Question: What does it mean to be parsimonious?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What us a Berserker?
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History for 2/15/2024
Birthdays: Galileo Galilei, Frederick Douglas, French King Louis XV, Michael Praetorius, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Tiffany, John Barrymore, Lillian Disney, Jane Seymour, Cesar Romero, Gale Sondergard, Melissa Manchester, Chris Farley, Claire Bloom, Chris MacDonald, Art Spiegelman is 76, Marissa Berenson is 77, Matt Groening is 70

980AD- Today is the Feast of Saint Sigfrid, an Englishman who became the patron saint of Sweden. At the invitation of Viking King Olaf Tryggvason, Sigfrid came north from Glastonbury and baptized Swedish King Olaf the White. Once when Sigfrid was away and his nephews minding his church, the pagans grabbed them and cut their heads off. Saint Sigfrid made the decapitated heads preach to the pagans about the coming Judgement Day. Musta scared the beejeezus out of them.

1720- Young Francois Voltaire had begun a career as a successful playwright with his first play Oedipe. But his second play Artemire was booed as loudly as his first play was cheered. The irate playwright ran up on stage and argued with the audience for over an hour, but the audience still thought his play stunk.

1764-The town of Saint Louis, Missouri was established by French fur trappers (les voyageurs) up from New Orleans, led by Pierre Laclede Ligueste.

1793- Revolutionary France adopted the tricolor flag. After Waterloo, royalists tried to go back to the white with gold Fleur du Lys banner. But from 1848 on the Tricolor remained the national banner of the French nation.

1815- Things on the Island of Elba had gotten so quiet that the British officer in charge of Napoleon's exile, Sir Colin Campbell, informed his prisoner he was going on holiday to see his girlfriend in Italy. Napoleon asked, “Will you be back by the 28th? “Yes, why?” Oh, nothing. it's just my sister Princess Pauline is planning a party and we'd hate for you to miss it." But Napoleon was actually plotting to escape to France and re-conquer Europe. Pauline had her party on the 25th. On the 28th Sir Colin Campbell returned from his holiday to find his prisoner, and his military career, had flown the coup.

1836- The Mexican Army of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna crossed the Rio Grande into the rebellious state of Texas. Santa Anna had mortgaged his own lands back home and put his field hands into uniform to bolster up the ranks of his army.

1861- When Texas joined the Confederacy, US frontier fort commanders worried about how to proceed. This day without waiting for orders, General William Twiggs surrendered all his army posts and war material of the Department of Texas to the new Confederate Government. The rebels gained tons of munitions and guns, and even some Egyptian camels from a failed experiment to introduce them to American deserts. President Elect-Abe Lincoln called Twiggs a traitor, and Twiggs responded by trying to unsuccessfully challenge outgoing President Buchanan to a duel.

1862- Battle of Valverde New Mexico- Pro Confederate Texans fought Pro-Union Colorado and New Mexico militia in a sleepy adobe village. Texans captured 4 Yankee brass cannon and dragged them back to San Antonio. The Valverde Guns became a famous Texas unit.

1879- President Rutherford Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases in U.S. law courts, even though they still were not allowed to vote.

1898- The U.S.S. Battleship MAINE EXPLODED in Havana Harbor, killing 252 sailors. The cause was never confirmed, it may have been a spontaneous igniting of fumes in the gunpowder magazine, but the American public was urged to blame Spanish sabotage.
The next day a motor launch out to the site of the disaster rescued the ships cat clinging to the mainmast protruding from the water. U.S. public opinion against Spain was pushed by "yellow journalists" like William Randolph Hearst and Josef Pulitzer. Hearst said “ The Maine is a wonderful thing.” When Pulitzer’s correspondent, artist Frederick Remington arrived in Cuba, he reported home, “There is no war down here.” Pulitzer responded, "You supply the pictures, I'll supply the war."
American expansionists had been planning a war with Spain since 1896 and had tried to pick a fight over Cuba in 1871 and 1874. President McKinley, who Teddy Roosevelt described as having:"no more backbone than a chocolate éclair" gave in and declared War on Spain to cries of "Remember the Maine!". More Americans were killed on the USS Maine than in the entire Spanish American War, which was fought and over by December of that same year. America emerged as a power player on the world stage.

1903- British Major General Hector MacDonald was one of the most famous soldiers of the Victorian Era. “Fighting Mac” had laughed in the face of fierce Afghan tribesmen, Boer bullets, and Dervish’s spears, and always triumphed.
But he had a secret. The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name. He married young but abandoned his wife and son, and now sought only the company of men. This day while serving as military commander of Ceylon, a leading cleric and several boys accused General MacDonald of homosexuality. Gays in the British Empire were not uncommon- Gordon of Khartoum, Cecil Rhodes of South Africa, even Earl Kitchener of Omdurman were known to prefer men to women. But never in the open. MacDonald tried to flee to England on medical leave, but the General Staff ordered him to return and clear his name in a court martial. Instead, MacDonald went into his office and put his service revolver to his temple. All Edinburgh turned out for his funeral.
Still friends and admirers refused to admit he was gone. There was a rumor that a successful World War I German General von Mackensen was actually MacDonald under an alias, since von Mackensen stayed in the Balkans and never faced English troops in battle.

1933- ATTEMPTED ASSASINATION OF FDR- In Miami, unemployed anarchist Giuseppe Zangara shot a pistol at President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a rally in Chicago. He missed FDR but killed the Mayor of Chicago Anton Czermak. Giuseppe
Zangara was tried and sent to the electric chair by the following month.

1942- Japanese troops captured Singapore. The British were confident the Japanese couldn't get an army through the thick Malaysian jungle, so they concentrated their heavy guns facing out to sea. Gen. Yamashita, the "Tiger of Malaya" put his army on bicycles and with light tanks burst through the jungle and breached the cities defenses from the weaker land side. The “Gibraltar of the East’ fell with depressing speed – Prime Minister Winston Churchill admitted he was humiliated. He felt the defeat had shown the world just how old and brittle the British Empire had become.

1947- The British had administered the Palestinian territories like a colony of the Empire since the end of World War I. But faced with a shattered post World War 2 economy, fed up with Arab-Jewish terrorism and the mortification of having to put Jewish Holocaust survivors back into camps, this day the British Government announced it was going to leave the Palestine Mandate. The new United Nations could have the whole Arab-Israeli mess and bugger off!

1947- During the anti-Communist witch hunt, the FBI revoked the visa of famed documentary filmmaker and founder of the National Film Board of Canada, John Grierson because they thought his personal politics were too lefty.

1950- Walt Disney’s Cinderella opened in theaters. After financially skirting close to the ground through most of the 1940s Cinderella marked a return to classic fairy tales and a return to unqualified success. It was one of the top box office movies of 1950 and earned three Academy Award nominations. “ Bibbity-Boppity-Boo.”

1954- Future President and b-movie star Ronald Reagan tried doing a stand-up act at the Las Vegas Ramona Room with the "Honey Brothers", a comedy troupe similar to Abbot & Costello.

1965- Canada adopted the Maple Leaf flag. It did not completely replace the Dominion Flag until 1979.

1967- The first Super Bowl was played at the LA Colosseum. Green Bay Packers 35, Kansas City Chiefs 10.

1973- Actor and animation voice Wally Cox (Underdog, Mr Peepers, The Boatniks) was found in his LA apartment dead of a heart attack. He was 48. He was a close friend of Marlon Brando. It is said Brando kept a jar of Wally’s ashes and would occasionally be seen talking to it.

1984- Touchstone Pictures created, so the Walt Disney Company could do more adult PG movies. Their first film was Splash, starring a tastefully topless mermaid Darryl Hannah.

1989- The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan.

1991- In a speech, President George H. W. Bush invited dissidents in Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He declared, “The Day of the Dictator is Over!” Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Marsh Arabs rose in revolt, confident the US would back them. The US instead ignored them and left them to be bombed and nerve-gassed by Saddam’s Republican Guard. Thousands died, and the dictator remained for another ten years.

1994- After months of insane bidding, Viacom’s Sumner Redstone beat out QVC’s Barry Diller to buy Paramount Pictures. The cost was $20 billion, although the studio’s net worth was estimated at $8 billion. When asked, Diller replied: “What’s done is done. Next.”

2002- Scientists announced the first discovery of fossilized dinosaur vomit.

2003- Millions of protesters march in cities from Hollywood to New York, Kyiv to Capetown to Tokyo to protest US plans to attack Iraq. Nearly a million and a half people marched in London alone. Pres. Bush invaded anyway.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What us a Berserker?

Answer: Among Viking warriors, going berserk was when you got so psyched up by hand to hand combat you lost consciousness and became a fighting machine. “ battle madness.” Warriors would later not remember what they did. Vikings considered it a holy state of Odin. Although Vikings would help induce this state by taking magic mushrooms.

Quiz: What us a Berserker?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What cities’ nickname is The Jaw?
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History for 2/14/2024
Birthdays: Joshua Norton aka Joshua I Emperor of the United States 1819, Jack Benny- real name Benjamin Koubielsky, Frederick Douglas, Christopher Latham Scholes- inventor of the typewriter, George Washington Ferris inventor of the Ferris Wheel, Pier Francesco Cavalli, Jimmy Hoffa, Vic Morrow, Skeezix Wallet (character in Gasoline Alley comic strip), Gregory Hines, Ignaz Friedman, Thelma Ritter, Carl Andersen, Hugh Downs, Jim Kelly, Florence Henderson, Meg Tilly, Alan Parker, Simon Pegg is 53,
Margaret Knight the inventor of the flat bottom paper bag. The character Lara Croft, is 56.

Happy Valentines Day!

This holiday was originally the Roman fertility festival LUPERCALIA, when the young men of Rome wearing nothing but olive oil, would run through the streets waving oak branches over the heads of young girls to inspire fertility. They also spanked each other with little leather whips. Then they would all go to the orgy.
Keeping with the custom of the early Church to sanctify pagan holidays with saints days, Pope Gelasius I decided to rename the holiday for St.Valentine, who was martyred by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus in 295 A.D.. The olive oil, whips and orgy were out, but tradition has it that Valentine in prison kept communicating with his flock by writing little notes and tossing them through the bars. The notes were written on little leaves (silphium) that are the familiar heart shape we use today (which looks nothing like an anatomical heart.). These notes or "Valentines" fused with the romance notion of the old Roman party and became a custom for lovers as early as the 14th century.

44BC- After years of Civil War Gaius Julius Caesar was now master of Rome. He kept most of the institutions of the Roman Republic but declared himself Dictator and Consul for life like his mentor Sulla had done. He had been heard to say “the Republic is just a word, without real substance”. People wondered if he was out to make himself king. The concept of a King was hateful to most Romans, regardless of their political party.
This day at a Lupercalia celebration one of his biggest brown-nosing lieutenants, Marc Antony, publicly tried to put a crown on Caesar’s head. Caesar refused it twice. Instead of popular enthusiasm, this gesture alarmed many. A conspiracy formed to kill Caesar led by Marcus Brutus, a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the republic, and Gaius Cassius Longinus, who had fought for Pompey against Caesar.

Today in the Orthodox calendar is the Feast of Saint’s Cyril & Methodius, the Apostles to the Slavs, who created the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet out of Greek and Hebrew characters.

1779- Captain James Cook was killed by angry Hawaiian natives after an argument over hostages. Despite heavy attack the shore party rallied and fought their way back to the longboats thanks to their second in command, ensign William Bligh, the future Captain Bligh of the Bounty.

1797- Battle of Cape St. Vincent. The British Navy under Admiral Jervis defeated a Spanish fleet off the coast of Portugal. Admiral Nelson was there in support.

1814- Battle of Vauchamps. Napoleon beats Marshal Blucher and his invading Prussian army. Blucher was called Old Fowvarts (Forward) because that was his favorite command.

1824- KING CAUCUS- Just in case you wished for a more innocent time in American politics, consider this election. A group of powerful Congressmen of the dominant Whig party tried to predetermine that the next president would be easy to control by nominating William Crawford, who was blind and paralyzed from a stoke. Remember in those days of poor communications most citizens would never even see a President except for an artist's engraving in a newspaper.
The scheme was foiled and John Quincy Adams was elected president, even though more people voted for Andrew Jackson. This was done via another scheme hatched with Henry Clay that had manipulated entire states into his camp when not one soul had voted for him, then traded them to Adams for the Secretary of State job.
The later angry public outrage over "King Caucus" led to liberalization of the election process. Jackson easily defeated Adams re-election bid in 1828.

1848- President James Knox Polk is the first sitting president to sit for a photograph. The daguerreotype was taken by a young Matthew Brady. John Quincy Adams was the earliest former president to be photographed.

1859- Oregon became a state.

1870- The first elevated commuter railway was inaugurated in New York City at Greenwich and 9 Ave.

1876- THE TELEPHONE- One of the strangest coincidences in technology history was that two men invented the same device at almost the same moment.
Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell in Boston and Elijah Gray in Chicago were both working on a device to transmit human voices instantaneously over electric wires. Each knew of the others work and labored furiously to be the first. When Bell was able to get a weak sound of his voice over the wire his sponsor and future father in law Robert Hubbard wanted to file the patent. But Bell procrastinated until he felt it was perfect. Exasperated, Hubbard took the schematics and went himself to the office to file the patent. What he found out later, was he filed the patent barely two hours ahead of Gray in Chicago! Bell’s patent was granted on March 7.
Gray tried to challenge the patent. US courts decided that since Grays attorney had filed a “caveat” to a patent- which meant I’m working on an idea” while Hubbard & Bell filed a patent “I’ve invented the idea”, they awarded the patent to Bell. Elijah Gray still went on to invent more things, founded the Western Electric Company and grew very rich. But Alexander Graham Bell got the immortality as inventor of the telephone.

1884- 25 year old Teddy Roosevelt was an up and coming member of the New York State legislature. On this day he received a double shock - both his mother and young wife died on the same day. Shattered, he abandoned his political career and fled to the Badlands of North Dakota to be a rancher and deputy sheriff. He said the landscape was so bleak it "looked like the personification of a poem by Edgar Alan Poe." He became President at age 41.

1886- Los Angeles began to export its first trainload of oranges back east.

1887- Several leading French intellectuals including Honore’ Balzac, and Charles Gounod published a letter to the President of the Republic begging him NOT to build the Eiffel Tower. "A Useless Monstrosity, which even America with it's crazed passion for commerce has the sense to reject! And what if it lasts 20 years?" There were plans to pull down the Eiffel tower 1907, but by then it had gained a new purpose as a radio antenna.
Novelist Guy de Maupassant, hated the tower but still went to its restaurant every day. When asked why, he said, "Because it is the only place in Paris where I cannot see it".

1907- Golden Books incorporated. One of their artists was Gustav Tennegren, who would become a key stylist of Walt Disney's Snow White and Pinocchio.

1917- I.A. Lilly became the first female N.Y. subway train conductor.

1919- THE SPARTACISTS- The government offices in Berlin are seized by Communists. Inspired by the Revolution in Russia they try to declare the Soviet Republic of Germany. They called themselves Spartacists after Spartacus the leader of the slave rebellion against ancient Rome. Right-wing paramilitary private militias called frei-korps led by former Imperial officers entered the city and battled the Bolsheviks for control of the streets. One of the reasons why businessmen in the west were later so cozy with Hitler was their relief that Germany didn’t turn into another Soviet Union.

1920- The League of Women Voters formed.

1927-Alfred Hitchcock’s first suspense film “The Lodger” opened in London.

1929- Dr. Fleming discovered penicillin.

1929- the ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE- Scarface Al Capone's men dressed as Chicago police rounded up a bunch of Bugs Moran's hoods at the S.M.C. Cartage Company garage at 2122 North Clark Street and blew them away with tommy guns. Capone subcontracted the job to Detroit’s Purple Gang. The seven men had 200 bullets in them. They even shot their dog. Dr Reinhardt Schwimmer, one of the men killed, wasn’t even a mobster but an optometrist who liked to hang out with gangsters to experience life on the edge. When Bugs Moran was asked who he thought had done it, he replied: ”Only Capone kills like that.” Big Al himself was in Key Biscayne Florida having lunch with the Dade County District Attorney.
One of the triggermen was Machine-gun Jack McGurn, but when questioned by police his girlfriend testified he had been in bed with her all that day. Newspapers called her his 'Blonde-Alibi". Machine Gun McGurn was bumped off shortly after.
At the massacre site amazingly one gangster- Joe Duesenberg- lived long enough for police to question. But to the end he wouldn't spill the beans. When asked who shot him full of bullets, he replied:" Nobody!" and died.

1931- Tod Browning's film of the play Dracula, starring Hungarian actor's union organizer and recreational morphine addict Bela Lugosi, premiered.

1939- The German battleship Bismarck christened in Kiel harbor.

1941- Mickey Mouse cartoon The Little Whirlwind, was released.

1942- Japanese forces attacked Sumatra.

1943- Battle of the Kasserine Pass began- Rommel the Desert Fox gave the U.S. Army in Africa it's baptism by ambushing it in the narrow Kasserine Pass. The only time in WW2 American troops broke and ran in panic.

1946- John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert unveiled the ENIAC, the first all electronic circuited computer, started up at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator.

1949- The United States charged that the Soviet Union had as many as 14 million people in prison camps in Siberia, called Gulags.

1962- First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave a tour to network television cameras of the private living quarters of the White House. It’s the first time most Americans had ever seen the inside of the Executive Mansion. She worked mostly without a script, adding her own details as she went along. The day after the broadcast, Pres. Kennedy called the FCC just to see how her Nielsen ratings were. They were much higher than his speeches ever were.

1965- The Detroit home of black activist Malcolm X was firebombed.

1967- Former kinky pinup model Betty Page married Harry Lear and became a born-again Christian.

1968- Part of the Vietnamese Tet Offensive was the Communists overrunning the old Imperial Capitol of Hue. This day US Marines finally recaptured the cities Imperial citadel after weeks of bitter street fighting. The Communist command center was set up in a throne room called the Place of Perpetual Peace.

1979- Digital music composer Walter Carlos, who scored the film A Clockwork Orange, announced he had a trans operation and was now Wendy Carlos.

1989- Iranian Imam Ayatollah Khomeni issued a 'fatwah' -death sentence against Pakistani born novelist Salman Rushdi because he considered parts of his book "The Satanic Verses" to an insult to the prophet Mohammed. The fatwah was finally revoked in 2000 by the Supreme Islamic Council (Iran's equivalent of the Supreme Court).

1990- As the Voyager 1 spacecraft was leaving our solar system, Dr. Carl Sagan had the spaceship look back and take a family photo of our planet system, 3.7 billion miles away. A few faint dots on a distant sunbeam.

1991-Meg Ryan married Dennis Quaid. The divorced a few years later.

2005- Steve Chen, Chad Harley and Jared Karan started You Tube.
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Yesterday’s Question: What cities’ nickname is The Jaw?

Answer: Moose Jaw, Manitoba.

Quiz: What cities’ nickname is The Jaw?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is an amphora?
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History for 2/13/2024
Birthdays: Giambattista Piazzetta, Bess Truman, Grant Wood, Lord Randolph Churchill, Fyodor Chaliapin, Peter Tork, Oliver Reed, Chuck Yeager, Woody Hayes, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Carol Lynley, Kim Novak is 91, George Segal, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Springer, Stockard Channing is 80, Kelly Hu, Mena Suvari

Happy International Radio Day!

1503- This day during the endless wars of the Italian Renaissance, outside the town of Barletta things were interrupted by a unique event. Angered by a French captain who said that Italians were all sissy-girlie-men, thirteen Italian knights challenged thirteen French knights to mano-a-mano single combat. Both armies lined up and cheered like a sporting event. The knights fought until all thirteen Frenchmen were down.

1542- Catherine Howard, the 5th wife of Henry VIII was beheaded. The execution was held on the exact spot where wife Number 2 Anne Boleyn was beheaded six years before.

1635- The Boston Public School for Boys opened. The first public school America.

1692- THE GLENCOE MASSACRE. Pro-English Scottish forces tried to make the Highlands accept King William of Orange, and renounce allegiance to the Stuart dynasty by singling out a particularly rowdy clan for annihilation. The MacDonalds of Glencoe were smaller than the MacDonalds of Keppoch, so they were to be the example. Ironically the leader of the clan was trying to get King James in exile to release him from his oath of obedience, when the soldiers of Clan Argyll and Campbell came visiting.
The soldiers used the highland tradition of hospitality to gain entrance into the MacDonald hall, then started slaughtering everyone just when their hosts were bringing out the wine. This blatant betrayal of hospitality and the magnitude of the massacre backfired on the perpetrators and made Glencoe a bitter symbol of Scottish Nationalism.

1693- The Virginia College William & Mary founded.

1742- After governing for 20 years, the first English Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, stepped down when his Tory government lost its majority.

1765- Dr. Benjamin Franklin stood up in the British House of Commons and argued the justice of the American protest of the Royal Stamp Act, against all the government MP’s. He won and the hated Act was repealed. This probably delayed the American Revolution for a decade.

1820- Five years after Waterloo, and twenty-five after the French Revolution guillotined his great uncle, the Duc de Berry, the heir apparent of France was assassinated outside of the Paris Opera by a republican terrorist. The Bourbon family’s survival would now depend on the minor branch, the House of Orleans.
In the meantime, Napoleon was sitting in exile on the equatorial island of St. Helena. If you are a fan of the "Napoleon was poisoned theory", modern scientists doing radioactive analysis of hair samples noted that after this incident the arsenic content in Napoleon's body goes up 150%.

1863- President Lincoln hosted a wedding reception at the White House for P.T. Barnum star attraction General Tom Thumb and his bride. Lincoln was heavily criticized by his political opponents for having such a frivolous party during the depths of the Civil War.

1866-The first daylight bank job. In Missouri, the Clay County Savings Bank is robbed of $60,000 by a young ex confederate guerrilla named Jesse James.

1867- The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss Jr premiered in Vienna. Brahms was a personal friend of Strauss. An anecdote from the time is that Strauss's stepdaughter approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan. Brahms inscribed a few measures from the "Blue Danube," and then wrote beneath it: "Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms."

1886- Artist Thomas Eakins resigned in disgust his professorship at the Philadelphia Academy of Art when he was criticized for allowing women students in his class drawing male nudes. At that time the men still were not fully nude but wore a kind of thong with a pouch covering their junk.

1914- ASCAP founded.

1917- Beautiful spy Mata Hari was arrested in Paris. Known in Berlin as agent H-21.

1926- Walt Disney and his young crew move into their new studio at Hyperion and Griffith Park Ave. They’d call it the Hyperion Studio. They worked there until 1939 when they moved to Burbank.

1932- Free Eats, the first Our Gang short comedy to feature George “Spanky” MacFarland.

1933- comic strip character Blondie married Dagwood Bumstead.

1939- Producer David O. Selznick replaced directors on Gone With the Wind. George Cukor was out, Victor Fleming was in after completing The Wizard of Oz. Vivien Leigh liked Cukor who was known for directing women, but Clark Gable convinced the producers that the film needed an action director. About 15 minutes of George Cukor’s work remains in the picture. Victor Fleming loved Gable, but didn't get along with Vivien Leigh and came to hate the controlling Selznick. David O. brought in Sam Wood to direct second unit when Fleming fell behind schedule.
At the end Victor Fleming blew his stack when Selznick proposed giving Wood and Cukor equal co- screen credit. This was all before DGA contract credits were established. Today, Victor Fleming is recognized the director of record. Yet despite it all, Gone with the Wind became a box office smash. For many years critics and polls declared it the greatest Hollywood movie ever made. A decade after its release, Clark Gable went up to David O. Selznick at a party and said: "Maybe I'm wrong about disliking you David, 'Gone With the Wind' keeps getting re-released and keeps me a star."

1935- German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptman found guilty of the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby and electrocuted. Up until the end he kept declaring his innocence. The chief of police in the town of Bergen New Jersey where the murder occurred was the father of Desert Storm General Norman Schwarzkopf.

1937- Hal Foster's comic book hero Prince Valiant first appeared.

1945- THE FIREBOMBING OF DRESDEN. Some experts say the annihilation of this militarily defenseless city was an act of revenge for Rotterdam and Coventry, the fact was at the Yalta conference several days earlier Stalin had asked that the major German cities on his eastern front be bombed by his Anglo-American Allies to delay Nazi divisions withdrawn from Norway and Holland to be used to slow the Red Army 's advance. Dresden was to be a major assembly point for these new reinforcements. Still, it's a legacy the Allies find troubling.
On this day in the early evening, 845 British bombers followed by 700 American dropped thousands of tons of incendiary bombs in a pattern calculated to cause a firestorm. The temperature reached 800f degrees, the church bells melted, and the oxygen was literally sucked out of the air by cyclonic winds. By conservative estimate 35,000-100,000 people were killed. Young American P.O.W. Kurt Vonnengut was in a group made to help dig out bodies. The experience changed his life, and he later wrote his accounts in the classic anti-war novel "Slaughterhouse-5"

1959 -Happy Birthday BARBIE! Mattel introduced the plastic nymph, from a German doll named 'Bild Lilli" based on a character in a comic strip by Reinhard Beuthin. Mattel co-owner Ruth Handler had it re-designed and changed to 'Barbie" after the nickname of her daughter Barbara.

1964- The Invention of Cool Whip.

1972-“ Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome….” The movie Cabaret with Liza Minelli and Joel Grey opened in theaters.

1976- While working on The Rescuers, famed Disney animator John Lounsbery suddenly passed away. He was 64.

1996- The off-Broadway musical Rent by John Lawson premiered. Lawson spent years working as a waiter, living in poverty in a cold water flat in lower New York. Hoping for his big break. 36 year old John Lawson died of an aneurism just three months before Rent opened. It made him world famous, earned Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize, and made $250 million. His story was told in the 2022 Lin Manuel Miranda film tik-tik-Boom.

2016- Disney’s Zootopia premiered in Brussels. Directed by Rich Moore and Byron Howard. It opened in the U.S. on March 4.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is an amphora?

Answer: A clay jug used for stacking, storing and transporting liquids and grain in the Ancient Greek world. The ancient equivalent of a storage barrel. Plural- amphorae.

Quiz: What is an amphora?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: To be on The Road to Perdition. What does that mean?
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History for 2/12/2024
BIRTHDAYS-Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin are born on the same day in 1809, although an ocean apart; Austrian Emperor Francis II, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Joe Garagiola, Luigi Boccherini, John L. Lewis, Bill Russell, Franco Zeffirelli, Rudy Larriva, Lorne Greene, Joe Don Baker, Arsenio Hall, Christina Ricci is 44, Josh Brolin is 56.

333BC- Estimated date that Alexander the Great took time out from his war with Persia to travel out into the Sahara Desert to visit the oracle of Amun-Ra at Siwa. There the oracle declared him to be the living son of Zeus-Amun. Back in Athens someone said to the politician Demosthenes, “Did you hear? Alexander the Macedonian says he is now the son of Zeus.” Demosthenes shrugged, “If he wants to be son of Zeus, so let him be son of Zeus. Son of Apollo, too.” (Plutarch)

4th Century- Today is the feast day of Saint Julian the Hospitaller- Julian was a nobleman who one day when arrived home to his castle, mistook his parents for intruders and killed them. He was so distraught he ran off into the woods and became a hermit, helping people across a wild river. One day he helped a leper across who turned out to be an angel. He said:" Julian. God has forgiven you." He is the patron saint of travelers and ferrymen.

1502- Ferdinand and Isabella had thrown all the Jews out of Spain, now what about the Muslims? This day all Muslims not accepting baptism were given until April 30th to leave the country. They complained that when the Moors ruled they tolerated all religions, but the Spanish monarchs were deaf to all entreaties. Up to 3 million Moors eventually left. A century later, French Cardinal Richelieu called the Edict of 1502 "the most barbarous act in history."

1554- Lady Jane Grey was beheaded after being queen of England for nine days. This poor 16 year old kid was a pawn in the power struggle after the death of Henry VIII's sickly son Edward. The Protestant court knew the real next in line was the Catholic Mary Tudor, and Princess Elizabeth wisely kept a low profile, for now. Archbishop Cranmer and the Seymour clan pushed forward this cousin as a serious claim to the throne. It didn't wash and Mary became queen and earned the name "Bloody Mary", not for her ability to mix a cocktail. Jane went to the block as did Cranmer, and many others.

1709- Sir Alexander Selkirk shipped out for the South Pacific on a Chilean schooner. During the voyage he got into an altercation with the eccentric captain who marooned him on a deserted island. That ship later sank and the crew imprisoned in Peru. Selkirk survived on his own for four years on goats until he was rescued by a passing British ship that saw his signal fire. His story became the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's book-"Robinson Crusoe".

1789- Ethan Allen, the frontiersman whose Green Mountain Boys were heroes of the American Revolution, died from injuries gotten from drunkenly falling out of a sleigh crossing frozen Lake Champlain. His last words were when someone said, "Ethan, the Angels await thee…." Allen replied:" They do? Well, goddamn 'em, let em wait!"

1790- In Philadelphia, a group of Pennsylvania Quakers presented a petition to the US Congress calling for the abolition of slavery. But the real sensation was that the bill was written and endorsed by Benjamin Franklin. The octogenarian patriot regretted sweeping the slavery issue under the rug in the past, and now at the end of his life he wanted to show where he stood. It was Franklin’s last public act. Three weeks later he died. The furious debate in Congress almost split the brand-new government. Finally, the Senate chose to do nothing, and let the issue pass for a future time.

1793- Congress enacted the Fugitive Slave Law, making it a crime for anyone to help a slave trying to get away to freedom.

1797- First performance of the German national anthem. Composer Franz Josef Haydn was worried about the spirit of the French Revolution radicalizing the Austrian peoples. When in London he saw how the anthem God Save the King brought all Englishmen together in song. He thought his country could use a good song, too. So with poet Leopold Hashka and an old Croat drinking song, Haydn composed GOTT ERHALTE FRANZ DER KAISER! God Bless Our Kaiser Francis. It was later renamed Deutschland Uber Alles and Deutschlandlied.

1798- LORD NELSON AND MRS. HAMILTON DO THE NASTY... Admiral Horatio Nelson had been increasingly shivering his timbers over his friend Sir William Hamilton's sexy young wife Emma. He was staying with the Hamilton’s in their villa in Naples during his tour of duty in the Mediterranean. According to historians analyzing their love letters to each other, Emma and Nelson make specific references to the 'Delightful Twelfth of February", and Mrs. Hamilton bore a daughter nine months later she named Horatia. Their open love affair in the face of polite society was one of the scandals of the age.

1809 -Happy Lincoln's Birthday, Because of Richard Nixon’s 1970 law creating President’s Day you do not have today off as a holiday. One of my favorite Lincoln quotes is:" Some people say I’m two-faced. If I'm supposed to be two-faced, why did I settle for this one?"

1814-Battle of Chateau-Thierry- Napoleon defeated somebody yet again.

1817- Battle of Chacabuco- Argentine leader Jose de San Martin defeated the Spanish Royalist Army.

1839- The Aroostook War- Maine and New Brunswick lumberjacks scuffle over their border. There was a lot of war talk but not much else happened.

1909- African American civil rights leaders like W.E.B. DuBois and Oswald Villard call for a new militant organization to combat the growing violence against black people. the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP is born.

1912- Following Dr Sun Yat Sen’s declaration of the Republic of China, the last Manchu Emperor, Henry Pu Yi abdicated his throne.

1924- RHAPSODY IN BLUE- Band leader Paul Whiteman had commissioned a rhapsody for Jazz Band from the famous composer George Gershwin. Tonight at a concert at the Aeolian Hall in New York City it premiered in a long bill of "Modern Music". Also on the bill was jazz interpretations of "Yes We have no Bananas" and "Kitten on the Keys." Sergei Rachmaninoff, Fritz Kriesler, Igor Stravinsky and Leopold Stokowski were in attendance.
Gershwin’s orchestrator was Ferde Grofe’, the composer famous for the Grand Canyon Suite. It was Grofes’ idea to bring in a jazzman named Ross Gorman to do the opening clarinet solo. While rehearsing the piece, Gorman took Gershwin’s opening 17 note ascent and ‘smeared’ the riff to the long high note, creating the famous opening. Gershwin liked it so much he told him to play it always that way.
Gershwin was originally going to call his piece Concert Rhapsody for Jazz Band & Piano or American Rhapsody. But his brother Ira Gershwin was inspired by some Whistler paintings he saw at a museum called Nocturne in Blue and Green and Harmony in Grey and Green. He suggested Rhapsody in Blue.

1941- General Irwin Rommel landed in North Africa to take over the Italian forces and his new Afrika Korps. Using lightning tactics and brilliant improvisation in the desert he became legendary as the "Desert Fox". He took over from an Italian general named Barbazioli, who because of his wild facial hair was nicknamed "Electric Whiskers".

1947- THE BIRTH OF THE 'NEW LOOK' The Paris fashion show where designer Christian Dior defined the look for women of the 1950s into the early 60's: Wasp waists, gloves and patent leather accessories, pleated mid length skirts.

1964- Miles Davis and his band played Carnegie Hall.

1967- The Redlands Bust. Police arrested Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Marianne Faithful for doing LSD among other drugs. Marianne had just taken a bath and was wearing nothing but a fur throw rug, which he let drop in front of the constables. It was when the British public first saw how extensive the use of drugs among pop stars was.

1976- actor Sal Mineo was killed outside his car port in West Hollywood. Marilyn Monroe and Shelley Winters once shared an apartment in the same building. Mineo's murder remained unsolved for many years. There were rumors that he was done in by a gay acquaintance, but the killer turned out to be a routine robber who wanted money.

1986- Since 1977 Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was imprisoned for demanding the right for Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel. This day he was freed by Soviet Premier Mikail Gorbachov. Scharansky moved to Israel, changed his name to Natan, converted to a conservative branch of Judaism and got involved in Likud politics.

1994-"WHY ME! WHY ME?!" The Winter Olympics at Lillehammer began, which are remembered mainly for figure skater Tanya Harding hiring a hit man to break her rival Nancy Kerrigan's kneecaps with a steel pipe. Despite all the hub-bubb, the gold was won by Ukrainian skater Oksana Baiyul who was arrested a year later for drunk driving.
Nancy Kerrigan signed a multi-million dollar endorsement contract with Disney, which she succeeded in blowing within a month by making fun of Disneyworld during a parade. Within range of a microphone she whispered." This is all so corny! I can’t believe I’m doing this." When someone asked if Tanya Harding could get any commercial endorsements, it was pointed out that she was an asthmatic who smokes Marlboros.

1999- President Bill Clinton was acquitted in his Impeachment trial in the Senate stemming from his affair with young intern Monica Lewinsky. During the trial, word leaked out that several of the president’s chief critics like Representative Robert Livingston and Newt Gingrich also had extramarital affairs or sexually harassed their female employees. Chief Justice William Rheinquist, high on painkillers, presided over the trial with his dark Justices’ robes adorned with some gold stripes on the sleeves, the first time any Supreme Court Justice robes had any such adornment. He got the idea watching the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Iolanthe.
The Parker Pen Company had created special monogrammed pens for the Senator’s use during the trial. But when the pens were used it was discovered they all had the name United States misspelled on them- they read the Untied States of America. Others said it was a fitting statement on the state of the government at the time.
1999- Rushmore released, the first quirky movie by quirky director Wes Anderson.
2001- The Near Spacecraft landed on Eros, an orbiting asteroid. The first
landing on an asteroid.

2006- New York City has a record breaking snowfall of almost 27 inches.

2010- Happy Death Ray Day. A USAF high intensity laser beam shot down a missile in flight.
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Yesterday’s Question: To be on The Road to Perdition. What does that mean?

Answer: Perdition came from an old word that meant to be separated from God. So you are on the road away from God.

Quiz: To be on The Road to Perdition. What does that mean?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Who were The Hollywood Ten?
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History for 2/11/2024
Birthdays: Thomas Edison, Leslie Nielsen, Eva Gabor, Rudolph Firkusny, Joe Mankiewicz, Sidney Sheldon, Burt Reynolds, Sergio Mendes of the band Brazil 66, animator Al Eugster, Brandy Norwood, Bobby Picket -who recorded the Monster Mash, Tina Louise-Ginger on Gilligan’s Island is 90, Jennifer Aniston is 55, Sheryl Crow is 62

11AD- In order to become his heir, Augustus’ stepson Tiberius had to marry Augustus’ only daughter Julia. Tiberius was angry he had to divorce his wife Druxilla whom he actually loved. Julia despised Tiberius and scandalized her dad with her affairs.

1759- A Danish importer on the Caribbean Island of Saint Croix named Johann Michael Lavien filed for divorce against his estranged wife Rachael Faucette. She had been living on the isle of Nevis with a Scotsman named James Hamilton and had two children with him. Johann Lavien asserted in the court papers that his wife was a Scarlet Woman, and so her spawn were "Whore-Children". The divorce was granted and James Hamilton abandoned his little family. One of the little ‘whore-children" was Alexander Hamilton- future American patriot, and the hottest ticket on Broadway.

1789- In Italy, American consul William Short wrote his friend Thomas Jefferson that as per his request he had obtained for him a pasta mold. The first known introduction of pasta in America.

1801- THE FIRST DEADLOCKED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION decided in the House of Representatives after 35 separate votes were held. Upstart Aaron Burr managed to come out of nowhere and put together enough anti-Jefferson and anti-Adams votes to tie the election with Thomas Jefferson. President John Adams and Senator Charles Pickney were a distant 3rd and 4th. Former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton was furious that fellow New Yorker Burr threatened to eclipse his power. New York and Pennsylvania were the swing votes in any deal between Yankee New England and the South. Since foreign born Hamilton could never be President, he liked to play kingmaker.
So in retaliation Hamilton gave Adam's 36 electoral votes to Thomas Jefferson, not out of any love for him, but just to screw Burr. Cranky old John Adams was furious that he was rejected by the public: "Damn Them! Damn Them! Anyone can see this elective government won’t work!" He took his sweet time moving out of the White House, making the president-elect wait in a tavern. All this political chicanery doomed the Federalists, the first American political party, and Burr would get his revenge on Hamilton with pistols in 1804.

1812- Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting act that divided up his state into politically convenient if geographically tortuous congressional districts. In England such juggling of the voting populace to ensure your candidate’s election was called a "Rotten Borough", in America it became named for this governor- Gerrymandering.

1814- Battle of Montmiral. During the battle Napoleon saw a cannon emplacement in such a dangerously exposed position that all it's crew was dead or wounded. He dismounted his horse and proceeded to aim the guns himself under heavy enemy fire until help arrived. Whether or not he was hoping for a death on the battlefield he later says publically: "The bullet that gets me has not been cast yet!" But privately: "It's no use, I'm fated to die in bed."

1929- Benito Mussolini signed the Lateran Concordat that recognized the sovereignty of Vatican City within Italy, while the Pope blessed his Fascist regime. The threat of godless world communism scared the Holy See into a number of questionable relationships with right wing extremists like Hitler, Franco and the Eustache in Croatia.

1933- 19 year old Japanese schoolgirl Kiyoko Matsumoto committed suicide by jumping into the thousand foot crater of a volcano on the island of Oshima. This act started a bizarre fad in Japan, and in the ensuing months three hundred young girls did the same thing.

1936- Famed German Expressionist animator Oscar Fischinger escaped Nazi Germany for the U.S. Paid for by Hollywood director Ernst Lubitsch.

1937- General Motors settled a bitter strike and becomes the first major plant to recognize the United Auto Workers union.

1938- Donald Duck cartoon Self Control was released.

1945- Yalta agreement signed. If you were a Czech. Pole or Hungarian, it meant Roosevelt and Churchill had just traded you to Stalin for the next fifty years.

1948- Famed Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein died of a heart attack.

1963- Bell Jar author Sylvia Plath laid out bread and butter and two glasses of milk for her children, then stuck her head into an oven and committed suicide. Her poet-laureate husband Ted Hughes was in bed with another woman when he got the news. Hughes wrote stories for his children like The Iron Giant to explain death and loss.

1975- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to lead the Tory Party in England. The green-grocers daughter from Finchley became the Iron Lady and dominated British politics until 1990.

1976- Chuck Jones TV special "Mowgli’s Brothers."

1979 - The Iranian Revolution Day. With Shah Reza Pahlevi fled, the fundamentalist Shiite mullahs led by Ayatollah Khomeni declared Iran to be an Islamic Republic.

1990- Nelson Mandela was freed by South African authorities after 27 years in prison. He was jailed in 1962 for a life sentence and became the conscience and symbol of the black resistance to white South African rule, called Apartheid.

1995- Disney Studios planned neighborhood suburban community Celebration opened.

2000- Disney’s The Tigger Movie premiered. Directed by Jun Falkenstein, one of the first animated features written and directed by a woman.

2003- A small satellite named U-Map, while studying the faint glow at the center of the Universe, calculated the exact age of our Universe to be 13.7 billion years old. That stars first appeared at 200 million years after the Big Bang, and that the Universe will ultimately expand forever, not crunch back in on itself or explode in one big cataclysm.

2005- Playwright Arthur Miller died at 90.

2006- While hunting for quail, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting partner. After being treated for buckshot in his face, the victim, an attorney named Whittington, went before the press and apologized to the Vice President. In 2009, out of office, it was admitted that Whittington was not a close friend of Cheney, and that his wounds were more life threatening than first reported. Dick Cheney became the first Vice President since Aaron Burr in 1804 to shoot someone while in office. Nothing happened to Burr either.

2012- Singer actress Whitney Houston was found dead in her bathtub. She was 48, She was preparing for the Grammy Awards when she had a heart attack and drowned in the water.

2016- A Wrinkle in Time. While studying two black holes colliding in deep space, scientists announced they discovered Gravity Waves. It was one of the last unproven theories in Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity in 1905. That space and gravity ripples.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who were The Hollywood Ten?

Answer: The 10 Hollywood were writers, directors and producers who, during the early phases of the “Red Scare" anti-communist hysteria came before the House Un-American Activities Committee as suspected communists and refused to answer the Committees questions, including naming names of other suspected persons. All 10 were found in contempt of Congress and sent to jail. They were also blacklisted by the Hollywood movie industry. John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner, Lester Cole, Edward Dymytruk, Waldo Salt, Herbert Beiberman, Edward Maltz, Adrian Scott, and Alvah Bessie.