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Question: When dining in a wealthy Victorian home, what did you get when you were served terrapin?

Yesterday’s question answered below: When dining in a wealthy Victorian home, what did you get when you were served galantine?
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History for 1/16/2021
Birthdays: Yukon poet Robert Service, The inventor of the pneumatic tire- Andre Michelin 1853, Ethel Merman, Dizzy Dean, Peter Ustinov, Henry Mancini, A.J. Foyt, Marilyn Horne, Sade, Michael Wilding, Eartha Kitt, Debbie Allen is 71, John Carpenter, Diane Fossey, Kate Moss is 47, Tsianina Joelson, Animator Raul Garcia

1761- The British capture Pondicherry, the last French outpost in India.

1786- The Virginia Legislature passed the Ordinance of Religious Freedom, which stated that no man could be forced to join or support any church he didn’t want to. The Ordinance became the basis for the First Amendment to the Constitution.

1865- After resting his army in Savannah, Georgia for Christmas, Yankee General William Tecumseh Sherman started moving his blue columns north towards South Carolina.

1883- Moved to act by the assassination of President James Garfield by a demented civil servant, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, creating rigid merit standards for government jobs and creating the Civil Service Commission. Before this, things ran as the "Spoils System"- after every election hundreds of government jobs were given by the President and his party to party hacks and amateurs as payment for favors. Much uhh…as things are run today.

1891- Three weeks after the Wounded Knee massacre, the last independent warrior bands of Sioux Indians came in and surrendered to the U.S. Cavalry at the Pine Ridge Reservation.

1917-THE ZIMMERMAN TELEGRAM- The reason other than the Lusitania that the U.S. entered World War I. The Kaiser's generals fretted that the unrestricted U-Boat sinkings were strangling Britain, but they may force America into joining the Allies. So they concocted a scheme to keep the Yankees busy on their own side of the world.

On this day, British intelligence handed President Woodrow Wilson an intercepted message from Baron Zimmerman, the German charge d' affaire in New York to the German Ambassador in Mexico City. It relayed an offer from Berlin of an alliance, if Mexico would please invade Texas! The Kaiser promised President Huerta return of the entire U.S. southwest. The Mexican president wasn't enamored with the U.S. lately, but he still declined the offer.
Instead of checking U.S. participation in World War I, the incident all but decided it. Wilson had run for re-election as an anti-war candidate, but after this he was convinced Germany had to be defeated.

1919- In Argentina it was the end of the Sanglante- the Bloody Week. The government crushed a general nationwide strike – 700 killed.

1920- The League of Nations held its first meeting in Paris.

1935- “Ya better come out! We got you surrounded!” Kate Barker, called Ma Barker, died in furious shootout with the FBI at Ocklawaha, Florida. Legend has it they found Ma's body with the smoking tommygun still cradled in her lap. Others say she was only an ignorant hillbilly lady traveling with her boys gang as a cover.
Only one of Ma Barker's sons (Fred) was killed with her. Herman Barker committed suicide at Wichita, Kansas, August 29, 1927, after being blinded by police bullets in a gun battle in which he killed a policeman. Arthur "Doc" Barker was captured by the FBI in Chicago eight days before the shootout that killed Ma and Fred. He was killed attempting to escape from Alcatraz on January 13, 1939. Lloyd "Red" Barker was released from Leavenworth in 1939 after serving seventeen years of a 25-year sentence for mail robbery. He was murdered by his wife at their suburban-Denver home on March 18, 1949.

1936- the first racetrack photo-finish camera installed.

1936- Albert Fish, the Moon Maniac was executed at Sing Sing Prison. The 66 year old Fish had killed ten children and cannibalized their remains. He even went as far as to send a letter to the mother of his last victim describing how he had turned her daughter into a stew. The letter was traced back to him and he was arrested. He almost shorted out the electric chair because he kept his underpants filled with metal sewing needles. As he went to his death he told guards he was looking forward to the electric chair. "it is a thrill I never tried."

1938- Benny Goodman brought the new Swing Music to staid old Carnegie Hall. Count Basie and Harry James joined in to get the tuxedoed crowd dancing in the aisles, then afterwards they all went uptown to the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to watch Count Basies band square off against the legendary Chick Webb. After this triumph, Benny Goodmans’ band would never be the same- Lionel Hampton, Harry James and Gene Krupa all split off to form their own orchestras." That band I had the night I played Carnegie Hall was the best I think I ever had." Goodman said later.

1938- Nylon invented by the Dupont Company.

1939- Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr announced the successful fission of uranium. They asked that it be used for peaceful purposes only. One of their colleagues Dr. Leo Szilard immediately warned the U.S. that they better start a nuclear bomb program, because another friend of Bohr's, Dr. Rudolph Heisenberg, planned to build one for Hitler.

1940- Lee Francis, then Hollywood’s top madam, was busted for prostitution.

1942-Actress Carol Lombard and her mother died in a plane crash at Mt. Potosi Nevada, outside of Las Vegas, while returning from a war bond drive. She was 33. Her husband, movie king Clark Cable was so disconsolate that he volunteered for air force combat squadron instead of doing USO work, and went on dangerous missions trying to get killed.

1942- Japanese armies attacked Burma.

1945- Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg last seen. The diplomat had been covertly smuggling hundreds of Jews out of Nazi occupied Austria by giving them neutral Swedish passports. When the Soviets overran Vienna, Wallenberg disappeared. In 1991 The Russian government admitted that Wallenberg died in Leningrad’s Lubyanka Prison.

1954- THE WAR ON COMICS- Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee chaired the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. They concluded that one of the contributing factors to adolescent moral decay was four-color comic books! The media called comics “The Ten Cent Plague”.
The probe was sparked by a book called The Seduction of the Innocent by psychiatrist Frederic Wertham. He charged among other things that Batman & Robin were gay because when not fighting crime, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson lounged around all day in silk pajamas, with no women! That Superman was a fascist, and Wonder Woman’s strength and independence made her a lesbian!
Despite public testimony by Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Bill Gaines, 350 comic book companies including the EC "Tales from the Crypt" label were driven out of business. The strict comics-code was established. The comic book industry, which had been selling one million books a month, never regained that level of prosperity in the US again.

1962-First day of shooting on the film Dr No with a young actor named Sean Connery in the role of James Bond. Ian Fleming thought the casting of Connery would be a disaster, he had wanted Cary Grant or David Niven.

1970- Col. Mohammar Khaddafyi became premier of Libya, a job he kept until 2011.

1974- Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws first published.

1979- The Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlevi, fled Teheran in the face of the Ayatollah’s fundamentalist revolution.

1980-The silver market collapses, making the Hunt Brothers from two of the richest men in America to two of the poorest.

30 Years Anniv 1991- GULF WAR I - U.S. French, British and Arab air forces began attacking Iraqi-held Kuwait. Sadam, Wild Weazels, Gen Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Republican Guards, Scuds, Smart Bombs and CNN's Peter Arnett hanging a mike out the window of his Baghdad office as the bombs rained down.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: When dining in a wealthy Victorian home, what did you get when you were served galantine?

Answer: Cold boned fish or chicken, served in gelatin aspic.

Quiz: When dining in a wealthy Victorian home, what did you get when you were served galantine?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who said: “ there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
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History for 1/15/2021
Birthdays: Dr. Martin Luther King, Moliere, Gamal Abdel Nasser, outlaw Cole Younger, Charro, Matthew Brady, drummer Gene Krupa, Lloyd Bridges, Mario Van Peebles, Josef Broyer the mentor of Sigmund Freud, Margaret O’Brien, Aristotle Onassis, Captain Beefheart, Dr. Edward Teller, Disney animator Dave Pruiksma

Happy Druid New Year

Feast of St. Paul the Hermit

1208-THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE- Count Raymond of Tolouse, son-in-law of King Pedro the Lecher of Aragon, was thought to be sympathetic to a heretical cult called Cathars, from the French region of Albi (so Albigensians). They believed in a Zoroastrian dualism in direct conflict with the Church. When a papal representative named Peter De Castellan was sent from Rome to tell Count Raymond to knuckle under, he was assaulted.
So a crusade was declared not against Moslems in the Middle East, or the Moors of Spain, but against other Christians in the heart of Europe. The holocaust was terrible, for the first time the answer of how to tell the guilty from the innocent was: ”Kill them all, and God will recognize his own.”
The Holy Office of the Inquisition was then invented to finish things off. The Cathar religion disappeared except for cult fans like Alastair Crowley and the Dan Brown of the DaVinci Code.

1520- Pope Leo X tells little monk Martin Luther he has sixty days to knock off all this Reformation stuff and stop complaining, or he's going to excommunicate his butt!

1559- Queen Elizabeth I was crowned at Westminster Abbey. The daughter of Anne Boylen and Henry VIII was 25 and reigned 42 years. Only Queen Victoria and the current Queen Elizabeth II reigned longer.

1793- The Convention of the French Revolution condemned their King Louis XVI (now called simply “citizen Capet”) to death by guillotine. Voters for the death penalty included the artist Jean Jacques David, American Thomas Paine and Louis’ own younger brother the Duc D’Orleans, now ridiculously renamed Philippe Egalite’. When Philippe arrived home that night, his family shunned him. He cried aloud:” What else could I do?
Philippe later was guillotined too.

1811- In a secret session, the US Congress approved a plan to get Florida away from Spain.

1829- The first of two commercial working railroad locomotives arrived in the U.S. from England. Named the Pride of Newscastle back home, it was renamed the America. The Stourbridge Lion followed in May. These two trains began the U.S. Railroad system.
Historian Stephen Ambrose noted that until this time all of society moved at the speed of a walking horse. That George Washington and Thomas Jefferson could travel no faster than Jesus or Pharaoh Ramses did in their day. A Viennese doctor at the time said that the human body was never meant to travel faster than 35 mph. Railroads changed all that.

1861- The Abe Lincoln-hating Mayor of New York City Fernando Wood passed a non-binding resolution of secession from the United States. The pro-Southern sentiment went underground in the public outrage over the rebels firing on Fort Sumter.

1895- The Electric Strike- Brooklyn's 5,000 trolley car workers go out and hit the bricks. New York's 7th Regiment had to run the system.

1919- After World War I toppled the Kaiser, anarchy reigned in Berlin streets. Today as the Spartacist revolt was put down in Berlin, German Socialist leaders Red Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht were dragged out of the Eden Hotel, beaten with rifle butts, then shot. Their bodies were then dumped in a dry canal.

1919- The Great Boston Molasses Flood. In the North End neighborhood of Boston, a large storage tank filled with 2.3 million US gal (8,700 m3)[3]weighing approximately 13,000 short tons (12,000 t) of molasses burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 and injuring 150.[4] The event entered local folklore and residents claimed for decades afterwards that the area still smelled of molasses on hot summer days.[5][4]

1922- Irish troops led by IRA leader Michael Collins officially took over Dublin Castle and the Irish capitol’s administration from the British. The British commander at first upbraided Collins for being late for the ceremony. Collins said in response:” You’ve been here seven centuries and you can’t wait another seven minutes?” When the Lord Lieutenant Governor shook Collins hand and said, “I’m so happy to meet you!” Collins smiled,” The hell ya are.”

1927- The Dumbarton Bridge carried the first auto traffic across San Francisco Bay.

1929- Most of the nations of the world sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which stated that War is a bad thing. Ten years later World War II breaks out.

1935- The Tsuni Conference- Chinese Communists confirm Mao Tse Tung (or Mao ZseDong) as their overall leader.

1936-THE DGA- Several top Hollywood directors including Lewis Milestone, Ruben Mamoulian and William Wellman met at King Vidor’s house and pledged $100 dollars each to form the Screen Director’s Guild, later the Director’s Guild of America. It was a risky thing to do, previous attempts to form a director’s union were broken up with threats by the producers of perpetual blacklisting. Final recognition and contracts were signed by President Frank Capra in 1940. One provision insisted on in the contract was that the director’s credit be the final name in the opening titles before the movie began. And so it remains.

1942- THE GREEN LIGHT LETTER. Major League Baseball Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis wrote Roosevelt that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack, perhaps league play be suspended until the war ended?
The president responded in what’s known as “the green light letter,” encouraging Landis go ahead with the baseball season. “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going,” Roosevelt wrote. “There will be fewer people unemployed, and everybody will work longer hours, and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation, and for taking their minds off their work, even more than before.”

1943- Walt Disney released Education for Death, a wartime short directed by Clyde Geromini and animated principally by Ward Kimball.

1943- The Pentagon completed. First conceived as a medical research facility, it grew to become the headquarters of the massive US Military Industrial Complex, the largest office building in the world. The supervisor of construction was General Leslie Grove, who was also head of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.

1945- As the Nazi war effort was caving in on all sides Adolph Hitler relocated his headquarters from East Prussia to the Reichchancellory building in Berlin. One SS major cracked up der Fuhrer by joking that “now we can take a street car from the Western Front to the Eastern Front.”

1947-”THE BLACK DAHLIA”- One of the most lurid murder cases in Los Angeles history. A little girl playing in a vacant lot discovered the remains of high priced prostitute Elisabeth Short, 22, who used to work the Biltmore Hotel. She was named the Black Dahlia because of the black pullover sweaters and black lingerie she favored. Her body had been sawed in half and completely drained of blood, and the initials 'BD' carved on her thigh. Her body showed signs of torture. The murderer was never found. The incident was the basis for a movie called “True Confessions” with Robert DeNiro and Robert Duval. The last detective on the case died in 2003.

1949- Chinese Communist armies captured the city of Tientsin after an all day battle with Nationalist forces.

1951- ILSE, THE SHE-WOLF OF THE SS. Ilse Koch was the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald Concentration Camp and every bit as sadistic as her husband. She participated in experiments on inmates to turn them into soap, and their skin into lampshades. On this day in her second war crimes trial she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Sixteen years later in 1967 she committed suicide in prison. In the 70’s Roger Corman revived interest in her by creating a sexploitation film about her life. Most of the movie was shot re-using the sets of the Hogan’s Heroes TV show,which had been cancelled. The director of the film said of the screenplay, “That was the sickest piece of crap I ever read.”

1960- Walt Disney Presents Leslie Neilsen as Revolutionary War guerrilla Francis Marion in the adventure series Swamp Fox.

1967- THE FIRST SUPER BOWL- After a decade of professional football conference title games, the AFL and NFL combined to make a single championship game- Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.

1968- Jeanette Rankin, the 87 year old Congresswoman who voted against US participation in World War I and World War II, today led a protest against the Vietnam War.

1974- The first episode of Happy Days premiered with Ron Howard as Richie Cunningham and Henry Winkler as Da Fonz.

1983- Meyer Lansky, the elderly retired Mafia boss denied a visa to move to Israel, died of a terminal nosebleed.

1998- Investigators from special counsel Kenneth Starr’s office have their first meeting with President Bill Clinton’s tootsie Monica Lewinsky in the lobby of the Watergate Hotel. They tried to pressure the 25 year old to admit her affair. They verbally denigrated her when she asked that her lawyer or her mother be present. But the Babe from Beverly Hills High was smart. She held out for 8 months to get the immunity deal she wanted before speaking about Bill and those well-placed cigars.

2009- Capt. Sully Sullenberger safely ditched his disabled airliner in the Hudson River, saving all his passengers.

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Yesterday’s Question: Who said: “ there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Answer: George W. Bush’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Quiz: Who said: “ there are known-knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is a Basilisk?
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History for 1/14 /2021
Birthdays: Marc Anthony 82BC, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Benedict Arnold, Faye Dunaway is 80, Hal Roach, Richard F. Outcault, Cecil Beaton, John Dos Passos, Lawrence Kasdan, Guy Williams, Andy Rooney, Julian Bond, Steven Soderbergh is 58, LL Cool J, Emily Watson is 54

350AD. The feast day of Saint Hilary of Poitiers- Saint Hilary was the father of church music. In exile in Phyrgia, he noticed pagans sang hymns to their gods, so he composed the first Christian music. The Halleluiah Chorus, Ave Maria, Silent Night, and “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Heaven” would follow in due time.

1604- King James I of England thought he could be like Roman Emperor Constantine, and use his royal prestige to resolve the theological disputes dividing Christianity. This day he convened at Hampton Court a grand synod of Anglican Bishops, Presbyterians, Baptists, Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Puritans to try and settle their differences. Nothing was really solved, but the only positive step was a motion was made to create a standardized translation of the Bible into English- The King James Edition.

1639- The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first constitution for a colony, is established. The Connecticut territory was a disputed area between the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam and the English New Englanders until the English conquest of 1661. The personal intervention of the Duke of York prevented Long Island from being made part of Connecticut.

1699- The Pilgrims of Salem hold a day of fasting and prayer to atone for any people they may have unjustly tortured and executed as witches.

1797- Battle of Rivoli. Napoleon defeats the Austrians in Italy.

1831- Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame first published.

1858- Italian terrorists throw three bombs at French Emperor Napoleon III’s carriage outside the Paris Opera. 8 killed and 158 wounded, but not the Imperial family.

1893- After Britain’s Liberal party broke up over the Irish Question, the independent Labor Party was founded.

1900- Giacomo Puccini's opera "Tosca" premiered in Rome.

1914- Henry Ford's assembly line process for building cars accelerates car production, thanks to a new chain system pulling the chassis along as they are worked on. As the system got faster and faster the older, slower workers were replaced by younger ones. Hair dye sold at a premium in Detroit.

1943- Churchill and Roosevelt hold a summit meeting in Casablanca in North Africa. The Casablanca Declaration bound the allies to never negotiate less than a total surrender out of the Axis powers. It was felt that one of the reason Germany resorted to war only twenty years after the last World War was their denial that they were ever defeated.
At one point Churchill made a number of American diplomats and staff climb a high tower in the Casbah because he thought the setting sun would make a smashing good watercolor painting.

1952-The NBC "Today" show debuts with Dave Garroway, Jim Fleming and J. Fred Muggs the chimp.

1954- actress Marilyn Monroe married baseball star Joe DiMaggio.

1957- British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, citing ill health, but more likely because he bungled The Suez Crisis.

1957- Humphrey Bogart died of esophageal cancer at age 57. When he was buried at Forrest Lawn, wife Lauren Bacall put in with his ashes a solid gold whistle inscribed with the famous line from "To Have and To Have Not"- 'If you ever need me, just whistle.' The group of friends around Bogie and Bacall were nicknamed ‘The Rat Pack”.
After Bogart’s death Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin made the Rat Pack famous.

1964- Hanna- Barbera's ' The Magilla Gorilla' cartoon show.

1967- HIPPIES! The first “ Human Be-In” in Golden Gate Park. The Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead performed. Allan Ginsburg, Ram Dass and Timothy Leary spoke. LSD was laced into turkey sandwiches, and soon the crowd of 30,000 was high. The national media played up the event, and the rest of America first saw the power of the Hippy youth culture, and heard the word like “psychedelic” and Timothy Leary saying “ Tune in, Turn on, Drop out.” It was the prelude to the Summer of Love.

1972- Norman Lear’s hit TV comedy series Sanford & Son premiered. Starring Red Fox, it was based on the English show Steptoe & Son.

2004- Trying to channel JFK, President George W. Bush declared in his State of the Union speech his intention to return America to the Moon by 2020 and make a manned landing on Mars by 2030. To do this he gave NASA only one billion dollars more than their regular budget, while at the same time allocating $1.5 billion to fight gay marriage initiatives. In 2017 President Trump made a similar pledge to go to Mars.

2005- The Cassini-Huygens Probe landed on Saturn’s moon Titan.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a Basilisk?

Answer: A medieval monster that was so ugly, that just looking at it, made you drop dead.