Question: What is the Hippocratic Oath?

Question: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Poughkeepsie NY
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History for 11/13/2020
Birthdays: Saint Augustine 354 AD, King Edward III of England, Robert Louis Stephenson, actor Edwin Booth, Oskar Werner, Jean Seberg, Jack Elam, Judge Louis Brandeis (the first Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Alexander Scourby, Hermoine Badderly, Eugene Ionesco, Garry Marshall, Mel Stottlemyre, Joe Mantegna is 73, Jimmy Kimmel is 53, Gerald Butler is 51, Whoopi Goldberg- born name Caryn Johnson is 65

HAPPY FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH- A famous superstition, A Friday, the day Adam died, and Jesus was crucified, combined with the number thirteen- Judas Iscariot is called the Thirteenth Apostle, and the Vikings considered wicked Loki the Thirteenth God. So today is considered an unlucky combination. But you have a Lucky Day!

In Ancient Rome, today was Epulium Jovis, or the Feast of Jupiter Reclining.

In London it is Lord Mayor’s Day

1749- The University of Pennsylvania, originally called the Franklin Institute is established as the first non-sectarian American college. See below 1874.

1789- Ben Franklin wrote " Nothing is certain except Death and Taxes."

1842- Today Lewis Carroll noted in his diary:" Began writing the fairy tale of Alice. Hope to be done by Christmas.."

1851- The Denny Party from Illinois, aboard the schooner Exact landed at Aliki Point in the American Northwest territory. At the invitation of local Chief named Seattle, they set up a trading post across Elliot Bay at a Sucquamish village named Duwumps. Happy Birthday Seattle.

1861- THE TRENT AFFAIR- All through the American Civil War, Abe Lincoln's biggest fear, and Jefferson Davis’ greatest hope, was direct intervention of the great European powers. With England in Canada and France in Mexico and the British Navy ruling the seas, this was a real possibility. The British and French thought nothing of intervening in conflicts all over the world like the Greek Revolution or the war between Argentina and Uruguay. Almost as soon as the guns of Fort Sumter boomed, Emperor Napoleon III of France and the German Elector of Baden were offering their services as mediators.
On this day a U.S. Navy frigate fired on the British ship HMS Trent and removed from her two Confederate diplomats. Mason and Slidell were being sent as ambassadors to the Court of Saint James. They claimed diplomatic immunity, the U.S. said they were citizens in rebellion. London reacted to the insult to her flag with an explosion of war talk. General Garnet Woolsey volunteered to raise new regiments for an invasion of New York State through Canada. Abe Lincoln's reaction was "One War at a time." He apologized and offered reparations. On the other side Prince Albert helped keep the peace.

1868- Giacomo Rossini died at 68. He retired at 37 from performing and lived on royalties. It was said he became so lazy he laid about in bed all day. One day when writing a concerto his score dropped to the floor as he leaned over to fill his glass. Rather than bend down to pick it up he took a fresh sheet and wrote a sonata. He still could do a nice piece on occasion, like The Fantastic Toy Shop. Born on leap day Feb 29, at 68, he’d list his age as 16.

1874 -At the sesquicentennial celebrations of the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Green invented the Ice Cream Soda.

1914- Clothing designer Carez Crosby took two handkerchiefs and some ribbon off some baby bonnets and invented the Brassiere.

1917- THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR- After Lenin’s Communist Party seized power in Saint Petersburg disaffected officers and businessmen fled to the edges of the Russian Empire to organize resistance to the new regime. This day some "White" soldiers under General Krasnoe skirmished with some of Trotsky’s Red Guards. These were the first shots of a bloody Civil War that would rage for 4 years and kill millions. After just completing a World War and two Revolutions, when she heard this news one Russian poet exclaimed : "Oh God, You Mean its Not Over?!"

1940- Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' opened. As Walt put it, "this'll make Beethoven!"
Frank Lloyd Wright's opinion was 'I love the visuals, but why did you use all that old music?"

1953- An Indiana Judge ordered his local school district to remove any school books with references to the character Robin Hood. All the "take from the rich and give to the poor" it was obvious to the judge that the medieval rogue of Sherwood Forest was a Communist.

1956- The Supreme Court declares Montgomery Alabama’s segregation laws involving interstate buses are unconstitutional.

1969- President Richard Nixon’s’ Vice President Spiro Agnew accused the national news media of bias and partisanship. He excoriated them as "Nattering nabobs of Negativism" and gained a reputation for pithy use of the language. In reality Nixon speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan wrote all of Nixon and Spiros best lines.
Up to then White House reporters were a compromising bunch when asked, winking at John Kennedy’s bimbos and Franklin Roosevelt’s wheelchair. But relations soured as Lyndon Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War spiraled, then Richard Nixon’s paranoia led him to openly declare the press his enemy, and the press reacted in kind. And so modern media was born.

1970- A giant typhoon carrying 100 foot tidal waves smashed into Bangladesh, then called East Pakistan. 150,000 died.

1971- ABC TV. movie "the Duel" premiered. It starred Dennis Weaver as a hapless motorist on a lonely freeway menaced by an unseen truck driver. The movie was directed by a young protégé of Lew Wasserman, named Steven Spielberg.

1971- Walt Disney’s The Aristocats opened.

1974- Atomic plant worker Karen Silkwood was the first person to expose lax safety practices at the US nuclear power plants. For this she was rewarded with demotion, harassment, lawsuits. Even a radioactive isotope was put under her car seat. On this night she was finally killed in a car accident. She was on her way to talk to a New York Times reporter and it’s been alleged her car was deliberately run off the road. The files she was going to hand over to the press were taken from the car. The crash was ruled an accident.

1978- Mickey Mouse got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1986- President Ronald Reagan attempting to explain the festering Iran Contra Scandal said on nationwide TV:" We did not and I repeat did not…trade weapons or ransom for hostages, or would we ever." But it turns out that was exactly what he was doing.

1986- Directors John Huston, Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen denounced the fad promoted by Ted Turner of computer colorizing classic Black & White films like the Maltese Falcon. Supposedly one of the last things Orson Welles said on his deathbed was "Keep Ted Turner and his crayons away from my movies!" Ted got the message and shifted his money to digital restoration and building channels like TCM.

1991- Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast opened, the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

1997- Julie Taymor’s staging of The Lion King musical had its official Broadway debut. It had opened earlier in Minneapolis for a trial run. She became the first woman director to win a Tony award for it.

2001- President Bush issued an order that all people apprehended as terrorists would be tried by secret military commissions that dispense with our traditional American civil rights that we fought for in the Revolution. But he didn’t go as far as to call them prisoners of war, because then he could also ignore the Geneva Conventions.

2015- ISIS inspired terrorists attacked several parts of Paris, including a rock concert and a soccer match, killing 153.
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Yesterday’s Question: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Poughkeepsie NY

Answer: B. Cincinnati is named after a hero in Roman antiquity, Cincinattus.

Question: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Poughkeepsie NY

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Queen Elizabeth’s daddy was a King George. When her grandson Prince William’s son George becomes King, what number will be be?
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History for 11/12/2020
Birthdays: Auguste Rodin, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Bahi-ullah 1817 founder of the Bahii faith, Elizabeth Cadie -Stanton, Cecil B. DeMille, Grace Kelly, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, Shamus Culhane, Charles Manson, Neil Young, Edvard Munch, Nadia Comenici, Tanya Harding, Wally Shaw, Megan Mullally is 61, Anne Hathaway is 38, Ryan Gosling is 40, David Brain.

1035- King Canute the Great died. He was the Viking King of Denmark and England simultaneously. It was Canute who once tried to command the ocean tide to go out..

1623- In Vilnius Lithuania, Catholic priest St. Joseph of Polotsk was torn apart by an angry mob. Polish Catholic legislators led by chancellor Jan Zamoyski tried to reconcile the practices of their Ukrainian and Belarus subjects by creating the Church of the Uniate Rite. Clergy could keep their Eastern Orthodox rituals and wives, but acknowledge the Pope. This compromise didn't suit all tempers, and such acts of violence broke out into the Great Cossack Revolt of 1648.

1792- The Revolutionary French Republic issued a declaration that any other European kingdom that wants to overthrow their king and chop his head off, is welcome to come join the fun and France would help.

1859- The first trapeze act was demonstrated at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. The act caused such a sensation that the daredevil was immortalized by his tights becoming a fashion named in his honor- Jules Leotard.

1861- THE CURRAUGH CAMP AFFAIR- When 20 year old Edward the Prince of Wales went to Oxford he was kept on a short leash by his worried parents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They expected his college life to be- well, Victorian. He was to reside off campus, limited his diet to bland foods and soda water, and absolutely no smoking or carousing with women! This draconian regimen only stiffened Bertie’s rebellious nature.

When allowed to attend maneuvers in Ireland and bunk with a company of hard drinking cavalry officers, Bertie was at last free to go wild. By unfortunate coincidence the gossip about the Prince’s all night drinking binges and bedding actresses reached his father just as Albert was showing the first signs of the typhoid fever that would kill him. For years afterwards, Queen Victoria blamed her son for contributing to his father's death. In his adult years, King Edward VII was never without a cigar in his teeth, a girl on his lap and a drink in his hand. Women nicknamed him Dirty Bertie, and Edward the Caresser.

1912- SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC- in the Antarctic this day the frozen bodies of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and his men were found. He had lost his race to find the South Pole to Norwegian Piers Ammundsen then was stranded by a blizzard only 30 miles from his base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf. His last diary entry (March 29th ) said "We are showing that Englishmen can still have a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end. This diary and our dead bodies will be the proof. I should like to write more but I haven't the strength..."

1917- At the first meeting of the Russian Duma since the Bolshevik Revolution Lenin and Trotsky revealed their radical plan to reform Russian Society into a Communist Worker’s State dominated by the Soviets -workers and peasants councils.

1918- The day after the Armistice ended World War I, dozens of German army regiments against orders, began to march back across their border in perfect order. Then, defying the shouts and threats of their officers, the men threw away their helmets and guns, and simply walked home.

1918- With their Hapsburg emperor fled, Austria declared itself a republic.

1920- In the wake of the "Black Sox" Baseball scandal, the first rigged World Series, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was elected first Commissioner of Baseball. He ordered all those involved in the scandal including Shoeless Joe Jackson permanently banned from baseball, even though they had been acquitted in a civil trial.

1923- In Clarksburg West Virginia a man shot his wife for smoking a cigarette. After World War I the psychologist nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edmund Bernayz left the office of war propaganda and went into the advertising business. He later bragged that it was he who created the campaign equating woman’s emancipation and voting rights with smoking cigarettes. He created ad campaign calling cigarettes "Freedom Sticks".

1927- The Holland Tunnel completed. It runs under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey. It’s not named for the Netherlands, but for the engineer Clifford Holland, who died shortly before its completion.

1933- Hugh Gray of the British Aluminum Company takes the first photographs of what he claimed was a monster in Loch Ness. He would be the first of many to have claimed to have seen Nessie.

1937- Alan Turing delivered his famous paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" at Kings College, Cambridge.
In it he postulated on the ability to create a "universal machine" that used numbers to solve problems and could be re-programable for different tasks. In his day they were called Turing Machines, but we know them now as Computers.

1938- The Madagascar Plan. Nazi Herman Goring announced a new plan to create a homeland for European Jews in French Madagascar off the coast of Africa. It sounds goofy but they got it from an idea of 19th century Zionist leader Theodore Herzl and the just concluded international conference at Evian France showed the reluctance of the western democracies to take in large amounts of refugees. The idea went nowhere.

1944- THE BATTLESHIP TIRPITZ is sunk. After the big battle with the Bismarck, Nazi admirals built an even bigger battleship, the Tirpitz. The allies however, found out through intelligence when it would sail and attacked this one as soon as it left harbor. They pounded it with bomber and torpedo planes and midget submarines day and night until it rolled over and sank. Survivors recalled as the ship was sinking they could hear through the hull the sound of the doomed sailors singing "Deutschland Uber Alles".
This caused a British Admiral to remark:" It's tragic that such men follow such a cause."

1946- Disney's "Song of the South" with James Baskett as Uncle Remus.

1946- The Exchange Bank in Chicago opened the first drive in bank.

1948- After World War II, Japanese leaders were sentenced for war crimes by a world court like the top Nazis leaders were at Nuremberg. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, Generals Homma and Yamashita and 900 others were executed or imprisoned for crimes against humanity and genocide.

1970- Florence Oregon found a large dead gray whale on its beach. City fathers decided it would be easier to dispose, if they blew it up. As an audience watched, they stuffed it with half a ton of dynamite. The explosion drew cheers from the audience, then everyone ran for cover as they were showered by falling 50 pound chunks of smelly blubber and guts. The film of it has been called the first viral video.

1981- The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for the second time. First reusable spacecraft.

1990- Akihito became Emperor of Japan.

2014- The European Space Agency successfully landed the first satellite Philae on a moving comet. Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It had been launched ten years before and had taken this long to reach it.
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Yesterday’s Question: Queen Elizabeth’s daddy was a King George. When her grandson Prince William’s son George becomes King, what number will be be?

Answer: If the order goes well, Elizabeth II would be succeeded by Charles III, then William V, the George VII.

Question: Who was Holden Caulfield?

Question: Hedy Lamar was a top Hollywood screen goddess in the 1940s, but today she is famous for something quite different. What is it?
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History for 11/10/2020
Birthdays: Mohammad, Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Claude Rains, Carl Stalling, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho Marx’s TV announcer, Tracey Morgan is 51, Animator and teacher Sue Kroyer

Today is the feast of Saint Leo the Great, the Pope who scared Attila the Hun away from Rome by playing on his superstitions about the invisible power of the Christian god.

1610- THE NIGHT OF DUPES- Cardinal Richelieu ruled France with a centralized authority that made him admired by King Louis XIII, but hated by just about everyone else. When the king was gravely ill, the Queen Mother nursed him back to health. In return she asked for her payment, the Cardinals head! She wanted him replaced by keeper of the seals Jean de Mariac. This day in the Luxembourg Palace, Mom told Louis "It’s either Richelieu or me!" On cue, the gaunt cardinal emerged from a secret door. The King made his choice- Bye Mom. Oh and uh.,. Jean de Mariac was beheaded.

1766- In New Brunswick New Jersey, Queens College was founded. It later changed its name to Rutgers University.

1770- Voltaire said:" If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

1775- The U.S. Marine Corps founded by Congress. Marines were originally the sharpshooters who climb up ships rigging during a sea battle and shoot down on the enemy decks. They have the nickname Leathernecks because part of their early uniform was a stiff leather collar worn under their cravat to ward off cutlass blows and "keep in the head up in a good military bearing."

1778- John Paul Jones had been beached in France for nine months. At the height of the American Revolution he had been told to send away his ship USS Ranger to await a bigger, better one from the French. But delay and red tape was making him crazy. Today his agents found him a new command- an old, run down merchant tub named L’Duc du Durras. John Paul Jones fixed it up, and renamed her the USS BonHomme Richard after Ben Franklin’s bestselling book. The USS BonHomme Richard became the most famous ship in the young American Navy.

1782- English King George III wrote his Prime Minister Lord Shelburne about the recently lost American Revolution: " I should be miserable indeed if no blame for the dismemberment of America from this Empire not be laid at my door, however knowing that Knavery is so much a striking feature of it’s Inhabitants, it may Not in the end be such an Evil that they are now aliens to this kingdom."

1793- FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESS OF REASON- The radical French Revolutionaries had done away with the Catholic religion as a collaborator in tyranny, but they knew the common people wanted the consolation of religion. So they now substituted the worship of Reason in its place. Today was the first festival of the Goddess of Reason held at Notre Dame, with an actress personifying the new deity and chants and hymns and such silliness. It didn't last, it's inventor Pierre Chaumette was guillotined for not being radical enough. When Napoleon came to power he restored normal Catholic worship, although the French army permitted no chaplains.

1865- During the Civil War Swiss immigrant Henry Wirz was the Confederate commander of the infamous prison Andersonville where thousands of Yankee prisoners starved and perished. On this day he became the first military officer ever hanged for war crimes. He was also the first person to use the excuse "I was only following orders."

1871- STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTON- No one in England had heard from the famous African explorer-missionary Dr. David Livingston for three years and he was feared dead. Henry Morton Stanley undertook the expedition partly as a publicity stunt funded by the Josef Pulitizer’s New York World newspaper. After one year of wandering through the jungle Stanley came upon the old missionary on the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Ujiji. Stanley introduced himself by saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley also proved Speeckes theory of the source of the Nile River as Lake Victoria Nyanzaa.

1880- Old Civil War general and New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace got his first novel published, and it came out pretty good- Ben Hur.

1885- Gottfried Daimler invented the first motorcycle.

1917- The Voting Rights for Women Movement or Suffragettes began a dramatic all day protest in front of the White House. Every time a protester was arrested and dragged off another would take her place. By the days end 41 women were arrested.

1918- After abdicating the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm decided he didn't want to stick around and end up executed like his cousin Nicky the Russian Czar. So, in the middle of night the German Imperial family slipped away by secret train and crossed the border into neutral Holland. The Hohenzollern Dynasty, which had ruled Germany since 1685, was now gone. Wilhelm’s first words when reaching the Castle of Daun were: "I should now like a strong hot cup of English tea."

1918- The Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and Empress Zita abdicate. Elderly Emperor Franz-Joseph II helped start World War I and then he conveniently died. His young grandnephew Karl tried to handle a bad situation he had no control over. He even attempted a peace overture behind the Kaiser's back as early as 1916. Ironically the Austro-German High Command helped to fund Russian revolutionaries like Lenin. German money paid the printing costs for Pravda.

After taking power in Petersburg Lenin immediately had soviet-style revolutionary cells set up in Vienna and Berlin. Like in Germany riots convulsed Austrian cities and whole regiments were throwing away their weapons and walking home. The Imperial Hapsburg family, which had reigned in Europe uninterrupted since 1265, piled into limousines and sped off for Switzerland before the Viennese Workers Soviet Committee could arrest them. Like the Kaiser, they too had heard how the Russian Czar and his whole family had been put up against the wall and shot. So they preferred not to suffer a similar fate. The Republics of Austria and Hungary were declared. In 2004 Pope John Paul II made Kaiser Karl I a Saint. Their son Crown Prince Otto lived to age 98 and died in 2011.

1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.

1951- The first long distance telephone call without needing an operator to make the connection.

1953- Disney’s short “ Toot Whistle, Plunk and Boom” released.

1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.

1971- The US table tennis team arrived in Red China for a tour. Ping-Pong became an unlikely diplomatic tactic to begin the warming of relations between China and the US.

1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 1970's folk song to happen.

1977- Pope Paul VI announced that Catholics who remarried or married Protestants were no longer automatically excommunicate.

1981- Innovative French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen 1925 movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. At Radio City Music Hall, Brownlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the NY audience.

1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall designed by Maia Lin opened to the public in Washington D.C,

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many hits like "Terminator II Judgement Day, Rambo, Basic Instinct and Total Recall" declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island".

2008- Two days after Barack Obama was elected president, Republican Georgia Congressmen Paul Broun was already calling him a “Marxist-Nazi.” This set the tone for the conservative hatred of the first black president that bordered on the hysterical, and continued long after he left office.
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Yesterday’s Question: Hedy Lamar was a top Hollywood screen goddess in the 1940s, but today she is famous for something quite different. What is it?

Answer: During WW2 she helped design an improvement for radio-controlled torpedoes. Though it was not used during the war, it was later adopted by the US Navy and, more importantly today, the concept eventually became the basis for WiFi and Bluetooth technology.

Question: Hedy Lamar was a top Hollywood screen goddess in the 1940s, but today she is famous for something quite different. What is it?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is meant by being prosaic?
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History for 11/9/2020
Birthdays: English King Edward VII, Hedy Lamar- born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler,
Confederate Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, Stanford White, Marie Dressler, Ed Wynn, Ann Sexton, Spiro Agnew, Tommy Dorsey, Dr. Carl Sagan, Whitey Herzog, Dorothy Dandridge, Dr. Herbert Kalmus the inventor of Technicolor film, Lou Ferrigno is 68, Sisqo

In ancient Rome, this was the Mundus Patet, The Feast of Mania, with Pluto another god of the dead, The Mother of the Underworld. Like the Greek Anthesterion it was a time when the Gates of Underworld were said to be open and the shades of the dead could come up and visit their old haunts. This is where we get the word Maniac.

64BC- Marcus Tullius Cicero delivered the first of his great speeches against Catiline, a Roman noble he accused of gathering an army of the disaffected to overthrow the Republic. Catiline was present in the Senate, but later in the day fled Rome.

1518- Pope Leo X tried some reform to calm the Protestant protests in Germany by repudiating some of the more outrageous claims of what buying indulgences could do. And that as Pope he could not get loved ones released from Hell or Purgatory, but could merely pray for God to forgive them. But it had no effect, the Protestant Reformation in Germany was going full steam ahead.

1781- After the Battle of Yorktown, George Washington watched his only stepson Jackie Custis die of camp fever or meningitis. Washington never having direct heirs probably saved America from ever developing an aristocracy. George Washington would not believe his Yorktown victory had really ended the Revolutionary War. He proposed to Rocheambeau an immediate attack on Charleston South Carolina. but his French allies told him they were done for the season. The French fleet returned to the Caribbean for the winter. George could not know that back in London the government was falling, and the Crown now just wanted peace.

1799- THE COUP OF THE 18TH BRUMAIRE- Napoleon seized power in France. The name referred to the date in the French Revolutionary calendar. The little general began by giving a speech in the National Assembly denouncing the Jacobin menace and the need to restore order. Throwing around the term Jacobin then was akin to calling people Terrorists today. However he was never as good a political speaker as he was a soldier. The senior politicians recognized baloney when they heard it and mobbed him. His brother Lucien who was a senator pulled him out of the crowd. So Nappy called in his troops and cleared the hall, pushing some senators out of the windows, it was a one-story building so the effect was purely symbolic.
At 2:00 AM a small group of friendly senators were convened to vote to create a leadership system of three Consuls with Nappy to share power, but he soon outmaneuvered the other two. Napoleon became dictator of France and declared the French Revolution completed and further action unnecessary. “I am the Revolution!” He was 31.

1872- The Great Fire of Boston. Much of the city center was destroyed because an equine virus, The Great Epizootic, had killed off the horses of the fire brigades.

1875- A treaty signed in 1868 had declared all of the Black Hills of South Dakota to be sacred protected Indian land “ So Long as Grass grows and Water Flows.” But prospectors supported by General George Custer had discovered gold in those hills and a gold rush began, Indians or no. This day a confidential memo from Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army Phil Sheridan with President Ulysses Grant’s approval ordered the frontier cavalry to cease preventing settlers and gold prospectors from entering the Black Hills. This memo violated the Treaty of 1868 and would lead to Custer's Last Stand next June.

1888- the last victim of Jack the Ripper found. 25-year-old prostitute Mary Reilly. After her murder the Ripper attacks ceased as mysteriously as they had started.

1906- President Teddy Roosevelt departed on board the battleship Louisiana to go inspect the Panama Canal dig. TR is the first sitting U.S. President to travel abroad.

1911-The first Neon sign illuminated.

1918- KAISER WILHELM ABDICATED. A curious fact was that in World War I the allies never made it to Berlin, much less even entered Germany. After four years of war, the German state collapsed from within- bread riots, the economy in shambles, The entire Navy mutinied, Bolshevik Revolutionary Workers Committees were set up in eleven cities including Cologne, Munich and Hamburg.
At first Kaiser Wilhelm hoped to first sign the peace with the Allies, then turn the German army around to restore order. But he changed his mind when 40 combat officers polled at random said 38 to 2 that they would refuse to kill other Germans to save his monarchy.“What about the Fananeider-The German Soldiers Oath to die for the Monarchy?!” Wilhelm asked Gen. Von Groener. “Sire, today the Oath is just some empty words!” Even the Kaiser’s personal bodyguards were setting up a Revolutionary Workers Committee. So rather than wind up arrested and maybe murdered with all his children like his cousin Nicky the Czar of Russia, Wilhelm abdicated. He packed up his family into a secret train and escaped to neutral Holland. The Hohenzollern Dynasty, which had ruled Germany since 1685, was now gone. Wilhelm’s first words when reaching the Castle of Daun were : "I should now like a strong hot cup of English tea."

Young Berlin university professor Albert Einstein wrote in his class log-“ Class canceled today due to revolution….”

1918- Meanwhile Berlin was in a confused panic, monarchists fighting communists in the streets. Chancellor Prince Max of Baden said to Reichstag leader Fritz Ebert:” I hand over to you the care of the German Empire.” Ebert replied:” I have lost two sons to that Empire.” Social democrat Karl Scheiderman was having lunch at the Reichstag when he was told the German Bolsheviks Karl Leibknecht and Red Rosa Luxemburg were about to publicly announce a soviet-style state. Scheiderman got up from his soup, walked out on the balcony and declared the Republic of Germany. Fritz Ebert became the first President.

1923- THE BEER HALL PUTSCH-Adolf Hitler's first attempt at a revolution styled to coincide with Napoleon's anniversary of coming to power in 1799. Old German war hero General Ludendorf stood by him in support. The coup attempt was easily put down by Munich police and Hitler only spent a year under house arrest. Hitler had a long memory. Eleven years later in 1934 when dictator Hitler was purging his stormtroopers, he remembered to look up the same Munich constable who had him arrested and had the poor man shot.

1928- Anthropologist Margaret Mead arrived in Ta’u, Samoa to begin work on her book “Coming of Age in Samoa” which will have a great effect on how people raise their children.

1935- An aggressive group of labor unions led by United Mine Workers leader John L. Lewis break away from the AF of L and form the Congress of Industrial Unions or the CIO. The AFL and CIO reunited in 1951.

1938- KRYSTAL NACHT- In Paris, an angry German-Jewish exile shot and killed a German diplomat named Ernst Von Rapt. Ironically Rapt was anti-Nazi and was being watched by the Gestapo. Back in Germany the Nazis use this incident to order the mass destruction of 191 synagogues and 1,000 Jewish businesses. Then the Jewish community was ordered to pay fines up to $40 million to pay for the damage. The name Crystal Night pertains to the sound of smashing glass in the streets.
German boxing champion Max Schmelling was the media idol of Aryan Superiority for defeating American Joe Louis. One thing no one knew was that Schmelling concealed two Jewish boys on Krystalnacht and had them smuggled out of the country. In 1961 Schmelling was invited to a testimonial in his honor at the Sands Resort Casino in Las Vegas. It was owned by one of those boys.

1964- First "Wizard of Id" comic strip published.

1953- Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning and liver failure in New York City, after downing 18 straight shots of whisky. There's actually some debate as to whether or not Dylan Thomas intended to drink himself to death. Scholars have recently suggested that he was a diabetic and died of hypoglycemia. Whatever the actual agent of Thomas' demise may have been, the coroner wrote on his death certificate under the cause of death heading, "Insult to the brain."

1965- "WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT?" The first Great East Coast Blackout. A transformer near Rochester shorts out and the surge overloads station after station until the entire eastern seaboard from Boston to Delaware is in darkness for 12 hours. Nine months later there was a notable rise in the birthrate. I guess there was nothing else to do.

1966- In London, Beatle John Lennon went to an art exhibit and first met a Japanese avant-garde photographer named Yoko Ono.

1981- The Screen Actor's Guild under President Ed Asner votes emergency moneys for striking PATCO air traffic controllers fired by the former SAG president, now U.S. President, Ronald Reagan.

1979- National Public Radio goes on the air. The first US national news show with women as anchor reporters. It was also the first news program in stereo.

1989- THE BERLIN WALL FELL. The East German authorities backed down as the people dance and sing on the hated symbol of Cold War division. A student points up at the TV cameras and shouted: "Look, the Whole World is Watching!" Some West German politicians drove to the scene of the spontaneous demonstration and they tried to get everyone to sing patriotic songs like "Deutschlandlied", but the crowd drowned them out, dancing to the theme from the movie:"GhostBusters".
The next day people found the streets covered in banana peels. It was the first thing East Germans bought in the west, and they ate their bananas as they window shopped.

1995- PLO leader Yassir Arafat had been warned it wouldn’t be wise to attend the funeral of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, killed on Nov 5th. This day he secretly sneaked into Jerusalem to make a courtesy call on Leia Rabin at her apartment to express his condolences. It was the only time the Jerusalem born Arafat ever visited Israel.

2004- The Jones Soda Pop Company of Seattle announced its new creation – Mashed Potato Flavored Soda. This was to follow up on their success last year of Roast Turkey and Gravy Soda.

2004- Mozilla-Firefox 1.0 started up.

2012- Steven Spielberg’s’ film Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis premiered.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is meant by being prosaic?

Answer: Being plainspoken, banal, simple, like prose, without poetry.

Question: What is meant by being prosaic?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was the place the Romans called Mare Internum, or Mare Nostrum?
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History for 11/8/2020
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nerva, Bram Stoker, Sir Edmund Halley, June Havoc, Margaret Mitchell, Joe Flynn- Captain Binghampton in the 60’s TV sitcom McHales Navy, Ricky Lee Jones, Bonny Raitt, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Ester Rolle, Katherine Hepburn, Parker Posey is 52, Gretchen Mol is 48, Tara Reid.

393AD- Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius banned any further worship of the old pagan gods and closed their remaining temples.

641 A.D.- Cyrus the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria surrendered Egypt to the Arab army of Caliph Omar. Egypt had been a Byzantine province and the emperors in Constantinople had been persecuting their national church, the Coptic Rite, as a heresy. So the Egyptians opened their gates to the Moslem conquerors. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius appeared at the port of Alexandria with a large fleet. But after removing some personal effects, he abandoned the Paris of the Ancient World without a fight.

1519- Spanish Conquistador Hernan' Cortez first met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II. Cortes was guided by Malinche', the "Pocahontas of the Aztecs". This noblewoman guided Cortez's little band into the heart of the empire. Eyewitness Bernal Diaz described how after dinner the Spaniards were given tobacco pipes to smoke, but a special pipe with different tobacco was given to Montezuma, after smoking it "The Emperor became merry, as we do when drunk with wine.." Cortez was also offered a cup of chocolate, then a bitter brew called Tchocolatl.

1620 -Battle of White Mountain.- Austrian Catholic armies crush the Czech rebels and their leader Frederick of the Palatinate, who is nicknamed: "The Winter King" for his brief reign. Unfortunately the Thirty Years War was just beginning. Future French philosopher Renes Descartes was a young soldier in the ranks. Although Frederick was married to the daughter of the English King, James wisely refused to get England embroiled in the European war. Fredericks son Prince Rupert later traveled to England and got involved in the English Civil War.
The Czech Protestant rebels mostly came from the province of Bohemia and their wandering exile in the cities of Europe caused the word "Bohemian" to become synonymous with a rootless lifestyle.

1789- Elijah Craig first distilled whiskey from Indian corn and strained it through a wool blanket. He lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, so the stuff soon became popularly known as Bourbon.

1793- In one of the more positive results of the Reign of Terror, the French Revolutionary Government opens the royal art collection of the Louvre to the public as a museum.

1805- Lewis and Clark stand on the sand at the Pacific Ocean near the mouth of the Columbia River.

1864- Abraham Lincoln was re-elected president over Democrat challenger George McClellan. It was the first U.S. election ever held during a war, and set the custom that Presidents in a war year never lose. Even most of the army voted for Old Abe. The inmates of the notorious Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp cast ballots, even if they had no way to send them to Washington.

1880- Famous actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in La Dame aux Camelias. She made a further ten tours of the US, all billed as Farewell Appearances.

1887- Gunfighter-Dentist Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis. He knew he had it for a long time, and in the 1800's it was as irreversible as AIDS used to be. So some say this knowledge is what made him such a bold pistolero. But unfortunately for him, he won all his gunfights and died in bed in a sanitarium anyway. His last words after taking a shot of whiskey were:" Well, I'll be damned!" He was 35.

1889- Montana became a state.

1910- Patent for the first insect electrocutor. FHZZZZITT !

1910- Congressman Victor Berger of Wisconsin became the first Socialist to be elected to Congress. In the first decades of the 20th century a number of big city mayors and congressmen were socialists. In the 1912 presidential election when Woodrow Wilson won by a slim one million votes, third party socialist Eugene Debs polled over a million votes. Today, Sen. Bernie Sanders does not hide the fact that he is a Socialist.

1918- German and Anglo-French negotiators began meetings in a railroad car in the remote Compiegne forest to negotiate an end World War I. Meanwhile the Kaiser’s government continued to collapse from within. Today revolutionary German sailors seized the town hall of Cologne and declared a workers state.

1923- When it sounds like they would be found out early, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler put into motion his attempt to overthrow the Weimar government. Because they started in a beer hall in Munich the coup is called the Beer Hall Putsch.

1926- New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote the hit song: "Will You Love Me in December like You do in May? ", met chorus dancer Betty Compton at the Gershwin musical "Oh Kay!" and fell in love. Politically, Walker was “ as crooked as a dogs leg”, but it was his romancing his mistress openly in front of New York society, not to mention in front of his wife, that was the scandal of the Roaring 20's.
Forced to resign as mayor after a probe unearthed massive corruption in his administration, Jimmy tried once more to run for mayor against Fiorello Laguardia in 1933. But he was blocked by the Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York and NY Governor Franklin Roosevelt. He had just become president and found Walker an embarrassment. Jimmy Walker and Betty Compton lived in Europe for the next ten years. In 2000 married NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost the chance to run for the US Senate in part because he made open appearances at shows and dinners with his girlfriend, even meeting her in Gracie Mansion while his family was in an adjoining wing.

1929- New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened.

1932-Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s second wife Nadehzda Alleyuieva shot herself, or so the official story said. It may have been the KGB, on orders of Stalin himself. Their daughter Svetlana later escaped to the U.S. and lived the rest of her life there.

1933- King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan was assassinated by Abdul Khallig.

1939- Pinks Hot Dogs in LA started by Betty and Paul Pink.

1942- Operation Torch- Anglo-American soldiers began mass landings on the beaches in French North Africa. The first action of American soldiers in World War II in Europe. The pro-nazi Vichy French fired on the Allies, until a deal was made with their commander Admiral Darlan. Charles DeGaulle was furious that fighting began before he could try to convince the French not to resist. But Eisenhower, FDR and Churchill were not yet ready to admit that the big nosed Colonel was now the de facto leader of Free-France.

1943- The first one man show of American abstract painter named Jackson Pollock. Pollock later created his brushless dripping form of painting that earned him the nickname:” Jack the Dripper”.

1950- In Korea, two Chinese MIG fighters tangled with US Sabre jets. The first jet-to-jet dogfight.

1952- The Supreme Court upholds a 1922 ruling that Baseball a sport, not a business. Therefore it is exempt from anti-trust laws.

1965- The Days of Our Lives soap opera first premiered on TV.

1966- Former actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan elected Governor of California trouncing two-term incumbent Pat Brown. Uber-Conservative Reagan declared a tough line with the hippies of Haight Ashbury and Berkeley.

1966- Doctors at St. Josephs Hospital removed one of Walt Disney’s cancerous lungs, but discovered the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and liver. They determined he did not have long to live.

1973- Walt Disney’s animated Robin Hood premiered.

1994- Marion Barry was re-elected Mayor of Washington D.C. despite serving jail time for smoking crack cocaine. Comedian Chris Rock wondered:” Who did he run against that was so bad, that you’d rather vote for a crackhead?”

2004- The Second Battle of Faluja began. U.S. Marines had to fight their way back into an Iraqi city they were forced out of the previous April. Faluja erupted in violence after outrages committed on civilians by non-military Blackwater mercenaries, called “contractors” by the media. Iraqis ambushed the mercs and danced with their charred bodies, so in had to go the Marines once more.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the place the Romans called Mare Internum, or Mare Nostrum?

Answer: The Mediterranean Sea, As the Roman Empire extended into Sicily and North Africa, the Romans called it first The Inner Sea, then Our Sea.