TomSito.com - TOM'S BLOG

Question: In these times of political turmoil, who appealed to “ The Better Angels of our Nature.”..?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who first said, “ There’s a method to his madness”..?
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History for 1/24/2021
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Hadrian AD117, Frederick the Great, Farinelli the Castrato-1707, Pierre De Beaumarchais, Swedish King Gustavus III, Edith Wharton, German Field Marshal Model, Sharon Tate, Ernest Borgnine, Mary Lou Rhetton, John Belushi, Disney director Wilfred Jackson, Warren Zevon, Yakov Smirnoff, Daniel Auteuil is 70, Orel Roberts, Natassia Kinski is 62

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

1075- In a direct challenge to Papal authority German Emperor Henry IV held an ecclesiastical council at Worms where he declared Pope Gregory VII to be a “licentious false monk” and ordered him deposed. The Pope responded by excommunicating Henry. What happened? See tomorrow.

1848- James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill, California. This event will spark the first big gold rush the following year, the '49 ers. Swiss immigrant John Sutter had bought the land from the last Russian settlers and set up his town while still under Mexican rule. Marshall operated his sawmill. Ironically the gold rush ruined them both. Thousands of prospectors ignored his jurisdiction claims, trampled his crops and slaughtered his herds for food. Within a year or two They were broke and spent the rest of their lives trying to get the US Government to reimburse him. John Sutter was also annoyed that the new settlement of Sacramento was not named Sutterville.

1863- Arizona Territory was formed out of New Mexico. The Southern Confederacy at one time tried to make it one of their states. Around this same time Lincoln also pushed statehood for Nevada, and West Virginia. He was hoping to stack Congress for his Constitutional amendments outlawing slavery, and granting full citizenship and voting rights to African-Americans.

1865- The Pioneer Oil Company set up to prospect for petroleum in the L.A. area.

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

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

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

1901- Activist Emily Hobhouse toured one of Lord Kitchener’s “concentration camps” that the British were using to corral in the Boer guerrillas in South Africa. This one was near Bloemfontein. Her reporting of the poor sanitation conditions and hardships of the Boer civilians there caused a scandal back home. Four out of five South Africans killed in the Boer War were civilians.

1902- Denmark sold the Virgin Islands to the USA.

1916- The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the federal Income Tax.

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

1936- The first motion picture of a solar eclipse taken from a dirigible, The Los Angeles.

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

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

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

1972- Japanese soldier Soichi Yokoi was found in the jungles of Guam unaware that World War Two had ended 27 years earlier. He had stolen a radio and listened to the news. But he thought the stories of American forces in Korea and Vietnam were just propaganda. He was returned to Japan a healthy, if somewhat confused hero.
He died peacefully in 1997.

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

1986 –The Voyager 2 space probe flew by Uranus. So far the only spaceprobe to ever visit that planet. It discovered its unusual rotation and that it had rings like Saturn, but they are thin and dark grey, due to the weak light of the sun.

1989- Serial killer Ted Bundy was executed by electric chair.

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

2006- The Walt Disney Company acquired CG animation studio Pixar. Apple and Pixar head Steve Jobs got a seat on Disney Board, Ed Catmull was named head of the studio, and director John Lasseter became its creative head.

2020- The government of China became the first to lock down their country to combat the spreading pandemic of Covid 19.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who first said, “ There’s a method to his madness”..?

Answer: In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, usurper King Claudius becomes suspicious that his nephew Hamlet might only be pretending to be insane. “ If this be madness, there may be method in it…”

Quiz: Who first said, “ There’s a method to his madness”..?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Why is another term for being drunk to be “ three sheets to the wind”?
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History for Jan 23, 2021
Birthdays: Musio Clementi, Edouard Manet, Sergei Eisenstein, Derek Walcott, Ernie
Kovacs, Stendahl, Jean Moreau, Randolph Scott, Dan Duryea, Rutger Hauer, Warner Bros animator Manny Davis, Disney animation director Dave Hand, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Mariska Hargitay is 57, Sonny Chiba. Animator Phil Mendez, Animator Peter Sohn.

St. Idelfonso's Day- He was archbishop of Toledo and had a vision one day in
which the Virgin Mary appeared and gave him a chausible (cloak).

1556- The worst earthquake ever recorded, killed 830,000 people in Zhanzshi China.

1789- Georgetown University founded near what will be Washington D.C.

1795- A fleet of 14 Dutch warships got stuck in the ice and surrendered to attacking French cavalry.

1806- Prime Minister Pitt the Younger dies at 46. A heavy port drinker, he had a
stroke after getting the news of Napoleon's big victory at Austerlitz over his coalition partners Russia and Austria. As the maps and dispatches dropped from his lap, his last words were: “Oh My Country!"
Another source said his dying words were actually "Oh I wish I had another one of Mrs. Bellamy's Meat Pies!" Suspiciously, the source of that anecdote was a spokesman for the Bellamy's Meat Pies Company.

1812- The largest earthquake ever in North America. It was not in California but in the
Mississippi Valley near New Madrid, Missouri. The quake was felt as far south as
New Orleans where it moved the mouth of the Mississippi River, and it rattled store
windows in New York City and rang church bells in Boston . Legend has it Shawnee indian leader Tecumseh had predicted it. He told Indians who had signed treaties with the whites:" I will stamp my foot, then you will know the anger of the Great Spirit."

1862- Here’s a toast to that great American- Count Agoston Haraszthy! Who? Next
time you raise a glass of Chardonnay or Pinot think of him. This day Haraszthy bought land in the Sonoma Valley and imported cuttings from 1,000 varieties of European wine grapes. The Hungarian Count jumpstarted the California wine industry.

1867- New York City residents awoke this day to find the East River separating them
and the City of Brooklyn had frozen solid. It stayed that way for several weeks
wreaking havoc among the ship traffic and commerce. Everyone realized they needed
a bridge. Plans for a Brooklyn Bridge was begun soon after.

1879- The Defense of Rourkes Drift. After the British invasion force was annihilated
by the Zulus at the Battle of Ishandlwana the other day, a ragtag group of stragglers,
wounded and drivers behind an improvised wall of piled up oatmeal sacks held off
the entire Zulu army. The first Victoria Crosses were given out over this engagement.
More were given here than at D-Day. One went to a sergeant who later had it stolen
off the wall of his pub. He petitioned the government and got another one....and
that too was stolen. When he died in 1911 he had the VC embellished on his tombstone....and,..you guessed it....it was stolen.

1913- A group of Turkish army officers led by Enver Bey took over the government from the despotic rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid IV, and tried to modernize things, keeping the Sultan as a figurehead. Enver’s movement created the name The Young Turks.

1920- The Netherlands refused to extradite deposed Kaiser Wilhelm to the victorious Allies for trial. He was granted asylum and lived peacefully until his death in 1941.

1922- The first insulin injection given in Toronto by doctors Banting and Macleod
to diabetic patient Leonard Thompson.

1930- Ivory Snow soap invented. Advertised as 'pure as the driven snow'. In 1969 the model on the Ivory Snow detergent box, Marilyn Chambers, became a notorious porn star. The baby she held in the photo was actress Brooke Shields.

1941- Aviator Charles Lindbergh testified before Congress to express his opposition
to lend lease aid to Britain and he urged America to negotiate a neutrality pact
with Hitler.

1942- Tupperware invented by Charles Tupper.

1943- The last Luftwaffe plane evacuated wounded and mail out from the German 6th
Army surrounded at Stalingrad. Field Marshal Von Paulus gave a final message to a colonel scheduled to be evacuated out:" Tell them that the Sixth Army
has been betrayed by the Supreme Command."
As the last three JU-52s took off, the Pitomnik Airfield was overrun. Russian T-34 tanks clanked down the runway casually firing shells into parked planes. Most of the freezing soldiers last letters, full of anger with Hitler, were ordered destroyed by Goebbels Propaganda Ministry. Some specimens survived and were published only recently.

1943- A group of top German generals began secret meetings on how to kill Hitler and stop the war. Their conspiracy would culminate in the Operation Valhalla, the July 20th Generals plot.

1957- The Disneyland TV show premiered” Our Friend, the Atom.”

1968- THE PUEBLO INCIDENT- While America was watching the Battle of Que Sanh in Vietnam, a US Navy spy ship doing CIA intelligence work was captured in North Korean waters. The hostage ordeal mesmerized the public for weeks and the sailors were finally released after a long captivity and humiliating show-trials. After his release,
the commander, Capt. Lloyd Bucher retired from the navy, went to Art Center in Pasadena and became an illustrator.

1974- The U.S. Congress authorized the building of the Alaska Oil pipeline.

1978- In Woodland Hills Terry Kath, the lead singer of the group Chicago, killed
himself when he playfully put a pistol to his head. His last words were: "Don't
worry. It's not loaded, see...?"

1983- TV series The A Team, making a celebrity out of a Mohawk and bling wearing former bouncer named Mr. T. “ I pity the fool!”

1989- Artist Salvador Dali’ died. Rushing to leave as much money as possible for
his family, his agents had the old dying artist autograph reams of blank paper they intended to print Dali’ lithographs on later.

2004- Satellite TV dish installer Jay McNeil of Paduca Kentucky was trying out a
new telescope when he discovered a nebula in space. It’s now called McNeil’s Nebula.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is another term for being drunk to be “ three sheets to the wind”?

ANSWER: In the Age of Sail, a sheet was a term for a rope that you tied a sail down with. So three sheets loose in the wind meant the sail was left to flap around wildly, like most drunk people do.

Quiz: Why is another term for being drunk to be “ three sheets to the wind”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Joe Biden is now the oldest man to be U.S. President. Who was the youngest?
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History for 1/22/2021
St. Vincents Day- "If Vincents Day be Rainy Weather, shall rain then 30 days together.”

Birthdays: Sir Francis Bacon, D.W. Griffith, Lord Byron, August Strindberg, Andre Marie Ampere (electric Amps), 1960’s UN Secretary General U-Thant, Ann Southern, Sam Cooke, John Hurt, George McManus, Joseph Waumbaugh, J.J. Johnson, Seymour Cassell, Jim Jarmusch is 67, Linda Blair is 62, Piper Laurie is 88, Diane Lane is 55

1503- Pope Alexander VI Borgia has his enemy Cardinal Orsini poisoned while imprisoned in the Vatican.

1506- THE SWISS GUARDS. Many European monarchs hired foreign mercenaries to be their personal bodyguards. They were often more reliable than their own subjects. The most famous were the Swiss. While the Swiss home cantons stayed at peace, her hardy mountaineers hired out as mercenary troops all over Europe. Swiss had a reputation as incorruptible and tough fighters. This day the warrior Pope Julius II hired a troop of Swiss and had Michelangelo design their uniforms. The Swiss Guards still guard the Vatican today, and are still recruited from the non-commissioned officers of the Swiss Army.

1522- Andreas Carstadt, an early follower of Martin Luther, set a new precedent by being a priest who openly got married. He was forty, she was fifteen.

1552- Because Henry VIII’s child was only ten at the time of the old king’s death Edward Seymour the Duke of Somerset ruled England as regent-administrator. But Somerset’s rule was troubled with corruption and religious friction between Catholics and Protestants. His own brother Thomas Seymour the Lord High Admiral was executed for trying to become king. Somerset soon fell and was replaced by the Duke of Northumberland. He charged Somerset with treason based on evidence given by Sir Thomas Palmer. Today Somerset’s head was cut off. Later Northumberland and Palmer lost their heads too. They confessed on the scaffold that they had fabricated the charges against Somerset.

1555- THE FIRES OF SMITHFIELD. When Mary the Catholic daughter of Henry VIII became queen she at first tried to be lenient towards her Protestant subjects. But continuous plots by Protestant nobility, and her own desire to restore England to the old faith hardened her heart. This day she began the mass trials and executions of those accused of Protestant heresy. Six clergymen including the Bishop of Gloucester were sentenced and burned at the stake. Hundreds more would follow. Even Spanish King Philip II urged Mary to cool it.
Mary’s executioners added a new twist to the old system of burning at the stake. Before lighting the bonfire, a bag of gunpowder was stuffed between your legs, so you went out with a bang. Bloody Mary and her cruelty in the name of Roman Catholicism all but convinced the English people to stay Anglican.

1787- 17 year old French cadet named Napoleon Bonaparte, on furlough in Paris, wrote in his diary that after exhausting negotiations with a streetwalker he "…sampled the joys of Woman for the first time.." Today he’d do an Instagram post.

1840- The first English colonists reach New Zealand.

1863- THE MUD MARCH- Union General Ambrose Burnside (who created the fashion for "side-burns") tried to avenge his humiliating defeat at Fredericksburg by a winter march up the Rappahannock River to maneuver around Robert E. Lee. In so doing he discovered why all pre-industrial age armies took the winter off. Burnsides army was pelted by blinding sleet storms and bogged down in oceans of gooey mud. When Burnside finally called it quits he had as many casualties from sickness as if had he fought a battle. A bitter army joke based on a children’s prayer went:
"Now I lay me down to Sleep, In mud that’s eighteen fathoms Deep."
"If you can’t see me when we Awake, please dig me up with an oyster Rake."

1879-Battle of ISHANDLWANA- The worst defeat ever inflicted by native peoples on a modern western army. The British thought they were brushing out of the way just another African spear throwing tribe when they attacked the Zulu Empire. They were unconcerned that the Zulu marched in regiments -impis, had generals -indunas and practiced strategy and tactics. A Zulu impi was trained to run in tight formation for 20 miles barefoot then fight a battle. Lord Chelmsford had invaded Zululand searching for the Zulu army when he was tricked by a simple diversion into dividing his forces. The Zulu then flanked Chelmsford’s force in a maneuver Napoleon would have admired, fell on his camp and wiped out two regiments of the 24th Welch Fusiliers.
It was a massacre similar to Custer at the Little Big Horn.

Lord Chelmsford and his staff were eating lunch several miles away when an aide noticed in his telescope flashing and running around the base camp. Lord Chelmsford dismissed it as nothing but sent a courier to investigate. The courier at first saw men in red coats and white pith helmets walking amongst the tents. As he got closer he noticed that they all had black faces.

1901- Queen Victoria died after a reign of 64 years, the longest for a British monarch until Elizabeth II. When she assumed the throne at age 19 in 1837 there were still many alive who remembered the Battle of Waterloo and white periwigs. She died in a world of electric lights, telephones, autos and motion pictures.

1912- The first bridgeway connecting Key West and the Florida Keys opened.

1912- U.S. Marines occupied the Chinese city of Tientsin to "protect American commercial interests".

1918- A Manitoba judge tries to outlaw movie comedies, because they tend to make the public "too frivolous".

1930- Work began on the foundation of the Empire State Building in New York.

1938- On a bare stage, Thorton Wilder’s play Our Town premiered.

1939- At Columbia University for the first time scientists split a uranium atom.

1944-Argentine Colonel Juan Peron first met radio actress Eva Duarte or Evita.

1944- ANZIO- The Allied armies advancing up the Italian boot had been fought to a standstill by fierce German resistance around Monte Cassino north of Naples -the Gustav Line. So the decision was made to amphibiously land a large invasion force in the rear of the German army with the intention of taking Rome. They completely surprised the enemy and their scouts reported the road into Rome was wide open. But the American commander General Lucas hesitated.
In the meantime the Germans recovered and rushed up elite SS divisions that turned the battle into a bloody stalemate. Churchill said: "I thought we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a beached whale!" Instead of two days, the allies didn’t take Rome until June 4th, five months later.

1947- Hollywood first commercial television station KTLA went on the air for regular broadcasting. At the time in all of Los Angeles there were only 350 TV sets.

1949- Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong) and the Communists captured Peking (Beijing).

1949- Tex Avery’s cartoon "Bad Luck Blackie".

1950- Preston Tucker tried to compete with the big auto giants like Ford and Chrysler with his revolutionary designed Tucker Automobile. But the giants bogged him down in court with charges of fraud. This day he was acquitted of all charges but the legal expenses ruined him. Only 40 Tuckers were ever made. Francis Ford Coppola made a movie about his life.

1951- During Winter baseball tryouts a promising young left-handed pitcher from Cuba was scouted by the New York Yankees. But after losing a game for the Washington Senators and getting dropped from their roster, he gave up on sports to pursue a career in politics- Fidel Castro.

1954- The Los Angeles Fire Department is ordered by federal courts to integrate.

1968-T.V. comedy review show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In premiered. It launched the careers of Lilly Tomlin, Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan. You bet your sweet Bippy!

1972- In an interview with Melody Maker magazine, rocker David Bowie outed himself and said he was gay. Technically he would be bi-sexual since his wife Angela did catch him in bed with Bianca Jagger. Others called him a closet-heterosexual.

1973- While President Richard Nixon celebrated his second inaugural with a concert, Leonard Bernstein conducted a Concert for Peace at the Washington Cathedral. While Nixon’s orchestra played his favorite classical piece Tchaikovsky’s Overture 1812 with real cannons, Bernstein played Haydn’s Mass in a Time of War to 15,000 people against the War in Vietnam.

1973- The Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court Decision 7-2 legalizing abortion. Before 1880 most abortion practices were legal, they were referred to as "quickening". The first prohibitions were more about banning dangerous quack drugs used in the process.

1975- Hollywood agents Ron Meyer and Michael Ovitz leave William Morris and form the Creative Artists Agency, or CAA.

1977- The day after his inauguration President Jimmy Carter was shown the first pictures from the KH-11, the first imaging orbital spy satellite. An American mole sold the technology to the Russian KGB a year later and soon France, Britain and Israel also had spy satellites in orbit.

1984- Amazon Indians attack an oil drilling crew with blowguns.

1984- Apple released the Macintosh I personal computer.
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Yesterday’s Question: Joe Biden is now the oldest man to be U.S. President. Who was the youngest?

Answer: Theodore Roosevelt, who became president at age 42 after William McKinley was assassinated.

Quiz: Joe Biden is now the oldest man to be U.S. President. Who was the youngest?

Question: Why is the board of senior ministers around a head of state called a cabinet?
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History for 1/21/2021
Birthdays: Leadbelly (Harlan Ledbetter), Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, J. Carol Naish, Tele Savalas, Christian Dior, Placido Domingo, Wolfman Jack, Paul Scofield, Robby Benson, Jack Nicklaus, Benny Hill, Emma Bunton- Baby Spice of the Spice Girls, Gena Davis is 65, Ken Leung is 51

1188- THE THIRD CRUSADE DECLARED- In reaction to the news of Saladin's capture of Jerusalem, King Henry II of England, Phillip Augustus of France and Conrad the Emperor of Germany "take the Cross", to invade the Holy Land. Henry died before the army departed and was replaced by his son Richard the Lionhearted. Every morning before breakfast and every night before retiring, all the knights of the Crusade would raise one steel-clad fist towards the east, and to the sound of massed trumpets they would all shout: " AEIDEUVA! AEIDEUVA! SANCTUS SEPULCHORUM!!" Help, Help to the Holy Sepulcher!

1535- Fun-loving King Francis I of France had been tolerant to the Reformation until over-zealous French Protestants tried to kill him. This day he responded by holding a solemn Catholic Mass in Notre Dame. The highlight of the show was the burning of six heretics. Francis had them tied to ladders and raised and lowered over a slow fire, to prolong their suffering.

1649- King Charles I was put on trial by the English Parliament for treason.

1789- The first American novel published- The Power of Sympathy: An Epistolary Romance by William Hill Brown.

1793- KING LOUIS XVI GUILLOTINED- For three years since the Bastille fell the French King tried to play a constitutional monarch while conspiring with the other European monarchs to crush the French Revolution. It was a game that was too subtle for him. When foreign armies invaded France, and declared their intention to remake Louis an absolute ruler, the revolutionary government condemned him to death.
Citizen Capet, so named for an old family name of French kings, mounted the scaffold at Place de La Concorde currently where the U.S. Embassy is. He tried to speak to the people but the drummers were ordered to drown him out. As the blade fell his chaplain shouted: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!" SPLAT!
The revolutionaries then stuck his head between his legs and threw him in a hole. Where the site of the Chapel Expiatore is today. The court executioner, Charles Henri Samson, wore pistols under his coat in case people tried to rush the guillotine. He usually never felt remorse for his victims ("I am not killing them, the State is") but this one bothered him. He stayed away from home for two nights and would later hide escaped political prisoners in his cellar.

1850- THE CLAY COMPROMISE. Senator Henry Clay crossed dark snow covered Washington streets for a late night meeting with Daniel Webster. President Zachary Taylor had just put forward in Congress California's application for admission to the Union as a non-slave holding state. Now the South was angrily threatening secession and civil war. Clay and Webster worked out a deal, called the Clay Compromise, which would grant concessions to both sides in exchange for cooperation. Northern man Webster probably sacrificed his last chance to be President by backing the controversial deal but the Compromise of 1850 succeeded in delaying the Civil War for ten more years.

1861- SECESSION! COLLAPSE! President-elect Lincoln was still packing his bags in Springfield and writing out the luggage tags in his own hand "A. Lincoln, White House, Washington, D.C.", while state after state of the South voted to leave the Union and join the new Confederacy. On this date Mississippi senator and former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis resigned from the Congress. As he left the Senate, Georgia senator Robert Toombs turned around and declared out loud to the Speakers chair:" The Union sir, is Dissolved!" Toombs had to hire a carriage to take him South because his personal slaves had run off to be free.
The Mormons of Utah were in an open state of rebellion, New Jersey and New York City talked of secession, California talked of pulling out of the union and joining Oregon to make a new country called TransPacifica. Mobs in Baltimore proclaimed Abe Lincoln would never get to Washington alive. Outgoing President James Buchanan said gravely: "I fear I may be the Last President of the United States.."

1899- The Opel motorcar company opened for business.

1916- The National Board of Review outlawed nudity in Hollywood movies.

1923- LENIN DIED. The Soviet dictator died of respiratory failure and cerebral hemorrhage at 54. The lack of a reliable system of succession plagued Communist states. As Lenin lay dying Leon Trotsky, Zioniev, Kamieniev, Krupskaya and a dozen others began a backroom scramble for power. Finally a minor bank robber and terrorist from Tblisi in Georgia who had risen rapidly in the last two years came out above them all- Comrade Kobal, also called Josef Stalin.

1930- Walt’s top animator Ub Iwerks quit The Walt Disney Company.

1935- the conservation group The Wilderness Society created.

1935- Disney animator Ollie Johnston’s first day at the studio, at $17 a week.

1938 -Max Fleischer told his New York cartoon studio they were relocating to Florida.

1938- George Melies, the father of Motion Picture Special Effects, died, He had been reduced selling trinkets in a little store in a Paris train station, but had a bit of the rediscovery by the film community in his final years. On his deathbed he gave his friends a drawing he made of a champagne bottle popping. He said “Laugh, my friends. Laugh with me, laugh for me, because I dream your dreams."

1943- Legendary jazz drummer Gene Krupa was arrested in San Francisco for sending a kid to get him some marijuana. He served 84 of a 90 day sentence.

1950- After a highly publicized trial top State Department official Alger Hiss was found guilty of perjury in a trial that accused him of covering up his connections to Communist agents in Washington. The trial made a national figure of a then little known congressman named Richard Nixon. Hiss served four years in prison, and lived the rest of his life maintaining his innocence.

1958- BADLANDS- Teenagers Charlie Starkweather and Carilann Fugate kill her family and go on a Bonnie & Clyde style crime spree throughout Nebraska, killing 11 people. When they were caught Starkweather pleaded self defense, even against the murder of Fugates infant baby brother. He went to the electric chair. Carilann Fugate did twenty years, yet always denied she was anything more than an unwilling accomplice.
Starkweather had a 'James Dean-Marlon Brando' leatherjacket look and the two teen killers seemed to typify middle America's dread of juvenile delinquency and the 'degenerate Rock and Roll' culture of the 1950's. Their story inspired several films, including 'Badlands".

1959- Former 'Our Gang' child star Carl 'Alfalfa" Switzer was killed in a bar in Mission Hills, Ca. He pulled a knife on a man over a $50 debt on a hunting dog. The man then shot him. He was 32. According to fellow Little Rascal Darla Hood, Switzer was a brute who bullied the other children, and bitter his adult acting career never blossomed.

1977- President Jimmy Carter declared a pardon for all remaining Vietnam War draft resistors.

1992- Disney's Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated film ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

2010- The Supreme Court handed down the Citizen's United Decision. In the case Citizens' United vs. the Federal Election Commission, the Roberts Court ruled that restrictions on corporate donations were limits on free speech. This one ruling opened the floodgates for businesses to spend unlimited money on political candidates.

2017- THE WOMEN’S MARCH. The day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the streets of Washington were jammed with the largest protest march yet seen, over 2 ½ million protestors.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is the board of senior ministers around a head of state called a cabinet?

Answer: In medieval times a king held court in public, and parliament discussed policy in public. But when the King wanted to plan things in private, he invited senior ministers into his private rooms, then called a cabinet.