Quiz: What is meant by The Fourth Estate?

Question: What is the Mason-Dixon Line?
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History for 1/21/2024
Birthdays: Leadbelly (Harlan Ledbetter), Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, J. Carol Naish, Tele Savalas, Christian Dior, Placido Domingo, Wolfman Jack, Paul Scofield, Robby Benson, Jack Nicklaus, Benny Hill, Emma Bunton- Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, Gena Davis is 68, Ken Leung is 54

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

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

1649- King Charles I was put on trial by the English Parliament for treason. His defense was as monarch no one could judge him but God.

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

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

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

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

1888- A key portion of Charles Babbage’s Differential Engine was tested for the first time. Babbage had already died, and the prototype was completed by his son. The Differential Engine was the grandfather of the modern computer.

1899- The Opel motorcar company opened for business.

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

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

1930- Walt’s top animator and right hand Ub Iwerks quit Walt Disney to start his own rival company.

1935- the conservation group The Wilderness Society created.

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

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

1938- George Melies, the father of Motion Picture Visual Effects, died at age 76. He had been reduced to selling trinkets in a little store in a Paris train station but had a bit of the rediscovery by the film community in his final years. On his deathbed he gave his friends a drawing he made of a champagne bottle popping. He said “Laugh, my friends. Laugh with me, laugh for me, because I dream your dreams."

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

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

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

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

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

1992- Disney's Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. The Best Animated Feature Oscar was not created until 2001.

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

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Yesterday’s Question: What is the Mason-Dixon Line?
Answer: For the early decades of the American Republic, it was called the dividing line between North and South. In 1765 Mason and Dixon were two surveyors brought in to settle the disputed border between Pennsylvania and Maryland, particularly to decide which state had claim to Philadelphia at its valuable tax base. Before the Civil War, it came to mark the border between slave states and free states.

Question: What is the Mason-Dixon Line?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered: What is a luthier? (hint: hand-made craftsperson)
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History for 1/20/2024
Birthdays: King Charles III of Spain, Richard Henry Lee- signer of the Declaration of Independence, Frederico Fellini, Patricia O’Neal, Dorothy Provine, Mario Lanza, David Lynch, George Burns, DeForest Kelly, Arte Johnson, Lorenzo Lamas, Rainn Wilson is 58, Edwin Buzz Aldrin is 94.

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

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

1193- Licensed prostitution began in Japan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1936- 19 year old Adriana Caselotti recorded her first tracks as Snow White for Walt Disney. Her father Guido Caselotti was a casting agent charged with finding the right actress. She stood behind him while he was on the phone, saying” Daddy! Pick me! Pick me!” I met her in her 80s, and that voice was still recognizable.

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

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

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

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

1947- Josh Gibson, star hitter of the segregated Negro Baseball Leagues, died indigent and alone. He was only 35. Had he been white he would be counted with Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb in baseball stardom. Instead, he was buried in obscurity. There was no money for a gravestone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2021- The central ceremony of American Democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. This day Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46 U.S. President, without the presence of outgoing Pres. Trump. Although Biden defeated him by the same substantial margin that FDR defeated Hoover in 1932, Donald Trump refused to concede and spent the four years stirring up discontent among the ignorant with conspiracy theories, and legal recounts in 21 states. All of which proved Biden won. Today 60% of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was rigged, without a single bit of proof.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a luthier? (hint: hand-made craftsperson)

Answer: Someone who hand-makes violins and other string instruments.

Quiz: What is a luthier? (hint: hand-made craftsperson)

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Yesterday’s Quiz: American Horse Racing’s championship is the Triple Crown. One horse has to win all three races, each one progressively longer in distance. The first race is The Kentucky Derby. What are the other two?
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History for 1/19/2024
Birthdays: James Watt, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Lee, Paul Cezanne', Janis Joplin, Slobodan Milosovic’, radio comedian Ish Kabibble, Dolly Parton, Michael Crawford, Chic Young, Guy Madison, Richard Lester, John H. Johnson publisher of Ebony and Jet Magazines, Jean Stapleton, Fritz Weaver, Sean Wayans, Robin MacNeill, Paul Rodriquez, Antoine Fuqua, Drea Di Matteo, and Bart the Bear-1977 Bear who starred in movies like Clan of the Cave Bear, The Bear, White Fang and Legends of the Fall, Tipi Hedren is 94.

Happy Feast of St. Wulfstan, who pulled the devils nose with hot tongs.

375 A.D. Valentinian I was a Roman emperor with strange mood swings. He outlawed the original Biblical method of birth control called exposure; in other words, leaving unwanted babies in the forest for the gods or wolves. Another time he had some stableboys crucified for letting the hounds go too early during a hunt.
When some Quadi barbarians crossed the Rhine and sacked a few villages Valentinian got his legions together and burned down half of their home forest. He only stopped for the winter and was preparing to continue in the spring when on this day a delegation of Quadi elders came to sue for peace. They explained that it wasn't their idea to make war, just some of the younger hotheads in the tribe. They said that the Emperor was overreacting. Valentinian got so angry at their lame excuses that he raised his fists, turned purple and before he uttered a word fell over stone dead. His general Theodosius took over as emperor.

1405- Tartar conqueror Tamerlane fell ill and died in Samarkand. He roved the world conquering and murdering like Genghis Khan, but without Genghis’ skill at empire building. His empire fell apart soon after his death, inspiring Shelley to write a poem about transitory glory- Ozymandias.

1523- In Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli publishes his 67 Articles attacking the authority of the Pope. This is the first manifesto of the Zurich Reformation.

1547- Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan IV Vasilievich, called Ivan the Terrible, crowned Tsar or Czar- a Russian word for Caesar. His father Grand Duke Ivan III the Great assumed the title and power but it remained for his son to formalize the office. The Russian Princes call themselves the new inheritors of the Eastern Orthodox religion and Roman Empire after Constantinople, once called New Rome, fell to the Ottoman Turks. Czars were crowned with the "Cap of Monomachus", a small skullcap worn by one of the Greek Byzantine Emperors, Constantine IV Monomachus“ single-combat”. This cap was covered with ermine trim and gold. The Czars boasted: "Two Romes have fallen. The Third Rome –Moscow- shall stand forever!"

1633- Thomas Morton of Merrymount had been twice deported by the Pilgrims for holding “licentious Maypole celebrations” at his Indian trading post. This day he returned to England and at court tried to have the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter revoked. King Charles declined, probably because that might make the whole crowd of buckle-shoed killjoys return home!

1729- British Restoration playwright William Congreve died. He willed all his property to Henrietta, the Duchess of Marlborough. But then the Duchess did something a bit odd. She had a death mask made of Congreve’s face and attached it to a life size mannequin. She ate and conversed with the dummy all day and slept with it at night. She insisted her servants wait upon the dummy and treat it when she felt it was ill. When she died, she was buried with the dummy.

1829- Goethe published Faust Part 1.

1840- Explorer Charles Wilkes claimed all of Antarctica for the United States. He was on a scientific expedition to chart the South Seas and Southern polar waters. Captain Wilkes was really good at exploring, but he was such a tyrannical disciplinarian he was court-martialed upon his return. Wilkes’ erratic behavior may have been the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab in his novel Moby Dick.

1853- Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore with the famous Anvil Chorus premiered in Rome.

1869- New York City controller Andrew Green received a petition from 18 of the city’s wealthiest citizens. It called for the establishment of a Museum of Natural History. The famous building was built in 1874.

1915- Two German zeppelins cross the Channel and drop bombs on Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn causing two deaths. The first time England was bombed from the air.

1919- Famed dancer of the Ballet Russe Vaslav Nijinsky danced his last performance at a hotel in San Moritz Switzerland. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was incarcerated for the next 30 years, and underwent numerous shock therapies until his death in 1950.

1924- Lillian Bounds began work at the little Walt Disney studio as an ink and paint artist. She only took the job because it was a short walk from her sister Hazel's house where she was staying, and she didn't want to spend money for bus fare.
She wound up falling in love and marrying Walt Disney and became a multimillionaire. Before her death in 1997 she financed the creation of Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

1940- The Three Stooges do their impression of Hitler and the top Nazis in the Columbia Pictures short comedy “You Natzy Spy”. Moe Howard was still the best all time Hitler impersonator. “Hail-Hail-Hailstone! Waahoo!”

1945- In Poland, the Nazis began the evacuation of the remaining concentration camp inmates in advance of the oncoming Soviet army. Tens of thousands were marched out of Auschwitz and Birkenau west in freezing snow and ice. Any who fell behind were shot.

1949- Disney’s So Dear To My Heart opened in theaters.

1955- President Eisenhower held the first press conference that was shown on television. It was held in the treaty room of the State Department. Eisenhower was famous for his ability to speak at great length and never say anything of substance. “This day, My Fellow Americans, more than at any other time, ahead of us lies the promise of the Future!”

1961- The first episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed.

1966- Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Nehru, became prime minister of India.

1967- The Star Trek episode “The Arena” first aired. Where Captain Kirk battled the Gorn in Vasquez Rocks.

1977- In one of his last acts as President, Gerald Ford pardoned Tokyo Rose. Iva Toguri D’Aquino was a Japanese American who did propaganda broadcasts for Radio Tokyo urging American GI’s to surrender. She explained she was stranded in Tokyo when the war broke out and was coerced into doing the broadcasts.

1979- Wendy O. Williams, mohawk-haired lead singer of the punk band the Plasmatics was arrested in Milwaukee for masturbating on stage with a sledgehammer.

1983- Klaus Barbie arrested in Bolivia and extradited to France. Barbie was the Nazi Gestapo chief in France and was called the Butcher of Lyon for his torture and execution of hundreds of French resistance and Jews. After the war Barbie avoided arrested and was briefly hired by the CIA as an anti-soviet spy. He went to South America and applied his skills for the dictators there until his extradition. While other former Nazis like Kurt Waldheim were disingenuously vague about their past, Barbie was loudly unrepentant. It was reported he continually embarrassed the Nazis trying to hide in South America by Sieg-Heil saluting them on the street and singing old stormtrooper songs over his empanadas.

1983- Apple introduced the Lisa. Named for Steve Jobs daughter, at a price tag of ten thousand dollars and incompatibility with the earlier Apple II doomed it to weak sales.

1985- Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA peaked the pop charts at #9.

1989- President Ronald Reagan, in one of his last acts as president, pardoned Yankee Baseball club owner George Steinbrenner for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon.

1991-Eastern Airlines ceased operations and went out of business. Chairman and former astronaut Frank Borman was philosophical: “Business without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.”

1993- First day of full production at Pixar on their first feature film Toy Story.

2016- JOHN SCOTT- John Scott was an NHL Hockey player who had an undistinguished 8 year career. He was mainly known for brawling and sitting in the penalty box. But when it was time to vote for the NHL All Star Game, a mischievous blogger named Puck Daddy started a Twitter campaign to elect this unlikely bruiser onto the All Star team. He won an overwhelming number of votes and was made Captain of the Pacific League team. Despite NHL owners trying to exclude him from the game, he played and was named MVP. Carried aloft on the shoulders of his teammates, he later said,” It was unreal. Like I was in a Disney movie, except for real!”

2020- The first case of coronavirus Covid 19 in the USA reported. Snohomish, Washington. Medical experts started to sound alarm bells, but President Trump chose to sit on this information, and ignore the warnings for 6 more weeks, until March. All the while he was quietly warning his personal investor friends. To date 1,167,000 deaths in the U.S. since then.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: American Horse Racing’s championship is the Triple Crown. One horse has to win all three races, each one progressively longer in distance. The first race is The Kentucky Derby. What are the other two?

Answer: The Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

Quiz: What is the difference between a university and a polytechnic university?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: When dining in a wealthy Victorian home, what did you get when you were served terrapin?
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History for January 17, 2024
Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin, Max Sennett-1880, Al Capone, Ethan G. Hodell 1883- the inventor of the Tow-Truck, Constantin Stanislavsky, Moira Shearer, Shari Lewis, Vidal Sassoon, Claude Coats, Denny Doyle, Kevin Reynolds, Muhammad Ali, Betty White, Jim Carrey is 62, Michelle Obama is 60, Zooey Deschanel is 44, James Earl Jones is 93, animator Genndy Tartakovsky is 54

50 BC- Julius Caesar’s chief rival for power in Rome was Pompey Magnus. Pompey was as famous a general as Caesar and he controlled the Roman Senate. Pompey bragged that if Caesar tried to start a civil war, all he had to do was stamp his foot, and soldiers would spring up everywhere.
But when Caesar came down from Gaul and invaded Italy two months before the traditional March campaign season, Pompey stamped his foot and nothing happened. Pompey’s troops were still in Spain and Greece. The only legions in the area were loyal to Caesar. This day Pompey and the Senate abandoned Rome and fled south to the heel of the Italian boot.

38BC- Augustus and Livia’s wedding anniversary!

395AD- The death of Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over the all the Roman Empire from Scotland to Iraq, Denmark to the Sahara. After his death the Roman Empire divided permanently between East and West. One son Honorius became Emperor of the West, and another Arcadius became Emperor of the East in Constantinople. A few years later in 401, The provinces of Britain in the West, and Armenia in the East, were abandoned by the withdrawing legions.

1775- Sheridan's Restoration comedy The Rivals premiered at Covent Garden Theater, London.

1781- THE BATTLE OF HANNAH’S COWPENS- Dan Morgan "the old wagoneer" and his mountainmen defeat a pro-British American army in the Carolinas. The American Loyalists in the South were led by Col. Banastre Tarleton, a dragoon officer unusual for his ruthlessness. After one battle he made his men go over the field and bayonet any men who might still be moving. This atrocity filled Morgan¹s ranks with rage, because many were the mountain kinfolk of the slain. This night the cry in the Yankee camp was:" Heads up boys! Bennie's Coming!"

1794- SCANDAL!! ANDY JACKSON MARRIED RACHEL DONELSON FOR THE SECOND TIME. Mrs. Rachel D. Robards was married to an abusive older man, when she fell in love with the dashing young officer in the Tennessee wilderness. Separated from Mr. Robards, she and Jackson were in Natchez, Mississippi at her sister¹s, when they heard word that Robards had filed for a divorce back in Nashville.
Jackson and Rachael then married and lived together for a year but then discovered that the divorce report was false and worse, Mississippi where they were married was still Spanish territory that didn't recognize Protestant marriages as legal. Rachel finally got her divorce from Robards, and they married again. Still, the social stigma of 'living in sin' stuck.
Rachel became morose in later years when Jackson's political enemies used the charge of adultery to attack him. Jackson fought duels and killed men over his wife's honor. By the time Jackson was elected President, Rachel Jackson was too ill to go to Washington. She died just before the Inauguration. The widower President lived long, but never got over his love for his Rachel.

1800- Thomas Jefferson welcomed French businessman Etienne Irenee Du Pont de Nemours to America. Monsieur Dupont had decided to move his business from revolution ravaged France and become an American. He founded the Dupont Chemical Corporation that today makes plastics and housepaints, but back then what was most important was he made gunpowder. During the American Revolution gunpowder was a precious commodity. Colonial women saved up pigeon droppings and their own urine to concoct saltpeter. Almost all the high quality gunpowder had to be imported from Europe. The Dupont family continued to control America’s petrochemical destiny way into the twentieth century and invented Nylon. And ladies could dispose of their urine in more sanitary ways.

1836- Texas General Sam Houston ordered Jim Bowie to go to the Alamo and blow it up. Then bring the soldiers and the valuable cannon back to the main army. But once there, Bowie was convinced by William Travis to disobey these orders and defend the Alamo to the bitter end.

1874- Chang and Eng Bunker were the original Siamese Twins, joined at the chest and sharing one liver. Since leaving Thailand they traveled the world with P.T. Barnum showing off their unique physique to paying crowds. They married two sisters and produced 21 offspring. As they aged, they made a deal that they wouldn’t be physically separated until one of them died. This day Eng awoke to discover his brother Chang had died of heart failure during the night. He cried “Then, I am going as well!” He frantically called for a doctor to come and separate them. But the doctor arrived too late, and Eng died too. They were 62.

1884- The Battle of Abu Kleer. British forces attempting to save Gordon of Khartoum are furiously attacked by the Dervish army of El Mahdi. At one point the Dervishes broke up a British infantry square, something Napoleon had trouble doing at Waterloo. Kipling wrote a poem in praise of the bravery of the long haired black Sudannese tribemen called “Fuzzy-Wuzzy” ­”Though we sloshed them with Martinis, an it wasn¹t ‘ardly fair, with the odds against you Fuzzy-Wuzzy, you broke the British square.” A Martini-Henry was a rapid firing rifle used at the time.

1904- Chekov's The Cherry Orchard opened in St. Petersburg.

1908- In London, Thousands of women march on Downing Street demanding women be given the vote. They broke windows and shouted “It will be bombs next time!” Among the suffragettes arrested and imprisoned was 23 year old Alice Paul from New Jersey. She was honored in 1996 by a US postage stamp.

1917- The U.S. bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $21 million.

1926- FATS WALLER KIDNAPPED- Harlem Jazz great Fats Waller was in Chicago for a gig. Suddenly several gunmen grabbed him off the street, shoved him into their limo, and drove to the lair of mob boss Al Capone. When they arrived there, the terrified Waller was reassured that it was Big Al’s birthday. All he wanted was for Fats to perform at his party. The bash went on for three days and the joint was really jumpin! After a song Big Al would stuff another $100 bill into a beer mug on his piano. Fats Waller left unharmed, and with a very fat wallet as well, but resolved to go back to Harlem where it was safe.

1926- George Burns married Gracie Allen.

1929- Elzie Segar was drawing a comic strip for Hearst’s NY Journal called The Thimble Theatre. It featured Olive Oyl, her brother Castor Oyl, and her boyfriend Ham Gravy. In this day’s strip, Ham meets an odd-looking sailor. He based on a neighbor of Segar’s, Frank Fiegel, a funny little man who liked to get into fights. Popeye the Sailor was born.

1935- In an address to Congress, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed national unemployment insurance. It had been an issue demanded by workers since Coxey's Army in 1895.

1942- Right after the Pearl Harbor attack British Prime Minister Winston Churchill slipped across U-boat infested Atlantic waters and arrived in Washington for strategy planning meetings with President Roosevelt. Today he flew back to London without incident, although over London itself his plane was almost mistaken for the Luftwaffe and shot down.

1949- The first Volkswagen beetle automobiles arrived in North America.

1949- The Goldbergs, a radio comedy show about a Jewish family in the Bronx, moved to television and became the first true sitcom. The show ended when Mrs. Goldberg was accused by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee of being a Communist.

1950- THE BRINKS JOB- Several small time hoods wearing Halloween masks entered a Brinks Armored Car office in Boston and stole $1,2 million in cash and 1.5 in securities. By 1953 one crook broke down and confessed just eleven days before the statute of limitations would run out.

1957- The first non-stop jet flight around the world. Three U.S. B-52 bombers took off from Edwards Air force base in California, and by flying at supersonic speed, and refueling in mid-air, circumnavigated the globe in a little over 48 hours. The mission was not intended for any scientific value, as much as to demonstrate that the U.S. could now go anywhere on the earth and drop a nuke on you. They cemented this idea by dropping a dummy bomb after passing over Malaya.

1961- Frank Sinatra’s Ratpack had campaigned hard for their friend John F. Kennedy for president. Black entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. had worked particularly hard to help Kennedy win the African American vote. But Sammy had a personal preference for blond white actresses and had married one, May Britt in 1960. To fend off negative publicity, this day JFK had his secretary Mrs. Lincoln telephone Sammy Davis and un-invite him to the President¹s Inaugural Ball. We’re Liberal, but not THAT liberal. And uhh.. thanks for the help. Dean Martin was so angry at this insult to his friend that he canceled his appearance at the inaugural. In 1968 Sammy Davis angered the black community when he publically embraced republican Richard Nixon.

1961- President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech to the nation. He warned against the growing influence of the “Military Industrial Complex”.

1961- Patrice Lamumba, nationalist leader and the first democratically elected president of the Congo, was executed by firing squad. Lamumbas’ pan-African nationalism earned him the enmity of the US state dept. and many believe the CIA might have been involved in his death.

1964- The first Porsche Carrera sports cars arrived in L.A.

1977- Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah for murdering an elderly couple. They pinned a paper on his chest with a heart drawn on it in pencil so marksmen could aim straight. Norman Mailor wrote the book, “Executioners’ Song”, about the event.

1989- A lunatic murdered 5 schoolchildren with an AK-47 assault rifle in Stockton California. Two months later Republican President George H. W. Bush. banned assault weapons and high capacity magazines by executive order. That ban was allowed to lapse by his son George W. Bush in 2004, and we’re still arguing, and counting our dead from school shootings today.

1994-The Great Northridge Earthquake rocked Los Angeles. 72 deaths and 20 billion dollars in damage. It was officially listed as 6.8 on the Richter Scale, although many persist that in some areas it was as high as 7.2. The epicenter was in the San Fernando Valley, so the valleys two major industries, animated cartoons and pornography, were temporarily disrupted.

1995- One year to the day after the Los Angeles earthquake, a massive earthquake struck Kobe Japan. The Japanese place great resources and time in earthquake preparedness, yet this 7.2 quake toppled whole freeways, killed 5,000 and left 1 1/2 million people homeless. It was the worst natural disaster in Japan since the 1923 Tokyo quake.

2000- A Complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton was offered for sale on E-Bay.

2021-Three days before President Biden was inaugurated, freshmen Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene texted outgoing Pres. Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and begged him to urge Pres Trump to declare martial law to stay president. “ In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for marshal law. I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next.”
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Yesterday’s Question: When dining in a wealthy Victorian home, what did you get when you were served terrapin?

Answer: turtle soup.

Question: When dining in a wealthy Victorian home, what did you get when you were served terrapin?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is an idyll? As in having a rustic idyll?
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History for 1/16/2024
Birthdays: Yukon poet Robert Service, Andre Michelin inventor of the pneumatic tire- 1853, Ethel Merman, Dizzy Dean, Peter Ustinov, Henry Mancini, A.J. Foyt, Marilyn Horne, Sade, Michael Wilding, Eartha Kitt, animator Aurey Bataglia, Debbie Allen is 73, John Carpenter, Caroline Munro, Diane Fossey, Kate Moss is 50, Tsianina Joelson, Lin Manuel Miranda is 45, Animator Raul Garcia-Sanz

1605. Part one of Miguel de Cervantes's, "Don Quixote de la Mancha" was published in Spain (The ingenious nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha") It is generally referred as the first modern novel. Not about the lives of the Saints, or classical gods and heroes, but regular people.

1761- The British capture Pondicherry, the last French outpost in India.

1786- The Virginia Legislature passed the Ordinance of Religious Freedom, which stated that no man could be forced to join or support any church he didn’t want to. The Ordinance became the basis for the First Amendment to the Constitution.

1865- After resting his army in Savannah, for Christmas, Yankee General William Tecumseh Sherman started moving his blue columns north towards South Carolina.

1883- Moved to act by the assassination of President James Garfield by a demented civil servant, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, creating rigid merit standards for government jobs and creating the Civil Service Commission. Before this, things ran as the "Spoils System"- after every election hundreds of government jobs were given by the President and his party to party hacks and amateurs as payment for favors. Much uhh…as things are run today.

1891- Three weeks after the Wounded Knee massacre, the last independent warrior bands of Sioux Indians came in and surrendered to the U.S. Cavalry at the Pine Ridge Reservation.

1917-THE ZIMMERMAN TELEGRAM- The reason other than the Lusitania that the U.S. entered World War I. The Kaiser's generals fretted that the unrestricted U-Boat sinkings were strangling Britain, but they may force America into joining the Allies. So they concocted a scheme to keep the Yankees busy on their own side of the Atlantic.
On this day, British intelligence handed President Woodrow Wilson an intercepted message from Baron Zimmerman, the German charge d' affaire in New York to the German Ambassador in Mexico City. It relayed an offer from Berlin of an alliance, if Mexico would please invade Texas! The Kaiser promised President Huerta the return of the entire U.S. southwest. The Mexican president wasn't enamored with the U.S. lately, but he still declined the offer.
Instead of checking U.S. participation in World War I, the incident all but decided it. Wilson had run for re-election as an anti-war candidate, but after this he was convinced, Germany had to be stopped.

1919- In Argentina it was the end of the Sanglante- the Bloody Week. The government crushed a general nationwide strike – 700 killed.

1920- The League of Nations held its first meeting in Paris.

1935- “Ya better come out! We got you surrounded!” Kate Barker, called Ma Barker, died in furious shootout with the FBI at Ocklawaha, Florida. Legend has it they found Ma's body with the smoking tommy gun still cradled in her lap. Others say she was only an ignorant hillbilly lady traveling with her boy’s gang as a cover.
Only one of Ma Barker's sons (Fred) was killed with her. Herman Barker committed suicide at Wichita, Kansas, August 29, 1927, after being blinded by police bullets in a gun battle in which he killed a policeman. Arthur "Doc" Barker was captured by the FBI in Chicago eight days before the shootout that killed Ma and Fred. He was killed attempting to escape from Alcatraz on January 13, 1939. Lloyd "Red" Barker was released from Leavenworth in 1939 after serving seventeen years of a 25-year sentence for mail robbery. He was murdered by his wife at their suburban-Denver home on March 18, 1949.

1936- the first racetrack photo-finish camera installed.

1936- Albert Fish, aka the Moon Maniac, aka The Grey Man, aka The Brooklyn Vampire, was executed at Sing Sing Prison. The 66 year old Fish had killed ten children and cannibalized their remains. He even went as far as to send a letter to the mother of his last victim describing how he had turned her daughter into a stew. The letter was traced back to him and he was arrested. He almost shorted out the electric chair because he kept his underpants filled with metal sewing needles. As he went to his death he told guards he was looking forward to the electric chair. "it is a thrill I never tried."

1938- Benny Goodman brought the new Swing Music to staid old Carnegie Hall. Count Basie and Harry James joined in to get the tuxedoed crowd dancing in the aisles, then afterwards they all went uptown to the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to watch Count Basie’s band square off against the legendary Chick Webb. After this triumph, Benny Goodmans’ band would never be the same- Lionel Hampton, Harry James and Gene Krupa all split off to form their own orchestras." That band I had the night I played Carnegie Hall was the best I think I ever had." Goodman said later.

1938- Nylon invented by the Dupont Company.

1939- Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr announced the successful fission of uranium. They asked that it be used for peaceful purposes only. One of their colleagues Dr. Leo Szilard immediately warned the U.S. that they better start a nuclear bomb program, because another friend of Bohr's, Dr. Rudolph Heisenberg, planned to make one for Hitler.

1940- Lee Francis, then Hollywood’s top madam, was busted for prostitution.

1942-Actress Carol Lombard and her mother died in a plane crash at Mt. Potosi Nevada, outside of Las Vegas, while returning from a war bond drive. She was 33. Her husband, movie king Clark Cable was so disconsolate that he volunteered for an air force combat squadron instead of doing USO work and went on dangerous missions trying to get killed.

1942- Japanese armies attacked Burma.

1945- Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg last seen. The diplomat had been covertly smuggling hundreds of Jews out of Nazi occupied Austria by issuing them neutral Swedish passports. When the Soviets overran Vienna, Wallenberg disappeared. In 1991 The Russian government admitted that Wallenberg died in Leningrad’s Lubyanka Prison.

1954- THE WAR ON COMICS- Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee chaired the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. They concluded that one of the contributing factors to adolescent moral decay was four-color comic books! The media called comics “The Ten Cent Plague”.
The probe was sparked by a book called The Seduction of the Innocent by psychiatrist Frederic Wertham. He charged among other things that Batman & Robin were gay because when not fighting crime, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson lounged around all day in silk pajamas, with no women! That Superman was a fascist, and Wonder Woman’s strength and independence obviously made her a lesbian!
Despite public testimony by Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Bill Gaines, 350 comic book companies including the EC "Tales from the Crypt" label were driven out of business. The strict comics-code was established. The comic book industry, which had been selling one million books a month, never regained that level of prosperity in the US again. Estes Kefauver tried to run for the Democratic nomination for president, but lost to John F. Kennedy.

1962- First day of shooting on the film Dr No with a young actor named Sean Connery in the role of James Bond. Ian Fleming thought the casting of Connery would be a disaster, he had wanted Cary Grant or David Niven.

1970- Col. Mohammar Khaddafyi became premier of Libya, a job he kept until 2011.

1974- Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws first published.

1979- The Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlevi, fled Teheran in the face of the Ayatollah’s fundamentalist revolution.

1980-The silver market collapses, making the Hunt Brothers from two of the richest men in America to two of the poorest.

1991- GULF WAR I - U.S. French, British and Arab air forces began attacking Iraqi-held Kuwait. Sadam, Wild Weazels, Gen Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Republican Guards, Scuds, Smart Bombs and CNN's Peter Arnett dangling a mike out the window of his Baghdad office as the bombs rained down.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is an idyll? As in having a rustic idyll?

Answer: Having a happy, peaceful, stress-free time, usually out in the country. First coined by the ancient Greek poet Theocritus, in hie stories The Idylls.