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March 25, 2018
March 25th, 2018

Question: What does it mean to say “ Strike while the iron is hot?”

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean to gaslight someone?
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History for 3/25/2018
B-Days: King Henry II Plantagenet, Joachim Murat, Gudson Borglum, David Lean, Gloria Steinem is 84, Mary Flannery-O’Connor, Arturo Toscanini, Aretha Franklin, Bela Bartok', Howard Cosell, Bonnie Bedelia, Anita Bryant, Simone Signoret, Sarah Jessica Parker is 54.

In ancient times this was the feast of the goddess of comedy Thalia, one of the Nine Muses. In Latin she was called Hilaria.

In the medieval London calendar this was Lady Day, when streetlights no longer had to be lit after dark.

421AD- People fleeing the depredations of Attila the Hun, flee into the marshes and found the city of Venice.

1306- Robert the Bruce crowned King of Scotland.

1330- Battle of Zebras de Acholes- Scottish king Robert the Bruce on his deathbed asked Earl Douglas of Argyle to take his heart to the Holyland. Red Douglas went on Crusade with the Bruce's heart embalmed in lead hanging from a silver chain around his neck. In Spain, the Earl was ambushed by a large force of Moors. When Red Douglas realized his hour had come, legend has it he hurled the box containing the Bruce's heart into the thickest of the foe and plowed after it, long sword in hand, to go down fighting.

1441-During the Council of Clermont the Vatican invited Czech Jan Hus under an amnesty to come and explain his Protestant doctrines. After he explained his case, they burned him at the stake.

1521-FIRST MAN CIRCUMNAVIGATES THE GLOBE- No, it was not Magellan. It was Magellan's slave, Enrique. Enrique was taken from his native Philippines by traders to Sumatra, then Arab merchants brought him to Madagascar where Magellan while serving with the Portuguese purchased him and brought him by sea around Africa to Lisbon then to Spain.
Later Magellan took him with his fleet west to South America and around the Cape into the Pacific and eventually back to the Philippine Islands. On this day Enrique found on the Isle of Cebu he could converse with the natives. Magellan knew he had done it and reached the Indies by sailing West. After Magellan was killed by natives, Enrique jumped overboard and swam home.

1524- Explorer Giuseppe Verrazano with a French fleet going up the coast of North America drop anchor off Cape Hatterras in North Carolina. Verrazano could not see the Carolina coastline beyond the thin isthmus of Diamond Shoals, so he decides the American Continent must become really thin in the middle before widening out to Canada. His men strain their eyes for signs of China beyond what he thinks is the" Pacific". For a century European maps reflect this silly mistake and Verrazano was later eaten by cannibals.

1634-The good ships Dove and Ark drop anchor in America bringing 128 English Catholics. The Colony of Maryland founded by Caelius Calvert- Lord Baltimore under former Virginia Gov. De La Ware (Delaware). For the first time in English America a Catholic Mass was held.

1668-First recorded horse race in America .

1815- After Napoleon seized back power in Paris he asked Europe for peace. This day the assembled powers meeting in Vienna declared him an outlaw and enemy of Europe. The issue was decided on the field of Waterloo.

1843- In London, the Thames Tunnel opened. The first tunnel under a major river.

1865- The Battle of Fort Steadman. Robert E Lee tried to break a hole in Ulysses Grants encircling army so he could rush reinforcements to Joe Johnston’s rebel army. They were trying to stop Sherman in South Carolina from marching north and uniting with Grant. It didn’t work.

1911-THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE- 145 seamstresses, mostly teenage Jewish immigrant girls, burn to death in a terrible office building fire. They could not escape the flames because their employer padlocked them into their sweatshop so they wouldn't take so many breaks or talk to union organizers. The pavement was littered with girls who jumped ten stories to their death rather than burn, while a helpless crowd looked on in horror. They would hold hands and leap to their deaths together.
The factory owners were never charged with any crime. The owners soon opened another clothes factory that was cited for fire safety violations. The tragedy was a major cause of the formation of the ILGWU now called UNITE and the first job safety laws. One of the eyewitnesses to the horror, Frances Perkins, later became Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. The last survivor of the fire died in 2001 at age 107.

1915- The first modern submarine disaster. The US F-4 went down with 21 sailors.

1916 - Ishi, the last survivor of his Yaqui Indian tribe, died.

1928- Young American composer George Gershwin first arrived in Paris.

1931- The Scottsboro Boys. In Alabama nine young black men were accused of raping two white women in a freight car. Although convicted the case was appealed and retired four times, and only the spotlight of national attention prevented any from being lynched.

1931- Shortly after the invention of automobiles, there were automobile races. This day in the dry lake beds of Muroc California saw the first race car speed trials sanctioned by the American Automobile Assoc. It was the beginning of NASCAR.

1932- Motion Picture Academy President William DeMille, the brother of Cecil B., started a 'Squawk Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their studio heads. (and this way they won't ask to unionize ). The first boss on the hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and catcalls, mostly from his screen writers. The forum quickly devolved into shouting, screaming free for all. Mayer furiously stormed out and preceded to fire all those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was abandoned.

1933- Nazis Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels offered famed director Fritz Lang a job. Fritz said he’d think about it, then immediately packed his bag for Hollywood.

1944- During World War II, a British pilot bailed out of burning Spitfire, and his chute failed to open. He fell 18,000 feet. In a freak occurrence, high on shore winds slowed his descent and he hit a wet beach that broke his fall. He suffered only a broken ankle. English film director Michael Powell made the incident the basis of his fantasy film with David Niven called "A Matter of Life and Death", released in the US as "The Big Staircase"

1945- The 322rd fighter group escorted a large contingent of bombers from Italy to Berlin and back. During the dogfights over Germany the unit’s P-51 fighter planes shot down three German Messerschmidt ME-262 jet fighters. No bombers were lost and the 322rd was awarded a special unite citation for bravery. The 322rd Fighter Group were the Tuskeegee Airmen, the all black pilots. Their commander Benjamin Davis became the first African American to become a US General.

1945- General Eisenhower told Marshal Stalin that the allied armies would hold back and allow the Soviet Red Army to take Berlin.

1953- NUMBER 10 RILLINGTON PLACE. A new tenant to this modest flat in London made an awful discovery- behind the walls were the bodies of 4 women with one more buried under the pea patch. The previous tenant Jack Christie confessed to the murders and was executed. Christie became the most infamous British serial killer since Jack the Ripper.

1954- RCA began mass production and marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an automobile -$1,000, 12 inch screen and there was very little programming in color.

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258 copies Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl printed in the UK on the grounds it was obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore printed the poem, he was arrested.

1957-The Rome Treaty establishing the European Economic Community.

1960- Thirty-five years after it was written and published in Europe an American judge ruled that D.H. Lawrence's novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not pornography and could finally be sold in the U.S. Whaddaya think of that, John-Thomas?

1960- The Moulin Rouge Agreement. After a lot of agitation and arm twisting from Frank Sinatra, the owners of the Las Vegas casinos agreed to integrate. It was so named for the Moulin Rouge Casino, which up to then had been the only casino that allowed black and white patrons to mix freely.

1965- Viola Gregg Liuzzo was a fiesty red-haired wife of a Detroit Teamster official who was so moved watching Martin Luther King’s freedom marchers being beaten up by cops that she drove down to Alabama to offer her help. When her children feared they would never see her again Mrs Liuzzo replied she would "live to pee on your graves".

This night she was driving black marchers from Selma to Montgomery when three Ku Klux Klansmen pulled along side her car and shot her at point blank range. Her case reached up as high as the White House where President Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover spent several anxious meetings over what to do. The Klansmen were rounded up but acquitted by an all-white Alabama jury, then the a Federal court gave them six years for violating Mrs. Liuzzo’s civil rights. Viola Liuzzo was the only white woman ever murdered in the 60’s Civil Rights Movement.

1966 - Beatles pose with mutilated dolls & butchered meat for the cover of the "Yesterday & Today" album, It was later pulled.

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam.

1975- King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was assassinated by a nephew. The nephew was beheaded.

1990- The Happy Land Social Club fire. A Cuban immigrant man broke up with his girlfriend over drinks in a crowded Latino bar in New York City. The bouncers threw him out when he got abusive. He left the club then returned and splashed gasoline around the one entrance and set it on fire. 87 people died, some so fast that their remains still had their drinks in their hands. It was the worst fire in New York since the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, ironically on this same date.
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Quiz: What does it mean to gaslight someone?

Answer: From the old Charles Boyer-Ingrid Bergman movie Gaslight. When someone for their own gain tells lies so often and so completely, the other person doubts their own sanity.


March 24, 2018
March 24th, 2018

Quiz: What does it mean to gaslight someone?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Guess the Arab? Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Don Rickles, Danny Thomas.
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History for 3/24/2018
Birthdays: Steve McQueen, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Ub Iwerks (the first Disney animator), John Wesley Powell, Harry Houdini aka Eric Weiss, Edward Weston, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde, Bob Mackie, Robert Carradine, Jesus Alou, Laura Flynn-Boyle, Alyson Hannigan, Joe Barbera, R. Lee Ermey drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket (Hoo-Rah!), Peyton Manning, Sir Elton John is 71

To the ancient Romans this was the Day of Blood- when the priests of the Goddess Cybele would end a nine day fast by walking in procession through the streets practicing self-flagellation with whips, atoning for their sins with their blood. Some scholars theorized that the Christians incorporated this custom into the story of Good Friday.

1185- Battle of Dano-Ura. Huge Japanese samurai battle fought at sea. The Minamoto Genji Clan defeated the Taira-Hekki Clan and seized the throne. The 7 year old Hekki Emperor and many of his retainers drowned themselves. To this day local fishermen find small crabs with shells like samurai face masques on them.

1241- The Mongol hordes were sent into Europe by Genghis Khan’s general Subotai. While one pincer marched into Hungary, another force under Vuldai and the Tartar Paidar burned the Polish capitol of Krakow. A trumpeter trying to give a warning from a church tower was shot through the throat with an arrow. Since then in his memory, in the town square every hour on the hour, a trumpeter plays the bugle call and stops short at the same note -The Heynal.

1603- Queen Elizabeth Ist of England dies of a gum inflammation, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I Stewart of the United Kingdom. Elizabeth was 69 and had ruled England since she was 25. She was famous for being frugal but she loved extravagant clothing. At her death she left 2,000 dresses. When an Anglican bishop in a sermon tried to criticize her for vanity, the Queen stood up and warned him to hold his tongue, ”ere ye may yet attain Heaven before your time”.

1663- King Charles II granted lands in the newly forming American settlements called Carolina to noblemen who supported him in the recently ended English Civil War.

1765- the British Parliament passed the American Quartering Act, which means you have to let a redcoat soldier sleep and leave cans of Holsten Pils and Marmite jars around whether you like it or not ! You even had to give them your extra food and candles at no charge! Up to now all the British army was on the frontier protecting against Indians, now it seemed the redcoats were moved into towns and settlements to keep an eye on the Americans! This and the Stamp Act was another of the sort of thing that bugged Americans about being a colony.

1794- Hero of the American Revolution Thaddeus Kosciuszko raised the banner of Revolt to liberate Poland from the Russians, Austrians and Germans. They were unimpressed. In spirit of American and French liberty he appeared in the great square of Krakow in a peasants jacket and cap and declares a fight to the death. He finished the war in a Russian prison. Eventually released, he visited America in 1797 and was paid $3,947 in back pay as an American army officer. He spent all the money buying black slaves and freeing them.

1808- Napoleons’ French army entered Madrid.

1843- THE BATTLE OF HYDERABAD- Sir Charles Napier and the British Army of India defeated the Balouki tribesmen and Taipur Emirs and conquered the region of the Indus Valley called the Sindh.
One problem generals always have after a big battle is coming up with a good name. This battle was fought near a village called Dabaa, but in Hindi, Dabaa meant Greasy Animal Skins. Charles Napier didn’t want to be knighted in Westminster Abbey as the Viscount Greasy Animal Skins, so he sent an officer to ride around until he found a town with a more suitable name. Finally they chose the town of Hyderabad.

Back in London Lord Napier was hailed as the Conqueror of Sindh. Punch magazine punned that his report consisted of one word-PECCAVI- Latin for “ I have Sinned.- get it? “ Victorian humor!

1882 -In Berlin, German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus that caused Tuberculosis, enabling a vaccine to at last be created. T.B. or consumption, was the AIDS of the 1800's- killing everyone from Frederic Chopin, Doc Holliday, Aubrey Beardsley and Mimi in La Boheme.

1900- Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck turned over the first shovel-full of dirt on the project to build the New York City subway system.

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s adventure novel The Lost World, first published in magazine installments. Conan Doyle was inspired when he in 1905 he attended a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society, when an Amazon explorer described finding dinosaur bones. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs type stories.
In 1925, Willis O'Brien made the Lost World into the first dinosaur monster movie.

1934-The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour debuted on radio. It became a national craze to see who could be a future star. Frank Sinatra was among their finds. The show eventually moved to television and later spawned the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Chuck Barris the Gong Show, Star Search, American Idol and the Voice.

1939- The film The Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. They became the most famous interpreters of the characters and went on to make a dozen more films.

1943 - The first Japanese anime’ feature premiered "Momotaro's Sea Eagles".

1944- The Nazi Gestapo in Rome retaliated for a car bomb that killed 33 Germans by pulling innocent people at random off the street and executing them.

1944- THE GREAT ESCAPE- 60 Allied POWs dug a tunnel and escaped from an elite prison in Poland. All but 5 were recaptured, and Hitler had 40 shot.

1954- The Nash-Kelvinator Company and the Hudson Car Company merge to form American Motors Corporation or AMC automobiles.

1955- Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" debuts at Broadway's Marosco Theater. Barbera Bel-Geddes was the first Cat, and Burl Ives was " Big Daddy".

1958- Elvis Presley inducted into the Army. G.I. Blues!

1962- No one had been a more loyal supporter of President John F. Kennedy than Frank Sinatra. The singer got his Ratpack friends to stump for the candidate, and even got Mafia money to support a man who’s brother Bobby was busy busting the rackets. But the President was warned that association with such a known libertine would cost him family values votes one day. So when Kennedy next visited Palm Springs he not only refused an invitation to stay with Sinatra, he stayed with more wholesome singer Bing Crosby, a Republican! Sinatra in a rage took a sledgehammer to the private helicopter landing pad he was preparing for JFK, and broke off his friendship with JFK’s brother-in-law actor Peter Lawford.

1973- In Buffalo, a drunk fan bit singer Lou Reed on the ass.

1989- The supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound Alaska. It was claimed its Captain Joseph Hazelwood was drunk. But insiders claim Exxon fabricated the drunk-captain story to excuse their inadequate detection and warning equipment. The route was well charted and easy to maneuver. Despite lots of promises to clean it up completely, today much of Prince William Sound is still contaminated and the wildlife was decimated.

1999- The U.S. and NATO began to bomb Belgrade over Serbian attacks in Kossovo.

2005- A Colorado Rockies big league baseball game was called off on account a swarm of bees. The bees were attracted by the coconut oil in the starting pitchers hair gel.

2006- 13 year old Miley Cyrus debuts on TV as Disney’s Hanna Montana.
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Yesterday’s Question: Guess the Arab? Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Don Rickles, Danny Thomas.

Answer: Danny Thomas was born to Lebanese Maronite parents. His born name was Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz


March 23, 2018
March 22nd, 2018

Question: Guess the Arab? Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Don Rickles, Danny Thomas.

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Guess the Hispanic: Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Carole Lombard
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History for 3/23/2018
Birthdays: US Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Akira Kurosawa, Joan Crawford, Dr Werner Von Braun, Juan Gris, Chaka Khan, Paul Grimault, Sidney Hillman Jack Ruby, Joan Collins, Eric Fromm, Fanny Farmer, Catherine Keener is 59, Hope Davis is 54

In ancient Rome today was the Tubilustrum, the Festival of the Sacred Trumpets of Minerva. Yes, the word is the origin of the word Tuba, although the modern tuba wasn’t invented until 1835.

Today is the Feast day of the Irish Saint Gwinear. Gwinear loved animals so much that once when he was thirsty he struck the ground with his staff to make a clear pool appear, then again to make another one for his dog and horse.

1721- Johann Sebastian Bach sent the first copy of his Brandenburg Concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg. When the Margrave died, and an inventory was made of his holdings in Berlin, the value placed on each concerto was six groschen, or about $5 each.

1775- During the debate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry
said the only way to deal with England was :"I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY FOLLOW, BUT FOR ME -GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH !" Henry became Gov. of Virginia, but later he was forgotten in the formation of the new nation, especially after he declared publicly that the Constitution was a big mistake and Tom Jefferson was an incompetent coward.

1806-After exploring the Pacific coast around the mouth of the Columbia River, Lewis and Clark start back for home.

1857- Stewart's department store in New York installs the first of Mr. Otis's new invention, the elevator. There were earlier steam elevators, but the danger of falling frightened off customers. Mr. Otis’ system of brakes and cut offs in the event of a cable failure made elevators popular and the age of skyscrapers possible.

1877- Mormon elder John D. Lee was convicted of the murder of 120 settlers when he ordered his men to attack a pioneer wagon train as it passed through Utah in 1857, the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre. On this day John D. Lee was marched to the massacre site, stood beside his own coffin and shot by firing squad.

1877- the first telephones installed in the White House.

1894- Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan-Doyle was in Davo Switzerland helping his wife recover from tuberculosis at a spa in the Alps. While there, the Swiss introduced him to a new sport that he quickly took to. This day he wrote to London enthusiastically about Ski-Running, or Skiing. Conan-Doyle predicted in the Strand Magazine “Within a generation, thousands of English people will be coming to the Alps to ski.” Today there are is a statue of Sir Arthur in Davo, Switzerland.

1903- Orville and Wilbur Wright kept looking for someone to build them a motor light enough to power their airplane design. Finding no taker, they built the thing themselves, and the propeller and this day took out an U.S. patent on the Airplane. They didn’t actually fly in it until nine months later.

1918- In a final attempt to break French morale during World War I, the Germans begin firing giant "Big Bertha" cannons at Paris. The monster shells fly 77 miles and took three minutes to reach their targets. The first shell hit Place De La Republique. A German gunner said the discharge of the cannon sounded like an "enormous vomiting dachshund'.

1919-Benito Mussolini created the Parti Fasci di Combatimento or Fascist Party in Italy. He started his career as a socialist union leader but swung to the other side later (better benefits?) He named his ultra-right group after the wrapped bundle of sticks with an axe sticking out that was carried before ancient Roman consuls, the fasces, it symbolized Roman power. In a previous generation Garabaldi's men were called Red-Shirts so Mussolini adopted the Black-Shirts. Later Hitler made his storm troopers Brown-Shirts.

1936- Ollie Johnston got a job as Fred Moore’s assistant at the Walt Disney Studio.

1945- THE FIRST JET FIGHTER ATTACK- In a last ditch attempt to stop the allied armies entering Germany, the Luftwaffe mounted an attack on two captured Rhine river bridges by fifty jet fighters. The Messerschmidt ME-262 Schwalbe (Swallows).
Half never get off the ground, others get lost and the rest don't accomplish anything. The Luftwaffe aces like Adolph Galland thought the jets were ideal for shooting down big B-17 bombers, but Hitler insisted they carried bomb loads, which slowed them down enough for propeller planes to hit them. The experimental jet fuel was so unstable that it had to be mixed by a chemist as it was being poured into the gas tank. If the mixing was done improperly the whole thing could explode on the runway.

1945- Later that day General George Patton led a group of journalists and photographers out to the center of the Rhine bridgehead. One journalist asked his thoughts now that he was breaching Hitler’s vaunted Seigfried Line and daring to go where no foreign soldier had stepped since Napoleon.
As cameras clicked the Patton undid his fly and took a long healthy whiz in the Rhine River. “I waited all morning to do that! Yessir, the pause that refreshes!” My father remembered signal corps photo lab assistants made a brisk business selling copies of the famous incident on left over scraps of enlargement paper. That photo was taken by Tech Sgt. Paul Dougherty of the 737 Tank Battallion.

1957- Art Clokey's Gumby Show. Clokey created the green clay fellow for his USC college thesis film Gumbasia.

1971- US Congress lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

1973-White House attorney John Dean tells President Nixon:" There's a cancer on the Presidency...."

1976- Panamanian middleweight Roberto Duran was being honored in Havana. Fidel Castro casually remarked to Duran “Hey, what do you think would happen if my fighter Teofilo Stevenson met Muhammad Ali?” Duran laughed, ” Ali would kill him!” Duran was suddenly on a plane home that night.

1977- The first Richard Nixon-David Frost interview.

1983- STAR WARS- President Ronald Reagan announced in a nationwide speech the Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed the Star Wars Program. He said US scientists were going to create a protective umbrella of laser satellites in orbit that would shoot down hostile nuclear missiles.
This program would cost trillions and even if it worked it could never stop all the missiles launched in a Soviet first strike. Conservative apologists said that the re-escalation of the cold war arms race drove the Soviets crazy and their inability to keep up with arms spending sped their economic collapse. Star Wars wasted billions of U.S taxpayer dollars before it was stopped.
On the day of the 9-11 World Trade Center Attack National Security Advisor Dr Condoleeza Rice was scheduled to make a major speech announcing the Bush White House resuming of the Star Wars program.

1987- After meeting creator Matt Groening, animators David Silverman, Wes Archer and Bill Kopp began animating the very first Simpson’s short for the Tracy Ullmann Show.

1989- COLD FUSION- Two physicists named Ponds & Fleischman make incredible claims that they had discovered a way to make electric power from Cold Fusion. This would mean limitless cheap power that left little waste. It could even use nuclear waste as a fuel. After a lot of excitement, upon closer scrutiny their formula didn’t work. Oh well.

1990- President George Bush Sr. banned broccoli from the White House.
He joked; "Read My Lips ! I hate Broccoli !"

2003- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, Beating out Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet.
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Yesterday’s Question: Guess the Hispanic: Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Carol Lombard

Answer: Rita Hayworth. Born Margherita Cansino.


History for March 22, 2018
March 22nd, 2018

Quiz: Guess the Hispanic: Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Carole Lombard

Quiz: Which composer was born British? Gustav Holst, Samuel Barber, Charles Ives, Giacomo Puccini, Sergei Rachmaninoff.
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History for 3/22/2018
Birthdays: Anthony Van Dyck, Marcel Marceau, Stephen Sondheim, Karl Malden, Werner Klemperer- Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes, George Benson, James Gavin, Allen Neuharth, Milt Kahl, Fanny Ardant is 69, Lena Olin is 63, Bruno Ganz is 77, Reese Witherspoon is 42, William Shatner is 87.

In ancient Rome, this day was the Festival of the Entry of the Tree- when the priestesses of Cybele, Goddess of the Harvest, would lead a procession through the streets carrying pine or palm branches. In later times the Christians took this and made it Palm Sunday.

1622- POWHATAN INDIANS SUPRISE ATTACK JAMESTOWN- While the Pilgrims were still thinking of coming to America and Plymouth Rock was just another rock, Jamestown Virginia was the only English settlement in North America.
After the deaths of Pocahontas and Powhatan in in 1619, Opescanacough- pronounced Opee-cantanoo, became Mamanatowick- overall chief of the Virginia Powhatan Confederation. He had hated the English since the days of John Smith. So he resolved to rid his land of the white settlers once and for all with a simultaneous assault on them from all sides on the same day.
The settlers were taken completely by surprise, many while tending their fields. 300 were killed, among them John Rolfe, the husband of the late princess Pocahontas.
Despite such heavy losses the English recovered and in a slow war of attrition eventually killed Opescanocough and wiped out the Powhatan people.

1687- Jean Francois Lully was court composer to Louis XIV the "Sun King" and by all accounts a champion opportunist. In an age when the Baton had not come into use for conductors, Lully conducted his orchestra by beating a large pole on the ground to the tempo of the music. One day during a performance he poked a hole in his own foot with the pole and died of blood poisoning.

On his deathbed he asked a priest for Last Rites but the priest refused unless he burned his latest opera "Atys" which the church considered blasphemous. Lully admitted his sins and burned the manuscript of ATYS in front of the priest, who then gave him the sacrament. A friend came in afterward and said:" How could you burn your work?" Lully replied:" Don't worry. I have another copy here in my desk. "

1719- King Frederick Wilhelm Ist announced the end of serfdom in Prussia-Germany.

1820 - Commodore Stephen Decatur was killed in pistol duel with Commodore James Baron outside Wash. D.C. Decatur was a colorful naval hero of the War with Tripoli and War of 1812 who said "My Country Right or Wrong" .

1882- Congress outlaws polygamy.

1894- First Stanley Cup Game- Montreal 3, Ottawa I.

1901- Japan announces that Russia better keep their hands off Korea.

1905-WELTSMACHT (world power) Kaiser Wilhelm in a speech for a dedication ceremony in Bremen tells the Germans that it is their natural right to dominate the world. It was another of his emotionally immature statements that sent chills through an already tense world situation.
We sometimes think German government officials then were like the Nazis, robotic and fanatical. But in the Kaiser’s time many of his officials were just as cynical as anyone else. German diplomats despaired whenever Wilhelm put his foot in his mouth. One attache tried to release an edited text to the press. The Kaiser complained: “Bauer, you’ve left out all the good parts!”
Another time after the Kaiser did a candid interview for the London Globe & Mail where he called the English people a "Race of Mad Bulls." The German ambassador in London said to a colleague "Oh Well, we might as well start packing right now..."

1913- Jack London (White Fang, The Call of the Wild) wrote fellow writers HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill and asked them how much they get paid. He was unsure what to charge.

1933- The first SS run concentration camp Dachau opened.

1935- The first regular electronic television service began in Berlin as Deutscher Fernseh Rundfunk. Broadcasting from the Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, it used a 180-line system, and was on air for 90 minutes, three times a week. Very few receivers were ever privately owned, and viewers went instead to Fernsehstuben (television parlors). During the 1936 Summer Olympics, broadcasts, up to eight hours a day, took place in Berlin and Hamburg.

1944- When the evidence became overwhelming President Franklin Roosevelt in a national radio address first told the American people of Hitler’s holocaust of the Jews. He warned that all persons aiding in these war crimes would be hunted down. Still no attempt was ever made to bomb Auschwitz, Dachau or even the railroad links to them. US Immigration rules had been tightened since 1938. Although Jewish groups had complained for years, the US public never really understood the full horror of the death camps until the film footage returned from the land armies a full year later.

1945- Several Arab nations including Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt form the Arab League. Their goal is the eventual unity of all Arab peoples from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, but about the only thing they all agreed on was hostility to a Jewish state in Israel. Today the Arab League is trying to stop the fighting in Syria without much luck.

1947- President Truman signed an Executive Order # 9835 ordering background checks of all government employees to see if they were commies, and to take a Oath of Loyalty to the United States. Two million took the oath, only 129 were sacked for refusing.

1958- Hollywood producer Mike Todd was killed in a small plane crash. He produced hit movies like Around the World in 80 Days and romanced starlets like Gypsy Rose Lee and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Todd had been married for one year and she was devastated by the accident. Years and many marriages later Taylor said Mike Todd was the only man she actually loved.

1960- Arthur Shawlow and Charles Townes patented the laser beam. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER. Pussycats rejoice!

1970- The Beatles break up. Paul McCartney filed papers in a London court for a formal dissolving of the Fab Fours partnership.

1972- Concluding a five-year study, the National Commission on Drug Abuse recommended ending all penalties and laws prohibiting marijuana.
No one in authority listened to them.

1972- Congress passed the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, forbidding any discrimination by sex. The ERA was first proposed by women’s rights groups in 1923. With the heady atmosphere of Women’s Liberation in the early 70s the amendment seemed a no-brainer, even Ronald Reagan supported it. However the Conservative backlash led by anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly slowly stunted its ability to win over states for ratification. The ERA died unratified in 1982.

1978- Karl Wallenda, 73 year old scion of the daredevil family the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death from a tightrope between two resort hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1991- Ivana Trump divorced Donald Trump. A celebrated court case ensued to see how the huge Trump fortune would be divided. Newspapers cry Ivanna More Money!

1995- First day of shooting on that utterly classic film- Dinosaur Valley Girls!

2004- Israeli missiles blew up Sheik Ahmed Yasin, the quadriplegic founder of the Palestinian group Hamas.
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Yesterdays Quiz: Which composer was born British? Gustav Holst, Samuel Barber, Charles Ives, Giacomo Puccini, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Answer: Gustav Holst. His parents were Norwegian immigrants, but he was born, lived and died an Englishman.


March 21, 2018
March 21st, 2018

Todays Question: Which composer was born British? Gustav Holst, Samuel Barber, Charles Ives, Giacomo Puccini, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What opera ends with the two lovers being buried alive, then they sing a beautiful love duet as they suffocate?
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History for 3/21/2018
Birthdays: Plato, Johann Sebastian Bach, Benito Juarez, Modest Mussorgsky, Fats Waller, Josef Pulitzer, Flo Ziegfield, Bronco Billy Anderson, Rev Ralph Abernathy, Armand Hammer, Harold Robbins, Matthew Broderick is 56, Gary Oldman is 60, James Coco, Timothy Dalton is 72, Rosie O’Donnell is 56, animator Kathy Zielinski.

It’s National Puppy Day!

Today in Switzerland this is the Feast of St. Nicholas Von Flue, who was married, had ten children, and made war. In 1481 when the Swiss Confederation was in danger of breaking apart Swiss leaders came to his monk's cell to seek his advice. Though he could neither read nor write, he worked out the Compromise of Stans, which saved peace and Swiss unity forevermore.

717 A.D. Battle of Vinciacus- Charles Martel, aka Charles the Hammer", defeated Ragenfridus and the Merovingian pretenders and assured the Carolingian line on the throne of the Franks, aka the French. Charles Martel’s grandson was Charlemagne. His great-grandson Pippin was made into a musical by Bob Fosse and Stephen Schwarz in the 1970's. A musical called "Ragenfridus!" just doesn't have the same ring.

1617-Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, died at Gravesend, England after being taken off the homeward bound ship, too ill with smallpox to continue. She was 21. Her children with John Rolfe became the beginnings of one of the largest families in Virginia, with many scions of the Old Dominion tracing their ancestry to Pocahontas.

1740- Composer Antonio Vivaldi - Il Pietro Rosso- the Red Priest, conducted his last concert at the Ospedale Della Pietra in Venice. It was a home for orphaned girls so it was an all-girl orchestra. The 64 year old Vivaldi later went to Vienna to see if he could get any commissions from the Austrian Emperor, but caught an illness on the way and died.

1804- The Duc D'Enghein shot by firing squad. The Bourbon nobleman was setting up a conspiracy just beyond the French border in Germany to overthrow the French Republic and re-establish the king. Napoleon sent a covert strike force of fast riding cavalry across the border to kidnap him and bring him back. Napoleon prided himself on not executing political dissenters like the masses that were guillotined in the Revolution. But this Duke was too dangerous to keep alive. Still, the cold-bloodedness of this action bothered Napoleon, and he referred to it often with regret.

1804-THE CODE NAPOLEON- That same day the French Assembly gave final approval to Napoleon’s revising the legal system. The French civil law courts had been in a hopeless muddle with 368 separate regional law codes some dating back to the Middle Ages. Nappy tackled the problem like he did a battle. He presided over 35 of 87 all day meetings of the jurists- once waking up the drowsy legislators with the cry “Come Gentlemen, Let us Earn our Salaries!” The CODE NAPOLEON became the basis for all French civil property rights and family law and is still in use in Louisiana and Quebec Canada today. Napoleon said: ” When the memory of my forty battlefield victories have faded, what will live forever is my Civil Code.”

1829- The British Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington had to work hard to get a Bill of Catholic Emancipation through Parliament. This day he had to fight a duel with an opposition MP, a Lord Winchelsea. They popped away at each other without doing any harm, and that seemed to satisfy everyone’s honor.

1859- The first public zoo opened in the U.S.

1864- Nevada statehood. Lincoln at this time was pushing several territories into statehood early so he could get emancipation and Civil rights legislation through congress with a majority against the rebellious Southern States.

1871- William Stanley set out to find Dr. David Livingstone. Livingstone was an explorer –missionary who had disappeared into the African jungle. No one had heard from for two years. Stanley, an illegitimate Welshman, had been a soldier in the American Civil War and fought on both sides. He undertook this African expedition financed by the New York Herald. His Swahili name was “Bula Matari” the Breaker of Rocks.

1871- German Chancellor Bismarck convened the first Reischtag (parliament) of the unified Germany.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson hosted a private screening of D.W. Griffith’s film “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House.

1917- Buster Keaton first stepped in front of a movie camera.

1918- The Ludendorf Offensive (second battle of the Somme) begins. When Lenin took over Russia he immediately made peace with the Germans to end the Great War in the East. This freed up one million German troops for the Western Front. German strategist Erich Von Ludendorf hurled them into one last attack to win the war before the American armies could arrive in significant numbers. Ludendorf (who was such a stiff Prussian it was said he made love with his monocle on.) called the action "Kaiserschlacht" ( Kaiser's Battle") and he promised the Kaiser that he would be in Paris by April 1st. When this attack was stopped by the fresh American forces, the German High Command admitted their chances of winning the World War I were now kaput.

1921- Chicago mobster Big Jim Colosimo was murdered by a new face in gangsterdom, a hitman for Johnny Torrio named Alfonso “Scarface” Capone. When Al Capone became famous, he showed his appreciation to Torrio by having him rubbed out too.

1921- Russian Communist leader Nicholai Lenin announced at a party conference the New Economic Policy. Russian state controls applied too quickly combined with the hardships of a civil war had destroyed the Russian economic infrastructure. A terrible famine raged. The New Economic Policy allowed for a certain amount of capitalism and free trade to occur until Russia could get back on her feet again. Stalin replaced the NEP with the first Five Year Plan in 1928.

1933- On the anniversary of Bismarck's parliament the Nazis dominated Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, giving newly elected Chancellor Adolph Hitler complete dictatorial powers to combat anarchy and terrorism. Hitler kept elderly President Hindenburg around for image sake until his death a year later. The Weimar Republic ended and the Third Reich began. Also passed today was an edict called the Heimtuckegesetz, or Malicious Practices Law, which made it a crime to criticize the Nazis.

1935- Persia renamed Iran and Mesopotamia renamed Iraq.

1951- HOLLYWOOD COMMIES- House UnAmerican Acitivities Commitee (HUAC) under Judge J. Parnell Thomas moves from Washington and sets up in Hollywood to continue rooting out Communist subversion in the movies. They began in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and later move to the federal building downtown.

Their concerns weren’t total fantasy, actor Sterling Hayden confessed he was ordered by his communist operatives to try and influence the Screen Actor’s Guild. Still the point remains whether the authorities overreaction was justified and whether Congress could get more publicity looking for spies in Tinseltown than the Department of Games and Fisheries.

Out of 15,000 people who made a living in the movies and television, only 295 were ever proven or confessed communists. It was an open secret that for $5,000 delivered to the right committee member, your dossier would be moved to the bottom of the pile. The hearings stopped in 1956, the blacklist was broken in 1960 and Judge J. Parnell Thomas went to jail himself for embezzlement.

1952- DJ Alan Freed put on an event of the new pop music in Cleveland Ohio. Called the MoonDog Coronation Ball, it was the very first Rock Concert.

1960- THE SHARPEVILLE MASSACRE- White South African police confronting a peaceful demonstration in the black township of Sharpeville open fire with machine guns into the crowd, killing 69 and injuring hundreds. Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress leaders abandon for a time peaceful protest and form a militant wing of their movement- Spear of the Nation.

1961- The Beatles first perform at the Cavern Club in Hamburg Germany.

1961- based on the success of the first Playboy Club in Chicago, Playboy Clubs with their Bunny waitresses opened in New York, Miami and LA.

1963- On orders from Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Alcatraz Prison was closed.

1963- Barbara Streisand married Elliot Gould.

1965- Rev Dr Martin Luther King’s civil rights marchers reached Montgomery from Selma.

1976- ASPEN MURDER- Jet setter Claudine Longet, a model who was formerly married to singer Andy Williams, shot and killed her lover Spider Sabich, a Olympic skiing champion. Even though their relationship was foundering she said it was an accident, that the Luger went off in his abdomen when he was showing her how to use it. In the bathroom. Uh Huh. Imagine being in the bathroom shaving and your girlfriend pops in “Honey, I’m having problems with the safety on my Luger.. Here darling I’ll just –oops!”
She spent 30 days in jail for negligent manslaughter, then married her defense attorney.

1980- Mafia capo Angelo Bruno received a shotgun blast to the head while he sat in his car after dinner. The Genovese family had his former capo Phil "Chicken Man" Testa take over rackets in Atlantic City.

1988- the Screen Actor's Guild hits the bricks for the fourth time in twenty years, this time striking Hollywood for residuals for cable and videocassette income.

2006- The first Tweet sent on the new format Twitter. Scientist Jack Dorsey tweeted his friends “ Setting up my twttr…” Twitter went public that July.

2010- Pres Obama signed the Affordable Care Act ( aka Obamacare) into law.
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Yesterday’s Question: What opera ends with the two lovers being buried alive, then they sing a beautiful love duet as they suffocate?

Answer: Aida. Verdi left his librettist and director strict instructions that they not sound in pain or gasping for air as they sing the last duet, but go to sleep gently.


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