Question: Who are the Seabees?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the origin of the phrase” To be Turned Down Flat?”
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HISTORY FOR 12/3/2021
Birthdays: French King Charles VI the Well-Served 1380, Gilbert Stuart, Sven Nykvist, Joseph Conrad- real name Josef Korzeniowski, Jean Luc Godard, Nino Rota, Jim Backus, Maria Callas, Larry Parks, Charles Pillsbury, Mitsuo Fuchida the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, Darryl Hannah is 61, Katerina Witt, Brendan Fraser is 53, Marisa Tomei, Julianne Moore is 61, Andrew Stanton, Amanda Seyfried is 36

749AD- This is the Feast of Saint John Damascene. He’s the saint who’s called the Father of Christian Art, because he theologically argued a way for artists to avoid the “No Graven Images “ hitch in the Ten Commandments, so we could make paintings of Jesus and the Saints.

1557- The Scottish Covenant- In Edinburgh Scotland a group of anticlerical noblemen Argyll, Glencairn, Morton, Lorne and Erskine signed the First Scottish Covenant- pledging to reform the religion of the land.

1591- The first fire insurance contract was written in Hamburg.

1775- The first official U.S. flag hoisted aboard the USS Alfred. It was thirteen stripes with a cross of Saint George and Saint Andrew in the corner.

1800-Battle of Hohenlinden- French whip the Austrians, but it wasn’t done by Napoleon but by a different general, so Nappy asks us to overlook his competition.

1818- Illinois became a state with its first capitol at Kaskaskia.

1838- The Battle of Windsor. Another attempt by the U.S. to conquer Canada. On this day a force of 500 disaffected Canadians, Yankee opportunists and Polish revolutionists crossed over from Detroit and captured Windsor Ontario. (why do we always invade Canada in the winter? )
They were led by the uncle of writer Ambrose Bierce, Lucius Verus Bierce. They called themselves the Secret Guild of the Sacred Hunters of the East, and their intention was no less than liberating Canada from the hated British yoke!
Well, nobody rose up with them. And while they were standing around trying to think of what to do next, the British army quickly rounded them up. Those that weren’t hanged, were shipped to New Zealand.
Lucius Bierce escaped back across the Detroit River in a canoe where he was promptly arrested for violating U.S. neutrality laws. He later devoted his time and money to abolitionist causes, and financed John Browns’ anti-slavery campaign in Kansas.
1845- Britain wages the First Sikh War.

1868- Preliminary hearings open into the treason trial of Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederate States. Radical republicans wanted someone punished for the Civil War, but many were worried that a master lawyer like Davis would use the opportunity to prove there was indeed a Constitutional basis for states legally seceding from the union. Davis himself hoped for a trial to prove just that point. But presiding judge Chief Justice Salmon B. Chase had by prior arrangement with President Andrew Johnson a plan to stall the trial until Johnson's amnesty for all confederates went into effect on Feb 15th.

1881- In Africa, explorer Henry M. Stanley founded the town of Kinshasa, which they called then Leopoldville after the King of the Belgians.

1890- A small British army marches into Uganda, and camping on a hilltop called Kampala informs the local chief Mwanga that he is now part of the British Empire, whether he liked it or not. The British officer even made Mwanga sign the treaty twice, because he felt his first ink splotch was done insincerely. Uganda remained a British colony until 1956.

1894- In Samoa, writer Robert Louis Stevenson was opening a bottle of wine, when he paused and cried “ What’s that?”, then he looked at his wife and said “ Does my face look strange?” Then he collapsed and died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 44.

1919- Impressionist painter Pierre August Renoir died at age 79. Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, when he could no longer paint with his hands, Renoir used a bit that held the brush in his teeth.

1925- GEORGE GERSHWIN PLAYED CARNEGIE HALL. Gershwin always wanted to be taken seriously as a composer, and not just a Tin Pan Alley songwriter. While in Paris he met Maurice Ravel, but instead of giving him advice, Ravel said: "You make HOW much from your songs? Maybe I should learn from you!" When he asked to be Arnold Schoenberg's pupil, Schoenburg told him :" Why do you want to be a bad Schoenburg, when you're already such a good Gershwin?"

1931- Happy Birthday Alka Seltzer! The fizzy tablet was invented by chemist Maurice Treener for the Dr. Miles Medicine Company of Indiana.

1934- Lee Blair, Disney artist and brother of Preston Blair, Disney artist, married Mary Browne Robinson, Disney artist. She became the most famous of them as Mary Blair.

1941- After clandestine diplomatic initiatives to raise the U.S. oil and steel embargoes failed, The Japanese High Command radioed it's carrier fleet out in the Pacific: "Climb Mount Niitaka". This code meant go forward with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Admiral Nagumo orders resumption of radio silence and turned his fleet South-SouthWest towards Hawaii.

1944- A Nazi newspaper published on this day features a photo of a young Austrian S.S. officer with his commander in Greece. After the war his commander was hanged as a war criminal. The young man became Secretary General of the United Nations, President of Austria, and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize- Kurt Waldheim.

1948- Happy Ozzy Day! Ozzie Ozbourne is 72- ”I never set out to be a businessman. I just wanted to have fun, f—k chicks, and do drugs.”

1948- Walt Disney’s Mickey and the Seal, debuted. Directed by Charles Nichols.

1956- British and French forces evacuate Egypt, where they had been since 1799.

1965- The Beatles release the album Rubber Soul.

1967- Dr. Christiaan Barnard of Capetown performed the first heart transplant.

1968- Elvis Presley opened in Las Vegas to rave reviews and packed houses. It marks the beginning of his comeback and his transition from thin, black leather-jacketed youth to fat, rhinestone jumpsuit, half tinted sunglasses, karate-swinging middle age.

1976- During a photo shoot for a Pink Floyd album cover at London’s Battersea Power Station, a 40 foot long inflated pig broke away from its’ tether and floated away to become a hazard to civil aviation. The AeroPork was lost to radar at 8,000 feet.

1984- An accident at a Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India filled the air with poison methyl-isocynate gasses that killed 10,000 people and blinds or otherwise injured a further 200,000. No one from Union Carbide was ever tried or convicted for the tragedy. Saint Mother Theresa showed her controversial side when she publicly encouraged people to accept the disaster as God’s Will. Even today, the ground around the closed facility is considered too deadly for inhabitation.

1991- Hulk Hogan defeated Undertaker to become WWF champ for the 4th time.

1997 – 56 year old Darlene Gillespie, an original member of the Mickey Mouse Club, was busted in LA for a securities fraud scheme.

1997- Young basketball star Latrell Sprewell lost his $32 million contract with the Golden State Warriors for trying to strangle his coach, P.J. Carlesino. Chill out, dude.

2004-The Ukranian Supreme Court ruled the recent presidential election invalid. Moscow and hardline Kiev Gov’t supported Victor Januscowicz followers committed widespread acts of voter fraud, then suppressed any news reports.
The story was revealed to the world by a heroic sign language translator for the deaf. While the state approved news anchor reported the elections on the evening news the translator, Nataliya Dmytruk, deaf signed “EYERYTHING YOU HAVE JUST HEARD IS A LIE! YUSCHENKO IS OUR TRUE PRESIDENT! THIS IS PROBABLY THE LAST TIME YOU WILL EVER SEE ME..” The word spread, and spawned weeklong mass demonstrations and international pressure that compelled the government to redo the election. Ms. Dmytruk survived and is today considered a national hero.

2008- Conservative Episcopalian churches in the U.S. and Canada announced they were leaving the main Episcopal communion to found a new church- the New Anglican Church of North America. These theologians objected to the Church nominating gay priests and bishops.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the origin of the phrase” To be Turned Down Flat?”

Answer: In early America when a gentleman desired to court a lady, he would leave his card du’ visite [calling card] at her house. When he returned to call, if the card was upright on the mantle, then the lady in question desired to accept his courtship. But if she declined, he knew when he saw his card – turned down flat.

Question: What is the origin of the phrase” To be Turned Down Flat?”

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why do we say someone who resembles another is a “dead ringer”?
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History for 12/2/2021
Birthdays: George Seurat, Charles Ringling, Julie Harris, Gianni Verasce, Monica Seles, Cathy Lee Crosby, Lucy Liu is 54, Britney Spears is 41

1254- Manfred, The bastard son of the German Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, came into Italy with an army and routed Papal forces near Foggia.
Ever since the Pope had crowned Charlemagne, the argument was whether Popes or Emperors were top dog. The German Emperors wasted two centuries fighting the independent Italian City states trying to consolidate a reborn Roman Empire. The Popes fought them like any other independent landowner who didn’t want to yield their property.
Emperor Manfred didn’t accomplish much in Italy, but he liked to sing and write poetry. Dante said “There was not his like in the world when it came to playing string instruments.”

1494 - BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES Now that the Medici family were driven out, mystical monk Savonarola proposed to the people of Florence that they create a republic ruled by God’s Law. Savonarola ruled Florence like a Christian Ayatollah. He led big public spectacles where in large bonfires Florentines burned their “vanities” like makeup, wigs, art and books, and tried to live a religious life. Even the artist Botticelli burned one of his own paintings. Eventually, it all got so boring they burned Savonarola instead, and recalled the fun-loving Medici family.

1644- THE FIRST GREAT EUROPEAN SUMMIT- The various combatants of the Thirty Years War began a peace conference at Westphalia. France, Spain, Sweden, The German Empire, Saxony, Holland, the Papacy, Hungary, Denmark and a multitude of German and Italian small states try and end the seemingly endless war. It took them four years to hammer out a deal. While Central Europe was ravaged by six armies that depopulated the countryside, plague broke out and peasants rose in revolt, diplomats wasted six months arguing the order of how they entered the conference chamber, how they addressed one another and who had precedence. It wasn’t until 1648 that the Peace Treaty of Westphalia was signed and the war ended.

1697- Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London reopened. It was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after being destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

1723- Phillipe D’Orleans died of an apoplectic seizure at 49. He ruled France as regent for the boy King Louis XV. Even when Louis attained his manhood, he didn’t mind if his Uncle Phillipe continued to run the country. Phillipe D’Orleans was an able minister but extremely corrupt and sexually promiscuous. The City of New Orleans was founded in his name.

1804- NAPOLEON CROWNED EMPEROR OF FRANCE .The 35 year old little corporal from Corsica who spoke French with an Italian accent, had piercing gray eyes and if he liked you showed his affection by giving your ear a tug, was crowned Emperor of the French. He had the Pope brought up from Rome to Notre Dame for legitimacy, but in a moment of planned theater Napoleon took the crown from his hands and crowned himself.
European liberals like Goethe and Beethoven who had thought Napoleon would be a strong force of reform in Europe were now disillusioned that he turned out to be just another usurper. Beethoven scratched off his dedication of his Third Symphony (Eroica) to him. Napoleon's mother, an old guerrilla named Madame Letizia, thought her son was making a fool out of himself and boycotted the ceremony. When David was doing the official painting of the event Napoleon ordered him to paint his mother in anyway.

1805- THE SUNRISE OF AUSTERLITZ- At a small village in what is now the Czech republic, Napoleon defeated the combined armies of Russia and Austria in one spectacular battle. Tolstoy called it the Battle of the Three Emperors. As much as he was a strategist and tactician Napoleon was a great analyst of human character. Based on his opinion of his opponent’s personalities, he predicted exactly how the battle would go two weeks before he lured them into it. The defeat of the Allies was total, French artillery blew holes in a frozen lake the Russians were trying to escape over, drowning hundreds. Within days they sued for peace and the war was ended. Napoleon's take on the days events: "Ah, que belle journee'."What a lovely day it's been."

1823- U.S. President James Monroe published the Monroe Doctrine, saying all the European empires then coveting lands in the Western Hemisphere should butt out or the Good Ole U.S.A. would have something to say about it! Shortly afterwards Britain extended its claim on Western Canada and seized the Falkland Islands, France entered Mexico, and Russia pressed it's claim on Alaska.

1834-Battle of Ndondakasuka- Csetshwayo and his Zulu Impis (regiments) defeat his rival Mbulazi to become King of the Zulu Empire. Csetshwayo's descendants are now the leaders of the Inkatha Freedom Party in modern South Africa.

1845- President James K. Polk re-affirmed the Monroe Doctrine and announced it would be the policy of his administration to get Texas and California from Mexico and Oregon from the British. He called such continental expansion America’s “Manifest Destiny.”

1854-Napoleon III was Napoleon's nephew and since 1848 legally elected President of the Second French Republic. But he decided that he wanted to be an Emperor like his uncle, so he seized dictatorial power on the anniversary of Austerlitz and arrested all dissenters like Victor Hugo, Alex DeTocqueville and cartoonist Honore' Daumier (gotta watch those cartoonists...)

1859- John Brown was hanged. He said nothing on the scaffold but left a prediction on a slip of paper,".. I now believe that the sins of this nation have become so great that the cannot be excised but by a great spilling of blood.." Witnessing the event were Col. Robert E. Lee, Captain Jeb Stuart, and part time reservist John Wilkes Booth.

1863- The dome of the U.S. Capitol completed as the Goddess of Freedom is hoisted up into place.

1877- Camille Saint Saens opera “Samson & Delilah” premiered in Weimar.

1896- We remember Wyatt Earp as the marshal of Dodge City and gunfighter of the 1881 OK Corral gunfight. He was better known to his people of his own generation as the referee of the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey Heavyweight Championship prizefight in San Francisco. After leaving Tombstone Arizona, Wyatt Earp drifted to San Francisco where his skills as a fight referee were called upon for this last of the big bare-knuckle bouts.
He enraged the public when he declared the fight for Sharkey in the 3rd round after Big-Bob Fitzsimmons couldn't stop bleeding. More people were out to kill him over this decision than were ever out to get him over the OK Corrall. He quickly pulled up stakes and went to the Yukon for the gold rush. He was all but forgotten until a little book called Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshal published in 1920 made him famous.

1901- Mr. King Gillette invented the safety razor.

1933- Voice actor Clarence “Ducky” Nash began working at Walt Disney. He would create the voice for Donald Duck and his nephews.

1935- Animator Marc Davis first day at Walt Disney Studios. He retired in 1978.

1938- The first executions in California by gas chamber.

1942- THE FIRST CONTROLLED NUCLEAR CHAIN REACTION -The concept of a fission reaction had been theorized by Einstein and Bohr in 1939. Under a squash court at the University of Chicago a team of physicists led by Enrico Ferme began a chain reaction in a uranium pile and stopped it again, producing a few watts of energy. To celebrate they produced a bottle of Chianti and some paper cups. No toasts were made to man's entrance into the Atomic Age. Tennis courts are still there and the Regenstein Library was built on the site. To this day the lowest basement registers off the scale on Geiger counters.

1954- Senator Joseph McCarthy’s fall from power became complete. The Senate voted to censure him for Misconduct Unbecoming a Senator. He died of alcoholism in 1957.

1956- Fidel Castro with 88 followers trained in guerrilla fighting, landed on the beach in Cuba and melted into the mountains. This group would be the core of a revolution that by 1959 would topple the US backed regime of dictator Fulgensio Batista and upset the world balance of power. The ramshackle boat Fidel, Che and his buddies made the crossing over from Mexico in was called the Granma.

1965- Walt Disney live action comedy That Darned Cat, with Dean Jones and Hayley Mills, opened.

1980- During El Salvador’s civil war four American churchwomen, three catholic nuns and a lay worker, were raped and murdered by government death squads backed by the U.S.

1982- Wild-eyed British comedian Marty Feldman (Igor in Young Frankenstein) suddenly died of a heart attack in Mexico while filming the comedy YellowBeard. He was 48.

1982- The full 13 minute video version of Michael Jackson’s song Thriller, premiered on MTV.

1993- NASA astronauts do a series of space walks from their shuttle to adjust the Hubble space telescope. The Hubble cost billions of dollars but was sent into orbit with a flaw in its lenses. It was nearsighted. The spacewalk in effect gave the Hubble a set of glasses to see better the furthest details of deep space.

1994- LA jury found Heidi Fleiss ‘The Hollywood Madam” guilty of running a prostitution ring. Charlie Sheen and Sean Penn were among her frequent flyers.

Yesterday’s Question: Why do we say someone who resembles another is a “dead ringer”?

Answer: In the XIX Century horse racing, substituting a faster horse for the nag listed was called a ringer. And something exact was referred to as “dead on”, as in targeting a rifle. Combining them to mean an exact duplicate became slang in the 1880s.

Another version has to do with people who were accidentally buried alive because of their physical condition subsequent to a disease, like a coma. To prevent this occurring, strings were attached to a corpses' finger and the other end to a bell on the grave's surface. If the corpse came to life and moved the bell would ring.

Question: Why do we say someone who resembles another is a “dead ringer”?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?
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History for 12/1/2021
Welcome to December, from Decembrius Mensis, month number 10 to the Romans who only had ten months in their original calendar. It’s the same Latin root as Decimate, Dime, Decimal.

Birthdays: Richard Pryor, Mary Martin, Cyril Ritchard, Dick Shawn, Richard Crenna, Lee Trevino, Charlene Tilton, Lou Rawls, Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov, Admiral Stansfield Turner, Rex Stout the author of Nero Wolfe, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Treat Williams, Andrew Cuomo, Woody Allen is 86, Bette Midler is 76, Sarah Silverman is 51

Happy Roman Festival of Neptune.

WORLD AIDS DAY- established by the UN in 1987.

659 AD-Today is the feast day of Saint Eligius of Limoge, a goldsmith and mint master to Merovingian King Dagobert, who started the art of Limoge enamels.

1521- Pope Leo X died after getting overheated attending celebrations of the defeat of French forces in Milan. He was 45. Some thought he was poisoned, but he probably caught the malarial fever prevalent in Rome at the time. Leo was one of the great art patrons of the Renaissance. He spent lavishly. “ God has given us the Papacy, so let us enjoy it” As soon as the Pontiff was cold, Cardinals and bankers looted the Vatican treasury for all the money he borrowed from them, sending the Church into one of the worst financial crises in its’ history.

1641- THE GREAT REMONSTRANCE- The English Parliament sent King Charles I a long list of everything that annoyed them about being his subjects. They demanded Parliament to be the supreme authority in the realm, to sit in permanent session, the right to select and dismiss royal ministers, and to reform the Protestant Church of England to a more Calvinist purity. “God's Blood! You ask of me things one would never ask of a king!"-sayeth King Charles. This little spat would become the English Civil War by June.

1805-THE MIDNIGHT CAMP AT AUSTERLITZ- The night before the big battle between French, Austrian and Russian armies on a cold little field in what would be the Czech Republic. Napoleon went on a midnight inspection of his troops. His tour turned into something akin to a homecoming football rally. The French soldiers cheered, lit torches, made bonfires, sang and partied all night. Across the hills, the enemy generals mistakenly thought all this activity meant Napoleon was preparing to run away.

1835- Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.

1861- The first installment of Charles Dicken’s novel Great Expectations began to appear in magazines.

1869- A Sir William MacDougal was sent by Ottawa to take over the administration of Prince Rupertland, now called the new Canadian province of Manitoba. His problem was the whole population of French trappers, Indians and half-breeds had already declared themselves the independent Metiz Republic, under their leader Louis Riel. MacDougal had to sneak across the border from the U.S. at midnight. Avoiding Metiz patrols, his party stopped at an abandoned Hudson's Bay trading post where they raised the Union Jack in the darkness. Gov. MacDougal read his Royal Proclamation to an audience of seven aides and two hunting dogs. Then they crept back over the border to the U.S. to a healthy dose of razzing from Yankee cowboys. The British Army arrived next spring and established order, but by then MacDougal had been recalled.

1879- Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera HMS Pinafore opened. Sullivan conducted the orchestra while Gilbert was a chorister.
“When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

1887- The very first Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan-Doyle "A Study in Scarlet" first published in Beeton’s Christmas Gazette.

1909- The Pennsylvania Trust Company invented the Christmas Club account.

1917- Father Flanaghan opened Boys Town west of Omaha Nebraska. A retreat for homeless boys and in 1979 girls as well.

1934- Josef Stalin's close confidant Sergei Kirov is assassinated in a Kremlin hallway by Lenoid Nikolayev. Stalin ordered the GREAT PURGES of the thirties to begin. Later it came out that Stalin had ordered Kirov assassinated as an excuse. Exact figures are debatable but it is estimated millions were arrested and died. Stalin even had the wandering poor blind storytellers of the Ukraine rounded up and shot for fomenting anti-revolutionary ethnicity. Declassified private papers of Stalin revealed he admired Czar Ivan the Terrible and tried to learn from his example. Legend is he once said, “One person killed is a crime. Millions killed is a statistic.”

1938- In Moscow legendary filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein released his film of Russian patriotism ALEXANDER NEVSKY, with soundtrack provided by Sergei Prokoviev.

1941-Anticipating imminent hostilities with Japan, The U.S. Navy withdrew it’s fleet of Yangtze River gunboats. As the gunboats steamed out into the South China Sea, they were surrounded by large Japanese warships, that held their fire to let them pass.

1943- FDR, Churchill and Stalin conclude their first meeting in Teheran, Iran. The western allies passed supplies to Russia via the Persian Gulf through Iran. Roosevelt discussed the occupation zones of a defeated Germany by drawing lines in pencil on a map torn out of an old National Geographic magazine he found on a table.

1944- Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra premiered by the Boston Symphony and Serge Kousevitsky.

1947- Alastair Crowley died. Called the “wickest man in the world” he fused several occult theologies like Bavarian Illumanism, Gnosticism and Numerology into his Abbey of Theleme. His own mother nicknamed him “the Great Beast.” In 1968 Alastair Crowley was portrayed on the cover of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album.

1949- The last Nationalist capitol, Chunking (Chonqing), fell to Mao ZeDong's PLA, the People’s Liberation Army.

1951- MIT scientists booted up Project Whirlwind, the TX-0 Computer. Called the Tixo, it was as large as a bus and was the first computer that could do more than one program at a time. In 1952 it had the first computer screen and first light pen. It calculated everything from synchronizing the gunfire of battleships to how much icing to put in an Oreo cookie. The TX-2 was used to write the first animation program Sketchpad, and the first interactive game SpaceWar!, both in 1962.

1953- Ex- Esquire magazine art director and frustrated cartoonist Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy Magazine. It featured a nude centerfold of actress Marilyn Monroe. She joked to the press “ I had nothing on but the radio!” Hefner assembled the layout of the magazine on his kitchen table and borrowed money from his mother-in-law to pay for the printing. The first Playboy had no number or date, because Hef was certain he couldn’t afford to make an issue number two.

1955- ROSA PARKS, a black seamstress in Montgomery Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus and was arrested for violating the segregation laws. She was fined $10. At the time she said she was unaware that she was breaking the law, she was actually seated in the first row reserved for Colored passengers, but since the bus was crowded the driver insisted she give up her seat for a white man anyway. This incident and the subsequent boycott is the spark of the great Black Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's.

1963- The NASA space facility at Cape Canaveral Florida was changed to Cape Kennedy in honor of slain president John F. Kennedy. The same day the Kennedy Family moved out of the White House so Lyndon Johnson could move in. Jackie Kennedy only returned to the White House once more in her life in 1971 and on the condition that it be in secret and no press be present. She even would tell D.C. taxicabs to avoid streets where she might accidentally get a glimpse of it.

1963- According to recently unclassified documents, today was supposed to be the day a staged coup would overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. The CIA had hired Mafia hitmen to shoot Fidel as he drove in an open jeep to his beach home. Then the head of the Cuban army, Juan Almeida would then seize the government.
But John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas suspended all such plans.

1964- DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING MET J. EDGAR HOOVER- Dr. King and Rev Ralph Abernathy were on their way to Oslo for Dr. King to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Washington they were invited to meet with the legendary head of the FBI. Hoover sat them down and proceeded to lecture them for over two hours, calling them "boys" and hinting that they better not cause him trouble, because he had tapes of Dr. King's extra-marital affairs. Dr. King and Abernathy left enraged. Hoover always believed that Martin Luther King and the entire NAACP were Communist agents of Moscow. Later when Dr. King came out publicly against the Vietnam War, one of these audio sextapes was mailed to his wife Coretta- anonymously.

1982- Dr. Barney Clark receives the first Artificial Heart. Part of the research development was credited to Paul Winchell, puppeteer and cartoon voice who created Jerry Mahoney, Knucklehead Smith, Dick Dastardly and a plastic heart valve. At first it was hoped these plastic valves could take the place of real hearts, but today they are mostly used for temporary relief until a human donor heart can be found.

1990- Tunnelers digging below the English Channel from France and England break through to meet in the middle and shake hands. A tunnel under the Channel had been a dream since Napoleon in 1802.
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Question: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?

Answer: Haddon Sundblom 1899-1976, was a top illustrator who defined our idea of what Santa Claus looks like, via his many Coca Cola ads. Sundblom also created the Quaker Oats Quaker and Aunt Jemima.

View- http://www.fortunecity.com/millennium/hibiscus/121/santa61.jpg

Question: Who was Haddon Sundblom and why was he important to Christmas?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is a dilettante?
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History for 11/30/2021
Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, William Enos Berkeley aka Busby Berkeley, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guilliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, Ridley Scott is 85, David Mamet, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark, Ben Stiller is 56, Kaley Cuoco is 36, Henry Selick

1731-An huge earthquake killed 100,000 in Peking (Beijing).

1750- Marshal Saxe died. Maurice de Saxe was born an illegitimate son of Polish King Augustus the Strong, but grew to become one of the top generals of French King Louis XV. Louis gave him the magnificent palace of Chambord for his retirement. The old soldier spent the summer nights camping out Cossack style and letting wild steppe ponies gallop the grounds.
A notorious ladies man, this night he was found dead after an all-night tryst with eight actresses at once. The king's physician wrote as the cause of death: "Une surfeit des femmes - an overdose of women.”

1776- As George Washington’s minuteman army retreated across New Jersey to escape the pursuing British Army, a third of his troop’s enlistment’s were up. In a cold rain 2,000 New Jersey and Maryland militiamen, one third the army, left and went home. Writer Thomas Paine was serving Gen. Nathaniel Greene as a secretary. He was moved by this pitiful sight to write the pamphlet: “The Crisis”: ”These are times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink in this crisis from the service of his country. But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of both man and woman. “Washington called his downcast soldiers together and had the pamphlet read aloud to them.

1782- On a dark, snowy day in an upstairs room on the Rue Bonaparte on Paris’ Left Bank, The United States and Britain signed the first of several protocols leading up to the treaty ending the American Revolution. John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Richard Lawrence signed for America, a parliamentary delegation led by Lord Oswald signed for the Crown. On British diplomat said:” The Americans are the greatest quibblers I have ever dealt with, and I pray never to again in the future!”

1809- Napoleon told Josephine he wanted a divorce. She was the love of his life, but at 46 she could no longer bear children and he desperately wanted a son to establish a dynasty. Even though she long suspected something like this might happen, eyewitnesses said when she heard the news she swooned. The French Army called Josephine Our Lady of Victories, and marked the end of their good luck from this moment. Although his second wife Marie Louise gave him a son, Napoleon never forgot her. In exile he once admitted,” I loved her, but I did not respect her.” On his deathbed in 1821, one of his last words was “Josephine.”

1864- THE BATTLE OF FRANKLIN. Confederate General John Bell Hood had lost Atlanta to Sherman, then failed to lure him out of Georgia. Now his subordinate officers missed an opportunity to entrap a different Yankee army outside of Nashville. That army now was facing them in an impregnable defensive position across open ground. Cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest urged a maneuver around the enemy, but Hood had had enough of his insubordinate officers. He ordered a full frontal attack. The attack was a complete fiasco.
General Patrick Cleburne, the blue-eyed Irish immigrant, called the Stonewall of the West, thought the order stupid, but couldn't send his men out without leading them.” Oh well lads, if we are to die today, let us do it like men.” After the battle he was found on the Yankee breastworks with 49 bullets in his body. Writer Ambrose Bierce was serving on the Union army staff. He was amazed at such a ‘ghastly carnival of death’ was being enacted on such a beautiful Autumn day.

1869- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened. The home of the Can-Can, Toulouse Lautrec, Josephine Baker, Bricktop, and Maurice Chevalier.

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. He was 46. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do.”

1918- Three weeks after the Kaiser was toppled, the new German government grants women the vote.

1922- The great actress Sarah Bernhardt made her last performance in Turin Italy. She was still considered sexy despite advanced age and a wooden leg.

1924- The first fax message sent. A photo of the Prince of Wales was wired across the Atlantic by radio transmission.

1935- Hitler’s government passed a law that non-belief in Nazi doctrine could be grounds for legal divorce in Germany.

1939- Soviet Russia invaded Finland. The gallant Finns fought back fiercely with skiing hit and run attacks, and gasoline bottle bombs nicknamed for Stalin's Foreign Minister, Vachyeschav Molotov, the "Molotov Cocktail".

1940- Actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Desi Arnaz. Together they pioneered the new art of Television Situation Comedy. They divorced in 1960.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt left Warm Springs Georgia and traveled by special train to meet that evening with Japanese ambassadors Hamada and Kurusu at the White House in a last effort to prevent war.
Meanwhile the main Japanese carrier fleet weighed anchor and left Yokohama for the North Pacific. It’s code name was Kido Butai. It was officially scheduled for military exercises, but once out at sea Admiral Nagumo ordered radio silence, and following his instructions from Admiral Yamamoto, turned his ships south-southeast towards Pearl Harbor Hawaii.

1944- The Red Army invaded Nazi held Austria.

1954- Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges of Sylacauga Alabama was hit by a meteorite. It shot through her roof, bounced off her radio and hit her on the hip. It gave her a nasty bruise and one heck of a story to tell. Broke the radio too. Today it is called Hodges Meteorite.

1961- President-elect John F. Kennedy signed a secret memorandum creating Operation Mongoose. It ordered the CIA under the direction of Attorney General Robert Kennedy to eliminate Cuban leader Fidel Castro by any means necessary. The CIA tried everything from Mafia assassins, to poison cigars, to chemicals to make his beard fall out. Nothing worked and Mongoose was discontinued after Kennedy’s assassination.

1966- Barbados got its independence from Britain.

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

1970- First day shooting on William Freidkin’s film The French Connection.

1974- The Missing Link. In a dry gully in Ethiopia Dr Donald Johannsen discovered the perfect skeletal remains of one of the earliest human ancestors, an ape that walked upright. Australiopithicus Afrancenis. He called it Lucy. Johannsen liked the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

1976- After doing such a fine job lowering the journalistic standards of the London press, Australian tabloid king Rupert Murdoch turned his attention to America. Today he bought the New York Post. The Post, a newspaper originally started in 1794 by Alexander Hamilton, quickly gains notoriety as the trashiest newspaper in the U.S. In an interview, Murdoch admitted the only reason he didn’t put in the Post his “Page Three Girls” -nude photos of young women so successful in the London Daily Sun, was because his wife objected...He later replaced his wife. Rupert then bought New York Magazine and the Village Voice, whereupon half their staff immediately quit.

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS TV show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into Sony Pictures.

1985- Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

1987- John Lasseter’s Pixar short Red’s Dream released.

1991- Battered wife Mrs. Omeima Nelson killed her abusive husband, dismembered his body and ate him. “I did his ribs just like in a restaurant.” she said.

1993- President Clinton signed the Brady Handgun bill into law. The bill was named for Ronald Reagan press secretary James Brady, who received a debilitating head wound in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. In 2001, President George W. Bush let it expire without renewing it.

1999- THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE- protesters trying to disrupt the World Trade Organization battled riot police and turned the downtown area into a battle zone. For the next several years wherever the WTO met they were surrounded by thousands of protestors, although the mainstream media tends to pooh-pooh their message.

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last serving member of the Disney family, was forced to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the mandatory retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he himself hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. Roy built a successful grass roots stockholders campaign SaveDisney.com. In 2005 Eisner was compelled to retire. Roy Disney kept an emeritus board position until his death in 2009.

2010- Don Hahn’s doc Waking Sleeping Beauty was released on DVD.
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Question: What does it mean to be dilettante?

Answer: A dilettante is someone who assumes a position while having only a passing interest in learning what the position entails. A willful ignorance.

QUESTION: What is a dilettante?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who were the Roundheads?
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History for 11/29/2021
Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis), Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Yakima Canutt, Gary Shandling, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen is 65, Jacques Chirac, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee, Chadwick Boseman, Anna Faris is 45, Vin Scully is 94

1830- The November Uprising. Polish nationalists rise up against the Russian occupiers in one of their many valiant but ultimately hopeless efforts. In America, literary figures like Hawthorne, Poe, and Longfellow were romantically moved to write lots of epic poems, but not much else could be done to help.
Edgar Allen Poe in his opium induced delirium, would run out of his Bronx cottage and march up and down the street with a musket in his hand shouting: "To Warsaw! To Warsaw!" Luckily, the local constable was well aware of Mr. Poe's eccentricities and sent him home to bed.

1864- Colorado militia killed over 150 Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre. Local garrison commander Col. John Chivington was depressed that he was not back east winning glory in the Civil War. So he attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village. He later held a victory parade in Denver displaying the scalps of the Indians, mostly women, old men and children. His actions sparked a needless war with the Cheyenne that raged for years afterwards.

1887- The US Navy received permission from the Hawaiian King David IV Kalakaou to lease land for a base at Pearl Harbor.

1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.

1914- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything alone, and may have hired a cameraman or assistant. This day, John Randolph Bray's cartoon "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" debuted. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, today known as the Production Pipeline. He created the job classifications of layout, animator, inbetweener, background painter, inker, blackeners (cel painters), and camera. In the 1920s the job of gag man (storyboarder), cleanup and checkers. After 1919, Bray shifted his studio focus from entertainment to technical and training films. J.R. Bray started the careers of Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer, Dick Heumer, and Shamus Culhane.

1929- Commander Richard Byrd radioed he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. Today its estimated he was probably wrong. Commander Byrd had flown over the North Pole in 1926 with his friend Floyd Bennett, but Bennett had since died. When Byrd made it over the South Pole he dropped a small American flag weighted with a stone from Bennett’s grave.

1932- Cole Porter’s musical The Gay Divorcee’ opened on Broadway.

1935- Physicist Edwin Schrodinger published his thought experiment “ Schrodinger’s Cat”.

1941- In occupied Russia, Nazi troops first raped and then hanged Zoia Kosmodemianskaya. She led a team of partisans guerrillas behind German lines at 18 years old. Before she died, she cried defiance at the Nazis:” You cannot hang all 200 million of us!”

1942- During WWII, the U.S. declared coffee would be rationed along with sugar, gasoline and rubber. And lots more. People put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". Gas Ration cards were listed as C, B & A. The C card meant essential defense worker so they had unlimited access to gasoline. B cards police & fire. An A card was the least important, i.e. us.

1944- A Detroit man named Malcolm Little was busted for larceny. He later reformed his life around the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Malcolm X.

1947- THE UN DECIDES. Since 1897 European Jewry had focused on buying land and relocating to Palestine. In 1936 the Egyptian Parliament issued an open letter to all Jews to come live amongst them, but rising Arab nationalism since 1919 tended to resist Jewish immigration. Since World War I, the British held Palestine as a mandate but after World War II they dumped the whole problem in the United Nations hands. The Peel Report, a Foreign Office paper published in 1937 said maybe creating two new states was the solution.
This day The United Nations voted 33-13 to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab independent states with Jerusalem under international supervision. On May 14th 1948 British forces completed their withdrawal and Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel.

1959- The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darin’s rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

1961- NASA sent Enos the Chimp into orbit.

1963- THE WARREN COMMISSION announced- President Lyndon Johnson set up the Warren Commission to investigate the murder of John F. Kennedy. He had originally thought the Dallas Homicide Squad was sufficient, but public outrage demanded more.
The Commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and participants included future president Gerald Ford, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State Alan Foster Dulles and future Senator Arlen Spector, then a young attorney who argued the validity of the "magic bullet" theory”. That one bullet went through Kennedy, bounced, went through Kennedy, ricocheted, went through Connolly, zinged, and wound up sitting in Gov. Connolly's bedsheets in the hospital with no surface dents or marks on it -or something like that. Why the first bullet went through Kennedy intact while the second bullet exploded inside his skull was never explained.
After ten months the Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was killed by a lone nut, so there was no conspiracy. In 1975, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded the contrary view, that Kennedy probably was the victim of a conspiracy but what it was is unknown. To this date there are still two million documents pertaining to the case kept classified. In the end the Warren Commission’s unsatisfying conclusions spawned a generation of conspiracy buffs.

1963- A week after the Kennedy assassination, comedian Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the dead president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies and won a Grammy in 1962, but now it wasn’t funny anymore. Meaders career faded, and he ended up managing a bar in Maine. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!”

1967- Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, stepped down to become president of the World Bank.

1972- Atari announced Pong, the first popular mass-marketed interactive game.

1981- Actress Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and
drowned. She was 43. Her husband Robert Wagner, and friend Christopher Walken were onboard having an argument and unaware of her predicament. Wood had once confessed to a friend that she had a horror of drowning.

2001- Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer. He was 58.

2017- Matt Lauer, the well-known host of NBC’s Today Show, was fired after allegations of sexual misconduct with staffers.

2018- Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns opened.
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Question: Who were the Roundheads?

Answer: When the English Civil War broke out, then nobility who were loyal to the king referred to the Parliamentary soldiers, mostly Puritans, as Roundheads. While Cavaliers wore their hair fashionably long, Puritans kept their hair shorter, to fit under a helmet.