Quiz: My mom used to say to me,” You keep doing all that reading and drawing you’re gonna be cockeyed!” What is the origin of cockeyed?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: There was once a famous police squad known as The Untouchables. In what U.S. city did they operate?
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History for 4/21/2022
Birthdays: Edwin S. Porter, Charlotte Bronte', John Muir, Freiderich Froebel the inventor of kindergarten-1782, Anthony Quinn, Patti Lupone, Iggy Pop is 75, Charles Grodin, Anna Magnani, Andie MacDowell is 63, Tony Danza, Elaine May, James McAvoy is 43, Rob Riggle is 52, Queen Elizabeth II is 96

Happy Palilia- Roman festival of the rustic god "Pales" for whom the Palatine Hill in Rome was named.

43BC- Battle of Mutina (Modena), One year after the assassination of Julius Caesar, his heirs’ squabble. Legions sent by Octavian defeated Mark Anthony and drove him into the mountains. Ten years later, Octavian defeated Anthony for good at Actium.

1526- The First Battle of Panipat. Mogul Emperor Baibur defeated the Indian army of Ibrahim Lodi and captured Delhi. This established the Moghul Empire in India. Babur’s army fought with Mongol bows, elephants, and cannon.

1831- NAT TURNER'S REBELLION- The most serious slave revolt in the South before the Civil War. Using an eclipse as a sign from heaven, Turner and 75 other slaves turned on their masters, and went on a rampage through Virginia. It took 3,000 troops to crush them. Turner was taken and hanged, defiant to the end. Nat Turner’s Rebellion hardened opinions of both pro and anti-slavery groups in the U.S. and accelerated the slide towards civil war.

1836- BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO-. After chasing Sam Houston’s men across Texas almost to the Louisiana border, General Santa Anna thought so little of these rag-tag gringo rebels that he no longer bothered to post sentries. When the Texans attacked at 1:00PM, most of the Mexican army was having an afternoon siesta. General Santa Anna was bedded down with his mistress he called his Yellow Rose, the origin of the song Yellow Rose of Texas.
Suddenly Houston's wild frontiersmen, filled with rage over the massacres of the Alamo and Goliad, rushed into the Mexican camp and routed them. After the battle Houston couldn't restrain the Texans from killing running fugitives, and even scalping some. Santa Anna was captured and forced to sign a peace.

1847- The 4th rescue team removed the last survivors of the Donner Party wagon train from their snowed in camp on Lake Truckee in the Sierras down to the settlement on the Sacramento River. A furious winter trapped the Donners in the mountains last Oct 31st with almost no food. Of 86 pioneers 41 died and the others ate their corpses to survive. Louis Kesesburg, the only settler who spoke openly of eating human flesh and was called a ghoul, moved to Sacramento and opened a restaurant.

1865- UNCLE BILLY’S POLITICAL LESSON. In North Carolina, General William T. Sherman had offered Confederate Joe Johnston’s army the same terms for surrender that Grant had given Robert E Lee. But Johnston handed Sherman new terms rewritten by crafty Confederate President Jefferson Davis. It asked for political and property amnesty for all Confederate leaders; that the US Government would leave all Southern state officials at their posts.
This went much further than one army surrendering to another, it was in effect a treaty that no one would be punished for the Civil War. But Uncle Billy Sherman didn’t seem to see the fine print. He thought that was what Abe Lincoln had wanted before he was killed. So, he signed it and passed it on to Washington.
When new President Andrew Johnson and General Grant read the terms, they were thunderstruck. They ordered Sherman to tear that treaty up and offer nothing but unconditional surrender. Hotheaded Secretary of War Stanton denounced Sherman in the newspapers as a traitor. Sherman the Hero of Atlanta was furious at being made a fool of. He resolved the rest of his life to have nothing more to do with politics, which is probably why we never had a President William T. Sherman.

1865- President Lincoln’s funeral train left Washington DC for the long trip back to Springfield Ill.

1911- LENIN WANTS A LIBRARY CARD. Russian communist revolutionary Nikolai Lenin was living secretly in exile in London. In a letter dated this day he applied to the British Museum Library collection to study its documents. His letter was in perfect English and he signed his name as Jacob Richter.

1910- Mark Twain died of congenital heart failure at 75 as Haley's comet appeared overhead. He once wrote: " When arriving in Heaven feel free to ask all the questions you want of Saint Peter. You may ask for his autograph, however don’t take any Kodak photos or bring your dog. Admittance to Heaven is based on favor, not merit, else the dog would be allowed to go in and you kept out."

1918- THE RED BARON SHOT DOWN- In the air duels above the World War I trenches, Baron Manfred Von Richthofen was the best. The Red Baron had shot down more planes than anyone -80 confirmed kills. (two more claimed but unconfirmed)
On this day, von Richthofen got onto the tail of a plane and was about to add #81, when Canadian Roy Brown got behind him and filled the back of his plane with machine gun bullets. Other experts claim The Red Baron was hit by Australian ground fire. Mortally wounded, von Richthofen still managed to land his red Fokker triplane before slumping over dead. Manfred von Richthofen was 26. Soldiers tore the plane to pieces for souvenirs.
Capt. Roy Brown later wrote of seeing the body of his enemy.
. “…the sight of Richthofen as I walked closer gave me a start. He appeared so small to me, so delicate. He looked so friendly. Blond, silk-soft hair, like that of a child, Suddenly I felt miserable, desperately unhappy, as if I had committed an injustice. I could no longer look him in the face. I went away. I did not feel like a victor. There was a lump in my throat. If he had been my dearest friend, I could not have felt greater sorrow.”
Roy Brown left the service after the war and became an accountant. He died of a heart attack in 1944.

1921- The Coconut Grove nightclub opened in Hollywood.

1933- The Nazis ban kosher meat processing in Germany.

1938- Disney animator Bill Tytla married artists model Adrienne LeClerc.

1944- During WWII, the French Committee of National Liberation (in exile in London) voted to give the women of France the right to vote. The first election French women could vote in would be the following Spring, after the liberation.

1948- HAIFA- As the British occupying troops were being withdrawn from Palestine’s second largest city, they had given up trying to keep Arabs and Jews from fighting. This day the British commander of Haifa informed city leaders that he was withdrawing his garrison. The British commander wagered a friend a bottle of whisky that neither side would have control of Haifa for weeks. The Jewish militia the Hagannah secured control of the city in 48 hours. The Arab population began a mass evacuation of the city,

1960- Brazil moved its capital from Rio De Janiero to Brasilia, a modern architects fantasy built in the middle of the jungle.

1961- Two British teenage rock bands meet each other for the first time- The Beatles met the Rolling Stones.

1964- British TV viewers double their pleasure- BBC 2 goes on the air. Their first program is Play School.

1973- The pop song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn became a number one hit on the US, Canadian and UK pop charts. The song spawned the custom of a yellow ribbon as a symbol of remembering a soldier overseas, which reached its’ peak during the Iran Hostage Crisis. That in turn spawned variations like the red AIDS ribbon, the pink breast cancer ribbon, and so on.

1975- As North Vietnamese armies roll towards his capitol, South Vietnamese President Nygun Van Thieu resigned and went into exile. The Roman Catholic French-educated Thieu tearfully blamed America for the defeat. Vice President Nygun Kao Key moved to Orange County Cal with much of the exile community.

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a live primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. Called THE MYSTERY OF AL CAPONE’S SECRET VAULT. After wasting two hours speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room, sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles, trash and a few dollar bills.

1989- Oil executive George W. Bush became part of an ownership consortium that bought the last place baseball team the Texas Rangers." As soon as I knew they were for sale I went after them like a pit bull on a pants leg…. It doesn’t get much better than this…"

1997-The first Intergalactic Funeral. The ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960's LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary were shot into space.
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Yesterday’s Question: There was once a famous police squad known as The Untouchables. In what U.S. city did they operate?

Answer: Al Capone’s Chicago.

Quiz: There was once a famous police squad known as The Untouchables. In what U.S. city did they operate?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What does it mean to place something in aspic?
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History for 4/20/2022
Birthdays: Harold Lloyd, Juan Miro', Adolf Hitler, Tito Puente, Nina Foch, Gregory Ratoff, Ryan O'Neal, Daniel Day Lewis, Jessica Lange, Luther Vandross, Don Mattingly, Rosalyn Summers, Crispin Glover, Betty-Lou Gerson the voice of Cruella da Vil, George Takei, Carmen Electra is 47, Andy Serkis is 59, Bob Kurtz

Happy 4:20 Day. See below 1970.

1605- King James I granted charters to the Virginia Company to found colonies in the New World. Jamestown Va. is the result.

1653- After the English Civil War beheaded King Charles I, General Oliver Cromwell sat listening to the Barebones Parliament arguing over trivial issues. He had already arrested any politician who disagreed with him, and those who were left were too afraid to discuss anything else. Finally, Oliver rose and exploded in rage:” Drunkards! Whoremasters! You are no Parliament! “He ordered his troops to run them all out. England would remain under Cromwell’s military dictatorship until his death in 1659. A note was tacked onto the locked doors of the House of Commons-“ This House to Let, Unfurnished.”

1689- Deposed English King James II Stuart had landed in Ireland and raised the Irish to help him regain his throne from his daughter and son-in-law William & Mary. This day his army surrounded the City of Londonderry and began an epic 4 month siege. Like every battle in those days the conflict had a heavy religious connotation, James’ Irish followers were Catholics while the besieged loyalists were Protestants. Despite starvation and heavy bombardment the Londonderriers held out until help arrived, and James II was beaten at the Battle of the Boyne.

1759- Composer George Friedrich Handel died after collapsing in the orchestra pit while conducting the Messiah. He was 74, almost blind, and suffering from a number of illnesses.

1769- Ottawa Chief Pontiac had organized a great rebellion against the whites that united all the Great Lakes tribes and made his name feared from Detroit to Maine. After capturing and burning scores of forts and towns, his forces were defeated by the British and American settlers, and he was forced to swear allegiance to King George. Ten years later old Pontiac was visiting a French merchant at a settlement across from modern Saint Louis called Caholkia when a Peoria Indian clubbed and stabbed him to death. It was never known why, but it’s rumored he was bribed by an English businessman. The Indian was rewarded with a barrel of whiskey, the very stuff Pontiac warned would ruin all Indian People.

1814- Napoleon sent to Elba, a little island off the coast of France. He quoted the famous palindrome "Able was I ere I saw Elba." he had been learning English.

1836- Wisconsin Territory established.

1859- " It was the Best of Times, It was the Worst of Times..." Charles Dicken's novel "A Tale of Two Cities" began to be published in magazine form.

1865- Robert E. Lee, now a private citizen in occupied Richmond, wrote President Jefferson Davis still on the run. He urged Davis to give up the struggle and allow the remaining Confederate forces to lay down their arms and go home.

1902- Marie Curie discovered radium.

1903- THE KISHNIEV POGROM- The word Russian Jews feared most was Pogrom. Much like lynch mobs in the American South, it meant the Russian police would stand back and do nothing while mobs were encouraged to murder and violate the homes of Jews. This day in the city of Kishniev, mobs killed 43 Jews and mutilated their bodies, and several hundred Jewish women were raped. There were protests around the world about the Kishniev massacre but nothing official was ever done. When Jewish leaders went to the Czar to protest, they were answered with another pogrom in Gomel.
Back in America, old Mark Twain donated money to groups advocating the Czars overthrow. Twain said:” If it takes dynamite to overthrow that regime well then, thank God for Dynamite!”

1909- Mary Pickford, the first Movie Star, goes in front of a camera for the first time.

1912- The first baseball game played at Fenway Park. The Boston Red Stockings, defeated the New York Highlanders (Yankees), 6-1.

1914- Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs opened. Commuters on the “El” could see how their cubbies were doing by looking for the W or L flag flying.

1914- THE LUDLOW MASSACRE- In Colorado a violent strike was being waged between coal miners and the Standard Oil Company of John D. Rockefeller. This night militia, Pinkerton detectives and strikebreakers attacked a tent camp of striking miners and their families in the dead of night. They poured kerosene on their tents while they were sleeping, set them alight and shot people as they ran out to safety. 20 died, half were women and children. As in most labor murders, no one was ever tried or convicted. President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops to occupy Colorado and restore order. Even then, John Rockefeller refused mediation until the strike was broken.

1912- A London West End theater manager and failed author named Abraham “Bram” Stoker died. He was 65. He managed the Lyceum theater where famed stage actor Henry King performed. If anyone noticed him, it was because he worked with Henry King. Bram Stokers seven books and several plays made little money in his time. But a decade later a play adapted from one of his novels made him world famous. Dracula.

1916- Mauser Day- A German submarine U-20 surfaces off the coast of Ireland and landed two IRA leaders, Sir Roger Casement and Patrick Pearse, and some rifles and ammunition. Casement was arrested by authorities while still on the beach, but the rifles were used to start the Irish Easter Sunday Rebellion.

1925- The Warner Bros. Moving Picture Company merged with Vitagraph, and began experimenting with fixing sound on to film.

1931- LA MAFIA- Charles “Lucky” Lucciano became a top crime figure in New York after he murdered Joey the Boss Masseria. Lucciano and Masseria were having dinner in Coney Island when Lucciano excused himself to go to the lavatory. Once gone, four gunmen burst in and filled Joey the Boss with bullets. Lucciano later whacked the other top capo of New York, Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano and Masseria were the last of the “Mustache Petes” the old guard Sicilian immigrants, still pursuing feuds brought over from the old country. After this the Mafia became more American than Sicilian and Luciano organized his gangs along a corporate model. Lucky’s young gunmen- Joey Adonis, Al Anastasia, Vito Genovese and Bugsy Siegel, all became important gang bosses in the years to come.

1935- Radio program “Your Hit Parade” premiered.

1938- On Hitler’s birthday, was the Berlin premiere of Leni Reifenstahl’s film Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

1939- RCA president David Sarnoff dedicated RCA pavilion at World's Fair in New York City. First U.S. news event filmed on television. Sarnoff predicted that one day everyone would have a television in their home!

1940- RCA labs demonstrated the first Electron Microscope.

1942- The' Bataan Death March' ends and the prison camps at Butan and Palayu. Half the captive 16,000 Pilipino and 10,000 American troops died. (there was two animators there who I later worked with at Filmation- Don Schloat and Len Rogers..)

1942- On his birthday, Adolf Hitler was presented with his favorite kind of present, a new tank. The first Tiger Tank.

1945- Adolph Hitler celebrated his last birthday (56) in his bunker and announced his decision to remain in Berlin. He did allow the military high command OberKommando Wehrmacht or OKW, to relocate out of the doomed city. There was a plan for a breakout to the Bavaria to organize a National Redoubt in the mountains and use Germany's poison gas stockpile, but the Fuhrer wanted his Wagnerian immolation in Berlin.
The U.S. sent him a birthday present of the last 1000 plane bombing raid. Soviet pilots later said after this raid they discontinued bombing missions over Berlin because "every target we could think of had already been destroyed." One effect of the bombing, several great apes in the Berlin Zoo died of heart attacks from the stress.

1951- After being fired by President Truman, General Douglas MacArthur was given a massive ticker tape parade on Wall Street in his honor.

1968- Pierre Elliot Trudeau sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada. Trudeau became one of Canada’s more colorful leaders with his flower-child wife Margaret.

1970- The people of San Rafael Cal, started a tradition of smoking marijuana en masse at 4:20, the police code for a drug bust. The Grateful Dead took up the tradition and now everyone lights up and tokes at 4:20PM.

1974 - Paul McCartney and Wings releases "Band on the Run" .

1976 - At a stage performance at City Center NYC, George Harrison secretly slipped in and sang the Lumberjack Song with the Monty Python comedy troop. John Cleese recalled: “George was wonderful. He came up on stage with us as a Mountie and sang the 'Lumberjack Song’ impeccably, and I don’t suppose 10 percent of the audience knew he was up there."

1977- Woody Allen & Diane Keaton starred in the film “Annie Hall”. Young Christopher Walken did an early cameo as Annie’s weird brother.

1980- The Mariel Boat Lift. Fidel Castro made a mockery of President Jimmy Carter's policy of admitting seaborne political refugees from Cuba by opening his prisons and creating a flood of boat people, including many hardened criminals.

1999- COLUMBINE- Teenagers Ryan Harris and Dylan Kleibold enter their Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado and shoot their classmates with semi-automatic guns. 15 died including the two gunmen and 26 were hurt. Despite making videotapes in which they bragged about their intentions, and leaving shotguns and ammunition around their rooms, their parents didn’t think anything was unusual.

2010- The BP DEEP WATER HORIZON oil well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and drenching the U.S. Gulf Coast with millions of gallons of crude oil and dispersal chemicals. BP could not stop the leak for two and a half months. Despite the disaster, that year the TransAmerica Company, that built the rig, awarded their top execs bonuses for their safety record. They paid 18.7 billion in fines. The gov’t allowed BP to write off $9 billion in costs to clean up their own accident.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to place something in aspic?

Answer: Aspic is a sort of meat-based gelatin. It can be molded and can contain meat, vegetables and other victuals and can be a way of both serving and preserving these foods. “Setting in aspic” has come to mean something that is preserved or unchanged. Depending on context, the phrase can have a slightly negative connotation, suggesting that the things set in aspic are behind the times, provincial, hidebound.

Quiz: What does it mean to place something in aspic?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: People know about the battle of the Alamo. But more important to Texas history was the Battle of San Jacinto. What happened there?
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History for 4/19/2022
Birthdays: Paulo Verronese, Elliot Ness, Jayne Mansfield, Dudley Moore, Paloma Picasso, Iwao Takamoto, Ashley Judd, James Franco is 45, Kate Hudson is 44, Tim Curry is 77

Cerealia- an ancient Roman agricultural festival. Ceres (Demeter), the mother of Persephone, was the Goddess of Growing and Planting. To say, “That’s Fit for Ceres” was the Roman way of saying “Totally Awesome”.

1521-THE TESTAMENT OF WORMS- Two days after reformer Martin Luther told him to take a flying leap, German Emperor Charles V announced he was against Luther’s reformation and called all German princes to support him. Half decided not to. Even Charles’ own sister became a Lutheran.

1587- SIR FRANCIS DRAKE RAIDS CADIZ- The bold English captain attacked the ships of the Spanish Armada in their harbor and so doing delayed the sailing of the Great Armada for one year. With him on the raid are men like Capt. Newport and Capt. Martin who in 1607 will be with John Smith at Jamestown.

1775- LEXINGTON AND CONCORD- The American Revolution began.
After being awakened by Paul Revere, some 70 farmers spent all night at Buckman's Tavern drinking and trying to decide whether to fight or run away. By 4:00 a.m. John Hancock talked them into staying to fight. Then John Hancock ran away.
The redcoat column was met on Lexington green by the minutemen. "Stand aside, ye dammed Rebels!" Captain Pitcairn shouted. " Stand fast boys! if they want a war, let it start here!" was Captain Parker's reply. The redcoats opened fire and easily dispersed that group. But by the time the British reached Concord bridge, hordes of farmers were shooting at them from bushes and rooftops. Finally, they were forced to withdraw to Boston empty handed. Lord Percy complained even 'American women were pointing muskets out of their kitchen windows and firing at us!" One 80 year old man shot three soldiers from his front porch, before he was bayoneted. He lived 7 more years. And most of the Yankee muskets were British government-issue Brown Bess.
Americans later called Lexington “The Shot Heard Around the World”, but the British Crown regarded this situation at first as little more than a minor local disturbance. It barely made the back pages of the London newspapers. But by Bunker Hill they realized they had a real trans-ocean war on their hands. As late as December, elements in the Colonial Congress kept asking Parliament if we could still be friends and talk it over.

1782- Holland became the first nation to officially recognize the United States of America. Ambassador John Adams hung a Stars & Stripes out his hotel room window, calling it the first official American Embassy in Europe.

1824- Poet Lord Byron died of fever and uremic poisoning at Missolonghi Greece.

1861- Maryland tried to join the Confederacy. In Baltimore a mob attacked the Sixth Massachusetts regiment marching to protect Washington D.C. 4 killed, 30 wounded. A young nurse named Clara Barton first took over the responsibility of treating the injured.
She later founded the American Red Cross.
If Maryland seceded the nation’s capitol would've had to be abandoned. Colonel Ben Butler solved the situation on his own initiative. He filed troops into the Maryland legislature to point guns at the delegates as they voted. They wisely voted to stay loyal.

1863- GRIERSON'S RAID. Gen. Grant, besieging the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, detached a hard riding cavalry brigade to loot and burn their way through the deep south from Vicksburg Mississippi, through Baton Rouge Louisiana to Union occupied New Orleans. Grierson himself was an Illinois music teacher who disliked horses and liked to strum his jaw-harp on the march. It was said any unit he commanded always had the best band. John Ford’s 1959 movie “The Horse Soldiers” was based on this event.

1881- Former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli died. When asked if he would like a final visit from Queen Victoria, Disraeli answered:" No, not now, she'd only ask me to take a message to Albert." His political arch-enemy William Gladstone wrote him a moving eulogy, but he confided in his diary that it gave him diarrhea to do it.

1910- The Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet.

1927- Mae West found guilty of indecent behavior in writing, producing and starring in a Broadway musical entitled “SEX”. She was fined, and emerged from jail more popular than ever. She said:” Everyone thinks I am opposed to censorship. Actually, I’m in favor of censorship. I’ve made a fortune from it!”

1951- General MacArthur had been fired from his Korean command by President Harry Truman. This day he did his famous speech to Congress” An Old Soldier never Dies, He just Fades Away, and like that old soldier I now close out my military career, and just fade away. An Old Soldier who tried to do his duty, as God showed him the light to do that duty, etc.” Republican Senator Robert Short shouted “We’ve just heard the Voice of God!”
President Harry Truman watched the speech on TV and called it “The biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard!”

1956-Movie star Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

1961- The BAY OF PIGS INVASION DEFEATED The CIA sponsored landing of AntiCastro Cubans failed on the beach of Bahia De Los Cochinos. After sanctioning some initial US Air Force bombing attacks, JFK changed his mind and cut off any further help, including a refusal to evacuate them when trapped. 200 Cuban insurgents were killed and 1,497 imprisoned. This earned him the everlasting anger of the Miami Cuban community.
An aide said the day after the surrender Kennedy went alone to a secluded D.C. golf course and spent hours hitting golf balls, moaning:” How could I have been so Stupid!” after each whack.

1970- XEROX PARC – The Xerox Company announced the setup of a research group in Palo Alto Cal. This group pioneered the development of the personal computer, GUIs and the laser printer.

1973- Three years later Xerox Parc booted up the Alto, the first personal computer. They invented a new mouse, point and click windows, graphic interface and digital printer. President Carter installed one in the White House. Yet Xerox didn’t know what to do with them, they were in the copier business. There was no internet yet, except for government communications. The Alto cost $16,500 each, too expensive for most, so the idea bombed. One day in 1979 a group from Apple visited led by Steve Jobs. The group was inspired by their progress, and they went back to Apple and put what they learned into the development of the Lisa and Macintosh.

1987- The first Simpsons short aired today. MG01 "Good Night Simpsons" was on the 3rd episode of The Tracey Ullman Show, airing Sunday, 4/19/87 at 9pm. Animated by Wes Archer, Bill Kopp, and David Silverman.

1993- Branch Davidian cultists led by their messianic leader David Koresh immolate themselves in their compound at Waco, Texas during a furious shootout with the F.B.I.

1995- THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING- On the second anniversary of the Waco tragedy, emotionally disturbed Gulf War veterans Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols wanted their revenge on the U.S. Government. So, they detonated a truck bomb at the Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Among the 156 dead were a dozen pre-school children in a daycare center on the first floor. McVeigh called the dead children “collateral damage.” He was executed in 2001, and Nichols got life in prison.

2005- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany elected Pope Benedict XVI. The first German Pope since Hildebrandt in 1077, and the first pope to have been a soldier in the Nazi army. He was drafted in 1945 as all male children had been ordered to. Italians called him “The German Shepherd.”
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Yesterday’s Question: People know about the battle of the Alamo. But more important to Texas history was the Battle of San Jacinto. What happened there?

Answer: We remember the Alamo, but the Texans lost at the Alamo. San Jacinto was the battle they won, and gained the independence of Texas.

Quiz: People know about the battle of the Alamo. But more important to Texas history was the Battle of San Jacinto. What happened there?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is meant by “living the Life of Riley”?
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History for 4/18/2022
Birthdays: Lucretzia Borgia, Franz Von Suppe’, Haley Mills is 76, Leopold Stokowski, Miklos Rosza, Herb Sorell, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Conan O’Brien is 59, James Woods is 75, Eric Roberts, Rick Moranis is 71, Maria Bello is 55, David Tennant is 51, America Ferrerra is 38, Disney animator Phil Young

185AD- Today is the Feast Day of the Roman martyr Saint Apollonius.

1506- Pope Julius II lays the cornerstone for St. Peter's Basilica. He had pulled down the old St. Peters, which had stood for 1200 years. The new structure designed by Bramante with the Dome by Michelangelo and the interiors by Sangallo and later Bernini.
With true Renaissance modesty, Julius originally wanted his own tomb in the center under the altar, borne aloft by four giants carved by Michelangelo. I guess nobody mentioned the grave of St. Peter, overtop which this Basilica was being built. Eventually Julius scaled down his plans, and when he died his enemies put him in another church altogether (San Pietro Vincoli). Saint Peters was completed a little over schedule, in 1626.

1521-THE CONFESSION OF WORMS- German Emperor Charles V called Protestant reformer Martin Luther to come to the Imperial Diet at the city of Worms and explain his criticism of the Catholic Church. Ordered by the Papal Legate and the Emperor to renounce his heretical views, Luther defied them all." Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me."
What makes this historically momentous is for the first time a common man stood before the Church, The Emperor and the assembled Princes of Europe and said "No. I won¹t obey". And he got away with it. The news ran like wildfire through Germany. That night someone hung on the council doors a placard with a farmer¹s shoe painted on it- the German traditional symbol of revolt.

1775- PAUL REVERE'S RIDE- Informers in Gen. Gage's office learned the British planned to send troops to seize an illegal arms cache in Lexington and arrest two radical leaders named John Hancock and Sam Adams. So silversmith Paul Revere, Thomas Dawes and a country doctor out on a date named Dr. Prescott were sent to warn them and raise the minutemen on the way, after getting the two lantern signal in the old North Church. "One if by land and two if by sea, etc." Dr. Prescott actually completed the mission. Revere was arrested by a British patrol soon after warning Adams & Hancock and sent home without his horse.
At daybreak Paul Revere walked over to Lexington green in time to watch the Revolutionary War begin. Longfellow's poem never mentioned Prescott or Dawes. Paul Revere never said "The British are Coming!" because he considered himself British like everybody else in America at the time. He would have said: "The Regulars are Coming! "meaning the regular army.

1778- THE WHITEHAVEN RAID- Former Scotsman John Paul Jones wanted to show the British public that the American Revolution wasn't just a distant war across the sea.
So he decided to raid the British Isles. An ulterior motive Jones had in attacking a seaport called Whitehaven was that Jones always suspected he was the illegitimate son of a Lord Selkirk, who resided there. It was his boyhood home. So through the dead of night, while the sailors of the U.S.S. Ranger were burning and plundering the harbor, John Paul Jones was out looking to kidnap his own father!
By dawn they were gone. The British Navy never regarded Jones as more than an irritant, but the raid was a great morale booster in the States. Jones couldn't locate his deadbeat dad, so he had to content himself with stealing his silverware.

1847- Battle of Cerro Gordo- General Winfield Scott defeated the Mexican army of Santa Anna and opened the way to Mexico City.

1857- Vice President Rufus King died of tuberculosis. President James Buchanan was totally distraught. There has been speculation that James Buchanan might have been our first Gay President. He was a lifelong bachelor, his niece Harriet Lane filled in for the social duties of First Lady. Only once in his life did Buchanan have an affair with a lady, which he broke off abruptly without explanation. When James Buchanan and Rufus King were colleagues in the Senate they roomed together and were inseparable. Old Andrew Jackson liked to refer to Senators Buchanan and King," Little Miss Nancy and Mrs. Buchanan".

1861-Mr. LINCOLN'S LOUSY DAY PART I- America’s top soldier Robert E. Lee declined Lincoln's offer to command the U.S. Army and instead sided with the Confederacy. In his letter doing so he confesses: "I foresee the Country will go through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation for our national sins."

1861-Mr. LINCOLN'S LOUSY DAY PART II- As if that news wasn't bad enough, on the same day Lincoln got a telegram from the pro-Southern Governor of Maryland saying not only would he refuse to cooperate in fighting the rebels, but he was cutting the telegraph wires and railroads into and out of Washington D.C.! Until the main union armies reached the capitol on the 24th, Washington was deserted, surrounded by a hostile slave state, with only a few Massachusetts volunteers to defend them. Maryland was only prevented from joining the Confederacy by Col. Ben Butler's initiative of sending troops into the state legislature to point their guns at the members as they voted. They voted to stay loyal.

1870- John D. Rockefeller files papers to form the Standard Oil Corporation of Ohio. One the largest companies in the world, today it is called Exxon-Mobil.

1906- THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE. 3,500 deaths and the city destroyed in the most frightening earthquake in U.S. History. Writer Jack London wrote:” Never has a modern Imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone!” Enrico Caruso was in town with the Metropolitan Opera on tour. He later sat on his suitcase in front of the ruined Palace Hotel and said- "Helluva Place! Ah’ma ’never coming back!"

Drew Barrymore’s grandfather the great actor John Barrymore was in a San Francisco hotel room when the quake struck. He ran into the bathroom and sat shivering in his bath tub until it was over. Afterward the National Guard put him to work clearing rubble looking for bodies. When they read his telegram, the other Barrymores refused to believe the story. Old John Drew, a patriarch of the acting family, felt otherwise. "It took an Act of God to get John out of bed and into a bathtub, and the National Guard to get him to go to work. I believe every word." Amadeo Gianini, founder of the Bank of America, then called the Bank of Italy, gathered up his bank's papers and stocks and buried them in his garden under the begonias until his new office could be set up. He soon set up for business again on a pier. City government was set up in the undamaged St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street and a large mahogany bar was moved out to the street to serve free drinks to calm nerves.

San Franciscans dusted themselves off and rebuilt. By 1913 they were doing well enough to host the World’s Fair. A little ditty of the time said:
"They say God spanked the town, for being rather frisky.
Then why'd He knocked the churches down, yet leave up
Hotaling's Whiskey?"

1914-. The full feature length movie premiered in Turin, Italy. "Cabiria" directed by Giovane Patrone. It was believed to be the first full length movie ever until the discovery of a 1912 version of Quo Vadis. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic the Birth of a Nation popularized the format for feature films.

1923- The first Yankee Stadium dedicated. Yankees win the opener against Boston, 4-1 in front of over 72,000 fans, Babe Ruth hit the park's first home run. The new $2.5 million ballpark is the first to feature three decks. This Yankee Stadium was replaced in 2009.

1934- The first automatic Laundromat opened in Ft. Worth Texas.

1938- Switzerland closed its’ borders to all Jews in a pact made with the German government. The Swiss government never admitted this until 1995.

1942- The DOOLITTLE RAID. Gen. Jimmie Doolittle led 16 B-25s to fly long distance and drop bombs on Tokyo. It was a desperate mission. They did it knowing they didn't have enough fuel to return to the carrier USS Hornet, so they continued on to China and took their chances where they landed. Some of the men shot down and captured were hanged or beheaded by angry Japanese. The raid was had no strategic value and did little damage, but after weeks of unbroken Japanese success, the American public needed a morale booster. General Doolittle survived the war and lived to be 97, dying in 1993.

1943- The Second Uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto.

1945- The German army surrounded in the Ruhr Pocket surrendered. 350,000 went into prison camps. Conscious that it was probably their last major battle in Europe, the Americans called it Operation Kaput. The same day British Prime Minister Churchill ordered Field Marshal Montgomery’s army to stop racing to Berlin and turn north towards Lubeck on the Baltic. "There is no reason for our friends the Russians to occupy Denmark, and our presence at Lubeck would save a lot of argument later on."

1945- Famed journalist Ernie Pyle is killed by Japanese machine gun fire during the fighting at Okinawa.

1955- Scientist Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 75. As he fell in and out of a coma, his last words were in German. Since no one around his bed could speak German, we don't know what his last words were.

1958- A U.S. court ruled that poet Ezra Pound no longer had to stay at a Washington D.C. mental hospital for the criminally insane. The Idaho born Pound had moved to Italy in the 1920s and became an ardent supporter of Mussolini and the Fascists. He felt artists thrived under strongman rule. Gertrude Stein couldn’t stand him because of his open Anti-Semitism. When World War II ended, he was arrested for treason and sent to this mental hospital. His release after 13 years incarceration, he returned to Italy and died in 1972.

1958- At the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 78,672, the Dodgers play their first game in the City of Angels, defeating the new San Francisco Giants, 6-5.

1967- Jonathan Frid first appeared as the vampire Barnabas Collins in the TV series Dark Shadows.

1980- The white minority dominated African nation of Rhodesia transitioned into the black majority nation named Zimbabwe and elected rebel leader Robert Mugabe as its first president.

1994- Disney’s first theatrical musical based on one of their animated films, Beauty and the Beast: A New Musical, opened on Broadway.

2000- Earlier that spring some of the worlds biggest internet companies –e-Bay, Amazon and CNN were paralyzed by a virus spread by a hacker. Today the FBI made an arrest. The culprit was a Canadian High School student who went by the domain name of Mafia Boy. He received probation, and a promise to only use his computer for schoolwork for two years.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is meant by “living the Life of Riley”?

Answer: The expression comes from a pop song of the 1880s, “Is That Mr. Reilly?”, in which the title character describes what he would do if he suddenly became wealthy. Sort of like the song “ If I were a rich man”, in Fiddler on the Roof. The phrase came to mean living the good life, a life of luxury.

Quiz: What is meant by “living the Life of Riley”?

Yesterday¹s Question: In World War 2, Britain, France and America were called the Allies, and Germany, Italy and Japan were called the Axis. But in WWI Germany and Austria were called the Allies. What were Britain, France and America called?
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History for 4/17/2022
Birthdays: Tobias Stummer-1539, Duke Maximillian I of Bavaria, Nikita Khrushchev, Thorton Wilder, Clarence Darrow, Arthur Schnabel, Olivia Hussey is 71, Gregor Piatigorsky, Don Kirschner, William Holden, Harry Reasoner, Boomer Eiseason, Sean Bean is 63, Victoria Beckham, Martha Sigall, Ron Miller, Jennifer Garner is 50, Rooney Mara is 37.

161 AD- Today is the Feast of Saint Anictetus, who may have died a martyr's death in the reign of the Roman Emperor Antoninus, but more likely he was simply worn out over the argument about when exactly Easter should take place.

1421- Dort Dyke, one of the largest water barriers in Holland, ruptured and the ensuing flood killed thousands.

1492- After 8 years of interviews, waiting in antechambers and being laughed at and called crazy, King Ferdinand of Spain finally granted a commission for Christopher Columbus to outfit ships and sail west across the Unknown Ocean to find Asia. Ferdinand gave him a diplomatic letter for the Great Khan of Cathay- now called China. The legend of Queen Isabella pawning her jewels to give him money didn¹t happen. She suggested doing so, only to embarrass the Royal finance minister to accelerate Columbus’ funding.

1524- A French expedition led by Florentine navigator Giuseppe De Verrazano sailed into New York Harbor. He thought at first it was a lake. Verrazano claimed the lands for France but upon returning home found the French King Francis too busy with his wars in Germany and Italy to bother with discoveries in faraway TerraNuova. Verrazano was later eaten by cannibals in the Caribbean. The big harbor was forgotten until Henry Hudson with the Dutch came upon it 80 years later.
This is probably good in the long run because then New York Harbor would have been called the Bay of Angouleme, and Manhattan the Isle de Valois. The Indian settlement that would one day be Newport Connecticut, he called “Refugio”. The Verrazano Narrows Bridge at the mouth of New York Harbor, is named for him.

1525-THE MASSACRE OF WEINSBURG- Count Ludwig von Helfenshein was a German lord hated by his people for his cruel severity. This day the Great German Peasant Revolt army reached the walls of his castle at Weinsburg near Heilbronn. A small group under a flag of truce asked for a parley. Count Ludwig’s knights slew them.

So the peasant army with enthusiastic help from the townspeople stormed the town and captured the Count. Now he begged for his life and offered his entire fortune as ransom. But the peasants only wanted revenge. They made Count Helfensheim run a gauntlet of peasants armed with knives, pitchforks, scythes and axes. As he ran they chopped away at him they added their curses" You killed my father! You imprisoned my brother for not taking off his hat as you rode by!" etc. Then they slaughtered all the other nobles.

1534- Sir Thomas Moore the Chancellor of England was ordered to the Tower of London by King Henry VIII.

1656- Battle of Warka- Poles under Hetman Czarniecki defeated the Hungarians under Georgi Rackoszy.

1792- British Captain Vancouver explored Puget Sound. He founds a settlement and names it for then Prime Minister Granville. In 1886 Granville (sometimes called Gastown after Gassy-Jack the saloon keeper) was renamed Vancouver.

1770- At a dinner party in Versailles, Madame Necker, the wife of France¹s first minister, suggested a subscription be held for the great artist Pigalle to make a statue of old philosopher Francois Voltaire. Rousseau and King Frederick the Great of Prussia donated money. The bust of the smiling old cynic became one of the well-known images of the XVIII Century.

1793-The Battle of Warsaw- American Revolution hero Thaddeus Kozciuszko tried unsuccessfully to defend the Polish capitol from Catherine the Great’s Russian army led by Marshal Suvarov.

1800- The Senate passed a bill for the moving of the U.S. government from Philadelphia to the new Federal City, being called Washington D.C.

1808- Napoleon ordered US ships trading with England seized when entering French harbors.

1839- The Republic of Guatemala declared.

1861- The State of Virginia voted to secede from the United States and join the rebel Confederacy. Virginia, The largest and most populous Southern State had wavered undecided and in a preliminary vote had voted 2-1 not to leave. But the violence at Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops to put down rebellion made her decide to join her Southern brethren. Abe Lincoln now could see out of his White House office window a Confederate flag flapping in the breeze across the Potomac at Alexandria.

1865- In Washington DC At ten o¹clock in the evening Federal agents show up at Mary Surrat¹s Boarding House and arrest the remaining conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln: George Atzenrodt, Lewis Paine and Mrs Surrat. Their leader John Wilkes Booth with David Herold were on the run in the back country of Virginia. The four mentioned were hanged and a dozen others implicated were given prison sentences. But historians disagree about how extensive the conspiracy was. As Lewis Paine said when he was captured:" You don¹t know the half of it!" perhaps we never will.

1869- The first professional baseball game ever played saw the Cincinnati Reds defeat the rival Cincinnati Amateurs, 24-15.

1875- The billiard game Snooker was invented by Sir Joseph Chamberlain, the uncle of the future British Prime Minister.

1924- Metro Pictures, Goldwyn and Mayer Films all merged to become Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer. By 1940 MGM was the largest studio in Hollywood.

1929- Baseball great Babe Ruth married Ziegfeld Follies dancer Marge Colson in a morning ceremony. Then he drove to Yankee Stadium and hit a home run.

85 anniv. 1937 "Porky's Duck Hunt" The birth of Daffy Duck. One legendary story is that voice actor Mel Blanc designed Daffy’s distinctive lisp to be an impression of the Looney Tunes boss Leon Schlesinger. When they screened this cartoon all the artists stood in dread of how Leon would take the joke. Leon never made the connection that the Ducks voice was an imitation of him:" Gee Fellers, dat Duck iz pretty Ffffunny!"

1941-Yugoslavia surrendered to the Nazis. Serb guerillas rallied in the mountains and continued to fight under Josef Broz Tito.

1945- As Allied armies overran Germany, a massed raid of American bombers destroyed 752 German planes on the ground. This was all that was left of the Luftwaffe, once the world¹s largest air force.
At the same time Field Marshal Walter Model, who had been directing much of the German army operations in the west since Normandy, was sitting in a forest listening to Propaganda Chief Goebbels on the radio tell the German people that everything was going well. “ I’ve sacrificed my life to those bastards!” Model sighed. He then drew his pistol, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

1946- Syrian Independence Day. The last French colonial troops leave Damascus.

1960- Cleveland Indians traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers.

1961-THE BAY OF PIGS INVASION- The CIA started landing 1,400 anti-Castro Cuban fighters in La Bahia de los Cochinos. When John Kennedy became president he was shown a CIA plan that had been developed to land anti-Castro guerrillas in Cuba. Once there they would start a popular uprising to overthrow the cigar smoking commie. Kennedy went along with the plan, it failed and JFK looked bad, and South Florida has voted Republican ever since.

1964-The Ford Mustang introduced by Lee Iacocca.

1971- The song "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night tops the pop charts.

1975- The Khmer Rouge entered Pnom Penh, the Cambodian War ends. The Khmer Rouge led by a junta with Premier Pol Pot at it's head declare it to be Year Zero and began emptying the city people into the countryside. The holocaust known as Killing Fields began. When it was finally ended by a Vietnamese invasion a few years later, almost one third of Cambodia's population had been murdered, or driven into exile.

1987- Comedian Dick Shawn ­the Hippy-Hitler in the original Mel Brooks film the Producers- was doing his one-man show The Second Funniest Man in the World at UC San Diego. After one particularly funny punch line he fell over dead from a heart attack. The audience laughed and clapped for several more minutes because they thought it was part of the act.

1989-The Polish Government removes the ban on the Solidarity trade union. During the attempts to round up and imprison the ringleaders of the movement, one Zomo (secret police) got so close he had collared a man who leaped out of his jacket to escape. Later the same cop and dissident found themselves across a table discussing government powersharing. The cop nonchalantly mentioned:" Oh, by the way, here is your coat."

2011- The first episode of Game of Thrones premiered in the U.S. on HBO.
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Yesterday’s Question: In World War 2, Britain, France and America were called the Allies, and Germany, Italy and Japan were called the Axis. But in WWI Germany and Austria were called the Allies. What were Britain, France and America called?

Answer: The Grand Entente. ( not as catchy as The Grand Alliance, I know…)