TomSito.com - TOM'S BLOG

Quiz: The symbol of the USA is Uncle Sam. The symbol of England is John Bull. What country is symbolized by Mariane?

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: What is a faux-pas?
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History for 1/4/2021
Birthdays: Sir Issac Newton, Emile Cohl, Louis Braille, General Tom Thumb, Jane Wyman, Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm, Sterling Holloway the voice of Winnie the Pooh, Francois Rude, Dyan Cannon is 84, Floyd Patterson, Don Shula, Barbara Rush, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Julia Ormond is 56

1642- English King Charles I, egged on by his queen Henrietta Maria, attempted to squash his uppity Puritan enemies in Parliament with one stroke. He personally marched troops into the House of Commons and demanded the arrest of five ringleaders, John Pym, Sir Arthur Hazelrig and others. They had already fled. When he ordered the Speaker of the House to identify the men, the speaker bowed and politely refused: "Sire, I have neither eyes to see nor lips to speak say as this House biddeth me".
King Charles and his guards left empty-handed, while Londoners laughed and threw garbage out their windows on him. He traveled north to raise troops. The English Civil War is recorded as beginning that September, but from this moment on King Charles considered no other remedy but force.

1725- American colonist Benjamin Franklin first arrived in London.

1821- Elizabeth Ann Seton died in New York. She was declared America’s first native-born Saint in 1979. Mother Cabrini the first American saint was an immigrant from Italy.

1824- Poet Lord Byron arrived in Missolonghi Greece to aid the Greek Independence movement against the Turkish Empire.

1861- As the Civil War was breaking out, Missouri inaugurated Governor Claiborne Jackson. Gov. Jackson in his inaugural speech declared Missouri would stand by her sister slaveholding states in the Confederacy, but the city folk of St Louis and Kansas City were for the Union. The farming population were pro Dixie. Already wracked by years of violence, Missouri would collapse into an anarchy of roving paramilitary gangs robbing, hanging and shooting the innocent. Bushwhackers vs. Redlegs. Missouri suffered some of the worst of any state in the US. One tenth of the population would die or relocate.

1863- James Plimpton of New York patented the four-wheeled roller skates.

1881- Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture premiered in Breslau. Johannes Brahms was offered an honorary degree by the University of Breslau. But he learned that in exchange, they wanted him to write them a free symphony! Brahms responded by sending them an overture to be played at commencement. On being performed, locals recognized several naughty student drinking songs Brahms had worked into the score.

1885- The first appendectomy operation.

1896- THE KRUGER TELEGRAM- Kaiser Wilhelm sends a telegram to Boer South African President Kruger congratulating him on defeating a coup attempt by pro-British mercenaries- The Jameson Raid. In the note the Kaiser implied military help for the Boers should Britain ever try anything else. When this note was leaked to the press, it was greeted with outrage in England. A backlash of anger also erupted among the German public.
Even though the Kaiser apologized to his grand-mama Queen Victoria, the incident was seen as the first break between two countries, who throughout history had always been allies. The previous year, Lord Salisbury had said:" Our greatest national threat shall always be France." But the Kruger telegram and Germanys building navy began to change minds. Lord Asquith said:" It's as though a friend at your club you've always chatted and drank whiskey & sodas with suddenly slapped your face!"

1896- After Mormon leader William Woodruff issued a manifesto reforming the Mormon Church’s hold over local government and renouncing polygamy, Utah became a state.

1904- The Supreme Court ruled that Puerto Ricans are not aliens but American citizens. Yet full citizenship was still delayed until 1917.

1904, Thomas Edison's movie crew filmed the electrocution of an elephant. Topsy, was being destroyed by its owners after she killed three men in as many years. (The third was a man who for a joke, fed her a lit cigarette.) The event was a public spectacle to a paying audience of 1500 people at Coney Island, where the elephant had actually helped build the attraction. Edison was the consultant chosen to arrange the electrocution, after cyanide-laced carrots had failed. He made sure to use Nikolas Tesla’s AC current, to show how dangerous it was.

1920- Eight teams combine to form the Negro Baseball Leagues. They were active until Major League Baseball finally integrated in 1948.

1932- Casey Stengel returned from the minors to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers, aka the Bums.

1936- Mickey’s Polo Team, directed by Dave Hand.

1943- Josef Stalin named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.

1944- Kaj Munk, Danish playwright and poet who preached passive resistance to the Nazi occupation, was arrested by the Gestapo and executed.

1946- Terrytoons "The Talking Magpies" the first Heckle and Jeckyl cartoons.

1948- Burma, received her independence from the British Empire.

1951- As Gen, MacArthur’s forces retreated from the Chinese Communist onslaught, Seoul fell into Communist control for the second time. The city, due to it's proximity to the front, changed hands several times during the Korean War.

1954- Young truck driver Elvis Presley went into Sun Records recording studio in Memphis. He plunked down $4 to record two demos for his mothers’ birthday. " Casual Love Affair" and "I’ll Never Stand in your Way". A studio technician was impressed enough to play the demo for his manager, who called back Presley for an audition.

1956- In the Peanuts comic strip, Charles Schulz made Snoopy first stand up on two legs.

1956- Walt Disney had lunch with his old nemesis Max Fleischer, now retired. The meeting was arranged by Max’s son Richard Fleischer, who was working for Disney directing Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Although everyone had a nice time, Richard later admitted he found the whole thing depressing. Seeing his dad humbled:” It was like seeing David vanquished by Goliath.”

1957- The Dodgers are the first baseball team to buy an airplane to travel around in.

1958- the TV show Seahunt premiered. It made a star out of Lloyd Bridges, the father of Jeff and Beau.

1960- Writer Albert Camus was killed in a car accident. He was 46.

1964- The Boston Strangler murdered his last victim, 19 year old Mary Sullivan. The family of Albert DeSalvo, the man who confessed and was convicted as the Strangler, still claim today that he was innocent because the pattern of this killing didn’t match the others.

1973- In San Francisco, scientists from several top food companies like Proctor & Gamble, Heinz and Del Monte began work inventing the Universal Product Code, or the Bar Code now seen on everything you buy. The first product to sport the bar code was Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.

1973- President Nixon informs the Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in that he refused to yield to them his taped conversations, citing an arcane concept not used since the days of Thomas Jefferson, called "executive privilege.”

1995- Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House of Representatives. In the Washington atmosphere of congenial deal making, Gingrich was the arch-apostle of the scorched earth, no-compromise, us vs. them style of politics. Several times he used a routine approval of the federal budget to stalemate the Clinton Whitehouse to a government shutdown. Even after he stepped down because of ethics violations, his highly philosophy style still rules Washington today.

1997- Spoon bending psychic Uri Geller predicted a UFO would land in Tel Aviv. Israelis watched the skies, but in the end, nothing appeared.

2010- Dubai opened the largest office building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. 163 floors.

2000- Charles Schulz published the very last Peanuts daily comic strip. It ran continuously since 1950. Schulz refused to allow any one to ghost him or take over the strip.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a faux-pas?

Answer: It is French for a false step. That first presenting yourself at court, if you did not bow and curtsey correctly according to protocol, it could hurt your standing in society. Today it has come to mean a clumsy mistake done in public.

Quiz: What is a faux-pas?

Yesterdays question answered below: What does it mean to be circumspect?
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History for 1/3/2021
Birthdays: Marcus Tullius Cicero, John Paul Jones, Victor Borge, Zasu Pitts, Sergio Leone, Hank Stramm, Bobby Hull, Robert Loggia, Maxine Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Ray Milland, Anna Mae Wong, Steven Stills, J.R.R. Tolkein, Victoria Principal is 71, Dabney Coleman, Mel Gibson is 65. Thelma Schoonmaker is 81

1521- Pope Leo X excommunicated former monk turned Protestant leader Martin Luther. In Wurttemberg this day Germany former Luther responded by tearing up and burning the Pope’s decree, as well as the canon of Roman law.

1777- BATTLE OF PRINCETON- After his Christmas victory at Trenton, George Washington’s little army gave the main British army the slip, wheeled around behind them and surprise attacked another redcoat regiment at Princeton New Jersey.
As a young student Alexander Hamilton had failed the entrance requirements to study at Princeton University. Instead he went to Kings College, later renamed Columbia. Now, as Major Hamilton of artillery, he had a pleasure rare among rejected college applicants- he got to fire a few cannon rounds into Princeton admission’s building.

1834- Tejano leader Stephen Austin traveled to Mexico City to put forward the grievances of his community to the Mexican government. Texians disliked that President Santa Anna had revoked the liberal Constitution of 1826 that had invited Anglo settlers to populate remote Texas. And they wanted Texas to be a separate state from the Mexican state of Coahiula. Stephen Austin suppressed all talk of independence in order to work with the new regime in Mexico City. Santa Anna responded to Austins petitions by throwing him in prison. He was released a year later, and returned to Texas, hot for independence.

1868- the MEIJI RESTORATION- the Tokugawa family had ruled as Shoguns since winning Japans’ civil wars in 1603, keeping the Emperor as a figurehead. On this date a revolution occurred when radical samurai seized Kyoto Palace and overthrew the last shogun Yoshinobu Tokugawa. Japan would be under the direct control of the Emperor and form a parliament. Japan would end her enforced isolation, and modernize her society. The Emperor Meiji would also move the capitol from Kyoto to Yedo, already being called Tokyo.

1871- Henry Bradley patents Oleomargerine in the U.S. It had been demonstrated in the Paris Exhibition of 1867 as a butter that didn't spoil, so Emperor Napoleon III thought it was useful to his armies in the field.

1899- An editorial in the New York Times refers to the horseless carriage as an “Automobile”. This is the earliest known use of the word.

1925- Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini suspended democracy and his black shirted followers declared him Il Duce, or the leader. He became dictator of Italy.

1926- General Motors introduced the Pontiac brand of automobile.

1933- MGM Louis B. Mayer hired his son-in-law David O. Selznick to produce movies. At the same time he was begging his filmworkers to take 20% paycuts because of the Depression, Mayer set Selznick’s salary at $4,000 a week. Newspapers joked “ The Son-In-Law Also Rises”

1946- Lord Haw-Haw, William Joyce, the English voice of Nazi radio propaganda broadcast from Berlin, was hanged for treason. English Fascist Joyce was actually born in Brooklyn but moved to England at an early age. He was nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw because of his stuffy upper class accent.

1952- The T.V. series DRAGNET premiered today. “The story you have seen is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” Star Jack Webb produced and wrote most of the scripts and oversaw the deadpan acting style.” Just the facts, Mam..”

1958- Howard Rushmore was the editor of Confidential, one of the most ruthless scandal magazines in show business. This day for reasons never explained Rushmore murdered his wife, then shot himself in the back of a NYC taxicab.

1959- Alaska became the 49th state.

1967- Jack Ruby, real name Jacob Rubenstein, the murderer of Lee Harvey Oswald, died of lung cancer in prison. To the end he was refused a meeting with Congress where he claimed he could discuss his patriotic motives for killing Oswald. Retired Mafia don Bill Bonano said Ruby being Jewish and not Sicilian, was the type of hood the mob used for clean-up jobs. That he was a soldier for Chicago boss Sam Giancana. Others say Ruby was just a two-bit loser who claimed he was more important than he actually was.

1973- Boatbuilding tycoon and George Steinbrenner led a group that bought the last place New York Yankees baseball club from CBS. "The Boss" becomes one of the more colorful baseball owners and propelled the Yankees into a new era of championship contention. Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for $10 million, and today they are worth several billion.

1977- Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne file papers to form the Apple Computer Company. Within two weeks Ron Wayne sold his share of the company to Jobs and Woz for $800. The only real businessman of the group, he felt these kids would stick him with the bills when their little business went belly up.

2004- Following the success of the Mars Pathfinder Rover in 1997, Two more advanced ones Spirit and Opportunity were launched. This day Spirit landed safely on Mars and began transmitting. The JPL mission leader announced "We're Back...We're on Mars.." Only supposed to last 90 days, Spirit transmitted for 6 years.

2004- After partying New Years in Las Vegas, 22 year old pop star Britney Spears woke up and realized she had just married her friend Jay Alexander while drunk. Today she annulled it. Alexander, who listed himself as unemployed, was soon seen driving around rural Louisiana in a $90,000 BMW.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to be circumspect?

Answer: To be discreet or guarded in expressing your opinions

Quiz: What does it mean to be circumspect?

Yesterday: Name a major event that occurred in 1921.
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History for 1/2/2021
Birthdays: Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV-1642, Frederic Opper the cartoonist of Happy Hooligan, Phillip Freneau, Roger Miller, Issac Asimov, Julius LaRosa, Tito Schipa, Renata Tebaldi, Tex Ritter, Dick Huemer, Cuba Gooding Jr, is 52, Tia Carrere, Kate Bosworth is 37

1492- Sultan Abu-Abdallah called Boabdil surrendered the Emirate of Grenada, the last stronghold of the Moslem Moors in Spain to Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. Boabdil's mother, the Sultana Ayeesha, scolded him for weeping while surrendering the keys of the city. " I should have smothered you as an infant, rather than watch you live like a degenerate and surrender like a whore...!" Gee, Thanks Mom…

As Boabdil rode out of the city between the Spanish troops, he paused on a hill for one last look at his beautiful city. The hill is today called El Ultimo Sospiro del Moro- the Last Sigh of the Moor.
This completed the master plan of the Christian Spaniards to regain the whole Iberian peninsula. Called La ReConquista, it had been raging for 500 years. In Rome Pope Alexander VI Borgia, who was also a Spaniard, celebrated the news by closing off Saint Peter's Square from worshippers to stage a bullfight.

1496- Did Leonardo da Vinci try to fly? Leonardo studied the motor actions of birds and sketched numerous flying machines. In one of his notebooks Leonardo had written:” On the second day of January, I will make the attempt.” When one of his apprentices named Antonio broke his leg, it was said he broke it trying to pilot one of his masters flying machines.

1522- Adrian VI, a Dutchman was elected Pope. He was the first non Italian since 1378 and the last non-Italian until John Paul II in 1978.
He really tried to be a true Christian spiritual guide and agreed with Martin Luther that the church was too corrupt and sinful in its ways. He demanded he and his cardinals live on only one ducat a day, about $12.50, he walled up the Belvedere Palace and it’s collection of ancient Greek and Roman art as pagan idolatry.
Poets, painters and sculptors were furious that this Pope cancelled all their lucrative contracts. The unemployed poet Aretino called the cardinals “miserable rabble that should all be buried alive" for choosing such a lousy pope.
After three months Adrian died. This time the cardinals selected a Medici Pope who loved art, music and parties. The artists of Rome sent flowers to Adrian’s doctor to congratulate him for losing his patient.

1542- The town of Geneva had put themselves under the Protestant theologian John Calvin to reform everybody’s lifestyles. His first move was to create order in their new way of religion. This day his great work the Ecclesiastical Ordinances were approved by the Grand Council and put into law. It created a ministry of deacons, pastors teachers and lay elders based on Biblical Law. Calvin’s new code became the basis of the future churches of Presbyterianism, Huguenots, Puritans and Calvinism and reached as far as England, Scotland and America.

1602- End of the siege of Kinsale. Rebel Earl Hugh O’Neill had invited the Spanish to help him overthrow British rule in Ireland. He lost, and the English domination of Ireland was confirmed.

1611-THE BLOOD COUNTESS- Beautiful Transylvanian Countess Elizabeth Bathory was indicted for the murder of 610 people. She apparently believed that bathing in the blood of virgin girls would keep her skin beautiful. The crimes of the Medieval nobility were often winked at until they become so outrageous they couldn’t be ignored any longer. When peasant girls kept disappearing around Csejthe Castle word got back to her big uncle King Sigmund Bathory of Poland, the enemy of Ivan the Terrible. When King Sigmund discovered the full horror of her story he had Elizabeth walled up alive in her chamber. Daily food passed through a slit in the wall. When after a few years the empty dishes stopped being passed through, that slit was bricked up as well.

1688- The great insurance house Lloyd’s of London founded. In the past they’ve insured Betty Grable’s legs, Bruce Springsteen’s lungs and offered a million English pounds to anyone who could prove Elvis Presley was still alive.

1757- British redcoats marched into Calcutta.

1785- Austrian Emperor Joseph II ordered the Jews throughout his empire to adopt family surnames. A similar law was passed in Prussia and the rest of Germany ten years later. Most Jews created surnames out of their profession. This was when someone like Ystchak the diamond dealer became Issac Diamondstein and Yakub the butcher became Jacob Fleischman.

1788- Georgia voted to ratify the Constitution.

1800- The free black community in Philadelphia petitioned Congress to abolish slavery. A South Carolina senator denounced the act as:” This new-fangled French philosophy of Liberty and Equality!”

1815- Lord Byron married Lady Anna Milbanke.

1837- It was the custom at New Years for the Mayor of New York to hold an open house. Average citizens could pay a call, have a glass of sherry and pound cake and express good wishes for the New Year. But Mayor Cornelius Lawrence was a Tammany politician who had been elected with the help of hooligans from the Bowery and Five Points. When he held an open house this day all these gang toughs stormed in, got drunk, wiped their fingers on the curtains and pocketed the silverware. It quickly became bedlam. In desperation Mayor Lawrence got militia troops to push the mob out and lock the doors.

1843- Richard Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman premiered in Dresden.

1863 –HELL’S HALF-ACRE- In the American Civil War the battle of Stones River or Mufreesboro resumed after a two days truce for New Years. The Union Army had been surprised attacked New Years Eve and caved in to a tight horseshoe configuration. By now it was now dug in and further fighting seemed fruitless. But Confederate army Commander Baxton Bragg couldn’t bring himself to retreat again as he had at Perryville.

So over the protests of his subordinates that it was suicide, he ordered a direct frontal attack. One brigade commander named Hanson declared he’d rather kill Bragg than murder his own soldiers. Hanson was killed in action. The Kentucky Orphans Brigade led by Confederate Vice President John Breckinbridge charged into a furious Yankee artillery cross fire and was annihilated. The attack failed and Bragg retreated anyway .

1873- Richard “Slippery-Dick” Connolly becomes the first American to embezzle a million dollars -he actually embezzled four million. He was the financial controller for the City of New York under Boss Tweed. Together the Tweed ring bilked New York City out of $60 million dollars. This day he fled abroad ahead of the police. Tweed was nabbed and died in jail but Slippery Dick Connolly lived in Europe happily ever after.

1878- Farmer John Martin thought he saw something shiny flying in the sky above Denizen Texas. He is the first person to describe it as a “flying saucer.”

1882- John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company controlled almost 90% of the U.S. crude oil output but the government seemed poised to hit it with anti-monopoly laws. So anticipating this move he reorganized Standard Oil into a Trust with himself as chief Trustee. Standard Oil later became ESSO (S-O) then EXXON.

1897- Young writer Stephen Crane survived a shipwreck when the good ship SS Commodore went down off the coast of Florida. He went on to write The Open Boat and The Red Badge of Courage.

1904- The Russians surrendered their big Pacific base of Port Arthur to the Japanese after a one-year siege. During the boredom of the siege the game Russian Roulette was invented- of putting a six shooter to your head with one bullet in a spun chamber. When their men kept dying for no reason the Stavka, or High Command, were at a loss how to stop it. When they caught men playing this lethal game they arrested them for illegal use of government property- i.e. the bullets.

1909- Aimie Semple MacPherson was given her ordination by the Evangelical community of Chicago. Sister Aimie moved to Los Angeles and became one of the first great broadcast evangelists, entertaining millions with salvation and sin, while keeping toy-boys and popping pills on the side.

1937- Hollywood actor Ross Alexander had hit on tough times. He had been in a few movies like Captain Blood and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but his career seemed to be stalled, he was in debt, and his wife committed suicide. This day the 29 year old went into the barn behind his Encino home and shot himself. The Warner Bros. Studio looked around for a replacement to refill their roster of male leads. They replaced Alexander with an Illinois college sportscaster called “Dutch”- Ronald Reagan.

1939- Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler it’s “Man of the Year”.

1942- The Japanese army under General Homma entered Manila. They said they had come to drive out the American Western colonialists and create pan-Asian harmony. But they offended the Philippines with atrocities like hanging the Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court from a flagpole when he refused to be part of the occupation regime. Homma also had the city bombed even after they agreed to surrender.

1958- Maria Callas threw one of the more celebrated temper tantrums in Opera history when she stormed off the stage at La Scala in the middle of Bellini’s Norma with the President of Italy in the audience. La Divina Callas was a Greek-American with a beautiful voice and the slimmest waistline since Lili Pons. She was part of the Jet-Set society culture and her temper was famous.

1960- Young Mass. Senator John F. Kennedy announced he was a candidate for president. When asked why do you want to be president? Kennedy replied:” Because it’s the best job there is.”

1963- The Magic Castle opened in Hollywood. The Academy of Magicians renovated this 1908 mansion and declared it the worlds most unique private club. Even today, you can only get in by being invited by a member.

1971- Israeli archaeologists in Jerusalem discovered the 2,000 year old remains of a crucified man. No, they didn’t think it was You-Know-Who. But it did provide the first empirical proof that Romans really used that method of execution.

1975- In a letter to MITS, college kids Bill Gates and Paul Allen offered their computer language adaptation of BASIC for the new Altair personal computer. They named themselves Micro-Soft.

1984- The Zenith Corporation announced it would stop selling video recorders in Betamax format and go over wholly to VHS. Other electronics giants followed suit and VHS won out over the higher quality Beta system.

1995- Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was inaugurated for a second term after winning re-election, despite his conviction of smoking crack cocaine. Comedian Chris Rock said: “Who ran against him? Who was such a bad choice that people said- I’d rather vote for a crackhead? “

2000- Larry Saunders had a conversation with his friend Jimmy Wales about writing data entries for collaborative websites called wikis. Saunders conceived of an open on-line encyclopedia encompassing all world knowledge. He called it Wikipedia.

2019- The Chinese space probe, the Chang’e 4 became the first manmade object to successfully land on the Dark side of the Moon.
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Yesterday’s Question: Name a major event that occurred in 1921.

Answer: The Anglo-Irish Treaty, Tulsa Race Massacre, Nicholas Landru “Bluebeard” executed, FDR gets polio, Coco Channel introduces Channel #5.

QUIZ: Britain is called the UK, the United Kingdom. What nations make up the United Kingdom?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Is Australia a country or a continent?
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History for 12/30/2020
Birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, Gen. Hideki Tojo, W. Eugene Smith, Luther Burbank, Anna Magnani, Bo Diddley, Sir Carol Reed, Sandy Koufax, Solomon Guggenheim, Jeanette Nolan, Jack Lord, Franco Harris, Joseph Bologna, Fred Ward, Tracey Ullman, Russ Tamblyn, Tiger Woods is 45, Heidi Fleiss, Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary, Douglas Engelbart the inventor of the computer mouse, Lebron James is 36, Eliza Dushku is 40

1370- Pope Gregory XI is an example of the rather unconventional path one could take to the Papacy in the Middle Ages. His genial uncle Pope Clement VI had made him a cardinal at age 18. Upon his election as Pope at age 39 someone noticed that he had never taken Holy Orders to become a Priest! So yesterday he was ordained a priest and today became Pope.

1672- Violinist John Bannister and his orchestra held a concert at Whitefriars chapel in London. It’s the oldest known music concert given not to royalty, or noble pension, but to the general paying public.

1689- The opera Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell premiered in London.

1816- Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley married Mary Wollenstonecraft. Mary wrote Frankenstein two years later.

1817- Coffee beans first planted on the Kona coast of Hawaii.

1853- The Gadsen Purchase- After the Mexican-American War the U.S. bought an additional 45,000 square miles from Mexico and finally settled the US border at the Rio Grande. The deal was brokered by U.S. Secretary of War and later President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis.

1862- During the Civil War, the day before the Battle of Stone's River Tennessee, Union and Confederate armies spent the day quietly facing each other across a creek under an icy rain. A battle of the bands started up. Blue and gray musicians serenaded each other across no-mans land with patriotic songs like Dixie and John Brown's Body, while the men sang along. Finally both bands synched up with a spontaneous rendition of " Be It Ever so Humble, There's No Place Like Home..." Thousands of throats from both sides took up the chorus.

1884- Anton Bruckner’s 7th Symphony premiered in Leipzig.

1894- Suffragette Amelia Jenks Bloomer died; she had gained notoriety for inventing "bloomers" a way for women to ride horses and do other physical actions without cumbersome hoops skirts.

1903 - A fire broke out in the crowded Iroquois Theater in Chicago killing 571. After the tragedy building codes were enforced that public buildings have exit doors that always open outwards, and some form of fire fighting equipment be on the premises. The Iroquois had a sign over the door that read “Absolutely Fireproof”.

1905- Idaho governor Frank Steunberg killed by a bomb set by union supporters.

1916-RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK KILLED- Several Russian noblemen resolve to rid their country of this Siberian peasant mystic who held such power over the Czar and his family that he could dismiss government ministers at will. He once had an entire army offensive redirected because he was negotiating to buy the real estate they planned to fight over. A first cousin of the Czar, Prince Youssuppov invited Rasputin to a late night party. He had a record player with Yankee Doodle playing in another room to convince the monk that a party indeed was in progress. Youssuppov gave Rasputin a glass of cyanide laced vodka. Rasputin drank it and finished the bottle. Then the conspirators rushed out, emptied a revolver into him, beat him with chains and heavy silver candlesticks, rolled him up in a rug and stuffed him into the ice clogged Neva River.
The official coroner's report said he had drowned. Shortly before his death, Rasputin wrote a prediction in a letter to the Czar saying that 'if the peasants, my brothers, kill me, then you, Czar of Russia, have nothing to fear. But if your relatives kill me, not you nor any one of your family will remain alive longer than two years." Rasputin's prediction was off by just four months. Nicholas II, and his 400 year old dynasty fell ten weeks later. The entire Imperial Family were murdered in July 1918.

1933- In Romania liberal premier Ion Duca was assassinated by the pro-fascist Iron Guard. In 1940 the Iron Guards leader General Ion Antonescu deposed King Carol II and established a dictatorship allied to Hitler.

1936- The Great General Motors Strike. The strike was violent and tied up steel, rubber tires and other manufactures for months. United Auto Workers invent the first "sit-down" strike at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Mich. "When they tie a can to the Union man-Sit Down, Sit Down! When the Boss won't talk, don't take a walk- Sit Down, Sit Down !"

1940- The Arroyo-Seco, the first L.A. Freeway opened by Mayor Fletchor Bowron, connecting downtown and Pasadena. Today called the Pasadena Freeway 110. (interstate U.S. route 66 was in 1932, and The Imperial Highway opened in 1936., the Ventura freeway 101, in 1958.

1944- Manhattan project director Gen. Leslie Groves had a private meeting with FDR at the White House. Groves told the President the two "cosmic super bombs" (Atomic Bombs) they are building would end the war. The reason they were making two was one was uranium based, and the other was plutonium based, and they weren’t sure which one would work.
To those who believe the U.S. A-bombed Japan out of racism, Franklin Roosevelt asked that one be dropped on Germany immediately to stop the Battle of the Bulge and kill Hitler. But Groves argued these A-bombs hadn’t been tested yet. He worried that if the bomb was a dud, the Germans were smart enough to take it apart and build their own from the fissionable material, which they might shoot in a V-2 at London. The atomic bomb wasn’t tested until July 1945. By then, Hitler was dead, and the war in Europe was over.

1941- “I Vant to be Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and was only seen fleeting on the streets of her New York neighborhood until her death in 1990.

1947- Under the eye of the occupying Soviet Army, King Michael of Romania abdicated and a Communist government was voted into power.

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with Monty Hall premieres.

1965- Ferdinand Marcos became president of the Philippines.

1971- Daniel Ellsberg was indicted for leaking the Pentagon Papers.

1988- Col. Oliver North, on trial for the Iran Contra Scandal, subpoenaed former President Ronald Reagan and President-elect George H. W. Bush. President Bush declined and Reagan testified on videotape.

1988- the Pixar short Tin Toy released in theaters. The first CG short to win an Oscar. (Luxo Jr was nominated but did not win.) The first feature film Toy Story initially began as an attempt to capitalize on the success of Tin Toy, as a TV special. Tinny’s Xmas.
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Yesterday’s Question: Is Australia a country or a continent?

Answer: Both. A nation and a continent.