Quiz: What professional sport is nicknamed “ The Beautiful Game”? (hint: not in the U.S.)

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean to have a holistic approach to something?
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History for 4/14/2024
Birthdays: King Phillip III of Spain, Christian Huygens, Arnold Toynbee, Sir John Gielgud, Menachem Schneerson- the Grand Rabbi of Chabad, Papa Doc Duvalier- Haitian dictator 1907, Robert Doisneau, Rod Steiger, Loretta Lynn, Morton Sobotnick, Frank Serpico, Pete Rose, Julie Christie, Kenneth Mars, Anthony Michael Hall, Steve Martin is 73, Sarah Michelle Geller is 46, Adrien Brody is 50. Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo

69AD- Battle of Bedriacum- After the death of Nero, several Roman generals turned their legions around and marched to Rome. In this battle General Otho was killed by the Gaulic Legions of Aulus Vitellius. He would soon be killed by Vespasian and his son Titus.

73A.D. MASADA- After the great Jewish revolt against Rome was crushed by Titus and Jerusalem destroyed, two legions remained behind to do mopping up. A group of zealots, Essene rabbis and their families held out in a mountaintop stronghold for two years in an epic siege.
The night before the Zealots realized the Roman siege engines were about to breach their walls. They resolved to not be taken alive. This day soldiers of the Tenth Legion Felix broke into the quiet works. They found 960 corpses. The Jews had preferred mass suicide to slavery. They killed their families, and then themselves.
Contrary to modern sensibilities, the Romans were not horrified by the ghastly scene. Greco-Roman ethics considered suicide a rational way out of a bad situation. They expressed grudging admiration of their Jewish foes. The reason we know anything about this incident was because a Jewish turncoat named Flavius Josephus wrote about it in his history. The Masada fortress was discovered by archaeologists in 1947.

1471- Battle of Barnet- During the chaos of the English War of the Roses, the Earl of Warwick became a power player in the shifting sides. He was nicknamed The Kingmaker. He finally overplayed his hand. This day Warwick the Kingmaker was killed in battle by King Edward IV.
The angry king had Warwick’s dead carcass brought to London and displayed naked on the steps of St, Paul’s Cathedral.

1543- Explorer Bartolomeo Ferrelo returned to Spain with news of a big new harbor he discovered on the Pacific coast of California that he named for his patron, Saint Francis- San Francisco Bay.

1758- RHINOMANIA- In India, Clara the Rhinoceros was adopted as a baby by two Dutch tradesmen, after hunters killed her mother. Despite her fierce-looking appearance, she was quite tame and gentle. In 1741 they brought Clara to Europe. No one had ever seen a live Rhinoceros, and she quickly became famous. They toured Clara through the capitols of Europe. She met Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, Louis XV and Madame de la Pompadour and King George II. Painters and artisans made images of her, and King Louis XV named a new battleship the Rhinoceros. This day she died in graceful retirement at age 20 in Lambeth Palace, London.

1777- During the American Revolution, British loyalist counterfeiters with a printing press on board the HMS Phoenix stationed in New York Harbor, began to make phony Continental money to undermine the Yankee economy. The Continental dollar became so worthless that “Not worth a Continental” was a favorite phrase.

1789- George Washington learned that he had been elected first president of the United States. He had just been turned down for a bank loan. The electors told him he had won overwhelmingly over John Adams and John Hancock.
The first election also produced the first sore-losers. John Hancock, who was the leader of Congress all through the Revolution, and had that really big signature, was so disgusted he lost, that when Washington paid an official visit to his home state of Massachusetts, Hancock snubbed him. John Adams was annoyed about being only Vice President of a country he felt he invented, under a man he felt he created. He was the one who first suggested the big Virginian with the bad teeth lead the army.
John Adams hoped his position of Vice President would evolve powers not unlike an English Prime Minister, the real power, with the President just a ceremonial figurehead. But Washington's annoyance with Adams ensured he, and consequentially all future vice presidents, would have little or nothing to do.

1828- The first edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary published. In the 70.000 entries Webster made it a political point to separate American English from the King’s English by substituting Spanish roots for words in the place of Norman French roots. This is when “Colour” became “Color”, Theatre and Centre became Theater and Center, and Cheque became Check.

1865- ABRAHAM LINCOLN ASSASSINATED- Well known actor John Wilkes Booth shot the President in the back of the head as he watched the play "Our American Cousin". Lincoln had seen the play several times and knew most of the lines by heart. Booth also knew the play, and timed his shot to the loudest laughline in the script. Booth leapt onto the stage and shouting something. It may have been” Sic Semper Tyrannus-And thus with Tyrants” the motto of the State of Virginia, or “The South is Avenged”. In 2019 a letter from an eyewitness was discovered that said Booth yelled both things.
That same night Booths accomplice Lewis Paine stabbed Secretary of State William Seward in his bed. When Seward’s son tried to stop him, Paine broke his skull and ran out into the street shouting "I am Mad!" Another man named George Atzenrodt was supposed to kill the Vice President but he lost his nerve and did nothing.

In the box with the Lincolns were a Major Henry Rathbone and his fiance' Miss Clara Harris. Lincoln had asked General & Mrs. Grant to join them at first but the Grant's declined. Nellie Grant didn’t like Mary Lincoln. Anyhow, to Clara Harris this was a pretty lousy first date, watching the president get a bullet in the brain, her dress splattered with Major Rathbone's blood from being slashed with a knife and seeing Mrs. Lincoln go insane, but she married Rathbone anyway. Rathbone was never the same man. Ten years later while living as ambassador to the German city of Hanover, Rathbone murdered Clara, and for the rest of his life was confined in an asylum for the criminally insane.

1871- Canada set its currency in dollars and cents, instead of pounds and shillings.

1883- Leopold Delibes’ opera Lakme premiered in Paris.

1906- The Azusa Street Church opened. Rev William Seymour began the first Pentecostal-Charismatic Church, a movement that spread around the world.

1910- At a baseball game in Washington, William Howard Taft becomes the first President to throw out the season's first ball.

1912- RMS TITANIC SINKS- At 11:40PM The unsinkable luxury liner going too fast and 14 miles off course struck an iceberg and by 2:40AM went down, taking millionaires and immigrants alike. As the stricken liner sank, the cruiser SS Californian watched a short distance away. They could have saved more people, but their radioman had gone to bed, and they thought the emergency flares lighting up the night sky were party skyrockets. No one was saved until the SS Carpathia arrived on the scene at dawn.
A strange fact is in 1898 a writer named Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility, in which an 880 ft luxury liner sank on her maiden voyage in the month of April. The fictitious ship was named the Titan.

1925- WGN broadcasts its first regular season baseball game. Quinn Ryan behind the mike as Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Cubs defeated the Pirates on Opening Day, 8-2.

1927- The first Volvo automobile rolled off the assembly line in Goteborg Sweden.

1930- Russian poet Vladimir Mayakowsky shot himself. This was convenient for Stalin because Mayakowsky had grown disillusioned with the Soviet regime. Stalin made a great public spectacle of his funeral.

1931- In Spain socialists, progressives and anarchists united to drive out the King Alphonso XIII. They proclaimed the Second Spanish Republic. Salud Republica!

1935- THE DUST BOWL - The drought conditions and over-farming in the plains states had been building for years, but this storm climaxed the decade long event. On this day a big dust storm struck Cimarron County Oklahoma. It blacked out the sun over five states. Cattle choked, calves and children disappeared in the drifts. Not even weeds would grow in it. The dust got through cracks in houses and when you awoke in the morning the only clean spot on your pillow was where your head lay.
After this storm the migration of farmers rose until the estimate was 40% of the populations of the drought stricken areas. People from Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Texas and Missouri piled all their belongings onto their jalopies, and took Route 66 to California. They were called 'the Oakies, and their plight was dramatized in the songs of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath.

1956- In Redwood City, Cal. Charles Ginsburg, Ray Dolby and Charles Anderson demonstrated the first videotape recording machine. They were going then for a mere $75,000 each.

1960- The musical Bye Bye Birdie opened on Broadway.

1962- Bob Dylan recorded “Blowing in the Wind”.

1963- Beatle George Harrison was impressed by an unsigned rock band he just heard called the Rolling Stones.

1969- Disney’s Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day won the Oscar for best Animated Short.

1969- The first regular season baseball game played outside the United States. The Montreal Expos play their first home game, treating 29,184 fans at Jarry Park to an 8-7 win over the St Louis Cardinals. Speaking about Expo fans, Cub announcer Harry Carrey noted: "They discovered 'boo' is pronounced the same in French as it is English.”

1986- President Reagan ordered U.S. military places bomb Libya in retaliation for a terrorist bombing in a nightclub in West Germany. 15 civilians were killed including a son of Libyan President Mohamar Kaddafi.

1994- The cable channel TCM (Turner Classic Movies) premiered this day. Host Robert Osbourne introduced Gone With The Wind.

2005- Baseball returned to Washington D.C., 34 years after the Washington Senators left to Texas, the Washington Nationals played their first game.

2008- Ollie Johnston, the last animator of Walt Disney’s original Nine Old Men, passed away at age 96.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to have a holistic approach to something?

Answer:

Question: What does it mean to have a holistic approach to something?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Vladimir Ulyanov was known by a more famous name. What was it?
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History for 4/13/2024
Birthdays: St. Thomas Becket, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Lord North, Samuel Beckett, Dame Eudora Welty, Al Green, Jack Cassidy, Butch Cassidy, Franklin W. Woolworth, Howard Keel, Don Adams, Ricky Schroeder, Peabo Bryson, Ron Perleman, Stanley Donen, Alfred Butts the inventor of Scrabble, Glen Keane is 70

1387- A party of 29 English pilgrims assemble to travel to the shrine of Canterbury. The trip was immortalized by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales.

1598- King Henry IV of France tried to end the religious strife tearing his country apart by publishing the Edict of Nantes- granting freedom of worship to all. The Edict of Nantes shocked Pope Clement VIII. Legend is his Holiness cried:" Every man with freedom of conscience? What can be worse than that?"

1612- This was the day of the legendary Duel on Ganryu island where Japanese swordsmen Musashi Miyamoto defeated Sasaki Kohjiro with a wooden sword.

1775- British Prime Minister Lord North had placed rebellious Massachusetts colony under an act called the Restraining Act. It declared that the New Englanders were not allowed to do business with any other nation but Britain. This day Lord North extended the act to cover the other colonies of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. He inadvertently gave the widely separated crown colonies in North America even more reason to work together, like they were an independent nation.

1829- THE CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION BILL PASSED IN ENGLAND. The previous June Irish orator Daniel O'Connell had successfully run for Parliament but was denied his seat because he was a Catholic. The old Duke of Wellington, now Prime minister of a Tory Government, believed the only way to keep his birthplace Ireland from collapsing into open rebellion was sweep away these outdated bans on the Roman Catholic religion, kept since the days of Henry VIII and the Reformation.
To pass this bill he had to convince the radicals, Whigs, Ultras, Tories of his own party, the reluctant King, and he even had to fight a duel. It was his biggest fight since Waterloo. But the bill passed and was considered the crowning achievement of his government. It probably kept Ireland under English rule for another generation.

1830- For many year Thomas Jefferson’s birthday was a national holiday. This day, Jefferson birthday party toasts were made by various Southern congressman that the South wouldn't tolerate the Federal government telling them what to do about slavery and would secede if pushed too far. Then Tennessean President Andrew Jackson rose up, raised his glass, coldly looked his pro slavery vice president John Calhoun right in the eye, and declared:" The Union Must and Will be Preserved!"
First time the issue of slavery vs. national survival was given national status. During the Civil War when the North captured the port of New Orleans Yankee General Ben "The Beast" Butler had these words inscribed on Jackson's statue in the center of town just to annoy the locals.

1843- Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese Twins, were married to two women in a double ceremony. They must have coordinated times for connubial privacy, for together they produced 21 children.

1846- After the first Yanqui garrison was expelled by a rising of the native Mexican Californios, this day U.S. Commander Stockton and General Freemont and their army returned to recaptured Los Angeles.

1865- After the surrender to Grant, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, now a private citizen, left his last army camp to ride back to a rented house in war destroyed Richmond. Along the road he dismissed the Yankee guards accompanying him for protection." I am in my own country now among my own people. I wish to be no further bother to you."
The commander of thousands of troops now was alone on his white warhorse Traveler with two blanket covered wagons, one with a sick friend in it. On the road he met a group of rebel soldiers walking home and gave them road directions using one of his 8 foot long military maps drawn by Stonewall Jackson. He told rebels who wanted to keep fighting" As you have been model soldiers, go home now and be loyal American citizens."

1865- In Goldsboro North Carolina, Confederate President Jefferson Davis completed his last cabinet meeting. Even after Lee’s surrender and the loss of Richmond, the Confederacy still had 175,000 troops and three armies in the field, so Jefferson Davis wanted to keep fighting. But the other cabinet members and the generals argued that the war was lost, and those numbers were on paper only. The starving dispirited troops were deserting in droves daily, the country was overrun with half a million Yankees. At last Gen. Joe Johnston wrung out of Davis permission to surrender to Sherman’s army.

1865- In Washington DC citizens held a Grande Illumination to celebrate victory. Throughout the city torch bearing revelers serenaded Lincoln and the Union. Expecting Lincoln to make a stirring speech from his balcony, Lincoln instead talked soberly about Reconstruction and amnesty. His one light moment was to order the band to play "Dixie", seeing how it was now once again the legal property of the United States.

1870- New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.

1902- J.C. Penny opened his first store in Kemmerer Wyoming.

1919- At the Golden Temple at Amritsar British troops opened fire on Sikh's peacefully demonstrating for independence. 379 killed. Their commander was given a stern reprimand. Queen Elizabeth II apologized to India in 1997.

1928 - THE MULHOLLAND TRIAL– William Mulholland, the genius engineer who created the great aqueducts that brings water down to Los Angeles was on trial for the St. Francis Dam Disaster. When his dam near Newhall burst sending a 30 foot wall of water careening down on sleeping suburbanites. 400 perished. On this day, the jurors of the Los Angeles County Coroner's inquest into the disaster emerged from their two weeks of deliberations. They named William Mulholland responsible, although innocent of criminal negligence. Deputy D.A. Asa Keyes trumped the ruling a "victory for the people", despite his earlier promise to have Mulholland convicted of manslaughter.
Though he was free of jail, but William Mullholland was a broken man. “I envy the dead.” Late at night he had his chauffeur drive him aimlessly around the city he helped create. He became a shut in for the last seven years of his life. D.A. Keyes later went to jail himself for misappropriation of funds.

1939- The film Wuthering Heights starring Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon premiered. Sam Goldwyn was disgusted by the headaches to bring this Charlotte Bronte novel to the Hollywood Screen. When asked if he planned to film more XIX century novels he replied: "Don’t bring me no more scripts by guys who write with feathers!"

1943- Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial at the Washington D.C. Mall.

1949- Lead character designer and story artist Joe Grant resigned from Disney Studios, not to return until 1989.

1953- A British WWII intelligence officer turned newspaperman in peacetime was bored with his life. His name was Ian Fleming. He decided to write a novel about his idea of the ultimate spy. Looking for a suitably bland name, his favorite book on birdwatching was written by someone named James Bond. "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, yet very masculine name, was just what I needed.” His wife thought the finished story was vulgar. This day, the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, came out and was an instant hit.

1962- The New York Mets (metropolitans) Baseball Club formed. They played at the old Giants park, the Polo Grounds, until Shea Stadium was built in 1964 next to the Worlds Fair grounds. The team adopted the Blue and Orange logo colors of the Fair as their own. Blue and Orange were also the colors of the moved away Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants.
The 62’ Mets were famous for their awful record. The cry was- Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? Players like Marvelous Marv Throneberry became famous for their mediocre play. Manager Casey Stengel titled his memoirs "I Managed Good, but Boy, Did They Play Terrible!" The Amazin’ Mets won their first World Series in 1969.

1964- Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Actor for the film Lilies of the Field. The first Oscar for any black actor or actress went to Hattie McDaniel as Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind in 1939. Best actress was not won until Halle Berry in 2002.

1964- The Best Animated Short Oscar was won by Ernie Pintoff’s film The Critic, voiced by Mel Brooks.

1967- Columbia Picture’s bizarre version of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale premiered. Several directors, John Huston, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, George Raft, and David Niven. Richard Williams opening titles, and Dusty Springfield ‘s song “The Look of Love.” Stories of a lot of recreational drugs off camera.

1970- "Houston, we have a problem here..." An explosion of an oxygen tank disabled the Apollo XIII moon mission. For the next several days the world held its breath as the spacecraft ricocheted itself around the moon and came back to Earth, the slightest mis-calculation of trajectory meant a cold, airless death for the three astronauts. Their plight was made into the film “Apollo XIII” directed by Ron Howard.

1975- During most of the wars in the Middle East, Lebanon remained an oasis of tranquility. Today the Lebanese Civil War began. Christian Phalangist militias, Iranian backed Shiites, Hezbollah, and Al Fatah Palestinians. Israel, Syria and the U.S. intervened. Lebanon became a war-wracked hell on earth for the next ten years.

1987- Colorado Senator Gary Hart announced his intention to run for president. During the election Gary Hart decried the media's obsession with scandal. He dared the press to find something on him. They did. In short order they turned up proof of his adulterous affair with beautiful model Donna Rice, complete with compromising photos taken on board a yacht appropriately named Monkey-Business. Gary Hart's political career sank like a stone and Ms. Rice became a lobbyist against porn on the Internet.

1997- 21year old golf phenomenon Tiger Woods won his first Masters Tournament by a record 12 strokes.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Vladimir Ulyanov was known by a more famous name. What was it?

Answer: Lenin. He signed his name N. Lenin which led people to assume his first name was Nicholai. He explained the N stood for “nyietsto- nothing.”

Question: Vladimir Ulyanov was known by a more famous name. What was it?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Richard the Lionhearted led the Third Crusade. How many crusades were there?
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History for 4/12/2024
Birthdays: Henry Clay, Lily Pons, Lionel Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Disney artist Bernhard “Hardie” Gramatky, Monserrat Caballe' is 91, Ann Miller, Tiny Tim, Shannon Dougherty, Andy Garcia is 68, Claire Danes is 45, David Letterman is 77

65AD. SENECA DIED- The Roman philosopher Seneca committed suicide after his old pupil the Emperor Nero ordered him to. The poets Lucan and Petronius were also forced to kill themselves. When Nero sent you an indictment for treason, you knew the verdict would be guilty. So, you had the option of avoiding the public trial and horrible execution by committing suicide in the comfort of your own home. This also ensured your wealth would go to your family and not be confiscated by the state. Seneca had previously been condemned by Emperors Caligula, and Claudius as well, but always managed to wiggle out of it. But now his luck ran out. While Nero's Praetorian guards waited the old man opened his veins, but his circulation was so bad that it was taking him forever. The Praetorians patience finally exasperated, they took him in to his steam bath and suffocated him.

1606- The Union Jack adopted as the official flag of Great Britain. It showed the union of Scotland's cross of St. Andrew (white diagonal cross on blue background) with England's cross of St. George (red perpendicular cross on white background).

1633- GALILEO FACED THE INQUISITION- Galileo had to publicly recant the theories of Copernicus before the court of the Holy Inquisition. Their argument of hot irons and thumbscrews outweighed his mathematical proof that the earth went around the sun.
Copernicus shrewdly avoided this problem by publishing his theory on his deathbed. When he heard of Galileo’s censure Frenchman Rene Descartes was intimidated enough to stop writing Le Monde, a book summing up his major philosophical and scientific conclusions. Protestant reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin also considered Galileo a dangerous lunatic.
The Catholic Church kept Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life. His conviction was overturned in 1827 and the Holy See admitted he might have been right in 1989.
Supposedly as Galileo was leaving the courtroom he whispered to a friend " eppi si muove!" but it moves! Meaning the earth.

1709- In London the first issue of the Tattler published. “All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, poetry, foreign and domestick news you will have from Saint James Coffeehouse.”

1796- George and Martha Washington sit for painter Gilbert Stuart. Stuart noted that the General was a very uncooperative model. Stuart asked him to take out his dentures because they made his jaw bulge. But then his cheeks looked sunken, so he had him pad them inside with cotton balls. He tried small talk about his famous battles but that made GW even more annoyed. Washington much preferred a discussion on how to raise turnips to reliving his military career. The likeness Stuart painted became the basis for many other paintings and prints. Today it is on the U.S. one dollar bill. Eventually Gilbert Stuart had to move to England, because the only commissions he ever got in the U.S. were people wanting copies of his Washington portrait.

1843- A charter to sell Life Insurance is granted to the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, beginning the American insurance industry.

1861 -THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR BEGAN-For the previous twenty years Southerners and Northerners debated slavery and the right of a state to leave the American union. Guerilla violence had already been raging in border states like Missouri and Kansas when in response to Abraham Lincoln’s election 11 states announced the formation of a new country- The Confederate States of America.
In the tense months after the Southern States declared independence a question arose. Who now owned U.S. Army bases and their property on Southern soil? Fort Leavenworth & Fort Fisher gave up without a struggle. The one other obvious place was Fort Sumter, sitting out in the middle of Charleston Bay, South Carolina. U.S. Col. Robert Anderson would defend the flag even as he was surrounded by hostile batteries, commanded by his former West Point pupil Gen. Pierre Beauregard.
In the wee hours of April 12th secessionist journalist Edmund Ruffin was allowed to fire the first shot at the fort. After a five hour cannon duel the fort surrendered. Ironically the only fatality was when a soldier was killed by a ruptured cannon while firing a final salute to the lowering Stars & Stripes. This was the almost bloodless beginning to the bloodiest war in U.S. history.
When the war was over Edmund Ruffin wrapped himself in a Confederate flag and shot himself, preferring death to "living in a universe populated by the vile Yankee race!"

1864-THE FORT PILLOW MASSACRE-Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest overran a small Yankee post manned by black troops and pro-union Tennesseans. The Rebels killed 300 of the garrison, just because they were black. Forrest later claimed it was because they refused to surrender and kept fighting after the flag was pulled down, but that is disputed.
Some say his action was to prove black soldiers were cowards. If so, he miscalculated. Thousands of free black men rushed to enlist, dropping on one knee first to take an oath to avenge Fort Pillow. After the Civil War Forrest was the first Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He resigned when they became too violent even for him. His reputation dogged him the rest of his life.

1865- The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia lays down its arms in a field outside Appomattox Courthouse surrounded by massed union troops. Lee and Grant both were not present. Grant left specific instructions that no union soldiers were to publicly celebrate: ”Those people are no longer our enemies, they are our fellow Americans. We will not exult in their downfall.”
General John Gordon led the ragged procession with the 250 surviving members of the Stonewall Brigade, who began the war as 4,500. Yankee Medal of Honor winner Joshua Chamberlain demonstrated the warrior’s ability to forgive, by commanding his men to salute the Confederates, who snapped to attention and returned salute.
In North Carolina when a hard riding dispatch rider with the news reached the front of Sherman’s western army, one soldier greeted him: “So you’re the sonofabitch I’ve been waiting four years for !”

1911- Cartoonist Winsor McCay opened his vaudeville act with his "Little Nemo" animated short.

1941-The Nazis captured Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The Croats and Serbs paused in their own fratricidal strife to take up sides, the Croats joining the Nazis’ and the Serbs the Soviets. In World War II more Yugoslavs were killed by other Yugoslavs than by the Germans.

1945- During WWII young infantryman Robert Sherman was hit in the knee by enemy gunfire. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life. After the war he teamed up with his brother to form the famous writing team The Sherman Brothers. Composing the hit songs for movies like Mary Poppins and Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. Robert Sherman died at age 86 in 2012.

1945- PRESIDENT FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT DIED. The government knew since 1944 that FDR's health was failing and he would probably die in office. Roosevelt was at his Warm Springs Georgia retreat in the company of an old girlfriend, Lucy Mercer whom he had promised Eleanor never to see again. The assignation was arranged by their daughter Alice, who promised not to tell her mom. Mom found out anyway. FDR’s last words were to his portrait painter Madame Schoumatoff” I have a splitting headache..” then died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 63.
The nation was shocked. In his Berlin bunker with the Red Army knocking on the door Adolf Hitler was jubilant because he felt this was an astrological omen of final Nazi victory. Gen. MacArthur was still bitter about FDR's broken promises to the Philippines. His first reaction was:" He never used the truth where a good lie would do."
Vice President Harry Truman was enjoying one of his whiskey & poker parties with House Speaker Sam Rayburn when he got the phone call. "Jeezus Christ and General Jackson !!"-was his response. He was rushed to the White House while the staff went crazy looking for a Bible to swear him in -confirming the suspicions of many about FDR's attitude towards religion. Finally a Gideon turned up in a guest room drawer and the 33rd President was sworn in. Truman told Eleanor:" I'll pray for you." Eleanor replied: "No Harry. We'll pray for YOU."

1945- Generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton toured a Nazi concentration camp and saw for themselves the full horrors of the Holocaust. Patton threw up. Eisenhower ordered the press to film everything, because as he said:” Someday some people might say this was exaggerated and never happened. Let them see for themselves.” Patton was so angry when he heard civilians in a nearby town expressed ignorance to what the camp was doing, He ordered his men to make the citizens tour the camp at bayonet-point. As he was leaving the camp Eisenhower turned to a US Army guard and said:” Still need a reason to hate them? I never thought I’d be ashamed to be German. ” Eisenhower’s ancestors emigrated from the Rhineland and settled in Kansas in the 1800’s.

1945-Momotaro: Sacred Sailors (桃太郎 海の神兵, Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei) by Mitssuyo Seo opened. The second Japanese anime, feature-length animated film.

1954- "ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK' recorded by Bill Haley and the Comets- arguably the first true Rock & Roll hit.

1955- the Salk vaccine for Polio made available to the public.

1961-THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE- Soviet Major Yuri Gargarin aboard Vostok 1.

1981- The first space shuttle Columbia took off. After 26 flawless missions, in 2003 the Columbia broke up and disintegrated upon reentry, killing all aboard.

1983- Harold Washington elected first black Mayor of Chicago.

1992- Euro-Disney, now called Disneyland Paris, opened. It attracted only 50.000 visitors the first year, about ten times less than what was expected. In 1955, the first Disneyland in California drew 100,00 on opening day alone. Many felt it should have been built in Barcelona where the climate was milder. Disneyland Paris finally paid for itself in 1997.

1995- To celebrate David Letterman’s 49t birthday, actress Drew Barrymore climbed up on his desk and flashed her breasts. For once, the bucktoothed talk show host was speechless.

1996- James and the Giant Peach opened in the USA. Directed by Henry Selick.

2003- When US forces occupied Baghdad, troops ignored important cultural landmarks while they secured the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Poor people looted palaces and the museum of antiquities, defacing, and destroying priceless artifacts of Ancient Mesopotamia and Babylonia.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shrugged,” Hey,…stuff happens.”
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Yesterday’s question: Richard the Lionhearted led the Third Crusade. How many crusades were there?

Answer: There were officially nine crusades. The First Crusade captured Jerusalem. The Third was the Crusade of Richard Lionheart and Philip Augustus. The Ninth was the Childrens’ Crusade.

Quiz: Richard the Lionhearted led the Third Crusade. How many crusades were there?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is a goniff?
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History for 4/11/2024
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, Frederick the Warlike of Saxony-1370, Ethel Kennedy, Joel Grey is 92, Louise Lasser, Mason Reese, Oleg Cassini, Cameron Mitchell. Norman McClaren would be 110, Bill Irwin, John Milius, Jennifer Esposito

1034- The Byzantine Emperor Romanus III Argyrus was poisoned by his wife.

1241- Battle of Sajoria- Two days after the Mongols destroy Polish-German knights at Leignitz and burned Cracow, another Mongol horde destroyed the Hungarian army of King Bela and burn Buda. Pest was across the river.

1506- Pope Julius II laid the corner stone for the new Saint Peter’s Basilica. It was completed in 1626.

1512- BATTLE OF RAVENNA -The first battle ever decided by artillery. The armies of Pope Julius II and his Spanish allies were defeated by Duke Alfonso D'Este of Ferrara and his French allies. The D'Este' family were patrons of Leonardo da Vinci, but this Duke was an artillery buff. For his birthday, friends gave him cannon.
At one point during the battle the Duke pulled his cannon to the side of the battlefield where he could fire on both sides at once. When someone explained he would be firing on his allies as well, the Duke snapped:" Well, they'll probably be enemies tomorrow!" Despite this curious strategy, he won the battle anyway.

1713 - FIRST TREATY OF UTRECHT- Ending the War of Spanish Succession. George Frederich Handel premiered the Royal Fireworks Music in celebration. France yields to England the eastern coastal provinces of Canada. When the French speaking inhabitants of Arcadia refused to swear allegiance to the English King, they were driven out of their homes at bayonet point. Scottish colonists are brought in who renamed their island Nova Scotia -New Scotland. The French exiles migrated down to Louisiana and settled in the swampy bayous. They called themselves Arcadians, which slurred to A'cajun or Cajuns.

1854- Depressed by his go-no-where career and drinking heavily, Captain Ulysses Grant resigned from the US Army.

1861- In the dark night outside Fort Sumter in rebel held Charleston Bay, Confederate commissioners call on Major Robert Anderson to lower Old Glory and surrender the fort. The Kentucky born major said he would surrender if after three days he received no food resupply. (a stalling tactic) The Confederates had sighted an approaching Union rescue fleet and knew this answer meant they would have to fire on the fort. Anderson knew it too, for as he said goodbye to the commissioners he added: " And if we don't meet again in this life, I'm sure we'll meet again in the next."...

1865-Abe Lincoln sends his aide Ward Hill Lamon on an errand to occupied Richmond. This meant Lincoln's only bodyguard could not be at his side at Ford's Theater on the 14th. Lamon had long flowing hair and maintained a belt full of guns, Bowie knives and brass knuckles to guard the president. He also occasionally produced his banjo and played for the President his favorite song, “Jimmy Crack Corn”.

1865- That night a crowd of well-wishers stood under Lincoln’s window at the White House to celebrate the end of Civil War. In the crowd was actor John Wilkes Booth and 23-year-old Charles Leale, an army doctor seeing Lincoln for the first time. Lincoln made a short speech calling for the first time for African Americans to be given the right to vote. Booth came away from the crowd in a fury and said to a friend:” That means n- citizenship. By God, that’s the last speech he will ever give!” Dr Leale would want to see Lincoln again. He bought a ticket to Ford’s Theater the night Lincoln was shot. Leale was the first doctor to reach the stricken president and administer CPR.

1873- General Canby and several army commissioners were slain by Modoc Chief Kintpuash (Captain Jack) while in a tent talking peace. Canby became the only U.S. general killed in the Indian Wars. Remember Custer was a brevet major general (i.e. honorary general) in the downsized post-Civil War army, but he was doing the job of a colonel. Cap'n Jack got a really cool general's jacket to wear until he was captured and hanged. The Modoc Indian Wars were in the Northern California country called the lava beds.
The Modocs themselves were peaceful until a mining company wanted their land. So they threw them a picnic and laced the food with rat poison. Cannons were hidden in the bushes to finish off the survivors. The remainder of the tribe went on the warpath and the U.S. Army had to come in and conquer them. A war correspondent photographer travelling with the army was future cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge.

1876- Benevolent Order of Elks Lodge founded.

1890- In England John Merrick, who was known as the Elephant Man, died.

1906- Albert Einstein published his Theory of Relativity.

1907- Baseball N.Y. Giant's Roger Bresnahan becomes the first catcher to wear a mask and shin guards. He had the mask built based on a sword fencing mask.

1914- George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion premiered at the Haymarket in London.

1926- Horticulturist Luther Burbank died. His last words:" I don't feel good."

1931- Dorothy Parker resigned her job as drama critic for the New Yorker Magazine. She married an actor named Alan Cambell and moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. While on her honeymoon the editor Harold Ross bugged her for some final fixes on an article. She sent a telegram from Paris: ”Don’t bother me. Stop. F*cking busy. Stop. And vice-versa. Stop“

1933- the Bauhaus directed by Mies Van Der Rohe was closed down by the Nazis.

1941- Henry Ford had vowed he would never sign a union contract. His dreaded security goons, called the Service Department, prowled the plants firing union men and even patrolled the toilets listening for loose talk. Ford kept machine guns on his homes roof and encouraged his executives to wear sidearms. But after a wildcat strike at River Rouge Ford reluctantly signed the first union contract in its history.

1945- Concentration camp at Buchenwald liberated by Patton’s Third Army. The Nazi guards had already fled, and an inmate answered the phone when the Gestapo called. They ordered the camp blown up and all the remaining inmates killed. The inmate answered not to worry, that they were already doing that. Then he went out to welcome the American tanks. Among the survivors was Nobel Laureate Ei Weisel, Simon Weisenthal and future leader of Communist East Germany, Eric Hoehnegger.

1950- First day filming on the movie All About Eve. As Bette Davis said “Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night.”

1951- When President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur from his command in Korea a firestorm of protest erupted in Congress. Several leading senators called for the Presidents Impeachment! One California senator stood up and said he was for censure but was against impeachment. His name was Senator Richard M. Nixon.

1955- WABD in New York and KTLA in Los Angeles began running pre-1948 Warner Bros cartoon shorts in a half hour format, soon to be followed by other cities. This helped introduce the baby boomers to the world of Bugs, Daffy and Porky.

1957- Poet Pablo Neruda was arrested by authorities in Buenos Aires.

1961- As part of the Bay of Pigs Invasion the US Air Force bombed and destroyed most of Fidel Castro’s Cuban air force on the ground.

1968- After the Vietnamese Tet Offensive and President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement that he would not run for another term, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford announced the US would send no additional ground troops to Vietnam. Even with 450,000 there already the generals were asking for an additional 200,000. Congress threatened to cut off funding. The US government began to talk of de-escalation and disengagement, but it took another 5 years to do it.

1970- Apollo 13 blasts off for the moon. Halfway there an explosion would force it to return.

1974- Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and defense minister Moshe Dayan resigned under heavy criticism for their handling of the Yom Kippur War. Ytschak Rabin became PM, the first Sabrah, or native-born Israeli to lead his country.

1979- Ugandan dictator Idi Amin-Dada driven out of power by a Tanzanian invasion. During his reign the mad dictator titled himself "Conqueror of the British Empire" and passed the time trying to wrestle crocodiles, rehearse mock invasions of Israel (a geographic impossibility) and played drums in his own rock band.

1981- Valerie Bertinelli married rocker Eddie Van Halen.

1983- At that year’s Academy Awards the winner for Best Animated Short was Polish artist Zybigniew Rybcyznski for his film Tango. During the ceremony he stepped outside for a smoke. When Security guards refused to let him re-enter, he became combative, shouting the only English he knew: ”I Have Oscar!” He wound up in an LA jail for assault, and his Oscar wound up in the bushes.

2006- Italian police captured the capo-de-capo of the Sicilian Mafia, Salvatore Provenzano, near the town of Corleone, the birthplace of Mario Puzo’s fictional Godfather. Don Provenzano had been hiding out for 43 years.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a goniff?

Answer: Today’s (Yiddishkeit) Answer:

Goniff (also gonif) is a Yiddish term for a crook, swindler, liar, thief; an amoral, dishonest person. (Thanks FG)

Quiz: What is a Te Deum?

Yesterdays quiz answered below: Has anyone ever run for president while in jail?
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History for 4/9/2023
Birthdays: Tamerlane, Eadweard Muybridge, Lenin, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Paul Robeson, Jean Paul Belmondo, Ward Bond, Seve Balesteros, Carl Perkins, Michael Learned, Tom Lehrer, Paula Poundstone, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Hefner, Dennis Quaid is 69, Elle Fanning is 25

192AD- Septimius Severus hailed Emperor of Rome by the African Legions.

641AD- Babylon falls to the advancing armies of Arab Islam. Muslims saw their two greatest enemies to be the Christians and the Persian Mithraists, the philosophy of Zoroaster and the Magi. Even today in Iran there is a small Zoroastrian minority.

999 AD. Sylvester II made pope, the first Frenchman. He reformed the way Popes were selected by organizing the College of Cardinals. Before that Popes were selected out of infighting between several leading Roman families. Tradition also says Sylvester was a sorcerer because he experimented with the medicinal properties of herbs, and he is credited with inventing the modern pendulum clock.

1241- BATTLE OF LEIGNITZ- Ogodai, the son of Genghis Khan, wanted to complete his father’s plan for world conquest. To do this he dispatched four armies –one to China, one to Korea, one to Europe, the fourth was pushing south through Baghdad, Egypt and Palestine. This day the Mongol horde of Subotai, Vuldai and Paidar clashed with the cream of East European knighthood on a plain in Poland. This was the first meeting of the Mongols and Western Knights.
The Mongols slaughtered them all easily. Paidar sent back to his overlord Batu Khan nine sacks of left ears taken from the slain, and King Henry of Bohemia’s head on a spear. The only reason the Mongols didn’t continue on to Paris and London as planned was back in Mongolia the Great Khan Ogodai died. Since the Mongol Empire was never more than an enlarged tribal system, custom decreed all Mongol elders had to stop everything they were doing and return home to Karakorum for a council -the Grand Kurlutai.
The Mongols rode away from Europe as mysteriously as they had arrived.

1553- French comic writer Francois Rabelais died. His last words were: ” I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

1682- Explorer Sieur De Lasalle claims Louisiana and the Mississippi for France.

1747- Famed British actor David Garrick signed a contract to take over the management of London’s Drury Lane Theatre.

1778- In Paris the philosopher Voltaire is initiated into the Masonic Order of the Nine Sisters on the arm of his friend, Benjamin Franklin.

1780- George Washington wrote Richard Lawrence the American emissary in Paris, about our chances of winning the American Revolution:” We here are at the end of our tether. If we do not receive help soon all will be lost.”

1812- THE SACK OF BADAJOZ-The Duke of Wellington’s English army storms into a Spanish city held by Napoleons French forces. The battle typified the ferocity of the war in Spain. The French and pro-French Spaniards dropped explosives and rocks on the heads of the attacking English and lined the tops of the city walls with broken glass and knife blades. The loss of life was so ghastly that when the redcoats finally breached the cities defenses they went berserk- looting, raping, and killing the civilian population.
This is when Wellington called his men scum.
Wellington always went through a depressed state after a battle, even his victories. At one point, tough old General Sir Thomas Picton noticed Wellington was openly weeping. He reacted: ”My God Arthur, what the devil are you blubbering on about?”

1859- Mark Twain received his Mississippi riverboat pilot’s license.

1865- APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE, THE END OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Robert E. Lee surrendered the remains of his army to Ulysses Grant (11,000 men to Grant’s encircling 150,000). Grant had had a migraine headache all morning until he received the note from Lee requesting terms. Grant’s staff understood that Lee’s note meant the end of the greatest cataclysm in U.S. history. One staff officer called for three cheers but the men could only manage one weak hurrah, then they all broke down in soft weeping. All realized that at last the killing was truly over.
Lee arrived wearing his best dress uniform because he expected to be taken into custody. Grant rode in from the field wearing a muddy private’s jacket. Grant recalled when they met during the Mexican War but Lee didn’t remember him. Grant was happy to make small talk until Lee brought them back to the business at hand. Grant’s secretary was a Seneca Indian named Captain Ely Parker. Lee paused to say ”I’m glad there’s at least one real American here.”

The house they met in was owned by a man named Wilbur McClean, who moved his family from Bull Run to Appomattox to get away from the fighting. He managed to keep his belongings safe for four years of war. Now, after Lee and Grant left the historic meeting, Yankee officers looted the place for souvenirs, George Custer riding off with the little surrender table perched on his head.

1914- THE TAMPICO INCIDENT- In the port of Vera Cruz a shore party from the USN gunboat Tampico was arrested by Mexican authorities while getting supplies. They were soon released and the Mexican Government apologized. But the American Admiral Mayo then demanded the Mexicans give the Stars & Stripes a 21gun salute. The Mexican army said they would if the USN did the same salute to the Mexican flag. Washington didn’t want to do this because it would have meant the US recognized the dictatorship of General Huerta, who had overthrown the legally elected President Madero.
So the US attacked Vera Cruz on April 21st, 20 Americans and 200 Mexicans killed. A newspaper at the time commented:” I can’t believe we almost went to war over some points of diplomatic etiquette!”

1914- The first all color film” The World, The Flesh and the Devil” premiered in London.

1917- Shortly after declaring war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson was confronted by old former President Teddy Roosevelt. 59 year old TR volunteered to lead a new regiment of Rough Riders into the World War I trenches. Wilson said thanks, but no thanks. He said of Teddy, “ He is really a great big boy. You can’t help but like him.” At the same time he also declined an offer from Annie Oakley to lead a company of lady sharpshooters into the trenches “Oakley’s Amazons”.

1921- The Fly-In Lunch Party. Leslie Brand was a millionaire who developed Glendale California north of Los Angeles. This day he invited guests to a special garden party provided they all arrived in their own airplanes. The little biplanes parked all around his grounds, today known as The Brand Library.

1938- In an interview with Liberty Magazine, Walt Disney said he, “had plans to put animation to various well-known pieces of music, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being only the start.” He was beginning to think of expanding the short into a concert feature. The result of which would be Fantasia.

1940- Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. Innocent looking civilian German freighters holed up in Danish and Norwegian ports suddenly disgorged hordes of steel helmeted Nazi soldiers. Copenhagen, Oslo and Trondheim were quickly overrun. Mysteriously the British Navy didn’t use its superiority to stop the Germans crossing the Baltic. The admirals were worried about the German dive-bombers. It showed the world that sea power had finally bowed to Airpower.

1942- On the Bataan Peninsula after weeks of desperate fighting Gen. Edward King sent a white flag to Japanese General Homma. It was the largest surrender of American forces in history. 78,000 Filipino-American troops.

1942- Black opera star Marian Anderson gave her concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to an audience of 75,000. She was snubbed from giving a recital at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall which caused a furious Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the DAR and arrange this concert.

1943- A U.S. Patents court concluded that Guglielmo Marconi had used several of Nichola Tesla’s patents to create Wireless Broadcasting. So in effect, Tesla was the real inventor of radio broadcasting. Vindication came too late. Marconi died a rich Nobel-Prize winner, and Tesla died alone and penniless.

1943- First battle of the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews revolt in a desperate struggle against the conditions the Nazis held them in. All guns and supplies were precious. One character of the street fighting was nicknamed Moishe the Bolshevik, who ran from doorway to doorway under heavy fire dragging bandoliers of bullets, grenades and several helmets on his head.

1948- Variety columnist Lee Mortimer had been needling Frank Sinatra for his advocacy of liberal causes. He accused Old Blue Eyes of draft-dodging, and hinted maybe he had pro-Communist sympathies. This day as Sinatra passed Mortimer in front of Ciro's restaurant on Sunset Blvd. he heard Mortimer call him a dirty dago. Frank went at Mortimer and punched his lights out.

1948- Massacre of Deir Yasin- During the Israeli war of Independence a rogue Jewish militia called the Irgun on orders from Likud founder Menachem Begin entered a Palestinian village and shot 150 men women and children. Israeli leader David Ben Gurion apologized for the massacre and ordered the Irgun and other independent units merged into the Israeli Army. But word of the massacre helped accelerate the exodus of Palestinian Arabs into exile.

1951- The day before he fired General Douglas MacArthur- President Harry Truman secretly sent to Korea five unassembled atomic bombs. These were to be armed and used if only the situation looked totally hopeless. They were never used.

1952- The quiz show “I’ve Got A Secret” hosted by Gary Moore premiered on the Dumont Network and ran for 15 years.

1953- The first issue of the T.V. Guide.

1959- NASA introduced the first seven astronauts to the public, The Mercury Astronauts: Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, Leroy Cooper, and Malcolm Carpenter- all military test pilots instead of scientists.

1962- The musical West Side Story swept the Academy Awards.

1963- Animator Vernon Stallings died (1891-1963) He is known for inventing the animation disc while working on Felix the Cat in the 1920s.

1965- Mickey Mantle hits the first indoor home run as the Astrodome opens with an exhibition game with the Astros hosting the Yankees. President Lyndon Johnson was supposed to throw out the first pitch but arrived late. Phillie catcher Bob Boone commented about the Astrodome "This is a tough yard for a hitter when the air conditioning is blowing in.."

1966- actress Sophia Loren married producer Carlo Ponti, with whom she had been living with for a decade but not allowed to marry because Catholics did not allow divorce from their previous spouses.

1974- Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds Restaurants was the owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team. After yet another sorry performance, losing 8-0, Kroc stormed over to the broadcast booth, grabbed the mike and out shouted ” You Guys Stink!” Despite this morale booster, the Padres eventually did win championship pennants and get to the World Series.

1975- As North Vietnamese armies approached the South Vietnamese capitol of Saigon, President Gerald Ford issued an advisory to all Americans to evacuate the country.

1991- The last Horn & Hardardt Automat was closed on 42nd St in Manhattan. Philadelphia restaurateurs Joseph Horn and William Hardart saw German experiments in mass market automated restaurants, and imported the equipment to start one in Philadelphia in 1902.

1999- American planes flying for NATO bombed the Serbian factory that made the economy car the Yugo. Car enthusiasts rejoiced.

2003- Baghdad fell to invading US and British armies.

2004- Archaeologists in Cyprus discover the 10,000 year-old grave of a New Stone Age man. With him were the remains of a cat that looks like it was deliberately placed there. This is the oldest evidence of man domesticating cats. So rest in peace- Gronk and Fluffy.

2005- Prince Charles wed Lady Camilla Parker-Bowles, his mistress of thirty years. They were not allowed to marry in Saint George’s Chapel in Windsor, the Queen avoided the ceremony and his father Prince Phillip didn’t feel like interrupting his trip to Germany; and because of a delay to respect Pope John Paul II’s funeral, all the commemorative cups and dishes had the wrong date on them. Among the thirty invited guests, were Mrs. Bowles divorced husband. In 2023 they became King and Queen of England.

2008- Stuntman Rupert MacDonald built a full-size Viking ship out of 15 million popsicle sticks.

2023- Illuminations’ Super Mario Bros. Movie breaks all records of an animated movie opening, and a movie based on a game. $484 million USD over the Easter holiday.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Has anyone ever run for president while in jail?

Answer: In 1920, Eugene Victor Debs ran for president on the Socialist ticket while serving jail time for protesting U.S. participation in WWI. He lost, obviously.
In 1992, Lyndon LaRouche, another rogue 3rd party candidate ran from his prison cell. I think he was in for mail fraud. He lost also.