Quiz: What is an idyll? As in having a rustic idyll?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who was Sappho?
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History for 1/15/2024
Birthdays: Dr. Martin Luther King, Moliere, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cole Younger, Charro, Matthew Brady, drummer Gene Krupa, Lloyd Bridges, Mario Van Peebles, Josef Broyer the mentor of Sigmund Freud, Margaret O’Brien, Aristotle Onassis, Captain Beefheart, Dr. Edward Teller, Regina King is 53, Disney animator Dave Pruiksma

Happy Druid New Year

Feast of St. Paul the Hermit

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day (U.S.)

1208- THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE- Count Raymond of Tolouse was thought to be sympathetic to a heretical cult called Cathars, from the French region of Albi (so Albigensians). They believed in a Zoroastrian dualism in direct conflict with the Church. When a papal representative named Peter De Castellan was sent from Rome to tell Count Raymond to knuckle under, he was assaulted. So, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade not against Muslims in the Middle East, but against other Christians in the heart of Europe. The holocaust was terrible, for the first time the answer of how to tell the guilty from the innocent was: ”Kill them all, and God will recognize his own.” The Holy Office of the Inquisition was invented to finish things off. The Cathar religion disappeared except for cult fans like Alastair Crowley and the Dan Brown of the DaVinci Code.

1520- Pope Leo X tells little monk Martin Luther he has sixty days to knock off all this Reformation stuff and stop complaining, or he's going to excommunicate his butt!

1559- Queen Elizabeth I was crowned at Westminster Abbey. The daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII was 25 and reigned 42 years. Only Queen Victoria and the Queen Elizabeth II reigned longer.

1793- The Convention of the French Revolution condemned their King Louis XVI (now called simply “citizen Capet”) to death by guillotine. Voters for the death penalty included the artist Jean Jacques David, American Thomas Paine and Louis’ own younger brother the Duc D’Orleans, now ridiculously renamed Philippe Egalite’. When Philippe arrived home that night, his family shunned him. He cried aloud:” What else could I do?”
Philippe was later guillotined anyway.

1811- At this time Spain was under Napoleonic domination and her king and government in exile. Mexico and other South American colonies were declaring their independence.
This day in a secret session, the US Congress approved a plan to get Florida away from Spain.

1829- The first of two commercial working railroad locomotives arrived in the U.S. from England. Named the Pride of Newscastle back home, it was renamed the America. The Stourbridge Lion followed in May. These two trains began the U.S. Railroad system.
Historian Stephen Ambrose noted that until this time all of society moved at the speed of a walking horse. That George Washington and Thomas Jefferson could travel no faster than Julius Caesar or Shakespeare did in their day.
A Viennese doctor at the time said that the human body was never meant to travel faster than 35 mph. That blood would squirt out of your nose and eyes, and you’d go insane.

1861- The Abe Lincoln-hating Mayor of New York City Fernando Wood passed a non-binding resolution of secession from the United States. The pro-Southern sentiment in the North went underground after the rebels fired on Fort Sumter.

1895- The Electric Strike- Brooklyn's 5,000 trolley car workers go out and hit the bricks. New York's 7th Regiment had to run the system.

1919- After World War I toppled the Kaiser, anarchy reigned in Berlin streets. Today as the Spartacist revolt was put down in Berlin, German Socialist leaders Red Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht were dragged out of the Eden Hotel, beaten with rifle butts, then shot. Their bodies were then dumped in a dry canal.

1919- The Great Boston Molasses Flood. In the North End neighborhood of Boston, a large storage tank filled with 2.3 million US gal (8,700 m3) weighing approximately 13,000 short tons (12,000 t) of molasses burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 and injuring 150. The event entered local folklore and residents claimed for decades afterwards that the area still smelled of molasses on hot summer days.

1919- Hollywood celebrities Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists Studio. Newspapers wrote “ The Lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

1922- Irish troops led by IRA leader Michael Collins officially took over Dublin Castle and the Irish capitol’s administration from the British. The British commander at first upbraided Collins for being late for the ceremony. Collins said in response:” You’ve been here seven centuries and you can’t wait another seven minutes?” When the Lord Lieutenant Governor shook Collins hand and said, “I’m so happy to meet you!” Collins smiled,” The hell ya are.”

1927- The Dumbarton Bridge carried the first auto traffic across San Francisco Bay.

1929- Most of the nations of the world signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which stated that War is a bad thing. Ten years later World War II breaks out.

1935- The Tsuni Conference- Chinese Communists confirm Mao ZeDong as their overall leader.

1936-THE DGA- Several top Hollywood directors including Lewis Milestone, Ruben Mamoulian and William Wellman met at King Vidor’s house and pledged $100 dollars each to form the Screen Director’s Guild, later the Director’s Guild of America. It was a risky thing to do, previous attempts to form a director’s union were broken up a threat by the producers of perpetual blacklisting. Final recognition and contracts were signed by President Frank Capra in 1940. One provision insisted on in the contract was that the director’s credit always be the final name in the opening titles before the movie began. And so it remains.

1942- THE GREEN LIGHT LETTER. Major League Baseball Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis wrote President Franklin Roosevelt that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack, perhaps big-league play be suspended until the war ended?
The president responded in what’s known as “the green light letter,” encouraging Landis go ahead with the baseball season. “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going,” Roosevelt wrote. “There will be fewer people unemployed, and everybody will work longer hours, and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation, and for taking their minds off their work, even more than before.”

1943- Walt Disney released Education for Death, a wartime short directed by Clyde Geromini and animated principally by Ward Kimball.

1943- The Pentagon completed. First conceived as a medical research facility, it grew to become the headquarters of the massive US Military Industrial Complex, the largest office building in the world. The supervisor of construction was General Leslie Grove, who was also head of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.

1945- As the Nazi war effort was caving in on all sides Adolph Hitler relocated his headquarters from East Prussia to the Reichchancellory building in Berlin. One SS major cracked up der Fuhrer by joking that “now we can take a street car from the Western Front to the Eastern Front.”

1947-”THE BLACK DAHLIA”- One of the most lurid murder cases in Los Angeles history. A little girl playing in a vacant lot discovered the remains of high priced prostitute Elisabeth Short, 22, who used to work the Biltmore Hotel. She was named the Black Dahlia because of the black pullover sweaters and black lingerie she favored. Her body had been sawed in half and completely drained of blood, and the initials 'BD' carved on her thigh. Her body showed signs of torture. The murderer was never found. The incident was the basis for a movie called “True Confessions” with Robert DeNiro and Robert Duval. The last detective on the case died in 2003.

1949- Chinese Communist armies captured the city of Tientsin after an all day battle with Nationalist forces.

1951- ILSE, THE SHE-WOLF OF THE SS. Ilse Koch was the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp and every bit as cruel as her husband. She participated in experiments on inmates to turn them into soap, and their skin into lampshades. On this day in her second war crimes trial she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Sixteen years later in 1967 she committed suicide in prison. In the 70’s Roger Corman revived interest in her by creating a sexploitation film about her life. Most of the movie was shot re-using the sets of the Hogan’s Heroes TV show, which had just been cancelled. The director of the film said of the screenplay, “That was the sickest piece of crap I ever read.”

1960- Walt Disney Presents Leslie Nielsen as Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion in the adventure series Swamp Fox.

1961- Berry Gordy of Motown Records signed a new group called The Supremes.

1967- THE FIRST SUPER BOWL- After a decade of professional football conference title games, the AFL and NFL combined to make a single championship game- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 at the Los Angeles Memorial Colosseum.

1968- Jeanette Rankin, the 87-year-old Congresswoman who voted against US participation in World War I and World War II, today led a protest against the Vietnam War.

1974- The first episode of Happy Days premiered with Ron Howard as Richie Cunningham and Henry Winkler as Da Fonz.

1983- Meyer Lansky, the elderly retired Mafia boss denied a visa to move to Israel, died of a terminal nosebleed.

1998- Investigators from special counsel Kenneth Starr’s office have their first meeting with President Bill Clinton’s tootsie Monica Lewinsky in the lobby of the Watergate Hotel. They tried to pressure the 25 year old to admit her affair. They verbally denigrated her when she asked that her lawyer or her mother be present. But the Babe from Beverly Hills High was smart. She held out for 8 months to get the immunity deal she wanted before speaking about her and Bill and those well-placed cigars.

2009- THE MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON- Capt. Sully Sullenberger safely ditched his disabled airliner in the Hudson River, saving all his passengers.

2021- Wandavision premiered streaming on Disney+

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Yesterday’s Question: Who was Sappho?

Answer: Ancient Greek female poet called “The Tenth Muse” who lived on the Isle of Lesbos. Although she had been married and had a son, she left some of the earliest examples of lesbian love poetry.

Quiz: Who was Sappho?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: I bought my wife a new frock. What is a frock?
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History for 1/14/2024
Birthdays: Marc Anthony 82 BC, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Benedict Arnold, Hal Roach, Richard F. Outcault, Cecil Beaton, John Dos Passos, Lawrence Kasdan, William Bendix, Guy Williams- born Armando Catalano, Andy Rooney, Julian Bond, Steven Soderbergh is 61, LL Cool J, Faye Dunaway is 83, Emily Watson is 57

350AD. The feast day of Saint Hilary of Poitiers- Saint Hilary was the father of church music. In exile in Phrygia, he noticed pagans sang hymns to their gods, so he composed the first Christian music. The Halleluiah Chorus, Ave Maria, Silent Night, and “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life” would follow in due course.

1604- King James I of England thought he could be like Roman Emperor Constantine, and use his royal prestige to resolve the theological disputes dividing Christianity. This day he convened at Hampton Court a grand synod of Anglican Bishops, Presbyterians, Baptists, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Puritans to try and settle their differences. Nothing was really solved, but the only positive step was a motion was made to create a standardized translation of the Bible into English- The King James Edition.

1639- The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first constitution for a colony, is established. The Connecticut territory was a disputed area between the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam and the English New Englanders until the English conquest of 1661. The personal intervention of the Duke of York prevented Long Island from being made part of Connecticut.

1699- The Pilgrims of Salem held a day of fasting and prayer to atone for any people they may have unjustly executed as witches.

1797- Battle of Rivoli. Napoleon defeats the Austrians in Italy.

1831- Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame first published.

1858- Italian terrorists throw three bombs at French Emperor Napoleon III’s carriage outside the Paris Opera. 8 killed and 158 wounded, but not the emperor or his family.

1900- Giacomo Puccini's opera "Tosca" premiere in Rome.

1914- Henry Ford's assembly line process for building cars accelerates car production, thanks to a new chain system pulling the chassis along as they are worked on. As the system got faster and faster, the older, slower workers were replaced by younger ones. Hair dye sold at a premium in Detroit.

1943- Churchill and Roosevelt held a summit meeting in Casablanca in North Africa. The Casablanca Declaration bound the allies to never negotiate less than a total surrender out of the Axis powers. It was felt that one of the reason Germany resorted to war only twenty years after The Great War was their denial that they were ever defeated.
At one point Churchill made a number of American diplomats and staff climb a high tower in the Casbah because he thought the setting sun would make a smashing good watercolor.

1952-The NBC "Today" show debuts with Dave Garroway, Jim Fleming and J. Fred Muggs the chimp.

1954- Marilyn Monroe married baseball star Joe DiMaggio.

1957- British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, citing ill health, but more likely because he bungled The Suez Crisis.

1957- Humphrey Bogart died of esophageal cancer at age 57. When he was buried at Forrest Lawn, wife Lauren Bacall put in with his ashes a solid gold whistle inscribed with the famous line from "To Have and To Have Not"- 'If you ever need me, just whistle.' The group of friends around Bogie and Bacall were nicknamed ‘The Rat Pack”.
After Bogart’s death Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin adopted the name and made the Rat Pack famous.

60th anniv 1964- Hanna- Barbera's ' The Magilla Gorilla' cartoon show.

1967- HIPPIES The first “ Human Be-In” in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead performed. Allan Ginsburg, Ram Dass and Timothy Leary spoke. LSD was laced into turkey sandwiches, and soon the crowd of 30,000 was high. The national media played up the event, and the rest of America first saw the power of the Hippy youth culture, and heard the word like “psychedelic” and Timothy Leary saying “ Tune in, Turn on, Drop out.” It was the prelude to the Summer of Love.

1969- At the Academy Awards, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day won best animated short. It is the last award credited to Walt Disney. Although he had died at the end of 1966, he had greenlit it and worked on it. Woolie Reitherman accepted the award.

1972- Norman Lear’s hit TV comedy series Sanford & Son premiered. Starring Red Fox, it was based on the English show Steptoe & Son.

1974- Sylvia Holland, British born story/concept artist at Disney on Fantasia/ Make Mine Music, died at age 74.

2004- Trying to channel JFK, President George W. Bush declared in his State of the Union speech his intention to return America to the Moon by 2020 and make a manned landing on Mars by 2030. To do this he gave NASA only one billion dollars more than their regular budget, while at the same time allocating $1.5 billion to fight gay marriage initiatives. In 2017 President Trump made a similar pledge to go to Mars. So far, neither has happened.

2005- The Cassini-Huygens Probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan.

2016- Actor Alan Rickman passed away at age 69 of pancreatic cancer.
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Yesterday’s Question: I bought my wife a new frock. What is a frock?

Answer: English slang for a ladies dress. Usually a little more upscale.

Quiz: I bought my wife a new frock. What is a frock?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: The French comic TinTin; What is the name of Tintin’s dog?
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HISTORY FOR 1/13/2024
Birthdays: Salmon P. Chase, Horatio Alger-1834, Sophie Tucker, Gwen Verdon, Robert Stack, Charles Nelson Reilly, Rip Taylor, Brandon Tartikoff, Julie Louise Dreyfus is 63, T. Bone Burnett, Patrick Dempsey, Orlando Bloom is 47

565A.D. THE NIKA SEDITION- In Constantinople, like Rome before her, the big spectator sport was chariot racing. Fans went crazy, lots of money wagered and charioteers were celebrities. Chariots were raced in teams like modern race cars (Team Unser, Team Ferrari etc.) and were distinguished by their colors. The big teams were the Blues and Greens. The Whites and the Reds were second tier. They even had their own booster clubs, who carried their arguments into the streets and beat each other up. The fan clubs were called in Latin FACTIOS, from where we get the words "fan, factions and fanatic".
On this day the hooliganism of the booster clubs got so bad they rioted in the streets and burned down half of Constantinople. Emperor Justinian had to bring in the legions to restore order.

1687- Father Eusebio Kino began his missionary work in the Spanish Southwest. He founded several missions in Arizona and helped introduce the horse, pairs of whom were brought over from Spain and released around Santa Fe to multiply in the wild. The Italian born Jesuit’s travels also proved that California was not a big island as previously thought.

1733- James Oglethorpe reached Charleston South Carolina with a 114 colonists plucked from prisons back in England. His goal was to sail down to the Savannah River and create a new colony to stand as a buffer state between Spanish Florida and the English holdings. He got there on Feb 1, and called his new colony after King George- Georgia.

1777- Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson signed a bill in the legislature banning sodomy. The penalty for conviction was castration.

1847- Mexican Gen. Andres Pico signed the capitulation of Campo de Cahuenga (the little park across from Universal Studios today), surrendering the northern Mexican state of Alta-California to U.S. Gen. John Fremont. Fremont, nicknamed "The Pathfinder", was the first Republican candidate for President in 1856, and when the Civil War began he was a General until the Confederates made a fool of him and he dropped from public view. He was a better explorer than tactician. During the Civil War Andres Pico served in the Yankee force that defeated an attempted Confederate invasion of California. I guess he figured one change of flag in a lifetime was enough.

1849- Battle of Chillianwallah. The British army under Lord Hugh Gough defeated the Sikh army of Sher Singh and conquered the Punjab. Gough was a blunt old style soldier. When his second mentioned the army was almost out of cannonballs, Gough responded:” Good! Then we shall be at them with the bayonet!” This was the first battle where common soldiers’ bravery was “mentioned in dispatches” by the commander. At one point a befuddled major issued the wrong orders to a key troop of cavalry who would have galloped away from the battle, but they were rallied by their chaplain. For his bravery, Lord Gough recommended the chaplain be promoted to Brevet-Bishop.

1854- The modern Accordion is patented by Anthony Faas. Polka fans rejoice!

1864- Stephen Foster, the composer of "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Camptown Races" was found dead, a penniless drunk in New York's Bowery slum. In his hand was a piece of paper with the words "Dear friends and gentle hearts... ". A Pennsylvania Yankee, despite writing a lot of music about the South, he only visited it once, to New Orleans in 1852.

1872- GRANDDUKE ALEXIS BUFFALO HUNT. Grand Duke Alexis the son of the Czar of Russia visited America. A sportsman, He expressed a desire to go out West and hunt real buffalo. The US Government ordered General Custer and Buffalo Bill to afford him every courtesy. Buffalo Bill even talked Sioux Chief Spotted Tail to move his tribe’s winter encampment 100 miles south so Alexis could experience real wild Indians. Starting today the hunting party hunted and feasted for two weeks, leaving behind a trail of champagne bottles and buffalo carcasses. The trip was a great success and Buffalo Bill realized there was big money to be made in giving fancy foreigners a taste of the Wild West…

1895- Oscar Wilde’s play The Ideal Husband, premiered in London.

1898- Under the banner headline "J'Accuse !", a Paris newspaper printed writer Emile Zola's stinging criticism of the French government's handling of the Dreyfus scandal, blowing the whole scandal wide open. It charged Dreyfus was scapegoated to take the wrap for informants higher up in the Army General Staff. The army sued Zola for libel, and he went into exile to avoid imprisonment. He returned one year later after an enquiry cleared Dreyfus.

1906- The first ad for a radio appeared in an American Science Magazine. It boasted an effective range of over one mile !

1910- Dr. Lee Deforest, experimenting with his new radio vacuum tubes broadcast singers from New York's Metropolitan Opera for the first time. The regular Texaco 'Live from the Met' broadcasts wouldn't get going until 1934.

1914- Folksinging union organizer Joe Hill was arrested in Utah on trumped up murder charges.

1925- THE FIRST CALIFORNIA GURU- Indian spiritual teacher Paramahansa Yogananda , then called “The Swami” settled in Los Angeles and gave his first lecture to an audience in LA Philharmonic Hall. He taught westerners about these new things called Yoga and Meditation. He was a cause celeb, with friends like Luther Burbank, Armelita Galli-Curci, and John Barrymore. His Autobiography of a Yogi became a bestseller, read by the folks like Steve Jobs.
He founded the Malibu Self-Realization Center in 1950. It featured one shovel-full of ashes from the funeral pyre of Mahatma Gandhi.

1929- Wyatt Earp died at 82 of prostate cancer in Los Angeles. After careers as a gunfighter, buffalo hunter, Dodge City marshal, prizefight referee, Yukon gold prospector and faro dealer, he finished in L.A. speculating in real estate. He was buried in San Francisco's Jewish Cemetery because his third wife, ex-saloongirl Sadie Marcus was of that faith.
He liked to stroll onto Hollywood western movie sets to give advice to Tom Mix and William S. Hart on how they did it in the Old West. Recent scholarship claims that a tall young prop boy and extra named Duke Morrison (John Wayne) liked to hang around Wyatt to get advice. Supposedly the famous John Wayne swaggering walk was copied from Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp would have died totally forgotten but in his last years he was interviewed by a journalist named Stuart Lake who published a best selling biography in 1931 called Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal. After that the movies and TV took up his name to make him the most famous lawman in western history, which would have been a surprise to him.

1930- The Mickey Mouse comic strip first appeared in US newspapers. Originally Walt Disney himself wrote them, Ub Iwerks penciled and Winn Smith inked.

1939- Col. Jacob Ruppert died, the brewing tycoon and owner of the NY Yankees during their glory years of Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig. His will left his millions to a chorus girl Helen Weyant. She said “ they were just friends.”

1943- Movie star Frances Farmer was dragged out of a Hollywood hotel in a straightjacket. She screamed Rats! Rats! and listed her occupation on her arrest record as “c**ksucker”. Her career was ruined and she spent years in asylums. But it’s inconclusive whether she had actually suffered mental illness, or it was her mother overreacting to her sullen, temperamental nature.

1945- Sergei Prokoviev’s 5th Symphony (Classical) premiered in Moscow.

1946- In his comic strip, Dick Tracy first uses his two-way wrist radio.

1947- The comic strip “Steve Canyon”, by Milt Caniff first premiered in newspapers.

1953-" The Doctor's Plot"- Aging Soviet dictator Josef Stalin decided to launch a new purge and shoot and imprison thousands of people. He announced he had uncovered a conspiracy of counter revolutionists and spies to bribe doctors to poison top Soviet officials. Luckily Stalin died before he could kick off his new terror campaign. As he lay stricken with a stroke on his deathbed, his doctors were too afraid to treat him.

1957-THE FRISBEE went into production today. Two World War II fighter pilots who met in a German prison camp, Warren Fransconi and Walter Morrison, invented the plastic platter in a San Luis Obisbo home. Originally called Flying Saucers and Pluto’s Platters, they got the name Frisbee when they demonstrated it at Yale University. The students there were used to flipping pie plates at each other from the local Frisbee Pie Company, so when they played with the new disc, they cried “Frisbee, Frisbee!” which seemed to Walter a better name.
When Walt Morrison died in 2002, his family obeyed his last request, to have his body cremated, his ashes mixed with plastic, and molded into a Frisbee.

1958- Actress Jayne Mansfield married weightlifter Mickey Hargitay. Their daughter was Marisa Hargitay.

1962- In the wee hours of a rainy night, TV pioneer Ernie Kovacs died when he plowed his Corvair into a power pole at Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Blvd. He was attending a baby shower Billy Widler threw for Milton Berle and his wife. But it was also known that Ernie had a weakness for screwdrivers, vodka and orange juice. At the funeral, the pastor said Ernie wanted his life summed up like this,” "I was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1919 to a Hungarian couple. I've been smoking cigars ever since."

1979- The Young Men’s Christian Association filed a lawsuit against the rock group the Village People over their hit song “YMCA”.

1979- Russian animator Yuri Norstein’s masterpiece Tale of Tales premiered.

1985- Carol Wayne, an actress who played sexy blonde roles on comedy shows like Johnny Carson, drowned while swimming in Mexico. She was 41.

2002- While alone watching a football game on TV, Pres. George W. Bush almost choked on a pretzel.

2011- The huge Italian luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia ran aground on rocks off the coast of Umbria and capsized, killing 32. The captain of the ship Francesco Schettino was not present when the ship was in crisis because he was in his cabin with a hot Venezuelan woman. After the crash, he left his sinking ship early and was seen in town when everyone else was still trying to rescue survivors. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The French comic TinTin; What is the name of Tintin’s dog?

Answer: Snowy. In French- Milou.

QUIZ: The French comic TinTin; What is the name of Tintin’s dog?

Answer to yesterdays question below: During WW2 German attack submarines were called U-Boats. What did the U stand for?
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History for 1/12/2024
Birthdays: Pilgrim leader John Winthrop, Charles Perrault (Mother Goose), John Hancock, Edmund Burke, John Singer Sargent, Jack London, James Farmer the founder of CORE, Herman Goering, Eddie Selzer, "Smokin' Joe" Frazier, Tex Ritter, Martin Agronsky, animator John Sibley, animator Ray Aragon, Howard Stern is 69, Rush Limbaugh, Oliver Platt is 64, Wayne Wang, Tiffany, Kirstie Alley, John Lasseter is 67

Festival of Sarasvati –the Hindu Goddess of Wisdom.

1493- All Jews ordered to leave Sicily.

1519- Vasco Nunez de Balboa, Spanish discoverer of the Pacific, was convicted of treason, rebellion and mistreatment of Indians and beheaded. The cause was probably more that the local colonial governor Pedro de Arias hated him.

1641- The Virginia Colony passed a law that if any Indian committed a crime, the first Indian seen, even if he was completely innocent, would be compelled to pay his fine.

1669- Buccaneer Henry Morgan convened a meeting of the Captains of the Coast, a meeting of pirates on board his frigate the Oxford. In their meeting they resolved to attack Cartagena Columbia, a rich Spanish port and staging area for Spanish treasure galleons. During the drunken celebrations someone fired a gun off in the Oxford’s powder magazine and the explosion blew a dozen men to Davey Jones Locker. Arrr..!

1800- The frigate USS Experiment was attacked by ten pirate ships off Hispaniola.

1809- A group of Viennese businessmen convinced Ludwig Van Beethoven not to move to another city by paying him a yearly allowance. Beethoven constantly worried about money and pleaded poverty, yet after his death people found thousands of silver coins hidden in little pots and cupboards throughout his home. He used to charge people three marks to look at him through his window while he composed.

1812- A scant six years after Fulton first demonstrated his steamboat, the first Mississippi steamboat brought a cargo of cotton bales from Natchez to New Orleans to be loaded onto a transatlantic ship. This is the beginning of the riverboat trade Mark Twain made famous.

1898- Nationalist riots broke out in the Spanish colony of Cuba. U.S. President McKinley sent the battleship Maine to Havana harbor to protect American interests. Americans have coveted Cuba since James Madison's time. Just before the Civil War broke out, Southern businessmen paid mercenaries to conquer Cuba from Spain and bring her into the union as a new slave state. The U.S. threatened Spain with war over Cuba in 1870 and 1874 as well.

1928- NY police raid Alfred Knopf publishing offices and seized 852 copies of the novel “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall, because reading it was thought to turn young girls into lesbians!

1928- Henry Grey and Ruth Snyder are electrocuted in Sing-Sing Prison for the murder of Mrs. Snyder's husband. The love triangle was the inspiration for the films 'Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice' and 'Body Heat". Press photographer Thomas Howard taped a small camera to his ankle and snapped a photo of Mrs Snyder frying in the chair. The New York Daily News published the photo on its front page.

1942- German submarine U-123 torpedoed the British tanker S.S. Norness right outside the entrance to New York Harbor. The incident sent panic up and down the Eastern seaboard. The New York Museum of Natural History even moved its Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton to Pittsburgh, to save it from Nazi attack.

1945- To the overture of thousands of heavy cannons and Katyusha rockets the Red army crossed the Vistula river in Poland and began its final offensive against the Third Reich. This would end with Hitler’s death and the fall of Berlin. The nickname the multiple firing Katyushas was “Stalin’s Pipe Organ”.

1945- Japan signed licensing contracts and received from Nazi Germany their plans for jet fighters. Work was begun on a Japanese version of the Messerschmidt ME 262, the worlds’ first jet fighter, but they were too late to affect the wars end. The first Japanese fighter jet flew over Tokyo on Aug 6th,1945, the same day Hiroshima was A-bombed.

1960-” The Scent of Mystery”- the first film in Smell-O-Vision.

1962- President John F. Kennedy signed Executive order# 10988, mandating federal workers had the right to join unions and bargain collectively. In 2001 in the trauma over 9-11, President George W. Bush demanded his newly organized 50,000 member Department of Homeland Security be forbidden to unionize.

1965- NBC TV premiered Hullabaloo, a Rock & Roll dance show with lots of mini-skirted go-go dancers. ABC responded with Shindig.

1966- Holy Cult Classic! The TV show "Batman" with Adam West and Burt Ward, premiered.

1969- Super Bowl III at the Orange Bowl, Broadway Joe Namath and the underdog NY Jets upset the Baltimore Colts led by the legendary Johnny Unitas 16-7.

1970- The Biafran Civil War ended.

1971- “ALL IN THE FAMILY” Norman Lear's TV sitcom debuted. Based on a popular British show Till Death Do Us Part, it broke new ground for American sitcoms by frankly discussing working class prejudice, menopause, rape and other taboo subjects. The first show featured the sound of a toilet flushing. The networks were so worried about its explosive content ABC rejected the show twice, and CBS ran the first episodes with a long apologetic disclaimer. Carrol O’Connor, the actor who played Archie Bunker, was so convinced the show would flop, he demanded as part of his contract a round trip plane ticket home. The show ran for 13 years, a bushel of Emmy Awards and made the name Archie Bunker famous.

1971- Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan, nun Sister Elizabeth McAllister and several others were indicted in Federal court for conspiracy. The Catholic clerics were trying to bring an end to the Vietnam War through non-violent acts of civil disobedience. After handcuffing themselves to missiles and the gates of army bases, the government alleged their scheme was to kidnap top Nixon diplomat Henry Kissinger and sabotage the State Department heating systems in the dead of winter. That was never proven. All charges were eventually overturned.

1987- No mystery, Agatha Christie died at 88 of natural causes.

1995- Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen announced the name of their new partnership would be 'Dreamworks SKG'. Someone in Florida immediately bought the domain name “Dreamworks.com” and waited for their buyout offer. I heard it was $5,000.

1997-According to Arthur C. Clarkes 1968 book "2001, a Space Odyssey", the HAL-9000 computer was booted up today.

1998-The LEWINSKY SCANDAL- Former White House staffer Linda Tripp was frustrated her career in the Clinton Administration was going nowhere. This day she appeared in the office of independent special prosecutor Kenneth Starr with tape recordings she secretly made of her friend Monica Lewinsky. They admitted to a sexual affair with the President. Conservative Judge Starr had been investigating Slick-Willie Clinton for years. After spending $54 million tax dollars, he hadn’t found much. So he immediately leaped at this opportunity, and asked the Attorney General for an extension of his mandate.
Ms. Lewinsky had meant to keep her affair a secret, despite telling 11 friends. By autumn, the resultant scandal brought Washington to a standstill and only the second presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history. President Clinton first lied, then admitted to the affair, but was acquitted and served out his term anyway. Judge Starr later was booted out of the Presidency of Baylor Univ. for covering up a sex scandal. Linda Tripp asked the public for donations for her legal defense fund for her violating federal wiretap laws “I am one of you...a David against a Goliath...Even $1,000 dollars would do..” She took the money and got a facelift.

2002-The Refusenik Movement began in Israel when 53 Israeli Army officers announced they refused to enforce the Likud Government’s policy in the West Bank & Gaza.
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Yesterdays’ Question: During WW2 German attack submarines were called U-Boats. What did the U stand for?

Answer: Undersea-boat. Untersee-boot.

Quiz: You’ve heard of the famous WW2 Battle of Guadalcanal. What country does the island of Guadalcanal belong to?

Yesterday’s question answered below: The famous Westminster bell named Big Ben was actually named for a real person. Who was it?
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History for 1/10/2024
Birthdays: Ethan Allen, Marshal Michel Ney, Frank James -Jesse's brother, Francois Poulenc, Ray Bolger (the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz), Stephen Ambrose, Sherrill Milnes, Pat Benatar, Sal Mineo, Jim Croce, Rod Stewart, Walter Hill, George Foreman, Linda Lovelace, Roy E Disney Jr, Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Concords is 50

50 B.C.- "Jacta Esta Alea!" Gaius Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River near modern Rimini with his legions and began a civil war for control of the Roman Empire. Caesar had been ordered by the Senate to give up his army command in Gaul and not bring his troops down. Once stripped of command he could be open to lawsuits, investigation and criminal charges. Years before Scipio Africanis, the defeater of Hannibal, was ruined by his political enemies this way. So instead Caesar attacked. The Rubicon was the border between the outer provinces and the home territory of Rome. Since then, "Crossing the Rubicon" means committing to a course of action you cannot turn back from. Caesar said "Alea jacta est" which means "The die is cast".

1072- Robert Giscard captured Palermo. At the same time Norman warriors under William the Conqueror were overrunning England and Scotland, other Normans knights were traveling south and spreading out across Southern Italy, Sicily and Croatia. They weren’t a national conquering army under a king, just professional mercenaries out for personal gain. They occupied Sicily and became the shock troops of the First Crusade. The Normans were finally driven out of Sicily in 1282.

1529- Michelangelo elected to design the military defenses of Florence. They failed to keep out the enemy, but they must have looked really beautiful!

1538- Martin Luther declared that Purgatory does not exist. " God in the Gospel of Mark has placed two ways before us- Salvation by faith or Damnation by unbelief."

1642- King Charles I slipped out of London as the city grew increasingly hostile to his cause. Londoners threw garbage out their windows at his Royal Guards. He traveled north to gather supporters. Parliament superseded the authority of the Mayor of London and called up the city militia. The English Civil War would break out in September.

1744- Bonnie Prince Charlie left exile in Rome to go to Scotland and start his uprising.

1775- PUGACHEV’S RISING. Yemelian Pugachev was an illiterate Cossack. One day for a laugh, his friends shaved his beard off while he was too drunk to notice. Without the beard they discovered he bore an amazing likeness to the Catherine the Great's dead husband, Czar Peter III. There was deep resentment in Russia among the common folk against the rule of Czarina Catherine. She was modernizing Russia against it's will and wasn't even Russian (she was a German princess).
Pugachev declared himself the Czar Peter, back to reclaim his throne for the Muziks (peasants) and the Old Religion. Pugachev's Rising cost tens of thousands of lives before Catherine's armies stamped it out. Today Pugachev was brought to Moscow in an iron cage, then beheaded. A comparable Russian people's uprising would not be seen again until 1905.

1776- COMMON SENSE published. Thomas Paine's pamphlet explaining the case for liberty was considered psychologically decisive in garnering mass support among average Americans. Washington called it -"more valuable than a hundred cannon." Englishman Paine, a former corset maker, had only been living in America for one year.

1855- The Clackamas People of the Oregon territory sold some of their prime timberland for $500 and some food.

1861- Benito Juarez elected President of the Mexican Republic. The statesman spoke Zapotec before he learned Spanish, and became the first Indian head of Mexico since the last Aztec Emperor Guatamoc in 1519. During Emperor Maximillian’s French occupation, Juarez's government was constantly on the run along the Texas border but he refused to ever cross it. He felt the legitimate government must never leave Mexican soil.

1861- Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.

1863-The world's first Subway Train line opened in London at Baker's Street Station.

1870- John D. Rockefeller first formed the company called Standard Oil. In 1911 it changed its name to Esso and Humble, then in 1973 Exxon.

1878- the first Amendment proposing to give women the right to vote is proposed in Congress. Suffragette leaders Elizabeth Cady-Stanton and Susan B. Anthony looked for three months for a senator with the guts to sponsor it. It was defeated but it was brought up at every congressional session for the next 45 years. (see below 1917-1918)

1888-date of LOUIS LePRINCE's claim of a patent on Motion Pictures, predating Edison 1893 and the Lumiere Brothers-1895. LePrince even had as proof a film he shot of his mother, who had died in 1887. Despite this, LePrince could get no one to take him seriously. One day he boarded a train from Dijon to Paris and disappeared from the face of the Earth.

1901- SPINDLETOP- BLACK GOLD, TEXAS TEA… Conventional wisdom up till then was America’s oil reserves were chiefly around the Great Lakes and Pennsylvania. On this day wildcat drillers struck oil in Beaumont Texas. The Spindletop gusher was so big, 3,000 barrels an hour, it doubled total U.S. oil production output overnight. Companies like Gulf and Texaco spring up to compete with industry leader Standard Oil (Exxon). The era of the Texas Oil Tycoons began and until they began to run dry in the 1970s, America controlled 80% of the world’s petroleum output.

1906- The London Daily Mail coined a new term for women politically agitating to gain suffrage, or the right to vote, "Suffragettes".

1910- Joyce Clyde Hall started the company that became Hallmark Cards.

1917- On the anniversary of the first women’s right to vote bill, The Women's Suffragette Movement began a 24 hour round the clock protest in front of the White House. It is the first time the White House was ever publicly picketed. Ten suffragettes are jailed but are immediately replaced by ten more, who when arrested are replaced by more, then more.

1917- Frontiersman and master showman Buffalo Bill Cody died at 70 of uremia poisoning. His last words after he was told his end had come was "Ah forget it boys, let's play a round of High-Five." Today his grave still overlooks the city of Denver.

1918- 45 years after being first proposed, The 19th Amendment granting American women the right to vote passed in The House of Representatives. It failed at first to get the necessary 2/3 vote in the Senate, but after more votes and wrangling. It finally passed in Feb 1919.

1919- The League of Nations formed. The United States refusal to join and the Leagues refusal to admit Soviet Russia would doom this early attempt at a United Nations. Being dominated by old colonial powers like Britain and France it ignored the national aspirations of 3rd world countries like Syria and Vietnam. Finally the aggressive actions of the Fascist powers like Germany, Italy and Japan revealed the impotence of the League. The Leagues failure and World War II was used to make the point about the United Nations in 1945.

1923- When the defeated Germans proved too slow in paying the massive postwar indemnities (cash payments) to the Allies for World War I, a Franco-Belgian army occupied the Ruhr Valley industrial area. This cuts off the already ruined German economy from 80% of its steel and coal. The French leave after massive steel strikes and riots, and leave the Germans fresh hatreds to avenge later.

1924- Columbia Pictures created, ruled by Harry Cohn, whose motto was "I don't get ulcers, I give them!"

1927- Fritz Lang’s silent Metropolis premiered. Screenplay by his wife/collaborator Thea von Harbou. Despite the opinion of H.G. Wells in the London Times, “ Foolishness, cliche’, platitude and muddlement.” It is considered a classic of film science fiction.

1929- Herge’s comic character Tin Tin first appeared in a Belgian newspaper XXe Siecle. Tintin’s dog Snowy, in French Milou, he named for his girlfriend.

1939- Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov sold his first story to Amazing Stories Magazine "Marooned off Vesta".

1940- As the British and French awaited the first big German offensive of WW2, Hitler’s Generals argued about which plan to use for that offensive. This day a small plane was shot down over Belgium. In the pocket of a dead staff officer was the plans for the more conservative German attack. When this fell into the Allies hands, Hitler decided to adopt the more audacious plan of “Panzer Heinz” Guderian for a lightning strike through the Ardennes Forest. This plan turned out to be much more effected in defeating the Allies.

1941- The comedy play ARSENIC AND OLD LACE opened on Broadway. Playwright Joseph Kesselring originally wrote it as a drama based on true events, until he was advised - and, wisely so - to turn it into a dark comedy instead, guaranteeing a larger audience. He made the title a joke on a popular turn of the century romance novel, Lavender and Old Lace. When someone joked that Mortimer’s evil brother looked like Boris Karloff, the character was indeed played by famous horror movie star Boris Karloff. He was an investor in the play. When buying the movie rights Warner Bros agreed to wait until the play ended its theatrical run. They thought plays usually are done in a few months so they had Frank Capra make it into a classic screwball comedy with Cary Grant and Raymond Massey. The play Arsenic and Old Lace ran on Broadway for three years, until 1944. Then Warner Bros could finally release the movie.

1947- Returned WWII veteran Ed Lowe was working at his dad’s sand and gravel pit in Michigan. This day a neighbor asked if she could borrow some sand for her cat to do his business in. This gave Lowe an idea to use a clay mineral mixture called Fuller’s Earth. It absorbs twice its weight in water and is odorless. He invented Kitty Litter, and made millions.

1949- For years the recording industry had been working on ways to improve the 78 RPM record –RPM means Rotations Per Minute. RCA records announced the invention of the 45 RPM record. Columbia (CBS) had announced the LP (Long Playing) 33 rpm record and originally offered to share the technology but RCA (NBC) was having none of it. But the 33 stored more music and could use old 78 rpm turntables adapted so the 45 soon became a vehicle for hit singles.

1958- Jerry Lee Lewis single "Great Balls of Fire" topped the pop charts.

1958- GET MARRIED, OR ELSE! Blond actress Kim Novak had starred in Hitchcock’s Vertigo and was touted as the new Marilyn Monroe. In 1957 she began dating black entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. Davis was a member of Sinatra’s Ratpack and he challenged America’s racial barriers with his great talent. But this high profile interracial match was just too much for Hollywood society to handle. Columbia’s studio head Harry Cohn said of Novak-"That fat Polack Bitch! How could she do this to me? "
Legend has it Cohn called the Chicago Mafia and put a contract out on Sammy Davis. L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen told Davis’ father that if Sammy didn’t marry a black girl in 24 hours, he would have his legs broken, and his remaining good eye poked out.
On this day in Las Vegas’ Sands Hotel, Sammy Davis Jr. married black actress Loray White. Harry Belafonte was the best man. The couple honeymooned separately and divorced 6 months later. But the affair with Novak was over and Harry Cohn died of a heart attack the same year. In 1960 Sammy Davis married blonde German actress May Britt.

1961- Writer Dashell Hammett died.

1967- Lester Maddox was sworn in as Governor of Georgia. Maddox was a high school dropout who gained national stature when he refused to allow black people to eat at his restaurant, the Pickrick Café in Atlanta. Maddox passed out axe handles to white patrons to beat up Civil Rights workers. Maddox finally closed his restaurant rather than integrate.

1971-Stanford Calderwood, the president of WGBH Boston, got a good reaction for a season of a British drama he ran on American TV called The Forsythe Saga. He soon returned from a trip to England having purchased a bushel of BBC dramas. Period pieces, Called “Frock Dramas”. This day Masterpiece Theater debuted on US TV with host Alastair Cooke. The first show was the BBC series The First Churchills. I Claudius, Poldark and Upstairs Downstairs followed. These shows were so popular that for awhile people thought PBS meant Preferably British Shows.

1972- The liner Queen Elizabeth 1, on her retirement journey to the scrap yard, mysteriously caught fire and sank in Hong Kong harbor.

1992- The GREAT RUBBER DUCKY DISASTER- A North Pacific storm causes a ship to lose 29,000 plastic rubber duck toys overboard. They joined 61,000 Nike sneakers already bobbing in the water from a similar maritime accident. Scientists used the rubber ducky migration to track Pacific Ocean currents around Alaska.

1993- CAMILLAGATE- As speculation grew that the English Prince and Princess of Wales' marriage was on the rocks a London tabloid published tapes of phone conversations between Prince Charles and his long term mistress Lady Camilla Parker Bowles. The highly embarrassing transcripts included the Prince expressing a wish that he could be Ms. Bowles' tampon. Camilla's husband divorced her and Charles and Diana soon divorced as well. Within a year of Princess Diana's fatal auto accident Camilla resumed spending the night at Kensington Palace. Camilla and Charles married in 2005 and became King and Queen in 2022.

1999- HBO’s The Sopranos premiered. Howyadoin..?

2000- AOL and Time Warner announced a $165 billion dollar merger that made it the world’s largest media company. Considered now one of the worst business deals in history, the company lost $80 billion in one year. The deal almost sank both companies, uprooted both chairmen, and they detached permanently in 2009. Today Warner Bros is merged with Discovery with equally chaotic results.

2004- NY based Writer and actor Spaulding Gray spent the day taking his kids to the movies. They saw Tim Burton’s movie Big Fish. Gray put his kids into a taxi home and from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, called his wife to say he would be home soon and that he loved her. Then he took the ferry, jumped into the harbor and drowned himself in New York Harbor. How He had waged a long battle with depression and his mother had commit suicide. His body did not resurface until March 9.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The famous Westminster bell named Big Ben was actually named for a real person. Who was it?

Answer: Its was named for Ben Cort, who was a top prizefighter in Victorian England at the time.