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Yesterday’s quiz answered below:
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History for 1/28/2009
Birthdays: King Henry VII Tudor, Jose Marti, Colette, Jackson Pollack, Claus Oldenburg, Arthur Rubenstein, Ernst Lubitsch, Connie Rasinski, Susan Sontag, Alan Alda, Barbie Benton, General George Pickett, William Burroughs (1855) the inventor of the calculator, Mo Rocca, Elijah Wood is 29

1393- DANSE MACABRE- At a masquerade ball given at the French court King Charles VI 'the mad' and several of his closest friends dressed up as 'wild men' to amuse the court. They had fur and hair attached to their bodies with tar. While everyone was enjoying the capering of these strange anonymous creatures a torch touched their tar covered bodies and the group exploded into flame. While the court watched these beings writhe in agony, one duchess screamed" Oh My God! That's the King!" King Charles was saved when that same duchess smothered his flames in her skirts and petticoats. Another duke saved himself by diving headlong into a vat of Beaujolais, but the others roasted to death. The common people weren't sympathetic. One duke liked to step on your neck while sneering 'Down Peasant!". As his barbecued remains were carried through Paris, people laughed and sang 'Down M'Lord!" Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem called “Hop Frog” about the incident and Roger Corman put it into his 1964 film- Masque of the Red Death.

1782- The Congress called for the use and funding of the Great Seal of the United States, even though no one had designed one yet. But the British had one and so...uh, we had to have one too !

1829- BURKE & HARE- In the early nineteenth century scientific experiments on cadavers were still outlawed as desecration of the dead so doctors secretly hired grave robbers to get them specimens to experiment on. Burke & Hare were the most infamous of Edinburgh's "ressurrectionists" because they didn't always wait for the subject to die, but murdered them in their boardinghouse. To Burke someone became slang for suffocating them. Doctors and later police became suspicious of the freshness of their specimens and Hare finked on Burke to save himself. On this day Burke was hanged before a crowd of thousands and his body later medically dissected. The notoriety of this case helped pass laws allowing doctors more legal use of mortal remains. Their story was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's story "The Body Snatcher."

1878- First commercial telephone switchboard.

1902- Andrew Carnegie was a rough crude tycoon with a ruthless streak that saw him ruin his competitors and pay vigilantes to murder his striking employees and their families. But after all the rough and tumble of the Gilded Age business world he showed a new side of his character in retirement. He set up the Carnegie Institute in Washington and resolved to give away the bulk of his $350 million dollar fortune in philanthropic causes like concert halls and orphanages. He was born a Glasgow orphan who grew up laboring in a coal mine. “A man who dies rich dies disgraced!”

1926- Composer Kurt Weill married his Pirate Jenny- Lotte Lenya.

1930- Warner Brothers Cartoons Born. Leon Schlesinger, the head of Pacific Art and Title, signed a deal with several unemployed Disney animators who had left Walt to form their own studio but had been stiffed by their contacts. Schlesinger had connections with the Warner Bros. since he helped them get funding for the 'Jazz Singer'. They create Leon Schlesinger's Studio Looney Toons, in imitation of Disney's Silly Symphonies. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and more result. Schlesinger sold to Warners Bros. and retired in 1943.

1949- The Admiral Broadway Review premiered on television. The one and a half hour comedy review starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. The show was so popular Admiral was swamped for orders for new televisions and ironically was forced to cancel the show to focus on their production needs. The show was revived as Your Show of Shows, one of the great shows of early television.

1956- Young singer Elvis Presley first appeared to television audiences on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.

1958- Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella paralyzed in an auto wreck. He spent the rest of his life as a spokesman for the rights of the handicapped.

1978- Premiere of Hanna Barbera's the Three Robonic Stooges.

1982- Danny DeVito married Rhea Perlman.

1986- THE CHALLENGER DISASTER- As the world watched the Space shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds after takeoff killing twelve crew members. They included New Hampshire schoolteacher Christie McAuliffe who had won the ride in a contest.. It was blamed on defective O-rings in the rocket booster.
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Yesterday’s Question: Has there ever been a 'President for a Day?'

Answered: I should have specified ‘U. S. President for a Day’. This also isn’t a job for an amateur apparently. Hello everyone, Pat Sito here. Our fearless blogger is under the weather and asked me to handle ‘history duties’ for a day or two while he recovers. My first foray into trivialand has landed me in some treacherous waters. I didn’t do my due diligence thoroughly enough! Snopes.com neatly blows to bits my bit of trivia. When the time came to take the oath of office after winning the election, Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in on Inauguration Day 1849 – a Sunday. Taylor and his new Vice-President didn’t want to be sworn in on the Sabbath and delayed the taking of their oaths until the next day. I thought that left David Rice Atchison, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, in charge or “President for a day”. It’s on his grave marker but snopes.com says False!
My deepest apologies to all!
Your humble author TS will be back soon with authentic quiz questions.
Thanks,
Pat Sito


Tuesday, January 27, 2009
January 27th, 2009

Quiz: Has there ever been a 'President for a Day?'

Yesterday's quiz answered below

History for Jan. 27, 2009

Birthdays-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is 254, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Charles Dodgson-better known as Lewis Carroll, Eduard Lalo, William Randolph Hearst, Samuel Gompers, Jerome Kern, Skitch Henderson, Donna Reed, Bridgette Fonda, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kate Wolf, Ross Bagdasarian a.k.a. David Seville- creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, James Cromwell, Mimi Rogers , Keith Olbermann

Today is celebrated as Thomas Crapper Day, when we recognize the inventor of the indoor toilet. Besides making life more comfortable his systems of valves and vents preventing waste odors and germs from re-entering the home. This did a lot to combat disease in the 19th century.

1307- The poet Dante Alighieri got his ass kicked out of Florence. At least being exiled from politics left his mind free to concentrate on his poetry, like the Divine Comedy.

1649- King Charles Ist of England was condemned by trial in Parliament to be beheaded.

1671- Buccaneer Henry Morgan and his pirates cross the Isthmus of Darien and attack Panama City by land. Morgan captured the city despite the Spaniards stampeding a herd of bulls at him. However the attack wasn't much of a surprise and most of the population had already fled with their valuables. I guess a coupla' hundred Englishmen with peg legs and patch eyes growling "Arrr, YoHo, Matey’s!" isn't a common sight in a rainforest.

1888- The first magazine published of the National Geographic Society.

1900- Italian opera composer Guiseppi Verdi died. On his instructions no music was to be played at his funeral.

1918- Warner Bros. Pictures incorporated. The Brothers Warner- Sam Albert, Harry and Jack were the sons of Jewish immigrants who had moved from Poland in 1882 and set up a bicycle repair shop in Ohio. Their first movie was Five Years in Germany. Throughout the 1920’s their little studio survived making pictures with dog star Rin Tin Tin. They called him the Mortgage Lifter, because the profits from his pictures paid their bills. Later they bought Vitagraph and gambled with the new Sound technology. When they made the Jazz Singer with Jolson, Warner Bros became a major studio.

1926- Englishman John Logie Baird demonstrated his televisor system- the first true television image.

1927- Charlie Chaplin’s short comedy The Circus premiered.

1944- WAS WALT A RED? Walt Disney donated money and may have attended a tribute to leftist cartoonist Art Young in New York. Art Young was a close friend of John Reed and Louise Bryant, founders of the American Communist Party. The F.B.I. noted the event was sponsored by the radical socialist newspaper The New Masses and other attendees included progressives like Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg.
Disney was already a founding member of the Hollywood Society for the Preservation of American Ideals, a grouping of conservative Hollywood celebrities meant to counteract the rampant Hollywood Liberals. Disney later became an F.B.I. informant, but like Reagan, it may have been after the F.B.I. reminded him of his attendance at this little soiree'....

1948- The Wireway Company announced the first tape recorder for sale using the new magnetic tape. It cost $150.

1967- Three Apollo I astronauts Gus Grissom (veteran of the third Gemini flight), Ed Young and Roger Chafee died in a flash fire in their capsule. In those days the hatchways were literally screwed on from the outside and there was no way to open it from the inside. The fire occurred during a routine rehearsal probably from static electricity igniting an atmosphere of pure oxygen and feeding on velcro. The three men burned to death while engineers frantically struggled with the hatch. After this episode the future Apollo capsules were fitted with a hatch with exploding bolts. Grissom had once said: “If we die people must accept it. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

1973- Henry Kissinger and Li Duc To sign the Paris Peace Accords ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. President Nixon hailed the agreement as Peace with Honor but the defeat traumatized a generation of Americans and confused the public as to just what the American role in the world really was. Kissinger and Li Duc To won the Nobel Peace Prize for that year. Li Duc refused to accept it because his country was still at war. “if there's no peace, it would be hypocritical to receive a prize for it!" Henry the K didn’t have a problem accepting it and went to Oslo. North Vietnam overran South Vietnam two years later.

1992- Presidential candidate Bill Clinton was denounced by a woman named Jennifer Flowers of having a 12 year extramarital affair with her when governor of Arkansas. He goes on 60 Minutes with his wife Hilary and calls her a liar. Of course we now know they did have an affair, but hey, that’s politics.

1997- First day shooting on the Cohen Bros. film The Big Lebowski- The Dude Abides.
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Yesterday's Question:
Why is a team of Presidents' or Prime Ministers' officials called a cabinet?
Answer:
In Medieval times, the most trusted kingsmen met with him to talk in secret, in a small enclosed room nicknamed a 'cabinet'. When states went democratic the name for such a privy council remained.


Quiz: Why is a team of Presidents' or Prime Ministers' officials called a cabinet?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below-
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History for 1/26/2009
Birthdays: First Lady Julia Dent Grant, General Douglas MacArthur, Stephan Grappelli, Angela Davis, Maria Von Trapp, Wayne Gretsky "The Great One" is 48, Eartha Kitt, Paul Newman, Roger Vadim, Jules Feiffer, Henry Jaglom, Anita Baker, Edward Abbey, Scott Glenn, David Straitharn, Randy Rhodes, Ellen DeGeneres is 51

404 A.D.-Today is the Feast of Saint Paula, who built the first abbey and monastery where all the monks and nuns wore identical uniform sackcloth, demonstrating that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

1788-AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL DAY.- A small fleet of ships carrying 700 convicts and 200 soldiers and families lands in Australia at Sydney Cove. The aboriginal people met them on the beach with calls of "Warra-warra!" which means "Go Away!" After a century Australians began to form their unique character. The Aussie nickname for British people is Poms or Pommies. This was for the initials printed on British prison shirts POM- or Prisoner Of his Majesty. Another version has it that British sailors regularly picked the pomegranate trees clean of fruit to ward off scurvy.

1865-Despite his Civil War victories General William T Sherman had been criticized for having a hard attitude towards black slaves, This day he answered his critics by issuing his General Order # 15, stating that every freed black American has the right to "40 acres and a mule".

1875- Late at night Pinkerton detectives on the trail of Jesse James threw a bomb into the window of the James family home. The explosion killed Jesse's 18-year-old mentally challenged stepbrother who had nothing to do with the outlaws and blew the right arm off their mother. The James Gang were nowhere near the farm that night.

1911- Richard Strauss’ opera Die Rosenkavalier opens in Vienna. Kaiser Wilhelm was offended by the E.T. Hoffman story about aristocrats sleeping around with servants. He called it "A dirty little play".

1934- Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to develop into a movie.

1939- The first day of shooting on the film Gone With the Wind.

1945- The Soviet Army finally liberated the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. The first soldier to reach the camp was a Mongolian scout on a horse which led one Jewish survivor to wonder if the Nazis now had intended to hand them over to the Japanese! The Russians later hanged Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoess in front of the villa in camp he and his family lived in. He was not the Rudolph Hess who flew to London in 1941 and died in Spandau Prison. Rescued survivors include the future Nobel Laureate Primo Levi, and the founder of Commodore Computers Jack Trammel.

1979- Nelson Rockefeller found dead in his office" en flagrante delicto" with Meaghan Marshak, his young female director of the Rockefeller Foundation. His second wife Happy Rockefeller had also been one of his office staff once. The method of the 70 year old billionaire former Vice President's death was an open secret in New York City. I had a friend at art school at the time who was a receptionist for a Park Ave. doctor who was Rocky's physician. She said the paramedics found him with his pants down but his tie still in place. His will left $50,000 and a Manhattan townhouse to Ms Marshak.

1979- The Dukes of Hazard tv show premiered.

1983- the software LOTUS 1-2-3 premiered that helped make IBM’s PC into the most popular business computers in the US.

1984-HELP ME TITO! During the filming of a Pepsi commercial a magnesium flash ignited singer Michael Jackson’s jericurl hair gel causing him 3rd degree burns,

1988- Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical Phantom of the Opera premiered.

1996-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies to a grand jury, the first "first lady" to do so. The only earlier incident that comes to mind for me was in 1862 when a senate committee convened to investigate whether Mary Todd Lincoln was a Confederate spy.

1998- The Japanese town of Ito was attacked by a pack of berserk monkeys, injuring 26.
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Yesterday Quiz:Composer Phillip Glass is currently writing an opera about the last days of Walt Disney, for the 2011 Season. Has there ever been an opera written before about someone connected to Animation?

The Photographer is a chamber opera by composer Philip Glass that is based on the homicide trial of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The opera is based on words drawn from the trial as well as Muybridge's letters to his wife. Commissioned by the Holland Festival, the opera was first performed in 1982 at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.


January 25, 2009 Sunday
January 25th, 2009

Quiz- Composer Phillip Glass is currently writing an opera about the last days of Walt Disney, for the 2011 Season. Has there ever been an opera written before about someone connected to Animation?

Yesterday's Question answered below.

History for 1/25/2009
Birthdays: Temujin called The Genghis Khan, "Prince of Conquerers", Byzantine Emperor Leo IV the Khazar, Benedict Arnold, Carl Eller, Robert Burns, Somerset Maugham, Virginia Woolf, US Vice President Charles “Goodtime Charlie” Curtis, Edwin Newman, Jean Image, Dean Jones is 78, Ava Gardner, Etta Jones, Corazon Aquino, Anita Pallenberg, Gene Washington, Tobe Hooper is 66

1533- Henry VIII secretly married Lady Anne Boleyn already pregnant with the future Queen Elizabeth. Anne Boleyn was later called a sorceress because she had six fingers on one hand. Lusty King Henry has also had sex with her mother and her older sister Mary. And Yer Little Dog, Too!

1890- Newspaper reporter Nelly Bly ( Elizabeth Cochrane ) of the New York World is welcomed home after traveling around the World in 72 days. The stunt was inspired by the Jules Verne story Around the World in 80 days, which had became a hit stage play.

1945- The Rock Creek Report recommends mass additives of fluoride into American drinking water supplies. Tooth decay drops by 50%, however many right wing fringe groups see it as a Communist plot.

1947- Mobster Al Capone died at his home in Florida at age 48. He was released from Alcatraz Prison early because of ill health, his mind was being slowly destroyed by untreated syphilis. When another hood was asked if Al would resume leadership of the Chicago rackets he replied:” Big Al is nuttier than a fruitcake.” Capone lived his final days in seclusion at his estate on Biscayne Bay.

1959- Disney's " SLEEPING BEAUTY " opened. Despite earning the fifth highest box office for that year it finished $1 million behind what it cost to make. The animation staff had swollen to it's largest to finish the production. Its disappointing box office soured Walt Disney on feature animation. His low budget live action films like The Shaggy Dog and the Absent Minded Professor were much more profitable. After Sleeping Beauty was finished the Disney studio had a massive layoff, the staff roster dropping from 551 to just 75. Artists employed since "Bambi" and earlier found pink dismissal slips on their drawing tables when they came to work. The staff will not return to these same levels until 1990.

1960- Actress Diana Barrymore, the daughter of John Barrymore, overdosed on sleeping pills. The Barrymore family that had dominated the American theater since the 1850’s had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Ancestor after ancestor drank themselves to death. Current leader of the family Drew Barrymore recovered after seeking rehab at age 12.

1961- John F. Kennedy has the first televised Presidential press conference.

1970- Robert Altman’s groovy movie M*A*S*H premiered.

1971- Charles Manson and his followers convicted of 27 counts of murder. They were all sentenced to the Gas Chamber but the death penalty had been abolished in California for the moment.

1995- Moscow radar detected a nuclear missile launch from Norwegian waters headed right for them. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his cabinet had five minutes to decide if this was an accident or the dreaded First Strike, warranting a full retaliatory launching of all Russian missiles against the US.. They decided it was a mistake, and it turned out the missile was only a Norwegian weather satellite being fired into orbit. Similar nail biting incidents happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and off the US coast in 1986.
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Yesterday’s Question: What do you mean when you say you’re publishing or putting out a “j’accuse”..?

Answer to yesterday's trivia:
J'accuse ("I accuse") was an open letter published on January 13, 1898, in the newspaper L'Aurore by the influential writer Émile Zola.

The letter was addressed to President of France and accused the government of anti-Semitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French General Staff officer sentenced to penal servitude for life for espionage. Zola pointed out judicial errors and lack of serious evidence. The letter was printed on the first page of the newspaper, and caused a stir in France and abroad. Zola was prosecuted and found guilty of libel on February 23, 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.

As a result of the popularity of the letter, even in the English-speaking world, J'accuse! has become a common generic expression of outrage and accusation against a powerful person.


January 24th, 2009 sat
January 24th, 2009

Question: What do you mean when you say you’re publishing or putting out a “j’accuse”..?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a euphemism, and should one seek treatment for it?
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History for 1/24/2009
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Publius Hadrian AD117, Farinelli the Castrato-1707, Pierre De Beaumarchais, Swedish King Gustavus III, Frederick the Great, Edith Wharton, German Field Marshal Model, Sharon Tate, Mary Lou Rhetton, John Belushi, Disney director Wilfred Jackson, Warren Zevon, Yakov Smirnoff, Daniel Auteuil, Orel Roberts, Natassia Kinski is 50

HAPPY ERNEST BORGNINE DAY! HE’S 92!
courtesy barthertheater.com

41 A.D.- CALIGULA ASSASSINATED- The psychotic Roman Emperor left a gladiator bout to have lunch when in an isolated hallway of the amphitheater his own bodyguards turned on him. His chief assailant was the captain of the watch Chaerea who Caligula liked to embarrass -he once gave Chaerea the watchword “Gimme a kiss”. After two sword thrusts the bleeding emperor shouted: " I still live ! Strike again !" Which they did until he was finally dead. They threw Caligulas’ corpse in a hole in the Lamian gardens. It was said his ghost continued to scare people there for years afterwards. Realizing that without an Emperor an Emperor's Guard isn't much use, the guards looked about for a member of the Imperial family that hadn’t already been butchered. They dragged Caligula's simple old uncle Claudius out from under a table and made him Caesar.

1848- James W. Marshall discovers Gold at Sutter's Mill, California. This event will spark the first big gold rush the following year, the '49 ers. John Sutter had bought the land from the last Russian settlers and set up his town while under Mexican rule. Ironically the gold rush ruined him. Thousands of prospectors ignored his jurisdiction claims, trampled his crops and slaughtered his herds for food. Within a year he was broke and spent the rest of his life trying to get the US Government to reimburse him.

1863- Arizona Territory is formed out of New Mexico. The Southern Confederacy at one time tried to make it one of their states.

1874- Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Gudunov premiered in Saint Petersburg.

1875- Camille Saint-Saens orchestral work Danse Macabre premiered in Paris.

1900- Battle of Spion Kop. (Boer Woer) The British Army rush an enemy position on top of a small hill, take it, and after the cheering notice they are alone on the bald hill completely surrounded by the enemy. OOPS! It was said that the British commander was a much better watercolorist than a military strategist. One of the stretcher bearers bravely running up and down the hill saving wounded men was an Indian law student -Mahatma Ghandi.

1902- Denmark sold the Virgin Islands to the USA.

1927- The Pleasure Garden premiered, the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

1936- FIRST MOTION PICTURE OF A SOLAR ECLIPSE TAKEN FROM A DIRIGIBLE- "The Los Angeles." I know it's dumb but trivia columns gotta have stuff like this from time to time...

1942- Producer David O. Selznick signed young star Jennifer Jones. He became infatuated and left his wife Irene, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer to marry Jones.

1961- Warner Bros. cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc had a terrible auto crash. He lingered in a coma for several weeks. The way the doctor brought him around was to say: “Hey Bugs Bunny! How are we today?” Blanc replied in character:” Ehhh…fine,doc!”

1965- Winston Churchill died at 90. His last words were "Oh, I'm so bored of it all..." At 75 Churchill said :"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter." David Lloyd George once quipped of how Churchill would behave in Heaven: "Winston would go up to his Creator and say he would very much like to meet His Son, about whom he has heard a great deal."

1972- Japanese soldier Soichi Yokoi was found in the jungles of Guam unaware that World War Two had ended 27 years earlier. He had stolen a radio and listened to the news. But he thought the stories of Americans in Korea and Vietnam were just propaganda. He was returned to Japan a healthy, if somewhat confused hero.

1983- Hulk Hogan pinned the Iron Sheik to win his first World Wrestling Federation title.

1984- Apple announced the first Macintosh Computer. It went for $2500.

1986 -Voyager 2 spacecraft flies by Uranus. A friend of mine was in the visitor's gallery at The Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the data began to roll in from the space probe. He saw one man break up the entire room of Nobel-prize winning professors into hysterical laughter with the childish pun :”Here is the latest data on Gas Emissions from Uranus..."

1989- Psycho serial killer Ted Bundy was electrocuted. He had conducted his own defense at his trial, which proves next time, get a lawyer.

2000- Your taxes at work. The entire computer system of the super-secret National Security Agency crashed and was down for several days. No explanation given.

2006- The Walt Disney Company acquired CG animation studio PIXAR. Apple and PIXAR head Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull get a seat on Disney Board and director John Lasseter becomes creative head.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a euphemism, and should one seek treatment for it?

ANSWER: Using a word or phrase in the place of one that might cause offense. But who gives a flying figgy anyway, it’s all bull-pocky.


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