why Bell couldn’t think of anything loftier or profound to say as the first message sent by wire.

1926- The First Book of the Month Club – The Lovely Willows by Sylvia Townshend Warner.

1933- The LONG BEACH EARTHQUAKE. There had not been a serious quake in LA since 1857, so everyone thought it a thing of the past. Today the buildings swayed and brick walls collapsed. It was the last big shift in the San Andreas Fault. 200 people were killed, and if the schools had not been empty for Easter break, the casualties could have been much worse.
Actors convening early SAG union meetings in the El Capitan Theater had to move out to the parking lot because of the aftershocks. The quake sparked the first serious earthquake building codes.

1935- The First Smokey Stover comic strip (notary sojac).

1938- Bowing to Arab anger and increased local rioting, the British Mandate authority in Palestine imposed the first restrictions on Jewish immigration. A quota of only 3.000 were permitted. The previous year 40,000 immigrated fleeing the Nazi persecution in Europe. Zionist Jews developed novel ways of smuggling more people ashore. They once held a Jewish Olympics to rival Hitler’s Berlin Games, then all the participants who came melted into the crowd and stayed.

1940- U.S. Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles tried some shuttle diplomacy between Berlin, London and Paris to try and halt the World War that had just broke out. He was met with no cooperation. Hitler told him “Peace will come when we have the inevitable German Victory.” In January 1941 FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, “outed” Welles by accusing him of homosexual activity, and attempting to proposition several Pullman porters on trains. Welles resigned in disgrace and was later the target of a HUAC investigation.

1947- Ronald Reagan becomes President of the Screen Actor's Guild after President George Montgomery and V.P. Franchot Tone resigned to become independent producers. In the violent gangster-ridden atmosphere of Hollywood unions Reagan took to wearing a .32 Smith & Wesson in a shoulder holster under his coat.

1948- Zelda Fitzgerald, the socialite wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, died in a fire at the mental hospital where she had been committed for more than a decade.

1948- Stalin’s agents take Czech Nationalist leader Jan Masaryk and defenestrate him -throw him out of a window- as a way of influencing the upcoming Czech elections. They gave as an excuse that he accidentally fell out of the window while doing yoga to combat his insomnia.

1952- General Fulgensio Batista seized power in Cuba. He was a favorite with US Corporations and the Mafia because he sold everything in his country not nailed down. Part of his coup was the dissolving and arrest of the Cuban Congress, among whom was a young novice politician and part time baseball pitcher named Fidel Castro.

1953- PANCHO AND THE GENERAL- Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes was the granddaughter of Thaddeus Lowe, inventor of the U.S. Army balloon corps in the Civil War. She became an aviatrix and in 1930 broke an air speed record set by Amelia Earhart.
In the late 1940s she moved to Muroc California in the desert and opened up a saloon, "The Happy Bottom Riding Club' where the test pilots flying dangerous experimental craft trying to break the sound barrier came to blow off steam. Chuck Yeager and the future astronauts were frequent guests. She once told famed General Jimmy Doolittle "Jimmy, you know I can out fly and out f**k you any day of the Week!!" The bar was famous for wild parties with lots of booze and rough housing.
In 1952 a General Holtoner took over command of Maroc, now renamed Edwards Air Force Base. He tried to have Pancho evicted so the Air Force could expand its supersonic runway. When she objected to the General's lack of respect, he implied that she ran a house of prostitution. On this day Pancho sued the US Air Force for 1 1/2 million dollars. General Holtoner was replaced, the Happy Bottom Riding Club was destroyed in a fire, and Pancho Barnes moved away. The bar was immortalized in the movie 'The Right Stuff'.

1954- In a letter to studio heads director Elias Kazan worried that young actor James Dean was “too odd” and unpredictable to star in his movie “Rebel Without a Cause”.

1954- First day of shooting on Stage 3 of the Giant Squid battle on Walt Disney’s production of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The director was Richard Fleischer, the son of Walt Disney’s onetime competitor Max Fleischer.

1956- Chuck Jones’ “Rocket Squad”, when Porky and Daffy do a satire of the TV show Dragnet, except set in the future.

1963- Pete Rose first took the field in a Cincinnati Reds uniform. During an exhibition baseball game with the Yankees Mickey Mantle hit one of his monster 400-ft home runs and young Rose was the only outfielder scrambling and jumping hopelessly to catch it. Mantle laughed and said:” Hey, look at Charlie Hustle over there.” The nickname stuck. Charlie Hustle would go on to break Ty Cobb’s all time hitting record and managed winning teams. But after his retirement he was banned from baseball for betting on sports. Which everybody does now today, anyway.

1969- The Godfather, a novel by Mario Puzo was first published. The book about a NY mafia family was a huge hit and spawned three successful movies.

1972- Silent Running, starring Bruce Dern and directed by Douglas Trumble opened.

1975- North Vietnamese begin their final offensive that would capture Saigon and end the Vietnam War on April 30th. For the first time in a decade, they fought out in the open with heavy Russian T-52 tanks.

1980- This year one of the most popular diets in the country was the Scarsdale Diet by Dr. Herman Tarnower. This day a woman named Jean Harris entered his Purchase NY home and shot Dr. Tarnower to death. Her trial was a cause-celeb in the NY press.

1988- Andy Gibb of the BeeGees died at age 30. It was reported he died of a drug overdose, but he actually died of heart failure brought on by years of heavy drug abuse.

1997- The Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who was in jail at Broadmoor England for killing thirteen women, was stabbed in both eyes by another inmate.

2008- BANG THE GOV SLOWLY- Elliot Spitzer was the hard-driving NY State Attorney General who rocketed to the governorship and was touted as a potential future presidential candidate. His specialty was catching hi-tech Wall Street white collar crooks. Today his Icarus-like ascent came crashing down. He admitted to soliciting high price prostitutes. At $4,300 an hour. Spitzer was known to them as Client #9. The ladies said he liked to leave his socks on. When the news of his resignation came over the ticker on the NY Stock Exchange trading floor, day-traders stopped to cheer.
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Yesterday’s Question: Some people watching Sen Katie Britt’s State of the Union speech called her a Stepford Wife. What is a Stepford Wife?

Answer: "The Stepford Wives" is a 1973 horror/science fiction novel with dystopian overtones about a town where all of the women are beautiful, docile and compliant, who love housework and respond only to the whims and desires of their manipulative husbands. The main character finally realizes that the wives are actually cyborgs created for a cabal of husbands after their actual wives are murdered. The term Stepford Wife has come to mean a weirdly robotic character whose thoughts and behaviors are not her own. (thanks, FG)