Question: What does it mean to be idiosyncratic?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Over two hundred years ago there was political movement called the Jacobins. Who were they?
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History for 6/7/2022
Birthdays: Pope Gregory XIII, Beau Brummel, Paul Gauguin, Chick Corea, George Szell, Watergate congressman Peter Rodino, Tom Jones, Jessica Tandy, James Ivory, Virginia McKenna, Prince, Mike Pence, Liam Neeson is 70

Today is the feast day of the Fifth century Saint Meriodoc of Ploughganou. Among his relics was a magical bell that when you placed it over the head of people with migraines and the hard of hearing made them well.

1099- After three years of marching and fighting, and more marching, the massed armies of the First Crusade finally sighted the Holy City of Jerusalem.

1191- Richard the Lionheart arrived in the Holy Land for the Third Crusade, he went by ship via Sicily and Cyprus- the easy way. The Crusaders met him on the beach with an old song that today is "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow".

1520-THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD- A Renaissance international summit organized by Cardinal Woolsey. King Henry VIII of England, King Francois Le Bel of France and Emperor Karl of Germany, all pitched their expensive gold cloth tents together, and held feasts, revels and tournaments while discussing politics.

1523- After a century of being united with Denmark in the Union of Clamar, Sweden broke away and established a new monarchy. Their rebellious noblemen gathered in a new Riksraad- Parliament, and declared their king a young blonde-bearded noble named Gustavus Ericksson Vasa. At times he was an outlaw like Robin Hood. Now Gustavus established his Vasa dynasty, and made Sweden a major power in Europe.

1594- All during Queen Elizabeth I reign there were plots and attempts on her life. This day the Queens Spanish-Jewish doctor Rodrigo Lopez was executed on suspicion of his attempting to poison the Queen. The evidence was circumstantial, and Elizabeth took several weeks to decide to sign the death warrant. When the news got out, there was a wave of Anti-Semitic feeling among the English populace, even though Jews had been forbidden to live in England since 1388. This is seen as the time when William Shakespeare got the inspiration to create Shylock the moneylender, in his play the Merchant of Venice.

1654- French Louis XIV "the Sun King" was crowned.

1692- After Tortuga was cleaned out of pirates by the Spanish Navy, the Jamaican town of Port Royal became the unofficial pirate capitol. At its height, with a harbor that could shelter 150 ships, Port Royal boasted more citizens than Boston and more money per capita than London. Trade was so extensive that among the treasures, divers found was a Japanese samurai sword. Today Port Royal was destroyed by a huge earthquake and tsunami.

1769- Though they seem quaint hills today, in Colonial times the Allegheny Mountains presented an insurmountable barrier preventing further movement west from the colonies of the Atlantic coast. This day frontiersman Daniel Boone reached Kentucky by charting a way through the Cumberland Gap. Boone’s achievement was the first penetration of this wall. Daniel Boone was once asked if he ever got lost. “Nope” he said: “But I was bewildered once.”

1776- In the Continental Congress representative Richard Henry Lee stood up and proposed a resolution calling for American Independence. " Be it Resolved that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States." This began the key debate that lasted until July 2nd. John Adams calculated that at this time only one third of the American public was for full independence, one third was for reconciliation with Britain and one third was fence sitting.

1810- THE TREATY of TILSIT- Another international summit. While dozens of conquered and allied princes stood in the rain, Napoleon conferred with Czar Alexander I of Russia on a raft moored in the middle of the Neiman River. It was the height of the little corporal's power. Napoleon said of the young Czar:" He is so beautiful ! If he was a woman, I would fall madly in love with him !" And he later said of Queen Marie Louise of Prussia: " She is so strong, she is the only real man in Germany."

1860- Workmen in San Francisco began laying track on Market Street for a light rail system, the famous Cable Cars.

1863- A French army sent by Emperor Napoleon III entered Mexico City to set up Austrian Archduke Maximillian & Carlotta as rulers of Mexico. Napoleon III was the first to refer to Spanish and Portuguese speaking states in South America as Latin America.

1864- Abraham Lincoln was nominated for a second term as President. At this time even he didn't think he would win. His opponent George McClellen was a popular general who ran on a platform of an immediate peace talks with the Southern rebels.

1882- The electric iron was invented by Henry Seely of New York City. This event was pretty far sighted because not many homes were equipped with electricity yet.

1893- Young Indian Mohandas K. Gandhi was practicing law in South Africa. This day he committed his first ever act of Civil Disobedience by refusing to comply with the racial segregation laws on a train out of Pietermaritzburg. Gandhi would win equality for so-called “coloreds “, meaning Indian and Asian citizens. Later, Gandhi moved to India to become the Mahatma, or the Great Soul.

1916- In the Presidential nominating convention of the Progressive, Bull Moose Party, former President Teddy Roosevelt refused their nomination, effectually killing off the third party he started in 1912.

1917- In an army reorganization in preparation for entering World War I, the U.S. army merged four regiments with artillery to create the U.S. First Division. Later in the trenches a doughboy took a piece of red felt from a German uniform and made a shoulder insignia from it. It was the first sewn shoulder patch. The First Division became famous as the Big Red One.

1924- This day marked the last known contact with the George Mallory Expedition. He was the first mountain climber to attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. They disappeared shortly after. Mallory’s bones were finally discovered in 1999. We all know that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenjin Norgai conquered Everest in 1953, but did Mallory reach the top first? Unlike Scott of the Antarctic he left no diary or logbook, so we may never know.

1927- A daredevil named Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly climbed on top of a flagpole on top of a bank in Newark, New Jersey, and sat there for eight days straight. This stunt was covered by the media almost as much as Charles Lindbergh’s flight. It made a national craze for flagpole-sitting.

1932- During the Great Depression about one third of the independent banks in the U.S. failed. On this day Hollywood was affected because the First Bank of Beverly Hills went under, erasing the assets of many important Hollywood figures.
Greta Garbo lost one million dollars overnight. Louis B. Mayer, ever one to capitalize on a situation, offered her an advance if she would sign an exclusive 7 year contract with MGM. Garbo's back was to the wall, so she signed. But she got her revenge in her own way- she immediately went on a 6 month vacation to Europe and took a lesbian lover Mercedes DeAcosta, whom she proceeded to tongue-kiss in front of news cameras.

1937- Screen goddess Jean Harlow, the original Platinum Blonde, died of kidney failure. She was only 26.

1942- Japanese troops storm the beaches at Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians Islands, Alaska, the first foreign soldiers on U.S. soil since the British redcoats in 1814.

1954- Scientist Alan Turing helped break the WWII German Enigma Code, and is considered one of the fathers of the computer. Early computers were called Turing Machines. He predicted one day computers would be able to think like humans, and one day we would play games on our computers. But when Turing was revealed to be gay, was sentenced to a mental institution to undergo chemical castration. He was convicted with the same law used to jail Oscar Wilde in 1895. Alan Turing was a fan of the Disney film Snow White. This day he laced an apple with cyanide and bit into it. He was 42.

1955- The TV quiz show, The $64,000 Question premiered.

1959- Boss of the Chicago Mafia, Sam “Momo” Giancana testified before the Senate McClellan Committee on racketeering in the U.S. While he was being grilled by chief prosecutor Robert Kennedy, Giancana had a strange grin on his face. Bobby Kennedy lashed out:” Why are you giggling Mr. Giancana? Don’t only little girls giggle?”
What Bobby didn’t know was Giancana was being courted by his own father Joe Kennedy Sr to help with money and support in the upcoming presidential election of his brother Jack.
Giancana’s support of the Kennedys and later disappointment when there was no let up in the racket’s probes after the election, is a main feeder to the conspiracy theory that John F. Kennedy was killed by the Mafia. In 1975 the day before he was to testify to the Frank Church Senate Committee on Assassinations, Sam Giancana was murdered.

1975- This day Sony announced the first home videotape playing system, the Betamax. They were about $25,000 each, but we were promised as they became more popular the price would come down.

1993- Rockstar Prince celebrated his birthday by changing his name to a funny symbol no keyboard can reproduce and no one can say. He did it because of a dispute with Warner Records who said because of his contract he could not issue recordings under his own name. In 2000 he switched back to Prince.

2002 –Kim Possible premiered on TV.
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Yesterday’s Question: Over two hundred years ago there was political movement called the Jacobins. Who were they?

Answer: There were two groups called Jacobins. In Britain in the 1690s they were the supporters of the deposed Stewart dynasty, named for King James II. In France during the Revolution the Jacobins were the most radical of the revolutionaries, Robespierre, Danton and Marat. They administered the Reign of Terror. Named for their meeting hall in an old monastery of St. Jacob. When Gen. Napoleon seized power, he claimed he was trying to protect France from “The Jacobin Menace.”

Quiz: Over two hundred years ago there was political movement called the Jacobins. Who were they?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: When Queen Elizabeth II finally dies and Charles becomes king, what number will he be?
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History for 6/6/2022
Birthdays: Diego Velasquez, Pierre Corneille. Alexandre Pushkin, Nathan Hale, John Trumbull, Thomas Mann, The Dalai Lama, Klaus Tennestedt, Bjorn Borg, Richard Crane, Dr. Karl Braun, Walter Chrysler, Isaiah Berlin, Aram Khachaturian, Jason Issacs, Sandra Bernhard is 67, Paul Giamatti is 55, Aaron Sorkin is 61

1438- THE ACT OF UNION. Emperor John III Paleologus was desperate.
His Byzantine Empire had been reduced to just the suburbs of Constantinople, and the armies of the Turkish Sultan were massing for their final assault. He needed help from his fellow Christians in the West.
But since the Crusades, the knights of the Europe had tired of long distance adventures. The courts of Italy wined and dined John, and made many pretty frescos of him, but gave him no troops. Greek scholars like George Lascaris lingered on and resettled in Italy, where their reintroduction of ancient literature helped spark the Italian Renaissance.
The Act of Union supposedly reconciled the differences between Latin and Greek Churches, but John went home empty handed and the Turks took Constantinople in 1453. Other Orthodox Churches like the Russian Church renounced their allegiance to the Patriarch of Constantinople, over his making a deal with the Pope in Rome.

1536- The Spanish Inquisition sets up shop in Mexico.

1654- Queen Christina of Sweden, daughter of the Protestant war hero King Gustavus Adolphus, abdicated her throne to turn Catholic and live at the Vatican. She could ride and shoot like a man and was learned enough in philosophy to debate some of the great minds of Europe. In the 1930’s Greta Garbo made a movie of her life. My favorite comment of hers was when one scientist declared that the Human Body was a machine, she countered:" If that is so, then why can’t my clock give birth to little baby watches?"

1660- The Peace of Copenhagen signed.

1683- The world’s first public museum, the Ashmolean, was opened. English archaeologist Elias Ashmole donated his collection of curiosities to Oxford University for the students to study. A building was commissioned from Christopher Wren and the museum opened to the public this day.

1727- BATTLE OF THE DIVAS- In Old London at this time the rage was for Italian Operas. Many international musicians made lucrative livings singing for Britons. Italian soprano Francesca Cuzzoni was the reigning star, but a rival arrived in town named Faustina Bodoni. This night at His Majesty’s Theatre Covent Garden, with the Princess of Wales in attendance, as Bodoni tried to sing Astianatte, Cuzzoni fans booed, hissed and shouted so much a fight broke out. Soon the two rival singers were up on stage tearing each others hair out, fistfights in the pit and scenery being pulled down. Composer George Frederich Handel laughingly accompanied the mayhem with an impromptu solo on kettledrums.

1740- Prussian King Frederick the Great instituted a new medal. Originally called the Order of Generosity, Frederick called the little blue Maltese cross Order Pour Le Merite fur Offizeren. Frederick liked to say things in French. The medal became famous as the Blue Max, coveted by World War I flying aces.

1797- The Lake Poets meet. In the Coxwolds region of England Samuel Taylor Coleridge walked across a field and visited William Wordsworth in his cottage. This began one of the great collaborations in literature. Coleridge had just finished the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The married Mr. Coleridge even had a platonic affair with Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy, and later Wordsworth’s sister-in-law Susan Hutchinson.

1833- President Andrew Jackson becomes the first President to ride on a train.

1844 –George Williams formed the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London, for lonely young men working in the new urban factories to have an alternative to pubs and dance halls.

1857- THE SIEGE & MASSACRE OF KANPUR- The most infamous episode of the Indian Sepoy Rebellion against the British. The Hindu Mahratta of India and the Moslem Moghul Emperor Bajadur had thrown their support behind the Sepoys, the rebellious Indian troops attacking British posts throughout India. At Kanpur the rebels surrounded a garrison of British troops with their wives and children in a little hospital compound.
After a two weeks of fighting and starving in100 degree heat the British surrendered on a promise of safe conduct. After giving up their weapons the Indians murdered them all, using professional butchers to chop up the captive women and children and fill a dry well with their body parts. 600 died. The incident horrified Victorian society, which adopted a harder attitude towards their Indian subjects. Captured Sepoys were tied across the mouths of cannon and blown to bits.

1867- THE KA-KA COMPROMISE- The Austrian Empire quiets its nationalist Hungarian subjects by turning their country into a dual monarchy. Hapsburg Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth go to Budapest and are crowned King and Queen of Hungary. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was called in German `Kaiserlich-Koniglich' or K.K. The regime's opponents called it KaKa, and they had interpreted the pun the same way we do.

1884- Nikola Tesla arrived in the United States.

1918- BATTLE of the BELLEAU WOOD- In World War I when the first U.S. Marine units arrived at the Western Front, Marshal Foch threw them in front of a major German attack. When the Yanks arrived in the trenches, the French commander announced the entire line was retreating. Marine Capt. Lloyd Williams replied: " Retreat? Hell, we just got here!" and they went into action.
Later in the fighting, Sgt Major Daly was heard bellowing at his men:" Come on' you sons a' bitches! Do you wanna live forever?!" The Marines stopped the Germans only 37 miles from Paris.

1925 - Walter Percy Chrysler founded Chrysler Corp.

1929- Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’ surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou ( The Andalusian Dog) at the Teatre des Ursulines in Paris. All the modernist artists were present like Picasso, Andre Breton and Cocteau. Bunuel had filled his pockets with rocks, in case the crowd hated the film and he needed to defend himself, but it was warmly received.

1930- USC’s Tommy Trojan statue unveiled.

1933-The first Drive In movie opened in Camden, New Jersey. 25 cents a car. Richard Hollingshead, a young entrepreneur, devised a way to offer comfortable movie watching to the public by experimenting in his own driveway.

1934- President Roosevelt signed the Securities and Exchange Act, which set up a regulatory commission to rein in the under the table shenanigans of brokers and financiers that had caused the Great Depression. The chairman of the SEC was Joseph Kennedy Sr, the father of JFK.

1939- Playright Eugene O’Neill had hit a dry spell of no writing and dread of impending Parkinsons disease. This day he got the inspiration to sketch out outlines for two plays- The Iceman Cometh, and Long Days Journey into Night.

1941- Actor George Raft wrote a memo to studio head Jack Warner reminding him of his contractual commitment to send Raft only good quality scripts. The latest he got: " The Maltese Falcon" he thought was “a lousy substandard idea, that has no chance." Humphrey Bogart did the film instead.

1942- Two days after the Battle of Midway the abandoned burning wreck of the carrier USS Yorktown was torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-162. In 1997 the Yorktown was found on the bottom of the Pacific by Dr. Robert Ballard, the same scientist who found the Titanic. To give you an idea of the depth of the Pacific compared to the Atlantic, Ballard said it took 1 1/2 hours for his submarine to descend to the Titanic, but it took 3 hours there, and 3 hours back to visit the Yorktown.

1942 –Adeline Grey does the first nylon parachute jump in Hartford Conn.

1944- D-DAY, the NORMANDY INVASION- General Dwight Eisenhower launched 6,000 ships, 14,000 planes and 156,000 troops on the shores of Nazi occupied France with the order: "Okay. Let's go." In Moscow, where Stalin had been begging for a second front, there were wild celebrations, and Radio Moscow played "Yankee-Doodle" all day. Eisenhower planned for young green troops be used in the first wave. "If they knew what was waiting for them like the veterans know, they wouldn't go."
The German High command was taken completely by surprise. When the invasion happened many officers were coming home from a weekend seminar on how to defeat an invasion. Adolf Hitler had taken a sleeping pill and left orders not to be disturbed.

In the assault were voiceover actor Paul Frees, Disney key assistant Dale Oliver, Marvel cartoonist Jack Kirby, and Disney/Warner development artist Victor Haboush. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was in the second wave to Utah Beach. Ernest Hemingway was in a landing craft among other war correspondents. James Doohan (Scotty in Star Trek) was a Canadian officer and was wounded. On Omaha Beach, war photographer Robert Capa leaped into the surf before the landing barges reached shore and walking backwards with the whole Nazi army shooting at him to photograph the first G.I.s landing. His 22 rolls of film were later ruined by an inept lab developer. Only three photos remain.

1949- Comic strip character Joe Palooka gets married to Ann Howe.

1949-BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING- George Orwell's book about technological tyranny -1984 was first published. Orwell's working title was "The Last Free Man", but the publisher thought it too depressing to sell. So, Orwell picked the date 1984, who's only significance was that it was the year he was writing 1948- reversed

1955 - Bill Haley & Comets, "Rock Around the Clock" hits #1.

1959- TThe Submarine Voyage attraction (inspired by the 1954 Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) opens in Disneyland's updated Tomorrowland. The 8 vessels are named Nautilus, Seawolf, Skate, Skipjack, Triton, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Ethan Allen.

1972 - David Bowie released "Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust"

1976- The Glendale Galleria shopping mall in Glendale Cal. opened.

1978- Proposition 13 property tax cut approved by California voters.

1982- the Israeli army invaded Lebanon. Prime Minister Menachem Begin felt that the operation should take only one or two days. In 2000, after an 18 year occupation and fighting among a confusing mix of Syrian & Iranian backed guerrillas, US Marines and Christian Maronite militias, the Israeli troops were finally withdrawn. The war remains controversial in Israel to this day. Ariel Sharon, the defense minister who was nicknamed "the Butcher of Beirut" because he allowed Lebanese militias to massacre Palestinian refugees, was Prime Minister 2001 to 2006.

1984- Climaxing two years of fighting Sikh Nationalists, Indian forces were ordered by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi to storm the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. 1,000 people were killed. Later that year, Mrs. Ghandi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in revenge.

1984- In Moscow, 29 year old mathematics Professor Alexey Pajitnov invented the game Tetris.

1985- The body of Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele is located and exhumed near Sao Paolo, Brazil. Mengele was the Nazi Angel of Death, who conducted experiments on inmates of the concentration camps. The elderly Nazi had a heart attack while swimming.

1991 - NBC announced Jay Leno would replace retiring Johnny Carson, winning out over David Letterman. Letterman moved to CBS.

2007- The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim California, named for a Walt Disney comedy movie, won the Stanley Cup after defeating the Ottawa Senators. It is the first Stanley Cup won by a west coast team since 1925.

2015- American Pharaoh won the first Triple Crown horse race in 37 years.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: When Queen Elizabeth II finally dies and Charles becomes king, what number will he be?

Answer: Charles III. If he chooses to keep that name. Elizabeth’s father George VI was born Albert. His brother Edward VIII was named David. We shall see.

Quiz: When Queen Elizabeth II finally dies and Charles becomes king, what number will he be?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Barney-Google! And his Goo-Goo-Googelly Eyes..” Who was Barney Google?
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History for 6/5/2022
Birthdays: Socrates, Pancho Villa, Thomas Chippendale -furniture maker, not the male strip club owner, Igor Stravinsky, Little archduchess Anastasia Romanov, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Dean Acheson, Bill Moyers is 88, Hopalong Cassidy, Tony Richardson, Lancelot Ware the founder of Mensa, Kenny G., Spaulding Gray, Ron Livingston is 55, Mark Wahlberg is 51

221BC - The Chinese poet Chu Yuan drowned himself as a protest of an unjust Emperor. His memory is remembered by the annual Dragon Boat Festival. People decorate boats like dragons, and drop dumplings into the river to dissuade fish from eating the remains of the poet.

754AD- Today is the feast of Saint Boniface, who chopped down the sacred tree of Thor at Mount Gundenberg in Thuringia.

1098- After the Crusaders starved the city of Antioch into surrender, an even bigger Saracen army led by Kerbogha the Emir of Roum trapped the Crusaders inside. Things looked real desperate boys and girls, luckily the Crusaders discovered the Holy Nail. But that's for a future story....

1305-"The BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY"- King Phillip the Fair of France makes a deal with a cardinal to help him become elected as Pope Clement V. The cost is Clement has to move the entire Vatican from Rome to Avignon in French territory. The Holy See stayed in France about 150 years.

1455- Poet Francois Villon gets thrown out of Paris again, this time for stabbing a priest in a bar fight.

1502- LEONARDO GETS A JOB- This day Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by Cesare Borgia as a military engineer. Borgia was the son of Pope Alexander VI, and wanted to conquer Italy for Holy Mother Church. The artist-scientist Leonardo had promised Borgia he could design horrific war making machines like tanks, flame-throwers and poison gas. Most of these things were unrealistic for the technology of the time, so Borgia employed him drawing maps of the topography of the lands he intended to conquer. After a few months Pope Alexander died, and the new Pope Julius kicked out Cesare Borgia. Leonardo went back on Renaissance LinkedIn.

1568- The Spanish Governor of the Netherlands the Duke of Alba invited the Dutch independence leaders to come and discuss their grievances with him. The leaders Egmont and Van Horn showed up. Alba then had them both executed. The other leader William of Orange escaped to lead the Dutch resistance.

1605- Battle of Fontaine Francaise- French King Henry IV defeats an invading Spanish Army with just 300 horsemen. One of France's most beloved kings, instead of staying in the rear of his army he always galloped into the center of a fight. He had a huge white plume in his helmet. When asked what his strategy for the battle was, he replied: "Just follow the white plume!"

1661- Isaac Newton admitted as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge.

1805- The first tornado seen by white men in Tornado Alley, Southern Illinois.

1816- The Year Without a Summer- Volcanic explosions in Indonesia and the Caribbean threw so much ash into the atmosphere that large parts of the U.S. recorded winter temperatures throughout the summer months. This day in New England it was 83 degrees, then it plunged to 42, then the following day saw ten inches of snow. Still, Currier and Ives had more time to paint those cutesy sleigh ride scenes...

1854- The US Know-Nothing Party established. It's goal being the restriction of the immigration, especially the Irish Catholics. Former President Millard Fillmore became one of their adherents.

1863- It was an open secret that Union General Ulysses Grant was an alcoholic. His loyal aide Colonel Rawlins was determined to cure him because he had lost his own father to drink. On this day during the Siege of Vicksburg, Rawlins smashed an entire case of wine given him as a gift. Grant reacted by jumping on a steamboat and going on a two-day drinking binge, a nervous newspaper correspondent named Sylvanus Cadwallader in tow trying to keep him out of trouble. After two days Grant stepped nonchalantly off the steamer and soberly resumed the siege. Cadwallader was warned to write nothing, a promise he kept until after Grants death 1885.

1876- At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, Americans first discovered an exotic new food- Bananas.

1884- Retired General William T. Sherman refused the Republican Convention's call to run for President. He was the first to say: " If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve." The "Hero of Georgia" hated politicians and newspapermen. He commented to a friend: "I have a happy life. The day after I announced myself a candidate for office I would read in the newspaper how I poisoned my grandmother. I never knew my grandmother, but there the story would be, in full lurid detail!"

1915- Britain’s top general Earl Horatio Kitchener the Sirdar of Omderman drowned when the HMS Hampshire was sunk by a German mine in the English Channel. The British recruiting poster with the image of Kitchener pointing at you with fierce eyes fixed saying I WANT YOU! was later copied by American James Montgomery Flagg, substituting Uncle Sam. Earl Kitchener was Secretary for War, but by this time had lost much of his influence in government. P.M. Lord Asquith commented "the man makes a better poster than a leader". Traveling with Kitchener to his watery grave was his personal aide Col. Oscar Fitzgerald. Earl Kitchener was not fond of ladies, and there was talk that he and Fitzgerald were … well... let’s just say, Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell.

1916- Grand Sherif Hussein of Mecca launched the Great Arab Revolt against the Turkish Empire. We in the west don’t remember Hussein as much as his British military advisor, a moody young man named T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia.

1940- The synthetic rubber tire invented.

1944- As the Allies celebrated the liberation of Rome, A NY animator turned G.I. named Johnny Vita solicited laughs from the troops by appearing on Mussolini’s balcony on the Via Del Corso, and doing a mock impersonation of Il Duce.

1944- In London, General Eisenhower received reports that the storm system over Europe would lighten slightly. If he delayed the invasion any further he risked losing the favorable tides until September. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of soldiers were waiting in ships. Ike launched the largest amphibious invasion in history with the words: " Well, there it is. I don't like it, but I don't see any other way. Okay, let's go.”

1946- THE BIKINI went on sale. Two-piece bathing suits had been around since the 1930s. Parisian Louis Reard invented our modern concept. Named the Bikini for the Atomic test in the Bikini islands, Diana Vreeland said it would "hit the fashion world like an atomic bomb". The first model to wear it was an exotic dancer, because the regular fashion models refused to parade around in “Reard's flimsy straps”.

1963- BRITAIN ENTERS THE 60'S, BABY...The Profumo Scandal. Sir John Profumo was defense minister, protégé of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and a rising star in Tory politics. This day Profumo resigned in disgrace and brought down the government, when it came out he was keeping a 19-year-old `party-girl' named Christine Keilor as his mistress. She was not only sleeping with married Sir John but was also dating a known Russian spy.

1964 - Davie Jones & King Bees debut "I Can't Help Thinking About Me," The group disbanded but Davie Jones went on to success after changing his name to David Bowie.

1967- The Arab-Israeli SIX-DAY WAR began. Egypt’s President Gamal Nasser sent tanks into the United Nations mandated Sinai Peninsula and cut off Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Tyran. Israel knew the coming war with its four neighbors was imminent. This day without waiting, Israel launched its own preemptive strike. Leaving only twelve jets to protect the entire country, at dawn they sent out their entire 300 plane air force to attack the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces on the ground. 400 planes were destroyed in two hours. Israeli commander Yitzhak Rabin said by then, the war was already over. The Israeli tank division Ugdah Peled rolled into the West Bank and attacked Jordanian armor near Jenin.

1968- SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATED at 12:15 AM in the kitchen area of the Ambassador hotel in LA after winning the California Presidential primary. Depressed by the slaying of Martin Luther King in April, Bobby Kennedy had said: "The only thing between me and the Presidency is a gun." The assassin was a Palestinian waiter named Sirhan Sirhan. He picked the one-year anniversary of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War to do the deed. "Kennedy you son of a bitch!" he shouted as he fired two shots into the back of his skull. People in the room shouted “ Oh God! Not Again! Not another Dallas!” Lying on the floor bleeding, Kennedy asked “ Is everyone ok?” RFK lingered and died the next morning. He was 42.
His eldest son watched his father get shot on live television and never got over it. He died of a drug/alcohol abuse several years later. Sirhan Sirhan is still in jail today and the Ambassador Hotel was bulldozed in 2009 for a High School.

1976- In a wine competition outside Paris, California wines won for the first time. Santa Magdelena Chardonnay for whites and Stags Leap Cabernet for the red. It marks the moment when the dominance of French wines was broken, and California wines went from being a joke, to world class status.

1981- The U.S. Center for Disease Control published the findings of scientist Michael Gottlieb on the pneumonias of five L.A. gay men to be something new called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Cases had been reported as early as 1975 and there is an ongoing argument whether Gottlieb or a French team at the Pasteur Institute discovered the disease first. One of the lead researchers at CDC was Dr. Fauci.

1989- Toronto’s Skydome Stadium opened. Home team Blue Jays lose to the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3.

1998- Walt Disney’s Mulan premiered at the Hollywood Bowl. Directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft.

1998- Reuters and ABC News erroneously reported the death of 96 year old Bob Hope. Arizona Congressman Robert Stump announced the comedian’s death on the floor of the Congress, to the great surprise of Bob Hope, who was eating breakfast while watching TV at the time. Bob Hope lived four more years, dying at age 100.

2004- Ronald Reagan, The Gipper, the Great Communicator, The Teflon President, FBI informant T-10, Arrow Shirt model, SAG president, Forty Mule Team Borax salesman, Hippie bashing California Governor and the then oldest living US president, died at age 93.

2010- The Dr. Who episode where the Doctor (Matt Smith) takes Vincent van Gogh in the Tardis to the present day to see his paintings hanging in the Louvre.
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Yesterday’s Question: Barney-Google! And his Goo-Goo-Googelly Eyes..” Who was Barney Google?

Answer: Barney Google was a popular character in Billy DeBeck's famous newspaper comic strip. Barney started out as a race track fan, owner of Spark Plug, a lovable, battered old nag. A plug was a nickname for an old horse. Cartoonist Charles Schulz (Charlie Brown) got the nickname Sparky from Sparkplug. In 1920 Mathematician Martin Sirota named the number 1 to the 100th power a Googol, after Barney Google. In the mid 1930’s DeBeck hired Fred Lasswell as his assistant. Together, they developed Snuffy Smith and the other denizens of Hootin Holler. The strip slowly became more hillbilly oriented and was retitled Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and eventually just Snuffy Smith. The strip has run continuously, under one title or another, for over 100 years, and continues to run today. (Uncle Fred’s assistant, John Rose, has been responsible for it since Fred’s death.) It is now one of the longest, or maybe the longest running comic strips in history.

Quiz: “Barney-Google! And his Goo-Goo-Googelly Eyes..” Who was Barney Google?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: The branch of Christianity known as The Coptic Church is centered in what country?
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History for 6/4/2022
Birthdays: King George III, Alvah Bessie, Rosalind Russell, Gene Barry, Dennis Weaver, Robert Merrill, Bruce Dern, Andrea Jaeger, Dr Ruth Westheimer, Freddy Fender, Rachael Griffiths, Noah Wylie is 51, Russell Brand is 47, Angelina Jolie is 47

Happy Saint John the Baptist Day.

1070- THE BIRTHDAY OF ROCQUEFORT CHEESE. Legend has it on this day in the town of Roquefort, a shepherd found in a cave some cheese he had been saving but had forgotten about. He noticed it was covered with mold, but he was hungry and ate it anyway. And lo and behold, it tasted much better than before...

1249- King Louis IX of France (St. Louis) arrived in the HolyLand on Crusade.

1259- Kublai Khan, the grandson of the Genghis Khan, was elected the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Kublai broke with Mongol custom by dividing their huge empire into three pieces. His uncle Kaidu would rule the Mongolian homeland and Uncle Batu the Western section (the Golden Horde in the Crimea) while Kublai preferred to rule China as it's emperor. In doing this he was acknowledging the reality that the master plan of Genghis for world conquest was unfeasible. The empire, which extended from Korea to Budapest to Baghdad was unmanageable and would break up anyway. Kublai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China would last. He was the Chinese Emperor who met Marco Polo.

1615- Osaka Castle fell to the forces of Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa.

1647- English troops storm into St. James Palace and arrest King Charles I. While the king had been gently stalling peace negotiations with Oliver Cromwell and the victorious Parliamentary army encamped at Putney, he was in secret talks with the Vatican Nuncio. King Charles promised toleration for Roman Catholicism in the British Isles if they would lend him an Irish army to beat Cromwell. At almost the same time he was promising the Scots that he would make all of England Presbyterian if they lent him an army. His attempts to restart the English Civil War was what labeled him "That Man of Blood" and got him beheaded.

1666- Moliere’s play "Le Misanthrope" premiered.

1717- FREEMASONS- The Grand Lodge of England was inaugurated in London on St John the Baptist Day. This is considered by some the birth of Freemasonry, but many alleged histories claim the practices of the Brotherhood of the Craft go back to ancient Egypt and was brought to England by the Knights Templar in the 1300’s. There is some validity to the reports of independent Lodges already existing in the 1630’s in England and earlier in Scotland. The Freemason movement spread throughout Europe and became an alternative to Christianity for many intellectuals in the 1700’s. Mozart, Haydn, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Casanova, Voltaire and many more were members.

1789- King Louis XVI was a kindly but weak king who never made a decision without consulting his beautiful Queen Marie Antoinette. But as the storm clouds of the French Revolution began to cover the land the Queen was taken out of the strategic decision making. Her sickly boy the Dauphin had died leaving her broken with grief.

1797- English officers in India fighting the Maharatta rajahs pause to celebrate King George III's birthday in their words "with a most ripe debauch."

1798- While Europe was convulsed by revolutions and Napoleon, the elderly ladies man Giacomo Casanova died of old age. He had accepted the retirement post of librarian for a Czech nobleman.

1844- The last Great Auk killed by hunters.

1863- Robert E. Lee launched his divisions from their encampment at Culpepper, Virginia northwards towards Pennsylvania for the campaign that will climax at Gettysburg.

1896-Henry Ford tests out his automobile with headlights in a nighttime drive around Detroit.

1912-The first minimum wage law passed, in the state of Massachusetts.

1916-THE HERO PIGEON OF VERDUN- During the horrific battle of Verdun the Germans had surrounded the French strongpoint of Fort Vaux. The fighting in the underground 15 foot high concrete tunnels of the fort was ghastly, men killed each other with hand grenades and flamethrowers at close quarters while groping through the blackness and gagging at the stench of rotting corpses. The French commander Captain Reynal, his telephone communications cut, sent his last carrier pigeon to get help. The pigeon, despite being badly gassed and perching on the roof of the fort for a little while, got through to the high command. Delivering his message, he then fell over dead. Help never got through, and Captain Reynal had to surrender, but the dead pigeon was awarded the medal of the Legion d'Honneur.

1916 - Mildred J Hill, one of the two Hill sisters who composed the song Happy Birthday To You, died at 56.

1919- The Women's Suffrage Act passed the Senate by one vote. A chorus of women in the visitor's gallery break into: "Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow". The deciding vote was cast by a Utah senator who wanted to please his mother.

1938- Date of the famous Walt Disney Studio Hotel Norconian crew party to celebrate the success of Snow White. The young, mostly single artists (average age 26), released of tension and filled with free booze, swapped bedrooms and galloped horses through the Hotel Norconian sending Walt and Roy fleeing the scene for fear of bad publicity. Walt picked the resort because when he first held a party at the studio, the crew trashed the place. One animator drunkenly fell out of a window. It was a first floor window, so he was unhurt.

1939- The Voyage of the Damned. The British ship SS Saint Louis was filled with 930 refugees, mostly Jewish families fleeing Hitler’s persecution. Up until the war the Nazis allowed thousands of Jews to emigrate, but after the Evian Conference the western democracies announced they weren’t prepared to open their borders to so great a human flood. So the Saint Louis was refused permission to land her cargo of human desperation. The ship sailed from Nova Scotia, to Florida, Havana, Panama, and finally back to Europe where most of the passengers perished in the Holocaust.

1940- The last day of the Miracle of Dunkirk. British sea transports and small pleasure craft cross the English Channel and withdraw most of the British Army trapped against the sea. 280,000 British men and 100,000 allies were saved, 40,000 men go into captivity.

1941- While the Second World War raged, 82 year old Kaiser Wilhelm II Hohenzollern died peacefully of old age. He refused all offers from Hitler to return to Germany and stayed in exile in Holland.

80th Anniv 1942- The BATTLE OF MIDWAY. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto committed the bulk of his carrier force to destroy the American Navy once and for all. Recent research of Japanese Imperial files reveal he considered this step a prelude to the invasion of the Hawaiian Islands, which he hoped would force America to negotiate peace. But the path of Yamamoto’s fleet was revealed by the breaking of the top Japanese radio codes and the American fleet laid an ambush for him. It was a battle of carrier-based planes where the opposing fleets never saw each other.
The famous suicide attack of TBY-8, was an attack of U.S. torpedo planes on the Japanese carrier fleet without fighter cover. Of 51 planes, 47 were shot down by faster more agile Zeros. But while the zeros were on deck getting refueled and rearmed a cloud of Dauntless divebombers dropped out of the sky and blew Yamamotos four best aircraft carriers to bits- The Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Kaga. The American carrier Yorktown was sunk.
The Japanese fleet would never mount an offensive of this size again. Its defeat was seen by the U.S. Navy as the turning point of the Pacific War.

1942- Capitol Records opened for business.

1944- Original date for the D-Day Normandy Invasion. It was postponed until there was better weather. If the allies waited too long the tides would not be this good again until September.

1944- American armies at last enter Rome. An Allied beachhead had been established at Anzio last February only a few miles away, and scouts had reported the Eternal City wide open. But the American generals Lucas and Clark hesitated until the Germans could bring up reinforcements and bog them down for weeks. But this day they entered the city to the cheers of the populace.

1947- The film "A Miracle on 34th St." opened. Starring Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwen and 8 year old Natalie Wood.

1951- The Supreme Court upholds the anti-Communist Smith Act. This act stated you could be fired from your job or jailed even on a suspicion that you were a communist, no proof required.

1951- Tony Curtis married Janet Leigh. The result was to produce Jamie Leigh-Curtis.

1965- The Rolling Stones release the single "Satisfaction".

1967- The television show "The Monkees" win the Emmy award for Best Comedy.
go figure... The producers of the Pre-Fab Four raised enough money to fund later projects like the hit movie Easy Rider. This same ceremony saw Bill Cosby become the first African-American to win an Emmy, this for his role in the series I-Spy.

50th Anniv 1972- UCLA political science teacher and black militant Angela Davis was acquitted of all charges of conspiracy and kidnapping by an all white jury in San Jose. Davis was arrested not for anything she did but just for her vocal support of more violent members of the Black Power movement. Her case, like almost all these kind of cases in the 60’s became a national media cause-celebre. In 1980 Angela Davis ran for vice president as a candidate for the American Communist Party.

1977- The Apple II went on sale.

40th Anniv 1982- The film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, premiered. Besides Ricardo Montalban as the badguy with the great pectorals, it features the Genesis Effect. This one minute sequence was a landmark of computer graphics effects. Done by the Lucas Graphics Group, who four years later would break off and become Pixar.

1989-THE TIENAHMEN SQUARE MASSACRE. Chinese army troops loyal to Premier Deng Zhao Peng crushed the student democracy movement in the center of Bejing. The demonstrations started around a funeral for Hu Yao Bang, a party premier who was ousted for his liberal democratizing policy. The crowds gathered in strength and militancy, students joined by workers and soldiers.

There was a hope China’s ruling elite would fall to a "people-power" type revolution that had overthrown Marco’s Philippines and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But Premier Deng brought in soldiers from the rural provinces and brutally cracked down.

No figures of total casualties exist but the figure ten thousand is thrown around as conservative. Incidentally this incident probably was the beginning of the world popularity of CNN news. Despite threats from commissars CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy remained at his post and continued to broadcast when all other news teams had fled. Deng Zhao Ping’s name was a pun on the word for "little bottle" so people showed their resistance by smashing dozens of small bottles out on the street.

1990- The New York Daily News quietly discontinued its long running comic strip Ching Chow. Besides being unbelievably racist and offensive, the little one panel strip of a stereotype Chinese man with a long hair queue saying Confucian platitudes, also was the source of racetrack and numbers racket tips.

2003- Martha Stewart, the self-made millionaire leader of a home recipe empire, was indicted for insider trading.

2004- THE HOMEMADE TANK- In the small town of Granby Colorado, a muffler salesman named Jim Heemeyer got so annoyed at his town, that he welded iron plates on to a large bulldozer to create a kind of homemade tank. While policemen fruitlessly shot at it, he razed to the ground most of the public buildings in town before shooting himself. If you can’t fight City Hall, bulldoze it.
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Yesterday’s Question: The branch of Christianity known as The Coptic Church is centered in what country?

Answer: Egypt.

Quiz: The branch of Christianity known as The Coptic Church is centered in what country?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What is the meaning of “ The Proof is in the Pudding”?
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History for 6/3/2022
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Jefferson Davis, Josephine Baker, King George V, Henry Shrapnel, Allen Ginsburg, Collen Dewhurst, Alain Renais, Curtis Mayfield, Paulette Goddard, Maurice Evans, Jack Oakey, Jan Peerce, Zoltan Korda, John Dykstra, Tom Arnold, Hale Irwin, Chuck Barris, Tony Curtis

1579- Sir Francis Drake, his ship the Golden Hind parked in Drake's Bay or Anchor Bay or wherever, claims California for England. He calls it Nova Albion. Early explorers thought America was a big island or series of islands. Magellan had found the way around the southern end. Drake repeated Magellan's route around South America to attack get into the Pacific. Now, he sailed north trying to find the northern end of the island so he could sail around the top to get back into the Atlantic.
But by Mendocino California, Drake realized that this was one big mother of an island, and it would be wiser to turn around and go home another way. The Northwest Passage isn't discovered until Canadian icebreaker did it in 1958.

1778- MOTHER ENGLAND OFFERS A DEAL- After the French, Dutch and Spanish decide to intervene in the American Revolution, and pile on Britain, The British Government under Lord North offered the rebellious American colonies all of their grievances, taxation, seats in Parliament. Everything short of full independence. The Continental Congress says too late, you're dealing with a separate country now.

1779- British General Sir Henry Clinton had a problem. He had just captured Charleston South Carolina and accepted the surrender of the largest number of American rebels- 4,000, as many as his own army. Now orders came from London were to leave Lord Cornwallis with a force to subdue the South and return to New York. But what about the prisoners? Today Clinton published an edict that all rebels who take an oath of loyalty to the Crown will be released. His subordinate grumbled:” Sir Henry doesn’t understand that these rebels swallow an oath to their King then an oath to their Congress with the same ease his Lordship swallows a plate of poached eggs!”

1800- President John Adams arrived in the Washington D.C. area and took up residence at the Union Tavern in Georgetown while waiting for construction to be completed on the Executive Mansion, later called the White House. First Lady Abigail Adams and her suite got lost in the forest coming from Baltimore.
There were only then three thousand residents in DC, one fifth were slaves. Pennsylvania Avenue was “wide morass confused with alder bushes”. The only way to understand where the avenues went, were from the wooden pegs sticking in the mud. Secretary to the British Ambassador Augustus John Forster wrote to London forlornly that he was losing his sanity, in this “absolute sepulcher, this rural hole.”

1846- In Texas, General Stephan Kearny with his Army of the West, received orders to march west and invade the Mexican state of Alta-California.

1851- The American clipper ship Flying Cloud began her maiden voyage from Sandy Hook New York. She was so fast she could sail from New York around South America to San Francisco in 89 days, making her the most celebrated Yankee merchant ship, and with the British Cutty Sark the subject of numerous model boat kits.

1864- BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR- The Civil War battles between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant had settled into something resembling the trench warfare of World War 1. This day General Grant, mistakenly believing Lee was abandoning his Petersburg defense lines, launched a huge frontal assault at Cold Harbor.
Seven thousand men were cut down in 20 minutes. Before rising from their fortifications to the attack, Union men wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to their shirts so their bodies could later be identified. One Massachusetts private wrote in his journal: "June 3rd. I was killed today." He went out and was indeed killed. By the third assault the Yankee army was near mutiny. A captain reacted to the order to attack: "I won't go back out there if Christ Almighty himself came down and ordered me to!"

In two months, Grant had lost 20,000 men, more than Lee had in his entire army. The newspapers started to call him “the Butcher”. But Grant knew if he held on, he would defeat the Confederacy, if by sheer weight of numbers than nothing else. Still, for the rest of his life he regretted the attack at Cold Harbor.

1875- Harper's Weekly Newspaper reported the Kansas Pacific Railroad was bowing to editorial pressure from back east and would no longer allow it's passengers to shoot at buffalo from their moving trains. It had become quite the tourist attraction.

1885- Feast of the Martyrs of Uganda- Ugandan king Mwanga got angry that too many Christian missionaries were running around his kingdom. One of the royal pages who had been converted even had the audacity to baptize Mwanga's son Kizito. So he ordered dozens of them burnt alive or chopped up. His chief steward Joseph said as he perished:" Mwanga has condemned me without cause, but tell him I forgive him from my heart."
Mwanga's persecution stopped when the British invaded later that year and turned Uganda into a colony until 1956.

1888-The poem: "Casey at the Bat" by Edward Lawrence Thayer published in the San Francisco Examiner.

1898- While Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders waited at Tampico Florida to embark for Cuba, an interesting meeting occurred. One of the U.S. army’s commanders was an ex-Confederate general named Fighting Joe Wheeler. Wheeler encountered another elderly retired rebel General James Longstreet, who was now a railroad executive. The two joked about Jubal Early, a hotheaded colleague. Longstreet said: “Joe, I hope I die before you do, because I want to get to Hell in time to hear Jubal Early curse you for wearing that pretty Blue Uniform!!”

1923- Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini gave Italian women the right to vote.

1924- Writer Franz Kafka died in Kierling Austria. He left instructions to
Friends to burn all his unfinished manuscripts including The Trial, but
Fortunately, his friends did not.

1929- Movie stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr married Joan Crawford.

1928- General Zhang Zuolin “The Old Marshal” was one of the last Chinese warlords to surrender to the Kuomintang Nationalist front (KMT) led by Chiang Kai Shek. Zhang Zuolin surrendered Peking (Beijing), on a promise he could retire in peace. But soon after boarding a train to Manchuria he was killed by a bomb. It was blamed on Japanese agents, but no one is sure. The intrigue and internal chaos of the time inspired several films and novels like Shanghai Express, the Bitter Tea of General Yen, and Lost Horizons.

1932- In a game against the Philadelphia A’s, NY Yankee hitter Tony Lazzeri hit “for the cycle” a natural cycle. This meaning his first at bat was a single, the second a double, his third a triple and his fourth at bat he hit a home run, a grand slam actually. In all 150 years of recorded baseball, only 14 batters have ever hit a natural cycle.

1937- King Edward VIII of England had abdicated his throne over his affair with American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Now as Duke of Windsor, he and Wally were officially married this day.

1939- Movie director Alexander Korda married movie star Merle Oberon.

1942- Japanese planes bomb Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, part of Alaskan territory. This attack was supposed to be the feint drawing attention from the main Japanese attack at Midway Island.

1943- First Day of the ZOOT SUIT RIOTS- In Los Angeles, Navy and Marine servicemen awaiting embarkation to the Pacific battlegrounds clashed with Hispanic gangs. Truckloads of off-duty servicemen drove up from San Pedro Harbor to enlarge the fight. The servicemen would choose whom to beat up based on whether they were wearing a fashionable zoot-suit. They beat up two 13 year olds sitting in a theater watching a movie. Downtown L.A. became an urban war zone for several days.

1944- Meteorologists in Norway predict a storm system over Europe to last all week. German High Command was sure an invasion of Europe was imminent, but that Eisenhower would need at least 4 days of good weather to launch an attack. The original date for D-Day was supposed to be tomorrow June 4th but this night Eisenhower canceled the go-ahead until June 6th. The tides would never be this favorable again until September. Field Marshal Rommel, deciding there would be no invasion that week, goes home to Germany for conferences and his wife's birthday, June 6th.

1946- A consumer study finds there are only 10,000 television sets in America.
A follow up study five years later finds the number at 15 million.

1948- The Hale telescope at the Mount Palomar Observatory in California dedicated. The 200 inch mirror had taken 11 years to polish and the observatory two decades to build. A brand new kind of glass was invented for the Palomar mirror, called "pyrex". If you thought it was invented just for test-tubes and coffee pots. Called the “Giant Eye” it gave us out first looks at black holes, and doubled our depth perception of the size of the Universe.

1949 - Dragnet is 1st broadcast on radio (KFI in Los Angeles ). Creator Jack Webb wanted to capture the dry, non-theatrical delivery he heard real cops’ use. He ordered his actors to “stop acting, just read the lines”. Webb wrote the scripts from real LAPD cases and starred as well.
He liked to mix martinis for the cast and crew in between setups.

1965- Edward White becomes the first American to walk in space in Gemini VII.

1967 - Aretha Franklin's "Respect" reaches #1. Sockittome, sockittome, sockittome.

1968- Artist Andy Warhol was shot in the gut three times by Valerie Solanas, author of the "SCUM Manifesto". Warhol barely lived. Solanas was institutionalized.

1971- The first artificial gene created.

1975- The Bob Fosse-Gwen Verdon musical Chicago opened on Broadway. Written by Kander and Ebb, based on a 1926 play Roxie Hart.

1976 –Galileo-Galileo Fig-a-ro! Queen's single "Bohemian Rhapsody" goes gold.

1980- President Jimmy Carter announced the United States would boycott the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow because of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians boycotted the LA Olympics in 1984.

1982- Schlomo Argov, Israeli ambassador to Britain, was shot outside of a London Hotel. Tensions had been building up between Israel and the Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Org. based in South Lebanon. Defense minister Arial Sharon planned an invasion of Lebanon, and was waiting for one more incident to spark it off. In the cabinet meeting over the killing, Mossad tried to point out that the assassin was identified as an Abu Nidal terrorist, who were enemies of the PLO. Prime Minister Menachem Begin waved them off.” They are all PLO”. The Israeli tanks rolled two days later. The War in Lebanon dragged on for twenty years, splintering Israeli opinion.

1986- Attorney Roy Cohn was disbarred by a federal appellate court. It was a symbolic act because Cohn was dying anyway of HIV/AIDS. In his career Cohn had prosecuted the Rosenbergs, helped Sen Joe McCarthy in his anti-Communist witch hunt and defended Mafia dons like John Gotti. Despite being gay himself, one of Cohn’s last acts was to lobby New York State legislators from his deathbed to defeat a Gay Rights Bill. His end was dramatized in the play Angels in America. Cohn was a mentor to young Donald Trump.

2001- Disney’s Atlantis the Lost Empire opened in theaters.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the meaning of “ The Proof is in the Pudding”?

Answer: The whole phrase is “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” and probably comes from British Isles or France or Spain (or all of them). Back in the day, pudding was not so much a dessert but more like sausage or haggis and the idea was to taste-test the pudding to make sure it was okay and wouldn’t make you sick…or even kill you. Today, shortened to “The proof is in the pudding,” means the best way to determine the value of something is to try it out. (Thanks FG)