Quiz: If Elizabeth II is queen, and William is Prince of Wales, what is the title of Elizabeth’s husband Phillip?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who was the last king of Great Britain, before Elizabeth II became queen?
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History for 7/27/2013
Birthdays: Confucius, Alexander Dumas fils, Enrique Granados, Hillaire Belloc, Norman Lear, Maureen McGovern, Keenan Wynn, Leo Durocher, Peggy Fleming, Bobby Gentry, Jerry Van Dyke, Vincent Canby, Betty Thomas, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Ilya Salkind, David Swift –director of the Haley Mills Disney films like The Parent Trap, Maya Rudolph is 41, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is 36.

1214- THE BATTLE OF BOUVINES-England loses her lands on continental Europe.
Ever since 1066 there was a technically sticky point of medieval etiquette, because the King of England was also Duke of Normandy, thereby a vassal of the King of France. For years nobody pushed the question.

Finally paranoid English King John Lackland had his boy nephew Arthur of Brittany castrated and then killed for fear he would try and overthrow him. King Phillip of France convened a Feudal grand jury over the murder and as his Feudal Suzerain formally stripped King John of Aquitaine, Gascony, Poitou, Brittany, Vexin, Anjou and hereditary Normandy, the so-called "Angevin Empire". King John naturally didn't go along with this and the issue was decided by battle. After the battle King Phillip was called Phillip Augustus, King John's nickname was changed from John Lack-land to John Softsword.

The French victory doubled the size of France and cut England off from the continent of Europe. Although the English tried several more times to get back Normandy, England went on to develop her own unique society, instead of being a Norman adjunct. King John even grew to prefer speaking English over French!

1586- Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco pipe home to England from America.
Columbus had of course brought cigars and other duty-free home years earlier but tobacco was one of the goodies that kept England interested in American colonies after everyone realized there weren’t any more gold-rich Aztec-Inca Empires to plunder. King James I called smoking a filthy and unhealthful habit, but Raleigh persisted. He even paused for a few last puffs before putting his head on the executioners block.

1661- England passes the Navigation Act, spurring shipbuilding, especially in the U.S colonies. The masts of the British Navy were harvested from tall New Hampshire oaks.

1667- At Sulzbach near Baden a lucky cannonball killed Marshal Turenne, general of Louis XIV. Turenne was one of the most brilliant commanders of the age and idolized by military strategists like Napoleon.

1861- One week after losing the Battle of Bull Run, Union Army commander Irwin MacDowell was replaced by General George B. McClellan. “Little Mac” McClellan was a brilliant organizer with a Napoleon complex a mile wide. He once kept President Lincoln and the Secretary of War cooling their heels for hours in his drawing room while he took a nap. Never able to defeat Robert E. Lee, he would persist in writing friends letters like “Once Again God has chosen me to be the savior of My Country.”

1880-BATTLE OF MAIWAND: The Afghan leader Ayub Khan's tribesmen destroy a British invasion force. Dr. Watson told Sherlock Holmes he was there . One of the heroes of the battle was a little terrier named Bobbie who was a regimental mascot and was wounded several times. He was brought to London and received a medal from Queen Victoria, but was later run over by a London taxi. I guess Afghanistan was safer.

1900- THE BIRTH OF THE "EVIL HUN"- Kaiser Wilhelm II addresses a contingent of German marines about to embark from Bremerhaven to go to China to help in the international effort to put down the Boxer Rebellion. Caught up in the spirit of the moment, Wilhelm said: "Take no prisoners! Kill all those who fall into your hands! As the deeds of the Huns of Attila resound through history for their ruthlessness, so like the Huns, make the name of Germany live in Chinese annals for a thousand years!"

An embarrassed chancellor Von Bulow called it "The worst speech of the year and possibly of the Kaiser's career." He tried to release an edited version to the press but someone leaked the true text. When the Kaiser read the edited speech he said: My dear Bulow! You left out all the good parts!" Germans got the nickname "Huns" for years afterwards.

1914-Austria declared war on Serbia. The first declaration of World War One.

1921- Two Toronto scientists, Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate the hormone Insulin to treat diabetes.

1921- SHAKESPEARE & CO. opens in Paris. The English language bookshop on the Seine owned by Sylvia Beach was the most famous hangout for the U.S. expatriate intellectuals. Shakespeare & Co. championed writers like James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Carlos Santayanna, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson and more. After the Nazi occupation the shop was liberated personally by Ernest Hemingway who shot snipers off it's roof. After paying his respects to Sylvia, Hemingway and his G.I. buddies went on to liberate the Ritz hotel and it's famous wine celler.

1937- The invading Japanese Army enters Beijing, then called Peiping, the former Peking. Most of the art treasures of the old Imperial City had been crated up and moved to Taipei.

1939- Nazi High Command gave secret orders for German supply ships to put to sea, fill up on supplies like fuel oil at neutral harbors in the Americas and take their positions in the Atlantic. In effect, this is the first hostile move against Britain, four and a half weeks before the attack on Poland and the declaration of war.

1940- HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUGS BUNNY. Warners short-"A Wild Hare”-There were several earlier prototypes of the famous rabbit, white with a different voice, but this is the short that launched his career. Bugs says “Whats Up Doc?” for the first time, co-opting a line uttered by Clark Gable while chewing a carrot in the Frank Capra film “It Happened One Night”.

1946- Writer Gertrude Stein dies. Her last words to Alice B. Toklas were:" What is the Answer?" When Alice said nothing, Gertrude said:" Well then, What's the Question?"

1953- THE KOREAN WAR ENDS- The Treaty of Panmunjom. After 170,000 Americans casualties and millions of Koreans & Chinese killed, the treaty fixed the border basically where it was when the war started in 1950. The South Korean Government was outraged and considered it a betrayal, because it acknowledged the permanent breakup of Korea in to two parts. South Koreans weren’t even allowed at the negotiating table. But America and China were tired of the endless death and stalemate and wanted out.

Before the treaty went into effect, South Korean President Sygmun Ree opened all POW camps and let all the North Korean troops who didn’t want to return home, run free. South Korea never signed the treaty so is still technically at war with the North.

1953- The Tonight Show debuted on NBC. It's first host was Steve Allen.

1965- The U.S. Government forces cigarette companies to print warning labels on the their packages about the hazards of smoking.

1977- John Lennon got his green card. Richard Nixon considered him a dangerous radical. Several times in 1972 he was under 60 day notice to leave the country.

1986- Gregg Lemond became the first American to win the Tour de France bicycle race.

1993- IBM announced it would eliminate 35,000 white-collar jobs. Downsizing becomes a popular sport in corporate America. The more worker careers ruined, the higher your stock rose. The chairman of General Electric Jack Welch, was nicknamed “Neutron Jack” after the neutron bomb that kills off people but leaves buildings intact. He recently wrote an op-ed in the Times defending the practice of outsourcing jobs.

1996- A bomb packed with nails goes off during Olympic celebrations in Atlanta Georgia. One woman was killed and dozens injured. While hunting the bomber, the media decided to focus on an overweight security guard named Richard Jewel. Ironically Jewell was the one who first alerted police to the suspicious package, and tried to evacuate the area, otherwise more people would have been killed. After weeks of merciless hounding by the press, the FBI declared Jewel completely innocent. In 2003 the police finally caught the real culprit, abortion clinic bomber and backwoods fruitcake Eric Rudolph.

2007- The Simpson’s Movie debuted.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was the last king of Great Britain, before Elizabeth II became queen?

Answer: King George VI, from 1936 to 1952.

Question: Who was the last king of Great Britain, before Elizabeth II became queen?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who invented the term “to jump the shark”..?

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History for 7/26/2013
Birthdays: Salvador Allende, Serge Koussevitsky, George Bernard Shaw, Gracie Allen,
Carl Jung, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards, George Grosz, Pearl Buck, Jason Robards Jr, Aldous Huxley, Jean Shepard, Vivian Vance, Emil Jannings, Sandra Bullock is 49, Kevin Spacey is 52, Kate Beckinsdale, Mick Jagger is 70

1533- Athawuallpa, Emperor of the Incas, was executed by Francisco Pizzarro. The Great Inca was captured by ambush at Cajamarca and forced to fill a large room with gold and two of silver to get his release. This was accomplished, but Pizzarro decided to kill him anyway. Athawallpa accepted baptism out of fear of being burned alive, the Inca mummified their kings and carried their remains around like saints relics, being burned denied you access into the next world. So he was generously garroted-strangled with a twisting stick behind the rope. The Spaniards burned his body anyway.

The Inca didn't completely submit but withdrew deeper into the Andes and fought on for 70 more years. Pizzarro became first governor of Peru and lived in Lima where he was run through with a sword during a feud with another Spanish noble family.

1656– Rembrandt van Rijn declared bankruptcy.

1694- The Bank of England opened on London's Threadneedle Street. It issued the first bank checks.

1757- Battle of Hastenbeck- The Duke of Cumberland, the bastard son of King George II who had defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden, took over a Hanoverian army in the Netherlands. The British general was so badly beaten that he signed a treaty of his own at Klosterzeven with the French pledging not to militarily intervene anymore in Central Europe and even giving up Hanover, King George’s family home. In London Prime Minister Pitt called Cumberland “a Coward and Traitor!”

1758- Admiral Boscowen’s fleet with the aid of New England militia captured the French fortress of Louisbourg on the mouth of the Saint Lawrence, This was the first step in the British conquest of Canada.

1775- U.S. Postal System begins. Ben Franklin as first postmaster general. The year before Franklin had been fired by the Kings Privy Council in London from his post as postmaster of the Colonies. Interesting enough the only time a US postal system ever operated at a profit was the Confederate Postal System ran by a man named John Regan.

1790- The Funding Bill passed in Congress that was the first step in the master plan of Alexander Hamilton to start the US economy. He struck a deal with states rights politicians like Thomas Jefferson that allowed the US government to assume all the outstanding debts the individual states accrued during the Revolution. This act bound all the loose knit states more firmly under the Federal Government’s leadership. In return Hamilton proposed moving the site of the American Capitol from Philadelphia to a more southern site, like some area in Maryland near George Washington’s Virgina home.

This site for the federal City would eventually be Washington DC. Of course all of this create a huge federal budget deficit, but in Hamilton’s thinking big deficits were good for a country, they implied solidity.

1815- THE WHITE TERROR- It was said after the French Revolution that the Royal Bourbon family had learned nothing but remembered everything. After the Battle of Waterloo smashed Napoleon's power forever, restored King Louis XVIII issued his Royal Ordinances, lists of Bonapartists to be arrested. Some like Marshal Ney and General Labedouyere were shot, some jailed, Marshal Brune was lynched, most fled into exile in America where Napoleon’s brother Joseph had resettled the Bonaparte family in Philadelphia.

Others fled to New Orleans where for years they defiantly waved the Tricolor flag at arriving French merchant ships. When Andrew Jackson fought British troops at New Orleans over the roar of the guns French volunteers sang Le Marseillaise at the bagpiping Highlanders, A group of Napoleon’s veterans tried to found a colony on an island off Galveston Texas, but were driven away by a hurricane . One of the exiles hanging around Philadelphia, a 16 year old draftee named Michel Bouvier was the ancestor of Jacqueline Kennedy.

1822- The Liberators meet. Simon Bolivar confers with Jose San Martin
at Guayaqui, Equador.

1826- School teacher Cayetano Ripoll became the last person executed for heresy by the Spanish Inquisition, which had been raging since 1492. Napoleon had suspended their activities when he occupied the country in 1808, but they restarted after he left.

1835 - 1st sugar cane plantation started in Hawaii.

1847- The Republic of Liberia was declared, the first democratic republic in Africa. Joseph Jenkins-Roberts elected first president. When the US government finally outlawed the African slave trade in 1825 one problem was what to do with all the boatloads of slaves still at sea completing the Middle Passage and all the unsold slaves in harbor depots? It was decided to send all these people to a specific beach on the West African Coast. The freed slaves called themselves Liberia and named their capitol Monrovia in honor of James Monroe, who was US president at the time of their liberation.

1861- Mark Twain left St. Jo Missouri to go west and sit out the Civil War. He went with his brother Oren Clemens who had been appointed to administer the Nevada territory.

1887 - 1st Esperanto book published.

1903 –FIRST TRANSCONTINENTAL AUTO TRIP- Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson, mechanic Sewell J. Crocker and Bud the Wonderdog in their Winton Touring Car rode into New York City, having left San Francisco sixty-three days before. They are the first to cross the United States by automobile. They did it to win a $50 bet that you could cross the country by auto in 90 days. Jackson won the bet but spent $8,000 of his own money to do it. He was hailed as the Great Automobilist and his car was put on display bedecked with flags.

1917- The last two-horse street car made it’s final run down Broadway. There were now more automobiles than horses on the streets of American cities.

1925- Exhausted by his verbal battle with Clarence Darrow in the just concluded Scopes Monkey Trial, famed statesman William Jennings Bryan died in his sleep.

1926 - National Bar Association incorporates.

1941- Angered by Japan's refusal to stop it's invasion of China and now Indochina, President Roosevelt orders Japan's overseas assets frozen and embargoes oil and steel.
Since the U.S. was then the world's leading producer of oil and steel this meant Japan's imports were cut by 90% and her industry would soon dry up. Japan had a strategic oil reserve that could last only three years. FDR also closed the Panama Canal to all Japanese shipping. The generals in Japan now felt war with America was inevitable.

1945-The Potsdam Declaration-Truman and Churchill call upon Japan one more time to surrender unconditionally. All the leaders now knew about the Atomic Bomb- including Stalin, who had been told by an American spy Klaus Fuchs. With a tentative schedule of dropping it the first week of August, they wanted to give Japan one more chance. The Japanese cabinet decided to ignore the Potsdam Declaration, and hope to use a diplomatic route to Stalin to force negotiations. They were unaware that Stalin was planning to attack Japan also.

1945- While the Big Three Potsdam conferences were going on, at home a British general election turned Winston Churchill out of office. He had to embarrassingly leave the conference and was superceded by Labor candidate Clement Atlee, who assumed a junior role in the talks. Churchill used to refer to Atlee as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing”

1947- HAPPY BIRTHDAY CIA ! Pres. Truman signs the National Security Act, creating the CIA, the NSC, The Joint Chiefs and all those other groups that draw unscrutinised federal budgets.

1948- President Truman issues Exec Order # 9981 to the U.S. military to ban segregation. At the time the US Army was more segregated than it had been in 1865 or 1776.
(What's this with Truman and July 26th?)

1951- Charlie Chaplin driven into exile by red-baiters. He was on a holiday to Britain when he learned his visa had been revoked by the U.S. government. He didn't return until 1972. Despite his immense achievements in Hollywood History, when the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated later that year, Chaplin’s name was deliberately excluded.

1952- Evita Peron the beautiful First Lady of Argentina died at age 33.

1953- Fulgensio Batista had suppressed the evolution of democracy in Cuba and ruled as a dictator. This day a 25 year old lawyer and part time left handed baseball pitcher named Fidel Castro with a few followers tried to start a revolt by raiding the impregnable Morcado Barracks. The pathetic assault was immediately crushed and the survivors including Castro jailed. But the event was seen by the people and the world that Cubans would not submit quietly. When Castro was released in 1956 and started his more organized guerrilla campaign he called his group the July 26th Movement.

1956- The Suez Crisis. Egypt's Gamal Nasser, on the anniversary of the exit of King Farouk I (1952) and the declaration of the Republic, nationalized the Suez Canal, which had been run by an Anglo-French cooperative. Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt but the war was stopped by the intervention of the US and USSR.

1958- Top US test pilot Ivan Kinchilo was killed in a plane crash. His F-104 malfunctioned only 800 feet off the ground and he ejected, but couldn’t prevent his parachute from delivering him into the fireball of wreckage. Kinchilo has been called the First Spaceman, since in 1956 piloted a Bell-X test plane to the edge of the stratosphere. A friend of Neil Armstrong and the Gemini astronauts, many say had Kinchilo lived he would have been an important figure in the NASA Space Program.

1959- KPFK , Los Angeles lefty alternative radio of the Pacifica Network, starts up.

1979- Alvin Texas recorded 43 inches of rain in one day.

1984- Edward Gein died peacefully in a prison for the criminally insane. Gein was arrested in 1957 and sentenced to life for mass murder. Police found his farm in Wisconsin decorated with human body parts and heads in the freezer and in the stove, and the dried cadaver of his mother. His story inspired "Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs".

1991 – Children’s comic Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman was arrested in Florida for masturbating in an adult movie theater. The film was Naughty Nurse Nancy.

1995- After a year of investigation the General Accounting Office noted that all documents pertaining to the Rosswell UFO Incident of 1947 had disappeared or been destroyed. …Hmmm.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who invented the term “to jump the shark”..?

Answer: The term was coined by writer Jon Hein because in Sept 1977 the fifth season of the TV show Happy Days featured the Fonz waterskiing in his trademark leather jacket, and literally jumping over a shark. Since then it has come to mean where a quality TV show goes past the point of no return into banality and silliness.

Quiz: Who invented the term “to jump the shark”..?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Queen Elizabeth II had reigned for 61 years, but she is not yet the longest reigning English Monarch. Who is?
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History for 7/25/2013
Birthdays: Bishop Theitmar of Merseberg-975AD, Arthur Balfour, Thomas Eakins, Maxfield Parrish, Stuart K. Hine 1899 missionary who wrote the hymn "How Great Thou Art", Walter Payton, Walter Brennan, David Belasco, Adnan Khashoggi, Imam, Jack Gilford, Illeana Douglas, Estelle Getty, Matt LeBlanc, Louise Brown the first "test-tube" baby-conceived by invetrofertilization-1978

Today is the Feast of Saint James, called San Diego or Santiago de Compostela in Spanish.

325 A.D. The Council of Nicea- The Roman Emperor Constantine called all the Bishops and Patriarchs of Christianity to answer the problems posed by the Arian (Gnostic) Christian sect. The Arrians asked: "If Jesus was God on Earth, then who was minding the store upstairs? And how can you kill God? Maybe he was just pretending to be dead..." They came up with the Nicean Creed (The Apostles Creed) and the Mystery of the Trinity, "One In Being with the Father" If you can't figure this out, some nun would be happy to rap your knuckles for asking.

1554- Queen Mary I of England "Bloody Mary" married King Philip II of Spain in Winchester Cathedral. Phillip didn’t linger long in England and Mary was much older than him and beyond child bearing years.

1570- Czar Ivan IV once more demonstrated why his got the name Ivan the Terrible by ordering mass executions of his supposed enemies in Moscow. This day he had Boyar Prince Viskavati hanged from a gallows and slowly sliced up with knives, allowing him to live just long enough to watch Ivan rape his wife and daughter.

1593- Henry IV, after a bloody religious-civil war had made himself King of all of France except Paris, which was holding out against him. When he asked why they were so stubborn in their resistance they said it was because he was a Protestant. "Well then," the King said-"Paris is well worth a Mass!" and he converted to Catholicism. Henry’s family, the Bourbons, became the royal dynasty of France and today is still on the throne of Spain. Just last month Henry IV remains were found, a pierced ear for a pearl earring.

1788- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony #40 in G minor.

1792- THE BRUNSWICK MANIFESTO- The Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia sent armies invading into France to help their brother-king Louis XVI put down the unruly French Revolution. This day the military commander of the invasion, Charles Willliam the Duke of Brunswick issued a proclamation to the French people that if they didn’t knuckle under to their King like all good little peasants should do he was going to kick their butts! He especially threatened Paris with a "memorable-vengence". This arrogant threat enraged the French people and all but decided King Louis and Marie-Antoinette would be executed. Danton and Marat called for a mass rising of the French nation. The Duke de Brunswick was defeated in battle by rampaging Frenchmen shouting Aux Armes-Citoyens!

1814- Battle of Lundy’s Lane. American forces defeat a British invasion force near Niagara Falls.

1822- General Augustin Iturbide has himself crowned Emperor of Mexico.

1846 -The Spanish-Californios residents of Los Angeles chase the U.S. occupying force out of town a second time.

1871- Samuel Colt patents the "peacemaker", the most famous Western sixgun. Gunfighters filed off the barrel sight so it wouldn't catch on your clothes during a quickdraw, and carried it "5 beans in the wheel" meaning while walking they kept it set at the one empty chamber, so it doesn't accidentally go off in the holster and shoot you in the foot, which might look embarrassing. Most gunfighters carried it in their belts or a waist high holster. Wild Bill Hickock carried his 1860 Navy Colts backwards in a red sash. The familiar low-on-the-hip two gun holsters didn't become common until cowboys saw them in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in the 1880’s.
Colonel Colt got very rich from his invention, and had an annoying habit of shooting his guns off in courtrooms and restaurants like Yosemite Sam.

1871 An electric carousel was patented by Wilhelm Schneider, Davenport, Iowa

1894-the Sino Japanese War. The Japanese surprise attack the Korean peninsula amphibiously at the Bay of Inchon, giving Douglas MacArthur the same idea 57 years later.

1897- Young writer Jack London went to the Klondike to look for gold. He didn’t find much but did get material for a lot of good stories.

1898- The US army invaded Puerto Rico. Spain had granted the island home rule but America got possession of it in the treaty ending the Spanish American War. It’s been a US commonwealth ever since. Puerto Ricans were given full US citizenship in 1917 and self government in 1942. As of the last referendum in 1993 Puerto Ricans still preferred the status of commonwealth.

1909-THE WRISTWATCH- Frenchman Louis Bleriot flew the English Channel. Bleriot had no fuel gauge in his plane. He knew the rate that his plane burned fuel so he kept a clock in his cockpit to mark the time. But a problem was the engines
vibrations would rattle the clock to uselessness. So he asked his friend Charles Cartier the jeweler to make him a reliable timepiece free from vibrations. Cartier created a pocketwatch that you could strap to your wrist with the clockface showing- the Wristwatch. By World War One wristwatches supplanted pocketwatches as the standard male accessory.

1918- In Russia the anti-Communist White Guards entered Ykaterinburg one week too late to prevent the murder of Czar Nicholas II and his family. They discovered the bullet ridden blood soaked room and after capturing one of the Bolshevik agents involved in the murder spread the news to the world of the crime. Soviet apologists for years maintained that the murder of the Imperial Family was done upon the initiative of the local Soviet council under Commissar Yakovlev. But documents discovered in 1989 revealed the murder of Nicolas II was a direct order from Lenin.

1920- The French Army occupies Damascus after Lawrence of Arabia and Faisal's All-Arab Congress government fail. Faisal's son was given the Kingdom of Mesopotamia (Iraq) after his claims to the Hejaz region was trumped by Saudi King Ibn Saud. The French would hold Syria as a colony after World War II, which is why the Syrians have never been very pro-western since.

1927- The Tanaka Memorial- Japanese statesman Baron Tanaka spelled out for the Japanese government a strategy of conquest for the next twenty years, calling for Japan to achieve economic dominance by creating a Greater East Asian Economic Sphere from Korea to Australia. This document was considered by Anglo-American strategists the "Mein Kampf " of the Japanese.

1934- Nazi agents assassinated the Austrian Chancellor Englebert Dolfuss for resisting Fascist encroachment, and having a very silly name.

1936- Orchard Beach opened in the North Bronx.

1940- In Nazi occupied Paris a Gestapo agent walks into the French offices of MGM studios and confiscates the release prints of "Gone With The Wind." They are taken to Berlin for a screening for top Nazis officials. Gone with the Wind was one of Hitler’s favorite movies.

1943- The Birth of L.A. Smog! A newspaper headline from this date mentions a 'gas-attack' of exhaust and haze that reduced visibility to three short blocks.

1943 - Benito Mussolini was overthrown as premier of Italy and imprisoned while the Italian government tried to open negotiations with the allies. Hitler responded by rescuing Mussolini and militarily occupying Italy.

1944- Operation Cobra- The Allies break out of the Normandy beachheads and hedgerows and unleash Patton's fresh Third army into the French interior countryside. Between now and the Battle of the Bulge the German Army can do little more than retreat to the Rhine.

1951- CBS conducts the first broadcast of color television. NBC made color tv popular in the mid 1960's.

1953-Chuck Jone's "Duck Dodgers in the 24 and 1/2 Century".

1953- New York City Subway fares rise from 10cents to 15 cents. Subway tokens are issued for the first time.

1959-"The Kitchen Debates" Vice President Richard Nixon traded catty comments with Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev at the American kitchen of the future exhibit in a Moscow Trade Show.

1965 – Folk Music star Bob Dylan was booed off stage at the Newport Folk Festival for using an electric guitar. Alan Lomax the great Smithsonian Folk Music historian got into a fistfight over it and Pete Seeger threatened to pull the electric plugs.

1968-Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humane Vitae, which set the Church policy against all forms of birth control other than the Rhythm Method. No to the Pill, Condoms and other contraception. This made the Pope a real drag to the Swinging Sixties.

1969 - 1st performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at the Fillmore East in NYC.

1969 – Senator Edward Kennedy plead guilty to leaving scene of an accident a week after the Chappaquiddick car accident that killed his campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne.

1972- The story was broken of the Tuskegee Experiments- that in the late 1940’s and 50’s the US Government did medical experiments on unwilling humans, injecting with them with syphilis and other diseases. The subjects used were exclusively African American men. One went mad and leapt out of a window. President Clinton officially apologized to the survivors in 1993.

1975 - "A Chorus Line," longest-running Broadway show (6,137), premiered.

1984- Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became 1st woman to walk in space

1985- Movie star Rock Hudson publicly acknowledged that he had AIDS.The first major figure to admit he had the disease.

1990 - Roseanne Barr sings the National Anthem at a San Diego Padre game, joke- impersonating ball players by spitting, grabbing her crotch and screeching during her rendition. It didn’t go over well with the more patriotically minded in that conservative town.

2000- An Air France Concord supersonic airliner exploded on takeoff, killing everyone on board. The investigation proved a piece of metal debris that fell off the previous Continental Airliner exploded one of the Concords tires and the resultant wreckage was sucked into the planes engine. Both Britain and France suspended SST flights for over a year and in 2003 discontinued them forever as being too expensive.

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Queen Elizabeth II had reigned for 61 years, but she is not yet the longest reigning English Monarch. Who is?

Yesterday’s Question: Answer: She’ll have to rule 7 more years to catch Queen Victoria, who ruled for 68 years.

Question: Queen Elizabeth II had reigned for 61 years, but she is not yet the longest reigning English Monarch. Who is?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: When discussing whether England can be ruled by a King or Queen, the precedent invoked is Salic Law. What does that mean?
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History for 7/24/2013
Birthdays: Simon Bolivar, Amelia Earhart, Alexander Dumas fils, Ambrose Bierce, Robert Graves, Pat Oliphant, Bela Abzug, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ruth Buzzi, Lynda Carter, Chief Dan George, Robert Hays, Gus Van Sant, Anna Paquin, Michael Richards, J-Lo Jennifer Lopez is 43

634 A.D. Accession of Omar as the third Caliph after Mohammed. This event caused the great split in the Moslem world. After the death of the Prophet his first successor was his best friend and companion during the Hijrah, Abu Bakir. But after his death the unrelated general and second best friend supporter Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, nicknamed "the Just" was nominated successor.

Mohammed's daughter Fatima and son-in-law and cousin Ali Ibn-Abu Taleb split off with their followers. After the death of Ali and his two sons Hassan and Hussein their group under the third Fatimid Caliph, Osman Ibn-'Affan became the Shiite sect of Islam while the main branch under Omar became the Sunnite.

The rivalry is similar to the Protestant-Catholic split in Western Christendom.

1567- Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned by the Scots and forced to abdicate her throne to her 1-year-old son James VI. Mary was raised in exile at the French court and her autocratic French ways and Catholic religion didn’t sit well with the Presbyterian Scots lords and their chaplain John Knox. So as soon as the succession was secure with a baby Mary was bundled off to prison and later turned over to Elizabeth of England for execution.

1568- Don Carlos was the eldest son of King Phillip II of Spain, the most powerful monarch in the world at the time. But Carlos and his dad didn’t get along, it all started when the King Phillip decided to marry the 16 year old bride Margaret of France, originally intended for Carlos. When Carlos showed signs of mental instability, he decided to take the side of Dutch rebels and made noises like he wanted to overthrow his father. Phillip had him imprisoned. He died of dysentery after fasting three days then gorging on meat and ice water, but many in Europe accused his father of poisoning him.

1656- Jewish philosopher Benedict Spinoza was excommunicated by the Rabbis of the Portuguese Synagogue in the Hague. His radical ideas of God made Jews, Catholics, Protestants and even some other humanists attack him, but his ideas formed the basis for modern rationalist philosophy. A German writer called Spinoza “Der Gott bedrunken Mensch” The Man Drunk on God. Albert Einstein, Kant, Goethe and Voltaire were all inspired by the philosophy of Spinoza.

1701- HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOTOWN!- After paddling in birchbark canoes 49 days from Quebec, French explorer Antoine de al Mothe-Cadillac and several families found the City of Detroit.

1758 – Mr. George Washington Esq., admitted to the Virginia House of Burgess.

1784- On his way home from France after the American Revolution, Dr Benjamin Franklin stopped on the British Isle of Wight. While there he met his only son William Franklin, the former Royal Governor of New Jersey. While Franklin was a leading patriot William stayed loyal to Britain and suffered imprisonment and exile. The two men loathed one another, they only agreed to meet to humor grandson Temple Franklin.

After an all night conversation nothing was settled and Franklin never spoke nor wrote to him ever again. When Franklin died he wrote William out of his will. “ It’s only what he would have done to me.” Temple never recovered any salaries Congress owed Ben Franklin, but he did inherit lands in New Jersey from his Tory father.

1794-The End of the "Reign of Terror". After tens of thousands of deaths and fear rampant, a group of French politicians called the Directorate overthrow Maximillien Robespierre and have him and his Jacobin followers guillotined. Robespierre didn't go quietly, a soldier named Charles Merda shot him in the face shouting Vive la Republique!" His brother Augustin Robespierre tried to escape out a window but just succeeded in breaking his hip.

At the guillotine Robespierre’s second in command Saint-Just was defiant to the end:
" I curse the dust I'm made of! I give it to you! Scatter my bones and Republics shall spring from them!" Robespierre wasn't so eloquent on the scaffold. He just bellowed in pain from the jaw wound. A woman shouted at him:" Go to Hell, Villain, and go knowing with you go the curses and maledictions of every wife, every mother !" When his head plopped into the basket Parisians cheered and applauded for 15 minutes. Then they overthrew and smashed the fearsome guillotine.

Napoleon was careful to keep few political prisoners and if he executed any he used a firing squad. He shrank from ever using the hated guillotine. He renamed the place where the Guillotine was set up Place de la Concord.

1824- The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian published the results of the first ever US public opinion poll- a clear lead for Andrew Jackson for president.

1832- French immigrant Benjamin Booneville led the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains in Southern Wyoming. Booneville was a US Army captain who answered personally to President Jackson. Many believed he used the wagon train as an opportunity to assess British power in the Northwest.

1847- The Mormons reach the Great Salt Lake. After trekking 1500 miles for17 months since Illinois, leader Brigham Young said :"Enough. This is the place.'

1847 - Rotary-type printing press patents by Richard March Hoe, NYC.

1901- William Porter, also known as O.Henry, was released from jail after doing time for embezzlement. While in jail he found he had a talent for writing.

1923- Treaty of Lausanne - The western powers end the Greek-Turkish War and confirm the Turkish Republic's borders from the old Ottoman Empire. The Turks keep Anatolia and their Aegean coastline, The French Syria, The Greeks the Ionian islands, the British Palestine, the Bolshevik Russians get Yerevan and the Armenians and Kurds get nothing.

1934- Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film Cleopatra premiered. It starred Claudette Colbert wearing skimpy metal lingerie that Lady Gaga could envy.

1938 - Instant coffee invented.

1948-HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARVIN THE MARTIAN- Warner's "Haredevil Hare" featuring the first Marvin the Martian.

1965- Bob Dylan released the song “Like a Rolling Stone”.

1966- Actor Montgomery Clift died at age 45.

1967-VIVE QUEBEC LIBRE. French President Charles DeGaulle was on a state visit to Canada. While giving an address to a huge crowd of in Quebec City he uses the same words he used in 1940 to call for French freedom from Nazi tyranny to announce his tacit support of French Canadian independence: “Vive Le France, Vive Quebec, Vive Quebeque Libre!” Long Live Free Quebec.

The Ottawa government cut short the remainder of his trip and packed him off back to Paris. But his words set the province aflame. All the separatist sentiment dividing Canada for next two decades-national referendums, the Meech Lake accords, the FLQ conspiracy and the Quebec Separatist movement, can trace their beginnings to those three words said on that day.

1969- After successfully landing on the moon and returning to Earth, Apollo 11 safely splashed down in the ocean.

1980- In London’s Dorchester Hotel, comedian and actor Peter Sellers died of a heart attack. He was 54.

1983-George Brett of the Kansas City Royals had a second homerun he hit nullified after Yankee manager Billy Martin complains he had too much pine tar on his bat.

1985-Walt Disney's "The Black Cauldron" premiered.

1998- Russell Weston was a schizophrenic who believed Navy Seals were hiding in his cornfield. He had shot his mothers twenty five cats because they had fleas. This day he went to Washington and tried to shoot his way into the US Congress, He killed two security guards before he was brought down in a hail of bullets. I wonder if the Congress was debating gun control at the time?

2002- Only once since the Civil War had a U.S. Congressman been officially expelled. Today the House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to expel Congressman James Trafficante for his conviction on Bribery and extortion charges, and having the worst haircut on Capitol Hill.

2005- American Lance Armstrong won the Tour du France bicycle race for an unprecedented 7th time, even after surviving testicular cancer that had spread to his spine and brain. Steroids or not, it was still one hell of an achievement.
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Yesterday’s Question: When discussing whether England can be ruled by a King or Queen, the precedent invoked is Salic Law. What does that mean?

Answer: The law of the Salian Franks stated that women cannot inherit property. Although the main part of the law regarding private property was quickly abandoned, many European thrones kept the custom that succession had to go to the Male descendant only. This resulted in many dynastic wars, like the Wars of the Roses , War of Spanish Succession, etc.

Quiz: When discussing whether England can be ruled by a King or Queen, the precedent invoked is Salic Law. What does that mean?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Which classical composer was nicknamed “The Red Priest”.?
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History for 7/23/2013
Birthdays: Ethiopian Emperor Rastafari Halie Selassie "the Lion of Judah", Raymond Chandler, Raymond Booth, Don Drysdale, Gloria DeHaven, Arthur Treacher, Pee Wee Reese, Bob Fosse, Harry Cohn, Don Imus, Slash, Marlon Wayans, Monica Lewinsky, Woody Harrelson is 52, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is 46, Edie McClurg is 62, Daniel Radcliffe is 24

Today is the Ancient Roman Festival of Neptune, God of the Sea.

1599- Michel Caravaggio received his first commission for a painting.

1645- Russian Czar Michael Romanov died, founder of the Romanov dynasty.

1846- Because he did not agree with the U.S. War with Mexico, writer Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes. A Concord Mass constable fined him. The event caused him to write his famous piece "On Civil Disobedience" which inspired Mahatma Ghandi Martin Luther King and Ang Syung su Chi.

1866- The Cincinnati Reds Baseball club formed. The oldest continual professional baseball team in the U.S.

1868- The 14th Amendment ratified, giving all African Americans the right to vote. It just wasn’t enforced until 1965.

1880 - 1st commercial hydroelectric power planet begins, Grand Rapids, Mich

1885- Ulysses Grant dies of throat cancer 4 days after completing his memoirs. He was 63. Despite being a great general he was a bad politician and a worse businessman. Bankrupt after trusting speculators who swindled him, Grant saw his book as the only way to save his family from his bad debts. They were published by the ex-confederate Mark Twain and became a best seller.

1886- This was the day Bowery saloonkeeper Steve Brodie claimed he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and lived to tell about it.

1888 - John Boyd Dunlop patents the pneumatic rubber tire.

1892- The business partner of millionaire steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie was attorney Henry Clay Frick. Frick was charged by Carnegie to resolve the union issues at his steel works while he vacationed in Europe. Frick set off the Homestead Massacre, shooting with shotguns workers and their families who protested a 20% pay cut.. Frick claimed he was merely the front man for Carnegie. Carnegie goes down in history as a great philanthropist. This day a Russian immigrant named Sasha Berksman entered Frick’s office and shot him twice. Frick recovered.

1894- Japanese troops occupy the Korean Imperial Palace. Japan held Korea as a colony until 1945.

1904 – The Ice Cream Cone created by Charles E. Menches during the LA Purchase Expo.

1908 -Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid IV is deposed by a group of militant army officers demanding modern reforms called the Young Turks.

1914-The Austro-Hungarian Empire sent Serbia it’s final ultimatum. After their Archduke's assassination in Sarajevo by Bosnian- Serb terrorists, the Austrian government deliberately made their demands so humiliating that Serbia would have to reject it and Austria could cleanly declare war. Austria wanted to beat up the little nation it saw as encouraging revolution among the Slav parts of it's territory in Bosnia. But Serbia had an alliance that would bring Russia into the conflict and Austria an agreement that would bring Germany into war with Russia.

Once the Austrians got proof that the assassins were in the pay of the Serbian Secret Service, if they had simply declared war then no country would have minded. The Austrian Emperor Franz Josef said: "Russia will not step in to protect regicides." But Austria wasting weeks publicly posturing and intriguing, so Russia, Germany and France would have to get involved or lose face. The Russian ambassador said to the Austrians-" You are trying to set fire to Europe!" When German Kaiser Wilhelm read the ultimatum he said-" Spirited note, what?"

1919- At the request of his Secretary of War McAdoo President Woodrow Wilson named the recently concluded great war against Germany as the "World War." It wasn’t called World War One until in Nov 1942, Time magazine labeled the new conflict of 1939-45 World War II. Franklin Roosevelt thought it" too depressing, like we were bound to have more."

1920- Kenya declared a crown colony of the British Empire.

1927 – Reacting to a public finally tired of the Tin Lizzy Model T and increased competition, the Ford Motor Co sells the first Model A car.

1932-The Birthday of Fritos. Texas ice cream maker Elmer Doolin buys a recipe for corn chips from a Mexican fry cook for $100 dollars and starts the Frito-Lay Company.

1936- Aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh arrived in Berlin to begin a state visit of Germany as the personal guests of Adolph Hitler. Lindbergh praised the German Luftwaffe as the "greatest air force in the world". Only three Americans ever got the Third Reich’s highest civilian medal- Lindbergh, Henry Ford and the Chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce.

1937 – Scientists at Yale University announced the isolation of the pituitary hormone.

1937-TENNIS DIPLOMACY- The US and Nazi Germany spent much of the late 1930’s testing their competing philosophies on sports playing fields- Democracy vs Aryan Racial Purity. First Jesse Owens at the Olympics, then prizefighters Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, this day even the semi-finals of the Davis Cup Tennis championship became another Yankees vs Nazis test.

At Wimbeldon England, American Don Budge and German Baron Gottfried von Cramm played the game of their lives. Hitler had personally telephoned Von Krom the night before and ordered him to win. Ironically von Cramm was anti-Nazi. Don Budge won after 6 nail biting tied sets. Queen Mary was present, and Hitler was glued to his radio. At one point American tennis great Bill Tilden who had been hired to coach the German team signaled that the match was in the bag. This provoked such an angry reaction from the audience that entertainers Jack Benny and Ed Sullivan tried to climb the fence to kick Tilden’s ass. But Budge came from behind to win. Von Cramm took defeat like a gentleman but Hitler didn’t. Shortly upon his return to the fatherland, the Gestapo arrested him for homosexual activity.

1942- Fuehrer directive #45. Adolf Hitler ordered General Von Paulus in Russia to turn his Sixth Army from his drive on the oil fields of Baku and take the city of Stalingrad.

1944- To counter charges that concentration camps are bad places, the Nazis invited the International Red Cross and neutral journalists to tour a model camp called Theresinstadt. The camp was a dummy with little white picket fences and flower pots in the barracks windows. The ICRC found conditions "moderately comfortable". After the Red Cross left the inmates were all shipped off to Auschwitz.

1952- Egyptian King Farouk abdicated to a group of army officers led by General Mohammed Naikeeb and Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser. Another officer in the coup was Col. Anwar El Sadat. Britain had ruled Egypt since 1880 and after withdrawing in 1936 they continued to control Egyptian politics through the Albanian-born ruler King Farouk. It was the first time Egypt was ruled by Egyptians in 2,250 years. Gamal Nasser would make Egypt a leader in the Third World non-aligned movement, fought wars against Israel and nationalized the Suez Canal. Nassar later said: "Whenever I asked someone 'What should I do first to build the new Egypt ?" they would only advise me who I should kill!"

1962- The first simultaneous television broadcast via the new TelStar communications satellite from America to Europe.

1966- The comedy song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha, Ha!" released. The singer was Napoleon XIV.

1967- The city of Detroit exploded into race riots after white police raided a house party at 12th & Claremont for returned black Vietnam veterans. Forty three died and it took 20,000 soldiers to restore order. It was the worst rioting in the city's history in a summer of race riots in other major American cities like Newark and Washington D.C.

1968- Fred Blasie won an unprecedented fifth World Wrestling Championship belt. Blasie later gained more fame for recording the comedy song "Pencil Necked Geeks" and beating up comedian Andy Kaufman in the ring for calling wrestling a hoax.

1974- The junta of military officers ruling Greece since the time of George Papadopoulos collapsed. Greece held free elections.

1982- Actor Vic Morrow and two children are killed by a stunt helicopter while filming "Twilight Zone, the movie". The last scripted line before his death was "I’ll Keep you safe kids, I swear to God!" The children were being worked into the early morning hours without a caretaker supervisor in defiance of the Coogan Laws. Director John Landis was investigated but exonerated, and never directed again. The only filmworker to dare to testify against Landis, the wardrobe supervisor, was blacklisted and never worked in Hollywood again.

1984- Vanessa Williams the first black Miss America, resigned after a photo spread of her in a nude lesbian scenario in Penthouse magazine. She denied any impropriety until the photos were published widely.

1986 - Britain's Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson called Fergie. They divorced later and she moved to the US and became the spokesperson for Weight Watchers.

1995- The Discovery of Comet Hale-Bop. It’s called that because it was discovered almost simultaneously by two separate astronomers-Alan Hale in New Mexico and Thomas Bop in Arizona. The comet’s passing close by the Earth was the signal for a messianic cult in San Diego called the Heaven's Gate to commit mass suicide by eating poison laced Jello chocolate pudding. They felt that suicide would enable them to join aliens flying in UFO’s flying in the comet’s tail. Media mogul Ted Turner said of the cult: "Oh well, one hundred fewer nuts in the world.."

2003-THE DOWNING STREET MEMO- British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet have a meeting about Iraq. During that meeting Blairs’ people openly discuss as fact that the Bush Administration cooked the data to bring about an excuse for invasion. “ Their case is thin..” This while the White House was loudly declaring that war was it's last resort. When the Downing St memo was revealed in 2005, the story was buried by the U.S. media.

2004- Two armed men enter the Munch Museum in Norway and steal Edvard Munch’s masterpiece The Scream at gunpoint. It was recovered with some water damage in 2007.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which classical composer was nicknamed “The Red Priest”.

Answer: Antonio Vivaldi. He had red hair, and he was a Catholic priest.