Quiz: What part of a medieval castle was the keep?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Civil War General Abner Doubleday wrote a famous song. What is it? Hint: no lyrics. Called General Doubleday’s Lullaby.
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History for 7/20/2022
Birthdays: Petrarch, Sir Edmund Hilary, Lord Elgin, Quaker Anne Hutchinson, Natalie Wood, Theda Bara the Vamp, Diana Rigg, Dick Lucas, Carlos Santana, Lord Reith- the first Director General of the BBC. Carlos Alarzaqui, Giselle Bunchen is 42, Sandra Oh is 51, Harrison Ellenshaw is 77

1402- Near Ankara (Angora), the armies of the Ottoman Sultan of Turkey were destroyed by a Tartar invasion led by Tamerlane.

1420- Czech leader John Ziska led the Hussite rebels to defeat the German Emperor Sigmund at Witkowo Hill, freeing his besieged capital Prague. Ziska led armies in battle despite losing both eyes in fighting. When he finally died, he left instructions to have his body skinned, and the hide dried, and stretched onto a war drum.

1773-The Vatican outlaws the Society of Jesus, aka the Jesuits. The pope had gotten tired of all their intrigues and foreign entanglements. They went into hiding until they re-emerged reformed in 1820.

1804- Sir Richard Owen born. He was the British scientist who coined the term Dinosaur for all the big fossils being dug up. Yet he came to oppose Darwin’s theories of evolution. He believed dinosaurs were the creatures from Noah’s Flood who for some reason missed the boat.

1858 – Admission first charged to see a baseball game, 50 cents. NY beat Brooklyn 22-18.

1868 - 1st use of tax stamps on cigarettes.

1869- Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and in the Holy Land first published. If you ever wondered what was the most popular book in America during the 19th Century, it was not Moby Dick, War & Peace, Jane Eyre or David Copperfield. The all time best selling book in America during the Victorian Era was a sappy travel diary" Tent Life in the Holy Land "by a forgotten author William Prime. Twain had taken The Grand Tour abroad that was fashionable with the American wealthy classes and thought he’d have some fun recounting his own trip” To cross the Sea of Galilee by boat, a big local Arab demanded eight dollars for use of his miserable conveyance. No wonder Christ preferred to walk.”

1877- Russians besiege Turkish held Plevna in Bosnia.

1879- Joel Chandler Harris published in the Atlanta Constitution "The Story of Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox as Told by Uncle Remus". The first Uncle Remus stories. In Georgia Harris collected the stories from interviewing African American storytellers in the slave quarters. They felt comfortable speaking with him because he was the illegitimate son of an Irish immigrant. Pres. Teddy Roosevelt said, "Presidents may come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put. Georgia has done a great many things for the Union, but she has never done more than when she gave Mr. Joel Chandler Harris to American literature."

1881- Sitting Bull returned to U.S. territory and surrendered. He and his people had been residing in Canada since the Little Big Horn. When Canadian officials first challenged them being in Canada, Bull produced out of his medicine bag old treaty medals stamped with King George III on them. He said, "We also are the children of the Great Redcoat Mother."

1919- Pancho Villa assassinated while driving in his new Dodge. Even with 16 bullets in him he still managed to kill one of his attackers. He was 45. Three years later someone broke into his grave and stole his head.

1920- On the last day of testimony at the Scopes Monkey Trial defense attorney Clarence Darrow surprised everyone by calling prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan to the witness stand. In a dramatic all day debate Darrow and Bryan grappled over the validity of the Bible vs, Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution. Darrow ultimately lost the case, but this debate made Bryan look foolish. The confrontation was dramatized in the 1955 stage play “Inherit the Wind”, later made into a famous movie by Stanley Kramer.

1944- THE GENERALS PLOT- German generals try to assassinate Adolf Hitler, take over the Third Reich and declare a ceasefire with the Allies. During a conference at Hitler’s strategic HQ at Rastenberg Prussia, one-eyed Count von Stauffenburg planted a suitcase-bomb next to Hitler's feet and excused himself. But someone bumped against it and moved it out of the way. After watching the massive explosion Stauffenburg then relayed the code word "Valkyrie". This meant the plotters could begin to arrest key Nazis, disarm the SS and form a provisional government with Field Marshal Rommel as President.
In the explosion many were killed but amazingly Hitler only suffered a punctured eardrum and a stiff left arm. That night he went on nationwide radio to announce he was all right, and even read the weather in that day's newspaper to prove he was not pre-recorded. The coup plotters were rounded up and executed, some hung slowly with piano wire. Their deaths were filmed for Hitler's amusement at home. Rommel was forced to commit suicide. After 5000 arrests the purge was halted only when an allied bombing hit the courtroom and blew up the judge.

1946-Bob Clampett's cartoon"the Great Piggy Bank Robbery" with Daffy Duck as Duck Tracy. "I'm gonna rrrrrrrrrrrubbb ya out, see!"

1951- King Abdallah of Jordan was shot and killed at the Al Acqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by a Palestinian. He was attending a memorial service for the Prime Minister of Lebanon who had also been assassinated. He was an enemy of the Palestinian leader the Grand Mufti and resisted the Mufti’s attempts to declare a Palestinian state after Israel’s War of Independence. King Abdallah claimed all Palestinian lands not part of Israel should be part of Jordan. Abdallah then angered the Palestinians further by wanting to make peace with Israel and declaring that the Jews had every right to worship at their holy places like the Wailing Wall, then under Jordanian control. Watching his grandfather killed was young future King Hussein, who was never that fond of Palestinians afterwards. He drove them out of Jordan in 1972 spawning the Black September Movement.

1954- As part of the settlement brokered by the United Nations for the French to leave colonial Indochina, the country was divided in half at the 17th parallel, with the Communists in North Vietnam and the non-Communists in the South. This set the stage for the next twenty years of war that would go on until unification in 1975.

1963- Lt. Colonel John Paul Vann, acknowledged one of the finest combat field commanders in the service, scheduled a meeting with the Joint Chiefs in Washington. He planned to tell them that further American military involvement in Vietnam was pointless. The generals already knew his purpose and refused to meet with him. Afterward, he was slowly pushed out of the army for having a bad attitude. He died as a civilian adviser when his helicopter went down near Da Nang in 1972.

1964 –The first surfing record to go #1-Jan & Dean's "Surf City"

1968 - Iron Butterfly's "In a-Gadda-da-Vida", reached #4 in the pop charts. Then it was called Psychedelic Rock, today it is considered the first Metal hit. The song was written as “In the Garden of Eden” but singer Doug Ingle was so drunk and stoned, In a Gadda Da Vida was all he could mumble out.

1969- Tranquility Base- The Eagle has Landed. Apollo11’s Lunar Module the LEM first landed humans on the Moon. The astronauts stepped out onto the surface 8 hours later (The 21st)

1973- Bruce Lee died of cerebral edema one month before his last film Enter the Dragon premiered. The handsome Hong Kong movie star single-handedly made Chinese martial arts a worldwide craze, and the Chop-Socky genre film a standard genre in world movie theaters. He was buried in his Enter The Dragon costume. Bruce Lee was 33.

1974- Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus, after a Greek coup toppled the coalition gov’t of Archbishop Makarios.

1976-Warner\Lambert, makers of Trident sugarless gum, comes out with their famous slogan "Sugarless gum is recommended by four out of five dentists who chew gum". When people asked what gum the fifth dentist recommended, they were brushed.

1976- The Viking I probe successfully landed on Mars.

1984 - Jim Fixx, creator of the Jogging craze through his hit book Running, died at 52 of a heart attack. Apologists for a health advocate dying so young, say Fixx would have died even younger without his physical routine. The creator of PowerBars also died in his fifties.

1994 - OJ Simpson offers $500,000 reward for evidence of ex-wife Nicole’s killer. No clues or suspects other than himself have ever been found. As David Letterman said" OJ began to vigorously search for the real killer on all the major golf courses of the nation.”

2001- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away premiered in Japan. The first Japanese anime films to win an Oscar.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Civil War General Abner Doubleday wrote a famous song. What is it? Hint: no lyrics. Called General Doubleday’s Lullaby.

Answer: the bugle call “Taps”.

Quiz: Civil War General Abner Doubleday wrote a famous song. What is it? Hint: no lyrics. Called General Doubleday’s Lullaby.

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: The last queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani (1838-1917), wrote a famous song. What is it?
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History for 7/19/2022
Birthdays: Edgar Degas, Col. Samuel Colt, Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic, Bert Kwouk, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vicki Carr, Max Fleischer, Lizzie Borden, Ille Nastase, George McGovern, Brian Harold May of Queen, Atom Egoyan, Anthony Edwards, Campbell Scott, Dal McKennon- the voice of Gumby, Ben Franklin in Ben and Me, and Archie in the Archies, Benedict Cumberbatch is 46

64 A.D. THE BURNING OF ROME- As the city burned, mad emperor Nero was inspired to run up to an observation platform and sing an elegy on the destruction of Troy accompanying himself on the lyre. Romans later became suspicious when the areas most affected by the fire on the Palatine Hill were expropriated by the Emperor to build his new palace, the Golden House.
The fire started to die out after six days, but then flared up again on the grounds of the estate of Tigellinus, a top aide to Nero. The fire burned for nine days and destroyed two thirds of the city, including a temple built by Romulus, and the shrine of the Vestal Virgins. The Romans were the first civilization to form a city fire brigade.
When Nero heard the Roman people were blaming him for the disaster, he shifted the blame to a despised foreign minority, the Christians.

711 A.D. Battle of Medina-Sidonia- The Moors conquered most of Spain. When he first landed, the Moorish commander Tarik Bin Ziyad ordered his landing ships burned. He addressed his warriors: " ...The enemy is in front of you and the sea behind you... You have no choice but victory!” They pushed the Christian Spaniards north up against the Pyrenees Mountains. The Moors weren’t driven back until 1492. Until then the Emirs of Granada and Cordoba set up lavish courts where great sums were spent on poets, artists, mathematicians and scientists.

1500-In the Vatican, Lucretzia Borgia’s second husband Duke Alfonso of Naples was stabbed to death by assassins sent by her brother Caesar Borgia. Enemies of the Borgias said Caesar was jealous and had an unnatural passion for his sister, but his real reasons were political. Alfonso was against Caesar’s alliance with France, the enemy of Naples. Caesar had previously sent men to assault Alfonso as he was leaving Saint Peters Basilica in Rome, but he fought them off and recovered. While convalescing he spotted Caesar from his sickbed window, grabbed a bow and arrow and tried to shoot him. Then Caesar had him whacked. Cardinal Sforza, who arranged the marriage, was soon poisoned.

1553-Lady Jane Grey deposed after being Queen of England for nine days. When Henry VIII's sickly son died at 15 the Protestant grandees panicked that the next in line to the throne was his Catholic daughter Mary Tudor. So they attempted a bit of dynastic sleight of hand with this distant protestant cousin. (remember Elizabeth then was considered illegitimate). It didn't wash and Mary soon earned the sobriquet "Bloody Mary" by having all their heads.

1629- Communications between Europe and America in the colonial period were always spotty and confused. The fastest news could travel across the Atlantic was two months. On this day an Anglo-American expedition attacked the French settlement of Quebec and captured Governor Samuel Champlain. Shortly afterwards a message came from London saying the war had been over for two months and they should let him go and apologize.

1799- THE ROSETTA STONE DISCOVERED. During Napoleons campaign in Egypt several soldiers digging a latrine, uncover a black basalt slab with several forms of writing all over it.
In 1821 Francois Champollion figured it out. The stone was the key to translating Egyptian hieroglyphics, sort of an ancient Babelfish. The document in honor of Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy is written three times. Once in Hieroglyphs (sacred letters of Ancient Egypt), then in Hieratic (governmental cursive type, a simpler form of Hieroglyphs used for texts unrelated to the Temple and Religion) and in Coptic, the same Egyptian language written in Greek letters. Since Champollion knew Greek, and had contacts with Egyptian Christian priests who spoke Coptic. The rest was easy.
Before the Rosetta Stone people thought Egyptian hieroglyphics were just magical symbols, but after the stones discovery the long mute voice of Ancient Egyptian civilization was heard again. Prayers, Literature and Poetry could now be understood.
It was like the discovery of a long dead world.

1848- THE SENECA FALLS DECLARATION- The Birth of the American Woman's Rights Movement. In a Wesleyan Chapel 200 delegates heard Lucretzia Mott and Elizabeth Cady-Stanton make the case for women to be treated as equal citizens under the law including the right to vote. Frederick Douglas attended, and admitted that at first he was a skeptic, but he left convinced.

1878- In New Mexico Territory the climax of the Lincoln County Wars, a feud between cattle barons and smaller independent ranchers. John Tunstall's attorney Big Jim McSween and his men including outlaw Billy the Kid were surrounded by a large force of rancher Murphy’s men backed up by militia with a Gatling gun and a small cannon. The Murphy men set the house on fire and shot the defenders as they rushed out. Billy the Kid blasted his way out to freedom. Big Jim McSween tried to surrender but was shot down.

1879- Doc Holiday had opened a saloon with a partner in Las Vegas, New Mexico. A drunken army scout named Mike Gordon got mad at one of his dance hall girls, went out into the street and started bellowing threats and firing his pistol wildly at the windows of the saloon. Doc Holiday came out of the swinging doors, drilled Gordon dead with one bullet, then walked back in and calmly resumed his poker game.

1900- The first line of the Paris Metro underground dedicated. Ligne 1 Porte Vincennes.

1913 - Billboard Magazine publishes earliest known "Last Week's 10 Best Sellers among
Popular Songs" Malinda's Wedding Day is #1

1932- writer Daphne du Maurier married General Frederick Browning.

1934- In an affidavit dated this day an old blacksmith from Pittsburgh named Louis Davarich claimed in 1899 he flew in a flying machine before the Wright Brothers. The inventor was a German immigrant named Gustav Whitehead. He designed a monoplane powered by a small steam engine. If true this would predate the Wright Brothers by 5 years, but Whitehead never documented nor published his discoveries, and did not apply for a patent. He died poor and forgotten in 1927. Is it true? Believe it or not!

1939 – Dr. Roy P Scholz is 1st surgeon to use fiberglass sutures, replacing cat’s intestines and wool thread.

1941 - British PM Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign. By coincidence the letter "V" in morse code corresponded with the opening notes of Beethoven ‘s 5th symphony "Dit-Dit-Dit Daaah." making it the musical theme of the BBC overseas radio service war news. If you ever lived in England you would know that reversing the two fingers sign is an insult akin to flashing someone the middle finger.

1942- Operation Drumroll cancelled. Germans withdrew U-Boats stationed off the US coastline because of effective US counter-submarine measures.

1942- Actor Stirling Holloway, who did Disney character voices like Winnie the Pooh, enlisted in the army. He was 37. They didn’t send him to fight, but used him in Special Services raising money and public relations.

1952- Several UFOs appeared on the radar of Washington DC’s National Airport (Today its Reagan Airport). So many alarming reports and phone calls came in, that the Air Force was obliged to hold a news conference to calm public fears. They explained the lights were temperature inversions. Uh, huh…

1957 - 1st rocket with nuclear warhead fired, Yucca Flat, Nevada

1957- The film “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” starring Michael Landon premiered.

1966- Frank Sinatra(50) married Mia Farrow (21). Frankie’s ex Ava Gardner commented:” Hah! I always knew Frank would one day wind up in bed with a little boy. “Two years later when Mia Farrow was offered the lead role in Roman Polanski’s film “Rosemary’s Baby” Frank gave her an ultimatum "Baby, it's either me or your career”. She took the part and he served her with a divorce papers on the set. Mia got an Oscar nomination and Frank recorded “Strangers in the Night”.

1990- The Richard Nixon Library dedicated in Yorba Linda California. Nixon's Western White House of San Clemente first refused the honor of being the site as well as his actual birthplace town of Whittier. The little wood frame house where Nixon was born was moved to the Yorba Linda site. At the dedication the five living Presidents were present.
Senator Bob Dole pointed at former Presidents Ford, Reagan and Nixon and joked: "Look. There’s Hear no Evil, See No Evil, and Evil.”

1991- Heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson raped a contestant for the Miss Black America Pageant named Desiree Washington. He got 3 years in jail.

1993- President Clinton launched his gays in the military initiative called "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell." It caused a storm of controversy, and probably uprooted more gay men and women out of their military careers than if nothing was done. The initiative was outlawed in 2010, after hundreds of careers were ruined.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The last queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani (1838-1917), wrote a famous song. What is it?

Answer: She wrote, Aloha-Oe, Aloha Oe, Until we meet again….”

Quiz: The last queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani (1838-1917), wrote a famous song. What is it?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Protestant theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote a famous song. What is its title?
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History for 7/18/2022
Birthdays: William Makepeace Thackeray, Chill Wills, Nelson Mandela, James Brolin, Elizabeth McGovern, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Hume Cronyn, Red Skelton, Hunter H. Thompson, Clifford Odets, Paul Verhoeven, John Glenn, Vin Diesel is 55

Happy Ancient Egyptian New Year! The day when Sirius the Dog Star is seen in the Southern skies, which heralds the coming of the Nile’s flood. In modern times we call it the Dog Days of Summer.

390 BC - THE GAULS SACK ROME Migrating tribes of Gauls crossed the Alps, defeated the young republic's legions and stormed into the city as the population fled. When Gauls beheld aging, white haired Roman senators at first they thought they were gods. But when a Gaul pulled one of their beards and the man clopped him on the head, they knew they were just old men and slew them. The Gauls took ransom and migrated back up to where France is today. The Romans would not meet them again until 300 years later when their empire expanded north.

1792- John Paul Jones died in Paris. Amazingly although Jones was one of the only captains winning fights with British warships in the whole Revolutionary navy, yet he felt he never received enough credit. So, he left for Europe and became a mercenary. He organized the Black Sea Fleet for Czarina Catherine of Russia but left there after dodging a charge of sex with a minor. He retired to Paris. His sword and medals were pawned to pay for his funeral. The American Ambassador skipped his funeral, because he didn’t want to pass up on a dinner party.

1862- Confederate John Hunt Morgan took his rebel cavalry raiders into Yankee Indiana and attacked the town of Newburg.

1863- THE ASSAULT ON FORT WAGNER- Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and his 54 Mass. Regiment proved the courage of African-American men by launching a suicide attack on this bastion in the complex of forts around Charleston, South Carolina. Shaw and half of his command were killed but they held the outer works before being driven back. The fort was never taken and today is under water. 5 Medals of Honor were given that day including a sergeant who dragged himself into camp that night with six bullet wounds and the regiments Stars & Stripes stuffed in his jacket.
When Col. Shaw’s family asked for his remains, Confederate commissioners snapped: "We buried him with his n---rs!" Shaw’s father responded:" It’s what he would want, to be buried in the midst of his men." Ulysses Grant concluded: "If someone asks will a Slave fight, tell him no. But if asked will a Negro fight, tell him yes."
By the Civil War's end 180,000 black men had volunteered, 85% of the eligible male African American population who could fight. The level of integration in the U.S. army in 1865 would not be seen again until the 1950's.

1870- The Vatican published the bull Pater Aeternus, that declared Papal Infallibility. That even when the Pope is wrong he is still right because he’s the Pope and you are not.

1877- Thomas Edison first recorded sound on tin foil cylinder `Mary Had a Little Lamb'

1925- The first volume of Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler was published. The original title was "My Four and a Half Years Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice". But publisher Max Aman prevailed upon him to edit it down to My Struggle.

1933- Jewish Agency leader David Ben Gurion met with Palestinian Nationalist leader Awni Abd Al’Haadi, the nephew of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and co-founder of Al Fatah. Ben Gurion asked "if it is possible to reconcile the ultimate goals of the Jewish people and the goals of the Arabs within Palestine? They only agreed to keep talking.

1939- MGM tried a sneak preview of the film The Wizard of Oz. Afterward they debated cutting the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow as slowing down the story. Finally, they decided to leave it in. The film debuted in August to wild success and acclaim.

1939- RKO pictures signed Orson Welles to direct movies in Hollywood. That Hollywood signed a 24 year old radio star who never made a single film, and gave him complete freedom and final cut was an amazing deal.

1943- General Hideki Tojo's government resigned after the American victory at Saipan.

1950- Walt Disney’s live action film Treaure Island Premiered, with Robert Newton as Long John Silver, Capt. Jack Sparrow’s role model. Arrrr-mateys!

1964- Bob McKimson’s "A False Hare", the last Bugs Bunny theatrical short for Warner Bros for twenty years, until 1985.

1966- Bobby Fuller who made the hit song "I fought the Law and the Law Won" was found in LA in his mothers Oldsmobile, beaten and dead from "forcible inhalation of gasoline"- huffing.

1968- Engineer Bob Noyce quit Fairchild Semiconductor and founded a new company in Santa Clara California named Intel. His partners were Andy Grove and Gordon Moore, he of Moore’s Law. It sold a new thing called microprocessors. In 1980 Intel would invent the silicon chip.

1969- Senator Ted Kennedy had been in a downward spiral of depression and drink since the murders of his brothers Jack and Bobby. This night Ted and a young campaign worker named Mary Joe Kopechne drove off the rural Dike Bridge at a place near Martha's Vineyard called Chappaquiddick. Kennedy escaped the sinking car, but Kopechne drowned. Kennedy was never able to explain why he waited four hours to report the accident to the police. Despite an illustrious Senate career, Chappaquiddick destroyed Ted Kennedy's chances of ever becoming President.

1975- Famed underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode’ experimented with breath control while doing hallucinogenic drugs. This day the creator of The Wizard of Id died of auto-asphyxiation while high. His last words were to his son, “ Mark, I’ve seen God four times, and I am going to see him again soon.” He was 33.

1981- John Henry Abbott was a murderer and bank robber doing hard time in prison. He started writing famous author Norman Mailor about life in prison, and it turned out he was a pretty good author himself. Through Mailors’ influence, Random House published Abbott’s book "In the Belly of the Beast" and it became a best seller.
Well, this day despite his literary celebrity status, John Henry Abbott fell back into his bad habits and murdered another person- a Richard Adan at the Bonbon Café in New York. John Abbott was went back to prison for life, and committed suicide in 2001. Norman Mailor refused to concede he made a mistake- "Culture is worth a little risk."

1986- Aliens, the sequel directed by James Cameron, premiered. Game over, man!

1998- The movie Pokemon the First was released in Japan, stoking a Pokemon craze.

2019- A demented man set the Kyoto Animation Studio ablaze with gasoline and attacked people with a knife. 34 people died in the blaze. Many were young women for whom it was their first job.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Protestant theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote a famous song. What is its title?
Answer: Eine mächtige Festung ist unser Gott. A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

Quiz: Protestant theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) also wrote a famous song. What is its title?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the Van Allen Belt?
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History for 7/17/2022
Birthdays: James Cagney, John Jacob Astor I, Hyacinth Rigaud, Bernice Abbott, Chill Wills, Brian Trottier, Phoebe Snow, Daryl Lamonica, Prof. Peter Schickele a.k.a. PDQ Bach, Earl Stanley Gardner the creator of Perry Mason, Art Linkletter, Phyllis Diller
Diane Carroll, animator Willie Ito is 88, David Hasslehoff is 70, Donald Sutherland is 87

In ancient Rome, today was the feast of the god of Honor, Honorous.

924- The death of Edward "the Elder", King of the West Saxons. During his reign, he annexed Wessex and the Danelaw up to the Humber River. Danelaw was the name for English territory governed by Danish Vikings.

1429- Charles the Dauphin is crowned King Charles VII at Rheims, thanks to Joan of Arc.

1453- Battle of Chatillon. The last battle of the Hundred Years War. English warlord Sir John Talbot was blown away by the French with their newfangled firetubes. Other names for the cannon were bombardons, culverins, and a variation on the catapult name for rock thrower- a Mangonnel, shortened to Gonne or Gun.

1647- A Neopolitan fishmonger named Maisaniello led 100,000 Italians in a revolt against high taxes and tariffs. Maisaniello held power in Naples for ten days until his was assassinated this day by agents of the Spanish Viceroy the Count de Orsuna. One of Maisaniellos ideas was he reduced the price of bread by half, and if a baker didn’t comply, he was roasted in his own oven.

1717- British King George I held a procession by boat from Whitehall Palace to Chelsea and back. To add color to the event, he had his composer George Freidrich Handel compose a suite to be played by a boatload of musicians. Handel’s Water Music. King George enjoyed the music so much he made the exhausted musicians play the entire sweet three times during the outing.

1789- Three days after the Bastille was stormed, King Louis XVI appeared on a balcony at Paris city hall the Hotel Du Ville and wore a red, white and blue cockade in a red Phrygian liberty cap to the cheers of the crowd.

1793- Charlotte Corday, the assassin of French Revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat, went to the guillotine. She was only 24. When her decapitated head was lifted out of the basket, the executioner gave it a smack on her cheek for being a bad little girl, to the laughter of the crowd.

1803- James T. Callender, editor of the Aurora newspaper, was among the worst scandal mongering journalists in early America. He broke the story of Alexander Hamilton’s extramarital affairs and Thomas Jefferson’s sleeping with his slaves like Sally Hemmings. He called John Adams a "pernicious hermaphrodite" and labeled George Washington’s Farewell Address the "Last ravings of a diseased mind". Everyone hated him. This night his body was found floating the James River. Without any investigation, a court ruled he probably fell in while drunk.

1841 - British humor magazine Punch first published.

1867 - 1st US dental school, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, established

1873- The U.S. Secretary of War William Belknap approved the revised set of cavalry regulations called "Upton's Rules". It became the standard for the U.S. Cavalry throughout the Indian Wars. Belknap was forced to resign for pocketing defense funds in 1874.

1876- Battle of Warbonnet Gorge. Skirmish between the 5th US Cavalry pursuing hostile Indians soon after Custer’s Last Stand. The battle is remembered chiefly because Gen Phil Sheridan asked his old friend Buffalo Bill Cody to return from his play-acting back east and scout for the army one more time. He looked rather incredible riding the prairie in his theatrical black velvet silver studded Mexican Vaquero britches and coat.
Bill Cody was challenged to single combat by a Cheyenne Chief named Yellow Tail. Bill killed the chief and scalped him, waving the hair in the air to the cheering troopers and announcing, "The first scalp for Custer!" Buffalo Bill then returned to the East where his new stage production, “The First Scalp for Custer" ran for weeks to sold out audiences.

1879 - 1st railroad opens in Hawaii.

1893- Representatives of fourteen stage unions meet to form IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical & Screen Engineers of the U.S. & Canada.

1917- President Woodrow Wilson approved U.S. troops to join an Anglo-French mission to Russia. Originally intended to help the Russians from the German Army, the mission became an attempt to help anti-Bolshevik forces overthrow Lenin and reopen the second front against the Kaiser. In effect the U.S., France and Britain invaded Soviet Russia.
The American general was named Graves; the British were led by General Ironside, a 6 foot 4, killing machine his friends nicknamed "Tiny". The Michigan wolverines sent to Archangel and Vladivostok were told they were going to capture German U-boat bases. This excuse wore thin when the Great War ended and they were still fighting Bolsheviks, without ever seeing a German.
They were never given any real instructions about what to do except support Anti-Bolshevik forces, who were pathetically few in number. The Allied forces were withdrawn from Russia in 1922.

1928- Mexican President-elect Alvaro Obregon was at a large banquet for former veterans of the Mexican Revolution. Part of the party was having a cartoonist stroll about making caricatures of the guests. Obregon said to cartoonist Leon Toral: "Make sure you make me look good." Toral responded "Oh, I will.." and pulled a gun and shot the President to death. An assassin but still a professional artist, Toral actually completed the drawing before reaching for his pistol. Gotta watch them cartoonists….

1935 - Variety's famous headline "Sticks Nix Hix Pix" meaning audiences in rural areas were not attending movies with a rustic theme.

1936-. The Spanish Civil War began. When their king was overthrown and a Republic declared, a Spanish Fascist army led by Gen. Francisco Franco invaded Spain from Spanish colonial North Africa. The first moves were to occupy the Canary Islands. The Fascists figured the takeover would only take a few days, but all over Spain the common workers, farmers, artists, even women and children took up guns to fight. Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy openly supported Franco. Soviet Russia supported the Republicans with tepid help from USA and England. Many young intellectuals and artists like Hemingway and Orwell went to Spain to volunteer.

1937- the Nazis open an art exhibit of banned artworks and artists called Entartete Kunst- Degenerate Art. Works of Dali and Duchamp, Grosz, Lippschitz, Kandinsky and Miro, with appropriate insults underneath. The next day Hitler dedicated the Great German Art Collection, having cleansed the German art world for National Socialist art, mostly bad deco-greco nudes and dumb Nordic medieval fantasy scenes.

1944- Top German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was strafed by an Allied fighter plane as his open car sped down a French country road. Germans nicknamed these roaming planes JABOS, for jaeger-bomber or hunter bombers. By now Rommel was in the Generals Plot to overthrow Hitler. His last conversation was with an SS Panzer Division General named Sepp Dietrich. Rommel asked him cryptically": Would you obey an order from me, even if it ran counter to the wishes of the Fuehrer?" Dietrich said he would.
But the plane attack cut short his career as a conspirator. When the General's Plot to kill Hitler went off in three days Rommel, who the conspirators planned to make President of the new Reich, was in a coma in the hospital.
Even though the bomb failed to kill Hitler, if a healthy Rommel, who's fame was second only to Hitler, went on nationwide radio and announced an army coup against the Nazis and an immediate unilateral peace, it's intriguing to think what might have happened.

1944- The Port Chicago explosion. In Oakland Harbor, African American sailors were given the dreary but dangerous duty of loading ammunition onto ships. This day an accident with high explosives blew up 321 men. The blast broke windows in San Francisco across the bay and was heard as far away as Boulder City Nevada.
When the base commander ordered the men to immediately resume loading with no change in pattern or promise of investigation- the black sailors refused. They were court-martialed for mutiny and treason.

1945-THE FIRST POTSDAM MEETING-New President Harry Truman met Stalin and Churchill in a suburb of war ravaged Berlin. Halfway through the talks Churchill learned that he was defeated in the British General elections and would be replaced by Clement Atlee. Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb and was surprised that Stalin wasn’t surprised. Stalin already knew because of spies he had at Los Alamos. Stalin told Truman the Japanese government was requesting peace talks, asking that Russia act as intermediary, which he had no intention of doing.
Stalin called the Anglo-Americans his "soyuznicki" Little Allies. Truman called him "Uncle Joe". Paranoid Stalin disliked the name, because he thought it was meant to be an insult.

1955- DISNEYLAND dedicated- Walt Disney's dream of a perfect family amusement park, called 'The Happiest Place on Earth" was declared open with celebrities like Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter and the Mouseketeers in attendance. It opened to the public the next day. Walt hoped to get 1,000 visitors that first day. He got 30,000. Facilities broke down from the huge crowds and the haste with which the park was built. Concrete pavement which was poured the night before was still soft under people's feet, there were no working water fountains and the car parking was a nightmare. To the Disneyland workers opening day was nicknamed 'Black Sunday". But despite all, Disneyland became a huge success.

1955 - Arco, Idaho becomes 1st US city lit by nuclear power.

1959- Singer Billie Holiday, called Lady Day, died of heart and liver failure, and cirrhosis in Metropolitan hospital in NY. Hounded by federal authorities for twenty years, Feds were trying to arrest her for drug possession even as she lay dying. She was 44.

1959- Alfred Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwest premiered.

1967– The Monkees performed at Forest Hills NY, Jimi Hendrix was their opening act.

1968- In Iraq, the Bath party seized power under President Ahmad Hussain Al-Bakr. The following year his chief of police Saddam Hussein would overthrow him.

1968- The Beatles musical cartoon feature The Yellow Submarine premiered in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Look Out! It’s the Blue Meanies!!

1969- The first Vampirella comic, created by Forrest Ackerman and Trina Robbins

1975-The first Apollo-Soyuz space linkup. A second linkup would not happen until 1995.

1979- Nicaraguan rebels called Sandinistas overthrow dictator Anastasio Somosa. He escaped to Miami with CIA help. The Reagan White House spent most of the 1980’s obsessed with these Communist rebels as a new escalation of the Cold War.

1988- A home video tape was released of actor Rob Lowe having sex with two underage girls in his hotel room.

1996- TWA Flt.#800- a jumbo jet flying from New York to Paris exploded over Long Island Sound shortly after take-off. Disturbing rumors of a missile bringing down the plane was squashed by authorities, despite the Air France pilot immediately behind and eyewitnesses describing a streak of light in the sky before the explosion.
In Paris, elderly Kennedy press secty Pierre Salinger reported it as a missile and was dismissed as senile. The official reason the FAA gave was "fumes ignited in a wing tank", but that explanation failed to satisfy the grieving relatives. Why a plane with a 30 year safety record should just blow up, and none have blown up that way since, remains a mystery.

2004- Katsuhiro Otomo’s film Steamboy premiered. Japanese interest in the idea of SteamPunk began to spread worldwide.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the Van Allen Belt?

Answer: The Van Allen belt is an area (actually areas) high above the earth's surface that, via the planet's magnetic force, captures and holds radioactively charged particles and protects earth from being showered with lethal radiation. The Apollo astronauts had to pass through the Van Allen Belt to get to the Moon.

Question: What is the Van Allen Belt?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who was Peter Rodino? (hint:1970s US History)
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History for 7/16/2022
Birthdays: Andrea Del Sarto, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Ginger Rogers, Pinchas Zukerman,
Orville Redenbacher, Roald Amundsen, Sunny Tufts, Barbera Stanwyck, Reuben Blades, Mary Baker-Eddy the founder of Christian Science, Phoebe Cates, Will Farrell is 56

1054 –The GREAT SCHISM- Eastern Greek Orthodox and Latin Roman Catholic Churches split. The Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius and Pope Leo IX mutually excommunicate one another. When Catholic Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1209 they put a prostitute on the Orthodox Patriarch's throne just for laughs. The Greek Patriarch referred to the Vatican in Rome as a "Synagogue of Satan!"
Historian Ernle Bradford stated that his event marked the moment when Christianity ceased to be a supra-national force for unity in Europe the way Islam was in the Arab world. Europeans would now turn to nationalism as their identifying creed and Christianity took a backseat.

1099- JERUSALEM FELL TO THE CRUSADERS- The knights of the First Crusade broke into the city and committed horrible massacres of the population. The rampaging knights even cut down Armenian & Syrian Christians, because they looked dark and were dressed like Arabs. In an ironic twist of history, the Jewish population fought shoulder to shoulder alongside their Arab cousins. When the massacre started they withdrew to a central synagogue where the Christians barred he doors and burned them to death.
The Crusaders then declared the Holy City free, and warlord Geoffrey de Boullion declared himself "Protector of the Holy Sepulcher" instead of king, since in his opinion "There is no King here but Christ". After he died his younger brother Baldwin made himself King of Jerusalem. The Crusaders held Jerusalem for about a hundred years.

1212- BATTLE OF LAS NAVAS DE TOLOSA (Al Uqab) Christian Kings of Spain defeated the Moors and began the "Reconquista", the gradual winning back of the Iberian peninsula lasting until 1492. King Pedro of Aragon was nicknamed Pedro the Lecher, because of his sexual appetite. Legend has him having to be helped into the saddle after taking on 100 women in one night!

1439 - Kissing is banned in England to stop diseases from spreading. I wonder if they knew about fist-bumping?

1690- After the collapse of his cause in the Battle of the Boyne, King James II Stuart fled Ireland for exile.

1721- Guilliame DuBois, archbishop of Cambrai was ordained a Cardinal. The Bishop was one of the most sexually promiscuous men in France, outdone only by his master Phillipe D’Orleans, Regent for the boy King Louis XV. The memoirist Madame De Sainte Simon wrote “His Eminence, the Cardinal had a face like a ferret, and was a Cloaca Maxima of depravity.” named for Rome’s largest sewer. Yet despite his sexual reputation, he ran Frances’ foreign policy almost as well as Cardinal Richelieu did a century earlier. France was at peace for 27 years. His only fear as Cardinal was that his wife would renege on the blackmail money he paid her and go public.

1769- Fra Junipero Serra founded his first Mission settlement in California- San Diego de Alcala, now the City of San Diego. The master plan was to create a string of missions from San Diego to San Francisco one days ride apart- San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Anna, San Gabriel, Santa Maria Reina de Los Angeles, etc.

1777- I WILL FIND YOU! -In frontier Kentucky outside of Boones borough Jemima Boone and her girlfriend are set upon by a Shawnee Indian war party and kidnapped. Her daddy Daniel Boone with seven men tracked the war party. This day after a sharp fight they freed the women. Despite killing the son of the Shawnee chief, Boone was later adopted into the tribe in his place. This incident was widely reported in the colonies and was the basis for James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans.

1779- American colonial General "Mad" Anthony Wayne attacks the British garrison at Stony Point, New York.

1862- In Paris the French Emperor Napoleon III received John Slidell, the ambassador of the Confederate States. But France declined to intervene in the American Civil War.

1877- THE GREAT UPHEAVAL- The B&O Railroad cuts their workers wages 10% for the second time that year. (there had been a recession raging in the U.S. economy since 1873). Workers and engineers at Martinsburg Virginia went out on strike and started sabotaging trains. The strike soon spread coast to coast and became America's first nationwide strike. The laws protecting workers union rights were still far in the future so strikes were put down by troops randomly shooting into crowds, mass firings and vigilante murder of union leaders.
The violence shocked the rest of the world. Karl Marx wrote Engels "did you hear what is happening in America?” He always thought industrialized countries like America and England would go communist long before Russia and China.

1918- CZAR NICHOLAS ROMANOV AND FAMILY MURDERED. After abdicating the Czar's family was imprisoned in a house in Siberia. The anti-Communist While armies were about to capture the area. So from Moscow Vladimir Lenin sent orders that they all be killed. In the middle of the night commissar Yakov Sverdlov told the Czar they were to be moved and were ordered to wait in a basement room of their house. Outside Red guards revved a truck motor to mask the sound of the guns. Then a group of soldiers came in the room pulled out their pistols. Nicholas’ last word before the guns went off was "Schto? " What the-? They even shot the family doctor, the boy’s sailor bodyguard and the family dog.
The anti-Communist forces captured the area two weeks later and told the world about the crime. Seeing what happened to the Russian Czar may be part of the reason the Kaiser and Austrian Emperor went quietly into exile after losing the Great War. Bones weren't discovered until 1988 and in 1993 DNA testing proved them to be the true remains of the Czar and his family. DNA Testing on the remains of a woman who died in 1984 named Anna Andersen, who claimed to be the child Duchess Anastasia were negative.

The reason the children's remains weren't in with the others was because the Bolsheviks first tried destroying their remains with sulfuric acid but found it took too long, so they cremated the rest. Czar Nicholas II and his family were made saints of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1994.

1932- Cecil B. DeMille shot the scene in his film Sign of the Cross where Claudette Colbert took a bath in asses milk. Legend has it that DeMille insisted on real milk in the bath and that by the second day the hot studio lights had curdled it to a smelly cheese. But production notes show the scene was all shot in one day. DeMille always got away with sexy semi-nude scenes by putting them in biblical settings. After all, who would criticize a morality tale from the Good Book?

1935- The first parking meter set up in Oklahoma City.

1936 - 1st x-ray photo of arterial circulation, Rochester, NY

1945-THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB EXPLODED at Alamagordo New Mexico (site code name was "Trinity'). Called at first the Super Cosmic Bomb, nicknamed "The Gadget". The Manhattan Project scientists weren't sure that once you started the chain reaction detonating particles of light when it would stop, if ever. Physicists Richard Fenyman and Enrico Fermi wagered a case of beer that they would incinerate the state of New Mexico. (Funny guys). They were led by General Leslie Groves, a by-the-book army engineer who supervised the construction of the Pentagon, and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist and Berkeley radical who read Sanskrit to relax. When he saw the force of the blast, Oppenheimer recalled the Hindu verse: "Now have I become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds..."

1951- J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" published.

1953- The story begins of a murder confessed by insurance investigator Walter Neff into a Dictaphone in the 1944 movie Double Indemnity.

1954- Groundbreaking for the construction of Disneyland.

1956 –The Last time Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey Circus performed under a canvas circus tent.

1963- Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6.

1964- Conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater was nominated to run against Lyndon Johnson for president. Goldwater set the tone by his speech:" Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." LBJ’s campaign portrayed him as a dangerous warmonger and he lost in a landslide. In later years Goldwater’s conservative views were eclipsed by the even more conservative Reagan and Bush.

1966- Mao Zedong went for a swim in the Yangtzse River and gave permission for his young Red Guards to begin The Cultural Revolution.

1969- Congress passed Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their spacecraft.

1969- Apollo 11 blasted off for the Moon.

1973- WHO HAS THE TAPES! Presidential attorney Alexander Butterfield admitted to the Senate Watergate Committee that President Richard Nixon had bugged the Oval Office and had recorded tapes of all of his conversations. The tape system was actually installed by Lyndon Johnson. When Nixon took office, he was going to have it all removed. But his aides convinced him to keep the system to document his place in history. Why Nixon never destroyed these tapes that brought him down remains one of the mysteries of history.

1994- Comet Schoendacher-Levy 6 impacted with the Planet Jupiter, giving scientists a spectacular ringside seat to the processes of the creation of the Universe.

1988- Katsuhiro Otomo’s classic film Akira premiered in Tokyo. It opened in America a year later. It was the first Japanese Anime film to go beyond the domestic and niche genre fan base, to appeal to a global audience.

1999- JOHN-JOHN -Thirty years after the death of his father and uncle, 38 year old John Kennedy Jr. fell victim to the Kennedy curse when his small plane crashed on the way to a wedding in Martha’s Vineyard. His wife had delayed to have a pedicure, so he had to take off at dusk. He was too inexperienced to fly on instruments at dusk in fog and he lost his bearings, hitting the water at 150 miles per hour. The Kennedy’s have a history of bad luck with planes- Kathleen Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy’s parents and JFK’s older brother Joe Kennedy all died in small plane crashes. Senator Ted Kennedy barely survived a crash. Teddy refused to ever fly with John Jr., so he died of old age in 2009.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was Peter Rodino? (Hint:1970s US History)

Answer: He was the New Jersey congressman who chaired the House Committee Investigating the Watergate Scandal.