Question: What is an EGOT?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What modern country in ancient times was called Luistania?
-----------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/19/2023
Birthdays: King Charles I of England, President James Garfield, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Roy Campanella, Tommy Dorsey, Ted Turner is 85, Calvin Klein, Indira Ghandi, Dick Cavett, Larry King, Kathleen Quinlan, Alan Young -Mr. Ed’s friend, Ahmad Rashad, Allison Janey is 64, Meg Ryan is 62, Jodie Foster is 61, Terry Farrell

1493- On his second voyage to the New World, this day Christopher Columbus discovered the island of Puerto Rico.

1581- The son of Czar Ivan the Terrible, also named Ivan, came in on his dad beating his pregnant wife. He thought she was wearing clothing too immodest for her station. When young man tried to make him stop, the elder Ivan beat the boys’ brains out with a mace. In this one act of blind rage Ivan extinguished his own dynasty.

1619- A young French student named Renes Descartes had enlisted in the army of Elector Maximillian of Bavaria to fight in the Thirty Years War. Outside of Neuberg one evening he climbed into a stove to keep warm. There he had the first revelation to invent analytical geometry and the mathematical applications of religion. “ Cogito, Ergo Sum.” I think, therefore I am.” Gee. That happens to me every time I climb into a stove, too

1703- The "Man in the Iron Mask" died in Pignerole prison. Louis XIV had him locked up for forty years. He was first mentioned in Voltaire's History of the Age of Louis XIV as having a velvet mask, which writer Alexandre Dumas changed to iron for dramatic effect. No one ever discovered who he was or why his face was covered. Speculation was that he was everyone from an Italian diplomat, to the son of Oliver Cromwell, to a twin brother of King Louis XIV himself. It made for great literature, but he remains a mystery.

1828- Composer Franz Schubert died of complications of venereal gonorrhea at age 31.

1863- THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS-At the dedication of the soldiers cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield, the crowd watched Rev. Edward Everett, a famous abolitionist, deliver a fiery two-hour speech. Then President Abraham Lincoln stood up and in just two minutes delivered the most famous speech in U.S. History. "Forescore and Seven years ago Our Forefathers set Forth....And Government Of the People, By the People and For the People Shall Not Perish from the Earth. "
The crowd was polite but indifferent. The Times of London correspondent thought it "vague and uninspiring". Lincoln himself told his aide: "Lehman, that speech won't scowl." meaning a plow blade that's too dull to cut. But Rev Everett was inspired “Mr. President, you said in two minutes much more than I did in two hours.” Contrary to legend Lincoln didn’t write it quickly on the back of an envelope, he worked long on his speeches and was seen doing corrections up to the last minute. There are three pencil copies of the speech still in existence. The photographer at the scene was still setting up his equipment when the brief speech ended and Lincoln started to sit down. He opened his shutter in time to get a blurry view of Lincoln's head in the crowd.

1903- Suffragette Carrie Nation tried to address the US Senate to plead for women’s voting rights and alcohol prohibition. She was barred admittance.

1915- I DREAMED I SAW JOE HILL LAST NIGHT.... Joe Hill was executed in Utah- Swedish Immigrant Josef Hilstrom was a nationally known charismatic poet and union organizer. Large Utah copper mining companies that found Hill's folk song singing union activism a nuisance had him convicted on trumped up murder charges. He was shot by firing squad despite pleas for clemency from President Wilson, Helen Keller and the Pope. Crowds of 10,000 marched in London and Sydney Australia for mercy for Joe Hill.
Hill's last words were: "I die as I have lived, a rebel. Don't mourn, Organize!" He stipulated in his will that his body be transported over the state line and buried in Colorado because: "I DON'T WANNA BE CAUGHT DEAD IN UTAH!" His body was cremated and the ashes sent in little envelopes to union offices across the nation.

1937- Japanese armies captured the Chinese city of Shouchow and pillage it with great slaughter.

1941- Princess Iron Fan, by Wan Guchan and Wan Laiming, opened . Considered the first Asian animated feature film.

1942-“ THE IVANS ARE COMING!” OPERATION URANUS- The big Russian counter-attack in the Battle of Stalingrad begins. The Battle for the city named for Stalin had stalemated into house to house fighting in cellars and factory rooms the Germans called Ratt Kellerkrieg- Rat Cellar War. Meanwhile Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov had been massing forces on either end of the German 6th Army where weak Axis units of Romanian and Italian troops were holding the line. Luftwaffe commander Freiherr Von Richtofen reported the troop concentrations to army commanders, but HQ remained strangely apathetic.
Today to the sound of thousands of Katyushka rocket launchers, nicknamed Stalin’s Pipe Organs, Marshal Zhukov launched two massive pincer assaults that blew through the German front, and joined up in the rear trapping 100,000 Nazis.

1942-“ GUERILLA MOUSEKIS. Since the previous August, The Battle of Stalingrad had stalled into urban house to house street fighting. Meanwhile the Nazi panzer tanks had to sit quiet in fields outside the city.
This day, when the big Russian counteroffensive began, the Nazis rushed to start up their tanks. But soon their engines began to overheat and stall.
During the long weeks of waiting, field mice had crawled into their engines and ate their radiator hoses and electrical insulation. 68 of 100 tanks immediately broke down. All thanks to the actions of enemy mice.

1942- In a concentration camp in Poland, author-artist Bruno Schulz was executed. The author of “Street of Crocodiles” last act was being forced by a Gestapo officer to paint images from Brothers Grimm fairytales on his son’s bedroom wall before he was shot.

1945- Trying to complete the plan of social services created by Franklin Roosevelt, President Harry Truman called for National Health Insurance. It was defeated in Congress after intense lobbying by the powerful insurance and pharmaceutical companies. It would also be blocked when reintroduced later by Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Clinton. Until Pres. Obama created the ACA, the U.S. was the only nation in the front rank of developed nations to have no form of national health insurance.

1959- Jay Ward's television show 'The Adventures of Rocky and his Friends' debuts.

1961- Michael Rockefeller, the son of tycoon Nelson Rockefeller, disappeared in the jungles of New Guinea. It’s assumed he was killed by aboriginal people.

1969- The great soccer champion Pele scored his 1,000 goal.

1998- Film Director Alan J. Pakula was one of the Hollywood community who preferred living in New York City. This day he was driving on the Long Island Expressway when he was killed in a freak accident. A large truck kicked up in its tires a discarded piece of steel pipe. It flipped it through Pakula’s windshield, killing him instantly.

2002- HOMELAND SECURITY. Reacting to the 9-11 attack Congress approved President Bush’s plan for a cabinet level position called the Department of Homeland Security. This branch would concentrate the activities of US Customs & Immigration, FEMA, The Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies.
Despite insisting this new organization was all that stood between us and future 9-11 attacks, the Bush White House stubbornly refused to sign any bill that did not first bar it’s employees from joining the Gov’t Employees Service Union like the rest of Washington D.C.
By 2006 Homeland Security had botched up the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and it’s fourth ranking executive was arrested by Polk County Fla police for soliciting sex from a 14 year old girl with leukemia.
=====================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What modern country in ancient times was called Lusitania?

Answer: Portugal.

Question: What modern country in ancient times was called Lusitania?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is a detective called “A Private Eye”?
=======================================================
History for 11/18/2023
Birthdays: Armelita Galli-Curci, Karl Maria Von Weber, W.S. Gilbert, Johnny Mercer,
Astronaut Alan Shepard, Louis Daguerre, Brenda Vaccarro, Eugene Ormandy, George Gallup, Warren Moon, Pam Dawber, Rocket Ishmail, Delroy Lindo, Kevin Nealon, Owen Wilson is 56, Chloe Servigny is 50

500 A.D.- Today is the Feast day of the Irish Saint Mawes, who was born in a barrel floating in the sea.

It’s hand drawn animation day! See below- 1928.

1421- In Holland a dyke holding back the Zuyder Zee River gave way and the ensuing flood killed 10,000.

1602- In Transylvania, 22 year old English soldier of fortune John Smith killed three Turkish warriors in single combat. Such single bouts were normal before large armies clashed. The Duke of Transylvania, Sigmund Bathory, granted the commoner Smith his own coat of arms, three Turkish heads. This is the same John Smith who will go to Virginia and meet Pocahontas in 1607.

1718- Francois Voltaire’s first play Oedipe, premiered in Paris.

1812- The Battle of Krasnoe-Napoleon's frozen army retreating from Moscow, fights it's way out of three encircling Russian armies trying to trap it. One of the armies was commanded by an admiral Tchitchagoff who's 20th century descendant would be the artist Erte'. Another general was the grandfather of writer Leo Tolstoy. General Tolstoy was an eccentric, who rode into battle in a chauffeured carriage with a trained bear sitting next to him he'd taught to drink champagne.

1863- Abraham Lincoln boarded a train to Gettysburg to deliver “a few appropriate remarks” to dedicate the new national cemetery there.

1865 Mark Twain's first story "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' published.

1883- THE DAY WITH TWO NOONS. Congress adopted William Allen’s plan to divide the United States into standardized time zones, corresponding to timetables set by the transcontinental railroads. At noon in New York City, the bells of Saint Paul’s Church tolled. Ten minutes later, several blocks away, the bells of Trinity Church on Wall St. tolled noon Eastern Standard Time, 11:00AM Central Time, 10:00AM Mountain Time and 9:00AM Pacific Time. And so it has been ever since.

1889- Richard Strauss completed his orchestral tone poem Tod und Verklarung, Death and Transfiguration. The 29 year old created a musical illustration of what it felt like to die and your soul ascend to glory. Fifty-nine years later in 1949, as 85 year old Richard Strauss lay dying, he said to his wife, “Yes! It is exactly the way I saw it…”

1902- THE TEDDY BEAR BORN-The Washington Evening Star published a story of how President Teddy Roosevelt while hunting couldn't bring himself to shoot a grizzly bear cub. Cartoonist Cliff Berryman illustrated the incident with one of his signature “dingbat” bear cubs in a gesture of “oh no!” Brooklyn toymaker Morris Mitchcolm sewed a doll from the illustration in the newspaper and sent the first one to the White House. Mitchcolm did so well with the sale of Teddy Bears he founded the Ideal Toy Company.

1903- The Hay-Buneau-Varilla Treaty signed, giving the U.S. permission to dig a canal in Panama. When Colombia wanted too much money for the canal zone, President Roosevelt backed a revolution that created the nation of Panama. Such a deal!

1914- SABOTAGE - A secret message was sent out by Imperial German Naval Command to all diplomatic embassies to begin sabotage operations of war material being readied in America and Canada for shipment to England.
Bombs exploding in cargo ships and warehouses in New York, Boston and Baltimore became common. One incident called the “Black Tom” pier explosion detonated two million pounds of explosive on a Jersey City wharf. The blast cracked windows on Wall St. and damaged the arm of the Statue of Liberty.
The success of German spies in the U.S. before America's entry into World War I sparked the buildup of a little known government office called the F.B.I. and the strict domestic counterintelligence work done in World War II.

1928- HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICKEY MOUSE- At Universal’s Colony Theater in New York, Walt Disney’s cartoon "Steamboat Willie" debuted before a movie called Gang War. The first major sound cartoon success and the official birth of Mickey Mouse. Two earlier silent Mickey's were being completed, but when Walt saw Al Jolson speak in The Jazz Singer, he held those two shorts back so the sound experiment could go ahead. At this time Walt Disney had just 11 employees.

1942- OPERATION FLIPPER, The KEYES RAID- The British army in North Africa had had enough of their German adversary Rommel the Desert Fox, so they sent Australian-Scottish commandos on a suicide raid to the Afrika Korps HQ just to kill him. Desert warfare was so porous the front lines were virtually non-existent. Unfortunately, Rommel was far away in Rome the night 50 commandos shot up his office. Only 2 made it out, 3 were killed and the rest captured.

1953- Singer Frank Sinatra had been having trouble with his sputtering career and his crumbling marriage to screen sex goddess Ava Gardner. This day songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen claimed he found Old Blue Eyes on his bathroom floor with his wrists slashed. Heusen bound his wounds then called his agent rather than the police. Sinatra recovered and soon his career revived and he had a new marriage.

1963-The first push button telephones go into service. By 1980 they pretty much replaced the rotary dial phones.

1964- In a public statement to the press, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called Dr. Martin Luther King “The most notorious liar in the country!” This in response to the criticism Dr. King made that the FBI wasn’t trying hard enough to track down the murderers of civil rights workers. The elderly Hoover always believed Dr. King and the whole NAACP were commie agents of Moscow.

1968- Mattel introduced Hot Wheels toy cars in stores.

1970- At the Lakeside School in Seattle, a young kid named Bill Gates was first shown computer programming.

1978- JONESTOWN- After visiting U.S. congressman Leo Ryan and his party were murdered, 912 American members of the Rev. Jim Jones cult in Jonestown Guiana commit suicide, many drinking from tubs of Kool Aid, spiked with cyanide.

1985- Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin & Hobbs debuted.

1988- Disney’s Oliver & Company released.

1988- Don Bluth’s The Land Before Time was released.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------______________________________________________
Question: Why is a detective called “ A Private Eye”?

Answer: Scotsman Allan Pinkerton was in law enforcement and served as a bodyguard to President Lincoln. After the assassination he set up a private detective agency, who’s logo was a large open eye, with the motto, “We Never Sleep”. It was an ad featured in all the newspapers. This gave rise to the name a Private Eye for an investigator for hire.

Question: Why is a detective called “ A Private Eye”?

Question:What is a palladin?
----------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/17/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Vespasian 9 A.D, Il Bronzino, August Ferdinand Moebius-1790 the inventor of the Moebius Strip. Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Rock Hudson- real name Roy Sherer, Walt Peregoy, Peter Cook, Isamu Noguchi, Lauren Hutton, Tom Seaver, Gordon Lightfoot, Les Clark, Lee Strasberg, Shelby Foote, Sophie Marceau, Martin Scorcese is 81, Lorne Michaels is 79, Danny deVito is 79

395- Death of the Roman Emperor Valentinian.

1796- Russian Czarina Catherine the Great died at 67 years old of a stroke on the toilet, not crushed trying to have sex with a horse, as some scandalous rumors alleged.

1800- The idea to create Washington DC was to create a new city, not beholden to any particular state, between north and south. And indeed, at first it was in the middle of nowhere. Following President Adams from their cozy homes in Philadelphia, this day Congress sulkily convened for the first time in the half-finished capitol city. Titled The Federal City, it was already being called Washington City. It was still mostly a Virginia swamp. Wooden pegs in the mud showed where streets would be one day. The only buildings up in operation were Congress, the Presidents Mansion, and Conrad’s Tavern.
Many complained that city planners Pierre L’Enfant and Benjamin Banocker had made the main avenues too big, that there will never be enough carriages and wagons to fill these roads. This first Congressional session couldn’t accomplish much, because there were not enough members present to make a quorum.

1839- Oberto premiered, an opera written by a new composer named Guisseppi Verdi. ( Joe Green). The great composer would go on to write Rigoletto, Aida and La Traviata.

1853- San Francisco passed a law to put up street signs at the intersections of major streets.

1858- A Pennsylvania businessman named William Larimer founded a new town at the foot of the Rockies called Denver.

1869- The Suez Canal opened. The opera "Aida" was commissioned to be premiered for this occasion but Verdi missed his deadline by ten years.

1875- Russian psychic Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott found the American Theosophical Society.

1876- Peter Tchaikovsky’s musical rhapsody the Marche Slav premiered.

1882- The Chinese Exclusion Treaty signed in Peking between the United States and the Chinese Empress Zhaou Zsi. This was the first of a series of pacts attempting to limit Asian immigration to the U.S. In cities on the Pacific coast during the depression of the 1870’s violence against Chinese workers was sadly common. So many died building the Southern Pacific Railroad that the term “You Don’t Have a Chinaman’s Chance” was coined to mean the odds were against you. San Francisco writer Ambrose Bierce acerbically observed: A Chinese woman was recently found murdered on a street in San Francisco. She had done no crime but was merely the victim of Galloping Christianity. Barbaric acts like these mar the fine American tradition of Religious Intolerance.”

1891- Polish pianist Ignaz Paderewski made his American debut at Carnegie Hall. Paderewski created the cliché image of the temperamental classical musician with long flowing hair. Classical music became known as longhair music.

1926- The Chicago Black Hawks played their first game,
beating the Toronto St. Pats 4-1.

90th Anniv. 1933- The Marx Bros classic Duck Soup premiered.

1934- LBJ marries LadyBird. For you born after the 60's, President Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor whom he nicknamed LadyBird Johnson. Their daughters were LucyBird and LindaBird, so everyone in the family had the initials LBJ.

1941- Ernst Udet was a top World War I flying ace who was persuaded by Goring to build the Nazi Luftwaffe. Udet was responsible for developing the Stuka dive bomber and it’s screaming vertical attack. But his conscience was troubled. One of the WWI Knights of the Air, he grew depressed by the terror bombing of civilians and genocide his inventions were being used for. Sinking into drink and drugs. This night at dinner, Udet spoke of his time as a young ace with Von Richtofen the Red Baron, adding “Ahh, but we were decent men then…” He then went up to his bedroom, and shot himself.

1941- US ambassador to Tokyo, Joseph Grew, cabled Washington that he had heard disturbing rumors that the Japanese military was planning to attack Pearl Harbor.

1959- The DeBeers mining company of South Africa announced the invention of synthetic diamonds.

1965- Battle of Ia Drang ends. The first large battle fought between North Vietnamese regulars and U.S. combat troops. The first battle fought with helicopters. Although the Vietnamese forces were defeated, it told their generals that their system was working of moving down the Ho Chi Minh trail through neutral Laos and Cambodia then crossing into South Vietnam.

1968- THE HEIDI GAME- NBC was broadcasting a football game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. The game was running late and would interfere with the broadcast of the movie "Heidi". The network heads felt with the Jets leading 32-29 with 65 seconds left, why disappoint the kiddies? So they pre-empted the rest of the game to start the movie. Oakland won 43-32 in a miracle comeback scoring the final touchdown in the final nine seconds. The embarrassed programmers had to answer nationwide firestorm of complaints from outraged football fans. So, to this day on television, no matter how boring a football game is, it is seen to its very end.

1973- In a televised press conference about the expanding Watergate Scandal held at Walt Disney World, President Richard Nixon uttered the famous phrase:” People want to know if their president is a crook, well, I am not a crook!”

1978- This night, our world was rocked by a disturbance in The Force more powerful than the destruction of Alderon, It was "The Star Wars Holiday Special", a two-hour comedy variety show on CBS, with Harrison Ford, Beatrice Arthur and Nelvana’s animated cartoon. To this day, even Mark Hamill jokes about how dumb it was.

1988- Benazir Bhutto elected Prime Minister of Pakistan.

1989- Don Bluth's animated film All Dogs Go to Heaven premiered.

1993- US Congress voted for the free trade, bill called NAFTA.

1994- The Sony Corporation posted a $2.7 billion dollar loss from its first year owning a Hollywood movie studio. Yet despite a lot of industry jokes ( “What’s the difference between Sony Pictures and the Titanic?-answer: The Titanic had entertainment.”) By 1996 the studio was on top with blockbusters like “Men in Black”

2002- Premiere of Disney’s Treasure Planet.

2019- The first reported case of CoVid 19 was reported in Wuhan China. It grew to become a global pandemic not unlike the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. So far it has killed 6.6 million people around the world, 1,120,000 in the USA.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: What is a palladin?

Answer: The loyal knights around the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne were called his Palladins. Similar to King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table.

Question: What country owns the Galapagos islands?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What U.S. town name was NOT originally an Indian name? a. Chicago, b. Hoboken, c. Miami, d. Narragansett
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/15/2023
B-Days: Georgia O'Keefe, Bill Melendez, Irvin Rommel the "Desert Fox", Avrial Harriman, Daniel Barenboim, George Bolet, William Pitt the Elder, Veronica Lake, Beverly D'Angelo is 72, Mantovanni, Ed Asner, Sam Waterson is 83, Otis Armstrong, Petula Clark is 91

64 AD- THE ROMAN EMPIRE OUTLAWED CHRISTIANITY- It is hard to believe today, but the Roman Empire was proud of its religious toleration. There was a harmony to the pagan world, A Goth knew his god Odin or Wotan was called Jove in Rome and Zeus in Athens and Mithra in Persia. So, the Judeo-Christian concept of One God just didn't quite fit in. Christians were also refused to participate in any of the usual state rituals to Mars or Jupiter.
The only other religion persecuted as vigorously as Christianity was the Druids, but that was because the Druids preached rebellion to Roman rule. The Romans dispersed the Jews as a nation, but Julius Caesar left strict laws about never violating Jewish dietary or Sabbath Laws.
Anti-Semites claim Messalina, the wife of Nero, was a Jewish convert and convinced her husband to ban the Christian cult, but the answer goes deeper than that. Secrecy and fear of its alien practices bred suspicion that would last 300 years.

1532- After marching his Spanish conquistadors for six months through steaming jungles and over tall mountains Francisco Pizarro reached the border of the mysterious Inca Empire. At the little border town of Cajamarca his 200 men suddenly found themselves face to face with 40,000 Inca warriors. The Imperial Inca Army was outfitted in gold armor, and “they shined like the sun!” What happened? Tune in tomorrow…

1754- First use of the modern trombone. It was played at a child's funeral.

1777- The ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION passed by Congress. A first pass at a U.S. Constitution that gave all real power to the individual states. It required a majority vote of 9 out of 13 states to get anything done and had no president. With rules like that, indeed nothing did get done. There were no laws regulating national commerce so goods travelling state to state paid tariffs like they were going through a foreign country.
By 1787 the Articles were junked for the more centralized U.S. Constitution, but States Rights supporters would resurrect it later for their Southern Cause, hence the Confederacy.

1828- Author Victor Hugo signed a contract with Gosselin's Publishing House to write a story about the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris. He was paid 4,000 francs in advance; The HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was the result.

1849- In Rome, Vatican lay government minister Count Pellegrino Rossi was stabbed and as he walked through a crowd of Italian nationalists. Italians desiring the unification of Rome to the newly forming State of Italy rioted and looted the Popes Palace. Pope Pius IX,” Pio Nono” had to flee disguised as a plain priest. He returned a year later with a French army to reinstate the Papal States. Rome was annexed into Italy in 1870.
Pius IX came to power professing liberal reforms but soon went back on his word and threatened excommunication against “Treasonous Democracy”. In Italy another name for liar was a Pio Nono, or Pius the Ninth.

1860- Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president a large meteor was seen in the skies over the Eastern U.S. Most took this as a bad omen of troubles to come.

1864- SHERMAN BURNED ATLANTA- Atlanta was the economic center of the South, an enormous industrial depot far from the front with railroad tracks linking all the coastal ports. William Tecumseh Sherman drove out the civilian population of the city at bayonet point and torched it. He claimed his men were only destroying military stores, but he didn’t stop them burning everything.
When his Confederate opponent Gen. Hood complained that what he was doing was barbaric, Sherman replied" You might as well protest to a thunderstorm, and against these terrible hardships of war. War is all cruelty. and the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
Sherman had an army band serenade him beneath his window, playing the "Miserere'" from Verdi's "Il Trovatore", while he watched the city burning, impatiently chewing on the stump of an unlit cigar.

1881- The American Federation of Labor AF of L formed under the leadership of former cigar-maker Samuel Gompers. In 1951 they merged with the CIO.

1889- Emperor Pedro II abdicated, the Republic of Brazil is declared.

1907- The comic strip A. Mutt by Harry “Bud” Fisher debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle. The name was later changed to Mutt & Jeff. It was the first 6 day consecutive daily newspaper strip. The strip was so popular that its creator Harry “Bud “ Fisher became a celebrity, and negotiated the first large backend deal. He became the first millionaire cartoonist.

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

1926- FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooked up 20 cities across America and Canada for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein. It came from the Steinway building penthouse on 57th St. in Manhattan.

1934- Animator Bill Tytla started work at Walt Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.

1937- The U.S. Congress gets air-conditioning.

1941- Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordering the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals and Romanies.

1957- Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III established the Archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the U.S. and Canada.

1958- Movie star Tyrone Power was filming a sword duel with George Sanders on the film Solomon and Sheba. He paused and told the director “ I have to stop, I don’t feel well”. He then dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 44. His father Tyrone Power Sr. had also died on a Hollywood movie set in 1931 of a heart attack,

1965- Walt Disney announced he planned to build a second Disneyland, this one in Orlando Florida.

1977- The Bee Gees soundtrack for the film Saturday Night Fever came out.

1979- ABC news announced they would broadcast a daily update of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The late night show became Nightline.

1989- Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid opened.

1990- It was revealed that the Grammy winning pop group Milli Vanilli didn’t sing on their own album but lip-synced to the music.

1995- According to the Starr report, President Clinton had his first sexual tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky. At one point he was on the phone to a member of Congress while getting serviced by the chubby chick from Beverly Hills High.

===========================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What U.S. town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Hoboken, c. Miami, d. Narragansett

Answer: There’s a debate about Hoboken. Some say it has Algonquin roots, others that it was from a suburb in Antwerp.

Question: What U.S. town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Hoboken, c. Miami, d. Narragansett

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What movie studio was originally called Famous Players Lasky?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/14/2023
Birthdays: Robert Fulton, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, McClean Stevenson, Jarahwahal Nehru, Mamie Eisenhower, Brian Keith,
Louise Brooks, Ellis Marsalis, Harrison Salisbury, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, Yanni,
P.J. O'Rourke, George Petrovic' called KaraGeorge "Black George" Serbian nationalist 1762, Astrid Lungren the creator of Pippi Longstockings, William Stieg, Laura San Giacomo is 61, Patrick Warburton is 59, Zhang Yimou is 72, King Charles III is 75

1565- King Phillip II of Spain ordered the Inquisition to enforce his edicts against protestants in the Netherlands. While Dutch emissaries like William of Orange urged moderation towards the growing population of Dutch Calvinists, Phillip said: “I would rather that thousands lose their lives, than reign over a kingdom of heretics”.

1666- English diarist Samuel Pepys recorded witnessing the first experimental blood transfusion done on two dogs.

1798- WolfTone, the young Irish revolutionary leader, committed suicide in prison after his capture. He knew he was certain for a hangman’s noose. He is sometimes called the founder of the IRA, although this is more a romantic notion than historical fact.

1805- Napoleon’s French Army captured Vienna. Composer Ludwig Van Beethoven had dedicated his Symphony #3 Eroica to him when he considered Bonaparte a force for liberalism and human rights. But after Napoleon became an emperor, he angrily scratched out the dedication. “So, he is just a man after all!” Now, ironically with all Austrian society run out of town, Beethoven had to premiere his symphony to an audience of French army officers.

1832- The first regular horse drawn streetcar service began in New York.

1851- Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick, or the Whale” was first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row. Before petroleum products, homes were illuminated by oil from refined whale blubber. This made hunting whales a lucrative trade for New Englanders. Herman Melville was inspired by a report of an albino whale named Mocha-Dick who had sunk seven ships off the coast of Java and was reported to have " a hide white as wool.” Melville also knew of a New Bedford whaling ship Essex that was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in 1839.
For the famous author of Typee and Billy Budd, Moby Dick was a critical and financial disaster. What's now considered one of the greatest works of American literature was ridiculed in its time. Melville, broken in spirit, sank into obscurity and finished his life as a customs agent for the Port of New York. When he died, he was so forgotten the New York Times misspelled his name in it's obituary.

1875- British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and banker Sir Lionel Rothschild had lunch. Their brandy and Stilton were interrupted by an agent with the secret message that the Khedive of Egypt needed money and was willing to sell the unfinished Suez Canal zone to England. But Disraeli had to get the money on the spot. Disraeli knew Parliament was out of session and probably wouldn't agree to the sum anyway. "Well, how much do you need?" Rothschild asked. Disraeli replied "Four million Pounds Sterling" ($44 million in modern money). "No problem," quote Sir Lionel. Rothschild lent the Crown the money on the spot. The Suez Canal was built, and maintained by Britain until 1956.

1883- Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, or, the Mutiny on the Hispaniola, first published. He wrote a friend,” It's quite silly and horrid fun – and what I want is the best book about Buccaneers that can be had" Stevenson gave us our image of a typical Pirate of the Spanish Main. His book told us about peg legs, pet parrots, skull and crossbones flag, treasure maps, and the song “ Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest. Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum!”

1883- London’s World newspaper printed an exchange of telegrams between writer Oscar Wilde and painter James MacNeil Whistler. “ When you and I are together we never talk about anything but ourselves.”-Wilde. Whistler:” No, no, Oscar. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me.”

1889- Inspired by Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days, New York World reporter Nellie Bly, real name Elizabeth Cochrane, set out to travel the world in the declared time. She did it in 72 days.
Nellie Bly was considered by Victorian society scandalously independent. She was a war correspondent, she had herself committed to a lunatic asylum to report on mistreatment of the mentally ill, she went up in a balloon and was the first woman to descend to the bottom of the sea in a diving bell- bathysphere.

1918- The Czechs declared their independence from the collapsing Austrian Empire.

1921- Winston Churchill told his political constituents that so far the "Twentieth Century has been a terrible disappointment." Just wait, Winnie, you ain't see nothing yet.

1922- Happy Birthday B.B.C. the British Broadcasting Companies first regular radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results.

1927- Stalin’s victory as paramount Russian leader was completed. His chief rival Leon Trotsky was this day officially expelled from the Soviet Communist Party. Trotsky went into exile, and was eventually assassinated in Mexico City.

1937- SPAM introduced! Shoulder-Pork And haM.

1940- The Nazi Luftwaffe bombed the English city of Coventry, not for any military reason, but as a terror warning to the British. Ironically the British had broken the Nazis secret Enigma code and knew about the attack, but if they issued a warning, the Nazis would have realized their code had been compromised and would change it. Churchill had to make the terrible decision that the secret was more valuable than all those civilian casualties.

1943- When Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct the New York Philharmonic, 24 year old Leonard Bernstein was asked to assume the baton. Bernstein became an overnight sensation.

1943- During naval maneuvers in the South Atlantic the destroyer William D. Porter accidentally fired a live torpedo at the battleship Iowa carrying President Franklin Roosevelt! The Porter reported the mistake in time so the Iowa could take evasive actions and the torpedo exploded harmlessly in her wake. But the captain and crew of the William D. Porter were arrested and courts-martialed back at port. The incident kept top secret until the 1970’s. For years afterwards whenever the William S. Porter came into harbor she was greeted with the cry “DON’T SHOOT, WE’RE REPUBLICANS!”

1957-THE APALLACHIN CONFERENCE- The top Dons of the Mafia decided to meet at a small upstate New York town near Binghampton. The estate of Joseph Barbara, the President of the Canada Dry soda pop company was clogged with black Cadillacs and Lincolns driven by guys in silk suits. All the heads of the Five Families were there, Joe “Bananas” Bonano, Joey Profacci, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Paul Castellano, Joey Catena and Louis Tafficante.
No one’s quite sure what this meeting was about. Theories are it was an attempt to broker a peace after the hits on Al Anastasia and Frank Costello, and to decide whether the Old Sicilian capos would agree to the younger men’s request that the mob organize narcotics. As luck would have it two New York State troopers investigating a bad-check case noticed the gangland gathering. They called for the estate to be surrounded. Once the cops raid commenced it was a free for all of mobsters jumping out of windows and running like rabbits through the corn stalks.
The raid produced few convictions, but the headlines focused national attention on the Mafia. It proved without a doubt what had always been feared, that the Mafia was not a loose term for some local immigrant gangs but a highly centralized national organization. Congressional hearings like the McClellan Committee began to bust up the rackets. Mobsters who write of this time say the Appalachin mistake was the beginning of the end of the Mafia’s nationwide power.

1957- The Supreme Court refused to review the challenge to government obscenity laws brought by Irving Klaw and his wife, producers of the Betty Page kinky pinup photos.

1959- In Holcomb Kansas, two men broke into a farm home and murder four people. The subsequent trial and execution was attended by writer Truman Capote, who wrote the book “In Cold Blood”.

1960- Anthony Mann began shooting the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren.

1961- President John F. Kennedy ordered the number of U.S. military advisors in Vietnam increased from 1,000 to 16,000. There has always been conflicting evidence about just what JFK thought about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Some scholars point to writings that said Kennedy by 1963 was having second thoughts about involvement and wanted to begin pulling out after the 64 election, but Lyndon Johnson had deeper ties to the South Vietnamese regime and big military contractors like Bell-Huey. Others say if JFK wasn’t assassinated, he still would have done the same Vietnam mistakes that Lyndon Johnson later did.

1963- Volcanoes push up out of the sea the island of Circe, now part of Iceland.

1965- BATTLE OF IA DRANG- The First major engagement between U.S. combat troops and Vietnamese regulars. Ho Chi Minh wanted to see how his troops could withstand a major engagement with this new adversary. General William Westmoreland couldn’t think of any other way to say the battle was a success than by counting the number of enemy dead.
Based on this defeat the Vietnamese would not challenge the Americans again in open battle like they had defeated the French but went underground and fought a guerrilla war for the next three years. Ia Drang was also the first battle where troops where brought in, out, and supplied totally by helicopters. Among the units involved were the reconstituted 7th Cavalry. The battle was dramatized in the Mel Gibson 2002 movie “We Were Soldiers.”

1973- Britain's Princess Anne wed Captain Mark Phillips. They divorced in 1992.

1967- Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sold his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts.

1968- Frank Sinatra announced that the smog and air pollution in Los Angeles had gotten so bad that he was moving out to the desert in Palm Springs.

1986- Wall Street Tycoon Ivan Boesky who defined the 1980's with mottos like "Greed is Good, Greed is Natural", pleaded guilty to insider trading and stock fraud and willingly finked on everyone at Drexel Bernham-Lambert who helped him.

1991- At ILM, the creation of the dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park were going to be done in traditional stop motion animation, like Ray Harryhausen used to do. Two CGI animators, Steve “Spaz” Williams and Walter Dippe’ did a quick test of a moving T-Rex on their own time and this day left it out for review as Spielberg’s producers chanced by. They loved the test and showed it to Steven who declared it all had to be done in CGI. The resultant success of Jurassic Park was the turning point in the digital revolution in modern media.

1995- Because of a deadlocked budget debate between President Bill Clinton and Congressional leader Newt Gingrich, the U.S. Government shut down.
National parks like Yosemite, and tourist attractions like the Statue of Liberty turned people away because their staffs were unpaid.

1998- Pixar’s A Bugs Life Premiered.

1998- Colorful and eccentric NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman married beautiful supermodel Carmen Electra. There was some doubt at first as to the validity of the story as Rodman admitted he was blind drunk throughout and didn’t remember the ceremony. They divorced shortly after.

2016- Disney’s Moana premiered.
========================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What movie studio was originally called Famous Players Lasky?

Answer: Paramount Pictures. Named for early studio chief Jesse Lasky.