Question: What are you being asked to do when you are invited to be in a sculling competition?

Quiz: What does it mean to “cut a rug”?
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History for 3/5/2024
Birthdays: Henry III of England, Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, Explorer Le Sieur de Cadillac the founder of Detroit, Hector Villa-Lobos, Howard Pyle, William Oughtred 1574- inventor of the Slide Rule, Red Rosa Luxemburg, Rex Harrison, Dean Stockwell, Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 68, Eva Mendes is 49

Today is the feast day of Saint Eusebius of Cremona.

493AD- BARBARIAN PEACE SUMMIT- 17 years after the last Roman emperor fell, Theodoric the Visigoth invited to peace talks Odoacer, King of the Germans in Italy. On a pre-arranged signal two Goths held Odoacer's hands pretending to shake them, then Theodoric whipped out his sword and with one stroke sliced Odoacer in half lengthwise. He said of his sword stroke: "Surely the mother of this knave hath made him with gristle, for I find no bones in his body." Peace was achieved.

1496- English King Henry VII hired Italian mariner Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) to go explore this New World that the Spanish were going on about.

1534- Renaissance painter Correggio died when after an argument in the cathedral of Parma with his patrons paid him with sacks of pennies. He grew overheated carrying them all home and died of a fever at age 45.

1562- The Teutonic Knights disbanded- Warrior monks were a creation of the Crusades, but by the Renaissance they were outmoded. This German order of military monks formed in Jerusalem went to Prussia after the Crusades to convert the pagan Baltic peoples by chopping them up for Christ. But by now they had two big problems: Number one- everyone they used to chop were Christians already. Number two- the Reformation had started and all the knights were converting to Lutheranism, even the Order’s own bishop! So Grand Master Kettler went to Wittenberg to talk to the great reformer Martin Luther. Luther told Kettler to chuck the whole monk-thing, get married and become Duke of Prussia. Brandenburg-Prussia was the state that Germany unified under in 1870.

1616- The Holy Office of the Inquisition published its verdict on the new scientific ideas of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. It read:" The idea that the Earth goes around the Sun is Foolish, Philosophically Erroneous and Heretical since it contradicts Holy Scripture. The idea that the Earth revolves on its axis is also Ridiculous and Heretical." Galileo’s writings were not removed from the Index of Banned Books until 1835. In 1986, Pope John Paul II admitted Galileo might have been right.

1717- On his birthday Giovanni Tiepolo joined the Guild of Saint Lawrence, the artists union in Rome.

1759- Francois Voltaire’s most famous satire on religion and hypocrisy- Candide- was published. It was immediately ordered publicly burned by the regional parliaments of Geneva and Paris. This only increased its popularity. To stay out of trouble Voltaire first refused to admit he was the author:" People must have lost their senses to attribute to me that pack of nonsense! I have, Thanks God, better occupations."

1770- THE BOSTON MASSACRE- A snowball fight near some British sentries turned into an ugly anti-British riot that made the redcoats open fire on the crowd. African American Crispus Attucks among several others were killed. Radical publisher Sam Adams inflated the incident into the Boston Massacre. The British authorities were accommodating enough to allow the soldiers put on trial in a colonial civilian court. The soldiers were defended by a young Boston lawyer named John Adams. They were all acquitted.

1836- At the Alamo, as the Mexican army of Santa Anna prepared for their final attack, legend has it Colonel Travis gathered the remaining defenders. He drew a line in the sand with his sword and asked all who wished to stay and fight to the bitter end to cross it. All crossed but one. He was an elderly Frenchman named Louis Rose, who slipped out through the lines to safety. Rose was a veteran of Napoleon's army and had fought at Waterloo. I guess he felt he had been through enough history for one lifetime. At dusk, 16 year old rider James Allen slipped out of the Alamo to bring the doomed men’s last message to the outside world.

1853- Harry Steinway & Sons began their piano making company.

1863- The U.S. Army finally admits having the men do their own cooking was bad for morale, as well as their digestion. The first field kitchens with real cooks set up.

1868- Englishman C.H. Gould patented the first stapler.

1877- Rutherford Hayes inaugurated. His wife banned hard liquor from the White House. For this she was nicknamed Lemonade Lucy.

1891- The town council of Phoenix Arizona offered a bounty of $200 for every dead Indian brought in, and they didn’t care how they came to be dead.

1912- Italy became the first to use dirigibles for military purposes. Using them to get aerial reconnaissance of Turkish positions west of Tripoli, Libya.

1913- The day after his inauguration, President Woodrow Wilson began filling his cabinet. Secretary of the Navy Dearing proposed as Assistant Secretary of the Navy a young New York assemblyman named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wilson said:" Most Roosevelts I know try to run everything, but this fellow is a capitol idea!"

1915- NYPD broke up a plot by anarchists to set off bombs in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

1918- Lenin moved the capitol of Russia from Petrograd- Saint Petersburg, back to Moscow.

1933- The day after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a nationwide "Bank Holiday", a nice way of saying shut the whole system down to stop the panic. One third of all U.S. banks had already collapsed. Roosevelt moved so fast, throwing program after program to combat the Great Depression, that his first 100 days in office became legendary, and now the media use it as a litmus to measure other presidents against.

1936- Disney’s Three Orphaned Kittens won the best short Oscar at the 8th Academy Awards.

1937-Allegheny Airlines born, later to become U.S. Air. Allegheny had such a bad safety record that by the 1970’s the joke on their motto was "Allegheny will get you there-maybe." In 1979 Allegheny rebranded themselves as USAir.

1937- SPITFIRE. The first flight of Britain’s most famous fighter plane, the Supermarine Spitfire Mark II. Designer R. J. Mitchell fought red tape and outdated thinking on the army requisition board. He died of exhaustion and heart failure at 42, never knowing that his Spitfire would become the decisive weapon in winning the air war over Britain and saving his country from invasion. During the Battle of Britain, when Reichsmarshall Hermann Goring asked Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland what could he use to defeat the English? Galland responded “ I could use a squadron of Spitfires.”

1954- The Creature From the Black Lagoon opened. Directed by Jack Arnold. The Gill-Man designed by Disney animator Millicent Patrick.

1963- Country star Patsy Cline died in plane crash near Camden Tenn. Also killed were singers Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

1963- The hula-hoop was patented.

1966- As America was still getting used to the idea of fighting in Vietnam, and anti-war sentiment was beginning, a Sgt. Barry Sadler wrote a pro-war song titled Ballad of the Green Berets, that today hit #1. “Put silver wings, on my son’s chest. Make him one of America’s Best.”

1973- New York Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson make a stunning declaration. The left-handers announce that they have traded each others’ wives, children, houses, even their family dogs.

1982 – comedian John Belushi died of a drug overdose at The Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip. He had done 20 heroin-cocaine speedballs in just 24 hours. A woman named Cathy Smith was charged with administering to him the fatal dose. Robin Williams was with him that night partying but left early. Belushi was 31. Someone scrawled on Belushi’s tombstone:" You could have given us more laughs.....But NNNOOOO! (one of his signature comedy lines)

1994- The TV show Duckman premiered.

1995- Vivian Stanstall, lead singer for the Bonzo Dog Band, died in a fire in his London flat. He had been smoking in bed.

2004- Communist China changed its constitution to say that private property is now OK.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to “cut a rug”?

Answer: It was slang in the early XX century for being able to dance well.

Quiz: What does it mean to “cut a rug”?

Yesterday’s Question: Pres. Hoover made The Star Spangled Banner the official national anthem in 1931. There was not an official anthem before, but what song was used as the U.S. theme first?
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History for 3/4/2024
Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, Ray “Boom-Boom” Mancini, Patsy Kensit, Katherine O’Hara is 71, James Ellroy, Mykleti Williamson. Ward Kimball, Vicky Jenson, Ken Duncan

1152- Frederick Barbarossa made Emperor of Germany. Barbarossa means 'redbeard'. Barbarossa was the Richard Lionheart of Germany.

1517- HERNANDO CORTEZ LANDED IN MEXICO. With a hostile Viceroy of Cuba between him and Spain, and only 508 men, he resolved to conquer the Aztec Empire of many millions. He even burned his ships, to force his men to conquer or die.

1554- Queen Mary Tudor published a Royal edict repudiating her father Henry VIII’s religious reforms and restoring the Roman Catholic faith to dominance in England. Protestantism and other “heresies” were forbidden. To those who didn’t agree, she became Bloody Mary.

1647- As he realized he was losing the English Civil War, King Charles I sent his son Charles II and the rest of his family to Holland for safety. Today he saw them off. They would never see him alive again.

1681- King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn and his Quakers to build a colony in the New World. Penn wanted to name the new country "New Wales" because of its hills, but King Charles disagreed. As a Quaker, Penn was too modest to have a whole colony named after him. Since the Merry Monarch was essentially paying off an old debt owed to Penn's father, Admiral Penn, who stayed loyal to him during Cromwell’s time, the king suggested the new colony be named for his father. What else was there besides hills? Lots of forest-- the King knew that woods in Latin is Sylvania. Hey, how about Penn's Woods? thus Pennsylvania.
When His Majesty noticed the Quakers not removing their hats in his presence, King Charles removed his. William Penn asked: ”Sire, why dost thou remove thy hat?” The Merry Monarch replied:” Well, ONE of us is supposed to!”

1759- Madame de Pompadour secured the appointment of Etienne de Silhouette as Finance Minister and controller general. Silhouette tried to fix the chaotic French economy by raising taxes of aristocrats and cutting back their privileges. Noblemen said they had been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. By November the king fired him, and people joking called him a shadow. Since then the word silhouette has come to mean an outline figure.

1791- Green Mountains, or in French, Vermont, territory became the 14th state. The first new state added to the original 13 colonies. Before then, Vermonters had tried to be an independent country and once during the Revolution, Ethan Allen floated secret negotiations to sell Vermont back to the British.

1793-1933, Traditional Presidential Inauguration Day. "March Forth with a New President" (get it ?)
Transportation being what it was in early America, and the time it took to count votes, and the Electoral College to ratify the election results, this seemed a convenient time.
Inauguration ceremonies have been as elaborate as the Trump’s $107 million inaugural, to as simple as when Tom Jefferson addressed a few invited guests indoors, then returned to have dinner alone at Conrad's Tavern.
At Lincoln's second inaugural in 1865, Incoming Vice President Andrew Johnson was so nervous, he kept accepting sips of corn whisky. So before Lincoln delivered his famous speech " With Malice Towards None. With Charity for All..." Johnson was up there burbling incoherently in a drunken stupor. Lincoln had to order him pulled off the podium. In 1937 Franklin Roosevelt moved the inauguration date to the third week in January and that’s where its been ever since.

1836- Today General Santa Anna held a council of war to decide what to do about the Alamo. Many of his generals were against an attack. The Texans were cut off with little food, and there was no help coming. The Alamo had no strategic importance. So why waste men? But Santa Anna wanted to make an example of these “Yankee Land Pirates”. He ordered a grand assault on the Alamo as soon as the preparations were completed.

1861- THE STARS & BARS. During the Civil War the Confederate army was having a problem with their flag. Their first design so closely resembled the United States flag that soldiers had trouble distinguishing one from the other in heavy battle smoke. Creole General Pierre Beauregard put the ladies sewing circles of New Orleans on the problem and they came up with the Stars & Bars design based on the Cross of St. Andrew.

1887- William Randolph Hearst bought the little San Francisco Examiner and began to build the Hearst newspaper empire. Hearst’s father was part owner of the famed Comstock Mine, and thought his son crazy for wasting his time in the penny-paper business. Hearst died in 1951 at age 88, leaving an estate of $160 million.

1887- The first Daimler motorcar introduced in Esslingen Germany- the Daimler Benzin Motorcarriage. Daimler’s chief competition was Dr Carl Benz. In 1899, Austrian Emile Jellinek invested heavily in Daimler’s motorcars, provided he name them for his daughter Mercedes. Mercedes and Benz merged in 1926 but the two founders- Gottfried Daimler and Carl Benz never met face to face.

1902- AAA the Auto Club founded.

1917- Jeanette Rankin became the first female member of Congress.

1922- F.W. Murnau’s classic film Nosferatu, the Vampire, opened in Berlin.

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

1933- Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous speech“ The only thing we have to fear is, Fear itself.” at his first inauguration.

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refused the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as a protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

1936- First flight of the German dirigible Graf Hindenburg.

1944- Louis Lepke Buchalter went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. Buchalter with Albert Anastasia headed the heavy enforcement arm of Lucky Lucciano’s New York Mafia Syndicate. Nicknamed “Murder Incorporated,” the Brooklyn gang committed at least 100 murders, including Dutch Schultz, and Lucciano’s mentor Joey the Boss Masseria.

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon Blvd. in L.A. William Holden was their best man.

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

1958- U.S.S. Nautilus, first nuclear sub, reached the North Pole under the ice cap.

1960- American opera baritone Leonard Warren dropped dead on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London, actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died, had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants baseball team would stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada.

1982- The Abrahams/Zucker Bros TV comedy Police Squad! premiered.

1994- Basketball legend Michael Jordan went to bat for the first time in a Chicago White Sox Baseball uniform. Jordan gave up baseball after one season and returned to the NBA.

1991- During the Gulf War, US troops destroyed an Iraqi bunker concealing tons of deadly sarin nerve gas. Estimates are up to 24,000 troops were exposed to the toxic release.

1994- 375 pound comedian John Candy died of sleep apnea. He was 43.

1997- The senate of Brazil finally allowed women to wear slacks to work.

2000- The Japanese launch of Sony Playstation 2. It was designed to compete with Segas Dreamcast and Nintendo’s Cube. The Playstation 2 was the most anticipated videogame launch in history. 600,000 units were sold. One store in Tokyo’s Ginza had 4,000 people lined up at their door. It remained hot for 13 years.

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t actually work.

2008- The first Simon’s Cat short cartoon appeared on YouTube. English commercial animator Simon Tofield wanted to teach himself Adobe Flash, a 2D computer animation program. He decided to make a cartoon of his cat, and his quirky behavior. He took the results and posted it on YouTube for a laugh. It got thousands of views and made him famous. Now he has a staff, sells merchandise and is working on longer films.

2016- Disney’s Zootopia, directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush.

2018- Pixar’s Coco won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film.

Yesterday’s Question: Pres. Hoover made The Star Spangled Banner the official national anthem. There was not an official anthem before, but what song was used as the U.S. theme first?

Answer: Hail Columbia ( Columbia, Gem of the Ocean).

Quiz: What is the difference between a suite and a sweet?

Yesterdays Question answered below: What country in Europe has a region called Istria?
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History for 3/2/2024
Birthdays: Sam Houston, Alexander Graham Bell, Kurt Weill, Desi Arnaz (Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III), Ted Geisel aka Dr. Suess, Mikhail Gorbachov, Willis O'Brian, Moe Berg, Karen Carpenter, Lou Reed, Jennifer Jones, John Cullum, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, animator Bob Givens, Jon Bon Jovi is 62, Daniel Craig is 56, animator Stephen Chiodo

1818- It had been thought that the Pyramids in Egypt were solid monuments with no chambers. This day Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni discovered the entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza and explored its inner corridors and burial chambers.

1836- TEXAS DECLARED INDEPENDENCE FROM MEXICO. In 1821 the Mexican Congress had given Yankee settlers permission to live in the under-populated northern province of Teijas. Soon there were 100,000 Yanquis to just 3,000 Spanish Tejanos living there. After a military coup in 1833 brought General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to power, conditions in the outer provinces got harsh. Taxes were bad and the army sent to police them were drawn from the dregs, usually prison convicts. Mexico also wanted the American settlers to liberate their black slaves. Slavery was outlawed in Mexico.
When settler’s leader Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to complain he was jailed for fomenting insurrection. Even with Santa Anna’s army closing its grip on the Alamo, the Republic of Texas independence declaration was signed this day at Washington-on-the-Brazos. One of the signers there was John Wheeler Bunton, the great grand-uncle of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Texas revolt was as much a revolt of the ethnic Mexican Teijanos as the gringos. Similar revolts broke out at the same time in California and Jalixsco, but we remember Texas because it succeeded. Most histories were written after the Civil War in the racist Reconstruction Era. It made it out to be all white Texans vs. all brown Mexicans.

1863- The Union Pacific Railroad adopted a standard track width of 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches. The width of a Conestoga wagon. This width became the standard for the United States and later for most of the railroads of the world. Although train travel was invented in Britain, Europe was slow to adapt to it, while America, Russia and India rapidly embraced a technology that could quickly cover their vast distances quickly.

1923- THE FIRST TIME MAGAZINE. Founders Henry Luce and Claire Booth Luce were among the more powerful of the nation’s cultural elite. Conservative to the core -to the end of their days they thought Franklin Roosevelt and Civil Rights were big mistakes, they still experimented with LSD when it was thought by Harvard professors to be mind expanding. In the late 1980's the Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time-Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate.

1925- The US Government started assigning numbers to motorways and planned interstate highways. Before that roads had names like the Boston Post Road or the Baltimore to Washington Highway.

1933- "KING KONG"s exclusive premiere at the new Radio City Music Hall in New York. It opened in the rest of the country in April. “Twas Beauty killed the Beast.”

1935- The Looney Tune Cartoon "I haven’t Got a Hat" premiered. This cartoon gave birth to the first permanent Warner Bros. cartoon star- Porky Pig.

1940- SEABISCUIT. The small ungainly racehorse Seabiscuit had lost the Santa Anita Handicap Stakes twice before. Now at 7 years old, with ligament tears, he was considered all washed up. But he was entered one more time to try to win this race. The jockey Red Pollard was an alcoholic who had broken his leg and collarbone and was told he couldn’t walk, much less ever ride again.
Today this unlikely duo raced one more time against odds more like a Hollywood movie than a stakes race. The Biscuit not only won his last race, but set a track record, the second fastest time ever, and the richest win for that time. It’s called one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history.
When discussing the Sports Legends of the Twentieth Century- Seabiscuit and Secretariat are the only non-humans.

1940- Chuck Jones’ Elmer’s Candid Camera, where Elmer Fudd meets an early prototype of Bugs Bunny.

1943- Battle of the Bismarck Sea. U.S. Navy planes shot up a Japanese task force.

1947- Crusading Hollywood union organizer Herb Sorrell was plucked off the street in Glendale by gangsters posing as police. They may not have been just posing, many movie studios hired off-duty LAPD at double-time rates to “take care” of troublesome employees. They drove Herb up to Mulholland and worked him over, leaving him by the side of the road. Shortly after leaving the hospital, Sorrell was jailed for disturbing public peace.

1960- Wilt Chamberlain ("Wilt the Stilt") scored 100 points in one game for the Philadelphia Warriors. Wilt averaged a phenomenal 55 points per game that year and the NBA instituted a number of anti-Wilt regulations to ensure guys under 6'2 could get back in the game, like offensive goal tending, etc. Wilt also claimed to have put his off the court time to good use. He claims to have had slept with 3,000 women.

1961- Pablo Picasso married his second wife Jacqueline. He was 80, she was 35. Jacqueline cared for the increasingly reclusive artist and kept even his family at a distance. When Picasso died in 1973, she turned away many family members from the funeral. Jacqueline committed suicide in 1986.

1962- The classic Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man premiered. It’s a Cookbook!

1965- US military bombers do the first bombing raid inside of North Vietnam in a campaign that got the designation Rolling Thunder.

1965- The movie The Sound of Music opened at the Rivoli theater in Manhattan.

1971- Charles Engelhard died, a venture capitalist whose wild investments and grand lifestyle made him the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger.

1972- Pioneer 10 space probe launched. The first satellite to the outer planets, it sent back the first closeup photos of Jupiter in 1973 and left our solar system in 1983. It carries a plaque with a representation of men and women, a map of the Earth and Richard Nixon’s signature on it. It is in deep space now and will reach the star Ross 246 in the constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 A.D. Boy, I can hardly wait!

1973- The Women in Film organization founded.

1976- Francis Ford Coppola began shooting his epic film “Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines. The film was plagued by cost overruns, a typhoon and his Philippine Army helicopters frequently flying off to fight real guerrillas, but somehow it all got done. Today it is considered a classic.

1979- The Anglo-French Concord supersonic airliner service introduced. It was discontinued because of bad economics in 2003.

1982- Science Fiction writer Philip K. Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana, California. He was 53. The author of stories the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall and the series The Man in the High Castle were based. Dick said he was at times possessed by a superalien who appeared in his mind in a beam of pink light. His autobiography was entitled “I am alive, and you are dead.”

1989- At a photo session, NY Mets outfielder and Darryl Strawberry threw a punch at the team's first baseman, Keith Hernandez. The scuffle started over comments about salaries and ended with The Straw walking out of camp. A sportswriter for Sports Illustrated describing the fight said," Darryl Strawberry finally hit his cut off man."

2014- Walt Disney’s Frozen won the best animated feature Oscar.
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Yesterday’s Question: What country in Europe has a region called Istria?

Answer: Istria is a peninsula in the Adriatic Sea that is mainly part of Croatia, but sections also belong to Italy and Slovenia.

Question: What country in Europe has a region called Istria?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Suffering succotash! What exactly IS succotash?
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History for 3/1/2024
Birthdays: Frederic Chopin, Augustus Saint Gaudens, Glen Miller, David Niven, Oskar Kokoschka, Roger Daltry, Robert Conrad, Deke Slayton, Yitschak Rabin. Catherine Bach, Timothy Daly, Harry Belafonte, Lupita Nyongo, Ron Howard is 70, Javier Bardem is 55, Zack Snyder is 58

Welcome to MARCH from MARTIUS Mensis, THE MONTH OF MARS-so named because in ancient times it was the first month that was warm enough for armies to take the field. Various warrior societies held religious ceremonies to inaugurate campaigning season. In Rome, the Salian Priests would do a ceremonial war dance with the magic shields of Mars the Avenger, dropped from heaven for Romulus. The Macedonians would split a dog in half lengthwise and parade the troops between the two halves, sort of going through the gates of Pluto.

86 BC. Roman legions of Lucius Cornelius Sulla recaptured Athens from Mithridates the king of Pontus (a part of eastern Turkey). Mithridates was defeated and committed suicide. According to Plutarch, at one point Sulla's men captured a satyr (half man-half goat) in the precincts of the temple of Artemis. Sulla questioned the supernatural creature about the history of the future, but all it would do is whinny like a goat. So he told his men to get rid of it.

589AD- HAPPY SAINT DAVIDS’ DAY- This is the traditional date of the death of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. Called the Waterman, he was a Celtic monk, abbot and bishop who became the first archbishop of Wales. He was one of many early saints who helped to spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic tribes of western Britain. Welshmen celebrate today like the Irish celebrate St. Patrick, although without the green beer.

1562-THE MASSACRE OF VASSEY- In France the Catholics and Huguenots- Protestants had been headed towards open conflict despite all attempts at mediation. In the little town of Vassey south of Dijon the Catholic Duke Du Guise became annoyed when Huguenots hymn singing in a barn disturbed his ability to hear Mass. Scuffling broke out and when the Duke got hit in the face with a stone, his retainers drew their swords and chopped up 125 people. The French Religious Wars had begun.

1579- Sir Francis Drake on board the Golden Hind made the catch of his career. In the waters off Cartegena Colombia he attacked and captured one of the great Spanish treasure ships carrying Inca gold from Peru. This one ship carried more wealth than the entire treasury of Queen Elizabeth’s England. And a fleet of these ships crossed the ocean twice a year. Drake instantly became a rich man. The galleon was called La Nuestra Senora De La Concepcion, but her crew nicknamed her “CacaFuego” which some translate as “Spitfire”, but more closely means “Hot Shit.”

1680- Pennsylvania became the first US colony to outlaw slavery.

1711- The first issue of England’s’ great periodical The Spectator first published. It was unique for a broadsheet in that it didn’t cover politics or doings at court but printed essays on social gossip, literary criticism, studies of manners and morals. It was said the Spectator helped begin the transformation of English gentry from ale-swilling philanderers to the well-bred, well-read toffs of the Victorian Era.

1777- Young artillery officer Alexander Hamilton was appointed to General George Washington’s personal staff. This marked the beginning of Hamilton’s personal relationship with Washington that would last throughout the war and his presidency. Hamilton was his constant consultant, advisor, and may have written many of Washington’s speeches. There is a rumor that GW may even have been Hamilton’s father since his only trip outside the US was to visit Bermuda. Hamilton was born illegitimately on the Virgin island of Nevis, but beyond that no evidence has ever been substantiated.

1808- Parliament outlawed the overseas slave trade within the British Empire.

1815- Napoleon Bonaparte came ashore in France near Frejus on the Riviera and marched on Paris in a desperate gamble to regain his throne. He was attacking a nation of 14 million with just 1,200 followers. After his defeat in Russia and exile to Elba the European allies restored the Bourbon King and old aristocrats to France.
The old royals soon made it plain they learned nothing from the French Revolution and wanted to continue things as if it was still 1789. Little things like evicting war orphaned children into the street so some old aristocrat could have his crumbling chateau back. The Royal family also liked to spit on the tricolor flag and appeared in public in Russian uniforms, a uniform seen by French people as responsible for the deaths of many of their brothers and husbands. The people’s anger enabled Napoleon to recall old memories of Glory, and Liberte’.
At the sight of the little man in the plain black hat everyone went nuts. The whole Royal Army changed sides without a shot fired. His desperate gamble became a triumphal party and he was carried on the crowd’s shoulders back into the palace.

1836- A dozen Texans from Gonzales slipped past Santa Anna’s Mexican army to join their friends in the Alamo. These are the last reinforcements to arrive.

1872- Congress okayed the creation of Yellowstone National Park. In 1878 during the military campaign against the Nez Perce Indians, Chief Joseph took his warriors through the park territory frightening some early tourists.

1896- Battle of Adwa- The Italian colonization of the ancient land of Ethiopia is halted for a generation after the invading Italian army was defeated in one big battle. Critics like to scoff that the modern Italian forces were massacred by a spear wielding foe, but in truth the legions of the Negus Negusti (king of kings, i.e. Ethiopian emperor) had been covertly rearmed by France with the latest rapid firing steel cannon. France didn’t want any encroachment on her own colonial holdings in nearby Senegal.

1912- Albert Berry completed the first parachute jump from an airplane in St. Louis Missouri.

1917- Czar Nicholas II rushed back to his rebellious capitol St. Petersburg in a private train. Today his train was blocked by revolutionaries. His train backed up and was blocked again from behind by mutinous troops. His ministers advised that the army would no longer remain loyal and he may have to abdicate.

1919- The March Movement- Korea declared its independence from Japan, Russia and China.

1924- The first Alice in Cartoonland short, “Alice’s Day at Sea” from the new Disney Brothers Studio, premiered in several theaters.

1930- Disney animator Ub Iwerks, the animator/designer of Mickey Mouse, quit the studio to set up his own place. Iwerks partner was Pat Powers, who’s Powers Cinephone was the process used to put sound on “Steamboat Willie”. Powers engineered the break between Ub and Walt when Disney refused to let Powers buy into a co-partnership in Disney Studio. Walt was stunned by the loss of one of his first employees and closest friends. Iwerks studio produced Flip the Frog Cartoons, but it eventually failed, and he'll return to Disney to invent the xerox process.

1932- Museum of Modern Art in New York held first major retrospective of the style of architecture called "THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE" Steel girder frames with large windows for walls and no ornamentation. This style pioneered by Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Phillip Johnson. Called by critics "vertical ice cube trays" they now dominate the skylines around the world, making Moscow and Shanghai equally unrecognizable from Pretoria, or Newark, New Jersey.

1932- THE LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPING. The infant son of the famous aviator was taken from his crib in their Princeton New Jersey home. Forensic science determined he was bludgeoned and buried shortly afterwards. But the kidnap plot went ahead for nine days. The kidnapper left behind a crudely written note asking for $50,000 dollars in small bills. German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptman, the man who was convicted and executed for the crime protested his innocence to the end. But some of the ransom money was found in his apt. The New Jersey country sheriff in charge of the investigation was the father of future Gulf War general Norman Schwarzkopf.

1937- Connecticut issued the first metal license plates for autos.

1941- Congress approved designating a committee to investigate waste in Defense appropriations. It was chaired by junior Missouri Senator Harry Truman. The Truman Commission uncovered corruption and sweetheart deals among businessmen doing war work. They exposed waste, fraud, padding bills and corporations still doing business with the enemy, even after Pearl Harbor. The Truman Commission saved America millions and made Harry Truman a national figure. Truman was also a Democrat investigating within a Democratic Administration.
No such committee was ever allowed for the Iraq War, and the result was billions given out in secret no-bid contracts, and over a trillion dollars never unaccounted for.

1941- The first Captain America comic book by Marvel Comics published.

1946- The National Cartoonists Society formed.

1951- Frank Sinatra was subpoenaed by the Senate Kefhauver Committee looking into the activities of the Mafia. In deference to Old Blue Eyes public persona, strings were pulled so he was allow to testify in his attorney’s private office high in 30 Rockefeller Plaza at 4:00 a.m.

1954- Puerto Rican Nationalists shot 5 Congressman on Capitol Hill. They opened fire from the visitor gallery down on the Congressman.

1961- John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps.

1961-The Ken Doll introduced as a mate to Barbie.

1962- A huge tickertape parade in New York is held for astronaut John Glenn.

1966- The Russian probe Venera 3 landed on Venus. Although the Venera crash landed it was the first unmanned probe to land on the surface of another world.

1968- Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who presided over the Vietnam War buildup and humiliated by the Tet Offensive, resigned and was replaced by presidential advisor Clark Clifford.

1968- THE CHICANO BLOWOUTS- Discontent had been buildings in the Mexican American community over substandard teaching and facilities in California schools. One student remembered her college-prep teacher yelling at her in class “ You’re never going to college! By the end of the year you and your girlfriends will all be pregnant anyway!” This day on a given signal hundreds of High School kids stood up and walked out of class. The protests grew through the Southwest, and the American Public heard a new word – Chicano, for the first time.

1971- Radical Hippy Weathermen Movement planted a bomb in the men’s room of the US Senate. It exploded causing thousands of dollars in damage but hurting no one.

1973- Hanna-Barbera’s feature film Charlotte’s Web premiered in theaters. Directed by Charles Nichols and Iwao Takamoto.

1975- The first Honda Civics arrive in the US.

1978- Unemployed auto mechanics Gatchko Ganas and Roman Wardas broke into the tomb of Charlie Chaplin in Vevey Switzerland and stole his remains. They tried to hold it for ransom. The body was recovered and the two losers were soon arrested. They were trying to make enough money to open a car repair garage in France.

1988- Apple introduced the first commercially available CD-ROM drive for your personal computer.
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Yesterday’s Question: Suffering succotash! What exactly IS succotash?

Answer: It's based on The Three Sisters, a native American dish of corn, beans and squash. Most non Native Americans use tomatoes instead of squash. ( Thanks, NB)

Question: Suffering succotash! What exactly IS succotash?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In Greek mythology, who slew the gorgon Medusa?
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History for 2/29/2024 Leap Year Day
46 BC-We have a Greek thinker named Sosigenes to thank for today. He was commissioned by Julius Caesar to reform the calendar. The Roman Calendar was a system of ten months made of three weeks each consisting of ten days each. The system was so rickety that the Roman curia (government) actually had a department who’s only purpose was to tell you what day it was!
January and February didn’t exist, but when they were created they were originally between March and April, until moved to their present location. February in the original plan had 30 days but Augustus’ family was angry that August only had 30 days while July had 31, so they borrowed a day from February. This Julian calendar was changed again by Pope Gregory in 1582 to the modern western calendar.

Birthdays: Giacomo Rossini -Who liked to joke he was 16 years old when he was actually 67, Balthus, Jimmy Dorsey, William “ Wild Bill” Wellman, Alex Rocco, Arthur Franz, Phyllis French, Mother Ann Lee the founder of the Shakers, Dinah Shore, author Tim Powers (1952); his surreal stories often have characters with unusual birthdays.

Today in Anglo-Irish custom is the only day it is considered appropriate for a woman to propose to a man.

1504- Christopher Columbus, shipwrecked on Jamaica by a hurricane, scares natives into giving him food by accurately predicting a solar eclipse.

1528- Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake for preaching the reformed faith in Scotland.

1692- The first indictments of the notorious Salem Witch trials. Tituba, a black-Caribe servant cook of the town’s preacher, who liked to entertain his children with ghost stories of the Caribbean was arrested for witchcraft with Sarah Osbourne, an elderly deaf woman who, well... just looked like an old and spooky witch. In all 22 people were executed. Salem kept up the hysteria until the Governor of Massachusetts stopped it after his own daughter was accused.

1704- The settlement of Deerfield Massachusetts massacred and burned by French & Indians as part of Queen Anne’s War.

1776- French writer and spy Pierre D’ Beaumarchais wrote a letter to King Louis XVI advising France should support the American colonies revolution against England. Beaumarchais, who later wrote the Barber of Seville, set up spy operations and under the name of a Rodrique Hortalez & Company, to ship guns, gunpowder and uniforms to George Washington’s beleaguered army.

1796- JAY’S TREATY- One of the first foreign treaties negotiated by the infant American republic was a settlement of issues left over from the Revolution. The British agreed to settle the border between Canada and Vermont, and abandoned Ft. Oswego, New York. And the Americans gave up some territory and agreed not to use the St. Lawrence trade route for 25 years. This treaty was very controversial in it’s day but its effects were temporary.

1804- According to Napoleon's plans this was supposed to be the day he scheduled to cross the Channel and invade England after his navy gave beat Admiral Nelson. His Grande Army was camped all along the beach at Boulonge waiting to board transport barges. But they never got to make the trip. Nelson destroyed Nappy's fleet at Cape Trafalgar.

1908- Former Sheriff Pat Garrett, the killer of Billy the Kid, was himself gunned down while stepping off a buckboard to urinate. The assailant was in a lawsuit with Garret over a promise to remove some goats from his property.

1960- Hugh Hefner opened the first Playboy Club, this one in Chicago. The restaurant –nightclub succeeded on a gimmick of members-only keys and the famous Playboy Bunny waitresses. One Bunny said of her job,“I served London Broil in a bathing suit and heels and made more money than anyone in my family!”

1960- An earthquake killed 12,000 in Agadir Morocco.

1968- Dr. Jocelyn Burnell of Cambridge announced the discovery of the pulsar star.

1968- The Beatles win four Grammy awards for their Sgt. Pepper album.

1960- FBI agent Melvin Purvis shot himself with the gun he used to kill John Dillinger. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover would tolerate no competitors for the title of America’s most famous cop. When Purvis' fame began to overshadow Hoovers the Director hounded him out of his job. Purvis's widow commented bitterly that the F.B.I. didn't even send a card or flowers to note the passing of their single most famous field agent. J. Edgar also ruined treasury agent Elliot Ness’ career, although some contend that the accounts of his exploits in his book "The Untouchables" were more fiction than fact.

1984- Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced his retirement after 15 years in power.

1992- Bosnian Moslems and Croats vote on a referendum on independence for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The vote was boycotted by the Bosnian-Serbs. This was seen as the start of the Bosnian Civil War.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Greek mythology, who slew the gorgon Medusa?

Answer: Perseus.