Quiz- What is the meaning of “The Proof is in the Pudding”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: William the Conqueror was originally Duke of Normandy. What country is Normandy in?
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History for 6/2/2022
Birthdays: John Randolph, The Marquis DeSade, Martha Custis Washington, Thomas Hardy, Ludwig Roselius the inventor of decaf coffee 1874, Hedda Hopper, Sir Edward Elgar, Johnny Weismuller, Charlie Watts, Disney story artist Dick Heumer, Lotte Reinniger, Marvin Hamlisch, Barry Levinson, Jon Peters, Dana Carvey, Garo Yepremian, Jerry Mathers the Beaver of the old TV show Leave it to Beaver is 74, Dayvid Haysbert is 68, Lasse Halstrom is 76

193AD- Shortly after he abdicated, Roman Emperor Didius Julianus was assassinated. As his own bodyguard turned on him and raised his sword, Julianus cried” What evil have I done? Who have I killed?” Unfortunately, Roman emperors were rarely allowed to retire.

303AD- Martyrdom of St. Elmo. This guy has to win the endurance record. The Emperor Diocletian had him starved, beaten with clubs, flogged with lead balled whips, rolled in tar and set on fire, roasted again in an iron chair, and he finally died after having his intestines wound out around a windlass. He is the patron saint of seafarers. When the blue electrical phenomenon appeared on ship's masts during a storm, it is called "St. Elmo's Fire".

1453-At Breslau, Papal Legate John of Capistrano presided over the torture of six Jews. After they confessed to Jewish practices, he had them burned at the stake. After John died the Protestants dug up his bones and threw them to their dogs. John was canonized San Juan Capistrano in 1690. A century later Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra named the picturesque little mission in California after him. And the swallows do migrate there, sometimes.

1502- 30 year old Caesar Borgia had conquered most of central Italy in the name of his father Pope Alexander VI. He attacked the town of Faenza that was stoutly defended by Astorre Manfredi and his brother. Caesar Borgia offered them generous terms and after the surrender treated the Manfredi Brothers very courteously, until they got back to Rome where he clapped them in a dungeon. This day the bodies of the Manfredi Brothers were found floating in the Tibur.

1533- Pope Paul III banned the enslavement of Indians in the New World. Whether anybody listened to him is another matter.

1763- At the British Fort Michilimackinac near Lake Superior some Sauk and Chippewa Indians were playing lacrosse. While the British sentries were engrossed in the ball game Indian women gathered near the forts’ open gates. When one player hurled the ball up over the wall as a signal the women tossed concealed tomahawks to the players who then rushed the fort and defeated the garrison.

1780- THE GORDON RIOTS- Lord Gordon organized a public demonstration against a pending bill granting toleration of Roman Catholic worship in England. A mob marched on Parliament, then went went berserk and looted London for a week. Lord Gordon became the last nobleman ever executed in the Tower of London and Parliament passed the Riot Act. But his tactics scared Parliament from passing the Catholic bill. The Catholic Emancipation Bill would not pass until 1834. From then on whenever an unruly crowd won't disperse, before the Authorities start shooting and clubbing people, they first read them The Riot Act. The last reading of the Riot Act in the British Isles was in 1919 in Glasgow during a police strike.

1781- Thomas Jefferson was a great American statesman and thinker, but he was not much at military matters. This day, he sighted the British army approaching his mountaintop home of Monticello. He galloped away for his life, abandoning his household. The redcoats respected his home, but burned his barns and liberated 200 of his slaves. As Governor of Virginia Jefferson had compromised his states defenses when he refused to accept black volunteers in the Virginia militia, to make up the manpower lost to Washington’s army up north. In the meantime, Royalist governor Lord Dunmore was offering freedom for slaves who fought under the His Majesty’s colors. Jefferson resigned as governor and nine days later. Fellow Virginian Patrick Henry convened a committee to investigate Jefferson’s incompetence while in office.
Years later in 1820 when elderly Thomas Jefferson presided over a commemoration of Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, Jackson joked: “Well I’m glad to see the old gentleman got up enough courage to even remember a Battle!”

1886- President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. She was the daughter of his former law partner and Cleveland became her legal guardian after his death. Despite her being half his age and his reputation for fathering children out of wedlock, they were much in love and she especially charmed the American public. At age 21 she became the youngest woman to be First Lady. Songs were written for her and their first baby was honored with a candy bar- the Baby Ruth.

1896- Guglielmo Marconi took out a patent on wireless broadcasting - radio.
At the time his device could be heard from almost 12 miles away!

1908- James Spengler worked as a carpet cleaner in a dept. store in Akron Ohio. Being asthmatic, he found his work challenging, to say the least. So he invented the electric powered vacuum cleaner, which he patented this day. He eventually sold his invention to his cousin William Hoover.

1920- Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play Beyond the Horizon.

1920- TERRORISM- Radical Anarchists set off 11 bombs in the US, including at the home of the U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Palmer and his wife just missed being killed because the bomber’s device exploded as he was setting it down on their porch. This year they also set off a bomb in a wagonload of scrap metal on Wall Street and a man tried to shoot banker J.P. Morgan.
This sparked a large government crackdown called The Palmer Raids. Many innocent immigrants, suffragettes and union organizers were jailed or deported as criminals, including Emma Goldman. The progressive reaction to the crackdown was the birth of the American Civil Liberties Union. Palmers point man was young J. Edgar Hoover.

1924- Congress granted U.S. citizenship to all Native American Indians, whether they wanted it or not.

1918 -In Monroe NY, Velveeta Cheese was invented by Swiss immigrant Emil Frey as a way to recycle damaged and partially used cheese wheels.

1928- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek of the Kuomintang (KMT) Government, captured the imperial capitol of Peking (Beijing) from warlord Chang Zhou Lin, called the Old Marshal.

1932- The Screen Publicists Guild formed

1940- Will Eisner's "The Spirit" comic first appears.

1941- Lou Gehrig died of (ALS) Lou Gehrig's disease at age 38.

1946- Italians vote in a postwar referendum to become a republic. The monarchy of the House of Savoy was in place all during the regime of Mussolini. Because of King Vittorio Emmanuele IV’s support of Fascism, he and the Royal House of Savoy were declared deposed.

1952 - Maurice Olley of General Motors began designing the Corvette.

1952- Queen Elisabeth II of England crowned. The date was set by meteorologists who predicted it would be one of the few days that year that would have bright sunshine. And-you guessed it... it rained all day. It was also the first Royal Coronation to be seen on television.

1956- Elvis Presley introduced his hit song “You Ain’t Nothin But a Hound Dog” on the Milton Berle TV show.

1958- An L.A. referendum allowed the county to buy Chavez Ravine from its inhabitants to build Dodger Baseball Stadium.

1961-Pulitzer Prize winning writer George S. Kaufman died. Playwright, humorist and critic who wrote Dinner at Eight, You Can’t Take it With You, and Stage Door. He was 71. He requested the epitaph on his headstone read: "Over My Dead Body!"

1973- London animator Richard Williams closed down his Soho studio for a month so his staff could be tutored by old Hollywood animation legends Art Babbitt, Chuck Jones, Grim Natwick, and Ken Harris.

1996- Ray Combs, who took over the job as host of the TV game show Family Feud after Richard Dawson, hanged himself with his bed sheets at Glendale Adventist Hospital.

1999- Pope John Paul II blessed the new Vatican Parking garage.

2003- One secret to the American victory in Iraq was many in Saddam’s army heeded an appeal from the invaders not to resist and they would be taken care of. After the victory the occupation authority announced the Iraqi Army would be disbanded and all career soldiers lost their pensions and benefits. Today thousands of unemployed Iraqi soldiers demonstrated in front of American Occupation Headquarters in Baghdad demanding to be paid. It is the first time a defeated army ever demanded back pay from the winner.

2017- Wonder Woman, directed by Patti Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot, premiered.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: William the Conqueror was originally Duke of Normandy. What country is Normandy in?

Answer: France.

Quiz: William the Conqueror was originally Duke of Normandy. What country is Normandy in?

Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is a prostitute called whore? Where did that word come from?
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History for 6/1/2022
Welcome to June, from Iunius mensis, the month of Juno, queen of the Roman gods. Mother of Mars and Vulcan, protector of the Home and Defender of Women. From the Greek Hera.

Birthdays: Brigham Young, Marilyn Monroe, Pat Boone, Mikhail Glinka, Red Grooms, Karl Von Clausewitz, Andy Griffith, Nelson Riddle, Lisa Hartman, Cleavon Little, Frederica Von Stade, Powers Booth, Rene Aubergenois, Lisa Hartman, Morgan Freeman is 85, Jonathan Pryce is 75, Brian Cox is 76, Heidi Klum is 49, Josef Pujol *

*Pujol was famous throughout late Victorian Europe as Le Petomane- The Fartiste- who could fart musical melodies and snuff candles at great distances. He performed concerts for crowned heads that he would finish by farting La Marseillaise.

344BC- Romans dedicated the temple of Juno Moneta, the Lady Who Warns. They also stamped it on their money. Moneta is the root of the word Money and Monetary.

193 AD- Roman General Septimius Severus defeated his rival for the empire, Pescennius Niger “ Pescennius the Black”, massacred his family, and carried his head around on a spear. Septimius used the body of another rival as a doormat to wipe his feet on. This made him undisputed emperor.

1098- Antioch was stormed and captured by warriors of the First Crusade.

1660- Boston Puritans had passed a law that preaching any religion other than that accepted by the Massachusetts Bay Puritan group was heresy and forbidden. When Quaker Mary Dyer refused to cease, leave, or recant her views, this day she was hanged. Her death and that of another Quaker Anne Hutchinson shocked the colonies so, that King Charles II of England issued a royal command forbidding execution for heretical preaching.

1792- Kentucky Statehood. The lands of Kentucky were claimed at one point to be part of Virginia, claimed by Spain and groups of leathershirts (frontiersmen) even talked of founding an independent state called the Kingdom of Yazoo.

1795- The Glorious First of June. The British Channel fleet under Admiral “Black Dick” Howe attacked a French grain convoy in the Atlantic. They defeated the French escort fleet, but the grain transports got away anyway.

1813- In battle with a British warship, HMS Leopard, dying Captain Lawrence, of the U.S.S. Chesapeake, cried:" Don't Give Up the Ship!" They don't, but he died anyway.

1815 - Marshal Louis Berthier was Napoleon's chief of staff and an organizational genius. This day in exile in Bamburg while watching Russian troops ride towards a new invasion of France, he fell out of a window. Strange way to die for a general who was in constant battle for over twenty years. The fall may have been an accident or maybe a foreign agent decided he should be kept out of the coming war. The Duke of Wellington paid tribute to his abilities by noticing how many mistakes plagued the French due to confused orders and missed communications: "The Battle of Waterloo was decided when Berthier fell out that window."

1847- Utopian evangelist John Humphrey Noyes inaugurated a Free-Love commune at Putney, Vermont. It later moved to Oneida New York.

1862- When Gen. Joe Johnston gets wounded, Jeff Davis gives over command of the Army of Northern Virginia to his military adviser- Robert E. Lee. Lee's career begins. Johnston later magnanimously stated in his memoirs: "My getting shot was the best thing that could have happened for the Confederacy". At first the rebel soldiers weren't impressed by Mr. Lee. They nicknamed him Old Granny and the King of Spades for his making them dig trenches, but by the Civil Wars’ end his genius had achieved fame on both sides.

1876- Eighteen-year old Milton Hershey opened his first candy store. After he saw European machines to make milk chocolate demonstrated at the Chicago Worlds Fair, he decided to focus exclusively on chocolate. Hershey's goes on to become the largest candy maker in the U.S. The Hershey’s chocolate kiss is so named because the machine that creates the candy looks like it is kissing the conveyor belt.

1880 - 1st pay telephone installed; this one in a bank.

1879- After falling from the French throne in 1870 the Emperor Louis Napoleon III and his family lived in England. The only son of Napoleon III and Eugenie, Napoleon IV, went with the British Army to South Africa to fight Zulus. While waving his grand-uncle's sword around on patrol, he fell off his horse during a skirmish and was speared to death by 17 Zulu’s. The direct Bonaparte family line ends with him.

1909- The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, formed. W.E.B. Dubois edited their newsletter The Crisis.

1921- THE GREAT TULSA RACE MASSACRE-The deadliest race riot in US history. After a white woman in Tulsa Oklahoma claimed a black man grabbed her arm in an elevator, marauding white mobs attacked the black neighborhood of Greenwood. Greenwood was a prosperous community called The Black Wall Street. The white mobs burned 35 blocks of houses and killed at least 300 innocent people. Pushing many corpses into unmarked mass graves. Small private aircraft dropped home made molotov bombs. The Tulsa community did not apologize until the year 2000.

1931- 48 year old Swiss artist Albert Hurter joined the Disney staff, giving the look of cartoons like Snow White a more Germanic storybook look. His hiring created a new type of job at the studio, an Inspirational Sketch Artist, what we call today a Vis-Dev artist.

1933 - Charlie Chaplin wed actress Paulette Goddard.

1933- Eric Larson’s first day at Walt Disney Studio. One of the Nine Old Men, he retired 53 years later in 1986.

1936 - "Lux Radio Theater" moved from NY to Hollywood.

1938- SUPERMAN- Joe Seigel and Jerry Shuster were two aspiring cartoonists in a Cleveland High School. Jewish kids, they had read about the Nazi concept of the Aryan Superman. They wanted to show a Superman could be on the American side. So they created a new hero named Superman in 1933. The scrambled about as cartoonists in NYC for a few years and in 1938 sold Detective Comics (D.C.) on their Superman idea for $130. The first Superman in Action Comics came out this day. Part of the contract was they gave DC all rights to their creation.
When the first megabudget Superman movie was being made in the 1975, the National Cartoonist's Society spokesman Neal Adams pointed out that Seigel & Schuster were now destitute. Seigel was blind on disability, and Schuster delivered sandwiches from a local deli. The bad publicity forced Warner Bros and DC Comics to award them and their family’s pensions for their life.

1943- British actor Leslie Howard, who played Ashley in" Gone with the Wind "was killed. The movie star was doing diplomacy in Spain, but on the flight home his commercial DC-3 airliner was shot down by German JU-88 fighters over the Bay of Biscay. He was such an effective propagandist that when German agents learned his schedule, they sent the interceptors just to get him.

1955- Marilyn Monroe’s movie The Seven Year Itch opened.

1961 - FM multiplex stereo broadcasting 1st heard.

1966 - George Harrison is impressed by Ravi Shankar's concert in London.

1967 –Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the US and it immediately goes gold.

1968 - Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" hits #1.

1979- Gannett News Services began USA Today, called by some critics- 'MacPaper'.

1980- Ted Turner started CNN 24 hour news channel.

1981- Superman II, directed by Richard Lester. With Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder and Terence Stamp. Kneel before Zod!

2001- In Katmandu, Nepal Crown Prince Dipendra quarreled so much with his mother and father, the King Birenda and Queen Aiswarya, about his upcoming marriage that he came to dinner and shot them to death. He also killed four other members of the royal family and then himself. This was the largest massacre of a royal family since Czar Nicholas II’s family was executed in 1918. Next day, a Nepalese government spokesman labeled the incident an “accident”. Dipendra was in a coma for several days before dying and in those few days a government council declared him king anyway. In 2008 the Nepalese Monarchy was officially deposed.

2020- President Donald Trump had Black Lives Matter demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd in front of the White House tear-gassed and beaten to clear a path for him to stroll across the street to be photographed with a prop Bible, which he held upside down. Sources say he was so upset by Black Lives Matter protestors, he had to be talked out of ordering in the 82 Airborne Division to clear the streets. Yet all of this law enforcement managed to be strangely absent for three hours the following Jan 6th.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is a prostitute called whore? Where did that word come from?

Answer: In the Muslim concept of Heaven, every blessed soul in paradise would be attended to by 99 houris, beautiful servant girls.

Quiz: What countries today were called The Baltics?

Yesterday’s Quiz: What nations border Albania?
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History for 5/30/2022
Birthdays: Czar Peter the Great, Benny Goodman, Mel Blanc, Stepin Fetchit, Boris Pasternak, Irving Thalberg, Milt Neil, Howard Hawks, Gale Sayers, Agnes Varda, Michael J. Pollard, Wynonna, Keir Dullea is 85, Ceelo Green is 46, Idina Menzel is 50

In the US- MEMORIAL DAY
For those who are curious why America celebrates Memorial Day in May instead of November 11th like most of Europe, it is because of our Civil War.
The main Confederate field armies surrendered in early April; it took this long to quiet the entire countryside, the last fighting on May 27th. Once the countryside was finally at peace, the U.S. government declared a Day of Remembrance of the fallen. Abolitionist named James Redpath reported back to Washington that newly freed black families in Charleston South Carolina would decorate the graves of fallen union soldiers with flowers. The locals were only decorating their own Confederate graves. Later in 1868, Mary Cunningham Logan, wife of General John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union Army Veterans Organization, went to Petersburg, where she mentioned to her husband the Southerners were decorating the graves of their soldiers. The holiday was first called Decoration Day, and the first formal one was held May 28, 1868. By the end of WWI in 1918, Americans had gotten used to honoring all their war dead at the end of May, and the holidays name changed to Memorial Day.

1431- At Place de Vieux-Marche’ in English controlled Rouen, St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. She was only 19. Her last request was for a priest to hold up high a crucifix, so she could pray aloud above the flames. When an English knight watched the maid call out to Christ as she died, he exclaimed in grief: "Brothers, we are lost, because I think we have just killed a Saint! " She was made a saint in 1954. A few years ago, scientists opened her tomb for study, and only found the remains of a cat.

1593- English playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in an argument over a restaurant check at the Bulls Tavern in Depford. Marlowe, whose plays included “Tamburlane” and “Dr Faustus", was one of Shakespeare's competitors, and found time for some espionage on the side. Writer Sir Anthony Burgess theorized there may have been more spy-stuff to this case than not wanting to pay for ale & kippers. The murderer, Ingram Frizer, was quickly pardoned by Queen Elizabeth I, and Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave.
Another theory was it wasn’t Marlowe whose body was buried. That he was smuggled to Italy to be a secret agent. His plays continued to some out under the name William Shakespeare. Many of Will’s best plays date from after Marlowe’s “death”. Romeo and Juliet the following year. Many were set in cities in Italy like Verona, a place Will had no knowledge of, but Marlowe had visited extensively.

1630- King Gustavus Adolphus gave an emotional farewell speech to the Swedish Diet as he prepared to leave with his army for Germany. He had pledged to take up the Protestant cause in the brutal Thirty Years War then raging across Europe. Gustavus won many victories but he never saw Sweden again, because he was killed in battle at Lutzen in 1632.

1787- THE CRUCIAL VOTE creating the U.S. Constitution. The delegates of the thirteen states (actually twelve, Rhode Island refused to participate) had originally come to Philadelphia to iron out some bugs in the system called the Articles of Confederation.
On this day they were convinced to accept “the Virginia Plan” authored by James Madison and strongly backed by NY’s Alexander Hamilton. This was to scrap the entire U.S. government used up till then, and create a new central government with a two chamber Congress based on the Roman Senate. Also an elected chief magistrate called, at first, 'The Executive" and later The President. Some politicians not attending the meeting, like Patrick Henry and Sam Adams, were outraged. Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador in Paris, was dubious about the elected-president idea. “So they’ve decided to saddle us with a Polish King” he quipped, meaning an elected figurehead monarch with no real power. Aaron Burr wrote:” Same old pork, different sauce.”

1788- French philosopher Francois Voltaire died of uremic illness at age 84. He breathed his last cradled in the arms of Benjamin Franklin. He had been trying to write a chapter of a new dictionary, trying to keep himself going by drinking 20 cups of coffee a day. A great critic of the Catholic Church, he refused the Sacrament up to the last but was still smuggled away after death to be buried in sacred ground. In 1793 his remains and Rousseau’s were moved to the Pantheon.
In 1814 a Royalist ghoul broke into Voltaire and Rousseau’s tombs, stuffed their bones into a sack and threw them into a garbage dump. The whereabouts of his remains are unknown to this day.

1806- ANDREW JACKSON KILLED CHARLES DICKINSON IN A DUEL. -the hotheaded Jackson challenged Dickinson after he welched on horse racing bet. After Jackson accused him, he made insulting remarks about Jackson’s wife Rachel, calling her a scarlet lady. In Long County Kentucky they faced off with pistols at ten paces.
Dickinson got off a shot first. Eyewitnesses said you could see the puff of dust from Jackson's jacket where the bullet entered his ribs. Amazingly, instead of falling, Jackson just coldly stood there, staring. He then lifted his gun and shot Dickinson dead. 
Jackson would carry the lead ball in his chest for the rest of his life, alongside two others earned in Indian wars.
When asked why he didn’t forgive Dickinson and shoot wide, He replied: "I'd have killed Dickinson, even if he had put a bullet in my brain!"

1821 - James Boyd patents the Rubber Fire Hose.

1848- William Young patents the ice cream freezer.

1883- A rumor among the strollers on the Brooklyn Bridge that the bridge was falling caused a panic and 12 people were trampled. Young street kid Al Smith recalled being under the bridge and seeing a rain of bowler hats and parasols as the crowd pushed and shoved. To prove the bridge was absolutely safe, the mayor asked P.T. Barnum to parade his circus elephants over the bridge to Brooklyn.

1899- Female outlaw Pearl Hart robbed the Globe, Arizona stagecoach.

1913- It’s Albanian Independence Day! The Treaty of London signed, ending the First Balkan War and acknowledging the independence of Albania. The Second Balkan War started thirty days later.

1919- Hollywood entrepreneur Charles Tolman bought a natural declivity north of Hollywood Blvd called Daisy Dell. People had been picnicking in the grass there for years. Now Tolman wanted to build a concert amphitheater. Conductor Hugo Kirchhofer remarked “ It looks like a big bowl!” So it became the Hollywood Bowl thereafter.

1921-In Tulsa Oklahoma, a 19 year old black man named Dick Rowland got into an elevator operated by a white girl named Sarah Page. We’ll never know what actually transpired, but Rowland was later arrested for allegedly assaulting Page. Page claimed he grabbed her arm but nothing more. This incident led to the massing of mobs that resulted in the Great Tulsa Race Massacre. Thousands were killed, businesses torched, and the black neighborhoods were actually bombed from the air.

1922- The Lincoln Memorial dedicated. The huge statue of Lincoln seated was carved by an Italian immigrant family in the Bronx. While President Harding talked, a guest of honor was elderly 86 year old Robert Todd Lincoln, Abe Lincolns only surviving child. He was a former Secretary of War. It was his last public appearance.

1927- In one of the more disturbing Memorial Day parades in New York City history, one thousand Ku Klux Klansmen and blackshirted Italian Fascists tried to march down Broadway, and got into fistfights with bystanders.

1930- The Lockheed Terminal was rededicated as Burbank Airport.

1935 - Babe Ruth's last game. He went hitless for the Boston Braves against Phillies.

1942- The British RAF launch the first of their 1000 plane bombing raids on Germany, this one flattened the city of Cologne.

1955- The New York chapter of the Catholic League of Decency pressured Loews Theater on Broadway to take down a giant 30-foot billboard of Marilyn Monroe trying to push her skirt down.

1961- Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was ambushed in his Chevrolet. Shot five times, he was left dead in the street.

1962- Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem had its first performance.

1972- Director choreographer Bob Fosse filmed a live performance of Liza Minelli’s one-woman show Liza with a Z. It was telecast in Sept. and became a sensation.

1994 - Death of Baron Marcel Bich, Italian-born French engineer and industrialist who created an empire of disposable BIC pens, lighters and razors.

2003- Pixar’s Finding Nemo opened.

2020- Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the Dragon Rocket with two astronauts into orbit. The first private company space launch, and the first time American astronauts blasted off into orbit since the space shuttle program was retired ten years ago.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What nations border Albania?

Answer: Greece, Montenegro and Serbia (Kossovo)

Quiz: What nations border Albania?

Yesterday’s question answered below: In the Middle Ages, what is another word for a GardeRobe?
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History for 5/29/2022
Birthdays: John F. Kennedy, King Charles II (the "Merry Monarch"), Bob Hope, G. K. Chesterton, Patrick Henry, Oswald Spengler, T.H. White, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Josef Von Sternberg, LaToya Jackson, John Hinckley Jr., Al Unser Jr., Beatrice Lilly, Danny Elfman, Annette Benning is 64, Melissa Etheridge is 61, Rupert Everett is 64

526 AD -An earthquake destroyed the city of Antioch. Another major quake two years later caused much rebuilding efforts to be abandoned. Once one of the largest cities in the ancient world, on a par with Rome and Athens, today it is a forgotten little Turkish border town.

1415- The Grand Council of churchmen at Constance trying to heal the Great Schism ordered the deposition of Pope John XXIII. John ran the Vatican like a mercenary captain, taxing everything including gambling and prostitution. It was said he had slept with 200 women including maids, matrons and nuns. He fled Constance disguised as a groom and was given sanctuary by Cosimo de Medici of Florence. Today he is counted an AntiPope, an illegal one, so Salvatore Roncalli in 1958 was given his number John XXIII.

1453- CONSTANTINOPLE CONQUERED BY THE TURKS- Sultan Mehmed II the "Scourge of Christendom" stormed the capitol of the old Byzantine Empire. His great cherry wood cannons firing giant stone balls blew great holes in the city walls, proving the end of castles as serious defenses.
When he knew the battle was lost, the last Eastern Emperor of the Romans, Constantine XI Paleologus, sallied out sword in hand and went down fighting. His body was identified out of a pile of corpses only by the bejeweled purple shoes. As Mehmed II rode into the city in triumph he recited a Persian poem:" A spider weaves it's web in the palace of the Caesars, a shadow falls over the House of Amonhasarib.”
Except for Spain, Christian Europe hadn’t given much thought to expansionist Islam since the Crusades. Now Turkey became Europe’s number one rival for the next 300 years. The Byzantine Empire’s loss did have one beneficial effect on Western Civilization. All the fleeing Greek scholars, with their arms full of the works of Plato and Aristotle, would settle in European capitols and help spark the Renaissance.

1606- Michel Caravaggio the artist shot a man over a tennis match. Caravaggio was a mad-artist before the term was invented. The police records of Rome show the master painter constantly in trouble, seducing man, woman and child, throwing rocks at soldiers, stabbing waiters, etc.

1660- RESTORATION DAY- After Oliver Cromwell executed King Charles I, he declared the British Monarchy abolished, and ruled England as The Lord Protector. The Commonwealth never became a true representative government. It just replaced a king with a dictator. When Cromwell died in 1659 he tried to leave his son Richard Cromwell in his place. But the son is not the father. The rickety system didn’t work, and Richard got the nickname “Tumbledown-Dick”. A junta of generals led by General Monck had no choice but to recall King Charles’ son Charles II from exile in Holland to come ascend the throne. This day King Charles II entered London. For many years after Restoration Day was a holiday in the UK.

1692- The Battle of La Hogue- Great naval battle when the French fleet of Admiral de Tourville was ordered by Louis XIV to attack an Anglo-Dutch navy despite being heavily outnumbered. The French admiral did a brilliant job but lost anyway, and the French monarch turned his back on the navy, abandoning supremacy of the seas to England.
Once considered the most important naval engagement until Trafalgar, La Hogue is now mostly remembered on cheap, framed prints of naval battle paintings you see hanging in doctor’s waiting rooms.

1765 - Patrick Henry gave a defiant speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses against the English Stamp Act. Someone in the crowd yelled "Treason!"
Henry smiled: "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

1780- THE WAXSAWS or TARELTON’S QUARTER- In the later part of the American Revolution the British Army tried encouraging Loyal Americans to fight their Rebel brothers. A British officer named Banastre Tarleton raised a hard riding company of American Loyalist dragoons to subdue unruly South Carolina. But Tarleton had a sadistic streak that made him go beyond the gentlemanly war of the era.
At the Waxsaws in North Carolina, Tarleton rode down a company of Virginia militia and slaughtered them as they tried to surrender. After the battle ended he ordered his men to comb the battlefield and bayonet the wounded. So he won the tactical victory but Butcher Tarleton’s tactics made more enemies than friends for his side. Many North Carolina hill country folk who had been sitting out the war lost kin at the Waxsaws and so joined the American side in droves. Knowing they may get “Tarleton’s Quarter” made many Minutemen fight harder rather than surrender.

1790- Two years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Rhode Island had still not ratified the document. Rhode Island refused to send delegates to the convention drafting it, and only after the other twelve states threatened to completely sever all commercial ties with it did they knuckle under and vote to join the union, but only by a majority of only two votes.

1814- Napoleon’s Empress Josephine died of a cold contracted while entertaining Czar Alexander of Russia. She was 50. A woman’s fashion of the time was to wear a flimsy muslin dress dampened with water to make it see-through, the equivalent of the modern wet T-shirt. Dressed this way she went for an evening stroll through the gardens of Malmaison with the Russian emperor, caught a chill and soon expired. Napoleon learned of her death while he was in exile on Elba. He locked himself in his room for two days grief stricken. He admitted, “ I loved her, but I did not respect her..”

1843- John C. Freemont began his second surveying expedition mapping out vast areas of California and Oregon and studying its geography. For this he was nicknamed the Pathfinder and later became the first presidential candidate of the new Republican Party.

1848- Wisconsin became a state.

1856- THE LOST SPEECH- Former Congressman Abraham Lincoln was called upon to deliver the adjournment speech to the convention inaugurating the new Illinois Republican Party. He had decided to abandon his strategy of mincing words about slavery and “hit it hard.” Lincoln delivered what many regarded as the best speech of his life, a speech better than the Gettysburg Address or “With Malice Towards None” the Second Inaugural.
And maddeningly for history we have no record of what he said. The newspapermen jotting it down shorthand were so amazed by what they heard that they stopped writing, confident they would share the notes of a colleague later. Even Abe’s close friend Herndon, who was a prodigious note taker, gave up after fifteen minutes, admitting he “threw pen and paper away and was swept up in the inspiration of the hour”. The speech made Lincoln one of the rising stars of the party, yet we don’t know anything he said that night.

1859 –Illinois Congressman Abe Lincoln says in a better documented occasion "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of time, but you can't fool all of the people all of time"

1905- Third Day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights. Japanese Admiral Togo catches up to the second half of the Russian Navy and sinks it. In 1985 Japanese salvage crews brought up a huge hoard of gold bullion meant for the payroll for the Tsarist sailors. A Japanese venture capitalist tried to use it to buy back the Kurile Islands- the few small islands in the north that Soviet Russia invaded in the closing days of World War II and have never given back. Russia said 'No Deal."

1908- Teddy Roosevelt signed the first ban on child labor in the U.S.

1911 -The first Indianapolis 500

1912- In Philadelphia, 15 young women were fired by the Curtis Publishing Company for dancing "Turkey Trot" during their lunch break.

1914- THE COLONEL REDL AFFAIR- In the years before World War I, the Great Powers of Europe spent vast sums on spies and agents to discover each other's future war plans. The period was known as the “soft war” not unlike the Cold War of a later generation. Coloneloberst Redl was on the Austro-Hungarian General Staff but was passing information on to Russian Intelligence. He was exposed by an Italian double agent who was also his male lover. According to the Austrian military code of honor, Redl was forced by his fellow officers to shoot himself. An eccentric man, his apartment was filled with life-size mannequins in chairs. Hungarian director Istvan Szabo made an award winning film about Redl with Klaus Maria Brandauer in 1986. There were earlier films made of the story in 1931 and 55.

1932- The BONUS MARCHERS reached Washington D.C. Men who joined the army during the Great War were promised an extra bonus to be received in 1945. Similar bonuses were given by the Gov’t to Civil War Veterans in the 1890s. But by 1932 the Great Depression had so ruined people's lives a movement was started by a Portland veteran named Captain William Waters to pass a bill in Congress to get their bonus early. Veterans would lobby congress by mounting a poor people's march on Washington. People's marches of this sort had happened before, like "Coxey's Army" in 1896, the Civil Right's march in 1964, and the Million-Man March in 1995. Veteran's groups came from all over the nation and by the time they got to Capitol Hill they numbered around 80,000. The set up shantytowns on the Mall nicknamed “Hoovervilles”.

Everyday Senators going to work had to slip through a huge line of homeless men shuffling silently around the Capitol Building. The Hoover government panicked and believed Soviet-style revolution was imminent. The opposition to the bonus bill was led by Senator Howard Vidal, father of writer-activist Gore Vidal and uncle to Al Gore.

1941-THE GREAT WALT DISNEY CARTOONISTS STRIKE.. The picket line and campsite went up across the street where St. Joseph's Hospital is today. Chef's from nearby Toluca Lake restaurants would cook for the strikers on their off time and the aircraft mechanics of Lockheed promised muscle if any ruff stuff was threatened.

Picketers included Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), Walt Kelly and Margaret Selby (later Kelly) (Pogo), Bill Melendez (A Charlie Brown Christmas), Steve Bosustow and John Hubley (Mr. Magoo), Maurice Noble and Chuck Jones (What's Opera Doc?), George Baker (Sad Sack), Dick Swift ("the Parent Trap") Frank Tashlin (Cinderfella) Ade Woolery (Playhouse), and four hundred others. Animators from Warner Bros. MGM and Walter Lantz marched with their Disney brothers and sisters, because they knew this was where the fate of their entire industry would be settled. Celebrities like Dorothy Parker, Frank Morgan, and John Garfield gave speeches. The studio claimed no one of importance was on strike.

The strike was eventually settled by Federal arbitration and a little arm twisting by the Bank of America. Many of the artists who left the studio afterwards set up U.P.A. and pioneered the modern 1950's style.

1942- JOHN BARRYMORE- The great dramatic actor, the first American to dare to play Hamlet in England, died of cirrhosis and kidney failure at age 60. Whether the infamous prank actually happened where Raoul Walsh, Bertholdt Brecht, Peter Lorre, W.C. Fields and some others (the "Bundy Drive Boys") kidnapped Barrymore's body from Pierce Brothers Funeral Home and propped it up at the poker table to scare the willys out of Errol Flynn is a matter of debate. Flynn and Paul Heinried said it was true, writer Gene Fowler said it was false. . John Barrymore's last words were to screenwriter Gene Fowler: "Say Gene, isn't it true you are an illegitimate son of Buffalo Bill?"

1942- Bing Crosby recorded "White Christmas," debatably the greatest selling record of all time.

1952- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norga became first men to reach the top of Mt. Everest. The tallest mountain on the Earth.

1954- New York Police raided the studio of Irving Klaw, the photographer of the Betty Page kinky pin-up photos. Klaw tried to appeal to the Supreme Court but couldn’t get a hearing.

1956- Hollywood director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Invisible Man) drowned himself in his pool. His career was over and his health was deteriorating from a series of strokes. Bruises were found on his head and at first the police suspected foul play. It wasn’t until 1989 his gay partner made his suicide note public. His head had struck the pool’s bottom as he jumped in causing the bruise.

1972- Moe Berg died of old age. He was a master spy who using a front as a catcher for the Washington Senator’s Baseball team. He was fluent enough in quantum physics to converse with Einstein. He was once ordered by Washington to go to Switzerland and meet with Rudolph Heisenberg, the Nazi Einstein, and kill him if he felt the Germans were getting too close do developing their own atomic bomb. He chose not to shoot him. In his later years he was a regular contestant on TV game shows. Believe it or not!

1973 - Columbia Records fired president Clive Davis for misappropriating
$100, 000 in funds, So Davis went on and founded Arista records.

1977 - Janet Guthrie becomes 1st woman to drive in Indy 500.

1978 - Bob Crane, (Hogan-Hogan's Heroes), died at 49 under mysterious circumstances. He was found in a Tucson hotel room surrounded by pornography, bludgeoned to death by a camera tripod. The murder was never solved.

1987 –pop singer Michael Jackson attempted to buy the XIX century remains of Joseph Meredith a.k.a. the Elephant Man.

1999- Hikers in a Malibu ravine discovered the remains of Phillip Taylor Kramer, the bass guitar player of the 1960’s band Iron Butterfly. The musician had disappeared four years before. Now his skeleton was found sitting in his Ford Aerostar at the bottom of a steep ravine.

2003- The BBC aired a news expose alleging that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government “sexed up” or exaggerated the proof of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to justify the unpopular invasion of Iraq. The documentary named a shy government researcher named Dr. David Kelly as the perpetrator. He committed suicide as a result.
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Quiz: In the Middle Ages, what is another word for a GardeRobe?

Answer: A castle toilet.

Quiz: In the Middle Ages, what is another word for a GardeRobe?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What do these actresses have in common? Elizabeth Montgomery, Melanie Griffith, Gwynneth Paltrow, Carrie Fisher?
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History for 5/28/2022
Birthdays: Solomon 970 BC, Noah Webster, Dr. Joseph Guillotine, William Pitt the Younger, General Pierre Beauregard, Ian Fleming, Jim Thorpe, The Dion Identical Quintuplets 1930, Gladys Knight, Jerry West, Dietrich Fisher-Deiskau, Sandra Locke, T-Bone Walker, Taffy Abel (one of the first professional hockey stars), John Fogarty is 77, Carey Mulligan is 37, Carol Baker.

585 BC- An early recorded Solar Eclipse. It struck blind people who dared to look at it, and it scared away the armies of King Cyaxerxes of Media and King Alyattes of Lydia who were about to fight a battle. Not wishing to anger the Gods any further, they immediately made peace.

20AD- Tiberius’ general Drusus celebrated a triumph over the Pannonians (Hungary).

1358- THE JACQUERIE- In the Middle Ages the oppression of the peasantry coupled with the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War reached their breaking point. Major peasant revolts began to break out all over Europe. In Italy they’re called the Ciompi, in England, Wat the Tyner’s revolt, and outbreak today in France was called the JACQUERIE (after "poor Jacques" or peasant). The outraged peasants burned manor homes and castles and massacred nobility without any real plan. To English and French knights class meant more than national feuds, so they took time out from their Hundred Years’ War to join together to chop up their uppity peasants.

1453- The night before his final assault on Constantinople, Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, addressed his troops:" I give you the capitol of the ancient Romans, the greatest city in the world! I give you her women and children, her silks and jewels. All I ask is that you leave me her buildings and monuments. I want the city for myself!" Then battalions of belly dancers danced for the men, but no sex was permitted until the battle ended.

1494- The official "birth" of Scotch - though it probably had been around much earlier, on this date, the Scottish Exchequer recorded a purchase of malt by a friar to make "aqua vitae", the first written reference to spirits in Scotland. Scottish King James IV particularly liked the stuff. Called in Gaelic “Uisge beatha”, this got corrupted by English speakers into “Whisky”

1742 - 1st public indoor swimming pool opens at Goodman's Fields, London.

1786- French explorer the Comte de Perouse became the first European to set foot on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. "The climate of Mowhee is quite delightful." He wrote. Then spending only three days there he hurried his ship on to the Northwest coast of America.

1853- THE CRIMEAN WAR BEGAN- England and the French Empire declared War on Russia over Russia’s trying to beat up Turkey and annex the Bosporus. England and Russia spent the nineteenth century in a tactical struggle for supremacy in Central Asia not unlike the Cold War the Soviet Union fought with America after World War II. The name for the Anglo-Russian duel was "the Great Game". It only heated up once, producing such artifacts as the Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava Helmets and Florence Nightingale. Roger Fenton also followed the army to the Crimea as the first war-photographer.

1871- THE COMMUNE OF PARIS CRUSHED- As the occupying Prussian Army looked on, the regular French army loyal to the conservative government of President Alphonse Thiers recaptured Paris from the workers-revolutionary government called the Paris Commune. In the fierce house to house fighting the Hotel Du Ville -city hall was completely destroyed, as well as the Royal Palace of the Tuileries (the open area of the Louvre in front of there the glass Pyramid is.) and the Palace of Saint Cloud.

One hundred and fifty revolutionaries were lined up against the wall in Pere Lachaise Cemetery and shot. Today the Wall of the Communards is still there, and you can see the bullet holes. In Russia young Nikolai Lenin studied the Commune and when he formed his Bolshevik Party he took as his flag the red banner of the Commune.

1892- The Sierra Club formed.

1905- Second day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights- Japanese Admiral Togo, having shot up the first half of the Russian Navy waits for the other half.... They were slowly chugging their way around the world being sent from the Black and Baltic seas to the Sea of Japan.

1928 - Dodge Brothers Automobile Inc & Chrysler Corp merged.

1929 - 1st all color talking picture, "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC).

1935- Tortilla Flat published. The first novel by John Steinbeck.

1940- Throughout World War I the tiny Belgian Army held out heroically against huge German forces. In World War II the story was different. As the Allied frontlines crumbled before the relentless Nazis armored Blitzkrieg, this day the Belgian Army surrendered unconditionally. The surrender left retreating British and French forces dangerously exposed, were it not for quick thinking divisional commander who plugged the line and enabled the escape to Dunkirk. General Bernard Law Montgomery first caught the notice of Churchill and the English high command.

1941- THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE- Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on, and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees. The union claimed they had a majority of employee rep-cards signed, which Walt Refused to acknowledge. On this day, in defiance of the federal Wagner Act, Walt Disney fired animator Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy, and thirteen other cartoonists for demanding a union. Babbitt had emerged as the union movements’ leader. Studio security officers escorted him off the lot. “Would you mind if I collect my pencils?”
That night in an emergency meeting of the Cartoonists Guild at Hollywood Legion Hall, Art’s assistant Bill Hurtz, made a motion to strike, and it was unanimously accepted. Bill Hurtz will later go on to direct award-winning cartoons like UPA’s "Unicorn in the Garden". Picket lines go up next day in Hollywood animation’s own version of the Civil War.

Walt Disney nearly had a nervous breakdown over the strike, and a federal mediator was sent by Washington to arbitrate. In later years, Uncle Walt blamed the studio’s labor ills on Communists. The studio unionized completely, but the hard feelings remained for their rest of their lives.

1948- During the Israeli War of Independence the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem surrendered after a long siege by the Arab Legion. The Legion was a force organized and led by a British soldier of fortune Sir John Bagot-Glubb or Glub-Pasha. The main Jewish community was in west Jerusalem but the Holy places of the Old City were in the eastern part. Jews lost the Wailing Wall until retaken in the Six-Day War of 1967.

1954- Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3D premiered.

1957- The National League Baseball owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants to move west to California.

1960- George Zucco 74, a character actor who specialized in horror movies like Blood from the Mummies Hand, died. One version says he died of fright in a mental hospital in San Gabriel California. He was convinced that H.P. Lovecraft's Great God Cthulu was after him. He actually died of natural causes in a nursing home.

1961- Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded. It was the result of an Appeal for Amnesty, written in the London Daily Observer by Peter Benennson, who read of several Portuguese students who were arrested because they were overheard in a cafe making a toast to Freedom.

1966- the It’s a Small World exhibit, which had been created for the 1964 NY Worlds Fair, reopened at Disneyland, California.

1977- George Lucas film Star Wars opened in wide release across the country.

1981- The Bambi Murders- Police hunt Playboy Bunny Bambi Bembenek for shooting her husband’s ex-wife in Milwaukee. She was captured but escaped prison in 1990.
Just follow the little stiletto high heel footprints.

1983- “What a Feeling” the theme from the film Flashdance by Irene Cara and Giorgio Moroder reached the top of the pop charts. Everyone began dancing with leg warmers and baggy sweaters torn at the neck.

1987- A young German student named Matthias Rust rented a Cessna airplane in Helsinki, and flying low to avoid radar flew right into the heart of the Soviet Union. Evading a forest of missiles, radar and anti-aircraft weapons, he landed his little plane right in the middle of Red Square at the Kremlin. The ensuing furor and humiliation cost many Russian generals their jobs.

1998- Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman was shot to death by his wife Brynne as he slept. She was a heavy drinker and pill user. At 6:00am as the LAPD were knocking Brynne turned the gun on herself. Hartman’s last role was doing the English dub of Gigi the cat in Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.

2005- The great London clock Big Ben mysteriously stopped for 45 minutes.

2005- Actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed passed out drunk in her car shortly after a court hearing for a DUI.
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Yesterday’s Question: What do these actresses have in common? Elizabeth Montgomery, Melanie Griffith, Gwynneth Paltrow, Carrie Fisher?

Answer: They are all the daughters of movie stars as well. George Montgomery, Tipi Hedren, Blythe Danner, Debbie Reynolds.