Quiz: What is a dogma?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Which Looney Tunes director was promoted to director first? Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng or Chuck Jones?
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History for 8/21/2018
Birthdays: Christopher Robin Milne-1920, King Phillip II Augustus of France- 1165, King William IV of England- 1765, Aubrey Beardsley, Count Basie*, Wilt (Wilt the Stilt) Chamberlain, Friz Freleng, Kenny Rogers, Princess Margaret, Matthew Broderick, Vance Gerry, Peter Weir is 74, Kim Catrall is 62, Carrie Anne Moss is 51

*Count Basie's first name was William. When working in a swing band he'd often get to work late. This would make the band's director ask “Where is that no-account Basie? “ which in his colloquial slang came out: "Where dat no' Count Basie!?" Hence the nickname.

Consualia- Roman Festival of the first Harvest

1560 –Danish scientist Tycho Brahe wrote that he had become interested in astronomy.

1561- Queen Catherine de Medici attempts to solve the bitter wrangling over Protestants and Catholics dividing France by convening a grand Estates General at Fontainbleau. Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspar Coligny presented the Petition of the Huguenots. By then 20% of the French population were Protestant (Huguenots). They declared loyalty to the crown while asking that all men be allowed to worship as they pleased. It didn’t work. Soon Catholics and Huguenots were killing each other in the streets. Coligny was murdered in the Great Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

1810- After the Swedish Royal family, the Vasas, died out, the Swedish Diet, with major arm twisting by Napoleon, voted to have French General Bernadotte, married to the daughter of one of Nappy's old girlfriends Desiree' Clary, become the new King and Queen. Napoleon saw this move as adding Sweden to his continental empire but Bernadotte later changed sides and gave Napoleon the shaft. At the end of the Napoleonic wars Bernadotte hoped the Russian Czar would reward him with the throne of France but he let him keep Norway to add to his kingdom. Two centuries later Napoleon and the Czar’s families have lost their thrones, but Bernadotte’s descendants still rule Sweden today.

1820- After Argentina and Chile had been liberated from Spain, the army of Jose San Martin embarked from Valparaiso to invade Peru.

1858- The first Lincoln-Douglas debates. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas squared off in a series of open air debates for a congressional seat for Illinois. But the main subject was the slavery issue. Douglas, the 'Little Giant" won the election but the debates brought national attention to Lincoln. Douglas had even courted Lincoln's wife Mary before they were married. After Lincoln was in the White House, Douglas was his strong supporter.

1863-THE LAWRENCE KANSAS MASSACRE – In the Western Border States the town of Lawrence Kansas was the center of pro-Union partisan Jayhawkers. Locals called it YankeeTown. Early in the morning this day Confederate guerrilla leader William Clark Quantrill led 450 hard-riding Missouri raiders flying black flags into town.
As the wild horsemen galloped up Massachusetts Avenue shooting and burning, Quantrill stood up in his saddle and shouted “Kill! Kill! Kill all the n-loving Yankees!” There was no regular army there. They murdered 200 civilians, mostly defenseless old men and boys. A guerrilla named Rev Larkin Skaggs tore down the Stars & Stripes and dragged it behind his horse in the dirt to the laughter of the troops. There were some regular Confederate officers present who were appalled at the carnage. They later showed their unfired weapons to survivors to witness that they did not take part in the crimes.
Rev. Skaggs was shot down by a Delaware Indian as he tried to ride out of town. The citizens dragged his scalped corpse up and down the main street shooting it and pelting it with stones. It was later tossed into a ravine for wild dogs to eat. Many people never recovered from the nightmare. In 1865 at the end of the Civil War, William Quantrill was brought down in a hail of bullets. Quantrill's Raiders included young pups like 17 year old Jesse James, Frank James and Cole Younger.

1878 - American Bar Association organizes at Sarasota, NY.

1887- Mighty (Dan) Casey struck out at his last at bat with the NY Giants. The poem was written many years later.

1888- William S. Burroughs of St Louis patented the first modern adding machine, not counting the abacus.

1897- Ransom Eli Olds opened the Olds Auto Works in Detroit. The produced a new horseless carriage he called the Oldsmobile.

1911- Café waiter Vincenzo Perugia walked into the Louvre and stole the Mona Lisa. After trying to fence it for two years, he tried to ransom it back. He was arrested and the painting recovered.

1912- Arthur Eldred of Oceanside New York became the first Eagle scout.

1921- On his first birthday, Christopher Robin Milne was given a Farrell teddy bear from Harrods. His parents first called it Edward, but when he could speak Christopher Robin named it Winnie, for his favorite bear he saw at the zoo. The child would also mention the name of a swan there he liked named Pooh. This gave his dad A.A. Milne a swell idea for a new book.

1922 – The Curly Lambeau & Green Bay Football Club formed in 1919 was granted an NFL franchise. Foreigners have pondered the Great American Mystery: Why are the Packers the only US football team not situated near a major American City? That is because at a time when professional football was in its infancy, a Green Bay meat packing company paid for the team’s uniforms.

1929- Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo marry.

1930- Pardon Us, the first feature length film starring Laurel & Hardy. In 1926, Hal Roach director Leo McCarey noticed the Briton Stan Laurel and Georgia born singer Oliver Hardy looked funny together, and put them in a series of shorts. Laurel & Hardy became one of the greatest comedy teams in film history.

1935- Big band leader Benny Goodman was having a tough time. His band lost its radio gig when the show Let’s Dance was canceled. So he and his musicians drove across the country in a small caravan of cars playing various venues on the road. They were told in small towns to stop playing that newfangled Swing music and stick to old standards. One manager in Denver told him:” Don’t you guys know any waltzes? ” By the time they arrived in Los Angeles this day they were thoroughly demoralized. But today when they set up in the Palomar Ballroom in Hollywood the crowd was immense! And these kids wanted to jitterbug to the new Swing music! So hit it, Jackson, Awl Reet, Awl Reet!

1941- Nazi forces cut off the supplies and began the 800 day Siege of Leningrad. A directive from Berlin announced “The Fuehrer has decided to have St. Petersburg wiped off the face of the earth.” The epic siege would earn Leningrad the title of Hero-City. Dmitri Shostakovitch wrote and debuted his Leningrad symphony (#7) even as the Nazi Stukas reigned bombs down from above. He would have to take periodic breaks from composing to serve in the city fire brigade. Leningrad’s stand probably saved Moscow because it tied down troops the Germans needed for the final drive on the Russian Capitol. After Communism’s fall in 1991 Leningrad regained its original name of St. Petersburg.

1944- Moviestar James Cagney, star of Yankee Doodle Dandy, was cleared of charges of Communism. The accusations probably had less to do with Cagney's politics and more to do with his actor’s union activism, and his fighting in court the restrictive personal contracts studios put their stars under.

1959- Hawaii became the 50th state.

1961- The British colonial authorities release Kenyan nationalist leader Njomo Kenyatta from prison.

1967 –New York Mets second baseman Ken Harrelson became the first free agent.

1968- RUSSIAN TANKS CRUSH THE "PRAGUE SPRING' -Soviet forces destroy Alexander Dubchek's experiment of "Socialism with a Human Face." 650.000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops moved on the small country from all sides. Some of the Red Army soldiers marching into Prague were from Siberia and had never seen a western city before. Carlos Casteneda, who was there for a socialist progressive conference, recalled seeing a Soviet tank crash right through a department store glass window. The driver had never seen a glass window that large and didn't think anything was there. A Czech put a sign over the window frame: "NOTHING CAN STOP THE INVINCIBLE RED ARMY !"

1972 - Grace Slick was sprayed with mace by police after one of her band called the cops pigs.

1983- Benino Aquino, chief political opponent of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is promised no reprisals if he returns from exile in Hawaii. Stepping off the plane in Manila an assassin immediately shot him dead. His wife Cory Aquino took over and led the "people power" revolution that toppled Marcos.

1987- The movie Dirty Dancing opened.

1989- The Voyager II space probe flew by the planet Neptune. It was discovered Neptune had a faint ring like Saturn and rotated on its side- south-north instead of west to east. Scientists speculated the atmospheric pressure to be so great that it could actually rain diamonds.

1995- Bill Gates announced Microsoft Windows 95.

2003- A two-week heatwave in Europe killed 17,000 in France. 13,000 people dead in Germany, Italy 12,000. Most were elderly people sitting in their locked apartments without air conditioning while their families went on their august holidays. It is probably the largest heat wave death in modern times, since it took place in only a few days.

2011- Anti Khaddafi rebels push into the Libyan capitol Tripoli, completing the dictator’s overthrow.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which Looney Tunes director was promoted to director first? Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng or Chuck Jones?

Answer: After Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising left in 1935, Friz Freleng and Jack King were promoted. Tex Avery and Bob Clampett followed shortly after

Quiz: Which Looney Tunes director was promoted to director first? Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng or Chuck Jones?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who first appealed to “ The Better Angels of our nature….”….?
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History for 8/20/2018
Birthdays: President Benjamin Harrison, Sukenoba Nishikawa, Bernardo O’Higgins, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, H.P. Lovecraft, Art Tatum, Issac Hayes, Connie Chung, Jacqueline Susanne, Rajiv Ghandi, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Joan Allen is 62, Fred Durst, Alan Reed -the original voice of Fred Flintstone, Slobodan Milosovic’, Amy Adams is 44

Feast day of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

480 B.C. -THE THREE HUNDRED SPARTANS- When Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece the King of Sparta Leonidas decided the best place to try and stop him was in the narrow pass of Thermopylae. But the Spartan senate and other allied Greek states refused to send troops until they completed the Olympiad festival. It was forbidden for Greeks to wage war during the Games. So Leonidas went with the 300 Spartans of his bodyguard, and a thousand more allied troops, to try and stall ten times their number. After repulsing several attacks a traitor showed Xerxes a goat path around the Spartan position. Leonidas could still have retreated but he, his three hundred and some other Greek allies decided to stand and fight to the last man. They were wiped out, but they bought enough time for the Greeks eventual victory.

Later a monument was erected over their bones: O xein angellin Lakdaimoniois hoti tede keimetha tois keinon rhemasi peithomenoi- which means "Go Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that True to their Command, Here We Lie."

636 A.D. Battle of Yarmuk- The armies of Islam led by Caliph Omar defeat the Byzantine Greeks and captured Palestine and Jerusalem. The Caliph Omar received the defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanus Diogenes with a cup of fruit flavored ice called Sherbat or sorbet. Omar was a very devout Moslem and spurned the vanity of a white charger, preferring to travel by donkey, as the Prophet Mohammed had done. The custom was for high-born prisoners like an emperor to be ransomed back. But the Byzantine court was so annoyed, they refused to pay for loser Romanus.

1191- At the siege of Acre, Richard Lionheart had 3,000 Arabs and their families slaughtered in front of Saladin just to piss him off.

1619- A Dutch ship anchored at the English colony at Jamestown Virginia and landed the first African slaves. Twenty people. By the American Revolution, three million African people had been forcibly brought to America to serve as slaves. There was white slavery as well in the form of indentured servitude, but that had mostly died out by the American Revolution. In 1809 when an international treaty was signed to outlaw the overseas slave trade, even though despots like the Czar of Russia signed it, the only nation that refused was the United States.

1648- Battle of Lens, the last battle of the Thirty Years War. Archduke Leopold defeated somebody or other. The Thirty Years war went on so long that all those who started the war in 1618 had died and by 1648 nobody remembered how the whole damn mess got started in the first place.

1672- THE DAY THE DUTCH ATE THEIR PRIME MINISTER. Jan DeWitt had governed the Netherlands as Grand Pensioner of the Republic for four terms but by now many Dutch hated him for his weak handling of a French invasion. They wanted the more resolute leadership of young William III of Orange. Jan De Witt resigned his offices and when his brother Cornelius was imprisoned Jan went to his aid. A mob broke into the jail. As unsympathetic guards looked on they beat Jan and Cornelius to death and hung their bodies from a lamp-post. Some reports say the mob tore strips of flesh from their bodies and ate them.

1741-VITUS BERRING DISCOVERED ALASKA and helps colonize California. Well, he didn't actually help, but for 200 years Spain had ignored it's Southwest colonies because there were no gold-rich Inca empires there. But when Berring opened the Pacific coast to Russian colonization, the King of Spain freaked and ordered towns and missions built up the California coast. Britain also rushed its’ claims to Washington State and British Columbia. This is why Juan De Cabrillo explored the California coast in 1542, but cities like L.A. and San Francisco weren't founded until 1776.

Berring was a reluctant explorer. The Dane had heard Czar Peter the Great was giving cushy salaries to skilled European sailors. But when Berring arrived in Russia the Czar ordered him to travel 3,700 miles to Siberia, build a fleet and explore the arctic because the Czar had always wondered if America and Russia are connected. He went off and fooled around in the Arctic Sea for awhile, then went back and said it wasn't. The Czars scientists said that wasn't good enough, go back and do it again! Finally he discovered his Berring Straights, but died of scurvy in the Aleutians before he ever got paid.

1794- Napoleon Bonaparte was released from prison at Caps d’Antibe. He was arrested with the leading Jacobins when Robespierre was overthrown. Nappy was friends with Robespierre’s brother.

1862- SECOND BATTLE OF BULL RUN or MANASSAS. Robert E. Lee maneuvered the larger Union army of General George Pope back onto the old Bull Run battlefield and smashed it, sending thousands of bluecoats running back to Washington, -again. Pope considered himself a man of action and bragged "From now on my headquarters are in the saddle!" To which one wag wrote :"It's not the first time that a general had his Headquarters where his Hindquarters should be !' Confederate General James Longstreet was nursing a foot wound so he directed the decisive attack wearing bedroom slippers instead of boots.

After three spectacular Yankee defeats in just two months, the Confederate cause was looking pretty good. In London, Prime Minister Palmerston wrote Lord Liverpool the foreign secretary that Washington or Baltimore would soon fall into rebel hands and a special steamboat was kept waiting at the navy docks to rush President Lincoln and his cabinet to safety when the capitol fell. The time may have arrived for England to offer her mediation to negotiate a ceasefire. Emperor Napoleon III of France was also offering Paris as the site of an international peace conference to oversee the final separation of North and South.

1866- One year after the Civil War ended President Andrew Johnson declared the great insurrection officially over and rescinded all remaining wartime regulations and edicts, reinstating Habeas Corpus, etc.

1882 -Peter Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" premiered in Moscow. The composer said of all his works the two pieces he liked the least were the 1812 Overture and the Nutcracker Suite. Overture 1812 was Richard Nixon’s favorite classical piece.

1896 – The Dial telephone patented. It was nicknamed the Gravediggers Dial because it was invented by funeral director Almon Strowger. His inspiration to create the automated switching system was the local telephone operator was the wife of his competitor in the funeral business. She kept sending all inquiries for an undertaker to her husband. The rotary dial and Strowger switching system was the world standard until replaced by the touchtone button system in the 1980s. Even though the dial phone is a memory, the words remain when we speak of dialing a phone number.

1913- The first successful parachute jump. French balloonists experimented with parachutes in the 1790's but this is the first practical one.

1940- In Mexico City exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky was assassinated. While writing at his desk he was hacked in the neck with a mountain-climbers pick. His murderer Ramon Mercador- alias Jules Antoine, alias Jackson, was paid by Stalin's agents. He got into Trotsky's household by dating one of the maids. It was rumored that part of the Stalinist cell in Mexico was famed painter David Siqueiros. Trotsky was having an affair with famed painter Frida Kahlo. Leon Trotsky predicted Stalin would try to get him while the world's attention was distracted by the Hitler War in Europe. When Mercador was released from a Mexican prison, Stalin presented him with the Order of Lenin.

1940- In a radio speech Winston Churchill praised the efforts of the Royal Air Force in fighting Hitler's bombers-"Never have so Many, owed so Much, to so Few.'

1953- The Kinsey Report on Sexual Behavior in Women first published. Alfred & Clara Kinsey’s study proved to the conservative American public that 50% of women had premarital sex, liked sex for more than just procreation, and 25% had an extramarital affair. This document following his 1948 report on sexual behavior of men revolutionized social attitudes towards sex and feminism.

1954- President Eisenhower’s intelligence chief Allan Foster Dulles presented a paper on Far East Policy in which he urged that the US support be given to the post colonial government of South Vietnam in opposition to communist Ho Chi Minh.

1971- THE ENEMIES LIST. FBI documents prove this day the Nixon White House began to covertly investigate journalist Daniel Schorr because of his anti-war editorials. President Richard Nixon kept an enemies list of people he imagined to be opponents to his administration. It began with obvious liberals like George McGovern and Ted Kennedy, then expanded as far as June Foray the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel.

1972- Star Hollywood directors Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich and William Freidkin announced a partnership in a new production company called "The Director's Company". Young punks Martin Scorcese, George Lucas and Steven Speilberg were also involved. The partnership lasted two years then collapsed.

1982- Ralph Bakshi's film Hey Good Lookin'.

1982- President Reagan sent the Marines into civil war torn Beirut Lebanon.

1985- Israel shipped 96 American-made shoulder held missiles to the radical Ayatollahs of Iran. This was part of the Iran-Contra scheme. When Congress had forbidden the Ronald Reagan White House to send any money to Anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua, Reagan’s people cooked up this scheme to sell the Iranians weapons for covert funds for the Nicaraguan Contras.

1989- George and Joy Adamson, the naturalists who inspired the book Born Free, were murdered by Somali poachers with machetes in Kampi Ya Simba, Africa.

1998- THE WAG THE DOG ATTACKS- After the Al Qaeda terrorist organization bombed US embassies in Africa, the Clinton Administration looked for an opportunity to hit back. This day the CIA got word that senior Al Qaeda leaders including Osama Ben Laden were gathered in a remote Afghan camp for a meeting. President Clinton ordered a spread of cruise missiles launched to kill them. The missiles hit their target, but Ben Laden got away.
In Washington the hostile Conservative media had a field day accusing the Clinton of making the strikes only to distract public attention from the Monica Lewinsky Sex Scandal. It alluded to a popular movie out at the time called Wag the Dog, where a scandal ridden president rigs a fake crisis to distract public attention. Bill Clinton was stymied in any further efforts, and Osama Ben Laden lived on to plan 9-11.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who first appealed to “ The Better Angels of our nature….”….?

Answer: Abraham Lincoln said it in his first inaugural speech: The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature ."

Hello Gang! Sorry I've been away for awhile on Vacation. But I am back on the job now.

Quiz: Who first appealed to “ The Better Angels of our nature….”….?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Who was the It Girl?
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History for 8/19/2018
B-Days: Roman Emperor Probus (232AD), Orville Wright, Ring Lardner, Ogden Nash, Alfred Lunt, George Enesco, jockey Willie Shoemaker, Malcolm Forbes, Tipper Gore, Gene Roddenberry, Colleen Moore the It Girl, Jill St. John, Ginger Baker, Dawn Steel, John Stamos, Peter Gallagher is 62, Kyra Sedgwick is 53, Matthew Perry is 49, Jonathan Frakes is 66, Bill Clinton is 72

480 B.C. THERMOPYLAE- The Spartan King Leonidas had gone on ahead of other Greek allies to try and slow down the gigantic Persian invasion force of Xerxes. He chose to stop them at a narrow mountain pass in Thessaly called Thermopylae or Hot Gates. He had only 300 Spartans of his royal guard and 7000 other Greek allies to fight off 200,000 Persians.
After repulsing several attacks, this night spies told Leonidas a Greek traitor named Ephialtes had shown Xerxes a way behind his position. If he did not retreat he would be surrounded. Their priest Meistias saw in the sacrificial entrails nothing but death.
But Leonidas decided the best way to gain time, and create an example for all Greece to rally, was to stay and fight to the last man. He allowed his allies to withdraw, but 1500 warriors including his 300 Spartans stayed with him. Meistias sent away his only son to be saved, but he stayed to fight.

This night before the last battle the Spartans spent most of their time combing and oiling their hair and beards, for they did not want to enter the next world looking shabby. One Spartan warrior named Dieneces, was told when the Persian multitudes fire their arrows they black out the sun. Dieneces replied: “Good, then we can fight them in the shade.”

14 A.D.- Elderly Emperor Augustus died after ruling the Roman Empire for 44 years. The Empress Livia had ordered the imperial villa surrounded with troops so no one but her saw his end. She said his last words were:" Have I played my part well in this great comedy called life?" But the historian Tacitus suspected Livia might have aided his shuffling off this mortal coil before he had second thoughts about leaving the empire to his stepson Tiberius, He may have said something more like: " Honey, I don't feel so good. What did you put in these figs?"

1274- King Edward Ist Longshanks and his Queen Eleanor of Castile crowned at Westminster Abbey. Edward was called Long-Legs because he was over 6 foot, and his constant wars and blood conquest earned him nicknames like The Hammer of the Scots, the Great Plantagenet, and Big Baddass In-Your-Face, Mofo King.

1399 - King Richard II of England surrendered his throne to his cousin Henry Bollingbroke, who became King Henry IV. Richard II is not remembered for much else but inventing the pocket-handkerchief.

1561 - Mary Queen of Scots arrives in Leith Scotland to assume her throne after spending 13 years in France. She was raised at the extremely Catholic court of Queen Catherine de Medici and had little in common with her increasingly Presbyterian Scots subjects.

1599- Spanish conquistadors capture Acoma pueblo in New Mexico, east of modern Albuquerque. The Indian village on the sheer tabletop mountain reminded the Spaniards of attacking castles back in Europe. After their victory they enslaved the population and burned the Indian chief at the stake as a heretic. According to monk Diego de Las Casas, as the chief was roasting, Las Casas started to feel guilty, so he urged the chief at his last moments to accept baptism. The chief called out through the flames:" No thank you, because then I would go to the Christian Heaven and meet even MORE of you people!"

1692- Salem Mass, The pilgrims executed four people as witches. One was a senile old woman who just looked scary like a witch, and another was a Caribbean servant named Tituba who liked to tell children ghost stories. One Rev George Burroughs, was a distant ancestor of Walt Disney.

1745- THE GATHERING OF THE CLANS- At Glenfinnin in the Scottish Highlands, to the thunder of drums and the skirl of massed bagpipes, Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his banner of revolt and called all Scottish clans to rally to him. Many clans stayed aloof but Clan MacDonald and Cameron wholeheartedly swelled his ranks, as did his family clan the Stuarts. His men were paid in oatmeal.

1781- George Washington started his Continental army marching from Yonkers, New York to attack Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia. At Dobbs Ferry he started ferrying his troops across the Great Northern River, as the Hudson was known then. He was amazed that the British army was only twenty miles away in New York City, yet they never stirred to attack him. Washington’s minutemen were so broke that the French general the Comte du Rocheambeau donated some of his own money to pay their wages.

1787 – British astronomer W. Herschel discovers Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Herschel also discovered Uranus and other celestial bodies.

1812- OLD IRONSIDES- During the war of 1812 The USS Constitution pounded it out with the frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia. The British captain complained his cannonballs bounced harmlessly off the Constitutions heavy New Hampshire oak hull as though it was made of iron. The nickname stuck and today Old Ironsides is the oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy. In 2012, the same Constitution was taken out for a spin around Boston Harbor.

Aug 19, 1814- THE ASSAULT ON WASHINGTON BEGAN. A huge British battle fleet of 14 Ships of the Line landed an invasion force at the town of Benedict on the Pautuxent River in Maryland. Admiral Cockburn’s intent was to march on Washington D.C., and “give the Americans a Good Drubbing!” The soldiers were all hardened British regulars, fresh from defeating Napoleon in Spain. The Duke of Wellington had turned down the American expedition. He called it " Fruitless, and a waste of time".
Most of the American armies were on the frontier or north trying to invade Canada. To defend the American capitol were only some Maryland militia and a few Marines from two armed schooners hiding in the shallows of the Chesapeake.
U.S. Secretary of War Armstrong was convinced the British were faking, and their real target was Baltimore. President James Madison sent contradicting orders to Armstrong and the field commanders. Secretary of State James Monroe, a veteran of the Revolution, personally galloped about alone under British fire bringing the only reliable scouting reports.

1848- The New York Herald published a story that President Polk confirmed that gold had indeed been discovered in California.

1886- Joseph Conrad got his British citizenship. The author of Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim was born in Poland as Jozef Konrad Korzenieowski, but he went into exile when his nationalist father was arrested by the Czars police and sent to Siberia.

1891 - William Huggins described the astronomical application of the spectrum.

1909- The Brickyard is born. The first Indianapolis 500 autorace.

1929- the Amos and Andy show premiered on radio.

1942- The Dieppe Raid- Allied commanders were under pressure from Stalin to prove that they were doing something to open a second front in the west to take the pressure off Russia. So they sent a Canadian division in what amounted to the largest commando operation of World War II. These Canadians had to attack a large U-Boat base on the channel and ram a destroyer full of explosives into the dry docks. The Germans were waiting and it became a suicide mission. The Canadians suffered almost 60% casualties.

1945- Four days after the Japanese surrender, Ho Chi Minh seized power in French Indochina and declared the Republic of Vietnam. Uncle Ho had been supported by the CIA’s forerunner the OSS in his struggle against the Japanese. This day Ho ordered a reading aloud of his declaration, heavily borrowed from the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Even though FDR's personal representative Avriel Harriman advised that the U.S. recognize Ho's government, we decided to support the French and British in trying to keep their colonial empires. The British fly in French paratroops and the stage is set for the Vietnam wars of the next 30 years.

1953- Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown and the Shah assumed absolute power. All with the cooperation of the American CIA. The popular Mossadegh was trying to steer Iran into a nonaligned status between the cold war superpowers and had nationalized the Iranian oil industry. So to Washington he was a threat. Eisenhower advisor Allen Foster Dulles considered Mossadegh a dangerous lunatic for not wanting American support. The Shah Reza Pahlevi II ruled for the next 25 years until overthrown by the Moslem fundamentalists under the Ayatollah Khomeni. The CIA did not admit their role in this until 2011.

1953- The Israeli Knesset voted to create a huge memorial to Jews killed in the Holocaust called Yad Vashem.

1955 - WINS radio, announces it will not play "copy" white cover versions of black R&B. DJs must play Fats Domino's "Ain't It A Shame," not Pat Boone's. In 1957 Little Richards “Tuttie-Fruitie” never got higher than 17th in the Billboard Charts while Pat Boones version, by his own admission awful, went to number one.

1957- The NY Giants baseball team voted to move to San Francisco.

1960- The Russians launched a Sputnik capsule into space with two dogs- Belka and Strelka, 2 rats and 40 mice. They recovered this orbiting zoo the next day. The first sending of life into space and returning them safely.

1973 - Kris Kristofferson wed Rita Coolidge.

1977- Groucho Marx, the last surviving Marx Brother, died at age 86. In his final years Groucho had rewrote his will in favor of his young personal secretary Erin Fleming. This spawned a furious legal battle between Fleming and the Marx family.

1988- The Iran-Iraq war ended after 8 bloody years.

1989- The Polish Communist regime resigned and turned over power to the Solidarity trade union movement. Poland is the first Communist Warsaw Pact government to collapse.

1991-THE AUGUST COUP. Communist hardliners in a final attempt to stop the fall of the Soviet Union, try to overthrow leader Mikhail Gorbachov. They try to do it the way they did it to Nikita Khruschev in 1964, arresting Gorbachov while he was at his vacation dacha or cottage. The coup failed several days later when Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin climbed on top of a tank and called for a "people-power" style rising to support the democratic elements of the government.

2000- Scientists report water at the North Pole for the first time in 50 million years.

2004- Google stock first went public on the stock market.

2012- Director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Days of Thunder) jumped to his death off a bridge in Los Angeles. He was 68.

2335 – According to Star Trek the Next Generation, this is the birthday of William T Riker, in Valdez Alaska, first officer of the Enterprise.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was the It Girl?

Answer: Clara Bow. It was said as a movie actress, her sex appeal to men caused her to have that certain “It”. She starred in a 1927 movie entitled It.

Quiz: What is a thespian?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In the Early American Republic, what was “The Virginia Junto”?
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History for 8/6/2018
Birthdays: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Daniel O'Connell "the Liberator", Dutch Schultz (real name Arthur Fleigenheimer), Louella Parsons, Lucille Ball, Robert Mitchum, Andy Warhol, Hoot Gibson, William B. Williams, Michelle Yeoh, M. Night Shyamalan, Melissa George, Soliel Moon-Frye

1504- Birth of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury under Elizabeth I and was responsible for formulating the 39 Articles. An apocryphal story is that his long nose and inquisitive nature gave rise to the term "Nosy Parker ".

1571-During the Ottoman Turkish conquest of Cypus this day its second largest city Famagusta fell after a one year siege. The Turkish pasha was so enraged at all the time and soldiers killed to capture the city, that he ordered the Venetian commander General MarcAntonio Bragadino skinned alive and his hide nailed to the poop deck of his flagship.
The Bragadino Family later negotiated with Sublime Porte and regained possession of the skin, folded him up nicely and placed behind glass in his monument in the Church of San Giovanni et Paulo. When you enter the church today look to the right up high and you’ll see a bust with something that looks like a brown table napkin behind a glass plate. That’s General Bragadino.

1774- Religious leader Ann Lee and a group of followers first arrived in America from England. They called themselves the United Believers in Christ's Second Coming, but were more popularly known as the Shakers.

1806- Napoleon ordered the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. This was a bit of international bookkeeping. The Empire existed if only on paper since 950 A.D. As Voltaire joked “ it wasn't really an Empire, it wasn't Roman (it was mostly German states) and it wasn't really that holy either”. The Austrian Empire and the Confederation of the Rhine States under French dominion take it’s place.

1825- Bolivia gained independence from Peru.

1840- NAPOLEON III'S ABORTIVE COUP. Louis Napoleon was the nephew of the first Napoleon and one day he decided since his uncle was a genius he must be a genius also. So he resolved to leave exile in Britain and overthrow the French government. In 1814 Napoleon just had to show up on the beach in Cannes for the people to go wild and carry him to the palace on their shoulders.
So Louis Napoleon appeared on the beach in Boulogne waving his sword and flag. Instead of cheering crowds, a local constable tried to arrest him for carrying an unlicensed firearm.
When the gun went off and hurt the constable, a mob chased Mr. Bonaparte back to his boat booing and laughing. While trying to row away the boat capsized and Napoleon III was picked up by a fishing boat while clinging to a lifebuoy. A minister in Paris said of the affair: "That blockhead! Everything would be easier if he would just drown himself!" Louis Napoleon later became France's second emperor in 1852.

1890- FIRST MAN ELECTROCUTED- Prison officials wanted a more humane way to execute badguys than hanging, after a 300 pound killer named Mad Jack Ketcham made everybody sick when the noose ripped his head off. So they turned to the miracle of the age, electricity. A spirited competition began between inventors Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse whether AC or DC current was more lethal. Lots of dogs and cats around their laboratories disappeared for test subjects. Edison wanted to call his device an "Automort" or "Electramort".
When Edison knew he was going to lose the contract he suggested the inventor give his name to it." Joe will be Westinghoused at Midnight !"-etc. Finally it was simply the Chair, Sparky, or the Hot Seat. The first man in it, an axe murderer named William Kemmler, took several 17 second jolts to be sent off, his hair and jacket caught fire and his shoes melted and stuck to the floor.

1890- Cy Young pitches and wins his first game.

1914 –The first German zeppelin raid. A Zeppelin bombs the Belgian city of Liege, 9 killed.

1926- Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel.

1926- Warner Brothers Studio premiered its motion picture sound on disk system. The film was Don Juan with John Barrymore the Great Profile. It didn’t really have much impact until they made the "Jazz Singer" with Al Jolson two years later.

1930- Judge Crater disappeared. The New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater had given no indication of any trouble but he had accrued huge gambling debts and was known to be connected with crooked politicians of Tamany Hall. The judge had dinner with some friends at the Stork Club and told them he would join them later at the theater. He got into a taxi at 43rd street and vanished forever. It was the media story of the year. One paper called him “ the missingest man in New York.”

1932- Top Broadway singer Libby Hollman "Statue of Libby" had married quiet tobacco millionaire Zachary Smith Reynolds of R.J. Reynolds and moved to his North Carolina estate. But life on the farm was boring, so Libby brought her Broadway friends down to party. After one party, she was missing for several hours and came home with grass stains on her knees and a big smile. The couple quarreled and Smith Reynolds died of a gunshot wound to the head. Libby and a friend were indicted for murder, but the R. J. Reynolds Family had the charges dropped to avoid a prolonged scandal. No one was ever charged.

1945- HIROSHIMA- At around 11:00 A.M. Capt. Tibbetts and his B-29 "Enola Gay" dropped one bomb and sent us into the Atomic Age. The uranium device was called the "Cosmic Bomb" by the scientists and "Little Boy" by the crew. Navy Secretary Admiral Leahy had said:" It's the biggest damn fool thing we've ever done. It'll never go off!"

When it did go off one crewmember shouted: "Wow! Lookit that sonofabitch go! This war is over!!" The navigator wrote in his journal" My God! What have we done?" The target city of Hiroshima was selected because it was undamaged up until then, and the surrounding hills would concentrate its effect. The A-bomb killed around 130,000 people and continued to kill survivors with radiation and cancer. 50,000 people were vaporized outright leaving only shadows burned into the pavement.

Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, the bomb's main designer, had built it primarily to stop Hitler -both the Nazis and Japanese had their own unsuccessful atomic programs. He was still horrified by the results. He became a lifelong pacifist and was later persecuted for refusing any more help in developing nuclear weapons.

1958- Chuck Jones short Rocket By Baby premiered.

1959- Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest premiered.

1962- Jamaica gained independence from Britain.

1970- THE HIPPIES ATTACK DISNEYLAND- A nationwide call for civil disobedience at the famous American-establishment tourist spot was called for August 6th. Called "Yippie Day" Yippies were considered more militant than Hippies. 750 long haired, denim clad young teens filtered into park. Once in they quickly massed, then invaded the Wilderness Fort in Frontierland. There they raised the Vietcong flag, passed out marijuana to tourists and chanted "Stop the War! Free Charlie Manson!" They were finally expelled with great difficulty by park security and the Anaheim police.
In the 1980’s Disney was almost invaded by Nazi skinheads, but this time they were ready.

1973- Stevie Wonder was involved in car crash. After being in a coma for 4 days he recovered completely.

1984- Carl Lewis won four gold medals in track & field at the Olympic Games in LA.

1991- Tim Berners Lee of CERN announced the world wide web, aka www. Today the first website of the web went online- http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

1998- A chubby White House student intern from LA named Monica Lewinsky testified to a Federal Grand Jury that she had sex with President Bill Clinton in a small room down the hall from the Oval Office. Hey, watch where ya put that cigar!

1999- I see dead people..” The Sixth Sense premiered.

2001- One month before the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, the CIA presented President George W. Bush with a study that increased terrorist chatter meant some kind of attack was likely. The report was entitled OSAMA BEN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK IN CONTINENTAL US. That the terrorists may use hijacked civilian airliners. President Bush thanked them:” Okay, you’ve covered your ass...” then resumed clearing brush on his ranch. CIA chief George Tenant didn’t think it important enough to even show up.
Later in 2003 after the 9-11 attack, National Security adviser Dr. Condoleeza Rice was quoted in hearings " No one could predict terrorists would hijack civilian airliners and fly them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon." Bush and Cheney said the fault was poor intelligence. CIA intelligence chief Tenant later got the Medal of Freedom.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: In the Early American Republic, what was “The Virginia Junto”?

Answer: The group of like-minded politicians around Thomas Jefferson- James Madison, John Randolph, James Monroe and Meriwether Lewis were called the Virginia Junto. It seemed that except for John Adams, most of the first few US presidents seemed to be from Virginia, and from this party.

Quiz: In the Early American Republic, what was “The Virginia Junto”?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In American history, what was The No-Nothing Party?
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History for 8/5/2018
Birthdays: Guy de Maupassant, Amboise Thomas, William- first black child born in British America, Neil Armstrong, John Huston, Robert Taylor, Conrad Aiken, Roman Gabriel, Selma Diamond, Patrick Ewing, John Merrick the Elephant Man, Loni Anderson, John Saxon, Jonathan Silverman is 47

Feast of St. Afra, a German prostitute who was burned to death rather than worship idols.” My body hath sinned but my soul is pure.”

1583 - The HMS Squirrel brought the first English settlement within sight of Newfoundland. After the first rough winter the colony failed. The boat retrieving the colonists sank in a storm and all were drowned. A colony planted in Roanoke Virginia by Raleigh two years later also failed. The first permanent British colony wouldn’t succeed until Jamestown in 1607.

1667- Moliere’s comedy “Tartuffe” first played for the public. The next day the Parliament of Paris ordered the theater closed and its posters ripped down. The Archbishop of Paris threatened excommunication of anyone who saw it or performed it. It seemed the Church didn’t like all the jokes about a con man who steals everything from a family by pretending to be a priest. But King Louis XIV thought it was funny. He overruled the prelates and ordered the play resumed.

1769- Marching up the California coast, Gaspar de Portola discovered the San Fernando Valley. He came down out of the Sepulveda pass, made a left at Ventura Blvd. and went over to the Chumash village by a spring. They called it Encino, Spanish for grove of oaks. The original Indian word for this valley was “Valley of Smoke” because of all the brush fires creating a lingering haze.

1775- 1st Spanish ship, the San Carlos, entered San Francisco Bay.

1847 -Author Herman Melville met Nathaniel Hawthorne. They went for a hike together in the Berkshires.

1864-“ DAMN THE TORPEDOES!” Admiral David Farragut at Mobile Bay, Alabma. The Union Navy captured one of last Southern deep water ports. As the US warships in a line ran the heavy cannon of the rebel forts, a lead ship exploded from a floating mine called a torpedo. This stacked up the ship traffic under the enemy guns like a shooting gallery.

Admiral Farragut shouted, “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead! “ He pushed his flagship the USS Hartford to the lead and gambled the remaining booby traps would be duds. They were. They also defeated the Confederate ironclad Tennessee, who’s captain Franklin Buchanan had commanded the Merrimac two years earlier. Even though Farragut had closed the port to Confederate ships, the North wouldn’t spare troops to capture the city. So the city of Mobile Alabama didn’t surrender until four days after Lee surrendered to Grant in 1865.

1882- On little Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor, on top of an old War of 1812 fort, the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty set. The statue had arrived in pieces from France. Some assembly required. Donations for the statue’s construction were collected by a national fundraiser organized by newspaper tycoon Josef Pulitzer.

1891- the American Express Company introduces Travelers Checks.

1910- The first Traffic Light set up on Euclid and 105th sty. in Cleveland.

1921- KDKA Pittsburgh does the 1st radio baseball broadcast Pirates-8, Phillies-0.

1924- Arf, Arf ! the first Little Orphan Annie comic strip drawn by Harold Gray.

1926- Magician Harry Houdini stays in a coffin under water for one hour.

1927- RCA-Victrola record producer Ralph Peer realized there might be a market for “Hillbilly Music”. So he set up a makeshift recording studio above a furniture store in Bristol Tennessee, and put an ad in the local papers for talent. In one day he recorded stars Jimmy Rogers the Singing Brakeman, The Carter Family, The Tennessee Mountaineers and Ernest “Pop” Stoneman. This session has been called the “ Big Bang of Country Music.”

1940- The Day of the Eagle. The first German raids by the Luftwaffe over England. Mostly to probe defenses and attack coastal radar installations. This was the beginning of the Battle of Britain.

1945- At Tinian airbase The atomic uranium bomb “Little Boy” is loaded onto the B-29 bomber Enola Gay after traveling by ship from Hawaii. The crew will take off at 5:00 am next morning.

1945-THE INDIANAPOLIS The ship that carried the Atomic bombs, the cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-168 on the way back from Tinian. Because the Indianapolis was under top secrecy it took five days for the Navy to realize that she was even missing. By the time rescue planes reached the site most of her sailors had drowned or had been eaten by sharks. Out of 900 sailors in the water only 300 were rescued. Survivors recalled how they could feel the sharks noses bumping into the soles of their feet, then another comrade would disappear under water.
This day the plane that discovered them did so by accident. He had spotted the oil slick and assumed it was a submerged Japanese submarine and was closing in to drop a bomb when he saw the men’s heads bobbing in the water.

1953- The film “From Here to Eternity” opened, starring Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift. But the big story was Frank Sinatra’s Oscar winning performance as Maggio that signaled the turnaround in his slumping career.

1953- Operation Big Switch- a large exchange of prisoners of war in the Korean conflict. At this time when some American POW’s refused to come home the charge was made of “Brain Washing”, that the Red Chinese used extreme psychological pressure to alter prisoners behavior.

1955- The Screen Actor’s Guild strikes Hollywood for television residuals. Their president was Walter Pidgeon who had played Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet.

1957- American Bandstand featuring the eternally teenage Dick Clark debuts on television.

1962- GOODBYE, NORMA JEAN. Marilyn Monroe found nude in bed, dead of barbiturate overdose. She was 36. Whether you think the starlet overdosed by accident, suicide, or was done in by the Mafia, the Kennedys, a Svengali like personal physician, lovesick lesbian physical therapist or space aliens, it is still a mystery. She made a call to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s office in Washington several hours earlier but was rebuffed. Her last call was to her hairdresser Mr. Guilaroff. She left the bulk of her belongings to her drama teacher Lee Strassberg and her funeral was organized by ex-husband Joe Dimaggio. Her Westwood cottage suite had a tile over the doorway which read :"All my troubles end Here."

1963- The US, Britain and USSR sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

1964 - Actress Anne Bancroft & Comedian Mel Brooks wed.

1966- Caesar’s Palace Hotel & Casino first opened to the public. This was the first of the super-resort casinos, with a total theme park design and three times the space and accommodations of anything yet seen on the Vegas Strip. Its success ushered in an accelerated era of building for Las Vegas casinos.

1966 –It a moment of youthful indiscretion, John Lennon declared his band the Beatles were now more popular than Jesus. This flippant comment provoked a firestorm of nationwide protest among conservative elements in the US. Beatles albums were publicly burned in the streets. Lennon apologized, then followed up by saying he was being crucified over the comment. Paul McCartney rush up to the mike to insist that wasn't the choice of words they preferred.

1967- Bobby Gentry released “Ode to Billy Jo”.

1980- The Osmond Brothers break up.

1984- Welsh actor Richard Burton died of cerebral hemorrhage at 64. With a tumultuous career and two marriages to Elizabeth Taylor, the hard drinking Burton was the most famous English-speaking actor of his day. But unlike Olivier and Gielgud, he was never knighted. The monarchy objected to their portrayal, when Burton starred in a TV miniseries on Winston Churchill. Burton was buried with a copy of Dylan Thomas’ poems.

1984- Joan Benoit won the first Women’s Olympic Marathon.

1986 - It's revealed painter Andrew Wyeth had secretly created 240 drawings & paintings of his neighbor Helga Testorf, in Chadds Ford, Pa

1994- JUDGE KENNETH STARR appointed by the Newt Gingrich Congress to be special prosecutor to investigate wrongdoing by President Clinton in his Whitewater financial dealings.
When the Whitewater affair proved a cold lead, he came upon the Travelgate, Paula Jones and the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Yet Starr never garnered much support because the public perceived his probe as just another political vendetta. While many Watergate investigators were fellow Republicans, Judge Starr was an openly declared enemy of Bill Clinton. And his blunt tactics brought up disturbing memories of McCarthyism- like his ordering the arrest of a D.C. bookshop owner who refused to hand over his receipts and berating jurors who deadlocked over two counts against Clinton’s law partners.
After $54 million tax dollars spent, Congress voted impeachment of the President for lying under oath. But that effort was defeated and Clinton served out his term. Judge Starr became president of Baylor University in Texas. In 2016 was made to resign due to his covering up a student sex scandal.

1995- The infamous SIGGRAPH party at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. Titled Nailed: An Evening on the Cultural Frontier. When the very conservative Nixon Library was approached about the party, they heard it was a limited invitation event sponsored by ILM and Silicon Graphics. What could go wrong? What they got was 3,000 drunken, pot smoking hippies and computer nerds. The grounds were festooned with scantily clad Brazilian Carnival dancers, sword swallowers, Japanese Taiko drummers, and the bands Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone. LSD guru Timothy Leary held a mock exorcism over Nixon’s birthplace. SIGGRAPH Orlando chapter president said” It was wonderful! I doubt Richard Nixon would have appreciated any of this!”

2001- In a throwback to the long dead Communist era, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il visited Moscow to meet with Russian leaders. Flanked by goose stepping soldiers he laid a wreath at the tomb of Lenin. Russian President Putin let him sleep in a Kremlin suite his father Kim Il Sung slept in 50 years earlier, as the guest of Stalin. Terrified of flying, Kim made the 6000 mile trip from Pyongyang by train, pausing to visit a tank factory. The only reaction was annoyance from Moscow workers. Kim’s private train had jammed up their morning commute.
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Yesterdays’ Quiz: In American history, what was The No-Nothing Party?

Answer: They were an anti-immigrant party emerging in the 1850s running the former president Millard Filmore unsuccessfully for president. Originally The American Party, they got the name for telling their followers to say “I know nothing” if confronted by journalists.