Quiz: Who were these men? Durward Kirby, Don Williams, Arthur Treacher, Ed McMahon?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean to “ go through your Kubler-Ross”?
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History for 7/7/2022
Birthdays: Joseph Jacquard- of the Jacquard Loom 1752, Gustav Mahler, Satchel Page, Ringo Starr is 82, Doc Severinsen, Robert Heinlein, William Kuntsler, Gian Carlo Menotti, Ken Harris, Shelley Duval is 73, Ted Cassidy-Lurch in the Adams Family, Michelle Kwan, David McCullough, Pierre Cardin, and according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this is the birthday of Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick Dr. John Watson.

750 BC- 391AD This was the Roman Feast of Quirinus, then day when Romulus the founder of Rome was taken up to heaven and took his place beside the Gods as the deified Quirinus.

175AD- The future Roman Emperor Commodus attained manhood. There was a special celebration when a Roman boy grew his first beard. He made a ceremony of putting off his boys cloak-tunica, and donning the man’s toga.

1569- Sir Francis Drake boldly sailed into the harbor of Cartagena (in modern Columbia), the largest port on the Spanish Main, and looted a treasure galleon.

1607- The English anthem God Save the King first sung in honor of King James I.

1666- King Charles II and his court evacuate London because of the Great Plague.

1735- King Stanislas Lescynski lost the throne of Poland to Augustus III, a boyfriend of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Stan was the father-in-law of king Louis XV of France fortunately, so Louis gave him the Duchy of Lorraine to live in. In the town square of Nancy there is a statue of Stanislas pointing east. Some say he's pointing home to Poland, others say towards the red light district of Nancy, where he spent much of his time.

1754- Kings College in New York founded. After the American Revolution the name was changed to Columbia University.

1777- During the Revolution, the British invasion force of General Burgoyne captured the New York fortress of Ticonderoga back from the American rebels.

1814- Sir Walter Scott published his first novel Waverly. He wrote it under a pseudonym because he worried novel-writing would damage his reputation as a poet.

1821- The Latin American liberation army of Jose San Martin captured Lima Peru.

1839- The First European Railroad link opened between Vienna and Prague, thanks to the investment of Meyer Rothschild, of the bank of The House of Rothschild. Even though the English had a rail line between Liverpool and Manchester up in 1830, European development moved much slower than in America, where vast distances needed to be connected. There was medical concern about people being moved at such high speeds as 35 miles an hour! A Viennese doctor wrote then that if the human body moved faster than 15 mph (24k), blood would squirt out of your eyes and ears. Men would go mad and women sex-crazed.

1865- Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators were all hanged Lewis Payne, George Atzenrodt and David Herold. Even weeping old Mary Surrat, who's involvement is still debatable. She may have known of some kind of plot but all they could prove was she the landlady of the boardinghouse where the plotters met. Everyone expected that a last minute amnesty would come from President Johnson, but the President stayed silent and she was hanged with the others. Mary Surrat was the first woman executed in the U.S.. Big Lewis Payne’s neck didn’t break at first and he kicked and danced in the air for five minutes before he choked. General Dan Sickles said afterward, "We do not want to know their names anymore." The large gallows was then broken up and the splinters sold off as souvenirs to tourists.

1894-The Pullman Strike-U.S. troops battled 5,000 Chicago area railroad workers and their families. Dozens were killed. Troops were called for after marshals and detectives refused to shoot unarmed working people. Other unions go out in sympathy with the Pullman workers and make the strike nationwide. Union president Eugene Debs is arrested for sedition and treason, but acquitted by three grand juries. He later ran for president on the socialist ticket in 1912. Before crushing the strike with force, President Cleveland had just set the date for the first Labor Day.

1895-THE FIRST SUNDAY COMICS - The first modern comic strip, Hogan’s Alley featuring "The Yellow Kid" by Richard Felton Outcault, debuts in the Sunday edition of Josef Pulitzer's New York World. The strip was so popular it gave the name "Yellow Journalism" to the sensationalist tabloid press. Newspaper comics at this time were the mass media of the day. For people who couldn’t afford a theater ticket and couldn’t yet speak English, the little characters in the penny papers were extremely popular and made celebrities out of cartoonists like Outcault, Bud Selig, George McManus, and Winsor McCay. Richard Outcault later invented the backend deal, when he asked for a percentage of all sales from his new comic strip "Buster Brown and his dog Tige”.

1898-Congress voted to annex the Kingdom of Hawaii.

1900- Warren Earp, the youngest brother of Wyatt Earp, was killed in a gunfight. He had gotten into an argument in a saloon in Wilcox Arizona. Warren Earp was not at the OK Corral in 1881 but he did help his brothers hunt down the killers of Morgan Earp.

1911- THE AGADIR INCIDENT, also called, "The Panther's Leap'. In the tense international climate just before the Great War, Germany sparked a major international incident by making moves to take southern Morocco from France. They sent the battle cruiser Panther to the Bay of Agadir to "protect endangered German citizens", There were no Europeans in that part of Morocco, so the German ministry cabled a Herr Weiland to rush overland by train to meet the warship. He was nicknamed "The Endangered German". After a lot of diplomatic threats between Paris, Berlin, London and St. Petersburg, Germany eventually backed down. One Berlin newspaper said:" To think we almost went to war with Britain & France over a country that can only provide sand for our canary cages!"
An angry German minister said:" The incident had the same effect as viewing a dead squid. First shock, then amusement, then revulsion."

1925- Afrikaanz is recognized as one of the official languages of South Africa, along with English and Dutch.

1928- A bakery in Chillicothe Missouri invented the automatic bread slicer, enabling bakers to cut an entire loaf into slices at once. This originated the phrase, “ The best thing since sliced bread.”

1930- Work began on Hoover Dam.

1936 - RCA shows the first true TV program: dancing, a short film on locomotives, a Bonwit Teller fashion show & monologue from the Tobacco Road radio comedy show.

1941- The US military took over British bases on Iceland that protected trans-Atlantic convoys. This act was considered by Germany a further provocation of Neutral America towards joining the war on the Allied side. Earlier President Roosevelt had frozen German assets in the US and expelled their diplomats.

1942- SS chief Heinrich Himmler gave the go-ahead for forced sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

1943- BANZAI- Climax of the Battle of Saipan- 4,300 Japanese troops streamed out of the jungle in a massed Banzai charge on U.S. Marine positions. Fighting devolved into hand-to-hand combat with Samurai swords and bayonets, more like our Civil War a century earlier than World War II. One of the Marines wounded in the attack was future movie star Lee Marvin, nicknamed Captain Marvel by his buddies for his gung-ho attitude. Almost all the Japanese were killed.
Later in a cave the Marines found the bodies of General Saito and Admiral Nagumo, the fleet commander at the Pearl Harbor attack. They had committed hari kari when the attack had failed. This event also caused Prime Minister Hideki Tojo's government to fall, since Tojo had pledged the U.S. could not take Saipan, an island which placed Japan within range of US long range bombers.

1946- After the War, the BBC television service resumes and an announcer says:" Well now, where were we?" They continued the Mickey cartoon Mickey’s Gala Premier from where it was interrupted in 1939. World War II probably held back for a decade the development of television.

1946- Mother Cabrini made the first American Saint. She was an immigrant from Italy. Later St. Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first native born American saint.

1946- Millionaire aviator Howard Hughes crashed an experimental airplane into four homes in Beverly Hills. Hughes had crashed planes before without much injury, but this crash left him near death. His slow recuperation left him with a lifetime addiction to morphine and codeine.

1947- THE ROSWELL INCIDENT- An official news report from the USAF 509th bomber command -the same unit that dropped the Hiroshima bomb- stated they had recovered the wreckage of a UFO in the New Mexico desert near Roswell and were examining it. The next day the commanding general of the 8th Air Force arrived in Roswell. He announced to the press that the earlier report was an error, and it was only a downed weather balloon. The wreckage was removed under heavy-armed guard.
Complete secrecy was then imposed. The communications officer Major Jesse Marcey, who posed for an official photo showing him with the balloon wreckage, later told his son the photo was faked. Marcey, who died in 1967 and his adjutant Lt. Haut still stick to the original version of their story. Lt. Haut also claimed the base commander Col. William Blanchard thought it was UFO debris. This report coming only two weeks after the first modern sighting of "flying saucers" over Mt. Reynier in Oregon sparked the Flying Saucer craze that gripped America throughout the 1950’s.

1949- "I’m Friday"- The program Dragnet first debuted on radio. It later became a hit on TV as well. Jack Webb conceived, wrote, directed and starred in the show. His hardest job was urging actors "not to act" but to speak the lines normally like the average person does.

1957- Former MGM animation directors Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera filed papers to incorporate their new company, Hanna - Barbera Enterprises, Inc.

1958- Al and Jerry Lapin opened the first International House of Pancakes (IHOP) restaurant in Toluca Lake California.

1960- First demonstration of a practical laser beam. In Russia it had been theorized since 1951. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, or LASER.

1967- Vivien Leigh, the actress who played Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, collapsed and died from recurrent tuberculosis. She was 53.

1967 - Beatles' "All You Need is Love" is released. Queen Elizabeth II said it was one of her favorite songs.

1967 – The Doors' "Light My Fire" hits #1.

1976- First women cadets enroll at West Point Military Academy.

1981- Judge Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1982- A drunken lunatic named Michael Fagin with a bleeding left hand broke into Buckingham Palace, got past all the security, and startled Queen Elizabeth in her bed. Her personal bodyguard was out walking the royal corgis. The Queen kept the man engaged in conversation at the foot of her bed until guards dragged him away.

2005-THE 7-7 ATTACK- Four Al Qaeda terrorist bombs exploded in the London subway Tube and a double decker bus, killing 50 and injuring one thousand.

Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to “ go through your Kubler-Ross”?


Answer: Swiss Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ famous book, On Death and Dying, described the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Going through one’s Kübler-Ross means to personally move through the five stages.

Quiz: What does it mean to “ go through your Kubler-Ross”?

Yesterday’s questions answered below: Where is the Red Sea?
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History for 7/6/2022
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Czar Nicholas Ist, Frida Kahlo, Della Reese, Bill Haley,
Nancy Reagan, Sylvester Stallone is 76, Merv Griffin, Janet Leigh, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sebastian Cabot, James Bodrero, The Dalai Lama, LaVerne Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Geoffrey Rush is 71, Ned Beatty, President George W. Bush is 76, Fifty Cent is 47, Jennifer Saunders is 64.


83 B.C.- Sulla stormed Rome and defeated the supporters of Marius. This first civil war amongst powerful Roman factions is known as “The Wars of Marius & Sulla" or “the Social Wars”. As dictator, Sulla published lists of hundreds of political enemies called the Proscribed. If you were on that list, anybody could kill you without trial. Sulla had on his staff a student intern who recently changed sides. His name was Julius Caesar.

1190- Death of Henry II, King of England and the Angevin Empire – he ruled a territory almost as great as Charlemagne but his reign was marred by the martyrdom of
Thomas à Becket and quarrels with his family. Henry had pledged to go on Crusade to liberate Jerusalem and after his death his Crusade was taken up by his son Richard the Lionhearted. In the end Henry was so disgusted by the feuds with his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and sons Richard, Geoffrey and John Lackland, legend has it his dying breath was a curse on his own family.

1480- The Duke of Gloucester was crowned King Richard III. He is referred to as the Last Plantagenet, meaning the last of the bloodline of Geoffrey of Anjou and Richard the Lionhearted. He was defeated and killed by Henry VII of the House of Tudor. The recent discovery of his remains proved he really did have a spinal deformity. Whether he was the villain as Shakespeare and Hollingshed portrayed him, is a matter for scholars to argue over. Shakespeare was writing plays for the granddaughter of the man who killed him, so that would obviously color his interpretation of events.

1495-Battle of Fornovo- King Charles VIII of France begins a new round of European kings invading Italy by marching on Naples and defeating a combined army of the Italian city states. The warrior king Charles of France eventually died back home by banging his head on low doorway. Doh!

1560-The Treaty of Edinburgh- after a small war, victorious Scottish Presbyterian rebels compel Mary Queen of Scots dismiss her French troops from Scotland and declare freedom to worship, which meant Scotland was going Protestant. Representatives of Queen Elizabeth of England also demanded Mary renounce forever her claim to the throne of England. Mary’s mother was King Henry VIII’s sister. Mary refused that.

1685- THE BATTLE OF SEDGEMOOR AND THE BLOODY ASSIZES.-The illegitimate son of King Charles II, the Duke of Monmouth, tried to overthrow his Catholic uncle King James II with the help of many old Roundheads, angry that the Catholic monarch was planning to subvert the liberties won by Cromwell in the English Civil War. This day Monmouth hightailed it for the hills while his army was cut to pieces in battle.
After the battle the punishment of the rebels under Judge Jefferies was so brutal it was nicknamed the Bloody Assizes. An assize was another name for circuit court. Hundreds were beheaded, tongues cut out, limbs branded with hot irons, then transported as slaves to the Bahamas and Barbados to cut sugar cane. Refined sugar was a new delicacy sweeping the nation. To this day many lighter skinned Bahamians can claim descendant from these condemned rebels. In the 1890s Rafael Sabatini wrote a novel about one slave who escaped to become a pirate named Captain Blood, later made into an Errol Flynn movie.

1809- THE IMMORTAL BELOVED LETTERS- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven never married, but not for want of trying. The bad tempered loner loved several women but never had a serious relationship beyond prostitutes. After his death, several love letters were found. The letters written this day were of a supremely passionate nature, where he begged some unknown woman to keep an appointment with him at some unstated rendezvous in Hungary. “Though still in bed my thoughts go out to you, My Immortal Beloved…” The letters were never sent and have no addresses or names. Who was this Immortal Beloved Beethoven yearns for?

1809-Battle of Wagram- Napoleon defeated the Austrian army of Archduke Charles. The Austrian soldiers wore white uniforms, so the French called them: "Soldats de la creme'". Napoleon planned this battle out so well that as soon as he was satisfied the enemy was toast, even though fighting still raged all around him, he took a nap on a leopard skin rug.

1843- THE REBECCA RIOTS In the countryside of Wales people’s anger against rents, tolls and tariffs took an unusual form. A big farmer named Tom Rees (Twm Carnabwth in Welsh) Dressed up in ladies petticoats, darkened his face and led a mob of 200 similarly dressed to smash a toll road barrier near Pontaldulais. They called themselves The Rebeccas from a passage in the Bible Genesis 24:60,” Rebecca mother of millions, let thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them.” Later that year the Rebecca protests died out and those the police captured were transported to Australia.

1853- In Ripon, Wisconsin, Free-Soil Whigs and other lefty radicals form the new Republican Party. They were first called the Anti-Nebraska Men, rejecting the Nebraska Compromise, then Black-Republicans for awhile because of their strong anti-slavery stance.

1885- Louis Pasteur gave the first inoculation to cure rabies.

1886 - Horlick's of Wisconsin offers the first malted milk to public. It began as an attempt to create a new type of baby formula.

1895- A businessman named William Sydney Porter returned from Honduras where he had fled after being indicted for embezzlement. He had returned because he had learned of the illness of his wife. Porter was sent to prison, and while there began writing little stories which he later published under the name O. Henry.

1906- THE GREAT FUNERAL OF JOHN PAUL JONES- The heroic sea captain of the American Revolution in Paris in 1792. Ill and forgotten, he had no friends. Writer Thomas Carlyle said Jones “resembled an empty wineskin.” The few mourners at the little Paris cemetery were he was interred were all admiring Frenchmen and children he had given coins to on the street during his walks through the Luxembourg Gardens. The American ambassador skipped his funeral because of a dinner party he didn’t want to miss. A Frenchman named Simonot had embalmed Jones in brandy in a lead sealed barrel because he figured the American government wanted to ship him home. He was amazed when they were too cheap to even cover the transport fees. Jones’ sword and medals were pawned to pay for the funeral.
A century later America had become a great power. Scientists set about to look for John Paul Jones remains. They discovered the lead barrel in Paris’ Old Protestant Cemetery. The brandy embalming kept him so well preserved they could do an autopsy on the body. Jones had died of bronchial pneumonia and kidney failure at age 45. President Teddy Roosevelt shared Jones’ dream of a powerful US Navy. He used the occasion to stage a grand re-internment in Annapolis Naval Academy.
So on his birthday rows of battleships booming salutes and mile-long processions of marching US Marine and French honor guards gave John Paul Jones the grand funeral he always felt he deserved, just 113 years late.

1917 As Lowell Thomas’ newsreel cameras rolled, Lawrence of Arabia and Bedouin Sheik Ouda Abu-Tai captured the Red Sea Port of Aqaba from Turkish troops. The battle was dramatized in the 1962 David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia.

1925, Walt and Roy Disney place a $400 deposit ($5,750.00 in modern money) on a lot located at 2719 Hyperion Avenue, in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Their aim is to build a big new studio.

1928- The film "The Lights of New York" premiered at the Strand theater on Broadway. 1927's the Jazz Singer popularized sound movies while still being half silent. This film was the first with an all dialogue track.

1938- THE EVIAN CONFERENCE- No, it wasn't about bottled water. Since 1933, the refugees fleeing the Hitler’s Third Reich grew to tens of thousands. President Franklin Roosevelt called for a summit of Western powers at Evian France to discuss the issue of the rising numbers asking asylum in the democracies. 32 nations participated. The conference turned into a parade of diplomats making excuses. It accomplished nothing. From 1938 to 1944 only half the quota for U.S. visas allowed were ever filled. The rest were held up by red tape while the Holocaust raged. Also the British Mandate authority bowed to Arab anger to restrict immigration to Palestine. Saudi Prince Ibn Saud said:” Why should we be punished for the sins of Europe?” The only nations on Earth who accepted unrestricted Jewish immigration from the Nazis were Holland and Denmark. Young delegate and future Israeli leader Golda Meir was asked what she hoped to get out of the conference. “All I want to see before I die is for my people to get something else beyond Expressions of Sympathy.”

1944- A fire broke out in the main tent of Ringling Bros Circus during a children’s matinee in Hartford Connecticut. The big top had been waterproofed with a paraffin solution thinned with gasoline and now that mixture engulfed the tent in flames. 168 died and 682 more were injured, mostly children. In 1950 a mad arsonist named Robert Segee admitted he started the Hartford Circus Fire.

1957- Chuck Jones short "What’s Opera, Doc?" debuted. “Kill da wa-bitt, kill da wa-bitt..."

1957-16 year old John Lennon first met 15 year old Paul McCartney at a church picnic near Woolton, England. Lennon invited McCartney to join his first band called the Quarrymen, but McCartney missed their first engagement because of a boy scout trip.

1964 - Beatles' film "Hard Day's Night" premieres in London. The bands iconoclastic, antics portrayed by Richard Lester’s surreal free style direction set the style for the music videos of the future.

1965- TV sitcom F-Troop premiered. Shortly after the series began production it was learned that lead actress Melody Patterson (Wrangler Jane) fibbed on her paperwork and was actually underage, she was 16 years old. She kept the part, but the writers had to tone down any sexual innuendo in the scripts. The show did well, but is rarely show today because of the racially insensitive humor towards indigenous people.

1965 - Rock group Jefferson Airplane formed.

1967- The state of Biafra tried to win its independence from Nigeria. In the Civil War that followed a million of its citizens died of malnutrition and the images shocked the world.

1974- The first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keilor’s ode to small town life in Minnesota. Brought to you by Powdermilk Biscuits. His last broadcast was in 2016, and was forced to leave his company in 2017 due to Me-To allegations of sexual misconduct with his employees.

1996- Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump opened in theaters.

1998- French workers at Disneyland Paris theme park went on strike for better pay and not having to smile constantly like Americans do.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Where is the Red Sea?

Answer: It is the water dividing the Arabian Peninsula from Egypt, Sudan and Africa.

Quiz: You know the Black Sea, where is the Red Sea?

Quiz: Who said, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.”…?
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History for 7/05/2022
Birthdays: P.T. Barnum, Beatrix Potter, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, Jean Cocteau, Admiral David Farragut, Len Lye, George Pompidou, Shirley Knight, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Milburn Stone (Doc on Gunsmoke), Warren Oates, Henry Cabot Lodge IV, Eva Green is 43, Huey Lewis is 72, Edie Falco is 59

1779- TRYON’S NEW HAVEN RAID- During the American Revolution, Royalist Governor William Tryon of New York thought a way to bring the American rebels back to their allegiance to the Crown was to launch punitive raids across Long Island Sound to rebel strongholds in Connecticut the day after their Independence Day celebrations.
Forty boats of redcoats landed at New Haven and looted, burned and brutalized the inhabitants. Most of his soldiers were hoodlums who were given the choice of prison or the army. The elderly Dean of Yale University was beaten to death with rifle butts. Civilian homes were ransacked and several women were gang raped in their own beds. The redcoats then burned Norwalk and Fairfield before returning back across the Sound to occupied New York.
Crown policy was that the majority of Americans are good subjects, just deluded by bad leaders. But Tryon was frustrated with the endless guerilla fighting. He lashed out with a brutality that accomplished more outrage than good. Gov. Tryon was soon recalled to London. For some reason there is a park named for Tryon in Upper Manhattan near the George Washington Bridge.

1814- Battle of Chippewa- During the War of 1812 an American force turned back a British counteroffensive across the Canadian border.

1820- THE TRIAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE- This was the greatest marital scandal ever to hit the British Monarchy. 
George the Prince Regent had been estranged from his wife Caroline for 25 years. She had been living a free life in Italy while George chased skirts at court. When his elderly, mad father George III finally died, and 'Princee' became King George IV, nobody expected Caroline to suddenly show up in England and still expect to be Queen. 
On this day George forced a bill into the House of Lords to grant him a divorce so he could be free to marry his mistress Lady Cunningham, nicknamed 'the Vice-Queen'. The evidence in the trial were juicy anecdotes of the Queen's own sexual shenanigans with a number of Italians. The whole sordid affair was terribly embarrassing and split the nation into factions. Some loyal to the King, others the Queen's defender's of Women's Rights and the Family. The King's public appearances were greeted with cries of 'Nero!" the Duke of Wellington was hissed and had rocks thrown at him and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool was so upset he could not address Parliament without a dose of ether first. 
Eventually the divorce bill was dropped and the King crowned, with the Queen shut out of Westminster Abbey. A popular doggerel in Punch made a joke on Christ's advice to the Adulteress-
" Most Gracious Queen we thee implore, to Go Away and Sin No More...
But if that effort Be too Great, Just Go Away at Any Rate.."

1830- The last Bey of Algiers was driven into exile by the invading French Army. This was the end of the Barbary Corsairs, active since 1517. Algeria would be a French colony until 1962. Part of the invading force was a new unit made up of Paris street riff-raff and foreign exiles called the French Foreign Legion.

1839- THE FLORA HASTINGS AFFAIR- The first great scandal of Queen Victoria's reign. After the escapades of her predecessors, the new 20 year old queen dwelt in a closed moral atmosphere. One day she noticed one of her ladies-in-waiting, a Lady Flora Hastings, had an enlarged belly, like she was pregnant. The idea that this unmarried grand dame may be pregnant was made worse by the idea that the father may have been the detested lover of Victoria's mother, Sir John Conroy.
The tittering eventually accelerated into a full-fledged political scandal involving the Prime Minister and the entire government. The slandered Lady Hastings had to submit to a humiliating doctor's examination to prove she was still a virgin and even that didn't silence the gossip. Finally, it came out that her belly swelling was caused by a large tumor on her liver, and had she paid more strict attention to it instead of the gossip she might have lived. This day she died and everyone blamed the young queen of persecuting Lady Hastings. Young Victoria was hissed in the streets for the remainder of the year.

1865- In London, William Booth formed the Salvation Army.

1863- After two days of torrential rain at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee began withdrawing his broken Confederate army south to Virginia. He had enough ammunition for one more day's battle, and he was hoping the Yankees would destroy themselves assaulting his strong defensive works. But the Yankees, much to Lincoln's annoyance, remained quiet in camp. This is the reason you don’t hear of the name of the winning Yankee General, George Meade, as much as you heard of Grant and Sherman.

1892- THE HOMESTEAD MASSACRE- Jacob Frick, the business partner of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, decided to solve the problem of uppity unions by surrounding his Homestead plant with barbed wire and guns then announcing to the astonished employees that they were getting a 20% pay cut. 3,000 workers fought with police and non-union replacements, 7 killed, the union leaders arrested for incitement to riot.

1910- Writer O. Henry died of cirrhosis and tuberculosis at 47. His last words were "Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark." He became a writer while serving a jail term for embezzlement.

1930- The Fox Midland Theater held the first meeting of a Mickey Mouse Club. It soon had chapters across the country and became a TV show in the 1950s.

1930- In West Texas, Bonnie met Clyde.

1933- Germans began building the Autobahn, a system of highways that became the envy of the world. The Bauhaus designers of the autobahn invented the ideas we take for granted today- the Cloverleaf Exit, Blending Lanes and the central meridian.

1934- THE SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL STRIKE- A longshoreman strike had brought harbor traffic along the West Coast to a standstill. California Governor Frank Merriam decided to send in the National Guard. When the longshoremen picket line was rushed by armored trucks full of scab replacements, they rioted, so the troops opened fire. Hundreds were hurt and two killed. Blood flowed on the Embarcadero. One policeman who killed a demonstrator later said: "The man was a Communist, so my only regret was that I did not kill more!" Flowers, candles and memorials to the slain men were kicked over by the S.F. police.
As a spontaneous unorganized reaction to the violence 100,000 San Franciscans refused to go to work for 4 days. The third largest city in the U.S. was completely paralyzed. Governor Merriam declared martial law but the tanks in the street were helpless. The regiment of National Guardsmen from Berkeley declared they would refuse to aim weapons at their fellow workers. To a nation struggling in the Depression there was widespread fear that this incident was the beginning of a Soviet style revolution. The Russian Revolution had started with general strikes. Then, on the 5th day everyone went back to work.

1935- The Wagner Act passed congress, decreeing all American workers have the right to collective bargaining and to form unions.

1943- Betty Grable married bandleader Harry James.

1945- The First British General Election held in ten years. PM Winston Churchill and his Tories were turned out for Labor candidate Clement Atlee. When his aides accused the British voters of ingratitude, Churchill said they had been through a lot and wanted to move on. Churchill’s wife Clementine told him, “This may well be a blessing in disguise.” To which Winston replied,” Maybe, but if so, it is quite effectively disguised.”

1945- OPERATIONS OVERCAST and PAPERCLIP- Pres. Truman had passed a law forbidding visas for anyone with a Nazi past to emigrate. BUT…The U.S. Army intelligence wanted top Nazi rocket scientists to be brought to the U.S. for our future space program. War Dept Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency chief Bosquet Wev declared:" We’re not going to beat a dead Nazi Horse!" Experts doctored the dossiers on these scientists and changed descriptions like: "Fanatical Nazi" to "Politically Neutral".
Head of the unit Dr. Werner Von Braun was the inventor of the clustered liquid fuel engine rockets which Hitler had named the Vengence-2 and fired at London. Dr. Arthur Rudolphe the designer of the Saturn-5 moon rocket was deported in 1984 when a British documentary exposed his running a slave labor camp in 1943. Also Dr. Herman Becker-Freysing, the man who built John Glenn's space suit, got his knowledge about the effects of atmospheric pressure and oxygen loss on humans from experiments he did on the inmates of Dachau.

1952- London Transport scrapped the last of their electric streetcars in favor of diesel polluting double-decker buses.

1954- Elvis Presley recorded "That’s All Right" at Sun Records in Memphis. Some call it the first true Rock & Roll song, but that is disputed by Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock, Ike Turners Delta 88 and many other R&B hits. “That’s All Right” was written by black bluesman Arthur Big-Boy Crudup, who never profited from the song’s success and died living in a shack.

1954- Tomoyuki Tanaka announced the beginning of production on the movie Godzilla.

1963- The Vatican finally says it’s okay for Catholics to be cremated, since the world is running out of land to make into cemeteries anyway.

1968- In Vietnam, after months of brutal fighting in a battle the mainstream media equated with Iwo Jima and Gettysburg, the US Marines were ordered to abandon their firebase at Khe Sanh anyway. Many Marines were outraged that they had to give up a place they had lost so many brothers over. But the Pentagon felt it was too vulnerable to enemy artillery. In Marine annals Khe Sanh is still counted as a great victory. Any blame for the withdrawal put on General Westmoreland, who had just been replaced as overall commander in Vietnam. He blamed the racial mixing in the ranks. This frustrating misuse of soldier’s sacrifice typified the Vietnam experience.

1975- Tennis player Arthur Ashe became the first African-American to win Wimbledon.

1975- Independence of the Cape Verde Islands.

1989- Reagan White House aide Lt. Colonel Oliver North sentenced for his role in the Iran Contra Scandal. North spent his last evening before testifying shredding incriminating documents. Colonel North appeared in court in his Marine uniform while being interrogated by Hawaii Senator Dan Inouye, a real combat war hero who lost an arm fighting in World War II. Pundits enjoyed the irony of one who could say "I bled for my Country," while the other "I Shred for My Country!"
His conviction was later overturned by a conservative judge on a technicality. Oliver North became a conservative talk show host.

1989- The first episode of the TV sitcom Seinfeld.

1994- In Bellevue, Washington, a man named Jeff Bezos started a company named Cadabra. Shortly after he changed its name to Amazon.

2002- International Professional Women’s Tennis had become dominated by two amazing American sisters, Venus and Serena Williams. This day Serena defeated Venus to win Wimbledon. Of 17 Wimbledon Women’s singles since, the Williams sisters won 14 of them.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who said, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.”…?

Answer: During the Spanish American War, when the US fleet engaged the Spanish Fleet in Manila harbor. On board his flagship USS Hartford, Admiral Dewey gave that order to Captain Gridley to commence the attack.

Quiz: Who said, “ You may fire when ready, Gridley.”…?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What did it mean when you “take the King’s shilling?”
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History for 7/4/2022 U.S. Independence Day
Birthdays: Jean Pierre Blanchard the balloonist-1753, George M. Cohan, Stephen Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Calvin Coolidge, Rube Goldberg, Louis Armstrong*, Edward Walker the inventor of the Lava Lamp, Mayer Lansky, Tokyo Rose, Louis B. Mayer, George Murphy, Emerson Boozer, Neil Simon, Mitch Miller, Eva Marie Saint is 98, Gina Lollobrigida is 95, George Steinbrenner, Ann Landers, Ron Kovic, Geraldo Rivera, Victoria Abril is 63, Pam Shriver, Rene Laloux, Gloria Stuart, Malia Obama

• Louis Armstrong always claimed his birthday was July 4th 1900, although records show his birth was August 4th 1901.

1054- A supernova in the constellation Taurus created a star visible in the sky for 23 days. The residue of the blast is visible today as the Crab Nebula.

1187- BATTLE OF THE HORNS OF HATTIN- Sultan Saladin lured the Christian Crusader army out into the desert, far away from water. The Saracens started a brush fire to confuse the Crusader formations with choking smoke. Old Duke Raymond of Tripoli realized what was happening but was helpless to stop it. When he saw his knights turning to fight, he cried out:" We're lost! We are already dead men!"
In one big battle the entire hierarchy of Crusader Palestine or Outremer as they called it, was dead or taken. Saladin also captured Christian holy relics like the wood of the True Cross and Holy Lance, and sent them to the Caliph in Baghdad.

While on the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saladin’s sister was captured and raped by a crusader named Raymond du Chatillion. Chatillion bragged that he planned next to march on Mecca and “piss on the grave of that lying old mule trader Mohammad!” Raymond was taken alive, so Saladin spent that evening torturing him to death. Hattin was the battle that decided that the Holy Land would not be part of Christian Europe. Raymond of Tripoli escaped back to his castle, to die of old age.

1630- Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus lands in Germany to help the Protestant side in the Thirty Years War. Nobody remembers now, but back then little Sweden was a butt-kicking berserk military power. She always had the problem of a small population of 4 million while she took on nations like France and Russia with tens of millions.

1636- The town of Providence Rhode Island founded.

1653-THE BAREBONES PARLIAMENT- Puritan General Oliver Cromwell had beheaded King Charles I and dispensed with Parliament. This day he tried a semblance of legality by naming a new parliament but with no royalists, Catholics or Presbyterians, in fact they were all his handpicked Puritan followers. It was nicknamed the Barebones Parliament because one its leaders was an itinerant Puritan preacher named PraiseGod Barebones. After a few months Cromwell dispensed with even this rubber stamp Parliament, and ruled directly as a dictator.

1712- A slave uprising in colonial New York City killed 9.

1744- Representatives of the Crown Colony of Pennsylvania negotiate a peace accord with the Iroquois Confederacy of the 5 Nations. The great Onondaga chief Canasatego lectured the white men : " Our wise forefathers established union and amity between the five tribes, it has made us formidable. We are a powerful confederacy and by following the same methods you too can acquire great power." A secretary present named Benjamin Franklin took his advice to heart. Their symbol, five arrows tied together is still held in the claws of the eagle in the Great Seal of the United States.

246 Years Ago 1776- U.S. INDEPENDENCE DAY- The actual vote for independence was on July 2nd, two days were required for rewrites, but the 4th was the day of the vote to approve the amended Declaration and the official announcement. After 46 revisions and deletions Tom Jefferson showed the finished document to Ben Franklin, he smiled: ”Now we may proceed.” The 56 men who signed the document knew that this was their death warrant as they were committing high treason. Many of them had their personal fortunes ruined as a result.
1776- It took two months for the news to cross the Atlantic. In London King George III wrote in his diary for July 4th, 1776:" Nothing important happened today..."

1802-The Hudson River fortress of West Point is inaugurated as a military academy.

1804- Already pledged to fight a duel in a week, Vice President Aaron Burr and former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton have to sit next to each other at an Independence Day dinner in New York City.

1826- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams last words were: "Jefferson...Jefferson still lives...” . Jefferson breathed his last at 1:30PM at Monticello Virginia, Adams at 6:00PM at his home in Quincy Massachusetts. Adams left holdings amounting to $100,000, Jefferson left debts amounting to $100,000. Jefferson freed only six out of 200 slaves, all of the Hemmings Family but not Sally Hemmings his mistress for 38 years. Jefferson’s daughter clandestinely freed her with a pension for her old age.

1831- former President James Monroe, veteran of Washington’s Army and called the Last Founding Father, also died on the 4th of July.

1848- The Communist Manifesto published by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels.

1850- President Zachary Taylor "Old Rough and Ready" gets sick from eating too many raw cherries and raw milk at a ceremony laying the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. He died 5 days later. Modern historians wondered if he was poisoned, being a Southern statesman who openly opposed slavery, but an examination of his exhumed remains in 1993 proved natural causes.

1855- Henry Davis Thoreau moved to Walden Pond. He was the first U.S. writer to describe nature as a thing of beauty instead of a mortal enemy to be conquered. This date is considered the birth of the American Conservation Movement.

1855- Walt Whitman published his quarto of poems The Leaves of Grass. Many people were shocked at its frank description of sexual desire. Whitman’s mother said: ”Walt is a good boy, but strange.”

1862- Oxford mathematics professor Charles Dodgson rowed ten-year-old Alice Liddell and her sister up the Thames in a small punt. The little girls begged him for a story, so Dodgson made up fantastic tales of March Hares, Mad Hatters and the Queen of Hearts.
Dodgson later wrote them down and published them in 1865 as Alice in Wonderland. He used the pen name Lewis Carroll, which was a joke on the fact that Renaissance scholars adopted big stuffy Latin names like Ludovicus Carolus Magnus.

1863- The day after the Battle of Gettysburg both armies sat motionless while a torrential rains pour down. Lee had no more reserves and was practically out of cannonballs, U.S. General Meade still had a third of his army untouched and ready to go. But Meade infuriated Lincoln because he refused to resume the attack.

1863-VICKSBURG- The Confederate fortress-city of Vicksburg surrendered to Union General Grant. Pennsylvania-born rebel General James Pemberton led 29,000 men into captivity. He said: " In know the Northerners. We can get better terms if we give up on the 4th of July than any other day." Grant was so confident he would win that while the battle was still going on he telegraphed the town's main hotel and booked a room reservation for July 4th.
This completed the Yankee control of the Mississippi from the north down through Memphis to New Orleans. It severed the jugular of the Confederacy for it cut her in half. Lincoln in his announcement said: "The Father of the Waters flows unvexed to the Sea." The citizens of Vicksburg would not celebrate the Fourth of July for eighty years, until 1945.

1863- In the far West, the town of Boise Idaho founded.

1879- Battle of Ulundi- After several Zulu victories earlier in the year, the full weight of the British Empire is brought in to conquer the Zulu people. It was the first time the British used Canadian, Indian and Australian regiments outside of their own territories. A large Victorian monument to British dead in the battle was erected. Only in 1989 was a monument allowed to the native Zulu people who died defending their own homeland.

1883- Buffalo Bill staged his first Wild West Show in North Platte Nebraska. Bill and his partners took the show all over the US and played for the crowned heads of Europe until 1916.

1898- The US flag first raised over Wake Island in the Pacific.

1905- Los Angeles developer Abbott Kinney had broken with his partners over the Santa Monica Pleasure Pier. He moved down the coast to some marshy wetlands and built a new community with canals, lagoons and gondolas. The town of VENICE California was dedicated this day. In 1925, the City of LA got rid of most of the canals and gondolas. Venice went on to be a seaside mecca for Beatniks, Hippies and weightlifters like young Arnold Schwarzenegger.

1911- The first rollercoaster on the Pacific Coast opened on Santa Monica Pier.

1914- First day of filming on D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.”

1915- Heavyweight Champion Jess Willard who had taken the championship from Jack Johnson was himself beaten by a new kid named Jack Dempsey, the Manassas Mauler. Dempsey chewed pine tar to make his jaw hard and washed his face in ocean brine to toughen his skin against cuts. Dempsey hit Willard so hard, he broke his jaw and knocked out six teeth by the fourth round. Jack Dempsey defended his title several more times and became a popular media figure by appearing with many Hollywood Movie stars. After he retired, he opened a bar-restaurant in NY Times Square called Dempseys, the first sports-bar.

1917- The US First Division paraded through Paris in advance of the main American armies still to come. General Blackjack Pershing laid a wreath on the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette and proclaimed:” Lafayette- nous voisci! Lafayette, we are here!” Jake Strauss the owner of Macy’s Department Store changed it to “Gallerie Lafayette, we are here!”

1917- The July Coup. Lenin and the Bolsheviks tried to overthrow the Russian Government early but were put down. They fled into exile, trying again in October.

1926- Hungarian film director Mano Mikhali Kertesz arrived in Hollywood. He changed his name to the more manageable Michael Curtiz and directed great classic films like Captain Blood and Casablanca.

1927-Walt Disney’s Trolley Troubles with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit premiered.

1930- 1,300 delegates formed the National Unemployment Council. They agitate Washington to create national unemployment insurance.

1933- In San Francisco Bay, the work began on the Oakland Bay Bridge.

1943- Nazis panzer divisions began the Battle of KURSK. Thousands of tanks swirled around in the flat dusty Ukrainian steppe land and blew each other to pieces. The Russians considered Kursk the real turning point of World War II because they stopped a full-on Nazi blitzkrieg. For the first time the Nazis began a retreat in the summer.

1946- The Independence of the Philippines is declared.

1947- THE WILD ONES- 400 motorcyclists converge on a small California town called Hollister to party hard. The local police arrest 49 and call for State reinforcements. The national media sensationalized the wild bikers terrorizing a small town, calling them "Hell's Angels" three years before the first chapter was formed. Truth be told many residents remember the incident fondly and said it livened things up.

Many of the bikers weren’t teenage delinquents but World War II veterans who used motorcycles to recapture the thrill and camaraderie of action. The Life Magazine that dramatized the Hollister incident had a cover photo showing a depraved biker swilling beer. The shot was staged and the man in the photo was actually a Hollister local who never went near a Harley. The Marlon Brando film 'The Wild One" was based on the Hollister incident.

1954- Dr. Sam Shepard returned to his suburban Cleveland home to find his wife beaten to death and a man fleeing the scene. Dr. Shepard himself was convicted of his wife’s murder in a controversial trial. People still argue today whether he was guilty or not.
In 1998 Dr. Shepard’s son got DNA evidence to prove there was another man at the scene the night of the murder, and in 2000 the court threw out his wrongful imprisonment suit. The TV show and film The Fugitive was based on Dr. Shepard.

1956- MIT’s TX-1 Whirlwind computer added an adapted typewriter keyboard to enter data. The first computer keyboard.

1966- President Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act.

1968- “The Green Berets” premiered. John Wayne financed and produced this attempt to counter the antiwar sentiment sweeping America by creating a pro-war WWII style movie about the Vietnam conflict.

1969-“ Give Peace a Chance.” released by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band.

1976- What’s Love Got to Do With It? Singer Tina Turner left Ike Turner.

1976- The Ramones first arrived in England for a tour. They greatly inspired future bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols. When playing at the Palladium the Sex Pistols said they couldn’t get tickets to get in so the Ramones pulled them in through the men’s room window. Hey, Ho, Lets Go!

1981- UPA producer Steve Bosustow passed away.

1982- Jimmy Connors defeated John McEnroe for his final Wimbledon Championship.

1982- Ozzie Ozbourne married Sharon Ozbourne.

1984- First Lady Nancy Reagan began the campaign to combat drugs among kids by saying “Just Say No”. Two of her Secret Service bodyguards were later caught doing cocaine.

1990- 2 Live Crew released the song Banned in the USA.

1997- NASA landed Pathfinder on Mars and deployed Sojourner, the first ever autonomous robotic rover. Expected to function for only two months, the rover collected data on the Red Planet for the next ten years.

2003- Pres. George W. Bush rashly bragged to the Iraqi insurgents “Bring it on!” Insurgent attacks on American forces immediately went up 300%.

2011- The London Guardian newspaper reported that reporters from Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper News of the World had hacked into the private phone records of Milly Dowler, a 13 year old girl who was raped and murdered in 2002.
The outrage against the Murdoch journalists shook Fox NewsCorp to its roots. One whistle blower committed suicide, The 166 year old newspaper News of the World was shut down, and the chiefs of London Police quit in disgrace.

2012- The Higgs-Boson is a subatomic particle. It existed only in theory until in
this day, the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced they had observed one. To know more, you have to ask Sheldon and Leonard from The Big Bang Theory.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What did it mean when you “take the King’s shilling?”

Answer: It meant you enlisted in the British Army or Navy. You were given a small cash bounty for joining up. Navy press-gang officers would go into a pub and plunk a coin into your beer. By drinking it meant you accepted the Kings ‘bounty. Pubs soon featured tankards with a glass bottom.

Quiz: What did it mean when you “take the King’s shilling?”

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is gossamer? As in to fly on gossamer wings.
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History for 7/3/2022
Birthdays: King Louis XI of France "the Spider King"1423, Franz Kafka, Mr. Preserved Fish -New York Congressman 1819, Dave Barry, Leos Janacek, John Singleton Copley, Ken Russell, Tom Stoppard, George Sanders, Peter Fountain, Yeardley Smith, Tom Cruise is 60, Kevin Hart is 42

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, “Doubting-Thomas,” the patron saint of architects.

1754- During the French & Indian War, young Virginia militia Captain George Washington surrendered his post, Fort Necessity, to the French. Up till now his major ambition in life was to be an officer in the British Army. Now his first command was a defeat, and to top it all off, because one of his allied Indians tomahawked a surrendered French officer, he was almost arrested for war crimes. When Washington signed the surrender document, a murder confession was slipped into the terms. It was in French, so he didn’t understand it.

1775- George Washington arrived in the camp at Cambridge Massachusetts to take over command of the colonial army surrounding Boston. A Virginia slaveholder, one of his first orders was to turn away all free African-American volunteers. But the New Englanders convinced him they were a vital part of their army, so he relented. In the American Revolution, one minuteman in eight was black.

1826- 83-year-old, dying Thomas Jefferson was drifting in and out of consciousness at his home in Monticello, Virginia. He would be cognizant long enough to ask, “Is it the 4th of July yet?” The author of the Declaration of Independence was grimly hanging on, determined to see one more Independence Day. Hundreds of miles north in Quincy, Massachusetts, 90-year-old John Adams was doing the exact same thing.

1863- PICKET'S CHARGE-CLIMAX OF GETTYSBURG-Robert E. Lee launched his last fresh divisions in a grand frontal attack to win the Civil War. 15,000 troops walk across one mile of open ground, while being shot at from the whole Yankee Army. Even against such long odds they almost break the Union center. The entire attack took thirty minutes.
Picket’s division suffered 50%, casualties including all his leading generals killed. General Lothario “Lo” Armistead put his hat on his sword point and shouted "Who will follow me?" Lo Armistead’s uncle had commanded Fort McHenry during the “Rockets Red Glare” British attack in 1814. Armistead reached the union artillery before he was shot down. When one North Carolina flagbearer survived murderous gunfire from all sides and lived to reach the union wall, the men in blue instead of killing him, shook his hand.
Finally the Southern assault spent itself and started to recede. Men retreated backwards because they didn’t want to be shot in the back. Lee rode out and told the survivors: “This is my fault. All of this..” That night he wrote his resignation to Richmond. But no fault would stick on their beloved old general. Pickett bitterly said:" That old man destroyed my division." After the Civil War George Pickett were ostracized by Southern society for daring to criticize Robert E. Lee’s decision to attack. Pickett was family friends with the Lincolns. When Picketts’ son was born Yankee generals sent baby gifts with a white flag through the lines.

1863- Santee Sioux chief Little Crow had led a large uprising against the whites in Minnesota. This day near the town of Hutchinson he was picking berries with his son when he was ambushed and killed by settlers seeking the $25 dollar bounty on Indian scalps. His body was thrown on an offal pile at a cattle slaughterhouse, and later put on exhibit by the Minnesota Historical Society. Eventually both bones and scalp were returned to the Sioux people for proper burial.

1866-Battle of Sadowa-Koniggratz- climax of the Seven Weeks War, also called the "BrudersKrieg" or "Brother's War" because in it Prussia fought the other German speaking states Austria, Hesse, and Bavaria to see who would be the dominant power.
As a result of Koniggratz, Berlin and not Vienna or Frankfurt would be the capitol of a united Germany.

1890- Idaho statehood.

1898-Battle of Santiago Harbor- U.S. fleet under Admiral Sampson defeated the Spanish in Cuba. The U.S fleet so heavily outgunned the Spanish ships, that the Spanish admiral is remembered at home as a hero for even attempting the fight to keep up the national honor.

1915- An emotionally deranged German language professor at Cornell named Eric Meunter sent a time bomb to the U.S. Senate, then went to Glen Cove New York, where he tried to assassinate tycoon J.P. Morgan. He shot Morgan in the thigh before he was wrestled to the ground and knocked out with a lump of coal. He committed suicide in jail two days later. The incident was played up in the yellow press to show how hostile Germany was, to turn neutral America into getting into World War I.

1916- Hetty Green "the Witch of Wall Street" died at 80. Her eccentric cheapness created the millionaire-bag lady myth. The richest woman in America, worth around $100 million, she lived in a dumpy apartment in Hoboken, refused to pay for a doctor when her son broke his leg, and stole bread off the tables at fashionable restaurants.
After she died, her son Ned Green bought a ferryboat, made it into a yacht so he could have the biggest one, named it after his favorite prostitute, partied with her and others every night, and collected whale penises. Hetty still left him so much money that when he died, the entire population of Massachusetts paid no state tax that year.

1931- The Cab Calloway Orchestra recorded 'The St. James Infirmary Blues."

1937- In California the Del Mar Racetrack opened. Owner Bing Crosby personally welcomed the first customers to his track. Called “ Where the Surf Meets the Turf.”

1943- Chuck Jones short Wackiki Rabbit debuted.

1969- Brian Jones, having been kicked out of the Rolling Stones just days before -- drowned in his swimming pool. His home was once the estate of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne.

1969- On the same day, John and Yoko Lennon were almost killed in a car crash, along with John's son Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko.

1971- The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison, was found dead of a heart attack in his bathtub in Paris. He was 28.

1971- In Sweden, the first laser eye surgery was performed.

1985- Robert Zemeckis’ film Back to the Future opened.

1988- In the Persian Gulf, the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger airliner killing three hundred civilians. They thought the Airbus commercial plane was an Iranian fighter jet sent to attack them.

1991- James Cameron’s Terminator 2 Judgement Day, premiered.

1996- Independence Day, by Roland Emmerich opened.

2002- Powerpuff Girls the Movie, premiered.

2013- After the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Mohamed Morsi of the Moslem Brotherhood was elected President. But this day he was overthrown and imprisoned by a military coup led by General Fatah al-Sisi. In 2019 Morsi died in prison.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is gossamer? As in to fly on gossamer wings.

Answer: A very light, thin substance spun from spider’s webs. Meaning fabric so thin as to be almost insubstantial.