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June 25th, 2009 thurs
June 25th, 2009

Quiz: What was the origin of the phrase, the Real McCoy?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What is a monstrance?
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History for 6/25/2009
Birthday: George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair ), Marc Charpentier, Lord Louis Mountbatten, General Hap Arnold, Cajun musician Clifton Chenier, Sidney Lumet is 82, Walter Brennan, Willis Reed, George Abbott, Carly Simon, June Lockhart is 84, Alex Toth, Jimmy Dyne-o-Mite Walker, George Michaels, Mike Myers

1630 – The Fork was introduced to American dining by Plymouth Gov Winthrop.

1815- After Napoleons defeat at Waterloo, now it that it was safe, King Louis XVIII returned to France. He was the younger brother of the Louis XVI guillotined in the Revolution. The slow, rotund Louis XVIII, called Dix-Huit -Deez-Hweet in French, was nicknamed "Louis Biscuit" by the British because he came to Paris with the supply wagons of Wellington’s Army. The French called him Louis Dix-Huitres meaning Louis Ten Oysters.

One British officer called him "A French Falstaff, a Fat Disgrace."

1835- Antoine Baron Gros was a celebrated painter under Napoleon and a friend of David and Ingres. But politics and tastes change. In a royalist postwar France dominated by Delacroix and Gericault, Baron Gros lived on forgotten and melancholy. This day the 64 year old artist drowned himself in the Seine.

1857- Writer Gustav Flaubert goes on trial for pornography for his novel Madame Bovary. He escaped conviction, and went on to his next book Salambo the Carthaginian princess who strangled herself with her own hair. Don’t try this at home girls!

1863- During the Civil War siege of Vicksburg Yankee engineers dug a tunnel under the rebel lines and fill it with gunpowder. The huge explosion accomplished little but blew a black slave named Abraham up through the air and over into Union lines. The man was badly frightened by his strange flight to freedom but miraculously unhurt . Soldiers of an Iowa regiment immediately put him in a tent and charged people five cents to come look at him.

1867 - 1st barbed wire patented by Lucien B Smith of Ohio. It was considered the perfect tool to protect crops from free-range cattle and other marauders. During the Boer War in 1898 South Africa the White Afrikaner Boers got the idea of stringing the stuff in front of the attacking Gordon Highlanders.It’s been used as a tool to herd people ever since.

1876- CUSTER'S LAST STAND called by the Sioux the Battle of the Greasy Grass- George Armstrong Custer and 300 of his 7th Cavalry are wiped out by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the combined Sioux, Cheyenne nations (approximately 1,700 warriors).
There had been defeats of the Whites like this before: Fetterman's Massacre, The Little Rosebud Battle, but nothing captures the imagination like the Little Big Horn. And for Native-Americans it marks the last coming together of the tribes and the last great victory .The Ogalala Sioux, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne all united to resist the violation of their sacred Black Hills. No U.S. Army commander ever expected so many different tribes could unite and field thousands of warriors at once. Custer trusted in his audacity. "Custer's Luck". The boy general –just 23 years old in the Civil War, he was always at the head of his men in costly, reckless attacks yet personally suffered nothing more severe than the flu. Now at age 36 his luck ran out.

Accounts by natives were sketchy and no one is sure just how Custer died. The last white soldier who saw him alive was a courier sent away with a message " Benteen, come up quick. Big Village. Bring packs". The courier was an Italian immigrant named Giusepppi Martini who couldn’t speak English. The famous image of Custer standing to the last with Old Glory in hand was made up by an artist named Paxton for an Anheuser-Busch beer advertisement in 1877. One Crow Indian scout who escaped said Custer was the first casualty and that his being shot down panicked the troopers. Others say the last they saw of Custer he was crawling on all fours with blood trickling down his mouth. He was found in a pile of bodies with a bullet wound in the left side and one in the temple. The Indians didn’t even know they had killed Yellow Hair until told way later. The tribes afterwards dispersed and headed for Canada. The only 7th Cavalry survivor was Commanche, Capt. Mile’s Keough's horse. He was treated with honor by the army and fed a bucket of beer every payday for the rest of his life.

Custer was hallowed with martyrdom. President Ulysses Grant was quiet about the affair but privately thought it a badly botched operation. Sitting Bull was more blunt- "The soldiers were fools, they rode to their deaths." Mrs. Libby Custer lived until 1937 and met FDR. The last living eyewitness of the battle, Mrs. Kate Bighead of the Cheyenne who was taken on the battlefield by her mother at 4 years old, died in 1959.

1970- Toi Yo ta Hoooo! Richard Wagner's opera Die Walkure premiered in Munich.

1906- Famed New York architect Stanford White was having dinner at Madison Square Garden (back when it was still a garden, on Madison Ave. and still square) when he was shot to death by millionaire Harry Thaw, the husband of his mistress Evelyn Nesbitt. The eccentric Thaw was obsessed by White, hiring detectives to follow the artist, and report his amorous pursuits. He would only date women who had dated White first. Thaw’s defense attorney’s got him acquitted of murder by reason of temporary insanity.

So instead of the electric chair Harry Thaw spent a few years in a mental home living on squab flambé' and champagne. The crowd cheered him when he was freed. The key defense witness was 22 year old Mrs. Evelyn Nesbitt-Thaw, one of the beautiful "Gibson Girls’. She gave juicy details of her kinky relationship with White, like the red velvet swing she would ride in the nude over the admiring architect’s head. After Thaw was released they divorced. Before Evelyn Nesbitt died of old age in 1967, she admitted Stanford White was the only man she ever really loved. The incident was the basis for I.L.Doctorow's novel "Ragtime".

1910- First performance of Stravinsky's ballet "Firebird" by Diagheilev and his Ballet Russe. Stravinsky used to refer to the dancers as "A bunch of knock-kneed Lolitas".

1910- Congress passed the Mann Act sometimes called the White Slave Trafficking Act. It stated you couldn’t coerce a woman across state borders for immoral purposes. Penalties are doubled for legal minors, but the law says nothing about boys.

1940- Young actor, and liberal labor activist Ronald Reagan married his first wife, actress Jane Wyman. So, wha' happened?

1951- After losing a power struggle between himself and Dory Schary, Louis B. Mayer announced he was stepping down as head of MGM. Mayer in his time was the most powerful man in Hollywood. He kept an all white office modeled after Mussolini’s in Rome. His penchant for putting relatives in charge of the company’s departments caused the joke that MGM stood for Mayer-Ganz-Mishpochen, Yiddish for Mayer-And-His-Whole-Family.

1951 - 1st color TV broadcast-CBS' Arthur Godfrey from NYC to 4 cities

1967- The "Our World" Beatles concert, the first television event to try a worldwide satellite linkup. They sing and record "All You Need is Love" live in front of an audience of 400.

1968- Pierre Elliot Trudeau elected Prime Minister of Canada. For the next twenty five years he and his flower-child wife Margaret will be one of Canada’s most colorful leaders.

1973- White House counsel John Dean testifies to the Congressional Watergate Committee "There is a Cancer on the Presidency." For the first time one of President Nixon's closest advisers hinted that the President himself was personally involved in the Watergate scandal.

1980- Disney premiered the 4th sequel to the Love Bug, Herbie Goes Bananas.

1997- Disney's animated film Hercules released.

1997- the widow of Malcolm X- Betty Shabazz , died of 3rd degree burns from when her 12 year old grandson set fire to her house.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a monstrance?

Answer: In a Catholic Mass, it is the receptacle that carries the consecrated Host for adoration. In Baroque times it looked like a crucifix at the base, topped with a gold metal sunburst around the clear glass casing of the wafer.


June 24,2009 weds
June 24th, 2009

Quiz: What is a monstrance?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Why is New York City called the Big Apple?
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History for 6/24/2009
Birthdays: Earl Kitchener, the Sirdar of Omdurman, E.I.Dupont, Ambrose Bierce, Jack Dempsey, John Ciardi, Mick Fleetwood, Phil Harris- singer and voice of Baloo in Disney’s Jungle Book, Billy Casper, Michelle Lee, Claude Chabrol, Chief Dan George, Pete Hamill, Peter Weller, Sherry Springfield

1219- Pope Innocent III set today as the deadline for deadbeat knights who volunteered to go on Crusade to get off their ironclad butts and get going. Knights had an economic incentive to taking the Crusading vow: no one could collect a bad debt from you and you couldn't be imprisoned. So some knights would take the vow for the perks but then stall on making the dangerous trip to the Middle East where two out of three never returned.

1324- THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN- Scottish King Robert the Bruce defeated the invading army of King Edward II of England and secured the crown of Scotland for the next 300 years. The Bruce fought in the midst of his troops, hacking down Sir Hugh de Bohun in single combat with his battle-axe. Edward’s father, Edwards Longshanks, had developed winning tactics of using Welsh archers to shoot up an enemy before the mounted knights charged. But Edward II’s bad generalship bungled the system and knights and footmen scrabbled to get out at the Scots not allowing the Welsh bowmen a target.

1374- In the French town of Aix la Chapelle was the first recorded outbreak of Ergot Madness or St. John’s Dance. Groups of people frothing at the mouth danced around uncontrollably until they fell over dead from exhaustion.

1497-English explorer John Cabot discovered Canada -Eh!

1534- The great medical pioneer Phillipus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus Von Hohenheim led a mass burning of medical textbooks at Basel University. The eccentric scholar took frequent sips of laudanum (a heavy opiate he developed) from a container in the hollow handle of his sword. He pioneered the use of minerals in medicine and invented the term Tartar for teeth. He also practiced Astrology and would never give an enema during the full moon. With this book-burning stunt Paracelsus claimed that all medical text before him was quackery and mumbo-jumbo. Burning in St. John’s Fire was the least it deserved. Truth be told he was right. His middle name Bombast became a synonym for bragging.


1668- Margaret Brent entered the legislature of the colony of Maryland and demanded the right to vote. She was chased out of the building.

1812- NAPOLEON INVADES RUSSIA with the largest army yet assembled.
Around 600,000. By December, barely 30,000 came out alive. This day while inspecting the troops Napoleon’s horse stepped in a rabbit hole and threw him on his butt. This was taken as an ill omen.

1876- CUSTER APPROACHES THE LITTLE BIG HORN- General Custer's scouts reported a large Indian camp at the Little Big Horn River. Custer decides to attack tomorrow without waiting for the other armies to catch up. Through his interpreter Mitch Boyer, he tells his Indian scouts that after he has destroyed the Sioux, he will go back east and become the Great White Father. The Republican presidential nominating convention was next month. The Crow and Mandan scouts were troubled by the signs and began their death-songs. Embedded N.Y. Herald reporter Mark Kellogg made a final entry in his diary: "I go to ride with Custer and will be there at the death...” In the dawn's light a survivor from Major Reno’s command overheard Custer's chief scout Bloody Knife tell Custer: " You and I are going Home today -but by a different path."

1901- The first exhibit in a Paris salon on the Rue Lafitte of a Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso.

1939- Pan-Am airlines began regular transatlantic passenger flights from New York to London.

1944- Three Jews escape Auschwitz, travel via Switzerland and bring evidence about the Holocaust to London and Washington. American and British Jewish leaders demand bombing the rail links to the camps. A shocked Churchill wrote Air Marshal Tedder:
"Get anything out of the airforce you can." Strangely nothing ever happened. The plans always stalled in lower echelons. Three times U.S. Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy wrote, "Kill this plan.” While massed Allied bombers were reducing German cities to ruins there was never one single air attack on a concentration camp. The gas chambers and crematoriums worked uninterrupted until they were finally overrun by the land armies. It's one of the war's more shameful mysteries.

1945- The Russian Victory Parade over the German Third Reich. Moscow rejoiced as thousands of Red Army troops marched in Red Square and tossed captured Nazi flags at the foot of Lenin’s tomb. This in imitation of their ancestors who tossed Napoleon’s battle flags in a heap on the steps of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. There next to Stalin stood future President Dwight Eisenhower representing the United States. Top military genius Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov, the victor of Stalingrad and Berlin, was allowed to review the troops on a prancing white horse. This display aroused jealousy in Stalin who was suspicious of rivals and not anxious to share the credit. Within a year of the victory, Stalin had Zhukov disgraced and sent to Mongolia, and the heads of the Soviet Navy and Airforce demoted and tortured. Stalin then awarded all the top war medals to himself.

1945- Meet the Press debuted on radio. Two years later it moved to television and it remains t.v.’s longest running program.

1947-The Berlin Airlift- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was furious when the western powers decided to unify their sections of defeated Germany back into an independent country and top Nazis supporters like industrialist Gottfried Krupp were being let out of jail and put back into positions of power. He decided to strike back at isolated Berlin. When Stalin orders all land routes to West Berlin sealed off hoping to starve the city into submission, U.S. President Truman orders the city supplied by round the clock air flights. The planes brought 4 thousand tons of supplies a day. A plane landed every three minutes. The Germans called them "candy-bombers" because they dropped candy on the children from above.

1947- THE FIRST MODERN UFO SIGHTING. A commercial airline pilot flying out of Seattle notices 6 silver disc shaped objects hovering over Mt. Reynier near Seattle. They then shot off at terrific speed. They are never identified nor explained. The pilot, Kenneth Arnold had impeccable credentials as an ex-combat Marine pilot and chamber of commerce member. The government response was to hit him with an IRS audit. The "flying-saucer" craze, with allegorical overtones to postwar atomic paranoia, sweeps the American imagination throughout the 1950’s.


1949 - "Hopalong Cassidy" becomes the1st network western on television-NBC.

1950- THE KOREAN WAR BEGAN- June 25th in some records because of the International Date Line- 30 North Korea divisions armed with heavy Soviet tanks and artillery crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. The attack was a complete surprise and most South Korean officers were at a party dedicating a new Officer’s Club. The US had deliberately kept the Korean Army lightly armed to diffuse Cold War tension. Mao and Stalin were equally surprised by North Korean Kim Il Sung’s attack. The previous January Secretary of State Dulles had said during a conference that the US "was not interested in the Korean Peninsula." But when President Harry Truman was informed of the invasion he responded in typical Truman fashion:" We gotta stop those Sons of Bitches!" At this time there were only 500 US troops in Korea called KMAG, for Korean Military Advisory Group, which one Yank this day changed to Kiss My Ass Goodbye! This is considered the first war fought by the United Nations, since Truman pushed through a resolution sending troops under the UN banner. The Russians were boycotting the Security Council over its refusal to seat Red China so they were unable to veto the move.

1963 - 1st demonstration of a home video recorder, at BBC Studios, London

1970 – The movie "Catch 22" opens in movie theaters.

1973- Eamon de Valera resigned as President of the Irish Republic at age ninety. The American-born Irish patriot had been a guerrilla in the 1916 Easter Sunday Uprising and was president since 1932.

1997 - Brian Keith, actor (Family Affair, Dirty Dingus McGee), shot himself at 75. He was suffering from incurable cancer and tired of fighting the disease.

2004- On the Senate floor, the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney, told the Democratic Senate Minority leader, Patrick Leahy, to “Go F**k Himself!” Republican Majority Leader, Senator Tom Delay, said the Vice President “was having a hard day”. The Vice President never apologized for this vulgar breach of etiquette. At the same time Bush Administration was urging the FCC to stiffen penalties on DJ’s like Howard Stern for his use of naughty language.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is New York City called the Big Apple?

Answer: Jazz musicians in the 1920s used to say: “When it comes to places to play gigs at, there are a lot of apples on the tree; but when you play New York, you got the Big Apple.”


June 23, 2009 tues
June 23rd, 2009

Quiz: Why is New York City called the Big Apple?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is Max Yazgur remembered fondly by Rock & Roll history, even though he never played an instrument?
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History for 6/23/2009
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Augustus, Josephine DeBeauharnais-Bonaparte, Bob Fosse, Justice Clarence Thomas, James Levine, Dan Ogilvy of Ogilvy & Mayers, Joss Whedon, Dr Alfred Kinsey, The Duke of Windsor formerly King Edward VIII, Wilma Rudolph, Selma Blair, Frances MacDormand

1611- In Hudson’s Bay, Canada, explorer Henry Hudson's crew mutinied and set him adrift in a rowboat with his son. They were never seen again. When back in Holland the mutineers were never charged because they claimed to have discovered the Northwest Passage to the Indies, which luckily they never were called upon to prove.

1683- William Penn signed a treaty with the Lenni Lenapi Indians at Shackamaxon under the Treaty Elm to start his new Quaker colony called Penn-sylvania. Penn wrote of the Indians: "Their language is narrow, yet lofty like the Hebrew…one word suffices in place of three."

1757- Battle of Plassey- Sir Robert Clive with 900 English and 1300 Indians defeated an army of 50,000 under Siraj-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Bengal who perpetrated the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. Daula was killed and the victory assured the British domination of India.

1793- During the French Revolution, Josephine De Beauharnais is condemned to be guillotined. In a prison filled with nobles and intellectuals she found her husband Alexandre the Vicomte du Beauharnais. They had been estranged for years and she had become quite a scandalous woman. When the jailer read out the names to go to the blade that day he read: "DeBeauharnais!" without specifying which DeBeaharnais was to go. The husband stepped forward and said: "Madame, just this once allow me to go first." When the Reign of Terror was overthrown she was released and she became the love of Napoleon.

1810- The Pacific Fur Company was set up by John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant merchant. His ambition was to set up a string of fur trading posts along the route traveled by Lewis & Clark. It is the beginning of the great Astor fortune.

1859- Battle of Solferino- Garabaldi and Napoleon III defeat the Austrian army. This victory and the next battle of Magenta free Milan and the Po Valley. All Italy is united for the first time since the Roman Empire. The completion of the unification process Italians called The Irredenta. In return, Italy gave France the city of Nice. After the carnage of the battle the suffering of the wounded was so pitiable that a Swiss volunteer doctor named Dr. Henry Dunant was inspired to found the International Society of the Red Cross. He was soon bankrupt and forgotten but his organization was taken up at the first Geneva Convention in 1864 and made international law.

1860- The U.S. Secret Service set up.

1865- Two months after Lee surrendered to Grant, at Fort Towson in Indian Territory, General Stand Watiee, aka De-Ga-Ta-Ga, surrendered his Cherokees. This is the last Confederate force in the Civil War. Confederate Jo Shelby rather than give up rode his Iron Legion of rebel cavalry across the Rio Grande into Mexico. After two years exile he returned and excepted the Yankee amnesty.

1868- Christopher Latham Scholes patents the typewriter. In 1873 he sold his patent to the Remington Company. In 1874 Mark Twain secretly admitted to a friend that he enjoyed writing on the newfangled technology.

1940- HITLER THE TOURIST. After the defeat of France, Adolph Hitler takes his one vacation out of Germany. A plane flies him to Paris in the early morning and he is driven around to see the sites. While his Mercedes is waiting at a traffic light a newsboy, not realizing who he was, stuck a morning newspaper under his nose yelling "le Matin! Le Matin!” Hitler was back in Berlin that evening.


1944- Franklin Roosevelt's last fireside chat on the radio.

1971- Three Soyuz 11 cosmonauts were found dead in their space capsule upon landing. The capsule must have had a pressure leak upon re-entry. Soviet accidents in space were kept secret until after the fall of communism.

1972- Title IX passed by the US Government. It called for women’s collegiate sports to be funded equally as the men’s sports.

1976- Toronto’s CN Tower opened. Called the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

I was looking through all the photos of the CN tower, and uh....I just kept going back to this one. Er...sorry.

1979- The Knack released the single My Sharona.

1989- Tim Burton’s film " Batman" opened.

1992- Head of the New York Mafia John Gotti was sentenced to life in prison for murder and racketeering. It had been so hard to pin anything on Gotti that he was nicknamed the Teflon Don. Finally, crusading prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani secured the testimony of the Dons top henchman Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano. For turning informant, Sammy dodged any penalties despite admitting killing 32 people, including killing and cutting up his own brother in law, whose pieces he buried in his backyard. John Gotti died in prison in 2002.

1993- Lorena Bobbit had tired of her abusive husband John. So this night while he was drunk, she severed his penis and drove off, casually tossing it into a nearby field. Doctors recovered the free willy and reattached it starting a media sensation. Bobbitt became a porn star.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: : Why is Max Yazgur remembered fondly by Rock & Roll history, even though he never played an instrument?

Answer: Max Yazgur donated his farm so the Woodstock Festival
Could happen. Yazgur's Farm, in Bethel, New York.
...I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
And then try and get my soul free


June 21st, 2009 sun.
June 21st, 2009

Question: When you call something a “ real doozie” where did that come from?

Yesterday’s Question: Sometimes the followers of a famous person are called Myrmidons. Who were the Myrmidons?
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History for 6/21/2009
Birthdays: Martha Washington, Alexander Pope, Berke Breathed, Al Hirschfeld, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judy Holliday, Benazir Bhutto, Jane Russell, Mariette Hartley, Bernie Koppel, Rick Sutcliffe, Maureen Stapleton, Joe Flagherty, Juliet Lewis, Prince William the Duke of York is 27. He will be King William V some day.

Happy Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. The sun, at dawn, aligns perfectly with the entrance to Stonehenge and in Persia the Zoroastrians would light ceremonial fires on altars on their roofs to the sungod Ahura Mazda.

1527- Political theorist Niccolo' Machiavelli died. - His last words were:
"I hope I shall go to Hell, for there I shall meet kings, popes and princes.
In Heaven one can only meet beggars, monks and apostles."


1582- Japanese warlord Nobunaga Oda assassinated. He was the most pro-western of Japan's feudal lords and in western Japan, a folk hero, sort of a samurai Robin Hood. Under his protection the Catholic missionaries flourished, and Oda liked to parade around in his Spanish suit of armor. His enemy Tokugawa Ieyasu later became Shogun and banned all contact with the outside world.

1789- RATIFICATION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION- New Hampshire becomes the 9th state to ratify the new document giving the majority of two thirds of the states. This despite angry anti-federalist sentiment from critics like Patrick Henry and John Hancock. They felt the new system was too centralized and could be tyrannical. Copies of the constitution were burned by mobs in Albany and Williamsburg. But eventually everyone got behind the system. Statesman Benjamin Rush noted: "We are now a Nation."

1791- THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES- After the fall of the Bastille in 1789, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette tried to work things out as constitutional monarchs but moderates like Mirabeau and Lafayette were losing control of the vengeful people, kept in medieval poverty for so long. So the royals decided to sneak away and escape across the border. The escape plot was organized by Count Axel Fersen, a lover of Queen Marie Antoinette. They slipped away in the dead of night and traveled 150 miles to the Belgian border before they were stopped. At Varennes they were recognized and brought back to Paris by the city's fishwives led by Jean-Baptiste Drouet the postmaster of Ste. Menehould. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were eventually both guillotined and their son Louis XVII died rotting in prison. Ironically, a troop of loyalist cavalry, who were to meet them on the road and escort them across the border got lost only a quarter mile away.

1791- The first Ledger entry.

1813- Battle of Vittoria- Wellington defeats the French in Spain and ends the Peninsular War and Beethoven writes a really silly overture to celebrate it. The Overture to Wellington's Victory has musical scoring for cannons and musket volleys. It was commissioned by a mechanical calliope inventor named Wilhelm Deitzel. It actually made Beethoven more money than anything else he ever wrote.

1854 -During service in the Baltic in the Crimean War –Ships Mate C D Lucas, Royal Navy, HMS Hercla, received the first of a new decoration called the Victoria Cross, or VC.

1864- FATHER ABRAHAM- President Abraham Lincoln visited General Grant’s Union army attacking Lee in Petersburg, Virginia. One highlight of the tour was when Lincoln was shown the 18th corps, a unit of black soldiers. General Grant complimented their excellent discipline and courage under fire. The black troops broke ranks and cheered wildly for Lincoln, their liberator. Hundreds strained just to touch his coat. One said: Now I know I shall go to Heaven, for I have seen Father Abraham, he that hath struck off my chains, and the Day of Jubilee is nigh!” For Lincoln it was a cathartic moment. Whatever his real motives for freeing the slaves, political expediency or moral obligation, he was deeply moved by the demonstration. Tears flowed freely down his face and for once he was speechless.

1866- First recorded train robbery by Jesse James.

1879 - F W Woolworth opens his 1st five and ten cent store.

1893- The FERRIS WHEEL -George Washington Ferris, Jr. decided that the Columbia Exhibition, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery, needed to surpass the French Eiffel Tower (introduced during the centennial celebration of the French Revolution). So he created his wheel so each compartment could hold 12 people plus a butler in a parlor-like atmosphere and rotate them 250 feet in the air. People were afraid they would gasp for oxygen up so high but it was a big hit anyway.

1907 - E W Scripps founded United Press Agency.

1919- In Scapa Flow, Scotland, German Imperial Admiral Von Reuter scuttled 21 of his interned battleships rather than turn them over to the victorious Allies. On shore, vacationing Scottish schoolchildren cheered, thinking it was a fireworks display for their benefit.

1939- Eugene O’Neill’s wife Carlotta wrote in her diary- Gene kept me up all night talking about his outline for a new play about his family- The Long Days Journey into Night. It took him two years to write and it almost killed him.

1940- In a theatrical act of revenge Adolph Hitler forced France to sign her surrender in the same railroad car in Compiegne that the Germans surrendered in 1918. They broke into a museum to pry loose the exact same Wagon-Lit train car so it could be moved to the exact spot. The treaty meant half of France was occupied by Germany while the other half was French governed from the mineral water spa town of Vichy by a puppet government led by old Marshal Petain.

1948- At the University of Manchester, John McCauley created and early computer, the Manchester Mark I, that could store a program in it’s memory and reopen it.

1948- The last Japanese holdout defenders surrender on Okinawa, unaware that the war had been over for three years.

1948- Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3-rpm long playing record, the LP. Inventor Peter Goldmark was annoyed that he had to change his 78 rpm records several times to hear just one Brahms Symphony. He decided to invent a way to fit all of a symphony on one side of a record. His immediate supervisors told him to stop it because people would not throw away all their 78 rpm records to replace them with his. So Goldmark went over their heads to CBS chief William Paley and Paley loved the idea. RCA and David Sarnoff tried to compete with the 45-rpm record, but all it was good for was singles. The 33 1/3 dominated recording until replaced by the Compact Disc in the 1980’s.

1978 - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's musical "Evita," premieres in London.

1998- Paleontologists in Canada announced the discovery of the largest Tyrannosaurus turd yet found. The search intensified for a T-Rex with a relaxed look on his face.

2004- The first flight in the privatization of Space, Bert Routans’ company financed by Microsoft head, Paul Allen, sent SpaceShip 1 up to the edge of the atmosphere. Test pilot Mike Nelvil was the first civilian astronaut.
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Yesterday’s Question: Sometimes the followers of a famous person are called Myrmidons. Who were the Myrmidons?

Answer: According to the Illiad of Homer, the hero Achilles was King of the Myrmidons. His followers were famous for their loyalty and dedication to him.


June 20th, 2009 sat
June 20th, 2009

Question: Sometimes the followers of a famous person are called Myrmidons. Who were the Myrmidons?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Question: XVIII Century Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, and XX century English composer Gustav Holst had something in common, besides being composers. What was it?
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History for 6/20/2009
Birthdays: Wolf Tone, Jacques Offenbach, Lillian Hellman, Errol Flynn, Audie Murphy,
Andre Watts, Cyndee Lauper, Bob Vila, Chet Atkins, Stephen Frears, Brian Wilson, Robert Rodriquez, John Goodman, John Mahoney is 69, Nicole Kidman is 42

1218- Simon De Monfort, Leader of the Crusade against the Albigensian heretics of southern France, was squished by a catapult stone whilst besieging Toulouse. Legend says the lucky catapult shot that nailed Simon was fired by the women & children of Toulouse who knew they could expect no mercy from him. In his brutal crusade in Albi, for the first time, the order heard about how to tell Heretics from True-Believer,“ Slay them All and God will know His own.” By contrast, his son, also a Simon de Monfort, emigrated to England and fought the King for individual civil rights and establishment of the House of Commons.

1605-The False Dmitri invades Russia. A defrocked Lithuanian priest named Grishka declared himself the dead infant son of Czar Ivan the Terrible grown up and convinced a powerful Polish noble family, The Mniszechs, to back him. Historians wrongly call this a Polish-Russian War but actually it was a privately run freelance invasion. I hope they paid 401k benefits and dental. Dmitri succeeded in toppling Czar Boris Gudunov and occupying Moscow. When the Polish Army went home the Russians killed him, burned his body, mixed the ashes with gunpowder, stuffed it in a cannon and fired it back in the direction of Poland.

1747- Persian King Nadir Shah had seized the throne and led armies across Central Asia in a march of conquest not seen since the days of Tamerlane. He conquered Iraq, Uzbekizatan, Afghanistan, Northern India and Yerevan. He forced the Indian Moguls to give him the fabulous Peacock Throne. But as he grew older he got increasingly paranoid, blinding his eldest son and executing hundreds. Finally, this day, his own bodyguards stabbed him and all Persia breathed a sigh of relief.

1756- THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA- Bengal Rajah Siraj ud Daula stuffed 146 captured British officers in a cell the size of Dilbert’s cubicle. Most died of asphyxiation by morning. 23 survived. It's a phenomenon discovered here as well as during the London Blitz of 1940 in crowded shelters that if you pass out in a perfectly upright position you may die because the blood literally drains out of your brain. Ick!

1789- THE TENNIS COURT OATH- French King Louis XVI got annoyed with his parliament or Estates General for constantly asking for permanent power and the right to rule by laws. So this day he tells them to disband. Of the Estates three divisions the First Estate- Nobility and the Second Estate – Clergy quietly obey and go home. But the Third Estate -the common folk- refused and when they were turned out of their meeting hall by the guards they reconvened in the Royal tennis court. There the members pledged not to disband until Liberty was established. "Go tell your master that here the People rule!"- Said Mirabeau to the royal herald.

1790- THE US CAPITOL CONCEIVED- In the then American capitol, New York City, Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, went over to have dinner with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Senator James Madison. There were no real American political parties yet, but Jefferson had been leading the opposition to Hamilton’s plan for the US Government to assume all the debt incurred by the individual states in the Revolution. This act would strengthen the central government at the expense of the states. Everyone knew Jefferson worked through Madison but he presented this dinner as his arbitrating a peace between Madison and Hamilton! No one recorded what was said at the meal but it is assumed Hamilton proposed a deal in exchange for the debt assumption- move the American capitol south. This night they agreed to move the planned US capitol to a new site on land suggested by President Washington near his Mount Vernon estate. It would become Washington, DC. It was also possibly the last time Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison ever agreed on anything ever again.

1815- NATHAN ROTHSCHILD'S BIG SCORE. -When The Battle of Waterloo happened in Belgium no one in England knew who had won for 72 anxious hours. The House of Rothschild Bank had a Dutch agent at the battlefield who galloped to Ostend then across the Channel to Nathan before the official news reached the London. This morning, Nathan Rothschild walked into the London Stock Exchange and took his usual stance by his favorite pillar. Everyone was sure Rothschild knew something. He said nothing himself but his agents started to sell off Government bonds. Day traders took this as a sign that the French were victorious, so the price of Government securities plummeted in panic sales. When the prices had fallen low enough Rothschild gave the signal to start buying. By the time the real news that Wellington had beaten Napoleon arrived, Nathan Rothschild had made a fortune. He later became the first of the Jewish faith to enter the House of Lords.

1819- The first steam powered ship successfully crossed the Atlantic. The SS Savannah made it to Liverpool after a trip of 27 days.

1837-QUEEN VICTORIA-Upon the death of her uncle King William IV, little, 19 year old Princess Victoria becomes Queen of the British Isles. She will rule until 1901 and give her name to the era, Victorian. She came to the throne when veterans of the American Revolution and Waterloo were still alive and she lived to use electric lights, telephones and was the first monarch to watch a movie. Before Victoria, the British Royals were never considered examples of morality. It was said her grandfather George III was insane, her Uncle George IV a bigamist, her other uncle, William IV, a glutton and her mother the Duchess of Kent was living openly with an Irish adventurer named James Conroy. If you wanted to meet the great men of the nation you had to look in the gambling houses or brothels.

Victoria changed all that. She and her husband Prince Albert made the pursuit of Morality and family the highest standard of polite society. My favorite Victoria story was this: it had to be explained to her exactly what a lesbian was, after which she dismissed the concept saying: "Women do not do that sort of thing." Another Queen Victoria story undercuts her prudish reputation just a bit: Apparently, there was an admiral whose passion was restoring old ships. He was boring Victoria to death with a long story about his latest project in drydock. To change the subject, Her Majesty inquired as to the health of his wife. The admiral, who was hard of hearing, replied, "Well, Mam, next we are going to turn her over and scrape her bottom." Reportedly, Victoria laughed ‘til tears rolled down her face.

1863-Several Virginia counties whose people opposed the Confederacy and slavery re-enter the Union as the new state of West Virginia.

1900- THE BOXER REBELLION- In Beijing, the Chinese Boxer Rebellion traps the foreign diplomatic corps in their compound in the Forbidden City. The Chinese mobs were led by martial arts societies like the I Ho Chu Huan- The Righteous and Harmonius Fists. Their goal was to drive out the hated foreigners who were ruining China the way they had carved up Africa and India. The German ambassador Baron Von Kettler was shot down in the street and the Japanese ambassador was pulled out of his sedan chair and beheaded. Women in western clothing were doused with gasoline and set ablaze. The Chinese Manchu Empress Zhou Zsi permitted the regular Chinese Army to support the Boxers. At first the besieged delegations didn't get along well, the British and Japanese didn't trust the Russians, the Germans were cut off from their big new brewery in Tsing-Tao, yeah, the same. And nobody liked the Americans with their constant preaching that they weren't out to annex new colonies while their gunboats and Marines prowled the Yangtze. But under the leader ship of British attache , Sir Archibald MacDonald, the diplomats soon learned to work together. They held out until an international force rescued them- the "55 days in Peking".

1910- Longtime President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, unsuccessfully tried to stop the Revolution breaking out by declaring martial law and arresting hundreds.

1940- Artist Alberto Vargas signs a contract with Esquire Magazine to paint the ‘Vargas Girls’ pin ups that made the magazine famous. He replaced artist Richard Petty who was demanding $1500 a week. Vargas was paid $75 a week. Today an original Vargas goes for $200,000.



1941- Two days before Hitler’s invasion of Russia, Richard Zorga, a Russian spy in the German Embassy in Tokyo, sent home to Moscow microfilm with complete information on the attack. He even revealed it’s codename- Operation Barbarossa. A Russian agent in Hungary, code-named “Lucy”, and the Chinese agents of Mao Tse Tung confirmed the information. Yet despite this warning Soviet leader Josef Stalin refused to believe it. On June 22 He and the Red Army were taken completely by surprise.

1941-Disney's "the Reluctant Dragon" premiered with cartoonist's pickets around the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Police actually have to close part of Hollywood Blvd. out of concern for what the rampaging animators might do. Future UPA producer Steve Bosustow drove up in a limo and picketed in tuxedo and top hat. His chauffeur was Maurice Noble, the designer of the RoadRunner cartoons. Ironically the movie was part documentary about how wonderful life was working at the Disney studio.

1947- Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, the mobster creator of Las Vegas, was murdered while reading his evening paper in his Beverly Hills home. He had bought the mansion from opera singer George London for his girlfriend actress Virginia Hill. The order to whack Bugsy was probably given by his old friend Mayer Lansky. The Mafia syndicate back east was fed up with Bugsy’s Las Vegas’ cost overruns. The second owner of his Flamingo casino Moe Greenberg had his throat cut with a butcher knife. Still, the Flamingo Hotel & Casino and the Las Vegas Strip went on to become a great success.

1948- The Ed Sullivan Show "Toast of the Town" later to be “the Ed Sullivan Show” premiered. Sullivan's show was the showcase that brought new acts like Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones into the average American living room. Prior to this, Mr. Sullivan was a columnist and radio show personality who co-authored "Red Channels", a book accusing dozens of his compatriots as Communists. His “really, really Big Shewww” may have been given to Sullivan to make him lay off.


1972- In the first reaction to the news of the Watergate Break in, Nixon Presidential spokesman Ron Zeigler dismissed it: “It is not for the White House to comment on the investigation of a third-rate burglary”. The Third-Rate Burglary drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

1972- THE SMOKING GUN- All through the Watergate scandal the big question was how involved was President Richard Nixon? A conversation in the Oval office was taped this day between Nixon and his aide H.R. Haldeman. Whatever was said on this tape it took two years of lawsuits and a Supreme Court ruling to get Nixon to surrender it. This tape for June 20th had 18 missing minutes. Experts say five separate manual erasures caused the gap. After a feeble attempt to blame it on the fumble fingers of Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, it’s generally believed, although never admitted ,that Nixon himself probably erased the incriminating parts of the tape. It was called the “smoking gun”. Three days after the tape was made public in 1974 President Nixon resigned. If Nixon had simply popped this tape into the White House incinerator, he may have completed his presidency with honor.
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Yesterdays’ Question: XVIII Century Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, and XX century English composer Gustav Holst had something in common, besides being composers. What was it?

Answer: They both had day jobs teaching at all girl schools. They both composed music for all-girl orchestras.


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