Question: What movie studio was originally called Famous Players Lasky ?

Question: In a famous Shakespeare play one character says ” This royal seat of kings, this sceptered isle...This blessed plot. This earth, this realm, this England.” Who says it?
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History for 11/13/2023
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 76, Jimmy Kimmel is 56, Gerald Butler is 55, Whoopi Goldberg- born name Caryn Johnson is 68

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."

1833- Whites and native peoples in the American West all noted a meteor shower of massive proportions. Hundreds fell per hour. Lakota people called it “The Day the Stars Went Crazy.”

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 Chief 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 warship 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 of the Atlantic, British Prince Albert helped broker 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 listed his age as 16.

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

1914- Clothing designer Caresse Crosby took two handkerchiefs and some ribbon off some baby bonnets and invented the Brassiere. She became very rich and lived the life of a 1920’s free spirit. She named her dog Clytoris.

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' premiered at the Broadway Theater in NYC. 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 Spiro’s 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, then Richard Nixon’s paranoia led him to openly declare the press his enemy, and the press responded 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 anonymous, 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. A radioactive isotope was put under her car seat. On this night she was finally killed in a car accident. She was 28. Silkwood was on her way to talk to a New York Times reporter. 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.

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: In a famous Shakespeare play one character says ” This royal seat of kings, this sceptered isle...This blessed plot. This earth, this realm, this England.” Who says it?

Answer: John of Gaunt in Richard II.

Question: In a famous Shakespeare play one character says” This royal seat of kings, this sceptered isle...This blessed plot. This earth, this realm, this England.” Who says it?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is an escutcheon?
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History for 11/12/2023
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 Shawn is 80, Megan Mullally is 64, Anne Hathaway is 41, Ryan Gosling is 43, David Brain is 82.

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 their Catholic practices with 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 able to go wild. By unfortunate coincidence the gossip about the Prince’s 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 called him Dirty Bertie, and Edward the Caresser.

1912- While King Edward VII was womanizing, his queen Alexandra was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. She used her Kodak Brownie camera to photograph the Royal Family at leisure. This day she published Queen Alexandra’s Christmas Album, with the proceeds to go to charity. The informality of her photos was revolutionary and did much to humanize the British Royal family to the public.

1912- Mayor of New Orleans Martin Behrman shut down the brothels and shady establishments of the red-light district Storyville. The place where American Jazz originated.

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 Amundsen, 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 reshape 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, Fighter ace James Norman Hall of the Lafayette Escadrille borrowed a Spad and flew over the Western Front one last time. He was amazed at how quiet and peaceful it now was. He no longer had to look anxiously over his shoulder for Fokkers diving out of the clouds, or anti-aircraft bursts. He landed, and never flew again. James Norman Hall moved to Tahiti, and with another Lafayette Escadrille veteran, Charles Nordhoff, wrote the famous book, The Mutiny on the Bounty.

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.

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.

1936- The Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge dedicated. Engineer Charles Purcell went on to design LA Freeways.

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.

1939- Actor Bela Lugosi spent the day at the Walt Disney Studio posing for their animators as the Devil in Night on Bald Mountain in Fantasia. Despite the good publicity shots, lead animator Bill Tytla was dissatisfied with his performance and used fellow artist Ham Luske as his model instead.

1940- The first LA Freeway, the Arroyo-Seco opened for car traffic for the first time. “ Called the finest highway of its kind in America”. In 1954 it was renamed The Pasadena Freeway, and today is simply called The 110 Freeway.

1941- On the night before mobster Abe Reles, alias Kid Twist, was due to testify what he knew of the Mafia, he was thrown out of a hotel window to his death. He was under Federal protection. In 1962, Joe Valachi testified mobster Frank Costello had raised $100,000 to bribe NYPD cops to do the deed themselves. A popular toast in Brooklyn those days was: “ Here’s to Abe Reles, a canary who could sing, but not fly.”

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- The town of 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: What is an escutcheon?”

Answer: An escutcheon is the shield on a coat-of-arms.

Question: What is an escutcheon?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: An early American superhero was named Nattie Bumpo. In what book did he first appear?
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History for 11/11/2023
Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gen. George Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnegut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Stanley Tucci is 73, Demi Moore is 61, Leonardo di Caprio is 49

Today in the Middles Ages this was "Martinmass" the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of France.

Happy Veterans Day in the U.S., Memorial Day in many European and Commonwealth countries.

1534- The Parliament voted the Act of Supremacy, confirming that the King of England would be henceforth the Supreme Head of the Church in England, and no longer beholding to the Catholic Church in Rome. They called it The Church of England.

1572- Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe noted that he observed a bright new star in the region of Cassiopea. It was brighter in the sky than Venus, but after 16 months it disappeared. Not until 2008 did scientists determine that what Tycho saw was a White Dwarf exploding into a Supernova. Today it is called Tycho G.

1647- King Charles I had been defeated in the English Civil War and was held a prisoner at Hampton Court. On this day, he gave his jailers the slip and escaped to the Isle of Wight to raise troops for what some historians call the Second English Civil War. His actions, not only of lying to escape but also of persuading a Scottish army to invade England on the promise to the Scots that he would forcibly convert England to Presbyterianism, as well as trying to raise a Catholic Army in Ireland, offended his few remaining friends. Oliver Cromwell concluded there was no use negotiating with a king who saw peace talks only as a delaying tactic. They must have the head of this 'Man of Blood". While in Scotland the king learned to play a new game called ” Golfe on balls.”

1673- Battle of Cochim - Polish Hetman Sobieski and his "Winged Hussars" defeat a Turkish invasion in the Ukraine. The heavily armored Hussar cavalry wore wooden wings decorated with feathers like something out of a Christmas pageant, but the effect on enemies was terrifying. The flutter and hiss they made during their attack made them seem like warrior Christian angels.

1807- The British Admiralty announced that all neutral commercial ships passing through European waters must put into an English port and pay tax, or be subject to attack and seizure by the British Navy. Britain further reserved the right to stop ships to search for deserters from the British Navy. By 1812 and estimated four thousand American sailors had been taken off ships on the high seas and imprisoned or impressed into English service. Because America desired to remain neutral in the Napoleonic Wars this was one of the roots of her declaring war on England in 1812.

1831- Nat Turner, who led the last large slave uprising before the Civil War, was hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia. He confessed but expressed no regrets.

1858- John Landis Mason invents the Mason Jar.

1865- Dr. Mary Edward Walker, Union army surgeon, abolitionist and prisoner of war, became the first woman awarded the Medal of Honor. It was taken away from her in 1885. When asked to return the medal, she wrote back, “Come and get it. I am armed.” They deferred, and she never actually gave it back. Her full status as a Medal of Honor recipient was not completely restored until 1977.

1887- THE HAYMARKET EXECUTIONS- Four leaders of an early American labor movement The Knights of Labor are hanged after being charged with responsibility for a bomb tossed at police during a demonstration in Chicago. Samuel Fielden, Adolphe Fischer, August Spies and Albert Parsons. Albert Parsons shouted as he dropped through the trapdoor:" Oh men of America, Let the Voice of the People be Heard!" It was never proven they actually had thrown the bomb, aww but they were a bunch of reds anyway...A later Chicago mayor ruined his political career when he proved publicly that the Haymarket defendants were innocent.

They were demanding unheard of concessions like a six-day work week and an eight-hour day down from twelve to fourteen. A monument was erected in Haymarket not to Parsons but to the police. Hippies blew it up in 1968.

1889- Washington State admitted into the union.

1914- Sultan Mehmed V of Turkey who was also the last Caliph, honoring his alliance with Germany in World War I, declared a Grand Jihad on the allies. He said it was the duty of all good Muslims to fight the Christians, unless of course they were Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians or Austrians. And uh, neutral Spaniards, Swedes and Portuguese were okay too. Historians say the effect of his declaration of Holy War was met in the Muslim world with resounding indifference. About the only one who listened was the Khedive of Egypt, who was promptly replaced by the British.

1918- ARMISTICE DAY-MEMORIAL DAY- World War I ended. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns of the Great War fall silent. It sounds poetic but it was just a coincidence, the opposing sides had been negotiating since the 8th.
In a strange salute when the word went down the battlelines that the ceasefire would take effect at 11:00AM, at one minute before, thousands of cannons on both sides fired one last round simultaneously.
One German machine gunner fired off his last belt of bullets, then he climbed up on his parapet. In full view of both armies, he executed a deep, theatrical bow. Then he turned around and walked away.
World War I's final tally was 22 million dead, almost 20% of the young male population in the opposing countries. In only 7 months of actual fighting 116,000 American died. This also marks the turning point of the Old World into the Twentieth Century: ethnic republics arose out of dying monarchies. The British, German, Belgian and French colonial empires were fatally wounded. Independence desires stirred in 3rd world colonies and the United States became a major global power and world financier.
People came home using wristwatches, trenchcoats, and referring to large weather systems as "fronts". A cold front, etc.
1918- The same day as the Armistice, French leader Clemenceau received a note from his friend, the old Impressionist Claude Monet. He said to celebrate the victory, he wanted to gift to the nation his huge painting cycle, the Water Lillies.

1918- TOMMY GUNS- While the Armistice was being celebrated, sitting on a New York wharf, forgotten, was the first shipment of Thompson submachine guns, built for a war just ended. Gen. John Thompson was an inventor who tried to solve the problem of close hand-to-hand fighting in trenches by inventing a light mobile machine gun that could be a “trench-broom” –spewing 800 bullets a minute. Because it fired small pistol bullets, it was called a “sub-machine gun”.
But the Great War was over and the U.S. Army wasn’t interested anymore, neither were most police departments. So in 1921 the Thompson Submachine Gun went on sale to the public as a “swell home defense system”. 
The people who did buy them were Gangsters and the IRA. They called them Choppers, Chicago Typewriters and Tommy Guns. Al Capone invented the novelty of hiding one in a violin case. John Dillinger was very proud of his.
Old John Thompson was horrified that his creation was being used by violent hoodlums to make incidents like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre possible. He died in 1940, only weeks before the US Army would order tens of thousands of his Tommy Guns to fight World War II.

1919- On the first anniversary of the Armistice, Congress declared today a national holiday honoring our veterans. Most of Europe and Canada celebrate today was Memorial Day, but our memorial day is in May to commemorate the end of our Civil War. Today was also known Remembrance Day, and in 1954, the name was permanently made Veterans Day.

1920- On the second anniversary of the Armistice, the British entomb an Unknown Soldier to represent all war dead “A Soldier Whose Name is Known Only to God”. The French do it and the Americans think this a neat idea so do their own at Arlington in 1932. Bavarian corporal Adolf Hitler called himself the Unknown soldier of Germany, Now because of DNA identification identities of war dead will no longer be unknown. In 1998 the identity of the Unknown of the Vietnam War was discovered, and the remains moved upon request of his family.

1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom.

1925- The Nazis formed a second para-military force to augment their stormtroopers called the Schutz-Staffel or SS. Its leader was a one time chicken farmer named Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was heavily into the occult. He built officer training centers in a castle made up to look like King Arthur's round table. He also encouraged Germans to conceive children in graveyards, so the unborn could absorb the spirits of dead German heroes. The SS published a list of suitable graveyards for romantic assignations.

1926- Work began building Route 66, the first interstate highway built for automobiles in the U.S. It will get finished in 1932. The world's first road exclusively for automobiles was opened in 1921, the Avus in suburban Berlin, followed by the Via Fiore Imperiali in Rome (1927).

1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale. The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package their cookies.

1937- Animation production wrapped on Disney’s first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chanteuse Kate Smith. Irving Berlin had written the song in 1918 for a Broadway show Yip,Yap, Yaphank, but it didn’t fit in. So, he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later, he revived the song as a peace hymn faced with the growing threat of WW2. This day at an Armistice Day radio concert it was sung by Kate Smith. It became a huge hit. Every few years there is a call to make it the national anthem.

1938- TYPHOID MARY- On this day 68 year old Mary Mallon died in an asylum. She was a carrier of the disease typhoid fever and, in 1910, while being a cook in a hotel resort she infected 1,000 people. Released from jail a few years later, she had promised not to resume her former profession. But soon she was in the kitchen again. She started the typhoid epidemic of 1915 and was arrested again. She herself never contracted the disease.

1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule so L.B. Mayer ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.

1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a popular character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.

1940- Battle of Taranto (Italy) The RAF attacked the Mussolini’s fleet in port using torpedo planes. Convention wisdom of the time was plane-launched torpedoes wouldn't work in the shallow waters of a harbor. The British solved this by equipping their torpedoes with little fins that gave them greater buoyancy. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto said he wouldn't have attempted Pearl Harbor if the British hadn't proved at Taranto that such torpedo runs were possible.

1951- In Los Angeles, the Bing Crosby Enterprises gave the world’s first demonstration of a videotape recorder. Developed by John T. Mullins and Wayne Johnston.

1953- Disney short Ben and Me, directed by Ham Luske.

1954- Tolkein’s second book of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, first published.

1966- Gemini XII spacecraft went up into orbit. It was the last flight of the Gemini program and the first spaceflight of Buzz Aldrin who would later be the second man to walk on the moon.

1971- Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks premiered at Radio City Music Hall in NYC.

1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol, Groucho Marx.

1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar flop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."

1992- The premiere of Walt Disney’s Aladdin, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. Starring Robin Williams doing the voice of the Genie.
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Yesterday’s Question: An early American superhero was named Nattie Bumpo. In what book did he first appear?

Answer: Nattie, or Nathaniel Bumpo was the full name of the sharpshooting frontiersman Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.

Question: An early American superhero was named Nattie Bumpo. In what book did he first appear?

Question: Which character was developed first? Captain Ahab, Sherlock Holmes or Cyrano de Bergerac?
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History for 11/10/2023
Birthdays: 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, Enrico Morricone, Tracey Morgan is 54, Neil Gaiman, Animator 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’s 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 as 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 Bye Mommy. Oh and uh.,. Jean de Mariac was beheaded.

1766- In New Brunswick New Jersey, The 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 got 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 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 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 tried 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 Pulitzer’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 throne, 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- Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and Empress Zita abdicate. Ancient Emperor Franz-Joseph II helped start World War I and then he conveniently for him, he 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- Pioneering French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen 1925 epic 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,

1991- Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast premiered at the El Capitan. Directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale.

1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many hits like Terminator 2 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, Georgia Republican congressmen Paul Broun was already calling him a “Marxist-Nazi.” This set the tone for the partisan hatred of the first black president that bordered on hysteria, and continued long after he left office.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which character was developed first? Captain Ahab, Sherlock Holmes or Cyrano de Bergerac?

Answer: Captain Ahab 1851. Sherlock Holmes in 1887, and Cyrano in 1897.

Question: When Abe Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater, what play was he watching?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When tallying up your finances, is it better to finish in the red? Or in the black?
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History for 11/8/2023
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 55, Gretchen Mol is 51, Tara Reid, Norman Lloyd, John Musker is 70

393AD- Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius banned any further worship of the old pagan gods and closed their remaining temples. He stopped the Olympic Games, not to return until revived in 1895.

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 Muslim conquerors. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius appeared at the port of Alexandria with a large fleet. But after removing some of his personal stuff, 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 Xocoatl.

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 only beginning. 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 this European war. Frederick’s son Prince Rupert of the Rhine 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. Abe Lincoln called Bourbon, “the most American of drinks.”

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

1821- Missouri became a state. The first American state on the west bank of the Mississippi.

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 hospital anyway. His last words after taking a shot of whiskey were:" Well, I'll be damned!" Another version said his last words were “ This is funny…” He was 35.

1889- Montana became a state.

1908- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were both killed by soldiers in San Vicente Canton, Bolivia. There is a theory that they faked this story and slipped back into the US to live out their lives quietly. Sundance under the name William Henry Long, died in Utah in 1936. In 2008 a DNA analysis was done on the remains and compared to the DNA of a distant relative of Sundance. They did not match.

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.

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 his chance to run for the US Senate in part because he made open appearances at shows and dinners with his girlfriend, even entertaining her in Gracie Mansion while his family was in an adjoining wing. She later became his 3rd wife.

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 upheld a 1922 ruling that Baseball a sport, not a business. Therefore it is exempt from anti-trust laws.

1956-The Ten Commandments opened in theaters. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Much of the animated effects like the pillar of fire were done by freelancing Disney effects animators like Joshua Meador.

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. Comedian Chris Rock wondered:” Who did he run against that was so bad that you’d rather vote for a crackhead?”
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Yesterday’s Question: When tallying up your finances, is it better to finish in the red? Or in the black?

Answer: Hundreds of years ago when businesses tallied up gains and losses, accountants recorded profits in black ink and losses in red ink. So being in the black is more desirable to being in the red.