Question: What is a wassel bowl?

Yesterday’s Quiz: The popular cartoon series Tom & Jerry was produced by what studio?
--------------------------------------------------------------
History for 12/23/2023
Birthdays; Joseph Smith, Paul Hornung, Ruth Roman, Otto Soglow -cartoonist of 'the Little King', Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz actor) Jose Greco, Elizabeth Hartmann, Harry Guardino, Claudio Scimone, Vincent Sardi of Sardi’s restaurant, Bob Barker, Frederick Forrest, Japanese Emperor Akihito, Carla Bruni, Harry Shearer is 80

1588- In France, Henri Duc d' Guise, Catholic leader of a powerful anti-Protestant league is called into the private chambers of King Henry III. Inside the chambers with the king were a dozen murderers hired to whack the duke. Seems his league got a bit too powerful. After Monsieur le Duc was stabbed repeatedly, the king came out of his hiding place, put one foot on his perforated body and said; "There! He doesn't look so tall now!" King Henri himself was assassinated a few months later.

1740- King Frederick the Great of Prussia attended a holiday masked ball, finished his coffee, said good night, mounted his horse, and invaded Silesia. He described it later as “my own little masquerade".

1753- A twenty-year old buckskin clad surveyor almost drowned when a raft his party was pulling across the Allegheny River capsized. Miraculously, despite his inability to swim and the icy water, he made it to safety. His name was George Washington.

1786- HMS Bounty sets sail from Portsmouth. Their mission to the South Seas was to bring back breadfruit plants and see if the breadfruit could be a cheap dietary staple like potatoes from America, except these would be used to extend the lives of the slaves in Jamaica and Barbados harvesting the sugar cane fields. But Mr. Christian and the crew would mutiny against tyrannical Captain Bligh and set him adrift in a rowboat.

1823- SANTA CLAUS BORN. This day the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously in The Troy Sentinel. Several years after the authorship was claimed by a Bronx Bible teacher, the Reverend Clement Clarke Moore. He was celebrated in his time as the father of Santa Claus until his death in 1863. In 2000, a literary-forensic specialist challenged Clement Moore’s authorship. He said a Revolutionary War veteran from Poughkeepsie named Major Henry Livingston was really the author of the poem. He said the poetry style of Livingston was much closer to the poem than anything Rev Moore ever wrote. But we may never know.
The poem completed the synthesis of English and Dutch folk traditions that were merging in colonial New York into our modern concept of Santa. The British had Father Christmas, or Saint Nicholas, who was a big fat jolly bishop with a white beard in a red suit. He merged with the Dutch Kris Kringle, or Sinterklaas, an elf who climbed down chimneys to give children toys.

Leaving cookies and milk out for Santa comes from an old Danish Viking custom at Yuletime to leave food out at night for Odin the Wanderer and his 8-legged horse Sleipnir.
In an 1859 reprint of the famous poem famed cartoonist Thomas Nast (who created the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey) drew the first likeness of Santa Claus. Because of residual anger from the Civil War claiming Santa was a Yankee or came from old Dixie, in 1867 Nast ended the argument by declaring Claus’s true address to be the North Pole! The Santa we all recognize was created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom for a Coca-Cola ad campaign in 1934.

1834- In London, Joseph Hansom patented Hansom cabs. This is the one horse, two wheeled cab with the driver in back. Cab is shortened from Cabriolet.

1857- In St. Louis, ex-army officer, failed businessman, and town drunk Ulysses Grant pawned his watch so he could buy Christmas presents for his wife and son. From this rock bottom he would eventually rise to win the Civil War, become President of the United States and the most celebrated American of his time.

1893- Humperdinck's opera "Hansel und Gretel" debuts in Weimar Germany.

1894- Claude DeBussey’s “Afternoon of a Faun” premiered in Paris.

1912- France’s leading literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise rejected a new novel by an author named Marcel Proust “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu” “Remembrance of Things Past”. One critic wrote: “Maybe I’m dead from the neck up, but I can’t see why the author needed 20 pages to describe how he got out of bed in the morning!” Remembrance of Things Past became one of the great literary works of the Twentieth Century.

1912- The Max Sennett short comedy “Hoffmeyer’s Release” premiered, the first comedy featuring the Keystone Cops.

1913- Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, creating the first federal banking reserve since the Bank of the United States was dismantled by Andrew Jackson in the 1830's.

1913- Young Italian Rudolph Valentino arrived in America to seek his fortune. He was so poor, that after a year he sent his parents a photo of himself in a borrowed tuxedo to show he was doing well. He worked as a nightclub dancer and gigolo until becoming a Hollywood film star in 1921.

1930- Young actress Betty Davis signed her first contract with Universal Studio.

1935- Walt Disney sent a detailed memo to art teacher Don Graham outlining his plans for retraining his animators to do realistic feature films.

circa-1935- This was the traditional day for Republic Pictures to fire all their employees and hire them back after New Years so they wouldn't have to pay them holiday pay. Republic billed itself on its business cards as The Friendly Studio.

1941- WAKE ISLAND. A large Japanese invasion force finally overwhelmed the tiny garrison of Marines and construction workers defending Wake Island. The hopeless stand of Col. Devereux, Hammerin-Hank Elrod and their men inspired the country still shocked by the relentless Japanese advance across the Pacific since the Pearl Harbor attack. The surviving Marines were shipped to POW camps in occupied Shanghai, but civilian construction workers were kept on the island to build an airbase for the Japanese. After they finished, they were all executed. The Japanese commander responsible was hanged for war crimes in 1948.

1941- A Japanese submarine torpedoed and sank the S.S. Montebello off the central California coast. Fifty-five years later in 1996 a research sub found the wreck with it's three million gallons of crude oil still intact.

1941- A meeting of business leaders and union officials make a deal that there would be no strikes or lockouts in American industry for the duration of World War II.

1942- The German Sixth Army was surrounded at Stalingrad and could not hold out much longer. General Von Manstein’s 16th Panzer Division was brought up from the Crimea, and was trying to break through and rescue them. But after two weeks of heavy fighting in blizzard like conditions, the 16th was bogged down. Hitler ordered Von Manstein to break off the attempt and stabilize the front in other areas, in effect, abandoning 250,000 men of the Sixth Army to their deaths.
This day while frozen, hollowed eyed men scanned the horizon for signs of rescue, the tanks of the 16th Panzer turned away. The commander of the last tank stood in his turret, solemnly snapped a crisp salute in the direction of his doomed comrades, then dropped down the hatch and turned around.

1944- The Germans had timed their surprise offensive “The Battle of the Bulge” to coincide with a heavy storm system over northern Europe. The snow and poor visibility kept Allied air forces grounded. As Third Army was moving northward to rescue soldiers trapped in the surrounded Belgian town of Bastogne, General Patton called the Third Army’s chaplain to him. “Captain!” Old Blood & Guts growled:” I want a prayer for good weather! Have it in my hands in an hour!”
Dutifully the prayer was written and recited throughout the army. This day as if on cue the sky cleared and the sun shined for the first time in a week. The slow moving German Tiger Tanks proved easy pickings for Allied fighter planes. Gen. Patton’s reaction: “That chaplain! Make him a Major!”

1947- Two Bell laboratory scientists invent the Transistor. Nobody was quite sure what to do with the little thing until Texas Instruments invented the portable radio in 1954.

1948- Former Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and 6 others were hanged for war crimes. Tojo had tried to commit Hari Kari but guards bound his wounds and nursed him back to health. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, was granted death by firing squad by MacArthur to save him the indignity of dying like a criminal.

1954- The First Organ Transplant. 23 year old Richard Herrick was dying of kidney disease. Dr. Joseph Murray of Harvard removed a kidney from his brother Ronald Herrick and used it to replace his brothers diseased one. The idea of operating on a healthy person just so he could help someone else was a radical idea. Hundreds of thousands of organ transplants of kidneys, hearts, livers and corneas followed.

1954- Walt Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, opened. Directed by Richard Fleischer, Max’s son.

1971- First B-1 bomber flight. The B-1 was supposed to replace the aging B-52 long range bomber fleet, in service since 1958. But after billions of dollars and embarrassed faces at Congressional hearings, the B-1 didn’t accomplish much. Then after spending billions more, the B-2 Stealth Bomber was developed. In 2001 in Afghanistan and 2003 in Baghdad, the majority of all air strikes were still by 30 year old B-52s.

1971- “You feel lucky, punk?” Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry premiered.

1972- The Immaculate Reception. Football’s Pittsburgh Steelers were trailing the Oakland Raiders 7-6 with one second to go, when QB Terry Bradshaw unloaded a Hail-Mary pass across the field to Franco Harris. The feared and brutal Oakland DB Jack Tatum batted the ball away back towards the Steelers, and Harris (still running upfield) made a shoestring catch (around the 20 yard line) and weaved through the stunned and basically unaware Oakland defenders into the end zone to win.

1973- Soap Opera “the Young and The Restless” premiered.

1973- THE ASTRONAUTS STRIKE. The first labor action to occur in space. American astronauts on board SKYLAB protested micromanagement, employer spying, and long hours. They demanded a day off, regular breaks, and greater workplace autonomy, but NASA refused. So they shut off the radio and took the day off, floating around, enjoying space, and taking photos of Earth. NASA gave in to their demands after one day, but those astronauts were never sent back into space.

======================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: The popular cartoon series Tom & Jerry was produced by what studio?

Answer: MGM.

Quiz: The popular cartoon series Tom & Jerry was produced by what studio?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Icarus was the young man who flew too close to then sun when his wings melted and he fell. Who was Icarus’ Daddy?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 12/22/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Diocletian 245AD, Josef Stalin-born Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 60.

1737- Preacher John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, was chased out of Savannah Georgia. The townspeople thought Pastor Wesley applied the Law of God a bit too arbitrary. He finally refused to grant an old girlfriend the rights of marriage because she had not been to confession enough in the past three months. This day he took ship back to England before he was arrested.

1807- President Thomas Jefferson was desperately trying to steer a neutral course in the struggle between Britain and Napoleon’s France, each wanted the US to choose their side. This day Congress passed his Embargo Act, cutting off trade with both European powers.

1808- DA-DA-DA- DUMMMM- Beethoven premiered his 5th Symphony.

1849- Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky had been a political radical. On this day the Czar's secret police the Ohkrana broke his spirit by a cruel ruse. They arrested him for treason. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was given a last meal, received Last Rites from a priest, blindfolded and stood before a firing squad. But before the guns would go off the squad stopped and his sentence was commuted. He was sent instead to Siberia for four years. This naturally had an adverse effect on his sensitive nature and he spent his final years a raving conservative.

1861- Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was ordained a deacon in the Church of England.

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

1864- General Sherman marching through Georgia, today telegraphed Pres. Lincoln: ” I present you as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah”. Uncle Billy spared Savannah the depredations his men committed in the rest of the state, many say because he had friends there before the war, but also because he needed a deep water port for a winter base that the US Navy could supply him from.

1888- Horn & Hardart opened their first Automat Restaurant. This in Philadelphia.

1898-THE DREYFUS CASE- Early in 1898 the French Army High Command discovered they had a spy on their staff leaking secrets to Germany. The man was a Colonel Count Esterhazy, an aristocrat pretty high up in the chain of command. The Generals worried that news of the scandal would humiliate and weaken the army's prestige. So they looked for a lower ranked scapegoat to pin Esterhazy's crimes on. They chose a Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was working class and Jewish. They had Dreyfus courts-martialed for espionage and treason and exiled to Devil's Island. As his sword and medals were being publicly stripped from him he shouted out loud "Citizens of France ! I am innocent !!"
Dreyfus's family refused to give up hope and brought in the famous author-activist Emile Zola, who uncovered the plot in the news article "J'Accuse !"I accuse. The scandal tore the French military and public opinion apart. Esterhazy fled to Germany and one top general shot himself. In 1906 Dreyfus was cleared of all charges and when the Great War came General Dreyfus was entrusted with the defense of The City of Paris.

1921- LENIN'S TESTAMENT- Soviet Russian leader Vladimir Lenin was in failing
health after an assassination attempt and a stroke. ,k;’[He knew of the internal
struggle within the Communist Party between Trotsky and Stalin to succeed
him.
This day he dictated a series of notes spelling out his analysis of the
situation and where he thought the future of the revolution should go. He
felt Stalin was too dangerous to be in charge" Comrade Stalin is devoid of
the most elementary human honesty". So Trotsky should come after him as
leader of the Soviet Union. Lenin called it "Letter to the Party Congress"
because he intended it to be published.
Upon Lenin's death Stalin seized power and made sure this document was never made public. It didn't come out for thirty-three years, until after Stalin’s death in 1953.

1932 – The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan and Arthur Byron was released.

1937- The day after the triumphant premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, animator Woolie Reitherman ran into Walt Disney at the studio. Instead of complimenting Woolie and telling him to kick back and relax a bit, Walt launched into a detailed analysis of the problems facing the next picture, and how they need to get started right away!

1938- Memo from Dave Fleischer’s casting director to Paramount rep A.M. Botsford, asking if they might offer the role of Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels to Gary Cooper!

1939- Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels” opened in theatres.

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car accident in L.A.

1941-Now that America was officially at war with the Axis, Prime Minister Winston Churchill slipped across U-Boat infested waters to spend a month at the White House planning strategy with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A White House butler described;" Mr. Churchill awoke to a tumbler of sherry. At noon scotch and sodas, champagne at dinner finished off with 90 year old brandy then light a cigar and begin the day's work- from 9:00 PM- 2:00 AM. Churchill liked to dictate memos from his bath. When Roosevelt was told he could enter the room, he was embarrassed and excused himself to leave. Churchill stood up from the tub wearing nothing but soapsuds and the cigar in his teeth and declared: "THE PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN HAS NOTHING TO HIDE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES !" When a friend later asked Roosevelt what was Churchill like, the President mused: "He's pink...all over."

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge, a German officer was sent under a white flag to Gen. McAulliffe's American troops in Bastogne. His message was “You are surrounded with no hope of relief. Surrender or be annihilated!” General McAuliffe sent him a simple reply:" NUTS!' McAulliffe's force was eventually rescued by Patton. In later years McAullife grew tired of the fame of being the general who said "nuts". At a party a Manhattan socialite once said to him: "It is an honor to meet you, General Nuts".

1951- Yves Montand married Simone Signoret.

1964- In Chicago, Comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes, the jury laughed out loud. Lenny complained about the policeman’s delivery. After Lenny Bruce no one has ever again been convicted in the U.S. for telling jokes.

1973- The 55 miles per hour speed limit was set for all US interstate highways.

1975- English actor Sir Alec Guinness wrote a friend about a recent job offer, "I have been offered a movie (20th Cent. Fox) which I may accept if they come up with proper money. London and N. Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction – which gives me pause – but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did "American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps."
The part was Obie Wan Kenobi, and the movie was Star Wars. By the time the first trilogy was done, he personally had made $50 million from it.

1984- Nerdy shopkeeper Bernard Goetz shot four African-American men on a NYC subway train. They had asked him for money and one man had a sharpened screwdriver. Goetz had once been robbed before of a liquor store payroll and pushed through a plate glass store window. So he pulled his gun and fired. Two of the men died and one was left paralyzed. Like OJ Simpson ten years later, the Subway Vigilante divided people along racial lines. Was Bernard Goetz a homicidal racist, or a mild man pushed over the brink?

1988- In Brazil ecologist and rubber workers union activist Chico Mendes was shot and killed by plantation owners.

1993- The Hubble Space telescope cost $1.5 billion but it had a flaw. Its lens was ground incorrectly, so it was nearsighted. This day Space Shuttle Endeavour flew into space to fit the Hubble with an optical corrective system called CoStar, in effect, giving it a set of glasses.

2000- The Cohen Bros. Depression Era comedy Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Opened.
“ I am a man of constant sorrow….”

2001- THE SHOE BOMBER. Would-be terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Rome to Orlando by trying to ignite a substance concealed in his sneakers. He was stopped and beaten to a pulp by his fellow travelers, including a 6’8 pro basketball player returning home from the Italian leagues. Richard Reid is why we all have to take our shoes off in airports now.
===================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: Icarus was the young man who flew too close to then sun when his wings melted and he fell. Who was Icarus’Daddy?

Answer: The scientist-sorcerer Daedalus.

Quiz: Icarus was the young man who flew too close to then sun when his wings melted and he fell. Who was Icarus’Daddy?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: we’ve heard of musical pieces like Piano Concerto #1 or #5. But who wrote Piano Concerto #0 ?
--------------------------------------------------
History for 12/21/2023
Birthdays: Benjamin Disraeli, Josh Gibson- the Home Run King of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Pat Weaver-TV exec who created the Today Show and father of Sigourney Weaver, Frank Zappa, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Florence Griffith Joyner, Chris Evert, Phil Roman, Jane Fonda is 84, Paul Winchell born Pinkus Wilchinski, Keifer Sutherland is 57, Samuel L. Jackson is 75, Jane Kaszmarek, Judy Delphy is 54, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 73

Happy Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year.

1375- The writer Boccaccio died, not of the plague, and not during a wild party like in his book the Decameron.

1376- END OF THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY- After a lot of lobbying from St. Catherine of Siena and Saint Brigid of Sweden, Pope Gregory XI moved the Vatican back to Rome from Avignon. Gregory mysteriously died shortly after he arrived. Roman mobs, angry at the poverty caused by the absence of the Holy See, attacked the mostly French cardinals selecting the next pope. They crowded around their building shouting: "Death or an Italian Pope!' and threw javelins at the ceiling knowing the points would pop out of the floor and prick their feet.
The terrified cardinals dragged any old bishop out of the Vatican library, made him an Archbishop, then Cardinal, then Pope, then ran for the hills. The librarian became Pope Urban VIII, “The Beast of Naples".

1776- American diplomats Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane arrive in Paris to negotiate a French alliance and money for the rebellious colonies. It took them a year. Their personal secretary, William Bancroft, was a British spy.

1788- Emperor Quang Tung of Vietnam was crowned.

1863- Congress created the Medal of Honor, at first only for Navy personnel for gallantry, but later extended to all branches of the military.

1866- THE FETTERMAN MASSACRE- Foreshadowing by ten years what Custer would get, the Sioux led by Crazy Horse surrounded an army detachment and wiped them out. The commander of Fort Phil Kearny Wyoming, a Colonel Carrington sent out the troop to drive away some hostiles molesting a woodcutting detail. It turned out to be an elaborate trap planned by Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. It was said Carrington was such a high-class snob,"the way he would prefer to deal with the Sioux would be to socially ostracize them".

Now as his men went down under a hail of arrows Carrington could hear the firing in the distance but didn't think they needed any help. Captain Fetterman and his second in command Brown were among the last survivors. Fetterman had said the threat of the hostiles was overrated and "With 80 men I could ride through the entire Sioux Nation !" Brown had gone against orders on the mission because he promised his family back east a real Indian scalp for Christmas. Now surrounded and not wishing to be tortured by the Indians, they held their revolvers to each other's temples and on the count of three...

1909- The first Junior High School or Middle School set up in the US in Berkeley Cal.

1913- THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE- Journalist Arthur Wynne created the word game, which included 32 clues and ran in the New York World.

1914- The premiere of the first feature length film comedy- Tilly’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and a young Charlie Chaplin.

1919-THE PALMER RAIDS- THE RED SCARE- Class-conscious American businessmen watched the growing Communist regime in Russia with fear. Soviet groups were also moving to take over Germany, Hungary and Austria. People feared foreign anarchists at home with bombs." Bolshevism is worse than war.”-Herbert Hoover. This day Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer received permission to go after what he deemed “seditious elements”.
Under emergency wartime sedition legislation (even though World War I had been over for a year) At the stroke of midnight on New Years, U.S. marshals raided newspaper and union offices and deported 249 immigrants, including women's rights advocate Emma Goldman. The raids were organized by a young executive in the treasury dept, named J. Edgar Hoover.

1925- Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic masterpiece Battleship Potemkin premiered in Moscow. The films pioneering use of montage and allegorical imagery intercut inspired a generation of filmmakers.

1933- Twentieth Century Fox signed 5 year old Shirley Temple to a seven year contract.

1937- Walt Disney's " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" had its grand premiere at the Carthay Circle Theater. The first feature length American cartoon, it became the box office champ of 1938, earning 4 times more than any other film that year. Russian director Sergei Eisenstein called it “The greatest movie ever made.”

1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner of the Three Stooges, was killed in a bar fight, while celebrating the birth of his son. No one is really sure what happened. One legend has it that actor Wallace Beery and some gangsters did the fatal pounding. Another rumor is one of the gangsters was young Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who forty years later would produce the James Bond movies and win an Irving Thalberg Award at the 1982 Oscars. Healy originated the violent comedy schtick of the Stooges. But by this time The Three Stooges had parted ways with Ted Healy and were doing much better.

1939- In the year of their nonaggression pact, Adolf Hitler sent Holiday Greetings to his new best-buddy Josef Stalin. "Merry Christmas, you Jewish-Bolshevik untermensch schweinehund! "Thank you and the same to you, you corrupt Fascist tool of International Capitalism, ифыефкв! "

1940- Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (44) died of a heart attack at Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham's house. She had just left the house to buy him some candy. She left him thumbing through his Princeton alumni newsletter. His last words to her were 'Hershey bars will be fine..."

1944- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros premiered in Mexico City. It opened in the US in February.

1945- General George “Blood & Guts” Patton died from injuries suffered in an auto accident in Manheim Germany on Dec. 9th.

1953- Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the Atomic Bomb, was accused of being a Communist. When he was asked in 1940 to head the Manhattan Project the government knew he was a Berkeley eccentric who had joined every leftist group in town, but he was brilliant. This act is now viewed more as the government revenge for his flat refusal to help Edmund Teller develop the Hydrogen Bomb.

1958- Charles DeGaulle elected President of the 5th French Republic.

1959- Joe Oriolo’s TV remake of Felix the Cat debuted on TV.

1964-The British Parliament voted to ban the death penalty.

1968- The Apollo 8 spacecraft was launched to the Moon. Besides winning the Space Race, and doing the famous Christmas Night reading of Genesis from lunar orbit, Apollo 8 had on board one of the very first mini-computers. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was one cubic foot in size, had stored memory of 5 bytes, a language (DSKY) and a digital display. It’s the forerunner of the personal computer.

1969- Famed football coach Vince Lombardi coached his last game- Dallas beat Washington 20-10.

1971- Richard William's animated TV special "A Christmas Carol" with Alastair Sim reprising his Scrooge.

1972- 14 members of a Uruguayan rugby team were found alive on an Andes mountain peak after their plane crashed. They survived the harsh conditions by turning cannibal and eating their dead.

1973- Ray Harryhausen’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad premiered.

1975- International terrorist Carlos the Jackal attacked an OPEC oil meeting in Vienna and took 11 ministers hostage. He escaped to Algeria and wasn’t finally caught until 1994 while trying to get an operation on his testicle.

1978- Chicago police investigating the disappearance of a 15 year old boy searched the home of contractor John Wayne Gacy. They found the remains of 33 children in the crawl space. Gacy in his spare time did volunteer work as a clown entertaining sick children.

1979- Disney’s Sci-Fi film The Black Hole opened in theaters.

1982- Thom Riley, one of the stars of the TV cop show ChiPS was busted for driving stoned on Quaaludes.

1988- PanAm 747 jumbo jet Flight 103 from London to New York exploded over Lockerbie Scotland killing all the passengers. The bomb was planted in Munich by Libyan agents. It was in retaliation for either Reagan's bombing of Tripoli in 1986, or the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July of 1988 by the US Navy Cruiser Vincennes.

1989- The Romanian army joined the people protesting in the streets and overthrew the hated Communist dictator Nicholai Cercescu. While most of the nation starved in a stagnant economy, Cercescu lived in luxury. His son drove sports cars and lost fortunes at roulette tables in Monte Carlo. Young Cercescu kept a “raping room” for women who caught his fancy. As the Communist regimes of Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany collapsed, Romanians realized their time had finally come, and they poured out into the streets.

1989- Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 official Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled- beakon. In 2007 President George W. Bush sent out Hanukkah cards featuring the White House Christmas tree.

2003- Just in time to spoil Christmas, Pres. Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced the color-coded threat level was raised to the highest state of alert since the 9-11 Attack. That Al Qaeda terrorists were about to attack the United States and kill us all at any minute! After terrifying everybody, absolutely nothing happened. In 2009 it was revealed the data came from a conman named Dennis Montgomery, who fooled the CIA into believing he had special software that he could use to intercept Al Qaeda secret messages broadcast on the Arab news network Al Jazeera. It was a complete fraud.

2012- The Era will come to an End, according to the ancient Maya Calendar. The Maya believed that the world as they knew it occasionally was turned upside down. The word for earthquake also meant revolution. Translating Mayan can be open to interpretation, so end of an era may also mean beginning of a new age of enlightenment.

2012- The Walt Disney Company spent $4.06 billion to buy Lucasfilm, ILM and the Star Wars rights. George Lucas retired to do philanthropic pursuits.

2089- According to Ridley Scott, today the good ship Prometheus landed on the Original Planet.
========================================================
Yesterday’s Question: we’ve heard of musical pieces like Piano Concerto #1 or #5. But who wrote Piano Concerto #0 ?

ANSWER: Beethoven didn’t bother to number his works. He left that for later musicologists. They listed his mature piano concertos he wrote from 1 to 5. But after his death, looking through his files they found an immature concerto he wrote at age 14. So they called it Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #0.

Quiz: we’ve heard of musical pieces like Piano Concerto #1 or #5. But who wrote Piano Concerto #0 ?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What does it mean when you say someone is “ gung-ho”?
--------------------------------------------------------
History for 12/20/2023
Birthdays: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Branch Rickey, George Roy Hill, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Jenny Agutter, Uri Geller, Irene Dunne, Cecil Cooper, Albert Dekker, animator Amby Paliwoda, Charlie Callas, John Spencer, Elsie De Wolfe, Jonah Hill is 40.

69AD- Roman General Vespasian occupied Rome with his legions, declared himself emperor and executed his predecessor, Aulus Vitellus. Vespasian was the winner in a year of civil war that started with Nero committing suicide, then Servius Galba, Otho, and Vitellus all in one year took the throne and were knocked off. The Romans called A.D. 69, the "Long Year". Vespasian was not an aristocrat like Caesar, but a humble man who rose up through the ranks. He was once caught nodding off during one of Nero’s harp recitals.

Feast day of Saint Dominic of Brescia.

1192- Richard the Lionhearted was returning from the Crusades when he was captured near Vienna and imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria for two years. Leopold blamed Richard for the death of his relative Conrad of Monferrat in Palestine. The King of France Phillip II and Richard’s own brother John sent large bribes to the German Emperor Henry just to keep Richard locked up. This was part of the plot of the novel Ivanhoe. Richard spent the time in prison writing a ballad “Ja nus hons pris”, I am master of Gascony, Brittany, Poitoux. So how come no one can get me outta here?” I’m paraphrasing a bit.

1688- William and Mary’s army occupied London.

1780- Britain declared war on Holland over the Dutch covertly aiding the rebel American colonies.

1790- The first successful U.S. cotton mill opens in Pawtucket RI, it’s inventor Samuel Slater had memorized British technology for use in America. He also thought child labor would be most useful in his factories.

1803- The Louisiana Purchase completed as the French flag came down and the Stars and Stripes went up over the Cabildo in New Orleans. New Orleans continued to be a magnet for French people dispossessed by the politics in Europe. Ten years after Waterloo the French royalist charge de affaires would complain to the U.S. state department that the New Orleanaise would still wave the banned revolutionary tricolor flag at arriving French ships. In 1817 the mayor financed two ships with a 19th century 'Delta-Force" of mercenaries to sail to Saint Helena and rescue Napoleon. The plan never went through.

1811- Napoleon made another attempt to go hunting in the Forest of Boulogne. Even though they were both great military minds, Napoleon and Wellington were terrible hunters, and bad shots. While hunting, Napoleon shot out the eye of one of his generals. and Wellington was constantly hitting barn doors and stable boys by accident. Napoleon kept the royal shooting park at St. Cloud as a game preserve, and a captain once saw him feeding snuff to the deer. Another time his chief of staff set up a hunting party but stocked his grounds with domesticated rabbits instead of wild hares. When the bunnies saw Bonaparte, they thought he was there to feed them and mobbed him. He actually had to flee the scene. One of the only times other than Waterloo Napoleon was driven from the field.

1819- The novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott was published in Edinburgh. The novel caused a sensation in Europe and was one of the great influences on Victorian England. It created our modern perception of Richard Lionheart, Prince John and Robin Hood. Polite society sought to emulate its ideas of chivalry and courtly love. During the US Civil War, Confederate General James Longstreet complained that his contemporaries, Southern Gentlemen, had been raised on “…too much Walter Scott.”

1860- SECESSION! to the sound of cannon and church bells the first Southern State, South Carolina, voted to secede from the Union. Until the Confederacy formed, South Carolina called itself "the Palmetto Republic". Judge Pettigru, who was against this drastic move, said:" South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."
At first Northerners reacted with apathy. In Washington D.C., a local store advertised: THE UNION IS DISSOLVING, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T STILL FIND SAVINGS WHEN YOU SHOP FOR CHRISTMAS AT LEHMANS!

1860- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his most famous poem- The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. “Oh, listen my children and you shall here, of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere. “ Although he got most of the actual facts wrong, it was a great success. Longfellow intended it to rouse Americans of his day to the threat of Southern Secession and Slavery.

1891- BASKETBALL INVENTED. Methodist Minister and former rugby player James Naismith worried how his Springfield College students could do team sports in the harsh New England winters. So he nailed up two peach baskets on opposite ends of a gymnasium at a YMCA in Springfield Mass. and invented the game of basketball. The first basketball was a soccer ball. He originally asked for square boxes but the man he sent out mistook his instructions and brought round peach baskets instead. The NBA regulation height of the baskets of ten feet was determined by the gym in Springfield having a second floor running track and two nails were conveniently waiting at this height. He blew a whistle, and “the boys began tackling, kicking and punching in the clinches,” Naismith said. “They ended up in a free-for-all in the middle of the gym floor.” Naismith played himself frequently, and married one of the first female players, named Amelia.

1892- Alexander Brown and George Stillman of Syracuse New York invented inflatable pneumatic automobile tires, replacing wagon wheel and bicycle rims.

1892- According to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days this was the day Phileas Fogg returned to London to complete his trip.

1920- English song & dance man Leslie Townes became an American citizen and changed his name to Bob Hope.

1937- Nazi Josef Goebbels noted in his diary that this day he sent his boss Adolf Hitler a Christmas present of a dozen Mickey Mouse Cartoons from America. Officially der Fuehrer called Mickey “vermin”, but privately he enjoyed their animated antics. Mussolini’s family loved “Topolino” cartoons. (Mickey Mouse in Italian).

1940- Captain America first appeared in a comic book.

1941- THE FLYING TIGERS first action in the skies over China, surprising and shooting down 9 out of 10 in a Japanese bomber squadron flying from Hanoi. General Claire Chennault had come to China in 1937 as an advisor to organize the Chinese Air Force and stayed on to coordinate U.S. efforts in Mainland China after Pearl Harbor. His men were all volunteer adventurers who flew their P-40's with the tiger teeth insignia against overwhelming odds. They were awarded a bounty of $500 for every Japanese plane downed. Eventually they were incorporated into the regular U.S. Air Force.
Chennault argued frequently with Washington, MacArthur and his army partner in China General 'Vinegar Joe' Stillwell. Just before the final victory in 1945 Chennault was forcibly retired and resumed his post as advisor to Chiang Kai Shek. He was the U.S. general most times under hostile fire. He flew combat missions and personally had 60 kills, which made him an Ace. Yet Chennault was deliberately not invited to the Grand Surrender Ceremony on the Missouri in Sept ‘45.

1942- Japanese planes bombed Calcutta, India.

1943- Stalin changed the national anthem of Russia from the revolutionary Internationale to the Hymn of the Soviet Union.

1944- German forces in the Battle of the Bulge surrounded the US 101st Airborne in the Belgian town of Bastogne. The Screaming Eagles of the 101st held out until relieved by Pattons’ Third Army just after Christmas.

1945- After the defeat of Japan in World War II Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent nation. He based his declaration on the US Declaration of Independence. France reacted by heavily cracking down on nationalists in Hanoi and Saigon. This began an eight-year war against the French to be followed, by a civil war, and another 8 year war against the Americans.

1946- It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra, James Stewart opened.

1950- Harvey premiered starring James Stewart and a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit.

1952- Bridgette Bardot married director Roger Vadim.

1955- Sir Lawrence Olivier’s film version of Richard III premiered.

1962- The Osmond Brothers premiered on the Andy Williams Show.

1957- Elvis Presley received his draft notice. G.I. Blues!

1968- Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day premiered.

1970- ELVIS MEETS NIXON or "The President Meets the King." Citizen Presley volunteers his services in the war on drugs and gave Nixon a gold plated 44 cal. pistol. The President thanked him with a White House security officer's badge for his collection of police badges. A recent biography of Presley described the dozen or so prescription medicines he was on while Nixon was naming him honorary chairman of the War on Drugs.

1971- Twentieth Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck blamed his own son CEO Richard Zanuck for Fox's monetary problems and fired him. This set off a power struggle among the board of directors. When Zanuck's estranged wife Libby threw her support against the mogul, Darryl F. Zanuck was overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.

1971- Roy O. Disney, Walt Disney’s older brother who took over running the company after Walt’s death, died of a stroke. He was 78.

1974- Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too came out with the film Island at the Top of the World.

1989- Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invades Panama to oust General Manuel Noriega, for being a dictator, drug pusher and not returning the C.I.A.'s washroom keys. When the general, known to Panamanian citizens as “Pineapple-face” took sanctuary in the Vatican Embassy, the U.S. army surrounded the building and drove him out by playing Jimi Hendrix and Motown through loudspeakers 24 hours a day. Tony Orlando or the Bay City Rollers would drive me out.

1996- Beavis and Butthead Do America, directed by Mike Judge, premiered.

2019- President Trump established the US Space Force as an equal branch of the armed services.
===========================================
Yesterday’s question: What does it mean when you say someone is “ gung-ho”?

Answer: A phrase popularized during World War 2 when Americans serving in China heard the Chinese troops use the phrase Deng-Hao, meaning “Let’s get up and get things done!”

Quiz: What does it mean when you say someone is “ gung-ho”?

Yesterday’s quiz answered below: In illustrations of Dickens A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marley is always wearing a bandage around his head lengthwise. Why?
-------------------------------------------------------------
History for 12/19/23
Birthdays: King Phillip V of Spain (1683), Edith Piaf, Edwin Stanton, Tip O'Neil, Cicely Tyson, Sir Ralph Richardson, Robert Urich, Robert Sherman, Jennifer Beals is 60, David Susskind, Fritz Reiner, Mel Shaw, Alyssa Milano is 51, Jake Gyllenhaal is 43

1154- Coronation of King Henry II of England. He was the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou and Empress Matilda, the daughter of William the Conqueror. His coronation settled a period of dynastic civil wars in England between the Conqueror’s children known as “The Wars of Stephen and Matilda". Henry and his sons Richard Lionheart and John Lackland are also called the Angevin dynasty, because of the part of France (Anjou) their family originated.

1686- According to Daniel Defoe, this was the day Robinson Crusoe was rescued from his deserted island.

1732- The Pennsylvania Gazette announced the publication of a new book by Dr. Benjamin Franklin writing under the penname Richard Saunders. The work was Poor Richard’s Almanac, an international best seller that made Franklin famous.

1783- William Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister of Great Britain at only 24 years old." A sight to make the Nations stare, A Kingdom trusted to a Schoolboy's care."

1793- The Anglo-Spanish fleet evacuated Toulon after the cities strong points were captured by the French army, led by a pushy 23-year-old major with a funny name- Napoleon Bonaparte.

1903- NY City’s Williamsburg Bridge opened, only the second major span across the East River since the Brooklyn Bridge. Because it linked Manhattan’s Lower East Side with Williamsburg Brooklyn, anti-Semites called it The Jew Bridge.

1914- Earl Hurd patented animation 'cels' (celluloids) and backgrounds. Before this cartoonists tried drawing the background settings over and over again hundreds of times or slashed the paper around the character and tried not to have it walk in front of anything. By the late 1990’s, most cels & cel paint were replaced by digital imaging, except in Japan, where some traditional paint continued.

1915- Earl Douglas Haig replaces Sir John French as commander of British troops on the Western Front. His nickname was Whiskey Doug because his family owned a well-known distillery. Haig had succeeded in the Boer War by bloody frontal assaults, and he proved he had learned nothing from the experience. He had no use for new gismos like machine guns and airplanes, even after he watched large numbers of his troops mowed down by them. In the attack called Passchendaele in 1917 he lost thousands of men in stand up frontal assaults. He reacted "Good Lord, have we really lost that many?"

1918- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It Or Not" column in the New York Globe.

1919-The premiere of E.C. Segar’s comic strip “The Thimble Theatre”. The original characters were Olive Oyl, her brother Castor Oyl, and her original boyfriend Ham Gravy. Ten years later Popeye the Sailor appeared, as well as J. Wellington Wimpy, Alice the Goon and the Jeep.

1926- The U.S. government passed a law that women authors can only legally copyright their works under their husband's names.

1929- Thomas Benton-Slate was an entrepreneur who invented dry-ice. This day in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, he attempted to fly the first all metal dirigible, the City of Glendale. He brought it out two days ago and it immediately began to pop rivets in the heat and fall apart. So he brought it in for repairs. This day he tried one more time, but the sun’s heat expanded the shell, causing rivets to pop again, followed by a metallic explosion and escaping gas. He had it dragged back into the hanger and forgot about it.

1932- BBC Overseas Service Radio broadcasts began. Originally called Empire Broadcasts. The sound of the chimes of Big Ben heard around the world. Despite gloomy predictions from the BBC's director-general John Reith - "The programs will neither be very interesting nor very good", the broadcasts received praise, and were further boosted by the support of a Christmas message from King George V (the first ever) to the Empire a few days later.

1941- The Japanese began their grand assault on British Hong Kong. The city surrendered on Christmas Day. Japanese assault teams had been told to take no prisoners and committed atrocities on British, Canadian and Australian defenders. In Berlin, Adolf Hitler told his dinner guests " The Japanese are all over those islands and will soon be in Australia. The White Race will disappear from those regions."

1944, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, ruling that the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps was constitutional as a “public necessity.”

1957- The musical ‘The Music Man’ starring Robert Preston first debuted. "Seventy Six Trom-bones in the Big Parade…"

1958- First airing of the Disneyland TV holiday special “ From All of Us, to All of You.”

1959- Confederate General Walter Williams, who claimed to be the last living veteran of the Civil War, died at age 117. His claim to be a general was later proved false, but he was that age and in the Civil War, so it was a good story.

1971- Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ premiered. Based on a novel by Anthony Burgess. In America the film received an X Rating, more for the violence than the sexual situations. The sensation over the film caused so many incidents of urban violence, that with Kubrick’s permission, it was banned in England for three decades.

1974- The first personal computer went on sale. The Altair 8800, named for the planet in the 1955 sci-fi movie classic Forbidden Planet. The computer came in a kit that you had to build and it cost $397. The next year, two kids at Harvard named Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a programming language for it called BASIC.

1986- Frank Oz’s movie version of the Ashman-Mencken musical Little Shop of Horrors.” This film convinced Disney to hire them to write the music for Little Mermaid.

1997- MTV dropped airing the rap song Smack My Bitch Up, by Prodigy.

1998- IMPEACHMENT- Before going on their holiday break, the Republican dominated House of Representatives voted two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The vote was along strict party lines and most of the Democrats stormed out in protest. Despite the impeachment, President "Slick Willy" Clinton was acquitted by trial in the Senate in February and completed his second term. To complete the circus-like atmosphere, pornography publisher Larry Flynt announced he had proof that incoming Republican Speaker of the House Bob Livingston, a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had had at least six affairs while a congressman including one of his staff and a lobbyist. Livingston resigned before his hand could touch the gavel. He was replaced by Rep Dennis Hastert, who did time in jail for molesting young boys when a gym coach. Three other of the loudest callers for impeachment, Senators David Vitter, John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Pete Sanford, were all soon after caught in their own equally tawdry affairs. President Donald Trump has been impeached twice.

2001- Peter Jackson’s film ‘The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring’ first opened. It was the first film to use the software Massive, which created hundreds of digital figures to recreate whole armies attacking and retreating.

2020- That evening at The White House Holiday Party, attorney Jenna Ellis was told that even though President Donald Trump had been told repeatedly he lost the election, he had no intention of leaving power. Something no president had dared do in 243 years of elections. “He intends to stay.” That night, Trump tweeted a message to his worked-up fans, “Come to the Capitol on Jan. 6th. It’s going to be wild.”
===============================================
Yesterday’s question: In illustrations of Dickens A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marley is always wearing a bandage around his head lengthwise. Why?

ANSWER: When a person dies, the muscles and ligaments that hold the jaw to the rest of the skull relax and begin to break down, causing the mouth to gape open grotesquely. Back in the day, morticians would keep the cadaver from this unpleasant manifestation by the use of a chin strap or sometimes a simple cloth tied around the head to hold the jaw in place. That is what Marley’s ghost is wearing.