Question: Who was the last U.S. President to ride a horse to an official function?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Who was the only U.S. President who was fluent in French and German?
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History for 8/26/2022
Birthdays: Sir Robert Walpole the first British Prime Minister, Mother Theresa, Albert the Prince Consort, John Wilkes Booth, Guilliame Appollinaire, General Maxwell Taylor, Christopher Isherwood, McCauley Culkin is 42, Geraldine Ferarro, Dr. Lee DeForrest, Ben Bradlee, Barbet Schroeder, Branford Marsalis, Chris Pine is 42, Melissa McCarthy is 52

480 BC- The Persian Army of Xerxes the Great King marched into Athens. They found an empty city. Athenian leader Themistocles had ordered the population to evacuate to the small island of Salamis. Themistocles defeated Xerxes later in an epic naval battle.

55 B.C.- JULIUS CAESAR LANDED IN ENGLAND- Caesar paused from his conquest of Gaul to check out the British Isles. He didn't stay long because Channel storms were playing havoc with his supply ships. Just long enough to fight some Celts under their chief Cassilvelaunus, collect some tribute, and add a chapter to his memoirs.
The Romans returned in A.D. 61 under instructions from Claudius to conquer and colonize. London, Colchester and York were founded originally as Roman army camps. The Romans stayed until 401AD, when the legions were withdrawn to protect Italy.

580AD- An ancient Chinese inventory of the household of a nobleman made the first recorded reference to toilet paper. Meanwhile in Europe, the ancient Romans used a sponge tied to a small stick. You were expected to rinse it out afterwards for use by the next person.

217AD- Today is the Feast of St. Zephyrinus, who didn't die violently but he is still counted as a Martyr because he had a lot of stress. (?) He was supposedly so charitable, that Saint Hippolytus found him annoying.

1346-Battle of Crecy – The English beat the French in the Hundred Years War., The Welsh longbows rained powerful armor piercing arrows on the French knights from long range. The King of Frances’ friend King John of Bohemia rode into the thick of the battle, despite his being elderly and completely blind. His horse’s reins were held by retainers galloping alongside him. When Edward the Black Prince of Wales discovered the king's dead body after the battle, he plucked three white plumes from his helmet and assumed his motto "Ich Dein". They became the symbols of the Prince of Wales. Also appearing at this battle for the first time were the big rock throwing fire pipes they called Bombardons, but we call cannon.

1498- Michelangelo gets a job in Rome. The big Florentine stonecutter was commissioned by Pope Alexander VI Borgia to carve the Pieta, Mary lamenting over the body of Jesus.

1572- In Paris four days after the Great Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, someone noticed the hawthorns were flowering out of season in the little cemetery of the Holy Innocents. The Bishop of Paris thought this was a divine sign, and ordered the church bells to ring. But when the dumbass people heard the bells they thought it was a signal to resume the massacre, so everyone ran out and started killing each other again.

1576- The artist Titian died at age 88. He outlived all the artists of the Renaissance, worked every day of his life, and might have gone on had he not caught a touch of plague.

1648- French peasant uprising known as La Fronde. The Fronde was a reaction to the king's government being controlled by scheming cardinals like Richelieu and his protege, Cardinal Mazarin. Had the movement more legal structure to their demands, France might have developed an English style representative government. The English were in the middle of their Civil War over the same issues at the same time. But the Fronde was more about blind class rage, and after it was crushed it left a deep impression on the mind of child King Louis XIV. He concluded that giving the common people any voice or power was a bad idea.

1790- THE KINGDOM OF YAZOO- Before the Louisiana Purchase the area around Spanish Mississippi territory and American Tennessee was a no man’s land of swamps Creek Indians. An Irish adventurer named O’Fanlon with a group of leathershirts and yahoos tried to declare themselves an independent nation -named for the Yazoo River.

1814- After completing their work of burning Washington D.C. to the ground, the British redcoats under Admiral Cockburn marched away in good order back to their ships. One old grandfather yelled at the British:" If General Washington had been alive you would not have gotten off so easily!" Admiral Cockburn reigned in his horse and replied -"Sir, if General Washington had still been President, we should never have thought of coming here."

1838- American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson met English writer Thomas Carlyle.

1846- W.A. Bartlet became first American mayor of Yerba Buena, in 1850 renamed San Francisco.

1868- First practical typewriter patented by Christopher Scholes. The Remington Company who were famous for making firearms took up the typewriter and mass produced it. In 1874 Mark Twain admitted to a friend that he preferred writing on it.

1914- During World War I, the German artillery bombarded the Belgian city of Louvain, destroying it’s 600 year old medieval library. It was considered the first great cultural crime of the 20th Century, but alas, not the last.

1918- 17 year old Walt Disney dropped out of high school and faked his birthdate in order to enlist to fight in World War I. Turned down for his age, he volunteered for the Red Cross. Assigned to the ambulance corps, he arrived in Europe just as the war was ending.

1929- The giant German dirigible Graf Zeppelin landed in Los Angeles at a remote place called Mines Fields, that would one day become Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). In ten years the Graf Zeppelin made 590 flights around the world without a single problem. It had a perfect safety record. Back then, lighter than air ships were considered much safer than airplanes.

1939- In preparation for the impending war with Germany, the Tower of London was closed to tourists and the English Crown Jewels smuggled out and hidden.

1944- Charles DeGaulle walked in triumph down the Champs Elysee among thousands as Parisians celebrates their liberation after four years of Nazi occupation.

1946 - George Orwell published "Animal Farm". Orwell said he conceived the idea for the novel while watching out his window a small boy driving a huge draft horse. The horse could have easily crushed the boy had it the free will, but instead patiently endured the boys taunts and flicks with a small switch.

1946- First day of shooting on Jean Cocteau’s film Belle et le Bete, Beauty & the Beast.

1958- First day of shooting on the Alfred Hitchcock film North By Northwest. Conceived as a story that ended in a chase across the stone faces of Mt. Rushmore. The working title of Ernst Lehman’s script was The Man Who Hung from Lincoln’s Nose.

1961- The Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto dedicated.

1964- The Tokyo subway system opens.

1967 – The Beatles, Mick Jagger & Marianne Faithful met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

1970- Tens of thousands of women across North America march in The Women’s Strike for Equality. It was led by Betty Friedan of NOW, the National Organization for Women.

1971- The New York Giants announced they would move from Yankee Stadium to a new complex being built in the Meadowlands of Rutherford, New Jersey.

1980- Director Tex Avery died after collapsing in the parking lot of Hanna-Barbera. He was 72. Two weeks before he was asked by a friend why he was working in Hanna & Barbera, Tex laughed:" Hey, Don’t you know? this is where all the elephants come to die!"

1985- The first Yugo economy car arrived in the US. From Yugoslavia.

1997- Special effects house Boss Studios, closed.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was the only U.S. President who was fluent in French and German?

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Quiz: Who was the only U.S. President who was fluent in French and German?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Who was the only U.S. President to learn English as a second language?
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History for 8/25/2022
Birthdays: King Ludwig II the Mad of Bavaria, Walt Kelly, Bret Hart, Lola Montez (flamenco dancing mistress of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria), Alan Pinkerton, Clara Bow, Ruby Keeler, Monty Hall, Van Johnson, Willis Reed, Frederick Forsythe, Wayne Shorter, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dr. Bruno Bettleheim, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Sean Connery, Gene Simmons, Anne Archer, Elvis Costello is 69, Tim Burton is 65, Claudia Schiffer is 53

Opiconsiva- Ancient Roman festival of the first harvest.

1127- Empress Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror, married Geoffrey of Anjou, a powerful noble family in central France. She was called Empress because her first husband was the Emperor of Germany. After the Conqueror’s sons died, England went through a confusing period of dynastic struggle that only ended when Matilda and Geoffrey's son Henry became King Henry II of England. Geoff D’Anjou The Handsome was an unassuming fellow, who other than producing the great English royal line of Richard the LionHeart and Henry V was also known for putting a little flower in his hat. In Latin a planta-genesta. His family name was called Plantagenet.

1688- Pirate Captain Sir Henry Morgan died of his various excesses of his pirate lifestyle. He was 53. Morgan the Pirate was the only top pirate who ever really got away with it and lived a rich old salt as Royal governor of Port Royal. A few years after his death Port Royal was destroyed by an earthquake and Sir Henry’s last resting place slipped under the waves with most of the city.

1814- The British Army occupying Washington D.C. continued their work of burning the city- The State Department, War Office, Library of Congress, The Treasury Building and more were torched. British Admiral Cockburn made a point of destroying the offices of the National Intelligencer, a newspaper run by an English immigrant named Joseph Gales who loved writing insulting editorials about him. A violent early morning summer thunderstorm, called by some a tornado, doused some fires but added to the misery of Washingtonians cowering in the forests of Arlington.
President James Madison spent most of the night in the saddle looking for his wife Dolly, and trying to rally his scattered government. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Dolly Madison with a carriage full of the furniture from the White House tried to enter an inn called Wiley’s Tavern. But the owner’s wife threw the First Lady out: “You can leave Mrs Madison! Thanks to your husband, mine is out fighting in the war! Damn You!”

1829- The Mexican Government refused US President Andrew Jackson’s offer to purchase Texas. Jackson then explored other means. Sam Houston, first President of Texas, and its first governor under the US flag was a protégé of Jackson.

1830- Brabant Rebellion, Belgium separated from Holland.

1830- This is the day of the legendary race between the locomotive the Tom Thumb and a horse and buggy outside of Baltimore. The Tom Thumb weighing in at about a ton and developing a whopping one-horse power. The boiler driven fan broke down near the end, so the horse won. Still, the train’s performance was so impressive that the first U.S. railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, shifted from horse drawn to steam railroad.

1835- The New York Sun newspaper ran a story that British astronomer Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of Neptune, had observed little men living on the surface of the Moon! The story proved false, but it really boosted the sales of the paper.

1875- Matthew Webb became the first person to successfully swim the English Channel.

1893- Colored People’s Day at the Columbia Exhibition in Chicago. How thoughtful!

1896- The Journal Examiner's Yellow-Fellow Transcontinental Bicycle Relay race.

1900- Is God dead? No, just Frederich Neitszche, this day

1912- In Shanghai, Dr. Sun Yat Sen formed the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party. (KMT)

1916- President Woodrow Wilson created the National Parks Service out of 35 separate departments.

1928- Commander Byrd set off to explore the Antarctic.

1942- King George VI youngest brother George the Duke of Kent, was killed in a military plane crash in Scotland. He became the first member of the English royal family to die in uniform in 450 years.

1944- PARIS LIBERATED. Adolf Hitler had ordered the Germans to dynamite all the major landmarks: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame etc, But when the time came, the German commander Gen. Deitrich von Choltitz refused to do it. There was street fighting, but the heavier German tank units had voluntarily evacuated the city. On Aug 20 the French Resistance (Les Maquis), rose and seized key points. This day Free French units under General LeClerc led the allied columns into the City of Lights.
Ernest Hemingway and a few paratroops liberated the Ritz Hotel's wine cellar and Shakespeare & Company bookstore. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were discovered by CBS correspondent Eric Severaid living unharmed outside of town.

1945- In an incident in postwar China, U.S. troops scuffled with Communist Chinese soldiers and a Capt. John Birch was killed. In the growing Cold War hysteria, Capt. Birch was lauded as the first martyr in the Crusade against Communism, and an organization in his name was formed. In 1958, Robert Welch, who had become rich from inventing the Sugar Daddy candy bar, formed The John Birch Society. Birchers became a force for extreme right wing politics in the 60's. Another one of their founders was Fred Koch, the father of the modern Koch Bros, who use their oil money to start the Tea Party in the U.S.

1967 – In Mississippi George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of American Nazi Party, was blown off the speaker’s platform by a shotgun blast. Although not as significant as the Martin Luther King or the Kennedy’s assassinations, it was another incident in the violent 1960’s. George Lincoln Rockwell was also a distant cousin of Norman Rockwell, although the famed artist was embarrassed to admit it.

1970- A young singer named Elton John did his first US tour, opening at the Troubadour in LA.

1980- The premiere of the Broadway musical version of the classic movie musical 42nd Street. In a moment of Broadway drama, producer David Merrick came out on stage and startled the cast and audience by announcing that the director of the play Gower Champion had died that very day. 42nd Street went on to be a smash hit. The play itself is about a Broadway director who works himself to death creating a hit musical.

1989- Congressman Barney Frank confirmed that he had paid for the services of a gay male prostitute named Stephan Gobie. The unrepentant Frank continued to serve in Congress another twenty-five years.

1989- The Voyager 2 probe left Neptune and shot off into deep space, completing its mission, a reconnaissance of the outer planets of our solar system. It discovered the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, the additional moons of these planets, and the volcanoes of the Jovian moon Io, and the ice of Europa. Today, you have ten times more computing power in your phone than in the Voyager spacecraft, yet all these years later it continues to transmit signals back to Earth. By 2012 Voyager I and Voyager 2 have both left the Heliosheath, the outer perimeter of our personal solar system, and today are deep in interstellar space. Voyager 1 with its Chuck Berry recording, should reach the next neighboring solar system in about 40,000 years.
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/

1991- At the Emmy Awards, comic Gilbert Gottfried upset the audience with a torrent of masturbation jokes about Pee Wee Herman. Fox Network actually apologized the next day.

2001-Beautiful 22-year-old R&B singer Alleiya was killed, when her overloaded chartered plane crashed on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was the only U.S. President to learn English as a second language?

Answer: Martin van Buren. His mother raised him speaking Dutch.

Quiz: Who was the only U.S. President to learn English as a second language?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean when you see a store sign that says “ apothecary”?
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History for 8/24/2022
Birthdays: Jorge Luis Borges, William Wilberforce, Marlee Matlin, Yasir Arafat, Max Beerbom, Cal Ripken Jr, Joshua Lionel Cowan the inventor of Lionel toy electric trains, Kenny Baker-C3PO in Star Wars, Stephen Fry is 65, Durward Kirby- 1960s T.V. announcer, Duke Kahanamoku-1890- Olympic champion who popularized Surfing, Kirk Wise, Dave Chappelle is 50, Steve Guttenberg is 65

410 A.D. ROME FELL TO THE BARBARIANS- Alaric the Visigoth marched a horde of Goths, Vandals and Huns to the gates of Rome. At midnight, escaped Goth slaves opened the Salarian Gate to them. Romans awoke next morning to the sound of barbarian horns. The Goths plundered the capitol of the Roman Empire for three days. Roman Emperor Honorius had moved his Imperial Court to Milan, and there was an Eastern Emperor in Constantinople.
The Roman Senate continued to meet until 578 AD. The last Emperor was deposed in 476. But the symbolic significance of the Roman Empire losing Rome was devastating. Even though the Empire staggered along for a few more years, this event marks the end of the Ancient World and the beginning of the Dark Ages. St. Jerome wrote:” It is the end of the world, I cannot write for the tears.”

1215 – After getting a hefty “donation” from English King John Lackland, Pope Innocent III declared the Magna Carta invalid. Luckily for future democracies, the English lords ignored him.

1217-THE BATTLE OF SANDWICH: FIRST VICTORY OF THE BRITISH NAVY- King John Lackland was a pretty lousy king, but he did understand that an island nation needs a real navy. So, he ordered land be purchased at Plymouth and Portsmouth and Greenwich for royal dockyards. This legacy didn't bear fruit until shortly after his death. A large French invasion fleet was defeated in the Channel by English ships lead by Sir Hugh de Bourg. The French didn't really have a navy yet either, these ships were hired freelancers led by a mad pirate named Eustace the Monk.
After the battle the victorious English found Eustace hiding in the bilge of his flagship. They sailed home merrily with his severed head decorating the top of their mainmast. This victory of Sandwich forced the French king to make peace and withdraw his occupying troops from London.

1227- GENGHIS KHAN DIED. A man called Temujin united a few small nomadic tribes into one of the greatest empires in history. He was named the Prince of Conquerors or the Genghis Khan. He was around 65. How he died is a mystery. The Mongols kept almost no records and all accounts are second and third hand. One said the old conqueror, now over sixty, had died of a fever, another in battle, Marco Polo heard he was shot in the knee with a poisoned arrow. My favorite is a captive Queen of the Tanguts concealed a piece of metal in her who-hah, and he lacerated his willy when ...you know... and he bled to death. ( I don’t make this stuff up….)
Part of Genghis’ funeral cortege was a riderless horse with boots reversed, a symbol of a fallen leader handed down to the funerals of Lincoln, JFK and Ronald Reagan.

1632- Battle of Alte Feste (the other castle). Archduke Wallenstein and his Catholic army stalled Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus and his Protestants outside Nuremburg.

1662 – The Act of Uniformity required all English subjects to accept Book of Common Prayer, or else!

1800- Alexander Hamilton ruined President John Adams chances of re-election by today publishing a pamphlet accusing Adams of incompetence “On the Presidency of John Adams, Esq.” Hamilton was a member of Adams Federalist Party. Hamilton wasn’t a fan of Tom Jefferson either, but he hated Adams even more. In the final vote tabulation, The incumbent President ran a distant fourth.

1814- BRITISH TROOPS BURN WASHINGTON D.C.- A large British task force filled with veteran redcoats fresh from defeating Napoleon, came up from Chesapeake Bay. With most of the US Army trying to invade Canada or on the Western frontier the only defense of America’s capitol was some scanty Maryland militia and a few beached Marines.
Generals, the Secretary of War, President Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe all galloped about in confusion barking orders. At noon at Bladensburg Maryland, the American force exchanged some gunfire with the British, panicked and ran away. The U.S. Army and government ran so fast that the incident was nicknamed "The Bladensburg Races". President James Madison had to leave in such a hurry that his evening dinner was still on the table. British Admiral Cockburn said he: "mightily enjoyed Master Jimmy 's sherry."
First Lady Dolly Madison fled the White House but saved Gilbert Stuart's painting of George Washington, cut out of its frame with a penknife by her butler French John –Jean Pierre Sioussat. The Declaration of Independence was hidden under a front porch in Baltimore and the US Treasury hidden in a wagon at a solitary Maryland farm.
At 9:00PM Admiral George Cockburn, sat in the speaker’s chair in Congress and said to his laughing troops:" Well lads, what shall we do with this vile nest of Yankee democracy ?" "Burn it!" they cried. The redcoats set fire to Congress, the Presidents Mansion, the Navy Yard and marched 6 abreast in good order down Pennsylvania Ave. Around 11:30 PM Cockburn and his staff entered Mrs Sutters Boarding House on 15th & Pennsylvania Ave. for a late supper. Cockburn blew out the candles on the dinner table, leaving the room illuminated by the bright glow of the burning city. He joked” THIS, is the light by which I prefer to eat.”
The humiliation unified American anger not unlike Pearl Harbor centuries later. It was no longer "Mr. Madison's War." On a Hudson riverboat author Washington Irving punched a man in the mouth he saw laughing over the President's flight." The National Honor must be Avenged!" After the British troops withdrew the President's burned out mansion was hastily covered over with the paint that was most in supply, white. The White House it was known thereafter.

1832- In a little London flat in the dead of night top Tory party leaders led by the Duke of Wellington executed a strange task. They huddled around a coal stove burning love letters. What made it unusual was they were the love letters of King George IV to his secret Irish-Catholic wife Mrs. Fitzherbert. The King while Prince Regent had secretly married her in 1788 but it was quickly hushed up, leaving him officially free to marry Princess Caroline of Brunswick.
Sir Charles Fox had declared on the floor of Parliament that the rumors were false and the Prince was not married. Mrs. Fitzherbert was paid to keep quiet even after George IV had died. By this late date old Wellington wanted to be sure before she died that her secret would never come out.

1847 - Charlotte Bronte finished the manuscript of her novel "Jane Eyre".

1853 – Saratoga Springs hotel resort chef George Crum invented Potato Chips, or crisps.

1887- The US set up a weather station in Greenland.

1913- Congress okayed the creation of the Parcel Post system- UPS.

1939- Mr. Leslie Mitchell became the first British Television announcer.

1940- In Milan the first successful jet flight- the Italian Camponi CC-2.

1942- Walt Disney’s film Saludos Amigos received its world premiere in Rio De Janeiro.

1944-The French Resistance in Paris with most of the police Gendarmes rise up to seize key points in the city as the Allied armies drew near. Gen. DeGaulle convinced General Eisenhower that Free-French units should be first to enter the city.

1951- Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. The film won the Grand Prize and first showed the world that Japanese Cinema was a new creative force in the film world.

1958- The United States threatened to drop atomic bombs on China over two little islands called Quemoy and Matsu. Some of Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist armies had taken refuge there after being defeated by Mao. The islands were close enough to the mainland to be shelled by Red Chinese artillery. This caused Pres. Eisenhower to threaten them with the A-Bomb if they didn’t knock it off.

1966- The effects fantasy Fantastic Voyage directed by Richard Fleischer opened. The submarine in the film was designed by Harper Goff, who designed the Nautilus for Walt Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, also directed by Richard Fleischer, the son of Max Fleischer.

1973- One month after Bruce Lee’s death, his last film Enter The Dragon opened in the US to wild acclaim. It renewed interest in the late star and helped spawn the Chinese Martial Arts craze in the US.

1992- HURRICANE ANDREW tore through southern Florida. One a scale of one to five Andrew was a force 5 hurricane. One meteorologist watched his wind velocity measuring device rip off his roof and dance down the street.

1993- LAPD announced an investigation of pop star Michael Jackson for possible child molestation. The investigation never led to any indictments, but the publicity tarnished his image. Equally damaging to his public image were revelations of his eccentric lifestyle, like his keeping chimps and mannequins around the house to talk to, and all the tap water and showers of his mansion spouting Evian water. Jackson was tried and acquitted of all charges in 2005.

1995- Microsoft's Windows 95 introduced.

1997- According to the 1984 James Cameron film The Terminator this was the day the Skynet computer system became self aware, and began the War of the Day of Judgement.

2004- Swiss scientist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who wrote the Five Stages of Dying, died. She was 78. The day before she told a local newsperson, “When I meet God, I will tell him he is a damned procrastinator!”

2011- Washington D.C. and much of the east coast was shaken by an earthquake. The first one in 121 years. Californians were told not to laugh too hard.

2011- Steve Jobs announced he was stepping down from all his positions at Apple, Pixar and Disney due to his failing health.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean when you see a store sign that says “apothecary”?

Answer: Apothecary was an old term for pharmacist, a person who mixes and creates medical drugs. In the UK they are called chemists.

Quiz: What does it mean when you see a store sign that says “ apothecary”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When Winston Churchill said, “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”, what was he talking about?
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History for 8/23/2021
Birthdays: French King Louis XVI, Gene Kelly, Keith Moon, Rick Springfield, Sonny Jurgensen, Alphonse Mucha, River Phoenix, Queen Noor of Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Ed Benedict the designer of the Flintstones, Barbara Eden is 91, Vera Miles is 93, Shelley Long is 72, Nik Ranieri, Oscar Grillo

Roman Festival Vulcanalia, to pray to Vulcan to prevent fires.

In Kyoto Japan, this is the first day of the Fire Festival, when candles are placed at each statue in the Temple of the Eight Thousand Buddhas

In Swaziland, Happy Umhlanga Day!

408 AD- Roman Emperor Honorius killed his last competent General, Flavius Stilicho. It was rumored that Stilicho allowed a huge horde of barbarians cross the Rhine frontier last Christmas as part of a plot. But more likely Honorius was afraid Stilicho might try to overthrow him. The barbarians sacked Rome shortly after.

1305- In London, the great Scottish rebel William Wallace was hanged, then cut down while still alive and drawn and quartered. His head was stuck on a spike on London Bridge and his pieces were sent to be displayed in various parts of Scotland. But the Scots instead of being cowed, got even angrier. In 1314 won independence under their King Robert the Bruce.

1499- Christopher Columbus was fired as Governor of the Indies and sent back to Spain in chains. He was a great visionary but a lousy governor.

1524- A large armada of warships from Spain, Portugal, Genoa and the Vatican were sent to Algiers to deal once and for all with the Barbary Corsairs. These North African raiders terrorized the waters of the western Mediterranean under their bold captains like Kehir el Din "Barbarossa", Dragut and a mysterious man known only as The Jew of Smyrna. But when the Christian fleet arrived in the Bay of Algiers a large storm battered their ships and threw them on the shore. The survivors were slain or enslaved as they staggered up on the beach. The Barbary Pirates would continue to be a headache for Christian Europe sea travel for another 300 years.

1572-THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY MASSACRE- The reason there are so few Protestants in France. Emotionally unstable King Charles IX and his domineering mother Catherine DeMedici had been trying to cope with the growing hatred between Catholics and Protestants, called Huguenots. After several civil wars and several treaties Catherine tried to cement a permanent peace by marrying the Kings sister Margot to the Prince of the Protestants Henry of Navarre. Catholic Paris was filled with Huguenots for the wedding.

Then the night before Catholic extremists murdered the Huguenot leader Gaspar Coligny. When faced with this event King Charles blurted out,” Then slay them all so none dare live to accuse me!” As the bells of Saint Margaret rang, a general massacre began throughout Paris. Protestants were put to the sword and the streets ran with blood. The massacre became so general that anybody who was mad at anybody declared them a Huguenot and they were promptly butchered. The Seine River flow turned red because it was choked up with corpses.
The Pope congratulated the French queen for ridding her land of heretics and ordered thanksgiving celebrations throughout Catholic Europe. In Spain, dour King Phillip II smiled for one of the few times in his life. Protestant countries were outraged and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth put her court in mourning. Even the Spanish Duke of Alba, who was burning dozens of Dutch Calvinists a day, thought this was “a base way to make war.” Protestant Prince Henry of Navarre under the Queens protection escaped and would eventually become king as Henry IV, first of the house of Bourbon.
Within a year Charles IX died slowly of tuberculosis, wracked with remorse:” What have I done? All that blood! I am damned!”

1617- The invention of the One Way Street (London).
1628- The Duke of Buckingham was a favorite of King James I. After James’s death the Duke continued to hold great influence over his son Charles I. Many people blamed Buckingham for England’s problems, and for reversing James’s peace policy and dragging England into the disastrous Thirty Years War that was destroying Europe. Parliament loudly demanded the duke’s imprisonment while Charles stood by his father’s old confident. This day a lunatic solved the problem by buying a kitchen knife, hiking sixty miles to London and plunging it into the Duke of Buckingham’s chest, killing him in front of his wife and family. It was one but not the only argument Charles would have with his parliament.

1634- Spain’s greatest playwright Lope De Vega wrote his last poem “El Siglo de Oro” – the Golden Age. He died the next day at age 73. A duelist and sailor on the Spanish Armada, Voltaire ranked him alongside Shakespeare. His work was so popular, the Holy Office of the Inquisition got angry when people sang a blasphemous doggerel that began “We believe in One Lope, the Poet Almighty…”

1750- 37-year-old Swiss writer Jean Jacques Rousseau published his first mature work- Discourse on the Arts & Sciences. In it he breaks with the other French philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot and began his theory of the Noble Savage- that Civilization is the problem and we were all a lot happier when we were primitives. Voltaire laughed “the pamphlet made me want to get down on all fours and live among the bears of Canada!”

1775- KING GEORGE III ISSUED A PROCLAMATION DECLARING HIS AMERICAN COLONIES IN A STATE OF REBELLION. Many English politicians like Charles Fox and John Wilkes felt the American colonists had some legitimate grievances that could have been peacefully addressed. Lord Chatham (Pitt the Elder) had gone as far to say in the House of Lords "The Englishmen on the other side of the Atlantic are only fighting for what the Englishmen at home should be fighting for, namely their rights!" He suggested several seats in Parliament be set aside for British North America.

But King George rejected all further debate and refused the "Olive Branch Petition", a final plea to avert war brought by the loyalist Governor of Pennsylvania William Penn III. "They must decide now whether they are our subjects or our enemies." -The King stated flatly.

The King's proclamation was that now the only solution would be by force of arms. Pardons would be given to those Americans who returned to their loyalty to the Crown, but British generals were given a secret list of ringleaders to be brought to London for trial like John Adams and Ben Franklin. Up to this point many Americans, even George Washington, felt complete independence was going too far and compromise with the motherland was still possible. But after news of this Royal Proclamation reached America in October most then felt there was now no turning back.

1784- Frontiersmen west of the Alleghenies tried to found the independent state of Franklin. It later entered the union in 1796 as the state of Tennessee.

1864- Abe Lincoln was in despair. After four years of Civil War all the Northern armies were bogged down or defeated, the Confederacy showed no sign of collapse, and a popular General George McClellan announced he would run against Lincoln in the fall elections as a peace candidate. On this day Lincoln made all his cabinet sign a secret Presidential memo: " Seeing that it becoming more apparent that this Administration shall not continue in office, we pledge to work with the next President to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, because the next administration by its very nature shall be unable to accomplish this." In several days Sherman's capture of Atlanta and Sheridan's victories in the Shenandoah Valley would reverse public opinion and Lincoln would win re-election.

1872- The first commercial ship ever sent from Japan arrived in San Francisco carrying tea.

1914- Japan declared war on Germany. World War I, not two. The Japanese wanted to attack and annex the German held Chinese province of Tsingtao, where their big brewery was.

1922- Leader of the Irish IRA, Michael Collins was ambushed and killed by other Irish guerrillas while driving through his home county of Cork.

1926- Screen idol Rudolph Valentino died in a New York hospital of an infection due to a burst appendix and bleeding ulcer. He was only 30. Today his condition could be controlled by antibiotics, but they weren’t invented yet. Women around the world went mad with grief. From L.A. to Budapest, women committed suicide before his picture. In Japan two women jumped into a volcano shouting his name.

1937- At the urging of the Stanford Dean of engineering Fred Terman, graduate Bill Hewlett had his first meeting with David Packard. They called their company started out of their Palo Alto garage the Engineering Service Company. The Hewlett-Packard Company would one day be one of the biggest names in computers and their garage hailed as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

1939-THE NAZIS-SOVIET PACT. Nazi minister Von Ribbentrop flew to Moscow and signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. This cleared the way for Hitler's attack on Poland. Many in the west saw this as Stalin's untrustworthiness, but the Russians said they were reacting to the lack of enthusiasm shown by the Western Democracies in stopping Fascism. This was evident in Ethiopia, Czechoslovakia and particularly evident in Spain, where the Soviets backed the anti-Fascists to the hilt, with no help at all from the democracies.
But Stalin was genuinely duped by Hitler; maybe through the political rhetoric Stalin imagined he saw a fellow opportunist demagogue. It was obvious to Uncle Joe that the strategy of the West was to try and push Germany and Russia into war, so why would Hitler be stupid enough to do it? Even two days before the Nazis Invasion of Russia Stalin refused to believe the reports of his spies that Hitler was going to betray him.
Josef Stalin’s action for temporary tactical advantage destroyed the intellectual justification for Russia’s leadership of Global Communism. All though the 1920’s and 30’s Communism seemed to some the best hope of the Left for stopping the Fascist dictators and winning Civil and Labor rights. But when Moscow ordered all good Communists to stop criticizing Hitler, they lost the sympathies of many progressives. Americans, Britons and Zionist Jews began to leave the party in droves.

1939-The Meeker St Bridge between Brooklyn and Queens completed. It was renamed the Kosciusko Bridge in honor of the Polish patriot who fought in the American Revolution. In George Washington’s time no one knew how to say his name either. They called him Colonel Koz. The bridge was rebuilt in 2017.

1942-THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD BEGAN. As clouds of Nazi planes bombed the city to flaming rubble, the tanks of the Nazi 16th Panzer Division reached the Volga River and began to fight their way into the northern suburbs of the City of Stalingrad. The 16th’s General was one-armed Hans Huber, whom his men nicknamed Die Mensch- The Man!
The Germans were met by elements of the Red Army mixed with marines and civilians driving new unpainted T-34 tanks fresh from their factory assembly line. An estimated 40,000 civilians died just in this first attack, as many people as had died at Waterloo, and the battle just beginning. The German 6th Army attack stalled in the city center and the fighting went on until next February.

1942- Fascist Italian troops were aiding their Nazi allies in the invasion of Russia. At Izbushensky near the Don River a regiment of Savoy cavalry charged Soviet troops with drawn sabers. It was called the last cavalry charge in history.

1944- Romania was declared liberated from the Nazis by the Red Army.

1947-President Truman’s daughter Margaret gave her first public singing concert. President Truman spent the following day personally telephoning music critics and threatening any who dared to give her harsh reviews. Paul Hume, the Washington Post’s music critic, wrote that Margaret Truman “cannot sing very well. She is flat most of the time.” The furious father dashed off a letter to Hume, warning that if they ever meet, “You’ll need a new nose, and plenty of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”
1948- The World Council of Churches set up.

1953- David Mullany of Shelton Conn. invented the Whiffle Ball. He did it to help his son who was lousy at throwing a curve ball.

1964- Twist and Shout! The Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl.

1994- Jeffrey Katzenburg announced he was leaving Disney.

1996- An obscure terrorist group called Al Qaeda led by some guy named Osama bin Laden held a press conference in Afghanistan, where they actually declared holy war (Jihad) on the United States.

2007- Open-source advocate Paul Messina created the hashtag for Twitter.
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Yesterday’s Question: When Winston Churchill said, “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”, what was he talking about?

Answer: He was discussing Soviet Russia, which then was as closed a society as North Korea is today.

Question: When Winston Churchill said “ It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”, what was he talking about?

Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a kepi? (Hint: U.S. Civil War)
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History for 8/22/2022
Birthdays: George Herriman the creator of Krazy Kat, Dorothy Parker, Claude DeBussy, Johnny Lee Hooker, Denis Papin 1647 inventor of the Pressure Cooker, Leni Reifenstahl, General Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Paul Molitor, Bill Parcells, Max Vilander, Carl “Big Yaz”Yazstremski, Dyanna Nyad, Deng Xiao Ping, Henry Cartier Bresson, Valerie Harper, Ray Bradbury, Cindy Williams, Kristen Wiig is 49

In Britain it is National Slacker Day: Stand Up for your Right to Sit Back Down!

565AD – St. Columba reported seeing a sea monster in Loch Ness.

1485-"A Horse! A Horse! My Kingdom for a Horse!!" Battle of Bosworth Field. Welsh prince Henry Tudor defeated and killed King Richard III and becomes King Henry VII, first of the Tudor Dynasty. Henry Tudor was married to Elizabeth Rivers, the daughter of Richards dead brother King Edward IV, further strengthening his claim to the throne. Shakespeare made Richard out to be a usurper and child murderer, but couldn’t hide the fact that he died well. Whatever the truth, he went down sword in hand, fighting like a true descendant of Richard Lionheart. Recently Richard’s skeleton was found under a parking lot, and he did indeed have a misshapen spine and club foot.

1558- When Antonio Carafa became Pope Paul IV. Former head of the Inquisition, he blamed the loss of half of Europe to Protestantism to the corruption in the Catholic Church. He attacked the dry rot with zeal. He started with a warning to all monks away from their monasteries without permission to return at once. This day he ordered the gates of Rome closed. All deadbeat monks still AWOL to be rounded up and sentenced to be galley slaves. He’s the Pope who created the Index of Forbidden Books, and ordered little shmatas painted on Michelangelo’s nude Christ in the Last Judgment.

1572-Admiral Gaspar Coligny, was leader of the French Huguenots –Protestants, and was one of the most powerful men in France. This night he was recovering from an earlier assassination attempt, when agents of the Duke du Guise rushed into his room and stabbed him to death. They hurled his body out a window to smash on the pavement stones at the Dukes feet. When it was pointed out to the king that the French Protestants may not like this, the emotionally unstable King Charles IX shouted:" Then slay them all, so none shall remain to accuse me!" The Great Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre was the result.

1611- Galileo made a group of Venetian senators climb to the top of Saint Marks Basilica in Venice with him to demonstrate to them his new invention, the telescope.

1715 – Handel’s "Watermusic" premiered on the Thames River to mark celebrations of the Peace ending the 15 year long War of Spanish Succession.

1776- The Long Island Campaign began. British General Lord Howe and his brother Admiral Richard, called “Black Dick”, commanded the largest invasion force ever sent by England. Today they began ferrying their army from tory-loyalist Staten Island across the Straights of Verrazano for the march towards the village of Breuklyn. -Brooklyn. Their Hessian mercenaries, to show off their discipline, stood at rigid attention as the flatboats bobbed in the choppy water. Now that the British fleet were anchored inside New York Harbor, George Washington agreed that New York City was as already lost. He contemplated burning the town to keep it from being used by the enemy as a base. But Congress couldn't let him give up America’s largest city without a fight.

1791-THE NIGHT OF FIRE- Haitian slaves, after decades of oppression were organized by a voodoo priest named Boumann. This night they set fire to plantations, crops and massacred 300 white settlers. This began the great Haitian Revolution which will rage until 1811 and make Haiti the second republic in the New World.

1806- elderly French painter Jean Fragonard died of a cerebral seizure after eating a large fruit ice on a hot day.

1848- Ulysses Grant married Julia Dent. One of the only things Grant did well other than win the Civil War was his long and happy marriage to his Julia.

1849- The first aerial bomb attack. Austrian General Von Wintzingerode was at a loss at how to get at the besieged Italian city of Venice. The Venetian lagoon was too deep to wade across but was too shallow for battleships. Finally, a Swiss mercenary suggested filling hot air balloons with troops and flying them over the city to drop explosives. A dozen pilotless balloons filled with grenadiers were launched aloft, and one or two did drop some grenades, but soon a stiff breeze blew them all to Croatia. Doh!

1851- The schooner America defeated the British yacht Aurora to win the trophy called the Hundred Guinea Cup that would in time be called the America's Cup. It was the first win for the US in an international sports competition. American yachts continued to win it for the next 150 years until Australia II took it in 1984.

1860- Italian nationalist leader Giuseppe Garibaldi with his 'redshirts' crossed the Straights of Messina from Sicily and invaded the boot of Italy.

1882- American showman P.T. Barnum bought the largest elephant in the London Zoo. He created a new name for the beast- he called it JUMBO. It was the highlight of his circus for years. After Jumbo was hit by a freight train and killed, PT Barnum had its bones bleached and charged people admission to come look at its skeleton.

1901-The Cadillac Automobile Company formed. Named for the French explorer who founded Detroit, William De La Mothe-Cadillac.

1902- Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to ride in an automobile.

1906 - 1st Victor Victrola manufactured, using Emile Berliners flat record turntable system. The Victrola was so cheap and easy to use it became standard in many homes and finished off any competition from Thomas Edison’s rival talking cylinder system.

1910- Despite a pledge after the Russo-Japanese War that they would bestow “complete freedom” on the Korean people, this day Japan’s military occupied Korea and annexed it to the Japanese Empire.

1914- The Angel of Mons. British forces stalled the German advance towards Paris with a fighting retreat, and in so doing helped the main French army to win at the Marne. In a proclamation to his generals Kaiser Wilhelm stated “Roll over this contemptible little British Army!” The term appealed to the Tommies, and they nicknamed themselves “The Old Contemptibles”. At this time newspapers reported that soldiers claimed they saw ghosts in shining armor aiding the British army. "those who could see said they saw 'a row of shining beings' between the two armies.”
The German field general was General Von Kluck, whose name rhymed with the Britons favorite expletive. As the marched through Belgian streets, the soldiers sang “We don’t give a F*CK about old Von KLUCK, an iz whole F*CKING ARMY!”

1922- After World War I, Lawrence of Arabia wrote home from Baghdad about the Postwar British occupation of Iraq:” The Public had been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques have been belated, insincere and incomplete. Things have been far worse here than we have been told.”

1927- Walt Disney’s last Alice in Cartoonland short, Alice in The Big Leagues is released.

1927- 200,000 people protest in Hyde Park London and around the world for clemency for convicted Italian immigrants Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vancetti. They were socialists who were convicted of murdering a store clerk in Massachusetts and became a radical cause-celebre. Letters demanding mercy came in from George Bernard Shaw, Helen Keller, Picasso, the Pope and more. Woody Guthrie wrote folk songs in praise of Sacco & Vancetti. The next day the State of Massachusetts electrocuted them anyway.

1929- Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony The Skeleton Dance premiered. The tight dancing synch inspired a generation of animators. The idea of skeletons was suggested by composer Carl Stalling, a Kansas City movie theater organist that Walt befriended.

1935- Father Charles Coughlin, “the Radio Priest” addressed ten thousand in Madison Square Gardens. At the height of his popularity almost one third the American public tuned into his weekly radio address. But as his influence waned after the 1936 presidential elections. He turned increasingly to racist Anti-Semitic hate mongering. He even tried to make excuses for Kristallnacht. In 1942 with America in the war, his archbishop with permission from the Vatican ordered him to shut up, on pain of being defrocked. He retired from public life.

1939- The first aerosol spray can.

1942- Brazil declared war on the Axis powers. She was the only Latin American country to send troops to Europe to fight in World War II.

1942- Tex Avery’s first cartoon for MGM, The Blitz Wolf.

1945- This was the date Stalin scheduled for the Soviet invasion of Hokaido, in North Japan. The American attack, in the event the atomic bombs didn't work, was not scheduled until November 1st. With all of the remaining Japanese army concentrated on the southern beaches awaiting the American landings, if the Russian invasion in the north had come off as scheduled, they would have been able to overrun Northern Japan quite easily. The world might have had to settle for a divided Japan resembling Korea. History however, turned out differently.

1953-The French government closed the Devil's Island prison colony.

1962- Rogue French army officers, angry at France’s yielding independence to Algeria, try to assassinate Pres. Charles DeGaulle. Near Orly Airport, they opened up with machine guns on the presidential motorcade. They killed two police motorcyclists, but DeGaulle’s peppy Citroen DS sped away and escaped the gunfire. For that, DeGaulle made sure Citroen would never go bankrupt. The incident was the basis for the novel and film The Day of the Jackal.

1976- The protest at the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in New Hampshire. The birth of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement.

1984 – The last Volkswagen Rabbit produced.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a kepi? (Hint: U.S. Civil War)

Answer: The little round wool cap all soldiers in the Civil War wore on their heads. Based on a fashion set by Napoleon III’s French army.