Question: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive….”

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What was Lenin’s first name?
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History for 12/14/2020
Birthdays: 1553-King Henry IV of Navarre*, Tycho Brahe, Nostradamus -Michel de Notre Dame-1503, English King George VI- 1895, Spike Jones the bandleader, Morey Amsterdam, Charlie Rich, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, Lee Remick, Patty Duke, Adult film star Ginger Lynn, Clark Terry- trumpeter. Cecil Pay, Saxophonist, Jane Birkin "Je t'aime moi non plus" is 73.

*Henry of Navarre 1555-1610 was one of Frances most beloved kings. When he was born his father Duke Antoine du Bourbon rubbed garlic on his lips and gave him wine to be strong. One of Frances horniest kings, even as an infant, his suckling dried up 8 wet nurses!

Welcome to the first day of what is referred to as the HALCYON DAYS. (Hal-see-on). The seven days prior to and after the Winter Solstice, a time of tranquility and peace. Supposedly, no storms happen. In 1867 Walt Whitman wrote a poem about the Halycon Days in "Leaves of Grass", using it as a metaphor for the time in the winter of one's life, when contentment replaces the "turbulent passions" of younger years.

1575- The Parliament of the Polish Commonwealth had a strange system of electing foreign princes to be their king. This day they invited Transylvanian Duke Stefan Bathory to come be king. Bathory turned out to be an okay king. He defeated Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible’ armies in battle, frustrating his efforts to gain an outlet to Western trade. But his niece Elizabeth Bathory was a bit strange. Called The Blood Countess.

1776- After chasing George Washington's miserable little rebel army from New York to Philadelphia, British General Lord William Howe announced the customary Christmas truce, and beds his army down for the winter. His subordinate Lord Percy wrote home:” It’s just about over with those people. We shall be home shortly.” Back in occupied New York City, Lord Howe took as a mistress the wife of his Boston superintendent of prisons a Mr. Loring, who grew rich enough on army contracts to not mind. A rebel poem of the time said: "Sir William He, snug as a Flea, lay in his bed a Snorring. Nor thought of Harm, as he lay Warm, in bed with Mrs......"

1782- British troops evacuate Charleston South Carolina, in preparation for the final peace treaty ending the American Revolution.

1798- David Wilkinson of Rhode Island patented a machine that made the new fangled inventions- metal screws, nuts and bolts.

1799- GEORGE WASHINGTON DIED. Washington had retired to Mount Vernon after his last presidential term in 1796. On Dec. 12th he went riding five hours during a sleet storm and caught the flu. Another theory was a viral infection of the epiglottis.
He might still have survived had it not been for modern medicine. Doctors bled him of four pints of blood, while applying leeches, mustard sulfur packs and laxatives to purge him of the ill humors. He developed pneumonia and died swiftly. Because coma was so little understood, people had a dread of premature burial. Washington left instructions that his body be left out several days to make sure he was dead before being sealed in a tomb. After assurances put his mind at ease his last words were:" Tis well." No priests or religious last rites were performed. Washington turned away a priest who offered. He was 67 years old, and always predicted he would not live very long.

The US government wanted to place his tomb at the center of the planned dome in the capitol building, but Washington’s wish was to be in a simple tomb in Mt. Vernon. He also freed all his 137 slaves and sent them each off with a pension.

1819- Alabama was separated out from Mississippi territory and made a new state. Under Spanish rule Alabama was known as West Florida.

1861- Albert the Prince Consort, husband of Queen Victoria, died at 42. Even though he died of typhoid fever, which was common in those times, Victoria blamed her son Bertie (Edward VII)'s sexual escapades as causing her beloved husband's heartbreak. One of Albert’s last acts was to tone down the diplomatic response to the Trent Affair, which avoided war with the United States.
Victoria wore mourning for the rest of her long life. She withdrew from formal politics for 12 years. She had Albert's rooms at Balmoral and Osborne kept like he was still there. Every single night for 40 years the servants would lay out his clothes and a basin of warm water like for some invisible user. She kept the cast of his hand on her night table at night so she could reach out to touch it for reassurance. When she died in 1901 after reigning 64 years her last words were "Albert..."

1863- Battle of Bean’s Station. Confederates in Tennessee defeated Yankees.

1871- Verdi's opera "Aida" debuts in Cairo.

1894- Socialist union leader Eugene Debs was sentenced to six months in jail for organizing sympathy actions for the railroad workers striking the Pullman company. Debs young lawyer handling his first case was Clarence Darrow.

1901- The first Ping-Pong tournament held in London.

1911- Norwegian explorer Roald Ammundsen and four others first reached the South Pole, winning the race against Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

1918- Cartoonist Johnny Gruelle entertained his dying daughter Marcella, by making up stories involving her rag dollies. After her passing, friends urged Gruelle to publish them. The RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY stories are born.

1924- Ottorino Respighi ‘s stirring rhapsody The Pines of Rome premiered.

1927- Charles Lindbergh does one last flight with his famous monoplane the Spirit of Saint Louis, from Washington to Mexico City. This is at the request of American Ambassador Dwight Murrow who wanted to improve Mexican-American relations. Lindbergh would not only improve relations but also marry Murrow's daughter Anne. To make the flight a challenge Lindbergh took off at night in a rainstorm to prove air travel was safe. The President of Mexico and 150,000 people greeted him in Mexico City.

When flying he noticed many Mexican towns had a sign named 'Caballeros' in their railroad stations. He reasoned Caballeros must be a popular name for a town.

1934- March of the Wooden Soldiers, the Hal Roach version of Babes in Toyland with Laurel & Hardy opened.

1944- Hollywood starlet Lupe Velez, the "Mexican Spitfire' committed suicide. She had taken an overdose of sleeping pills and laid herself out in a beautiful negligee of her own design to be found radiant in repose. But instead of dying immediately, the pills made her sick and she was found dead with her head in the toilet. In her prime she counted Gary Cooper, Anthony Quinn and Johnny Weissmuller among her lovers. When Weissmuller was filming 'Tarzan' the studio complained to her that their lovemaking was so...err.. athletic? exhuberant?....that she was leaving fingernail scratch marks all over his back. The makeup department complained of all the effort to cover them.

1944- The film National Velvet premiered, making a star out of 12 year old Elizabeth Taylor.

1945- Nazis camp guard Josef Brodsky “The Beast of Belsen”, was hanged .

1947- The National Association of Stock Car Racing or NASCAR formed.

1953- Young pitcher Sandy Koufax was signed by the Dodgers. He became one of their most famous pitchers of all time.

1957- Hanna Barbera's first TV cartoon "Ruff and Ready" premiered.

1962- Mariner II reached the planet Venus. The first manmade probe to reach another planet. Although it stopped working, it’s still up there in orbit between Venus and Mercury.

1967- Greek generals overthrow King Constantine II and rule by junta led by General George Papadapolos.

1970- George Harrison’s single My Sweet Lord went gold.

1972- THE LAST MAN LEAVES THE MOON. Apollo 17 blasts off. We all remember the first man on the moon, but do you remember the last? Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt. President Nixon annoyed NASA by saying he doubted that men would return to the moon in the remainder of the Twentieth Century, but he was right.

1977- DISCO! The movie Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta and the music of the Bee Gees make the Disco dancing scene a national craze.

1979- STUDIO 54 RAIDED- The Internal Revenue Service busted the worlds most famous disco club. Formerly the hangout of Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote and other “Beautiful People”, now the Feds were on to them. The IRS seized doctored account books, cocaine and undeclared cash, landing the owners in jail and bringing the celebrity playlands days to an end.

1983- Disney Studio released the short film Frankenweenie, done by a weird young artist named Tim Burton.

2012- SANDY HOOK. Emotionally disturbed man Adam Lanza shot up a kindergarten school in Newtown Conn, killing 27 including his mother and 20 little children.

2015- Hollywood premiere for J.J. Abrams reboot of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars the Force Awakens.

2017- Rupert Murdoch sold off much of the Twentieth Century Fox Studio to Walt Disney for $66 billion.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was Lenin’s first name?

Answer: Lenin was born Vladimir Ulyanov. He signed his name N. Lenin. Today historians refer to him as Vladimir Lenin, or Nicholai Lenin. When someone asked him what N stood for, he replied Nietzto- Nothing.

Question: What was Lenin’s first name?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What does it mean when someone is called a Bohemian? They are from Prague?
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History for 12/13/2020
Birthdays: Heinrich Heine, Mary Todd Lincoln, Dick Van Dyke is 95, Mike Mosley, Darryl Zanuck Jr., George Schulz, Christopher Plummer is 90, Steve Buscemi is 64, Jamie Fox is 51, Lynn Holly Johnson, Wendy Malick, Taylor Swift is 31.

305AD -Today is the Feast of Saint Lucy, who was ordered by the Romans to be raped in a brothel, set on fire, stabbed to death, and to stop men saying how beautiful her eyes were, she ripped them out and handed them over on a plate. But they miraculously grew back. So St. Lucy is the patron saint of opticians.

863- Duke Baldwin Iron Arm married Lady Judith du Kales.

1250 -Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II "Stupor Mundi" the Wonder of the World, his spirit broken by endless quarrels with the Pope and rebellious Italian city states, expired at age 52. Frederick had tried to re-form back the old Roman Empire but only succeeded in making Italy and Germany more divided than ever. Meanwhile France, England and Spain were developing into centralized nation states. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation or the 1st Reich, was never as powerful again.

1264- THE HOUSE OF COMMONS- Victorious rebel English Earl Simon de Monfort called for a meeting in Westminster of a Parliament of all nobles, clergy and - common folk of the realm. It's probably the first time since the ancient Roman republic anybody had asked the common people their opinion about anything. King Henry III and Prince Edward Longshanks couldn't argue because Simon had them locked up in the Tower. To make sure Earl Simon had bishops pronounce the most fearful oaths of excommunication on anyone who dared undo his creation. So even after Longshanks escaped and had DeMonfort chopped into mincemeat, the institution of the House of Commons remained.

1543- THE COUNCIL OF TRENT convened- Officially called the XIX Ecumenical Council, this conference launched the Catholic Counter-Reformation against the Protestant reformation.

1642- Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in the Pacific discovered a big island near Australia and named it for the Dutch province of Zeeland, so New Zealand. He also found another island and called it Van Deimans Land, but it was later named in his honor as Tasmania.

1672- Polish King Jan Cazimir died a monk in Paris. He was king during a period of terrible wars with Russia, the Cossacks of the Ukraine, Turkey and Sweden. But he was pacific by nature. One saying was “the only battles Jan Cazimir ever saw were woven in his Dutch carpets!”

1769- Dartmouth College founded.

1775- the U.S. National Guard formed.

1862- BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG- Union General Ambrose Burnside (who created the men’s fashion-"sideburns") made his men attempt a frontal attack uphill on a Confederate position of concentrated fire that " a chicken couldn't live through."
The massed regiments of bluecoats were mowed down wave after wave in one of the worst disasters in U.S. Army history. The New York Fighting 69th, the all Irish brigade, fell dead in even rows shielding their eyes from the bullets as though they were rain. They shouted “Faugh au Ballagh !” Gaelic for “Clear the Way!” They left 53% of their men dead on the field. In all 13,000 Yankees died to a mere handful of confederates.
One rebel general, sickened by the stupidity of it all, said: "This ain't war, it's just plain murder." After the defeat, Burnside rode past some of his men, a kissass major tried shouting "Three cheers for the General!" and was met with stony silence.

1872- The town council of Abilene, Kansas fired Wild Bill Hickok as sheriff. They said he was more violent than most of the criminals he arrested.

1895- Gustav Mahlers 2nd Symphony “Resurrection” premiered.

1928- Leopold Damrosch conducted the premiere of George Gershwin's -"An American in Paris."

1936- At the urging of New Yorker editor Harold Ross to find a better line of work, actor Dave Chasen opened Chasen's restaurant in Beverly Hills, which catered to Hollywood stars for 60 years. It is the restaurant where Leopold Stokowski was introduced to Walt Disney and as a result they conceived "Fantasia". Humphrey Bogart, John Huston and Lauren Bacall met upstairs to discuss the Blacklist of 1947. Elizabeth Taylor ordered Chasen’s chili flown out to Rome so she could eat it on the set of Cleopatra. The restaurant closed in 1995 because the Chasen family wanted to cash in on the choice real estate. Today it is a supermarket.

1937- THE RAPE OF NANKING- The Japanese army captured the Nationalist capitol of China. The Japanese generals let their soldiers run amok for three weeks, raping and murdering civilians by the thousands. Japanese who refused to kill the innocent were punished by their officers. Typical was two officers who held a contest to see who could behead more Chinese with their samurai swords. The winner killed 106 and the contest was reported in Tokyo newspapers on their sports pages.
When their commanding General Matsui returned from convalescent leave, he was horrified and ordered a stop. That got him recalled home in disgrace. The unprecedented brutality shocked the world, remember the full horrors of World War II were still years in the future.

1937-THE GOOD NAZI- During the Rape of Nanking, in an ironic twist, the women and children of the foreign delegations were protected from the rampaging Japanese soldiers by a German businessman Johann Rabe, who guarded the door in his Nazi party uniform and swastika armband. He took in desperate Chinese and saved thousands. Rabe had been born to a family of foreign merchants and lived his entire life in China, so when it was suggested to him, he joined the Nazi party not knowing anything about it. After Nanking, Rabe went home to Berlin and tried lodge a complaint with Adolf Hitler! The Gestapo threatened him with arrest if he didn’t shut up.

Then after World War II, Johan Rabe was arrested by Allied authorities for being a Nazi! By 1947 he and his family were reduced to eating soup made from nettles and grass to survive. Then a huge package was delivered of food and money. It was a subscription from the People of Nanking, to express their thanks for his humanity.

1939- Battle of the River Platte- The German pocket battleship Graff Spee battled with several British cruisers near the Argentine coastline. The German then put into the neutral port of Montevideo for repairs.
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1940- Fleischer Popeye cartoon "Eugene the Jeep" .The character would give its name to the new army General Purpose vehicle- G.P. or "Jeep".

1942- In the rubble choked streets of Stalingrad, Soviet sniper Tanya Chernova was making her way to Nazi headquarters with instructions to assassinate their commander Field Marshal von Paulus. But on the way a comrade stepped on a mine and the explosion tore through her abdomen. She survived, but her participation in the war was over. An attractive blonde former ballerina, she began the war as a guerrilla in the Ukraine, and was trained by supersniper Vasily Zaistzev. She called the Germans she had killed “broken sticks”. By the time this explosion ended her military career, Tanya Chernova had 80 broken sticks to her record. She was 20 years old.

1951- One of the legendary Hollywood producers was Walter Wanger- starting in 1921 his films included The Sheik, Stagecoach, Queen Christina, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Silk Stockings and Cleopatra. His wife was beautiful starlet Joan Bennett, but at this time she was having an affair with her agent Jenning’s Lang. On this day Wanger surprised Hollywood by pulling out a gun and shooting Lang in the nuts right in the MCA studio parking lot.
In true Hollywood fashion Wanger got off, sentenced to just a few months in an honor ranchero compound and was soon back to work. Contributors to pay his legal fees included the Jack Warner, Walt Disney and Sam Goldwyn Jennings Lang recovered and later produced House Calls and High Plains Drifter. After all, who needs balls to be a producer?

1961- Jimmy Dean’s folk ballad Big Bad John went to #1 of the country charts. Later Dean had his own TV variety show featuring the Muppets, and started Jimmy Dean’s Pure Pork Sausage Company.

1969- Arlo Guthrie’s hit song Alice’s Restaurant released.

1971- Disney’s film Bedknobs and Broom Sticks opened.

1978- The US tried to introduce silver dollar coins. The first Susan B. Anthony dollars issued. They looked too much like quarters so they didn’t catch on.

1981- Communist Polish Gov't under General Jaruszelski declared martial law and outlaws Solidarity, the Polish Labor Organization. The secret police, the ZOMO's started arresting all the ringleaders. Jaruszelski later claimed the liberal political climate was getting so out of hand that he had to crack down or the Soviet Union would invade like they did to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. People showed their quiet resistance by wearing a small transistor (i.e. resistor) on their lapel. Also popular was a button that from a distance looked like the graphic "Solidarity" Logo but up close spelled out: "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?"

1996- In Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi apocalypse epic the Plague of the 12 Monkeys was unleashed today, a virus that killed 4/5ths of the world’s population and drove the remainder underground.

2002- Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace. The Primate of Boston, the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States. Cardinal Law had spent years covering for priests who molested children. He even protected a priest who was registered in the Man-Boy Love Society. Cardinal Law was the highest ranking Catholic to step down from popular pressure. He was recalled to Rome to become prior of Santa Maria Maggiore.

2003-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was pulled out of a hiding hole and captured by U.S. forces near his hometown of Tikrit.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean when someone is called a Bohemian? They are from Prague?

Answer: To be a socially unconventional in an artistic way. To live a rootless lifestyle, like the old Beatniks in Greenwich Village. So named because During the Thirty Years War a liberal government in the Czech province of Bohemia was crushed by the Austrian emperor. Many of their intellectuals and artists fled into exile and wandered around various European cities.

Question: What does it mean when someone is called a Bohemian? Are they from Prague?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In Film and TV, what is known as “Breaking the Fourth Wall?”
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History for 12/12/20
Birthdays: Frank Sinatra, Roman Emperor Alexander Severus, Edvard Munch, Gustav Flaubert, Cherokee Confederate General Stand Watie, John Jay, Edward G. Robinson, Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt-the Black Knight of Germany, Ed Koch, Zack Mosley –the cartoonist of “Smilin' Jack", Connie Francis, Dionne Warwick, Cathy Rigby, Tracy Austin, Bill Nighy is 70, Tom Wilkerson is 72, Jennifer Connelly is 50

639 A.D. Moslem-Arab armies of the Caliph Omar invaded Egypt. Egypt at the time was a province of the Byzantine Empire and it's native church The Coptic Rite was persecuted by them as a heresy. So rather than put up with any more harassment, the Egyptians opened their gates to the advancing Arabs and the province was overrun in short order.

1524- Pope Clement VII the Medici Fox, steered a dangerous policy to keep the Germans and French from taking over Italy. The previous year he signed a secret treaty with Germany against France, today he signed a secret treaty with France against Germany. This policy blew up in his face. The German army of Charles V stormed Rome and locked up the Pope in 1527. Italy was ravaged by wars for the rest of the century.

1653- Puritan General Oliver Cromwell, having executed King Charles I, declared himself Lord Protector of England and ruled with a junta of generals as a military dictator. He had all the symbols of monarchy destroyed. This included the crown jewels and the ancient iron crown of Alfred the Great. This is why England's crown jewels date from the 1660’s, after Cromwell. Scotland's crown jewels were smuggled out of Edinburgh Castle ahead of Cromwell's troops in a berry basket.

1792- The Bank of the United States was set up in Philadelphia on the model of the Bank of England. President Andrew Jackson dismantled the Bank in 1832 and U.S. finances swung wildly in the hands of a few tycoons like Astor and Morgan until the Federal Reserve was set up in 1913.

1784- George Washington bid a final farewell to his friend the Marquis of Lafayette. The young little aristocrat and the tall somber Virginian had become so fond of one another they were like father and son. Lafayette left for France and they never saw each other again. When Lafayette returned to America in 1825, Washington was long dead.

1793- WASHINGTON THE SLAVEMASTER- The most concrete evidence we have that George Washington was troubled about owning slaves. This day George wrote a friend in England about his plan to carve up his Mt. Vernon estate into small lots and rent them out to immigrant English tenant farmers, so he could liberate his slaves. He asked his British correspondent to keep his plan a secret and destroy this note after reading it.
He never went ahead with his plan. After he and Martha were both dead, Washington’s will freed all 137 of his slaves and sent each off with a cash pension. Compare that to Thomas Jefferson, who freed 6 out of 300 when he died, and James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, who freed none.

1897-The Katzenjammer Kids comic strip by Rudolph Dirks appears in the Hearst’s New York Journal. The first comic where characters spoke in word balloons. The adventures of Hans & Fritz was so popular a rival newspaper started an imitation called the Captain & the Kids, leading to the first artistic plagiarism lawsuit.
In Paris, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas had a problem whenever they bought the American newspapers, because Picasso and Fernande Oliver would fight over who got to read the Katzenjammer Kids first.

1899- George Grant of Boston invented the Golf Tee.

1900- At a dinner party Charles Schwab proposed a steel trust company to corner the steel market, uniting the resources of Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and John "Bet a Million" Taylor. U.S. Steel is born.

1901-First transatlantic wireless signal sent by Guglielmo Marconi. This finally ended the frustrating hoopla over laying transatlantic telegraph cables and have them break down almost constantly since the 1850s. The pioneers of radio broadcasting like Armstrong, Lee Deforest and David Sarnoff got their start working for the Marconi Wireless Company. Recent scholarship puts forward that Nikola Tesla preceded Marconi with the concept.

1922- Lenin suffered the first of a series of strokes that left him too sick to work. He ruled Soviet Russia for one more year as a figurehead while his true state of health was concealed from the public. Top Communist officials like Trotsky and Stalin now fought for power.

1925- The world’s first Motel opened. Arthur Heinman opened the Milestone Motel in San Luis Obispo California. Motel was a contraction of Motor-Hotel.

1925- Cossack officer Rezah Pahlavi deposed the last Qajar Shah and becomes Shah of Persia, which would shortly change its name to Iran.

1926- Polish Marshal Josef Pilsudski seized power in Warsaw. Sending troops to surround the Sejm- Parliament, he strode in and told the astounded politicians:” I sh*t on all of you! I am going to treat you like children because that is how you want to be treated.” He ruled as dictator until his death in 1935.

1936- After the abdication of Edward VIII, his stuttering younger brother Albert was proclaimed King George VI.

1937- During their war in China, Japanese dive bombers strafed and sank the neutral U.S. gunboat Panay in the Yangtse River. The Japanese Government apologized and paid $2.2 million in reparations.

1941- In the emergency after Pearl Harbor the U.S. Army ordered all peacetime airliners and pilots commandeered into military service. Federal customs authorities in the port of New York also seized the world’s largest luxury ocean liner, The French S.S Normandie, for “protective custody”. Remember at this time France was an occupied part of the Third Reich.

1947- The United Mine Workers under John L. Lewis pull out of the AF of L. The historic difference was the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was made up of skilled technical workers and artisans. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was made up of more unskilled assembly-line type folks.

1952- The first Screen Actors Guild Strike. President Walter Pidgeon -Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet- had the movie stars hit the bricks to win television and commercial residuals. The final deals were settled by then SAG president Ronald Reagan in 1960. Ronnie compromised with the studio heads (many who later backed his bid for the governorship of California) that only residuals for films released after 1955 would be paid.
Actors who made their big hits in the 30's and 40s like Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and The Little Rascals were left out. Mickey Rooney, who's Andy Hardy movies were the top box office of the mid-1940's put it mildly: "Reagan screwed me !!"

1955- the first hovercraft design patented. It wasn't built and launched until 1959.

1963- Kenya under Njomo Kenyatta declared independence from Britain.

1975- Sarah Jane Moore pleaded guilty to trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford.

1980- The song “Whip It” by Devo won a gold record.

1991- Actor Richard Gere married supermodel Cindy Crawford.

2000- THE SUPREME COURT PICKED THE PRESIDENT. In the tightest presidential election since 1877, By one vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled George W. Bush won over Vice President Al Gore. They stated that although there may have been irregularities in the vote counting in the decisive state of Florida, it was too late and pointless to continue the recount, so they were suspending all further appeals. Al Gore and the Democrats gave in and squelched attempts by African-American congressmen to point out massive voter discrimination.

2015- Women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were finally given the right to vote.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Film and TV, what is known as “Breaking the Fourth Wall?”

Answer: When an actor on stage or screen looks at the audience and acknowledges their presence, sometimes confiding in them. Shakespeare used it in Richard III, Groucho Marx used it effectively. Most recently Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s comedy series Fleabag.

Question: During WWII, what branch of the U.S. Armed services was known as “ The Silent Service”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: There is evidence, and there is empirical evidence. What is the difference?
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History for 12/10/2020
Birthdays: English King Edward VII “Bertie”, Emile Dickinson, Ada Lovelace, E. H. Shepard the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh. Chet Huntley, Morton Gould, Victor McLaughlin, Dan Blocker, Tommy Kirk, Fionnula Flanagan, Kenneth Branaugh is 60, Dorothy Lamour, Susan Dey is 68, Michael Clarke Duncan

Happy World Freedom Day.

969AD- Byzantine Emperor Nicephorous II Phocas had no better administrator than John Tzimisces. But John was also the lover of Nicephorous’s wife Empress Theophano. This day she had Nicephorous assassinated. Theophano had earlier poisoned her own father-in-law Emperor Romanus II to help Nicephorous seize the throne. But now she was bored with him. To please the angry Greek Patriarch, John Tzmisces exiled Theophano to a convent and reigned as a pretty good emperor. But then he too was poisoned, by Basil II the Bulgar Slayer. Believe it or not, this was a happy period in Byzantine history.

1041- Byzantine Michael IV the Paphlagonian died. Before his death he had his sickbed moved to the Monastery of Saint Demetrios and changed his golden robes for monks rags.

1198-The death of the Moorish philosopher Averroes.

1508- Pope Julius II formed a grand alliance to crush the Republic of Venice. Called the League of Cambrai, the Vatican, France, The German Emperor, Spain and Naples all pledged to destroy the Most Surene Republic. The Venetians fought back valiantly, noblewomen patriotically pawning their jewels to pay the troops. After being attacked on all sides for 4 years, the League of Cambrai finally broke up when Pope Julius decided he’s rather have fellow Italians for neighbors rather than foreigners after all. The Republic of Venice survived, but her status as a world power was broken. She lapsed into an elegant, pleasure-loving decline until absorbed into Italy by Napoleon in 1796.

1513- Former Florentine politician Niccolo Machiavelli was living in a small town after being thrown out of government. He was even twisted a bit on a torture rack. Still missing his life in power, he declared this day to a friend he was writing a book on political theory to give to the Medici duke of Florence. He hoped by doing so he’d be called back to office. He also tried to dedicate it to Cesare Borgia. It didn’t get him a job, but his book THE PRINCE became one of the great works of political philosophy, the handbook of unscrupulous politicians ever since.

1518- Ulrich Zwingli was chosen to be the Gross Munster or chief vicar of the Swiss city of Zurich. Zwingli became a top leader of the Protestant Reformation like Martin Luther and John Calvin.

1520- Protestant reformer Martin Luther shows the Pope what he thinks of his Bull of Excommunication on him by burning it in public. Pope Leo’s command Exsurge Domine went up in smoke along with the Canons of Roman Church Law to the cheers of students.

1577- The Union of Brussels- The 17 provinces of the Netherlands and Belgium formalize their union. This is why Holland is also known as the United Provinces.

1607- Captain John Smith left the Jamestown camp with two men to find food. They were captured by the Indians who killed the other men and dragged Smith before chief Powhatan. He ordered Smith’s head to be placed on a flat stone and bashed in with a war club. But Powhatan’s favorite daughter Pocahontas threw herself over Smith and protected him. Smith could speak no Algonquin and the Indians no English and neither could sing any Broadway tunes. Was this an execution prevented or a ritual of admission into the tribe? Powhatan was known to extend his rule through dynastic alliances with other tribal leaders, and he was well aware of the white strangers, wiping out a Spanish attempt to land on his beach in 1600. Maybe this was his way of wanting to bring the white mans powers to his side. No one knows for sure. John Smith is the only source for the story, and he didn’t write of this incident until back in England 14 years later.

1641- King Charles I issued a Royal Declaration ordering all Britons to conform to the practices of the Church of England, or else! This Declaration was King Charles’ defiant answer to a list of demands called the Great Remonstrance given him ten days earlier that accused him of debasing the Protestant faith. This was a poke at all the Puritans, Pilgrims, Levellers, Anabaptists and Roundheads who were clamoring that the Anglican Church had gotten too Catholic-looking in it's rituals.
Indeed at the insistence of monarchs since Elizabeth the reformed English service had re-introduced crucifixes, communion plate and surplice aprons for the priests. The declaration was one more provocation building the conflict that would soon break out as the English Civil War. When violence broke out the Puritans dragged out the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Laud and chopped his head off. Laud was seen as the instigator of this declaration and the Kings policy on religion and was branded as Laudism.

1672- New York colonies Royal Governor Sir Thomas Lovelace announced the establishment of a regular monthly mail delivery between New York and Boston.

1800- Congress debated a bill to build a mausoleum for George Washington to be placed in the center of the Congress. But Martha Washington cut off such efforts by citing George’s specific instructions that his remains not be turned into some kind of regal national shrine. He insisted on and still sleeps in his simple family tomb at Mt. Vernon.

1710-Battle of Villaviciosa- Phillip V of Spain defeated an Anglo-Portuguese invasion and assures the throne for the Bourbon family. His descendant are still on the throne today.

1817- Mississippi statehood.

1839- THE GREAT GAME- A large British army left India to invade Afghanistan. The 15,000 troops carried with them 38,000 camp followers, including camels laden with raspberry jam, cigars, cricket bats and fox hunting dogs. One British officer alone brought sixty servants. The British claimed they were invading to contain Russian expansionism. The duel between Britain and Russia for the Indian Northwest that lasted until 1947 was nicknamed The Great Game. By 1841 this army would all die in the terrible Retreat from Kabul and its sole survivor would be a doctor who got lost. The British officer who coined the term the Great Game was beheaded by the Emir of Bokhara and thrown into a pit of reptiles.

1864- Sherman’s army reached the sea at the Georgia coast near Savannah.

1877- Siege of Plevna ends. Russia and Austria force Turkey to grant independence to Serbia and Bosnia. Austria’s later efforts to swallow up Bosnia became the issue that sparked World War I.

1869- Wyoming Territory granted women the vote, the nation follows 58 years later (California in 1911).

1898- Spain and the U.S. make peace ending the Spanish American War. Secretary of State John Hay who was once Abe Lincoln’s secretary called it “A Splendid Little War.” Critics Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce called it the Yanko-Spanko War. The United States became a global power player with colonies in Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, Midway, Wake, and the Philippines.
The Philippine’s, who were fighting for independence under their leaders like Aquinaldo, suddenly discover they were now American property. The U.S. declared they fought for their freedom from Spain yet never officially recognized their national independence movements. The Philippines gained its full independence in 1946 and the last American base, Subic Bay, wasn’t removed until the 1990s.

1899- Battle of Magersfontein (more Boer-Woer). Our post-Apartheid opinion of white South Africans was not very high, but in 1899 most of Europe and America sympathized with their fight against the awesome might of the British Empire. The Queen of Holland begged the German Kaiser to help them (the Boers were ethnically Dutch-German). Crowds in Paris and Brussels would jeer and boo at the visiting Prince of Wales with the cry "Vive les Boers!"

1901- The First Nobel Prize is given. Alfred Nobel made millions by inventing dynamite and nitro-glycerine. But as much as his discoveries were used for constructive purposes they also made it possible for armies to blow each other up much more efficiently. He felt guilty and after an accident with the stuff killed his own brother. He resolved to create something positive from his fortune. Hence the Nobel Prize. Nobel died on Dec 10th 1896 and the awards are given each year on the anniversary. President Teddy Roosevelt won the first Peace Prize in 1910 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. President Obama was the third U.S. President to receive the Peace Prize.

1905- O. Henry’s short story “ A gift from the Magi” first published.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt in a ceremony in the White House.

1938- To make the film "Gone With the Wind" Producer David Selznick and director Victor Fleming shot the massive "Burning of Atlanta" in Culver City, California. The sequence was storyboarded and designed by William Cameron-Menzies, who designed the sets for Intolerance for D.W. Griffith. Selznick used the opportunity to clean the studios backlot storage, destroying sets from King Kong, Little Lord Fauntleroy and Last of the Mohicans in the inferno. They shot the scenes with three Rhett Butler stand-ins.

1941-The Hollywood Victory Committee formed. Top Hollywood agents like Abe Lastfogel, Lou Wasserman and Myron Selznick (David's brother) start signing up movie stars for bond drives and touring shows for the troops.
The committee later created the Hollywood Canteen, a nightclub for servicemen on Ivar near Sunset. A soldier or sailor could come in for a free meal served by Tyrone Power or Red Skelton and have a dance with celebrities like Rita Hayworth or Dina Shore.
One animation painter who worked in the kitchen told me the only celebrity who would stay until closing, even mopping and washing dishes was Marlena Dietrich.

1941-Japanese planes sink the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in just 90 minutes. The prized British Battleships had participated in the sinking of the German dreadnought Bismarck in the Atlantic a year earlier but had been transferred to the Pacific to boost the defenses of Singapore. The next day a lone Japanese plane dropped a wreath at the site of the sinking in tribute to the 884 British sailors who died there.

1941- A Japanese Army of 4,000 under General Homma landed on the Philippine Islands at Luzon and Vigan while a third force overran the U.S. outpost on Guam.

1941- The New York Metropolitan Opera announced that in light of the Pearl Harbor attack they were suspending any further performances of Madame Butterfly for the duration. Other opera companies also stopped doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado.

1942- OPERATION WINTERSTORM- General Von Manstein was ordered by Hitler to swing his panzers north and attempt to break through the Russian forces encircling the trapped German 6th Army at Stalingrad. But Von Manstein’s rescue mission was halted by Russian resistance and wintery conditions just 30 miles short of their goal. The 6th Army surrendered in February.

1948- The United Nations adopts Article XIX, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The committee, spending months drafting the resolution, was chaired by the Eleanor Roosevelt. By this act she debuted not just as a former first lady and widow of FDR but as a stateswoman and diplomat in her own right.

1949- After being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist forces, Kuomintang (KMT) Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek flew to Taiwan. Two and a half million ethnic Han Chinese evacuated to the island of Formosa-Taiwan, which continues today to call itself the ROC- The Republic of China. This ended the Chinese Civil War. Since 1924 China suffered 2 million deaths in it’s first civil war, 20 million in the Japanese invasion and World War II, and 5 million more killed in the final civil war.

1966- The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” hit #1 in pop charts.

1967- R&B star Otis Redding and four of his band the Bar Kays were killed in a small plane crash near Madison Wisconsin. He was 26. Redding had recorded his hit “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” just three days earlier.

1974- Powerful Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Congressman Wilbur Mills resigned in disgrace after being busted by the DC police for getting drunk with a stripper named Fannie Fox and taking her for a 2:00 AM skinny dip in the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. Fannie was later christened the “Tidal Basin Bombshell.”

1978- The world premiere of Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. The incomparable Christopher Reeve with Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman.

1994- The Unabomber sent an explosive device that killed Thomas J. Mosser, an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam who handled the public relations spin for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster.

2013- Richard Williams unfinished epic animated film the Thief and the Cobbler received its premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. It was begun 40 years earlier in 1972 and never completed.
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Yesterday’s Question: There is evidence, and there is empirical evidence. What is the difference?

Answer: Empirical evidence is corroboration based on practical, first-hand, documented or eyewitness observation, rather than theoretical/circumstantial logic.

Question: There is evidence, and there is empirical evidence. What is the difference?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What do you do when someone hands you an ocarina?
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History for 12/9/2020
Birthdays: Sappho, John Milton, Jean De Brunhoff, Emil Waldteufel the composer of the Skaters Waltz, Admiral Grace Hopper 1906 who wrote the earliest computer language, Hermoinie Gingold, Dalton Trumbo, John Cassavettes, Broderick Crawford, Dick Butkus, Red Foxx, Cesar Franck, John Malkovich is 67, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Buck Henry, Felicity Huffman, Mario Cantone, Judy Dench is 86, Kirk Douglas

536- The legions of Byzantine General Belisarius captured Rome from the Ostrogoths.
This was part of Emperor Justinian’s unsuccessful plan to win back the western half of the old Roman Empire.

1641- Famed Flemish portrait artist Sir Anthony van Dyck died of a fever at his home in Blackfriars, London. He was 42.

1783- First executions began at England’s Newgate Prison, replacing the traditional
public hanging, drawing, quartering, branding, beheading place of Tyburn Hill- approximately where London’s Marble Arch is today.

1803- Congress passed the Twelfth Amendment calling for the President and Vice President to be of the same party. Before this, the system was the Vice President was the loser of the presidential election, thus the people’s second choice. But trying to govern with your bitter political enemy standing behind you proved impractical. The Amendment also defined the order of succession: President, Vice President, Secretary of State. Speaker of the House, Senate Leader Pro-Tem. In 1945 the 22nd Amendment excluded the Secretary of State, who was never an elected official.

1824- Battle of Ayacucho- Simon Bolivar defeated the last Spanish Army in the Americas.

1825- THE LATIN AMERICAN BUBBLE- The London Stock Exchange crashed over rampant stock speculation in the potential wealth in the new emerging Latin American republics. Financier Nathan Rothschild became a national figure when he lent the Bank of England millions to stay solvent. Thanks to new communications and international investment for the first time the London panic reached across national borders and caused the U.S. Stock Exchange and the Paris Bourse to also crash. This kind of speculation in futures caused the South Sea Bubble in France and the Tulip craze a century earlier. We’ve seen it in our own times with global credit crash of 2008.

1835- First battle of San Antonio de Bexar. Angry Texas citizens forced Mexican
General Cos to abandon a post in an old mission called the Alamo and give up a store
of valuable cannon. This was the inciting incident that provoked President Santa
Anna into attacking San Antonio the following Spring.

1840- Dr. David Livingstone set sail for Africa to do missionary work. He met Stanley
in 1871.

1854- Albert Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" published.

1861- The first ever government oversight committee formed. The Joint Congressional
Committee on the Conduct of the War. It was created because Congressmen were afraid
President Lincoln was a naïve hillbilly lawyer who was losing the Civil War. All they succeeded in doing was give Lincoln more stress and at one point they even accused First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln of being a Confederate spy.

1889- The Chicago Auditorium dedicated. The landmark building’s architect Louis
Sullivan had hired a new assistant to help with the drawings-Frank Lloyd Wright.

1899- BLACK WEEK-Battle of Stormberg Junction. A series of small battles in which
British forces were defeated by Boer guerrillas in South Africa.
The commanding British general Sir Redvers Buller, was considered so slow moving
that one wag suggested they periodically hold a mirror up to his nostrils to check
for signs of life. He was later replaced with the more energetic Lord Roberts of
Kandahar.-“Ol’ Bobs”.

1905- Richard Strauss’s opera Salome premiered in Dresden. The lead role demands
a soprano with big Wagnerian lungs but also a flat stomach to do the strip tease
the Dance of the Seven Veils. When the opera debuted in New York, old millionaires
like J.P. Morgan were shocked at its’ blatant sexuality. They threatened to cut
off funding until Sal and her skimpy veils was banished from the schedule.

1907- the first Christmas Seals go on sale to fight tuberculosis.

1909- Mary Harris a.k.a. Mother Jones speaks at the Thalia Theater in support of
the "The Strike of the 20,000" Immigrant seamstresses in New York's garment
district. "Every strike I have ever been in has been won by women!"

1917- During World War I, Field Marshal Allenby and the British army entered Jerusalem while Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab forces marched on Damascus. To promote harmony between Arabs and Jews, Allenby ordered the building a huge YMCA in the Old City. The people that schvitz together….

1931- Disney short Mickey’s Orphans debuted.

1936- The first cookery show appeared on British television.

1937- In the path of advancing Japanese armies, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai
Shek and his government abandoned the capitol Nanking and moved to Chunking.

1946- Damon Runyon died, the writer whose characters the musical "Guys and
Dolls' are based. His philosophy: "All life is six to five against."

1948- Actor Ossie Davis married actress Ruby Dee.

1960- Coronation Street premiered on British ITV.

1964- John Coltrane recorded his landmark jazz album “A Love Supreme”. Late on
foggy nights Trane liked to take his saxophone out onto the middle of San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Bridge in the night fog, and practice by himself.

1965- Bill Melendez's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" the first half hour animated TV special featuring the music of Vince Guaraldi. Producer Lee Mendelson had heard Guaraldi's jazz combo perform in San Francisco. He never scored a film before:" How many yards of music do you want? At the preview screening for CBS executives, the show was met with deathly silence; when the show concluded, one executive said to the director Bill Melendez, "Well, you gave it a good try." CBS hated its religious message, the idea of actual kids voicing the characters, not having a laugh track and having jazz as the soundtrack, and only aired it out of obligation for the specials sponsor, Coca-Cola. Out of fear, It was not screened for any critics sans one Time Magazine critic (who ironically gave it a positive review).
Estimates are that 15,490,000 households and 36 million people watched Charlie Brown and his friends that night. A Charlie Brown Christmas won an Emmy and has run every year for 54 years.

1967- At a Doors concert lead singer Jim Morrison was sprayed with mace and arrested
by Miami police for “lewd behavior” on stage, but probably more for referring to
the cops as pigs.

1968- The MOTHER OF ALL DEMOS- In San Francisco, Dr Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the first computer workstation. He showed how people would use hot keys, a printer and scanner, cut and paste text. And he had a simple internet hookup to another station at Stanford U, 120 miles away.

1967- Nicholas Ceaucescu became dictator of Communist Romania.

1992-Britains Prime Minister John Major announced the separation of Prince Charles
and Diana of Wales.

1994- Disney Animators in California move into their new Animation building designed
by Robert Stern.

1994- The Surgeon-General of the United States, Dr Jocelyn Elders, was forced to
step down after her statements that sex education in primary schools include masturbation outraged many conservatives.

2004- Mia Hamm and the stars of the Women’s National Soccer Team played their last
game, defeating Mexico 5-0.

2008- Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested for corruption, and having a really bad haircut.

2340- Mr Worf, the Klingon officer of Star Trek Next Generation was born.
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Yesterday’s Question: What do you do when someone hands you an ocarina?

Answer. You blow into it. It is a funny little oval shaped woodwind instrument. Sometimes called a vessel flute. Occarina is Italian for Little Goose.