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July 25, 2018
July 25th, 2018

Quiz: What modern country was known in ancient times as Illyria?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What ancient kingdom had a capitol named Pella?
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History for 7/25/2018
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 of Christianity to answer the questions 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, a 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 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. Recently 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-vengeance". 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 gold, 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.

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 engine 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 small watch that you could strap to your wrist with the clock face showing- the Wristwatch. By World War I wristwatches supplanted pocket watches 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 was a direct order from Lenin.

1920- The French Army occupied Damascus after Lawrence of Arabia and Faisal's All-Arab Congress government failed. Faisal's son was given the Kingdom of Mesopotamia (Iraq) after his claims to the Hejaz region were 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 walked into the French offices of MGM studios and confiscated the six release prints of "Gone With The Wind" sent from America. They were 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 leader of Italy and imprisoned, while the Italian government tried to open negotiations with the allies. Hitler responded by sending commandos to rescue 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 10 cents 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 pleaded guilty to leaving the 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 public figure to do so.

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 very 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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Yesterday’s Question: What ancient kingdom had a capitol named Pella?

Answer: Macedonia.


July 24, 2018
July 24th, 2018

Question: What ancient kingdom had a capitol named Pella?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Can you name the 14 punctuation marks in English grammar? Period, Comma, semicolon….
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History for 7/24/2018
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 48

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- After paddling in birchbark canoes 49 days from Quebec, French explorer Antoine de al Mothe-Cadillac and several families founded 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 in 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 hated one another, they only agreed to meet to humor grandson Temple Franklin.
After an all night argument nothing was settled. Ben Franklin never spoke or wrote to his son ever again. When old Ben died, he left William out of his will. “ It is only what he would have done to me.” Temple Franklin never recovered any salaries Congress owed Ben Franklin, but he did inherit land in New Jersey from his Tory father.

1794-The End of the "Reign of Terror". After 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 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 1,500 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 discovered he had a talent for writing.

1923- Treaty of Lausanne- The western powers ended the Greek-Turkish War and confirm the Turkish Republic's borders from the old Ottoman Empire. The Turks got to keep Anatolia and their Aegean coastline, The French got Syria, The Greeks the Ionian islands, the British got Palestine, the Bolshevik Russians got Yerevan, and the Armenians and Kurds got nothing. Lawrence of Arabia was present, but realized after awhile no one was seriously listening to him, so he left in disgust.

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- Warner's "Haredevil Hare" featuring the first Marvin the Martian. Now where did I put my Pew Illudium Q 36 Explosive Space Modulator?

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

1966- Actor Montgomery Clift died of a heart attack at age 45. When his private nurse Lorenzo James said goodnight to him at 1:00AM, he asked him if he wanted to watch his old movie The Misfits on TV. Clift’s last words were “ Absolutely Not!”

1967- 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 all of his mothers 25 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. After he confessed to juicing (using performance enhancing drugs like Steroids), all his medals were taken away.
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Yesterday’s Question: Can you name the 14 punctuation marks in English grammar? Period, Comma, semicolon….

Answer: Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, parenthesis, brackets, braces, and ellipses.


July 23, 2018
July 23rd, 2018

Quiz: Can you name the 14 punctuation marks in English grammar? Period, Comma, semicolon….

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who won the battle of Gettysburg, Lee or Grant?
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History for 7/23/2018
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 58, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Edie McClurg is 68, Daniel Radcliffe is 30

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 local 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 continous 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 died at age 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 memoirs as the only way to save his family from his bad debts. Writing up to 50 pages a day in constant pain, he refused any painkillers to not cloud his mind. But he coated his throat daily with a mixture of salt water and cocaine. He completed the book only four days before he died. 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 anarchist named Sasha Berksman entered Frick’s office and shot him twice. Frick recovered.

1894- Japanese troops occupied 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 its 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. 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 I until in Nov 1942, when 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 started 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 Wimbledon England, American Don Budge and German Baron Gottfried von Cramm played the game of their lives. Hitler had personally telephoned Von Cramm 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. He was released only after a campaign of protest letters from the worlds top athletes, organized by his old opponent, Dan Budge.

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.

1951-Thelonius Monk recorded the seminal jazz album Straight, No Chaser.

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."

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. 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 George W. Bush administration had cooked the data as an excuse for their 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 quickly buried by the complacent 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 three years later.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who won the battle of Gettysburg, Lee or Grant?

Answer: Neither. It was won by George Gordon Meade.


July 22, 2018
July 22nd, 2018

Question: Who won the battle of Gettysburg, Lee or Grant?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What was a common fact about all of these particular Revolutionary War battles? Battle of Long Island, White Plains, Germantown, Brandywine.
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History for 7/22/2018
Birthdays: Emma Lazarus, Eduard Hopper, Gregor Mendel, Alexander Calder, James Whale, Oscar De La Renta, Rose Kennedy, Stephen Vincent Benet, Jason Robards, Bob Dole, David Spade is 55, Terence Stamp is 81, Danny Glover is 73, Alex Trebek, Bobby Sherman, Don Henley, Alan Mencken, Irene Bedard, William Dafoe is 64, John Leguizamo, Selena Gomez, Albert Brooks is 72- real name Albert Einstein, a nice name but already taken.

1298- William Wallace's Scottish rebels were crushed by English King Edward I Longshanks at the battle of Falkirk.

1378- Viva l’Popolo! Revolt of the Ciompi- Woolworkers seize control of the Florentine
Republic. They were eventually put down. This idea of peasants fed up with the Black
Death and class oppression who rise up against their feudal masters catches on. Peasant revolts break out across Europe- in France the Jacquerie; in England, Wat the Tyner’s revolt.

1502- Amerigo Vespucci and a Portuguese expedition return from exploring the coast
of Brazil. It's popular nowadays to claim Columbus was ripped off by a German
mapmaker from the credit of discovering America, but there's more to it than
that. Columbus went to his grave believing he had discovered the outer coastline
of Asia. Vespucci, after exploring from Brazil up to South Carolina was the first to
present the idea that this new coastline was not Asia, but something quite different.
A new world.

1598- William Shakespeare lists on the Stationers Register, a sort of copyright service, his new play The Merchant of Venice.

1657-Battle of Czarny Ostrow-Poles defeated George Rakoszy the Voivode of Hungary.

1793- THE MACKENZIE EXPEDITION- No, I’m sorry, but Louis & Clark weren’t the first white men to explore the North American Continent to the Pacific. This day a party
of French-Canadian voyageurs and Scottish trappers led by Alexander Mackenzie reached the Georgian Straights in British Columbia ten years earlier. MacKenzie had been trying since 1789 to find the Pacific shore of Canada and stake British claims to
the great Canadian Northwest. In 1790 Mackenzie started out from Lake Athabasca
and followed a river that took him to the Arctic ocean instead of the Pacific -oops!
This time he reached the right salt water.
His 1801 book "Travels to the Pacific" was studied and debated intensively by President Thomas Jefferson and his aide Meriwhether Lewis. It is the prime reason the U.S. plans for the Lewis & Clark expedition to the Pacific were given top priority. For the first time since Christopher Columbus white settlers at last understood just how big the North American continent was. Mackenzie correctly estimated it was about three thousand miles wide.

1812- Battle of Salamanca. The Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon’s lieutenant Marshal Marmont in Spain. Wellington wrote in his report: " We have defeated 40,000
men in 40 minutes ". The battle was preceded by one of the most violent thunderstorms
anyone had ever seen. The troops were more afraid of the lightning bolts than the
cannon . The British noted that all of Wellington’s victories including Waterloo
were always preceded by a rainstorm.

1861- The day after the Battle of Bull Run the victorious Confederate army had no
serious opposition between it and Washington D.C. The Union army had panicked from
their defeat, thrown away their weapons and ran for the hills. If the Johnny Rebs
had marched the 25 miles into Washington and captured Lincoln, the Civil War would
have been over with and Bull Run would have been the American Waterloo. Instead
the Confederate generals sat down to argue amongst themselves who was to blame for
what went wrong in the battle, then a furious outbreak of measles ravaged the badly
sanitized camp. More men died from the measles than combat. The Confederacy let
slip their best chance to win the war in a few weeks instead of four bloody years.
One positive result of the panic after the battle was the Congress authorized the
creation of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Force, to supplant all previous
militias and provost guards to maintain order in the garrisoned city.

1862- EMANCIPATION- President Abraham Lincoln called a secret cabinet meeting at
The White House in the dead of night. Abe opened the session by reading jokes from
a newspaper by humorist Artemus Ward. The cabinet officers exchanged confused glances. Secretary of State William Seward found Abe’s folksy-hillbilly humor annoying. He wondered if the Old Tycoon would ever get to the point. Lincoln then shocked them
all, when he said that he intended to free the slaves by presidential proclamation. This
without the consent of Congress. Seward convinced him not do it until there was
a Union battle victory, because to do so at the then bad state of affairs would
look more like a last act of desperation. In a few weeks the Battle of Antietam
was fought, which wasn’t a great victory, but it was at least it wasn’t an embarrassing
defeat, so then the Emancipation Proclamation was announced.

1864- THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA- Confederate leader John Bell Hood attempted to break the siege of the Atlanta by William Tecumseh Sherman. At the beginning of the fight Sherman’s gifted corps commander General Dan MacPherson was killed by a sniper. MacPherson was admired by the generals of both sides. Had he lived, many predicted he would have been President. When MacPherson’s successor General John Logan asked for orders, Sherman told him "Just Fight’em. Fight them like Hell!" Hoods attempts at a break out failed.

1893 –In Colorado, Katharine L. Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful".

1894- The first true automobile race- from Paris to Rouen.

1898- Russian revolutionary Lenin married Nadehzda Krupskaya.

1916- Anarchists set off a bomb at a Preparedness Day Parade in San Francisco. Ten
killed. Despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence, union leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings were convicted of murder and given life sentences. Mooney was pardoned in 1939 and Billings not until 1961! Oh, uh…sorry about your life there.

1917 –In the provisional government between the fall of the Russian Czar and the
Communist revolution A.P. Kerensky was the leading figure. This day after Prince
Lvov resigned from the government Alexander Kerensky became Russian Prime Minister
and combined it with the defense and justice ministry. He moved his offices into
the Czars palace and began virtual one man rule. It was said Kerensky was very passionate and motivational as a speaker, he just didn’t have many ideas.

1921- Artist Man Ray arrived in Paris determined to go Dada!

1933- Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world. The following
year Post would die in the same plane crash as writer Will Rogers.

1934- Public Enemy #1-John Dillinger was shot down by G-Man Melvin Purvis coming
out of the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. He had just seen Clark
Gable and Myrna Loy in Manhattan Melodrama. Dillinger 's identity was betrayed
by Anna Sage, the Woman in Red, a German-Romanian prostitute who didn't want
to be deported. As they came out of the theater Purvis shouted “ STICKEM UP JOHNNIE!” Dillinger dropped into a crouch and went for his gun. Purvis blew him away. Anna Sage was deported anyway.

1945- In one of the last diplomatic notes to come out of Japan before the atomic bombing, Japan’s Foreign Minister said Japan refused any surrender terms that did keep their Emperor in absolute power.

1946-THE KING DAVID HOTEL- The British headquarters in Palestine
was situated in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. This day a terrorist bomb blew
up the hotel, killing 91 people, and maiming dozens more. It was the work of fringe Israeli guerrillas called the Stern Gang. In 1980 their leader, now Prime Minister Menachem Begin, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Egyptian Anwar Sadat, another former terrorist.

1958- Plan 9 From Outer Space directed by Ed Wood, opened. It has the reputation as the worst movie ever made. Wood coaxed elderly star Bela Lugosi to star in it, but half way though the film he died. Wood shot the remainder of Lugosi’s scenes with his dentist wrapped in a cape covering his face.

1965- Cary Grant married Dyan Cannon.

1967- Jimi Hendrix quit as the opening act for the Monkees.

1977- Walt Disney’s film "The Rescuers" featuring the last work of Disney
master animator Milt Kahl.

1989- Nintendo released in America the Gameboy. Designer Gunpei Yokoi designed it and the unique cross shaped directional fingerpad to replace a joystick control. Nintendo loaded Tetris on to it and it became a worldwide phenomenon. Gunpei Yokoi was killed in a car accident outside Kyoto in 1997.

1991- Jeffrey Dahmer’s final captive, Tracy Edwards, escaped his lair, still handcuffed, and got through to the Milwaukee Police. When officers arrested Dahmer, they found the remains of 11 people in his apartment.

1996- The Daily Show premiered on Comedy Central. John Stewart replaced Craig Kilborn in 1999 and made it famous.

2002- Worldcom files for Chapter 11, up to then the largest bankruptcy in US history. This while the CEO Bernard Ebbers was building himself a new $94 million mansion. Ebbers got 25 years in prison, and Worldcom reorganized as MCI. The following year the Bush Administration awarded them a no-bid contract to build a cellular telephone system in Iraq. Iraqis use the phones to set off remote control bombs.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What was a common fact about all of these particular Revolutionary War battles? Battle of Long Island, White Plains, Germantown, Brandywine.

Answer: They are all battles that George Washington lost.


JUly21, 2018
July 21st, 2018

Quiz: What was a common fact about all of these particular Revolutionary War battles? Battle of Long Island, White Plains, Germantown, Brandywine.

Yesterdays Quiz Answered below: What three words in standard English, all in common use, begin with the letters ‘dw’?
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History for 7/21/2018
Birthdays: Ernest Hemingway, Issac Stern, Marshal McCluhan, Don Knotts, Janet Reno, Gary Trudeau the creator of Doonesbury, Eugen Shuftan would be 125- inventor of the "Shuftan Effect", a cheap way of combining actors with miniatures by shooting through mirrors. All those "Lost World" Cesar Romero fighting the giant Iguanas were done that way. Edward Herman, Robin Williams, Josh Harnett, Norman Jewison is 93

Happy National Zippo Lighter Day. Smoking is bad but Zippos are cool- another one of life’s mysteries.

365AD- The Egyptian city of Alexandria was devastated by an earthquake. The tremor may have toppled the famous Pharos lighthouse. The quake caused the waters of the harbor to recede then return with tsunami force.

1588-the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon, Seville, Corunna and Cadiz to attack England. One of the sailors was playwright and poet Lope De Vega.

1605- The false Dmitri crowned Czar in Moscow. Dmitri was a Lithuanian priest named Grishka who claimed to be the dead child of Ivan the Terrible come back to life. His claim was backed up with a powerful Polish magnate's private army, the Mniszechs. He captured Moscow as Czar Boris Gudunov died but couldn't hold it long.

1784- Abigail Adams went by coach from the English Channel via Canterbury to London to join her husband John Adams. Adams was to assume his post as first ambassador to the Court of Saint James from the new nation of the United States. Abigail wrote of her coach journey how when they passed the area called Blackheath there was fear of robbers and highwaymen. She saw one robber captured, and shuddered that he would soon be hanged. She wrote in her diary:” It is good that such terrible things do not happen in America!” Why, women alone travel the roads in perfect safety!”

1798- "Soldiers! Forty Centuries look down upon you! “The Battle of the Pyramids- Napoleon's cannon mowed down the Mamelukes, who had ruled Egypt since the Crusades. He was so impressed with their courage that he later enlisted a corps of them in his own army. It was speculated around this time the Sphinx lost it's nose. French troops used the Sphinx for target practice. The battle was actually fought a distance from the Pyramids, but Nappy disliked the title Battle of Embaba’s Melon Patch, so Battle of the Pyramids it was.

1821- George IV crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey, but without his Queen Caroline. They couldn't stand one another and he was trying to get a divorce. So when she showed up in her state carriage for the coronation, on the kings orders the Lords and Peers rushed to shut the cathedral doors, leaving her out in the crowd of spectators.

1861- BATTLE OF BULL RUN or FIRST MANASSAS- First major engagement of the Civil War. Irwin McDowell's Yankees and Pierre Beauregard's Confederates had unknowingly adopted the exact same battle plan, feint with right and strike around the left. They would have completely marched around each other if they hadn't blundered together. The North was so confident of victory Washington society turned out with picnic baskets to watch the fun.

What they saw was a horrible Union defeat and they were caught in the mob of panicked soldiers running back to the Capitol called the Great Skeedadddle. Uniforms weren't standard yet and many states sent their men in colorful militia costumes. The union men from Wisconsin wore grey and the Rebels from Pensacola Florida wore blue. Both were shot at by their own sides. Rebel General Thomas Jackson was holding off union assaults when a dying general shouted : "Look, there stands Jackson like a stone wall!" The nickname stuck.

Stonewall Jackson had told his men:" When you charge, howl like furies." For the first time the famous Rebel Yell was heard. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was so nervous he rushed to the battlefield in a locomotive. When he arrived on the scene he tried to make a speech to rally the spirits of some ragged soldiers he thought had fled. Turned out they were Stonewall Jackson's veterans, just resting after they won the battle for him.

Bull Run could have been an American Waterloo, because the Yankee army was completely destroyed, and nothing stood between the southerners and the White House, only 40 miles away. But the gray-backs were also disorganized and exhausted, so the pursuit was called off. The Civil War would not be won in one big battle, but would drag on for four bloody years.

1865- The Civil War over and Abraham Lincoln dead, the hard line cabinet of Pres. Andrew Johnson voted to put Confederate ex-president Jefferson Davis on trial for treason. Former lawyer Davis was hoping for just such a trial; so he could force the issue of the Constitutional legality of secession out into the open and maybe even get a ruling from the Supreme Court. It was just for these reasons that cooler heads prevailed and the treason charge was never acted upon. After two years in prison Davis was quietly released and allowed to retire.

1884- In one of the dirtiest elections in U.S. history, the New York Post broke the story of Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland fathering a child out of wedlock and abandoning the mother. Cleveland admitted paternity but won election anyway, because the Republican James G. Blaine was even worse. Just as Cleveland pioneered the Democratic preoccupation with sex, Blaine pioneered the cozy relationship between the Republicans and big business. He had taken so many kickbacks, his nickname was the Tatooed Man. A leading Protestant divine stood with Blaine and accused the Democratic Party of being “ The Party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." Every Irishman in the country immediately voted for Cleveland. (around forty per cent of the population of New York alone, was Irish at the time). Republicans chanted "Ma, Ma! Where’s My Pa!- Dems countered" He’s Going to the White House, Ha Ha Ha!" another ditty was: "Mary is healthy and so is the Kid, We Voted for Cleveland and we’re damn glad we did!" Aren’t you glad we don’t have dirty elections like that today, boys & girls?

1917-Ford introduces their first truck, the Model TT. It weighed one ton and had a new innovation not in regular automobiles, a reverse gear.

1936- Republican Spanish troops besiege the Fascist fortress of ALCAZAR. They maintained a telephone hookup with the commander, Colonel Moscardo, to try and convince him to surrender. At one point they told him they were going to shoot his son if he didn't give up. The colonel said: " Put my son on the phone!" Hello son?" Put your faith in God, shout Viva Espana, and Die like a Man!" Moscardo never surrendered and the siege was broken.

1944- Democratic Presidential Convention nominates Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri to be Franklin Roosevelt's Vice President on the second ballot. As early as December 1943 the Democratic party knew FDR was a dying man. Whoever was his running mate would in all likelihood become President. With World War II not finished and the United Nations to create, this was a pretty important choice.

The incumbent Vice President was Henry Wallace, an eccentric who had a guru, sent field scientists to China and India to look for traces of teenage Jesus, and who believed Joe Stalin's Russia was the model for the American economy to pull out of the Depression. Democratic Party Chairman Robert Haneghan pulled every string he had to get Wallace off the ticket and Truman on. Truman himself didn't want the job and Roosevelt was promising it to everyone he met.

At last Truman agreed, and Hanaghan barred a pro-Wallace demonstration. He even sent a man with an ax upstairs to threaten the convention organist to stop playing "The Corn Grows High in IOWA" (Wallace's home state). Truman talked to Roosevelt only once or twice before FDR died and Truman had to decide whether to drop the A-Bomb and form the post-war world. Wallace tried a third party presidential run with Chet "the Singing Cowboy" Taylor as running mate in 1948. Robert Haneghan said-"The only epitaph I want on my tombstone is: AT LEAST HE PREVENTED HENRY WALLACE FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT!"

1954- The Fellowship of the Ring, first book of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, first published. C.S. Lewis said the book “came forth like thunder on a summers day..”

1954- The Geneva Accords were signed, dividing French IndoChina into North and South Vietnams. This division was only to be until elections were organized, which never happened. This only set the stage for the terrible Vietnam War that lasted until 1975.

1959- Judge Frederick van Pelt-Bryan ruled that Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence was not pornography and therefore could be sent through the postal system.

1969- “That’s One Small Step for Man..” Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon.

1970- In Egypt the Aswan High Dam completed, finally controlling the annual summer flooding of the Nile.

1971, The New York Times ran an article about Taki 183 on the front page of its inside section, titled "Taki 183" Spawns Pen Pals. Taki was the first graffiti tag artist. Taki was a nickname of a man named Demetrius from 183 St. In the late 1960s-1970s his tag seemed to be everywhere. Although Graffiti has been around since the Egyptians, this helped park the modern fascination.

1974- Constantin Karamanlis returned to Greece from exile to signal the restoration of Greek democracy after the rule of the Colonels Junta fell.

1980- SAG went on strike for actor's residuals from videocassette and cable TV sales.
The actors hit the bricks twice more, in 1988 and 2000.
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Yesterday’s Question: What three words in standard English, all in common use, begin with the letters ‘dw’?

Answer: Dwarf, dwell, and dwindle.


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