Question: Who are you imitating when you say, “ Ruh-Roh…”

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What was the studio that created Baby Huey and Little Audrey cartoons?
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History for 2/4/2024
Birthdays: Francois Rabelais, Big Bill Haywood, Fernand Leger', Charles Lindbergh, the Agha Khan, Betty Friedan, Rosa Parks, Erich Leinsdorf, Dan Quayle, Ida Lupino, Conrad Bain, McKinlay Kantor, George Romero, Lisa Eichhorn, boxer Oscar De La Hoya, Clyde Tumbaugh the astronomer who discovered the Pluto in 1930. Janet Waldo the voice of Judy Jetson, Alice Cooper (born Vincent Furnier) is 75

211 AD- Roman Emperor Septimius Severus died, despite praying every night to a shrine of little statues that included Zeus, Apollo, Mithras, Moses and Jesus. This guy wasn’t taking any chances! He also liked to keep the corpse of an enemy in front of his doorway for him to wipe his feet on.

1536- Henry VIII’s Parliament was presented with a Black Book cataloging all the supposed abuses and corruption of England’s monasteries and convents. They passed the King’s wish to close the monasteries and appropriate all Church wealth to the crown.

1703- THE 47 RONIN- A Japanese story that inspired hundreds of play, novels, and films. Asano Nagori the Lord of Ako quarreled with Kiru, the chief of protocol for the Shogun, and struck at him with his sword. To attack a representative of the Shogun was an insult, no matter how justified, so Nagori was ordered to commit suicide (seppuku) and his samurai declared Ronin or discharged freelancers.
The Ronin banded together to plan their revenge. They ambushed Kiru, and placed his severed head on the grave of their master. Then they all sat in his house to quietly await judgement. After consulting several Shinto bishops, the Shogun could see no dishonor in what they did. So instead of executing them as criminals, this day they were allowed to all commit suicide, which they all did unquestioningly. Today their gravesite is a popular shrine in Japan as a model of total dedication to duty.

1775- MR. PITT’S PLAN- Legendary British statesman William Pitt the Elder, was Prime Minister during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years War) and called "the Architect of the British Empire.” Today he came out of retirement to try to solve the American Crisis before violence could break out. With the support of Whigs like Lord Shelburne, Edmund Burke, Rockingham and Charles Fox and with his friend Benjamin Franklin in the visitors’ gallery, Mr. Pitt proposed in the House of Lords that Britain legitimize the American Congress and give it seats in Parliament. He stated, “The Britons in America are only doing what we Britons in Britain should be doing, namely, demanding our rights.”
But Mr. Pitts’ plan was voted down by Lord North’s government party, who instead passed a bill allocating more money for German mercenary troops to crush the malcontents. MP’s now placed bets on how soon they would burn Boston.
It’s intriguing to think how history would have changed had Pitt's solution been adopted, for at this time most Americans like George Washington were not yet ready for a complete break from Mother England. The hardcore radicals like John and Sam Adams worried that if America did win Parliamentary seats, that the momentum for independence would be lost.

1776- General Washington took the cannon captured from Ft. Ticonderoga and had his men drag them up Dorchester Heights overlooking British occupied Boston. The British were taken unawares because it was done in a terrible winter snowstorm. Staring up into the mouths of these large guns they knew these amateur soldiers had outmaneuvered them. They soon evacuated the city by sea.

1783- Britain declared a formal ceasefire with its former colonies the United States,
ending the American Revolution.

1826- James Fenimore Cooper’s novel “The Last of the Mohicans” was published. The character of wild frontiersman Natty Bumpo, called Hawkeye, has been called the first American superhero.

1861- Delegates of the several Southern states met in Montgomery Alabama to declare themselves the Confederate States of America. They decide to move the rebel capitol to Richmond, Virginia to insure that the Old Dominion State will join their cause.

1861- At the same moment in Washington D.C. a group of Virginia politicians led by old former President John Tyler arranged a covert peace conference between the slave states and free states in one final attempt at compromise. Despite long talks in a backroom of The Willard Hotel, they emerged more divided than before.

1861- The Apache Wars began. The U.S. Army arrested Apache chief Cochise for raiding his neighbors. Cochise escaped and declared war on the white man. The conflict would rage off and on for over 25 years and involved all the various Apache tribes as well as their cousins the Navajo.

1871- Ms. Victoria Woodhull testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the subject of women's voting rights. She was the first woman to testify before Congress, the first woman to run for President and the first woman to own a stock brokerage on Wall Street. Yet she is not as well known a figure as Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cadie Stanton. The mainstream suffragette movement was shocked of her open advocacy of Free Love, Spiritualism and Socialism.

1894- Dr. Richard Weatherill discovered the first signs of the Basket Maker culture.

1938- After being in first run houses since Dec 21st, today Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opened in general release across the US.

1940- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had Nicholai Yezhov, the Commissar of Internal Affairs and leader of the NKVD, the secret police, arrested and shot. Nikita Khruschev wrote Yezhov was an alcoholic drug addict who got what he deserved.

1945- YALTA. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met to map the postwar world. In an unguarded moment Roosevelt told Stalin that America only intended to stay in Europe two more years.
Later in the month a courier plane flying over Germany to Russia is shot down. Maps showing the agreed occupation zones of postwar Germany fall into the hands of the Nazis. Knowing how much mercy they could expect from Stalin, most of the top officials of the Third Reich arranged to be captured in the American Zone. Albert Speer had Wilhelm Furtwangler and the entire Berlin Philharmonic shipped by train to an American sector after one more Wagner concert. They played "Twilight of the Gods" from Gotterdammerung as the bombs rained down.

1961- United Artists released The Misfits, the last film of stars Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. John Huston directed and Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay. The film flopped in its initial run but has since gained classic status.

1966- Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Disney’s first Winnie the Pooh film came out with the live action film The Ugly Dachshund.
(***Now stop what you are doing and sing the Winnie the Pooh Song!!)

1968- Old beatnik Neal Cassady died in Mexico. Cassady was not an intellectual but his wild non-conformist lifestyle was the inspiration for his companion author Jack Kerouac to write his greatest novel " On the Road'. Alan Ginsburg also wrote poems about him. While Kerouac disliked hippies, Cassady drove the first Hippie Bus “ Further” filled with LSD advocates like Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. The night after a party where he filled up on pills and booze, Cassady passed on the ground wearing nothing but a t-shirt and shorts. He was found in the morning in a coma and died soon after. He was 42. At one point, Cassady took a 19 year old aside and told him: " Twenty years of fast living — there's just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up. Don't do what I have done.”

1983- Pop singer Karen Carpenter died of anorexia-nervosa. She was 32 and weighed only 77 pounds. Her death brought to national prominence how the societal pressure to stay thin could lead to this deadly condition.

2004- Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes launched their social networking site called Facebook.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the studio that created Baby Huey and Little Audrey cartoons?

Answer: Paramount Animation Studio. Formerly Max Fleischer’s.

Quiz: What was the studio that created Baby Huey and Little Audrey cartoons?

Answer to Yesterday’s Question below: What is a “nom de plume”?
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History for 2/3/2024
Birthdays- French King Charles VI the Mad –1380, Felix Mendelson-Bartoldy, Horace Greely, Gideon Mantell 1790-pioneer British fossil hunter that named the Iguanadon, Pretty Boy Floyd, Gertrude Stein, Norman Rockwell, James A. Michener, Joey Bishop, Shelley Berman, Bob Griese, Fran Tarkenton, John Fiedler the voice of Piglet, Victor Buono, Blythe Danner is 81, Morgan Fairchild is 74, Nathan Lane is 68

Today is the Feast of St. Blaise, patron saint of sore throats and sick cattle.

1238- The Mongol horde under Genghis’ grandson Batu Khan burned the Russian city of Vladimir-Suzdal. He later also destroyed Kyiv.

1134- Robert Curthose (little bandy legs) was the eldest son of William Conqueror. He should have been king but he was outmaneuvered first by his middle brother William II Rufus, then his youngest brother Henry I. Henry had his brother imprisoned in Cardiff Castle for thirty years, until this day he died in his 80s.

1547- Czar Ivan the Terrible married Anastasia Romanova. Her young death may have pushed his sanity over the edge.

1637- TULIPMANIA- Dutch merchants went so wild over the importation of tulip bulbs from Turkey, that they drove up the market price in tulips to absurd lengths. It was the birth of Futures Markets, investing in crops that haven’t even been planted yet. Today the first consignment of bulbs failed to sell, and caused panic selling. It caused the first international stock market collapse.

1690- The first paper money issued in the New World, by the Massachusetts Colony.

1780- THE FIRST AMERICAN SERIAL KILLER- For those who think this kind of crime is a symptom of our modern Secular-Humanist society: In New Milford Connecticut, Revolutionary War veteran Barnett Davenport was rooming at the farm of Mr. Caleb Mallory. This day for no apparent reason, possible ptsd, Davenport murdered Mallory, his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, using his musket and farm tools. He then set the house on fire with their bodies inside.
He was soon captured, and his confession ran to 14 pages. He was sentenced by Declaration of Independence signer Judge Roger Sherman to 70 lashes, then hanged. The incident was widely reported in the young nations press.

1781- After declaring war on Holland over their support for the Revolutionary War, Admiral Rodney with a British fleet captured the Dutch Caribbean island of Saint Eustachius (now the Virgin Islands). The island was a major trading center of covert military aid to the Yankee rebels. Rodney looted the city and flew the Dutch flag over the harbor for several more weeks to surprise incoming Dutch and American ships. But while he made neat headlines in the Caribbean, he and his fleet would have been far more useful rescuing Lord Cornwallis whose army was surrounded at Yorktown Virginia.

1783- The Kingdom of Spain recognized the independence of the United States.

1846- The US Army captured the pueblo town of Taos New Mexico from hostile locals and Indians by shelling the town with cannon fire. Lt. Sterling Price then hanged the native chiefs for treason, even though no one had told them they were now part of America.

1862- President Lincoln received a message from the King of Siam (Thailand) offering him Siamese war elephants to help him win the Civil War. He politely passed on the offer.

1863- MARK TWAIN- It was a long custom in American newspapers for columnists and critics to publish under pseudonyms. Abe Lincoln loved humor columns written by Charles Farrar Brown under the name Artemus Ward. Aurore Dupin published as George Sand. When riverboat pilot Samuel Clemens became a writer he first considered names like Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, and W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab. Today he borrowed from another riverboat pilot the idea for the pseudonym for which he would become famous. This day in the Virginia City Nevada Territorial Register newspaper was an article authored by someone calling himself - 'Mark Twain'. Mark Twain was the Mississippi River pilot's term for when a steamboat is in two fathoms of water or more, in other words, safely enough away from shallows to proceed at full speed.

1865- The Confederate government made the first overtures to Washington for peace talks to end the Civil War. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens secretly met with Abe Lincoln on board a riverboat in the James River to discuss terms. However no agreement was reached. One point that became a deal-breaker was the Lincoln’s offer of pardons and amnesties to Rebels who retook the Oath of Allegiance to the US. Stephens angrily replied that the South had a legal right to secede so had committed no crimes needing any pardons. So, the Civil War continued for two more bloody months.
Alexander Stephens nickname is where we get the term “Smart Alec.”

1889-THE BANDIT QUEEN- In Oklahoma, outlaw Belle Starr was shotgunned out of her saddle by an old boyfriend. She usually shot them first. Originally named Myra Belle Shirley, she pursued a career as an outlaw and had two children, one by Cole Younger, another by a member of the James Gang. Rustler, gunfighter, prostitute, sideshow performer, she said: "Let's just say I'm a woman who's seen a lot of the world."

1912- The rules governing U.S. football are revised. The playing field was shortened to 100 yards; a touchdown counted as six points instead of five; four downs are allowed instead of three and the kickoff point was moved from midfield to the 40 yd. line.

1913- Federal Income Tax Amendment ratified.

1916- The original Canadian Parliament building burned down.

1917- After a German U-Boat sank the U.S.S. Housatonic, President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany.

1920- The play Beyond the Horizon premiered. The first hit of a young man who tried to drink himself to death, but instead became a playwright- Eugene O’Neill.

1930- Roy Disney signed a deal with M. George Borgfeldt Co. of New York to sell figurines of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Disney merchandising is born!

1943- Four Chaplains Day. This day a German U-Boat torpedoed the troopship USS Dorchester, with the loss of 600 lives. Four army chaplains gave their life jackets to others to be saved, and so drowned in the icy Atlantic. Congress declared Feb 3rd thereafter Four Chaplains Day.

1945- General MacArthur began the battle to liberate Manila. The fighting lasted a month, fierce fighting house to house with some Japanese troops killing Philippine civilians as they withdrew.

1945- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros opened in the USA. It had premiered first in Mexico City last Dec.

1948- The first Cadillac’s with big rear tail fins were produced.

1953- Jacques Cousteau, inventor of the Aqua Lung, published The Silent World, and later made a film version of the book with Louis Malle.

1959 "The Day the Music Died" The first Rock & Roll tragedy. Top pop stars Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson died in plane crash. They were on tour and Holly chartered the small plane so they could get to Fargo, North Dakota in time to get his shirts cleaned. Waylon Jennings was supposed to join them but he gave up his seat to Richardson because Richardson was running a fever and didn’t want a long cold bus ride. As they left Richardson teased Jennings:” Hope your bus doesn’t freeze.” And Jennings joked:” Hope your plane doesn’t crash.” The plane was called the American Pie, which inspired a Don McClean’s hit song “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.”

1962- John F. Kennedy signed the trade embargo act against Cuba, banning all trade with Fidel Castro’s regime. White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger recalled how the night before JFK had him go around Washington DC and buy up all the Havana cigars (Monte Cristos) he could for the White House humidor. The embargo lasted until partially lifted by President Obama in 2015. Then it was reinstated by Pres. Trump.

1966- Russia soft landed a probe on the Moon- Lunik-7. The Soviets took the first photos of the Dark Side of the Moon with Lunik–2 as part of their Space Race with the US.

1973- Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law.

1986- After three months of negotiations, Steve Jobs signed papers to acquire the Lucas Film Graphics Division, now under their new name- Pixar Inc.

1989- Swiss firm L'Oreal/Nestle bought LA animation studio Filmation (HeMan, SheRa) from Westinghouse, and shut it down laying off 229 artists the day before a new federal regulation requiring a company give it's employees 60 day notice before closing went into effect.

1998- Near Trento Italy a low flying Marine jet on maneuvers tangled snapped a cable on a ski tram, sending 20 people 300 feet down to their deaths.

1998- Murderer Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection at Huntsville State Prison, Texas. She had chopped up two people with an axe in 1983.

2003-Legendary rock and roll producer Phil Spector killed his girlfriend B-movie actress Lana Clarkson at his LA mansion. Spector had created the Wall of Sound concert technique and produced for the Beatles, Diana Ross, The Ronnettes, and Lenny Bruce, among many others.
The few days before, Phil Spector said to the British Daily Telegraph, “. I would say I'm probably relatively insane, to an extent. I take medication for schizophrenia, but I wouldn't say I'm schizophrenic. I have a bipolar personality, which is strange.”
Phil Spector died in prison of covid in 2021.

2013- American super-sniper Chris Kyle spent his time back from the Iraq War helping men suffering from PTSD by taking them hunting. The Clint Eastwood film American Sniper was based on him. Today he took a vet named Edie-Rae Routh to a shooting range. At one point, Routh turned his weapon on Kyle and killed him. Shortly before he was shot, Kyle texted a friend about Routh “ This guy is straight-up nuts.”
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a nom de plume?

Answer: A pen name. It was the fashion in the late XVIII early XIX century to publish under a pseudonym. See above-1863.




.

Quiz: What is a “nom de plume”?

Yesterdays question answered below: What does it mean when you back someone “ to the hilt”?
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History for 02/02/2024
Birthdays: Tallyrand, Charlie Halas a co-founder of the NFL, James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifitz, Abba Eban, Farrah Fawcett, Garth Brooks, Christie Brinkley, Tommy Smothers, Stan Getz, James Dickey, Liz Smith, Elaine Stritch, Brent Spinner is 75, Shakira born Isabelle Ripoli, is 47

Happy Groundhog Day. This morning if Paxatawney Phil sees his shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter.

1600BC-392AD In ancient Rome it was the first day for the lesser Eleusinian Mysteries held in honor of the goddess Demeter. Some of the rites of Demeter were for women only.

In the Middle Ages it was the Feast of Candlemas, later named the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary.

961 A.D. -Otto I Hohenstaufen crowned, The HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE of the GERMAN NATION declared, or The First Reich. Otto was one of the first rulers to win wars with armored knights on horseback, instead of the Roman Legion style infantry, setting the style for the Middle Ages.
At age 45, he was crowned Emperor by Pope Stephen VI, who was 19. This event created the unusual connection between the German Empire and the Italian states. Italian states like Florence and Venice considered vassals of the German Emperor even though they acted independently and he almost never crossed the Alps to check up on them. A German Emperor was called King of the Romans until crowned by the Pope.
In 1477 the Emperors did away with kissing up to the Pope and left the Imperial selection to a court of electors meeting in Frankfurt. Holy Roman Empire hung around until 1809 when Napoleon declared the whole idea kaput. To quote Voltaire “ It wasn’t much of an Empire, it wasn’t Roman and it most certainly wasn’t very holy either.”

12-1300's-In the middle Ages this was the day of the Winter Reysa- when Crusader Knights of the Teutonic Order would venture into the Latvian Lithuanian forest, find a village of pagans, and chop them up for the Christian Faith. There were two expeditions a year, this one and in the summer. The Knights ran a sort of Club-Med for knights who wanted to crusade, but not risk the long dangerous journey to the Middle East.

1536- The City of Buenos Aires founded.

1565- CZAR IVAN THE TERRIBLE exhibited the first signs of mental unbalance. Without warning, in December he abandoned his capitol Moscow and disappeared. It took several weeks for the Russian court to find him at a little village named Alexandrov, 350 miles away. A procession waving incense and icons came out to beg him to return. He said he would return only if he were allowed to deal with his enemies ruthlessly.
This day he returned to the Kremlin with a private army called the Oprichina, 6,000 criminals and peasants dressed as monks to help him torture people. When asked if a group of Jews from Lithuania could settle in Muscovite lands, Ivan explained his opposition: “ Jews would bring strange herbs into our realm and lead Russians away from Christianity.”

1709- William Dampier was a reformed buccaneer who wrote books about his travels. This day while cruising the South Seas he rescued a man named Sir William Selkirk, who had been marooned on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez for four years. It seems Selkirk had gotten into an argument with the captain of a Chilean schooner who left him there. It was a wise move, because the captain went mad and his ship was lost with all hands. Upon returning to London, Capt. Dampier mentioned the incident to his friend, writer Daniel DeFoe. He used it to create his most famous novel- Robinson Crusoe.

1811- Russian fur traders established Fort Ross, just north of Spanish San Francisco. It was the deepest Russian settlement into North America. In 1845 the Russian Fur Trading Company sold it to American John Sutter of Sutter’ Mill fame. Today there is a reconstructed facsimile of Fort Ross on the site.

1848- TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO signed, which ended the U.S.-Mexican War. Ambassador Nicholas Trist was given the dangerous assignment of finding the Mexican Government fleeing the American assault on Mexico City, then convincing them to sign away California and the Southwest, approximately 40% of their national territory.
Just when negotiations in the little village of Guadalupe Hidalgo were about to conclude successfully, he got a message from Washington to break off talks and return. President Polk had changed his mind. He now wanted the complete conquest of Mexico down to the Yucatan! Trist knew if he did this, the war party in Mexico would keep up a guerrilla war for decades afterwards. So he ignored the message, signed for the U.S. and fixed our southern border at the Rio Grande.
When Trist got home, instead of thanks, he was arrested for treason. But President Polk couldn't convince his war-weary congress to continue the fight. So the treaty was upheld. The French tried conquering Mexico twenty years later and got the Mexican national rising Trist avoided. Nicolas Trist was released from prison, but he never got his back pay until President Lincoln awarded it to him on his deathbed 16 years later. John Kennedy wrote about him in his book Profiles in Courage.

1852- London’s first public toilet was dedicated- near 95 Fleet St.

1870- Samuel Clemens also known as Mark Twain, married Olivia Langdon or Livy.

1870- The first international news agency. Reuters, Havas and Wolf News Agencies agreed to pool their resources for the shared expense of telegraphy.

1876- The National Baseball League founded.

1890- Ten months before the massacre at Wounded Knee 11 million acres of Sioux homeland in South Dakota went on sale to white homesteaders. The Sioux were removed to a smaller reservation and the money raised from the sale was supposed to go to them, but it all disappeared into the pockets of middlemen.

1910- D.W. Griffith's' In Old California', sometimes called the first Hollywood film.

1913- New York’s Grand Central Station opened.

1920- Admiral Kolchak, leader of the anti-communist (White) Russian armies in the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, was shot by firing squad and chucked into a dry canal. For a year Kolchak was de facto dictator of all Russia from the Ural mountains to the Pacific.

1922- the novel "Ulysses" is published. James Joyce had finished the book months earlier but delayed publishing until his birthday, when it would be 2/2/22, which he considered lucky.

1925- IDITEROD- THE SERUM RUN COMPLETED- Nome Alaska at this time was a town totally depended upon supplies from the outside world traveling in by sled dog teams. When a serious epidemic of diptheria threatened the population the call went to the ‘Outside” as Alaskans called the rest of the world, for help. It normally took a musher 18-20 days to cover the 650 miles from the coast to Nome, now a relay of 20 teams in short sprints would attempt to do it in 5 days in the depth of winter.
One musher reported blizzard conditions so bad he couldn’t see the end of his team. While the press kept the world waiting breathlessly on this day Charlie Evans and his malamute team led by his lead dog Balto got into Nome with the serum in a metal cylinder wrapped in fur. At one point two of his dogs froze to death in harness and Evans took up their place himself and ran alongside the dogs the balance of the trip. It took 5 days and 7 hours. The epidemic was limited to five deaths.
The 20 men and their teams were hailed as heroes. Although the dog Balto got most of the credit and has a statue and a movie about him, experts say a 48 pound Siberian husky named Togo did the greatest exertion, going 200 miles in the first leg. The Iditerod sled race is today run in commemoration of this event. The last surviving musher of the original race, Edgar Nollner, died in 1999 at 94 years old .

1928- The pulp magazine Weird Tales published “ The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft.

1940- Soviet dictator Stalin had futurist theater director Vselevod Meyerhold shot.
At the time of his arrest Meyerhold’s wife Zinaida was stabbed to death. Neighbors who heard her screams assumed they were rehearsing a new play.

1952- Chuck Jones cartoon short “Feed the Kitty”. At the age of 12, Chuck witnessed a big dog kill a tiny kitten. It haunted him for years, so obviously this was how he hoped it should have ended.

1957- Elizabeth Taylor married producer Mike Todd. Todd was killed in a plane crash a year later. Despite her famous association with Richard Burton, Taylor later said Mike Todd was the only man she ever truly loved.

1961- In a little Greenwich Village nightclub called the Blue Angel a young stand up comic got his first debut. His name was Woody Allen

1963- In England, singer Helen Schapiro was on tour. On the lower end of her program card was a new band called the Beatles.

1966- Woody Allen married Louise Lasser. They divorced four years later.

1971- After a coup toppled legal President Milton Obote, former British colonial sergeant Idi Amin was inaugurated as president of Uganda. He declared himself Conqueror of the British Empire, led his little army in mock invasions of Israel, even though it was thousands of miles away, and he was surrounded by hostile nations. He played drums in his own rock band, wrestled crocodiles, and once reputedly killed and ate one of his sons.
In 1979, He was kicked out by a Tanzanian invasion.

1971- Murakami-Wolf's TV special "The Point" with Dustin Hoffman narrating and Harry Nilsson's music. In 1973, Hoffman's track was re-recorded by Ringo Starr for some reason. “Me and my Ar-row…”

1979- Sid Vicious, lead singer for the punk band The Sex Pistols, was found dead of a drug overdose. He was awaiting trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. He was 21.

1982- President Hafiz al-Assad ordered the destruction of Syrian city of Hama after its occupation by a Muslim fundamentalist group who sought to create an Iranian-style theocracy. Maybe as many as 25,000 were killed.

1985- O.J. Simpson married Nicole Brown Simpson.

1997- Nationally known sportscaster Marv Albert allegedly had an evening of sex and porn with a prostitute. At one point he bit the lady on the back. He was tried for lewd behavior and his career tanked.

2006- The Cartoon Riots. A Danish newspaper printed a political cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with his turban shaped like a bomb. This so offended people in the Muslim world, that rioting broke out in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jakharta and European capitols. Grenades were thrown at Danish embassies and Danish nationals made to flee. Cartoonist Peter Westergaard dodged a Somali man who attacked him with an axe, and even today needs a bodyguard.

2014- Actor Phillip Seymour-Hoffman died of a drug overdose.
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Yesterday’s question: What does it mean when you back someone “ to the hilt”?

Answer: It meant to stab your sword into someone to the handle. The hilt was the little crossbar there. So, it meant to go in all the way on something.

Quiz: What does it mean when you back someone, “ to the hilt”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a profiterole?
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History for 2/1/2024
Birthdays: Victor Herbert, Langston Hughes, Renata Tebaldi, Clark Gable, John Ford, George Pal, Terry Jones, Jim Thorpe, Sherman Helmsley, Lisa Marie Presley, Garrett Morris, Boris Yeltsin, Billy Mumy is 70, Pauly Shore, Sherilyn Fenn is 59, Michael C. Hall is 53

Welcome to February from Februarius Mensis, named for Februus, a Sabine god of the underworld called the Purifier. Another theory is this month is named for Febis, the Latin for fever, this being a time in the Roman climate when fevers were most common.

570AD- Today is the Feast Day of Saint Brigid, an Irish saint who gave beer to the poor.

1411- The Peace of Torun. The Teutonic Knights of Prussia, an order of warrior monks, yield and pledge obedience to Casimir II Jagiello, King of Poland-Lithuania. This creates a touchy situation with Germany since they had also pledged allegiance to the German emperor.

1733- Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland died. Described as Half-Bull- Half Cock, he could twist horseshoes with his bare hands, and drink everyone under the table. He wasted his kingdom’s treasury indulging his vices and filling his palace at Dresden with bejeweled treasures and porcelains, which makes it such a cool tourist destination today. One of the horniest monarchs of Europe, his reputation for womanizing would be unbelievable, had he not left behind hordes of illegitimate children. His last words were, “My life has been one ceaseless act of Sin.”

1790- First U.S. Supreme Court Session. It was held in the former Royal Exchange Building, a converted barn on Broad Street in lower Manhattan. The John Jay Court at first acted like a circuit court traveling around arbitrating local issues until a permanent home was fixed in the new Federal city.

1865- U.S. Chief Justice Salmon Chase admitted John Rock to be the first black lawyer to practice before the Supreme Court. Besides being a Boston attorney Rock was a dentist, orator and spoke French and German fluently.

1887- California land developer Harvey Wilcox took out a county deed for a new ranch he called 'Hollywoodland' after the name of an estate his wife admired back in Connecticut. It gave its name to the new Los Angeles town- Hollywood. The famous sign was put up in 1923.

1893- In New Jersey, Thomas Edison and his Canadian engineer W. K. Dickson built the FIRST MOTION PICTURE STUDIO. It was covered with black tar paper and called "The Black Mariah" because that was the nickname of police paddy wagons that it resembled. It's debatable how much of the inventing was more Dickson than Edison. Edison was only marginally interested in the movies. He was more concerned with how to extract iron ore from rocks using magnets. Dickson worked himself into the hospital to make the studio work, and resenting Edison’s apathy started experimenting on his own. When Edison found out, he fired him.

1896- Puccini's opera "La Boheme" debuted in Turin. It was based on Prosper Merimee’s popular book Bohemian Sketches. Puccini's old roommate Piero Mascagni (Cavalleria Rusticana) with whom Puccini and he once lived like Bohemian artists, tried to sue him, because he was writing a Boheme' also. The suit failed and Mascagni released his rival version, but it didn't hold up in comparison with Puccini's.

1898- The Travellers Insurance company issued the first auto insurance policy. It was to protect a car enthusiast from Buffalo. He was being sued and harassed by angry horse owners in his neighborhood.

1901- Outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with prostitute Hedda Place, sometimes called Mrs. Sundance, escaped the law back in Wyoming and arrive in New York City to relax. After a month of sightseeing they take a ship to Bolivia.

1908- King Carlos I of Portugal and his son were assassinated in the streets of Lisbon. In 1910 his other son was deposed and a republic declared under Teofilo Braga. King Edward VII of England attended a requiem Mass in their memory. It marked the first time in 220 years that an English King ever attended a Roman Catholic service.

1915- The Fox Film Company formed (Later Twentieth Century Fox). Disney ended them in 2020.

1926- Gen. Billy Mitchell resigned from the army after a court-martial censored him for shooting his mouth off in favor of building a large independent U.S. Air Force. He claimed all future wars would be won by air power. After World War II proved all of Mitchell’s arguments correct, he was reinstated an honorary Major general, posthumously.

1943- At his headquarters at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, Adolf Hitler received the news of the Nazi army surrender at Stalingrad. Hitler was furious. Not that he lost 250,000 of his best men, but that their commander Field Marshal Von Paulus surrendered instead of committing suicide.” This hurts me so much that the heroism of so many soldiers was nullified by one single characterless weakling.”
Then Hitler said in a foreshadowing of his own fate:” When the nerves break down, there is nothing left but to admit one can’t handle the situation and to shoot oneself.”

1944- The U.S. Marines invaded Japanese held Kwajelein, the world's largest atoll.

1961- Four black college freshmen sit down at a "whites-only" lunch counter at the Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina. When they left or were arrested four more sat down. Then four more. The Civil Rights sit-in campaigns begin.

1964- Indiana Governor Matthew Walsh declares that the Rock & Roll song “Louie-Louie” by the Kingsmen was pornographic and should be banned. The FCC investigated and their conclusion was that the “lyrics are unintelligible at any speed”. The song remained a major hit. In the 1980’s several schools in Northern Cal held Louie-Louie Marathons-96 straight hours of Louie-Louie played by Punk bands, polka bands, string quartets, water-glasses, and folk trios. Whoah whoah, Me gotta go, yo,yo yo yo.

1968- During the Vietnamese Tet Lunar Offensive, as Eddie Adams camera snapped South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan put a snub-nosed pistol to the head of a Vietcong prisoner and pulled the trigger. The photo of the young man’s death grimace became one of the more haunting images of that war.

1979- The Ayatollah Khomeni took over Iran and declared it an Islamic Republic.

1985- Walt Disney Feature Animation was moved from their 1939 building on the main lot, to some anonymous warehouses in Glendale near Disney Imagineering. One building was a repurposed casket factory. Many of the animators thought it presaged the unit’s eventual dissolution. Ten years later, after successes like Little Mermaid and The Lion King, they were moved back to a new building adjacent to the studio lot.

1990- Siegfried & Roy open their exclusive show at the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas. They and their white tigers have performed for Hollywood stars, presidents and Pope John Paul II. One Vegas columnist noted: “When Elvis performed in Vegas there were some empty seats. But there were nothing but full houses when Siegfried & Roy performed.” The act was finally ended when Roy’s throat was slashed by a tiger in 2003.
Roy died of Covid in 2020, and Siegfried a few months later in Jan. 2021.

2003-“Columbia this is Houston on UHF, Houston, Columbia on UHF…” NASA’s first space shuttle, the Columbia, broke up and disintegrated upon reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven astronauts were killed. The Columbia had flown 26 missions since 1981. On board was the first woman astronaut born in India, and the first Israeli in space, Col. Llan Ramon.

2020- Ophthalmologist Dr. Li Wenliang of Wuhan tried to warn the world about the coming pandemic of CoVid 19. He caught the disease while fighting it in others. Today he wrote his last message on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.” The dust has settled, and the diagnosis is confirmed.” He died a week later. Li Wenliang was 34.
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Yesterday’s question: What is a profiterole?

Answer: French pasty balls filled with cold custard or cream and topped with hot chocolate sauce.

Quiz: Who were the Ritz Brothers?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is the origin of the term “a podunk town”?
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History for 1/30/2024
Birthdays: Barbara Tuchman, Walt “Moose” Dropo, Olaf Palme, Dick Martin, Louis S. Rukeyser, Dorothy Malone, Boris Spassky, John Ireland, Douglas Englebart, Phil Collins, Vanessa Redgrave is 87, Gene Hackman is 94, Christian Bale is 50, Former VP Dick Cheney is 84

1649- KING CHARLES I of ENGLAND BEHEADED-The Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell condemned the King "That man of Blood" and abolished the English monarchy. As Charles laid his head upon the block he said:" I go from a corruptible crown to one which is Incorruptible." -Splat!
Cromwell’s government worried that if the identity of the headsman Richard Brandon was ever found out avengers may harm his family. They kept the secret so well that his name for a time was lost to history. In Alexander Dumas' sequel to “The Three Musketeers”, he makes the executioner to be the son of Madame DeWinter and the Duc de Rochefort.

1661- HAVE YOU SEEN OLIVER CROMWELL'S HEAD? English dictator General Oliver Cromwell died of natural causes in 1658. After the restoration of the British monarchy, The King’s sheriffs exhumed Cromwell’s body and exacted revenge by beheading it, and placing the head on London Bridge, where criminals are usually exhibited. A mob joyfully bounced around the rest of the corpse and threw it in the Thames.
After a year, the head fell off it's spike and rolled around on the ground. A priest took it home and sold it to a travelling circus. Eventually it was donated to Cambridge University, to whom Oliver Cromwell had been a benefactor. The college interred it but will not divulge where.

1790- Sir Malcolm Greathead invented the lifeboat.

1835- THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL ASSASINATION ATTEMPT –An unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence who thought he was King Richard III, emerged from a crowd in the lobby of the House of Representatives and fired two pistols at President Andrew Jackson. They both miss. Jackson, an old army man who already carried around two lead bullets in his body from Indian fights and duels, was so outraged that he grabbed Lawrence and started drubbing him on the head with his silver tipped cane. He beat him so badly that the police had the strange task of saving the assassin from his intended victim.

1862- John Ericsson’s radical design for an all-ironclad ship with a rotating turret, the USS Monitor, was launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

1889- THE MAYERLING AFFAIR-Archduke Rudolf Von Hapsburg, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, committed suicide with his mistress, Bavarian baroness Maria Vestera. Rudolf was already married, and even if he could divorce, he could never marry so below his rank. Some say that there was more intrigue to it, that German statesman Otto Von Bismarck had Rudolf murdered because Rudolph planned on challenging Berlin’s hold over German unity, but that theory is a longshot. His family felt Rudolf was an emotionally troubled man, who finally found a girl dumb enough to follow him in his suicide pact. The Baroness had taken poison and then Rudolf blew his brains out. Austrian funerary makeup artists worked overtime to make the Archduke's shattered face fit for an open casket wake. His mother the Empress Elizabeth refused to go: "I won't go see that thing! It's head is made of wax!"

1894-Charles King of Detroit patented the pneumatic jackhammer.

1917- During WWI, The German General Staff gambled that resuming unrestricted U-boat warfare would economically destroy England and win even if it angered the United States enough to declare war. Admiral Keppel told the Kaiser that even if the United States did enter the war, they could never get enough soldiers across the Atlantic to accomplish anything. “The threat from America is less than nothing. Nothing!”

1931- The Premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights at the Los Angeles Theater. Albert Einstein came as his guest. Later at a dance at the Biltmore Hotel, writer Herman Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane, Duck Soup) got into a drunken fistfight with producer David O. Selznick (Gone With the Wind, Rebecca). You’ll never eat turtle-soup in this town again!

1933- HI-YO SILVER!! The Lone Ranger debuted on radio. The Masked Man was invented by the WXYZ Detroit station owner George Trendle and writer Fran Striker with absolutely no experience of cowboys or Indians. They just wanted a hero like Zorro with a strict moral code. He was later voiced by actor William Conrad who did the Rocky & Bullwinkle narration and the TV detective series Cannon.

1934- Artist Salvador Dali married Gala.

1933- ADOLF HITLER TAKES POWER. After a general election President Von Hindenburg was forced to appoint the Nazi Party leader Chancellor. Hindenburg had earlier growled” Chancellor? I’ll make him a postmaster so he could lick stamps with my face on it!” But he was forced to give in. Germans fed up with skyrocketing inflation and political anarchy among leftist parties voted for the funny little man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache.
The Nazis didn’t win by a landslide vote, it was a 37-42% majority, with the rest divided among splinter parties. The German Army at first didn’t cooperate with the Nazis. Generals called him “ That little Bohemian corporal”. Their real power came when Hitler made a bargain with the major German corporations like Krupp, Seimans, Bayer and Daimler to take the ‘socialist” out of National Socialists and arrest all communists, unions and other bad-for-business types. All this was applauded by big business in the US like JP Morgan, Chase and Hearst who floated loans to Germany. With their new corporate clout, the Nazis quickly called a new election to gain an overwhelming parliamentary majority in the Reichstag.
After ancient President Hindenburg died in 1934 the Reichstag voted dictatorial powers to Hitler, making him Der Fuehrer.

1943- At Stalingrad, as the freezing remains of the German 6th Army were wiped out by superior Soviet forces, this day Berlin received the last radio message from Field Marshal Von Paulus’ headquarters in the basement of a bombed out department store:” Russians at the door. We are preparing to destroy the radios. We are preparing……”

1945- As the Red Army pushed the borders of the Third Reich back into Germany the German populations of isolated Baltic cities like Memel, Riga and Konigsberg tried to escape by sea. It was a Nazi Dunkirk, evacuations with ships full of people being bombed and strafed from the air. This day a large ship named the Wilhelm Gustoff was torpedoed by a Russian submarine. 1,500 people died on the Titanic, 7,700 people drowned in the frigid waters from the Wilhelm Gustoff- the most deaths ever in one sea disaster.

1946- The first US dimes with Franklin Roosevelt on the head were issued.

1948- At Birla House while walking to morning prayers, 78 year old Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was shot three times in the chest and killed by Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse

1956- Elvis Presley recorded Blue Suede Shoes.

1958- Britain’s House of Lords admitted women for the first time.

1960- For years after the making of Fantasia, critics had pondered Igor Stravinsky's cryptic reaction to Disney's portrayal of his "Rite of Spring". Disney publicity said he was "speechless with admiration!" Today in a Saturday Review article, Stravinsky said Stokowski's editing of his music was 'execrable' and the visuals "an unresisting imbecility". His opinion still didn't stop him from selling the studio film the rights to several other of his pieces including "The Firebird' in 1942. Igor needed the cash.

1961-Hanna-Barbera’s The Yogi Bear Show premiered. The other sections were Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle.

1963- MIT grad student Ivan Sutherland published his thesis Sketchpad, the first animation software. For the first time, a computer could draw lines instead of just numbers. When students at the University of Utah like Ed Catmull, Nolan Bushnell and Jim Blinn were learning about CGI. The first thing they were asked to read was Sutherland’s Sketchpad. Everything from Woody & Buzz, Avatar, Groot and Mortal Combat results.

1969- The rock band the Beatles last public appearance as a group. They tried to do a free concert in the London streets but were banned by police for fear of congestion and noise complaints. So they withdrew to a rooftop above their recording studio at 3. Savile RD. and played anyway. John Lennon ended the concert by saying: ‘Thank you very much on behalf of the band and myself, and I hope we passed the audition.”

1972- BLOODY SUNDAY- British troops attempting to quell Irish sectarian riots in the poor neighborhoods of Londonderry fired into a crowd of unarmed civilians, killing 14 and wounding dozens more. British authorities attempted a spin by saying the troops were responding to perceived snipers, but no evidence of any snipers was ever proven. None of the soldiers were ever disciplined for their actions. The incident outraged world opinion and angered the Irish Republic.

1973- White House operatives G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord were convicted of burglary in the Watergate break in. President Nixon hoped sacrificing these two small fish would end the investigation. It didn’t. Liddy did some jail time, and today is a highly paid conservative radio talk show host.

1976- George H. W. Bush Sr. became head of the CIA. Poppy Bush revived the organization which had been wracked by scandal after the Frank Church Congressional Committee revealed details of the Allende coup in Chile, overseas assassination, illegal surveillance of Americans and schemes to put chemicals in Fidel Castro’s food to make his beard fall out.

2001- Shortly after becoming president, George W. Bush held the first meeting of his National Security Council. Secty of State Colin Powell and Treasury Secty Paul O’Neill were shocked when Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condy Rice immediately start talking about how to invade Iraq and replace Saddam Hussein. Nine months before 9-11.

2002- President George W. Bush Jr. saluted his Vice President Dick Cheney on his birthday by saying “You are the best Vice President this country has ever had!” He may have forgotten that his own father was also once vice president. I’m sure his mom reminded him about that later.
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Yesterday’s question: What is the origin of the term “a podunk town”?

Answer: In the 1920s, famed Broadway composer Irving Berlin (White Christmas) liked to visit friends in Kentucky and take in the Kentucky Derby. When there, he would sometimes stay near a small rural town called Podunk Junction. The locals used the name as a joke for a backward rube. Back in New York City, Irving Berlin’s use of the phrase spread through NY high society. It became popular slang in the 20’s to call someone or something backward and ignorant as “Podunk”.