December 05th, 2009 sat.
December 5th, 2009

Question: Never mind the Taliban, who was Caliban? ( hint- the Bard)

Yesterdays Question Answered Below: Why is Haydn’s 96th Symphony nicknamed the Miracle Symphony?
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History for 12/5/2009
Birthdays: Pope Julius II, Martin Van Buren, Walt Disney , Fritz Lang, Eugene Debs, George Armstrong Custer, Little Richard Penniman, Strom Thurmond, Otto Preminger, Lin Piao, Calvin Trillin, Joan Didion, Jim Plunkett, Jose Carrerras, Margaret Cho is 42

1349- People in Europe were at a loss to explain why the Black Death plague was killing everyone. So they arrived at was their age old answer- It must be the Jews fault! This day in Nuremberg 500 Jews were killed by rioters.

1484- Pope Innocent VIII raises the practice of Witchcraft from a minor sin to a major heresy. Included in the definition of witchcraft is any remaining vestiges of local animist customs, herbalism or treating illnesses with home grown medicines. He ordered the Holy Office of the Inquisition to look into all cases. From 1484 to 1750 maybe 200,000 people died in Europe and America. As late as 1784 a woman in Belgium was executed for bewitching a child.

1502- Columbus last voyage was hit by a hurricane. For twelve days his ships were battered by wind and waves. At one point Columbus saw a waterspout in the ocean near them. He read a Rite of Exorcism at it and made the sign of the Cross with his sword. Tradition says it then went away.

1704-In Hamburg towards the end of the opera Cleopatre composer Georg Frederich Handel and soloist Johann Mattheson start bickering over who should bow and receive the audiences applause. As the curtain came down and the cheers rang out Handel and Mattheson started furiously wrestling over the harpsichord. They then rushed out into a snowy public square and fought with swords. The audience followed them and cheered on this unique encore. Neither was hurt in the end and they even made up over their next opera.

1766- London auction house Christies held it’s first auction.

1791-MOZART DIED- The 35 year old composer was slaving away on a commission for a Requiem Mass when he died of scarlet fever and kidney failure complicated by exhaustion and alcoholism ( and he didn't work in animation ).

Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave and when his wife came to mourn him a few days later nobody could recall where he was buried. But the financial woes of his wife Constanze are exaggerated. Within a few years she was loaning money to relations. Constanze, the aunt of composer Carl Maria Von Weber and Mozart’s pupil Sussmeyer finished the Requiem. The theories about Antonio Salieri poisoning him out of jealousy or the FreeMasons doing him in began only a few years later. Schiller wrote a play in 1817 called Mozart & Salieri where he has Salieri doing the dastardly deed. In 1827 one of Beethoven's pupils wrote the Maestro about going up to the sanitarium to visit the ancient composer: "Salieri is in one of his fits again, shouting “I killed Mozart! Mozart forgive me!”"

1854- Aaron Allen of Boston patented the theater chair that folded up so you could exit.

1912- New York Hat directed by D.W. Griffith premiered. The first movie script written by Anita Loos, then 19. She became one of the finest Hollywood screenwriters ,who penned films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

1933- Prohibition is repealed in the U.S. Interestingly enough the final state to ratify the repeal amendment was Utah. My grandmother recalled a parade of beer trucks going down Broadway being cheered like Lindbergh's return. She jumped on the running board of one to hoist a stein with young congressman Fiorello Laguardia and Al Smith.

1941- Marshal Zhukov commenced the first Soviet counterattack since the Nazis invasion began in June. As the Red Army pushed them back from the outskirts of Moscow the Germans first came up against the new Soviet T-34 Stalin Tank. German tankman Heinz Guderian said to a colleague” I have just seen a most amazing tank, and if the Russians are mass producing them, we may lose the war!”

1941- Admiral Halsey moved his carrier fleet- USS Lexington & Enterprise out of Pearl Harbor to go on maneuvers. They would not be there for the Japanese attack on Pearl. This is why Japanese Admiral Yamamoto was disappointed with the battle’s final results.

1945- Flight 19, a routine training patrol of 5 Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale at 2:00PM and flew into the Bermuda Triangle. Two hours later the commander radioed that his compass and backup compass had failed and his position was unknown. The 14 men and their planes were never seen again. In the next few months hundreds of planes and ships searched the waters for some signs of wreckage. Nothing was ever found.


1951- Shoeless Joe Jackson died. The most powerful baseball batter of his age, he taught Babe Ruth how to hit. But he was implicated in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 and permanently banned from baseball. He worked in a hardware store near his rural Georgia home.

1952- The Abbott and Costello Television Show premiered. Where’s Hilary, Mr Fields and Stinky? “ Niagara Falls! Slooowwlly I turn! Step by Step! Step by Step!”

1953- Josef Stalin died. He was in a coma after a stroke but his doctors were too terrified to treat him. Before he died he was preparing a new purge aimed at doctors.

1974- The Seattle Seahawks football team formed.

1974- The BBC aired the last Monty Python show.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is Haydn’s 96th Symphony nicknamed the Miracle Symphony?

Answer: When the symphony premiered in London in 1791, a chandelier came loose and dropped on the audience. But so many of them had rushed to the front to congratulate Haydn, no one was hurt.


December 4th, 2009 friday
December 4th, 2009

Question: Why is Haydn’s 96th Symphony nicknamed the Miracle Symphony?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who put up the first Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree?
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History for 12/4/2009
Birthdays: Chief Crazy Horse, Samuel Butler*, Thomas Carlyle, Lillian Russell, Vasilly Kandinsky, Buck Jones, Wink Martindale, Max Baer Jr.,Robert Vesco, Charles Keating, Wally George, Deanna Durbin, Pappy Boyington, Horst Bucholtz, Former South Korean Prime Minister Noh Tae Yoo, Rainer Maria Rilke,, Jeff Bridges, Marisa Tomei is 45, Tyrah Banks is 36, Johnny Lyon- 1948 of the band Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes

*"Life is one long process of getting tired."- Samuel Butler

963AD- Pope John XII was beaten to death by the husband of a woman he was sleeping with. In Nominae Patrie- OUCH!..Et Filiae..OUCH!…Et Spitritu Sanctam..OUCH!

1655- Jews had been expelled from England since 1291. This year Oliver Cromwell convened a conference at Whitehall to consider re-admittance of Jews into English society. Cromwell’s Puritans had great sympathy for “God’s chosen People” and one Roundhead legislator even proposed moving the Sabbath Day back to Saturday. But there was still too much anti-Semitic resistance to make the re-admittance official. Despite the failure of the government to make a decision from this time without official sanction Jews began returning to and settling in England. They were allowed their own Jewish Burial Ground in 1657 and in 1715 Solomon Medina became the first Jewish person to receive a knighthood.

1657-Painter Rembrandt van Rijn was evicted from his home. His kept out of debtor’s prison when his daughter and son-in-law auctioned most of his possessions to pay off his creditors.

1674- HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHICAGO! French missionary Jacques Marquette dedicated a mission house and trading post that will eventually become Fort Dearborn, then the Windy City. But who invented deep-dish pizza?

1777- Ben Franklin and the American commissioners in France were in despair. Nothing but bad news about British victories, and the French government was complaining about American privateers attacking British ships in French waters. Even sympathetic French newspapers called the American cause lost. Today with playright-spy Pierre DuBeaumarchais in attendance, a courier from across the sea arrived. Jonathan Austin delivered the news of the Battle of Saratoga. That a British General Burgoyne and his entire army were defeated badly. Immediately the French, Dutch and Spanish governments started calling the Americans “our friends”, and began discussing an alliance.

1783- WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL- The American Revolution now ended, George Washington bid farewell to his officers at a dinner at Fraunces Tavern in New York. Creole cook Samuel Fraunces "Black Sam' was later invited by Washington to become the first presidential chef. The tavern is still there on the corner of Water and Pearl Streets.

1791- The London Observer, called the oldest continually published newspaper in the world, first published. True, the Times was begun in 1788 but t had a spotty release it’s first few years while it’s publisher would be thrown in prison for libel.

1829- The British in India abolished the custom of suttee- that a widow throw herself on her husbands funeral pyre and die also.

1875- William Marcy “Boss Tweed” escaped Ludlow Street jail and fled to Cuba. He had been the corrupt boss of New York City politics throughout the 1860s and 70s. He was rearrested in Spain by a Spanish policeman who spoke no English. When asked by American diplomats the Spaniard said he saw a newspaper cartoon by Thomas Nast of Tweed in prison garb with his hands on two young boys so he thought he was a kidnapper! Tweed was brought to justice by the one crime he probably never did.

1881- First issue of the Los Angeles Times.

1909- The first Canadian Football League championship the Grey Cup, U of Toronto defeated Toronto Parkdale 26-6

1915- HENRY FORD'S PEACE SHIP-The great industrialist was a livelong pacifist and was horrified by the carnage of the Great War. On this day he equipped a large yacht with neutral diplomats and other famous personages like Thomas Edison and sailed to Europe. Pundits had fun mocking his homespun naiveté' and local lunatics like Urban Ledoux, aka Mr. Zero, jumped into New York Harbor and swarm alongside the ship "to ward off hostile torpedoes." Ford docked in Oslo harbor hoping to use his influence to get the Kaiser, Czar and the other crowned heads to a bargaining table like some kind of board of directors negotiation. Nobody would meet with him. Young N.Y. politician Fiorello LaGuardia noted: "The only boy he managed to save from the trenches was his own son!"

1916-RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK KILLED- Several Russian noblemen resolve to rid their country of this Siberian peasant mystic who held such power over the Tsar and his family that he could dismiss government ministers at will. He once had an entire army offensive redirected because he was negotiating to buy the real estate they planned to fight over. A first cousin of the Czar, cross dressing Prince Youssuppov invited Rasputin to a late night party. He had a record player with Yankee Doodle playing in another room to convince the monk that a party indeed was in progress. Youssuppov gave Rasputin a glass of cyanide laced vodka. Rasputin drank it and finished the bottle. Then the conspirators rushed out, emptied a revolver into him, beat him with chains and heavy silver candlesticks, rolled him up in a rug and stuffed him into the ice clogged Neva River.

The official coroner's report said he had drowned. Shortly before his death Rasputin wrote a prediction in a letter to the Czar saying that 'if the peasants, my brothers, kill me, then you, Czar of Russia, have nothing to fear. But if your relatives kill me, not you nor any one of
your family will remain alive longer than two years." Rasputin's prediction was off by about four months. Nicholas II and his 400 year old dynasty fell ten weeks later and the entire Imperial Family were murdered in July 1918.

1927- The Cotton Club opened as a speakeasy nightclub in Harlem. Owners were New York ganglords Owney “The Killer” Madden and George “Big Frenchy” DeMange. Duke Ellington’s orchestra highlighted the opening night. When other gangsters tried to open a rival The Plantation Club Owney had his henchmen demolish the place. The Cotton Club was one of the great centers of the Harlem Renaissance, but African Americans were segregated from eating or drinking at the tables. Even W.C. Handy was once refused.

1931- James Whale’s macabre masterpiece film “Frankenstein” opened at the Mayfair theater in NY. English actor William Henry Pratt renamed Boris Karloff played the monster.

1932-BEFORE RUSH AND O’REILLY-“Good Evening Mr & Mrs North and South America and All the Ships at Sea! Let’s Go To Press!” Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell began his famous radio broadcasts on the NBC Blue Networks. Winchell became one of the most powerful voices in American society and politics for 23 years, later a strong voice of Anti-Communism and supporter of Joe McCarthy. He once revealed his secret of his rapid fire delivery. Before a broadcast he would drink a large amount of water and the need to urinate made him talk faster.

1941- As Admiral Nagumo's carrier fleet approached Pearl Harbor, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox assured news reporters : "No matter what happens, the US Navy will not be caught napping !"

1941- film "Mr. Bug Goes to Town"-opened. Max Fleischer's last gamble to keep up with Disney and keep his studio alive. However the events of Pearl Harbor three days later not only sink the American Navy, but also Hoppity's box office and Paramount puts Max out of business.

1948- “Hey...Stella !! A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway with Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.

1952- A killer smog sickens thousands in the London area. Around 8,000 people become ill. London bans the use of coal, peat and wood fires to heat homes. A deadly smog covered Los Angeles in 1956 and accelerated the demand for development of unleaded gasoline.

1955- French mime Marcel Marceau appeared on American TV for the first time.

1958- Cocoa Puffs cereal invented.

1961- Someone at the Museum of Modern Art in NY noticed that they had hung Henri Matisse’s painting Le Bateau upside down. It had been that way for two months and until now nobody had noticed.

1988- Actor Gary Busey almost died in a motorcycle accident on Olympic Blvd. In Los Angeles. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered massive head trauma. He later claimed to have an out-of-the-body experience at the scene.

1993- Rocker Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer at age 52.
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Yesterday’s Question- Who put up the first Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree?

Answer: When Rockefeller Center was being built in 1930, the construction company used non-union laborers, mostly Italian immigrants. When they were told they would not be given Christmas off, they put a little Christmas tree out front of the building construction to call attention to their unfair treatment. The employers recognized the bad publicity, so afterwards they put up a huge decorative tree to show it was part of the Rockefeller tradition. For many years the fresh tree used to be harvested at a Rockefeller family estate upstate.


December 3rd, 2009 thur.
December 3rd, 2009

Question: Who put up the first Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Was there a real Pope Joan?
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HISTORY FOR 12/3/2009
Birthdays: French King Charles VI the Well-Loved 1380, Gilbert Stuart, Sven Nykvist, Joseph Conrad real name Josef Korzeniowski, Jean Luc Godard is 79, Nino Rota- film composer, Jim Backus, Maria Callas, Larry Parks, Charles Pillsbury, Mitsuo Fuchida the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, Darryl Hannah is 49, Katerina Witt, Brendan Fraser is 41, Julianne Moore is 49,

Happy Ozzy Day! Ozzie Ozbourne is 61- ”I never set out to be a businessman. I just wanted to have fun, f—k chicks and do drugs.”


749AD- This is the Feast of Saint John Damascene. He’s the saint who’s called the Father of Christian Art, because he theologically argued a way for artists to avoid the “Graven Images “ hitch in the Ten Commandments and make paintings of Jesus and the Saints.

1557- The Scottish Covenant- In Edinburgh Scotland a group of anticlerical noblemen Argyll, Glencairn, Morton, Lorne and Erskine signed the First Scottish Covenant- pledging to reform the religion of the land.

1591- The first fire insurance contract was written in Hamburg.

1775- The first official U.S. flag hoisted aboard the USS Alfred. It was thirteen stripes with a cross of Saint George and Saint Andrew in the corner.

1919- Impressionist painter Pierre August Renoir died of old age. Suffering from arthritis that left him unable to paint with his hands, Renoir used a bit that held the brush in his teeth.

1925- GEORGE GERSHWIN PLAYS CARNEGIE HALL. Gershwin always wanted to be taken seriously as a composer and not just a Tin Pan Alley pop-song writer. While in Paris he met Maurice Ravel, but instead of giving him advice Ravel said: "You make HOW much from your songs? Maybe I should learn from you!" When he asked to be Arnold Schoenberg's pupil, Schoenburg told him :" Why do you want to be a bad Schoenburg when you're already such a good Gershwin?"

1931- Happy Birthday Alka Seltzer!

1934- Lee Blair, Disney artist and brother of Preston Blair, Disney artist, married Mary Browne Robinson, Disney artist. She became the most famous of them as Mary Blair.

1941- After clandestine diplomatic initiatives to raise the U.S. oil and steel embargoes fail, The Japanese High Command radios it's carrier fleet out in the Pacific: "Climb Mount Niitaka". This code meant go forward with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Admiral Nagumo orders resumption of radio silence and turns his fleet South-SouthWest towards Hawaii.

1967- Dr. Christiaan Barnard of Capetown performed the first heart transplant.

1968- Elvis Presley opened in Las Vegas to rave reviews and packed houses. It marks the beginning of his comeback and his transition from thin, black leather-jacketed youth to fat, rhinestone jumpsuit, half tinted sunglasses, karate-swinging middle age.

1974-A 40 foot long inflated pig broke away from its’ teather at a Pink Floyd photo shoot and became a hazard to civil aviation. The AeroPork was lost to radar at 8,000 feet.


1984- An accident at a Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India filled the air with poison methyl isocynate gasses that killed 10,000 people and blinds or otherwise injured a further 200,000. Saintly Mother Theresa shows a controversial side of her nature when she publicly encouraged Indians to accept the disaster as God’s Will. No one from Union Carbide was ever tried or convicted for the tragedy. Even today the ground around the closed facility is considered too deadly for inhabitation.

1991- Hulk Hogan defeated Undertaker to become WWF champ for the 4th time.

1997 – 56 year old Darlene Gillespie, an original member of the Mickey Mouse Club, was busted in LA for a securities fraud scheme.

1997-Basketball star Latrell Sprewell lost his $32 million contract with the Golden State Warriors for trying to strangle his coach P.J. Carlesino.

2004-The Ukranian Supreme Court ruled the recent presidential election invalid. Moscow and hardline Kiev Gov’t supported Victor Januscowicz followers committed widespread acts of voter fraud, then suppressed any news reports. The story was revealed to the world by a heroic sign language translator for the deaf. While the state approved news anchor reported the elections on the evening news the translator, Tania Dmitriovna, signed “EYERYTHING YOU HAVE JUST HEARD IS A LIE! YUSCHENKO IS OUR TRUE PRESIDENT! THIS IS PROBABLY THE LAST TIME YOU WILL EVER SEE ME..” The word spread spawned weeklong mass demonstrations and international pressure that compelled the government to redo the election.

2008- Conservative Episcopalian churches in the U.S. and Canada announced they were leaving the main Episcopal communion to found a new church- the New Anglican Church of North America. These theologians objected to the Church nominating gay priests and bishops.
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Yesterday’s Question: Was there a real Pope Joan?

Answer: Despite the possibilities for more DaVinci books, Pope Joan was just a medieval legend. The closest thing may have been a noblewoman named Marozia (890-937AD), who was the mistress of two popes and controlled one more and may have placed her bastard grandson on the Throne of Peter. She was declared a Senatrix, and exercised temporal power over the city of Rome.


December 1st, 2009 tues.
December 1st, 2009

Question: Whose epitaph on their grave reads, “ All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia..”

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Today we know Air America as a lefty radio network, but it’s named for something previously in the 1960s. What was the original Air America?
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History for 12/1/2009
Welcome to Decembrius, month number 10 to the Romans who only had ten months in their original calendar. It’s the same Latin root as Decimate, Dime, Decimal and Dixie.

Birthdays: Richard Pryor, Mary Martin, Cyril Ritchard, Dick Shawn, , Lee Trevino, Charlene Tilton, Lou Rawls, Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov, Admiral Stansfield Turner, Rex Stout the author of Nero Wolfe, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Colombian DrugLord Pablo Escobar, Treat Williams is 58, Woody Allen is 74, Bette Midler is 64, Sarah Silverman is 39

WORLD AIDS DAY- established by the UN in 1987. The lights on Broadway and in Washington D.C. will be dimmed tonight to mark the occasion.

1641- THE GREAT REMONSTRANCE- Parliament sent English King Charles 1st a long list of everything that annoyed them about being his subjects. They demanded Parliament to be the supreme authority in the realm, to sit in permanent session, the right to select and dismiss royal ministers and to reform the Protestant Church of England to a more Calvinist purity. 'God's Blood ! You ask of me things one would never ask of a king !"-sayeth King Charles. This little spat would become the English Civil War by next June.

1805-THE MIDNIGHT CAMP AT AUSTERLITZ- The night before the big battle between French, Austrian and Russian armies on a cold little field in what would be the Czech Republic. Napoleon went on a midnight inspection of his troops. His tour turned into something akin to a homecoming football rally. The French soldiers cheered, lit torches, sang and partied around bonfires all night. Across the hills the enemy generals mistakenly thought all the activity meant Napoleon was breaking his camp to run away.

The secret to Napoleons’ leadership was a special bond between him and his soldiers that was unique to his time. In an world of kings and aristocrats who considered the common people scum Napoleon walked casually among his soldiers campfire’s like an equal, stopping to share a roast potato and a dirty joke in rough soldiers language. His men considered the Little Corporal one of them, like the title Emperor was just some other military rank. He called them “My Children”. Even George Washington refused that kind of familiarity with his Minutemen. After the victory of Austerlitz the next day Napoleon personally adopted all the children of the soldiers killed in the battle and had them raised in private schools where the boys learned a trade and the girls were provided with doweries for good marriages.

1835- Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.

1879-Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera HMS Pinafore opened. Sullivan conducted the orchestra while Gilbert was a choruster. “So Stick to your desk and never go to sea, and you will be the leader of the Queen’s Navy..”

1887- The first Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan-Doyle "A Study in Scarlet" first published in Beatty’s Christmas Gazette. Conan Doyle was a fan of the American writer Oliver Wendell-Holmes who was a doctor like him, and Sherlock was the name of his neighbor.

1909- The Pennsylvania Trust Company invented the Christmas Club account.

1917- Father Flanaghan opened Boys Town west of Omaha Nebraska. A retreat for homeless boys and in 1979 girls as well.

1934- Josef Stalin's close confidant Sergei Kirov is assassinated in a Kremlin hallway by Lenoid Nikolayev. Stalin orders the GREAT PURGES of the thirties to begin. Later it came out that Stalin had ordered Kirov assassinated as an excuse. Exact figures are debatable but it is estimated millions were arrested and died. Stalin even had the wandering poor blind storytellers of the Ukraine rounded up and shot for fomenting anti-revolutionary ethnicity. Recently declassified private papers of Stalin revealed he admired Czar Ivan the Terrible and tried to learn from his example.

1938- Legendary filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein released in Moscow his film of Russian patriotism ALEXANDER NEVSKY, with soundtrack provided by Sergei Prokoviev.

1953- Ex- Esquire magazine art director and frustrated cartoonist Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy Magazine. It featured a nude centerfold of actress Marilyn Monroe. She joked to the press “ I had nothing on but the radio!”

Hugh Hefner assembled the layout of the magazine on his kitchen table and borrowed money from his mother-in-law to pay for the printing. The first Playboy had no number or date, because Hef was certain he couldn’t afford to make an issue number two.

1955- ROSA PARKS, a black seamstress in Montgomery Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus and was arrested for violating the segregation laws. She was fined $10. At the time she said she was unaware that she was breaking the law, she was actually seated in the first row reserved for Colored passengers, but since the bus was crowded the driver insisted she give up her seat for a white man. This incident and the subsequent boycott is the spark of the great Black Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's.

1963- The NASA space facility at Cape Canaveral Florida was changed to Cape Kennedy in honor of slain president John F. Kennedy. The same day the Kennedy Family moved out of the White House so Lyndon Johnson could move in. Jackie Kennedy only returned to the White House once more in her life in 1971 and on the condition that it be in secret and no press be present. She even would tell D.C. taxicabs to avoid streets where she might accidentally get a glimpse of it.

1963- According to recently unclassified documents, today was supposed to be the day a staged coup would overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. The CIA had hired Mafia hitmen to shoot Fidel as he drove in an open jeep to his beach home. Then the head of the Cuban army, Juan Almeida would seize the government. But John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas suspended all such plans.

1964- DR.MARTIN LUTHER KING MET J. EDGAR HOOVER- Dr. King and Rev Ralph Abernathy were on their way to Oslo for Dr. King to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Washington they were invited to meet with the legendary head of the FBI. Hoover sat them down and proceeded to lecture them for over two hours, calling them "boys" and hinting that they better not cause him trouble because he had tapes of Dr. King's sexual encounters. King and Abernathy left insulted and enraged. Hoover always believed that Dr. King and the entire NAACP were Communists. Later when Dr. King came out publicly against the Vietnam War one of these sextapes was mailed to his wife anonymously.

1982- Dr. Barney Clark receives the first Artificial Heart. Part of the research development was credited to Paul Winchell, puppeteer and cartoon voice who created Jerry Mahoney, Knucklehead Smith, Dick Dastardly and a plastic heart valve. At first it was hoped these plastic valves could take the place of real hearts, but today they are mostly used for temporary relief until a human donor heart can be found .

1990- The tunnelers digging below the English Channel from France and England break through to meet in the middle and shake hands. A tunnel under the English Channel had been a dream since Napoleon in 1802.
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Yesterdays Question: Today we know Air America as a lefty radio network, but it’s named for something previously in the 1960s. What was the original Air America?

Answer: A private cargo airline that was actually a front for CIA special ops. They flew in Laos and Cambodia during the Viet Nam War, when supposedly we had no forces there.


November 30th, 2009 monday
November 30th, 2009

Question: Today we know Air America as a lefty radio network, but it’s named for something previously in the 1960s. What was the original Air America?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does it mean to have a Panglossian outlook?
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History for 11/30/2009
Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guiliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, Luther Ingram, Ridley Scott is 72, David Mamet, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark is 81, Ben Stiller is 44

1731-An earthquake kills 100,000 in Peking.

1750- Marshal Saxe died. An illegitimate son of Polish King Augustus the Strong, the one–eyed old general spent the summer nights camping out Cossack style and letting wild steppe ponies gallop the grounds of his Chateau Chambord. A ladies man, he died after an all night "interview" with eight actresses. The king's physician wrote as the cause of death on the Death Certificate; "Une surfeit des femmes."- an overdose of women.


1776- As George Washington’s minuteman army retreated across New Jersey to escape the pursuing British Army, a third of his troop’s enlistment’s were up. In a cold rain 2,000 New Jersey and Maryland militiamen quit and walked home. Writer Thomas Paine was serving Gen. Nathaniel Greene as a secretary. He was moved by this pitiful sight to write the pamphlet: “The Crisis.”:”These are times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink in this crisis from the service of his country. But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of both man and woman.“ Washington called his downcast soldiers together and had the pamphlet read aloud to them.

1782- On a dark snowy day in an upstairs room on the Rue Bonaparte on Paris’ Left Bank, The United States and Britain signed the first of several protocols leading up to the full peace treaty ending the American Revolution. John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Richard Lawrence signed for America, a parliamentary delegation led by Lord Oswald signed for the Crown. On British diplomat said:” The Americans are the greatest quibblers I have ever dealt with, and I pray never to again in the future!”

1886- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened.

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do."

1924- The first fax message sent. A photo of the Prince of Wales was wired across the Atlantic by radio transmission.

1940-Actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Dezi Arnez. Together they pioneered the new art of Television. They divorced in 1960.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt left Warm Springs Georgia and traveled by special train to meet that evening with Japanese ambassadors Hamada and Kurusu at the White House in a last effort to prevent war. Meanwhile the main Japanese carrier fleet weighed anchor and left Yokohama for the North Pacific. It’s code name was Kido Butai. It was officially scheduled for military exercises but once out at sea Admiral Nagumo ordered radio silence and following his instructions from Admiral Yamamoto turned his ships south-southeast towards Pearl Harbor Hawaii.

1954- Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges of Sylacauga Alabama was hit by a meteorite. It shot through her roof, bounced off a radio and hit her on the hip. It gave her a nasty bruise and one heck of a story to tell. Broke her radio too.

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

1970- First day shooting on William Freidkin’s film The French Connection.

1974- In a dry gully in Ethiopia Dr Dennis Johannsen discovered the perfect skeletal remains of one of the earliest human ancestors, an ape that walked upright named- Australiopithicus Afrancenis. She called it Lucy. Johannsen liked the Beatles tune Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

1976- After doing such a fine job lowering the journalistic standards of the London press Australian tabloid king Rupert Murdoch turned his attention to America and bought the New York Post. The Post, a newspaper originally started in 1794 by Alexander Hamilton, quickly gains notoriety as the trashiest newspaper in the U.S.

In an interview Murdoch said the only reason he didn’t put in the Post his “Page Three Girls” -topless photo spreads so successful in the London Daily Sun was because his wife objected...He later followed that up with buying New York Magazine and the Village Voice, whereupon half the staff immediately quit.

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS t.v. show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into SONY Pictures.

1985-Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

1991- Battered wife Mrs Omeima Nelson killed her abusive husband, dismembered his body and ate him. “I did his ribs just like in a restaurant.” she said.

1993- President Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Bill into law. The bill was named for Reagan press secretary James Brady, who received a debilitating head wound in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. President Bush let it expire without renewing it. The Ft Hood killer, Major Hasan, used two FT-57 semi-automatic pistols and 20 round clips that had been outlawed by the Brady Handgun Bill.

1999- Seattle protesters trying to disrupt the World Trade Organization battle riot police and turn the downtown area into a retro-sixties battle zone. For the next several years wherever the WTO met they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of protesters, although the mainstream media tends to pooh-pooh their message.

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last member of the Disney family, was forced to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the mandatory retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. In 2005 Eisner himself was compelled to retire, and Roy Disney was restored to an emeritus board position.
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QUESTION: What does it mean to have a Panglossian outlook?

Answer: Dr. Pangloss was a character in Voltaire’s satirical tale Candide. He was based on the philosopher/mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, who invented binary math. PANGLOSS is from panglossia--speaking all languages. He represented one who held to the insipidly optimistic philosophy that “this is the best of all possible worlds”.


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