Quiz: What was Julius Caesar’s first name?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What type of music features a “Laughing Clarinet.”?
History for 1/25/2022
----------------------------------------------------------------
Birthdays: Genghis Khan, Byzantine Emperor Leo IV the Khazar, Robert Burns, Somerset Maugham, Virginia Woolf, Vice Pres Charles “Goodtime Charlie” Curtis, Edwin Newman, Jean Image, Dean Jones, Ava Gardner, Etta James, Corazon Aquino, Anita Pallenberg, Disney Animator John Sibley, Tobe Hooper

Happy National Bubble Wrap Day.
36 AD (-?) THE CONVERSION of ST PAUL. There was a Jewish Pharisee named Saul who on the road to Damascus had a blinding vision. He changed his name to Paul and became the most zealous of Christians. Scholars speculate that Paul may had studied philosophical disciplines like Greek Stoicism and the Jewish Essene movement, because elements of these faiths seem to influence Paul's structuring of his new religion.
Paul is responsible for things like ladies keep their heads covered, men's heads uncovered in Church, etc. He made a point of going to Athens to preach the new religion in Plato's Philosophical Academy. He was also instrumental in bringing Gentiles into the religion, causing an early split in the faithful, when James the brother of Jesus felt that they should stay a reform movement within Judaism. That group eventually died out.

49AD- Claudius declared emperor of Rome.

1077- HENRY AT CANOSSA- One of the hottest arguments of the Middle Ages was whether Kings could boss around Popes or visa-versa. Ever since Pope Leo had crowned Charlemagne in 800, Popes declared that no monarch in Europe could rule legitimately without the Church’s official blessing.
In 1077 German Emperor Henry IV told Pope Gregory VII, the Fiery Hildebrandt, that he could appoint or fire German bishops with or without Rome’s permission. The feud grew as Gregory excommunicated Henry and released all his subjects from allegiance to him; Henry declared Gregory “a licentious false monk” and appointed another Pope.
But the superstitious fear of the common people and the ambition of rebellious German nobles brought Henry’s kingdom to a standstill. This day witnessed one of the most dramatic scenes in Medieval History: At the Italian town of Canossa, Emperor Henry in hairshirt and barefoot stood in the snow waiting at the locked door of the Pope to beg forgiveness. Gregory forgave him, but a year later they were at it again, and Henry chased Gregory out of Rome with an army and Gregory excommunicated him again.
Luigi Pirandello wrote a play about Henry IV in the 1920s.

1327- Edward III, the Great Plantagenet, became King of England.

1483- Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition Peter de Arbules was beaten to death while at prayers at the Cathedral of Saragossa. Tradition states that years later the blood on the spot of his death stayed liquid. He was made a saint in 1867. 1533- Henry VIII secretly married Lady Anne Boleyn, already pregnant with the future Queen Elizabeth. Anne Boleyn was later called a sorceress because she had six fingers on one hand. Lusty King Henry had also slept with Anne’s mother and her older sister Mary Boleyn.

1669- THE SECRET TREATY OF DOVER- King Charles II had at last gotten the British throne back from Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans, but he ruled over a kingdom bankrupt and ravaged by civil war. So on this day Charles signed a secret treaty with the richest country in Europe- Louis XIV's France. In it King Charles pledged to return England to the Roman Catholic Faith, and himself convert to Catholicism, in return for heavy subsidies of French gold.
Charles lived in a grand baroque style and may have converted on his deathbed, but said nothing in public, so England stayed Anglican. His brother James II who was openly Catholic was overthrown and exiled. The British parliament then passed a law that a Catholic can never again be King of Great Britain.

1755- The King of France appointed the Marquis de Montcalm to command all French forces facing the British in North America.

1814- France invaded by five separate armies, Napoleon said goodbye to his wife Marie Louise and his three-year old son. He would never see either of them ever again. After Waterloo, his father-in-law the Austrian Emperor Francis II kept Marie Louise from joining Napoleon in exile and gave her a handsome Austrian duke as a lover. Napoleon’s son was renamed the Duke du Reichstadt and raised as an Austrian, until he died of tuberculosis at age 21.
1858- Queen Victoria & Prince Albert's eldest child, Victoria the Princess Royal (Vicky), married Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (Fritzy) in a lavish ceremony. At this wedding, for the first time the "Bridal Chorus "Treulich geführt") from the 1850 opera Lohengrin by composer Richard Wagner was used as a processional. Like everything Victoria and Albert did, it soon became a custom, known in English was “Here Comes the Bride, All Dressed in White.” Queen Victoria in her own wedding started the custom of brides wearing all white.
1863- Lincoln fired his army commander Ambrose Burnside and replaced him with General Fighting Joe Hooker. Burnside, whose mutton chop whiskers named the style "sideburns" was a military hard luck case. He lost the battle of Fredericksburg so badly that even the enemy was embarrassed. His replacement "Fighting Joe" Hooker was so fond of "ladies of the evening" that he brought them on campaign in their own tent and cavalry escort. They were called "Hooker's Girls" hence the term-"hookers".
1890- Newspaper reporter Nelly Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) of the New York World is welcomed home after traveling around the world in 72 days. The stunt was inspired by the Jules Verne story Around the World in 80 days, which had become a hit stage play.

1900- In the Boer War the Boers had surrounded a British garrison in the town of Ladysmith. After many attacks the siege of Ladysmith was broken by a relief force that had in its’ ranks a young officer named Winston Churchill.

1924- The first Winter Olympics held in Charmonix, France. Winter sports were celebrated as early as 1901 as the Nordic Games in Scandinavia. Trying to hedge their bets the International Olympic Committee originally styled the Charmonix games the Winter Sports Week. It was so successful that in 1928 the IOC designed the games at St. Moritz the Second Winter Olympiad. These games did a lot to raise the public interest in the sport of ski running, now simply called skiing.

1925- In Prague, Karel Capek’s futuristic play R.U.R. opened. It featured electronic mechanical men, called by the Czech word for workers, “ roboti”, so robots.

1938- Walt Disney attempted to head off the rising tide of unionizing workers in Hollywood by forming a dummy company union called the Federation of Screen Cartoonists. No other artists but Disney employees joined, and Disney's chief attorney Gunther Lessing could veto any vote Walt or he did not like.

1939- President Franklin Roosevelt designated the fossil rich Badlands area of South Dakota a National Monument. 1945- The Rock Creek Report recommends mass additives of fluoride into American drinking water supplies. Tooth decay drops by 50%, however many right wing fringe groups like the John Birch Society saw fluoridation as an insidious Commie-Jewish plot.

1947- Mobster Al Capone died in seclusion at his home in Biscayne Bay Florida at age 48. He was released from Alcatraz Prison early because of ill health, his mind was slowly destroyed by untreated syphilis. When another gangster was asked if Capone would resume leadership of the Chicago rackets, he replied:” Big Al is nuttier than a fruitcake.”

1949- The first Emmy Awards ceremony was held at the LA Athletic Club. Five awards were given out for shows like Mabel’s Fables, and Treasures of Literature. Rudy Vallee hosted. Tickets were $5 each. Mayor Fletcher Bowron declared it “ TV Day” in LA.
1959- Propeller planes had been crisscrossing America since the early 1930s. This day American Airlines set up the first jetliner passenger service across the U.S. 1959- VATICAN II- Pope John XXIII called for the creation of a Second Vatican Council to initiate reforms in the Roman Catholic Church. This was called Vatican II and it’s sweeping ideas changed the Church forever. Latin Masses replaced with native language, the priest does the Eucharist ceremony facing you instead of with his back to you, Folk Masses with guitars, etc.

1960- Actress Diana Barrymore, the daughter of John Barrymore, overdosed on sleeping pills. The Barrymore family that had dominated the American theater since the 1850’s had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Ancestor after ancestor drank themselves to death. Current leader of the family Drew Barrymore recovered after rehab at age 12. 1961- John F. Kennedy has his first televised Presidential press conference.

1961- Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians premiered.

1970- Robert Altman’s movie M*A*S*H premiered.

1971- Charles Manson and his followers convicted of 27 counts of murder. They were all sentenced to the Gas Chamber, but the death penalty had just been abolished in California.

1971- Idi Amin seized power in Uganda.

1984- The widow of Mao Zedong, Chiang Ching, was sentenced to death for conspiring against the Chinese state. Madam Chiang was one of the leaders of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and her accomplices were known as The Gang of Four.

1995- Moscow radar detected a nuclear missile launch from Norway headed right for them. Russian President Boris Yeltsin had five minutes to decide if this was a mistake, or the dreaded First Strike, warranting a full retaliatory launching of all Russian nukes at the USA. He decided it was a mistake, and it turned out the missile was only a Norwegian weather satellite being shot into orbit. Similar nail-biting false alarms happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and off the US coast in 1986.

1996- American composer-playwright Jonathan Larson died of a sudden aortic aneurism at age 35. After a night of bar-hopping his roommate returned to find him dead on his kitchen floor. Larson spent years waiting tables and living in a coldwater loft in lower New York. Just three months after his death his musical Rent opened and became a major Broadway hit, earning $250 million dollars, Tony awards and a Pulitzer Prize. It ran for 12 years.

2011- The Arab Spring pro-democracy protests that began in Tunisia spread to Egypt, the world’s largest Arab country. Huge protests began in Cairo against long time president Hosni Mubarak. Eventually they forced his overthrow.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: What type of music features a “Laughing Clarinet.”?

Answer: Jewish Klezmer music.

Question: What type of music features a “Laughing Clarinet.”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: During the American Civil War, who were Copperheads?
---------------------------------------
History for 1/24/2022
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Hadrian AD117, Frederick the Great, Farinelli the Castrato-1707, Pierre De Beaumarchais, Swedish King Gustavus III, Edith Wharton, German Field Marshal Model, Sharon Tate, Ernest Borgnine, Mary Lou Rhetton, John Belushi, Disney director Wilfred Jackson, Warren Zevon, Yakov Smirnoff, Daniel Auteuil is 71, Orel Roberts, Natassia Kinski is 63

41AD- CALIGULA ASSASSINATED- The psychotic Roman Emperor left a gladiator bout to have lunch when in an isolated hallway of the amphitheater his own bodyguards turned on him. His chief assailant was the captain of the watch Chaerea. After two sword thrusts, the bleeding emperor shouted: " I still live! Strike again!" Which they did until he was finally dead. They threw Caligulas’ corpse in a hole in the Lamian gardens. It was said his ghost continued to scare people there for years afterwards.
Realizing that without an Emperor an Emperor's Guard isn't much use, the guards looked about for a member of the Imperial family that hadn’t already been butchered. They dragged Caligula's simple old uncle Claudius out from under a table and made him Caesar. He immediately gave them a heavy bribe.

1075- In a direct challenge to Papal authority German Emperor Henry IV held an ecclesiastical council at Worms where he declared Pope Gregory VII to be a “licentious false monk” and ordered him deposed. The Pope responded by excommunicating Henry. What happened? See tomorrow.

1848- James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill, California. This event will spark the first big gold rush the following year, the '49 ers. Swiss immigrant John Sutter had bought the land from the last Russian settlers and set up his town while still under Mexican rule. Marshall operated his sawmill. Ironically the gold rush ruined them both. Thousands of prospectors ignored his jurisdiction claims, trampled his crops and slaughtered his herds for food. Within a year or two They were broke and spent the rest of their lives trying to get the US Government to reimburse him. John Sutter was also annoyed that the new settlement of Sacramento was not named Sutterville.

1863- Arizona Territory was formed out of New Mexico. The Southern Confederacy at one time tried to make it one of their states. Around this same time Lincoln also pushed statehood for Nevada, and West Virginia. He was hoping to stack Congress for his Constitutional amendments outlawing slavery, and granting full citizenship and voting rights to African-Americans.

1865- The Pioneer Oil Company set up to prospect for petroleum in the L.A. area.

1874- Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Gudunov premiered in Saint Petersburg.

1875- Camille Saint-Saens orchestral work Danse Macabre premiered in Paris.

1900- Battle of Spion Kop. (Boer Woer) The British Army rush an enemy position on top of a small hill, take it, and after the cheering noticed they are alone on the bald hill completely surrounded by the enemy. OOPS! It was said that the British commander was a much better watercolorist than a military strategist. One of the stretcher-bearers bravely running up and down the hill saving wounded men was an Indian law student –Mohandas K. Gandhi.

1901- Activist Emily Hobhouse toured one of Lord Kitchener’s “concentration camps” that the British were using to corral in the Boer guerrillas in South Africa. This one was near Bloemfontein. Her reporting of the poor sanitation conditions and hardships of the Boer civilians there caused a scandal back home. Four out of five South Africans killed in the Boer War were civilians.

1916- The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the federal Income Tax.

1927- The Pleasure Garden premiered, the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

1936- The first motion picture of a solar eclipse taken from a dirigible, The Los Angeles.

1942- Producer David O. Selznick signed young star Jennifer Jones. He became infatuated with her and left his wife Irene, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, to marry Jones.

1961- Warner Bros. cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc had a terrible auto crash. He lingered in a coma for several weeks. The way the doctor brought him around was to say: “Hey Bugs Bunny! How are we today?” Blanc replied in character:” Ehhh…fine, doc!” Mel recovered and lived another thirty years.

1965- Winston Churchill died at 90. His last words were "Oh, I'm so bored of it all..." At 75 Churchill said :"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter." His granddaughter revealed he told her he intended to go on the same day his father died in 1895. And he did. David Lloyd George once quipped of how Churchill would behave in Heaven: "Winston would go up to his Creator and say he would very much like to meet His Son, about whom he has heard a great deal."

1972- Japanese soldier Soichi Yokoi was found in the jungles of Guam unaware that World War II had ended 27 years earlier. He had stolen a radio and listened to the news. But he thought the stories of American forces in Korea and Vietnam were just propaganda. He was returned to Japan a healthy, if somewhat confused hero.
He died peacefully in 1997.

1983- Hulk Hogan pinned the Iron Sheik to win his first World Wrestling Federation title.

1986 –The Voyager 2 space probe flew by Uranus. So far the only spaceprobe to ever visit that planet. It discovered its unusual rotation and that it had rings like Saturn, but they are thin and dark grey, due to the weak light of the sun.

1989- Serial killer Ted Bundy was executed by electric chair.

2000- The entire computer system of the super-secret National Security Agency crashed and was down for several days. No explanation given.

2006- The Walt Disney Company acquired CG animation studio Pixar. Apple and Pixar head Steve Jobs got a seat on Disney Board, Ed Catmull was named head of the studio, and director John Lasseter became its creative head.

2020- China became the first country to lock down their country to combat the spreading pandemic of Covid 19.
============================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: During the American Civil War, who were Copperheads?

Answer: Copperheads were the nickname for Northerners who sympathized and even worked for the Southern Cause. Many were active in New York and Chicago, where there was resistance to the Draft.

Quiz: Where does the term “The Real McCoy” come from?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Joe Biden is now the oldest man to be U.S. President. Who was the youngest?
------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/22/2022
St. Vincents Day- "If Vincents Day be Rainy Weather, shall rain then 30 days together.”

Birthdays: Sir Francis Bacon, D.W. Griffith, Lord Byron, August Strindberg, Andre Marie Ampere (electric Amps), 1960’s UN Secretary General U-Thant, Ann Southern, Sam Cooke, John Hurt, George McManus, Joseph Waumbaugh, J.J. Johnson, Seymour Cassell, Jim Jarmusch is 68, Linda Blair is 63, Piper Laurie is 89, Diane Lane is 56

1503- Pope Alexander VI Borgia has his enemy Cardinal Orsini poisoned while imprisoned in the Vatican.

1506- THE SWISS GUARDS. Many European monarchs hired foreign mercenaries to be their personal bodyguards. They were often more trustworthy than their own subjects. The most famous were the Swiss. While the Swiss home cantons stayed at peace, her hardy mountaineers hired out as mercenary troops all over Europe. The Swiss had a reputation as incorruptible and tough fighters. This day the warrior Pope Julius II hired a troop of Swiss and had Michelangelo design their uniforms. The Swiss Guards still guard the Vatican today, and are still recruited from the non-commissioned officers of the Swiss Army.

1522- Andreas Carstadt, an early follower of Martin Luther, set a new precedent by being a priest who openly got married. He was forty, she was fifteen.

1552- Because Henry VIII’s child was only ten at the time of the old king’s death Edward Seymour the Duke of Somerset ruled England as regent-administrator. But Somerset’s rule was troubled with corruption and religious friction between Catholics and Protestants. His own brother Thomas Seymour the Lord High Admiral was executed for trying to become king. Somerset soon fell and was replaced by the Duke of Northumberland. He charged Somerset with treason based on evidence given by Sir Thomas Palmer. Today Somerset’s head was cut off. Later Northumberland and Palmer lost their heads too. They confessed on the scaffold that they had fabricated the charges against Somerset.

1555- THE FIRES OF SMITHFIELD. When Mary the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII became queen she at first tried to be lenient towards her Protestant subjects. But continuous plots by Protestant nobility, and her own desire to restore England to the old faith hardened her heart. This day she began the mass trials and executions of those accused of Protestant heresy. Six clergymen including the Bishop of Gloucester were sentenced and burned at the stake. Hundreds more would follow. Even Spanish King Philip II urged Mary to cool it.
Mary’s executioners added a new twist to the old system of burning at the stake. Before lighting the bonfire, if they liked you, a bag of gunpowder was stuffed between your legs, so you went out with a bang. Bloody Mary and her cruelty in the name of Roman Catholicism all but convinced the English people to stay Anglican.

1787- 17 year old French cadet named Napoleon Bonaparte, on furlough in Paris, wrote in his diary that after exhausting negotiations with a streetwalker he "…sampled the joys of Woman for the first time.." Today he’d do an Instagram post.

1840- The first English colonists reach New Zealand.

1863- THE MUD MARCH- Union General Ambrose Burnside (who created the fashion for "side-burns") tried to avenge his humiliating defeat at Fredericksburg by a winter march up the Rappahannock River to maneuver around Robert E. Lee. In so doing he discovered why all pre-industrial age armies took the winter off. Burnsides army was pelted by blinding sleet storms and bogged down in oceans of gooey mud. When Burnside finally called it quits he had as many casualties from sickness as if had he fought a battle. A bitter army joke based on a children’s prayer went:
"Now I lay me down to Sleep, In mud that’s eighteen fathoms Deep."
"If you can’t see me when we Awake, please dig me up with an oyster Rake."

1879-Battle of ISHANDLWANA- The worst defeat ever inflicted by native peoples on a modern western army. The British thought they were brushing out of the way just another spear throwing tribe when they attacked the Zulu Empire. They were unconcerned that the Zulu marched in regiments -impis, had generals -indunas, and practiced strategy and tactics. A Zulu impi was trained to run in tight formation for 20 miles barefoot then fight a battle. Lord Chelmsford had invaded Zululand searching for the Zulu army when he was tricked by a simple diversion into dividing his forces. The Zulu then flanked Chelmsford’s force in a maneuver Napoleon would have admired, fell on his camp and wiped out two regiments of the 24th Welsh Fusiliers. It was a massacre similar to Custer at the Little Big Horn.
Lord Chelmsford and his staff were eating lunch several miles away when an aide noticed in his telescope flashing and running around the base camp. Lord Chelmsford dismissed it as nothing, but sent a courier to investigate. The courier at first saw men in red coats and white pith helmets walking amongst the tents. As he got closer he noticed that they all had black faces.

1901- Queen Victoria died after a reign of 64 years, the longest for a British monarch until Elizabeth II. When she assumed the throne at age 19 in 1837 there were still many alive who remembered the Battle of Waterloo and white periwigs. She died in a world of electric lights, telephones, autos and motion pictures.

1912- The first bridgeway connecting Key West and the Florida Keys opened.

1912- U.S. Marines occupied the Chinese city of Tientsin to "protect American commercial interests".

1918- A Manitoba judge tries to outlaw movie comedies, because they tend to make the public "too frivolous".

1930- Work began on the foundation of the Empire State Building in New York.

1938- On a bare stage, Thorton Wilder’s play Our Town premiered.

1939- At Columbia University for the first time scientists split a uranium atom.

1944- Argentine Colonel Juan Peron first met radio actress Eva Duarte or Evita.

1944- ANZIO- The Allied armies advancing up the Italian boot had been fought to a standstill by fierce German resistance around Monte Cassino north of Naples -the Gustav Line. So the decision was made to amphibiously land a large invasion force in the rear of the German army with the intention of taking Rome. They completely surprised the enemy and their scouts reported the road into Rome was wide open. But the American commander General Lucas hesitated.
In the meantime the Germans recovered and rushed up elite SS divisions that turned the battle into a bloody stalemate. Churchill said: "I thought we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a beached whale!" Instead of two days, the allies didn’t take Rome until June 4th, five months later.

1947- Hollywood first commercial television station KTLA went on the air for regular broadcasting. At the time in all of Los Angeles there were only 350 TV sets.

1949- Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong) and the Communists captured Peking (Beijing).

1949- Tex Avery’s cartoon "Bad Luck Blackie".

1950- Preston Tucker tried to compete with the big auto giants like Ford and Chrysler with his revolutionary designed Tucker Automobile. But the giants bogged him down in court with charges of fraud. This day he was acquitted of all charges but the legal expenses ruined him. Only 40 Tuckers were ever made. Francis Ford Coppola made a movie about his life.

1951- During winter baseball tryouts, a promising young left-handed pitcher from Cuba was scouted by the New York Yankees. But after losing a game for the Washington Senators and getting dropped from their roster, he gave up on sports to pursue a career in politics- Fidel Castro.

1954- The Los Angeles Fire Department is ordered by federal courts to integrate.

1968-T.V. comedy review show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In premiered. It launched the careers of Lilly Tomlin, Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan. You bet your sweet Bippy!

1972- In an interview with Melody Maker magazine, rocker David Bowie outed himself and said he was gay. Technically he would be bi-sexual since his wife Angela did catch him in bed with Bianca Jagger. Others called him a closet-heterosexual.

1973- While President Richard Nixon celebrated his second inaugural with a concert, Leonard Bernstein conducted a Concert for Peace at the Washington Cathedral. While Nixon’s orchestra played his favorite classical piece Tchaikovsky’s Overture 1812 with real cannons, Bernstein played Haydn’s Mass in a Time of War to 15,000 people against the War in Vietnam.

1973- The Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court Decision 7-2 legalizing abortion. Before 1880 most abortion practices were legal, they were referred to as "quickening". The first prohibitions were more about banning dangerous quack drugs used in the process.

1975- Hollywood agents Ron Meyer and Michael Ovitz leave William Morris and form the Creative Artists Agency, or CAA.

1977- The day after his inauguration President Jimmy Carter was shown the first pictures from the KH-11, the first imaging orbital spy satellite. An American mole sold the technology to the Russian KGB a year later and soon France, Britain and Israel also had spy satellites in orbit.

1984- Amazon Indians attack an oil drilling crew with blowguns.

1984- Apple released the Macintosh I personal computer.
=============================================================

Yesterday’s Question: Joe Biden is now the oldest man to be U.S. President. Who was the youngest?

Answer: Theodore Roosevelt, who became president at age 42 after William McKinley was assassinated. John F. Kennedy was 43, Barack Obama was 47.

Quiz: Joe Biden is now the oldest man to be U.S. President. Who was the youngest?

Question: What does it mean to be fecund?
---------------------------------------------------
History for 1/21/2022
Birthdays: Leadbelly (Harlan Ledbetter), Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, J. Carol Naish, Tele Savalas, Christian Dior, Placido Domingo, Wolfman Jack, Paul Scofield, Robby Benson, Jack Nicklaus, Benny Hill, Emma Bunton- Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, Gena Davis is 66, Ken Leung is 52

1188- THE THIRD CRUSADE DECLARED- In reaction to the news of Saladin's capture of Jerusalem, King Henry II of England, Phillip Augustus of France and Conrad the Emperor of Germany "take the Cross", promise to invade the Holy Land. Henry died before the army departed and was replaced by his son Richard the Lionhearted.
Every morning before breakfast and every night before retiring, all the knights of the Crusade would raise one steel-clad fist towards the east, and to the sound of massed trumpets they would all shout: " AEIDEUVA! AEIDEUVA! SANCTUS SEPULCHORUM!!" Help, Help to the Holy Sepulcher!

1535- Fun-loving King Francis I of France had been tolerant to the Reformation until over-zealous French Protestants tried to kill him. This day he responded by holding a solemn Catholic Mass in Notre Dame. The highlight of the show was the burning of six heretics. Francis had them tied to ladders and raised and lowered over a slow fire, to prolong their suffering.

1649- King Charles I was put on trial by the English Parliament for treason.

1789- The first American novel published- The Power of Sympathy: An Epistolary Romance by William Hill Brown.

1793- KING LOUIS XVI GUILLOTINED- For three years since the Bastille fell the French King tried to play a constitutional monarch while conspiring with the other European monarchs to crush the French Revolution. It was a game that was too subtle for him. When foreign armies invaded France, and declared their intention to remake Louis an absolute ruler, the revolutionary government condemned him to death.
Citizen Capet, so named for an old family name of French kings, mounted the scaffold at Place de La Concorde currently where the U.S. Embassy is. He tried to speak to the people but the drummers were ordered to drown him out. As the blade fell his chaplain shouted: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!" SPLAT!
The revolutionaries then stuck his head between his legs and threw him in a hole. Where the site of the Chapel Expiatore is today. The court executioner, Charles Henri Samson, wore pistols under his coat in case people tried to rush the guillotine. He usually never felt remorse for his victims ("I am not killing them, the State is") but this one bothered him. He stayed away from home for two nights and would later hide escaped political prisoners in his cellar.

1850- THE CLAY COMPROMISE. Senator Henry Clay crossed dark snow covered Washington streets for a late night meeting with Daniel Webster. President Zachary Taylor had just put forward in Congress California's application for admission to the Union as a non-slave holding state. Now the South was angrily threatening secession and civil war. Clay and Webster worked out a deal, called the Clay Compromise, which would grant concessions to both sides in exchange for cooperation. Northern man Webster probably sacrificed his last chance to be President by backing the controversial deal but the Compromise of 1850 succeeded in delaying the Civil War for ten more years.

1861- SECESSION! COLLAPSE! President-elect Lincoln was still packing his bags in Springfield and writing out the luggage tags in his own hand "A. Lincoln, White House, Washington, D.C.", while state after state of the South voted to leave the Union and join the new Confederacy. On this date, Mississippi senator and former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis resigned from the Congress. As he left the Senate, Georgia senator Robert Toombs turned around and declared out loud to the Speakers chair:" The Union sir, is Dissolved!" Toombs had to hire a carriage to take him South because his personal slaves had run off to be free.
The Mormons of Utah were in an open state of rebellion, New Jersey and New York City talked of secession, California talked of pulling out of the union and joining Oregon to make a new country called TransPacifica. Mobs in Baltimore proclaimed Abe Lincoln would never get to Washington alive. Outgoing President James Buchanan said gravely: "I fear I may be the Last President of the United States.."

1899- The Opel motorcar company opened for business.

1916- The National Board of Review outlawed nudity in Hollywood movies.

1923- LENIN DIED. Russia’s first Soviet leader died of respiratory failure and cerebral hemorrhage at 54. The lack of a reliable system of succession plagued Communist states. As Lenin lay dying Leon Trotsky, Zioniev, Kamieniev, Krupskaya and a dozen others began a backroom scramble for power. Finally a minor bank robber and terrorist from Tblisi in Georgia who had risen rapidly in the last two years came out above them all- Comrade Kobal, also called Josef Stalin.

1930- Walt’s top animator and right hand Ub Iwerks quit The Walt Disney Company.

1935- the conservation group The Wilderness Society created.

1935- Disney animator Ollie Johnston’s first day at the studio, at $17 a week.

1938 -Max Fleischer told his New York cartoon studio they were relocating to Florida.

1938- George Melies, the father of Motion Picture Visual Effects, died, He had been reduced selling trinkets in a little store in a Paris train station, but had a bit of the rediscovery by the film community in his final years. On his deathbed he gave his friends a drawing he made of a champagne bottle popping. He said “Laugh, my friends. Laugh with me, laugh for me, because I dream your dreams."

1943- Legendary jazz drummer Gene Krupa was arrested in San Francisco for sending a kid to get him some marijuana. He served 84 of a 90 day sentence.

1950- After a highly publicized trial top State Department official Alger Hiss was found guilty of perjury in a trial that accused him of covering up his connections to Communist agents in Washington. The trial made a national figure of a then little known congressman named Richard Nixon. Hiss served four years in prison, and lived the rest of his life maintaining his innocence.

1958- BADLANDS- Teenagers Charlie Starkweather and Carilann Fugate kill her family and go on a Bonnie & Clyde style crime spree throughout Nebraska, killing 11 people. When they were caught Starkweather pleaded self defense, even against the murder of Fugate’s infant baby brother. He went to the electric chair. Carilann Fugate did twenty years, yet always denied she was anything more than an unwilling accomplice.
Starkweather had a 'James Dean-Marlon Brando' leatherjacket look, and the two teen killers seemed to typify middle America's dread of juvenile delinquency and the 'degenerate Rock and Roll' culture of the 1950's. Their story inspired several films, including 'Badlands".

1959- Former 'Our Gang' child star Carl 'Alfalfa" Switzer was killed in a bar in Mission Hills, Ca. He pulled a knife on a man over a $50 debt on a hunting dog. The man then shot him. He was 32. According to fellow Little Rascal Darla Hood, Switzer was a brute who bullied the other children, and bitter his adult acting career never blossomed.

1977- President Jimmy Carter declared a pardon for all remaining Vietnam War draft resistors.

1992- Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated film ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

2010- The Supreme Court handed down the Citizen's United Decision. In the case Citizens' United vs. the Federal Election Commission, the Roberts Court ruled that restrictions on corporate donations were limits on free speech. This one ruling opened the floodgates for businesses to lavish unlimited money on political candidates.

2017- THE WOMEN’S MARCH. One day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the streets of Washington were jammed with the largest protest march yet seen, over 2 ½ million protestors. Similar protests happened across America. Donald Trump chose to ignore them.
===============================================
Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to be fecund?

Answer: It means to be exceedingly fertile, prolific, fruitful.

Question: What does it mean to be fecund?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered: What is a scrunchie?
----------------------------------------------------------------
History for 1/20/2022
Birthdays: King Charles III of Spain, Richard Henry Lee- signer of the Declaration of Independence, Frederico Fellini, Patricia O’Neal, Dorothy Provine, Mario Lanza, David Lynch, George Burns, DeForest Kelly, Edwin Buzz Aldrin, Arte Johnson, Lorenzo Lamas, Bill Maher is 66, Rainn Wilson is 56

In the French Revolutionary calendar this is the first day Pluvoise, the Month of Rain.

661AD- Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, was assassinated by a partisan of Muyawiah Ibn Abi Suffian- the founder of the Ummayad Dynasty of Caliphs. Ali’s supporters were called Ali's SHIAH or Ali's Partisans – which became the branch of Islam called Shiite, the rest of Islam is known as Sunni. It grew into a split like the one between Catholics and Protestants in Christianity.

1193- Licensed prostitution began in Japan.

1777- George Washington invited a bright young artillery captain to join his personal staff. Alexander Hamilton’s career began.

1779- The great English actor David Garrick died. Supposedly his last words were when asked “Is it hard to die?” Garrick replied:” Dying is not Hard. Comedy is Hard.”

1783- Britain signed peace treaties with France and Spain, ending their support to the American Revolution. The treaty with America had been finalized three months earlier.

1841- Convention of Chuen Pei-Treaty that ended the Opium Wars. China ceded harbor front land to Britain that would become the city of Hong Kong. The Chinese never smoked opium until it was introduced by British merchants from India.

1908- The Sullivan Ordinance barred women from smoking in public facilities.

1920- The American Civil Liberties Union founded by Roger Baldwin.

1924- WAR ON THE MAFIA- In 1924 the Mafia was almost completely destroyed. By who? Benito Mussolini. His jackbooted regiments marched across the island of Sicily arresting 11, 000 and executing hundreds. Mussolini declared victory and many of the surviving dons fled to America where Prohibition was providing great new opportunities for crooks. During WWII, when the Anglo-American armies liberated Sicily from the Nazis, who to put in charge of the local towns? Can’t be Fascists. Can’t be Communists. Who was left? ( Cue the Godfather music….)

1930-The Matanza Massacre. Authorities in El Salvador kill 30,000 peasants protesting the government refusing to seat peasant ministers who won an election. By the time the army stopped, 4 percent of the population was dead, the Communist Party gone and native Indian dress and languages outlawed. The leader of the peasants Augustin Farabundo Marti later gave his name to the 1980’s guerrilla movement.

1936- King George V of England died. In great pain from incurable cancer, In 1986 a doctor admitted getting instructions from his son The Prince of Wales to euthanize him with a strong shot of cocaine and morphine, called a “Brompton Cocktail”. The doctor timed his offing of the king so the news would be out with the morning newspapers, instead of the trashier afternoon tabloids.
His Majesties last words were reported to be:" How goes the Empire? " He actually winced at the sloppy way the injection was done and said: "Oww, God damn you!"
Another legend says when the King was told if he recovered they would return to the town of Bognor in Sussex for holiday, His Majesties last words were “ Bugger Bognor!”

1937- Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated for his second term after defeating Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas. He is the first president to be inaugurated in January instead of the customary March 4th. The Depression still raged despite all his efforts, he gives the inaugural speech decrying the rampant poverty in the U.S. "I see one third of the nation, ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clothed, living in conditions far beneath the minimum standards we regard as decent, etc."

1938- Early animation pioneer Emile Cohl died while headed for the Paris premiere of Disney's" Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Cohl was so poor that the electricity in his flat had been turned off and the candles had ignited his beard. Angry he was never recognized in his time, he once said: "the French prefer their artists with marble and flowers on top."

1942- The Wanasee Conference-Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann and other top Nazis have a lunch meeting in a suburb in Berlin. Over cocktails they invented The Final Solution. Zyclon–B gas chambers instead of electrocution or carbon-monoxide. They set a target goal of ten million Jews to be murdered by 1946.

1945- Franklin D. Roosevelt sworn in as U.S. President for a fourth consecutive term, the only person ever to do so.

1949- FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave Shirley Temple a pen that shoots tear gas.

1953- The Birth of Little Ricky on the I Love Lucy show drew a larger viewing audience than the televised inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower.

1961- John F. Kennedy gave his famous inaugural speech:” Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Outgoing President Eisenhower disliked JFK personally and was angry that his win over Nixon seemed a repudiation of his policies, so almost nothing was said between them in the limousine during the drive to the ceremony. John Kennedy also went through that day mostly hatless, inaugurating the fashion. Before JFK, a man was not fully dressed without a fedora or cap of some sort.

1964- Sports Illustrated Magazine put out its first Swimsuit Edition. Discovering many men like other things besides sports…

1965- Alan Freed, the disc jockey who coined the term Rock & Roll, died at 43 of uremic blood poisoning. He was broken by the Rock payola scandal and died so poor his friends passed the hat to pay for his funeral.

1966- The Ghost and Mr Chicken, with Don Knotts premiered.

1968- Young U.S. infantryman Ron Kovic was wounded near the Vietnamese demilitarized zone the DMZ. The black soldier who carried him to safety was killed shortly after and Kovic never learned his name. The incident put Kovic in a wheelchair for life and changed his attitude towards the righteousness of the war. He wrote the bestseller " Born on the Fourth of July" and became a passionate antiwar activist.

1969- Richard Nixon sworn in as President capping one of the most amazing comebacks in political history. After losing to Kennedy in 1960 Nixon lost yet again to Pat Brown for the governorship of California and was considered politically finished. Anybody remember Michael Dukakis, Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale?
Yet Nixon worked on his image over the years and re-emerged in 1968 as “The New Nixon”. Nixon ran as peace candidate and at his inaugural announced “The era of confrontation is over, the era of negotiation has begun.” It took him five years to get us out of Vietnam, immolating Cambodia, Laos and almost Thailand in the process. When Nixon took office there were 23,000 combat deaths, but when he left there were 58,000 war deaths and 8 US students shot down on their college campuses. So his record remains at best controversial.

1981- As President Reagan was being sworn in, the hostages taken at the United States Embassy in Teheran were released after being held for 444 days. 6 years later it was revealed a deal was negotiated with the Iranians to release the hostages in exchange for a ransom of weapons. But at the time, all the American public knew was that all the Old Gipper had to do was show up, to make the Mad Mullah’s hightail-it outta town.

1982- Rock star Ozzie Osbourne was hospitalized in Des Moines Iowa after biting the head off a dead bat thrown on stage during a concert.

1982- SONY introduced the Camcorder, the personal video camera.

1986- The worlds first computer virus, Brain, was sent out over the infant internet.

2001- George W. Bush inaugurated as the 43rd President. He is only the second son of a president to be elected, the other being John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams.

2009- Standing in front of the U.S. Capitol, a building built by black slaves, Barack Obama was inaugurated 44th President of the United States. The first African-American.

2009- While the inaugural balls for President Obama were taking place, leaders of the defeated Republican Party met in a secret conclave at the Capitol Grill. There they formulated the strategy to paralyze all legislation and frustrate all of Pres. Obama’s attempts to heal the economy they had destroyed. Then they would run against his ineffective record. They did paralyze his government with four times more filibusters than any in history, and won in 2016 with a promise to get America moving again.

2016- Cal Tech astronomers announced they discovered signs of a Ninth Planet beyond Pluto. It is 5,000 times larger than earth, and it’s wobbly oblong orbit takes 22,000 years to go completely around the sun, while the Earth takes one year. Named Ultima Thule, the space probe New Horizon reached it in 2019.

=======================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What is a scrunchie?

Answer: A big soft elastic hair tie. Made for women with huge thick, difficult to control hair.