Quiz: What does it mean if you are unguiculate?

Yesterday’s Answer below: In the Middle Ages they called the drink Aqua-Vitae, the Water of Life. What do we call it today?
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History for 10/14/2023
B-Days: William Penn-1644, King James II Stuart, Joseph Plateau, Sword master Masoaka Shiki 1867, Dwight Eisenhower, Lillian Gish, Ralph Lauren, Eamon De Valera, e.e. cummings, Mobutu Sese Seko, C. Everett Koop, John Dean III, Cliff Richards, Jack Arnold the director of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Ralph Lauren- real name Ralph Lifshitz, Roger Moore.

Feast of St Theresa of Avila

Happy National Desert Day.
1066-WHEN WILLIAM ROSE AND HAROLD FELL- BATTLE OF HASTINGS- The Norman army of William the Bastard defeated and killed King Harold Godwinson of the Anglo-Saxons. The occupation and settlement of Norman French into England had a dramatic effect on the language ensuring the language you are now speaking would become English, instead of something between Dutch and Danish. The Normans also introduced the English to the concept of surnames- Wulf the Tailor yielding to Robert Beauceant and William Longchamps. Duke William, who was never fond of the title 'Bastard", became King William the Conqueror.

1318- When Scottish King Robert the Bruce won Scots independence, he sent his younger brother Edward to Ireland to organize their resistance. After 4 years of fighting , Edward de Brus was killed by the English at the Battle of Faughart. It is generally accepted that he left Ireland in worse shape than as he found it.

1492- Columbus and his men left San Salvador to continue west and look for Cipango- their name for Japan. 1529- WESTERN EUROPE DISCOVERED COFFEE- The first Turkish Siege of Vienna ended. Despite Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent telling his troops that if they didn't win, he would fill the Danube with their genitals, the Turkish army gave up the siege and fell back into Hungary. As the Viennese went through the Turkish camp, they found large quantities of black beans that tasted awful. A Polish mercenary named Adam Kolschitsky had lived in Turkey and knew what to do with them. He opened the first Viennese coffeehouse, the KolschitskyDom. He is also credited with inventing the coffee filter, which made the strong Turkish java palatable to Europeans. The Viennese commemorated their victory with a pastry shaped like the Turkish battle ensign, the crescent, or the croissant.

1670-At a performance before King Louis XIV the Sun King at the Chateau of Chambord Moliere’s satire “Le Bourgeouis Gentilhomme” premiered. Lully wrote the music. 1806- BATTLE OF JENA- Napoleon's army destroyed the Prussian (German) army and occupied Berlin in only six weeks. The Prussian army had been considered the finest in the world but by this time the legendary regiments of Frederick the Great were led by old men and a timid king. The average age of the sergeants was 50 and the generals 75! The night before the battle the Prussians gave up the strategic high ground to the French because it was too chilly for most of the old men to sleep in the open. Also, they had built their camp facing in the opposite direction from the enemy to be out of the wind. Shortly before they were hit from the fire of three hundred cannons, Prince Hohenlohe was telling his outposts to get some more sleep as there probably would be no battle that day. One other psychological tactic Napoleon used was he lined up 250 regimental bands so their combined musical power would augment the cannon in blowing the Germans out of their beds. A contemporary German analyst said; "The Prussian Army had to be very clever to lose that badly, for it had all the advantages." The embarrassing campaign caused major reform in the army and for the remainder of the 1800's Europe would fear French Militarism, not German.

1908- The Chicago Cubs defeated the Detroit Lions for their first World Series championship. The next time they won a World Series was 2016.

1912- While going to give a political speech in Milwaukee, a lunatic named William Shrenck shot Teddy Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was slowed down tearing through his clothes, speech notes and tin eyeglasses case, and missed any important organs. Bleeding from his side Teddy spat in his hand to see if there was blood in his spittle, which would mean internal damage. Seeing there was none, he went ahead and gave his 90 minute speech before going to a hospital. -Bully!

1926- A.A. Milne’s first book of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Christopher Robin debuted this day.

1934- The Lux Radio Theater premiered.

1940- While the Blitz raged above them, 14 year old Princess Elizabeth, The future Queen Elizabeth II, made her first radio address- to the evacuated children living away from their families.

1943- The Sobibor Uprising. At the Sobibor Concentration Camp the Jewish inmates launched a surprise attack on their guards. They were led by several Jews who were Red Army veterans and understood the use of weapons. After killing 16 SS guards, 365 inmates escaped into the countryside. Most were hunted down and killed but 47 survived.

1944- Field Marshal Ervin Rommel, the "Desert Fox", was forced by the Nazis to commit suicide by taking poison. He was a key figure in the July Generals Plot to assassinate Hitler and stop the war. At first Rommel demanded a public trial, but reluctantly accepted the quiet way in exchange for the Nazi's pledge not to harm his family. This way Berlin could claim Germany's greatest soldier died of his war wounds, instead of trying to revolt.

1944- British Paratroops liberated the city of Athens from the Nazis. 1947- Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and achieved Mach I in the Bell XS-1 Glamorous Glennis.

1950- The LAPD raided a house party of gay men, which was illegal back then. One of the men arrested was future movie star Tab Hunter. This was kept secret until in 1955, when an angry agent Hunter leaked the story to Confidential Magazine. “Tab Hunter Busted at Limp-Wristed Pajama Party!” It soon blew over and Tab Hunter went on to have a full movie career.

1954- First day of shooting on Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of the Ten Commandments staring Charlton Heston out in the Egyptian desert. It was so brutally hot that Anne Baxter joked to Vincent Price “ Vin, who do I have to sleep with to get OFF this movie?”

1955- Actor Zero Mostel testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Zero made jokes at the committee’s expense, and even made some of them laugh, but was still blacklisted. In a playful mood, he told the Committee that he was employed by "19th Century-Fox." Zero denied he was a Communist, but refused to name names. He told the Committee that he would gladly discuss his own conduct, but was prohibited by religious convictions from naming others. Consequently, he was blacklisted during the 1950s. Shut out from the movies, he also lost many lucrative nightclub gigs, and he had to make due by playing gigs for meager salaries and by selling his paintings until the mid 1960s.

1959- Errol Flynn died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Exhausted by overindulgence in his favorite vices, doctors said the 50 year old movie star had the body of a 70 year old. A descendant of one of the Bounty mutineers, the Tasmanian born actor's last film was ' Cuban Rebel Girls'.

1962- THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS BEGAN- President John F. Kennedy was first shown top secret U-2 photos of Russian nuclear missile pads being constructed 90 miles away in Cuba. This meant instead of a 30 minute warning time a Soviet H-Bomb could hit New York or Washington in 7-10 minutes. Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked CIA operative Richard Helms: “Dick, is it true there are Russian missiles in Cuba?” When Helms replied there were, the normally erudite RFK reacted: “ OH, SHIT!!” For the next 14 days the world came closest its ever been to nuclear Armageddon.

1964- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize.

1964-IT’S FUN TO PLAY AT THE Y-M-C-A! Just three weeks before the presidential election, Lyndon Baines Johnson’s re-election was almost derailed by a gay sex scandal. One of LBJ’s closest aides Walter Jenkins, whom LBJ called My Vice President of Almost Everything, was busted by DC police for having a tryst with a Turkish diplomat in the YMCA locker room! He had been arrested for the same thing five years before.

This day Walter Jenkins announced his resignation from the Johnson White House and was sent to a mental hospital. Lyndon Johnson distanced himself from Jenkins and the press was strong-armed to bury the story until after the election. Republican challenger Barry Goldwater was warned by the FBI that if he tried to use this story, they had plenty of info on the Arizona senator patronizing prostitutes. The story never effected the election. Barry Goldwater remarked:” Communists and c*cksuckers, what a way to win an election!”

1968- French Canadians who wanted independence from English Canada form a political party called the Parti-Quebecois.

1972 - KUNG FU, starring David Carradine, premiered on ABC TV.
In her memoirs, Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, asserts that Lee created the concept for the series. There is circumstantial evidence for this in a December 8, 1971 television interview that Bruce Lee gave on The Pierre Berton Show. In the interview, Lee stated that he had developed a concept for a television series called THE WARRIOR, meant to star himself, about a martial artist in the American Old West (the same concept as KUNG FU, which aired the following year), but that he was having trouble pitching it to Warner Brothers and Paramount. Show creator and producer Ed Spielman denied taking Bruce Lees idea. He claimed he had been working on it on the East Coast long before. The show’s star David Carradine was a “gweilo”-Cantonese for white foreigner, pretending to be Chinese.

1972- Joe Cocker and his backup band were busted in Australia for drug possession.

1973- The Yom Kippur War between Arabs and Israelis almost drag the superpowers in as well. Russia had been supplying Egypt and Syria with their latest weapons. When Israeli tanks approached Damascus the Soviets warned Israel that if they attacked the Syrian capitol they would intervene with two Red Army airborne divisions. Israeli diplomat Yigail Allon said “From the way the Russians reacted you’d think they were protecting Stalingrad, rather than Damascus!”
Prior to this time Israel would buy weapons on the international market, paying cash, but now the US refitted the Israeli military directly. This day President Nixon warned Moscow that any attempt to intervene in the Middle East would be matched by American ground forces. Both sides cooled off and the superpower confrontation was kept a secret until the 1990s. Ironically the early founders of Israel were Socialists.

1978- Lover Scott Thorsten “outs” pianist Liberace by filing a palimony suit.

1979- Wayne Gretsky scored his first goal.
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Yesterday’s Question: In the Middle Ages they called the drink Aqua-Vitae, the Water of Life. What do we call it today?

Answer: Whiskey.

Question: In the Middle Ages they called the drink Aqua-Vitae, the Water of Life. What do we call it today?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: “In Flanders Fields the poppies grow….” Where is Flanders?
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History for 10/13/2023
Birthdays: Revolutionary War hero Mary Ludwig nicknamed Molly Pitcher, Lily Langtry-the Jersey Lilly, Lenny Bruce, Larraine Day, Nipsy Russell, Cornel Wilde, Margaret Thatcher, Herblock, Yves Montand, Nancy Kerrigan, Sammy Hagar, Marie Osmond, Kelly Preston, Chris Carter, Paul Simon is 82, Sascha Baron-Cohen is 51

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

539BC- The Persian armies of Cyrus the Great captured the city of Babylon, beginning the Persian Empire, which would last for a thousand years. Cyrus also allowed the Israelites to return home, ending their Babylonian Captivity. Cyrus is one of the few foreign kings the Old Testament has anything nice to say about.

54AD- Elderly Roman Emperor Claudius died from eating poisoned mushrooms served to him by his wife Agrippina. Another account has him vomiting out the mushrooms, so Agrippina administered to him an herbal enema which she also poisoned. This way she ensured her boy Nero would be emperor before Claudius could come to his senses about making that fat little monster his heir. Later as emperor Nero, had his mom killed.
Robert Graves wrote that Claudius feigned simple-mindedness but many Romans felt it wasn’t an act. It was the custom when a Roman emperor died to deify him, make him a god. The writer Seneca thought it would be embarrassing for the gods to have a dolt like Claudius among their company. He wrote an epic poem on the subject called the 'Pumpkinification of Claudius”.

1269- Henry III's rebuilding of Westminster Abbey completed, the bones of St. Edward the Confessor were re-interred.

1307- MASSACRE of the TEMPLARS- The Knights Templar were an order of warrior monks named for their Crusader base at the site of the Temple of Herod in Jerusalem. After the Crusades, while the Knights of St John Hospitaler continued to fight Muslims in Greece and Malta, the Templars settled back in Europe and went into banking. They amassed great wealth all tax-free because it was Church property. This annoyed kings like Britain’s Edward I and France’s Phillip the Fair. So, this day Phillip bribed the Pope to declare the entire Templar Order heretics and burned at the stake. As the Templar Grand Master Jacques De Molay was roasting at the stake, he called out to the king through the flames,”Phillip de Valois! I charge YOU to stand with me before the throne of GOD one year from today to answer for your crimes!” Molay died, but the Curse of the Grand Master had its effect. Later in the year King Phillip did indeed decline from a wasting disease and die. (Guizot, Histoire de France)

Myths abound about the Templars having bizarre rituals and secrets like the location of the Holy Grail, but most of it was made up by the Inquisitors to frame them. But one neat idea they brought back from the Middle East was the personal check. This way a Templar Knight could cross international borders without carrying heavy bags of gold, then go to the nearest Templar castle and redeem a note with his signet on it for money.

1590- Chief Powhatan, head of a confederation of Algonquian tribes in the Chesapeake Bay area, wiped out a Spanish Jesuit colony attempting to set up on his beach. He had heard from the Seminoles in Florida what these metal clad palefaces were capable of. Nineteen years later in 1607 another annoying bunch of English palefaces landed on his beach, but this time Powhatan was curious about these ones, especially when one started dating his daughter Pocahontas.

1670- The Virginia Colony passed a law that Negroes brought from Africa who proved to be Christians could not be kept as slaves. That law was repealed a year later.

1685- French King Henry IV had ended a long period of religious wars by granting freedom of worship with the Edict of Nantes. Later King Louis XIV decided Henry was a knucklehead and all Frenchmen should be Catholic, so this day he revoked the Edict of Nantes. This drove many French Protestants (Huguenots) to Canada, England, and America. In Ireland at the Battle of the Boyne 1690, there were as many expatriate French Protestants and Catholics shooting each other as Irish and Brits.

1768- THE BIRTH OF YANKEE DOODLE- The first written evidence of the song being played, this day by a British army band at a harvest festival in the Hudson Valley. The song means Yankee Doodle- American Dummy... “ stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" A macaroni was English slang then for someone dressed in the latest Italian fashions, hence a dandy. That just because the Yankee sticks a feather in his hat, he thinks he is a gentleman. Later in the Revolution the song meant to lampoon Americans was adopted by the rebels and played with pride at the British while they were laying down their arms at Yorktown and Saratoga.

1792- Cornerstone of the White House set. First called the President’s Palace, later the Executive Mansion, it was modeled by James Hoban after the Irish estate house of the Duke of Leinster. Instead of a chaplain, President George Washington had Masters of the Masonic Rite sanctify the building with their secret rituals. The mansion took 8 years to build. Constant problems halted construction like when the workers went on strike when the government closed down their on-site brothel. A compromise was made to move it off site.
When President John Adams moved in in 1800 it still wasn't finished, plus Washington took all the furniture with him. Abigail Adams hung her wash in the East Room because of the nice breeze. It wasn't until after the British torched the place in 1814 did it receive it's first coat of whitewash. The Oval Office wasn't built until Truman's time in 1947.

1812- Battle of Queenstown Heights. First major battle of the War of 1812. It cost the life of the brilliant young British General Issac Brock, but he saved Canada from the invading United States.

1815- Joachim Murat shot by firing squad. Marshal Murat was France's bravest cavalry leader. A wild bon-vivant, he would "ride to the sound of the guns" dressed in peacock feathers and gaudy uniforms, but amazingly was never harmed. Trying to regain the throne Napoleon gave him in Naples, his luck finally gave out when the Neapolitans put him up against the wall. His last words were:" AIM FOR THE HEART! DON'T TOUCH MY FACE!!"

1843- Bnai’ Brith, the oldest Jewish benevolent organization, was founded in New York by Henry Jones. It means “Sons of the Covenant”.

1845- Texans vote to accept annexation into the United States.

1857- Wall Street has yet another financial panic and crash.

1903- Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland premiered.

1904- Sigmund Freud's book 'The Interpretation of Dreams" first published.

1918- BATTLE OF THE COTES DU CHATILLON- During the American offensive to break the German lines in World War I, the Cotes Du Chatillon was a hilltop studded with fortifications, machine guns and barbed wire fields up to 25 feet wide. General Pershing called his cocky young “Boy Colonel” Douglas MacArthur and said “MacArthur! Take the Cotes Du Chatillon or hand me a list of 5,000 casualties!” MacArthur replied:” I’ll take the hill or my name shall top the list!”
This day, MacArthur personally led his Rainbow Division over the top without a gun or helmet, just a riding crop and his West Point varsity sweater. His doughboys captured the hill, but at such a frightful cost that MacArthur for years could not speak of it without tears. In his campaigns in World War II MacArthur became good at outmaneuvering enemy strong points to avoid high casualties.

1938- RKO Pictures was having a salary dispute with their singing cowboy Gene Autry. So, they cast around for another handsome cowpoke. Today they signed a Cincinnati born dentist from a vocal group called the Sons of the Pioneers named Leonard Slye. He became a star with the film “Under Western Skies” under his new name- Roy Rogers.

1947- Kukla, Fran & Ollie debuted on television. Burt Tillstrom was the creator and puppeteer, and Fran was his wife.

1964- Mary Pinchot Mayer was a Washington DC socialite, artist, and the sister-in-law to Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. On this day she was murdered while strolling a Georgetown footpath at noon. A black homeless person was accused of the murder, but later acquitted. Her sister took her diary to the CIA office of counterintelligence. It was said her diary admitted a long affair with President John F. Kennedy and claimed that on two occasions she and JFK smoked marijuana in the White House.
At this time his brother Robert Kennedy was still Attorney General. The diary was never seen again. Was it an FBI, CIA hit? Many women claimed President Kennedy as a lover. Judith Cambell-Exner claimed to be schtupping the Prez and the head of the Chicago Mafia at the same time, yet she lived to a merry old age. Mary Pinchot Mayer’s killer has never been found.

1970- Black activist Angela Davis was arrested on suspicion she smuggled guns to a Black Panther group so they could stage a shootout with California police. The evidence was thin and it was more about the Berkeley professor’s radical political philosophy that got her arrested. Back you need more than just suspicion to lock somebody up in the Good Old US of A, so Angela Davis was acquitted after a long, very public trial.

1973- During the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Egypt, this day saw the largest mass tank battle since World War II. While Egyptian SAM anti-aircraft missiles kept away the Israeli air force, two thousand tanks, more than was at the Battle of the Bulge, twisted, turned, and blasted each other in the Sinai Desert. They didn’t have to aim, they could look out their gun barrel and see their opponent as close as 100 yards apart. Today, urban warfare and improved shoulder-held rockets have made tanks increasingly irrelevant.

1978- Mickey Mouse gets his star on Hollywood Blvd Walk of Fame.

1982- The computer spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3 introduced.

1988- Scientists declared the Shroud of Turin a high-quality medieval forgery. Even the Vatican was curious whether the thing was genuine or not. In 2010 another study also concluded it was a forgery. But many persist in the belief that the Shroud is the real burial cloth of Jesus, with an imprint of his body left by the heat of the Resurrection, like some kind of miraculous Xerox copy.

1993- The Nightmare Before Christmas premiered. Directed by Henry Selick. Based on a three page poem Tim Burton wrote in the 80s while a bored Disney staff animator.

2016 – Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Yesterday’s Question: “In Flanders Fields the poppies grow….” Where is Flanders?

Answer: Flanders is a province of Belgium.

Question: Which is further East? The Ozarks or the Appalachian Mountains?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is a cat o’ nine tails?
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History for 10/11/2023
Birthdays: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Heinz the Ketchup king, Jerome Robbins, Carl Hubbard, Ron Leibman, John Candy, Omar Shariff, Ben Vereen, Art Blakey, Luke Perry, Joan Cusak, Jane Krakowski, Sig Ruman– the fat actor with the goatee and the over-the-top German accent in the Marx Brothers comedies.

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Bruno of Cologne, the son of Saint Matilda and King Henry the Fowler.

1303- Pope Boniface VIII died. He was the Pope who first proclaimed Papal dominance in the bull Unam Sanctam, and who used to declare crusades against Italian families he didn't like. He died a raving lunatic in the dungeons of San Angelo eating the flesh off of his own arms. Dante hated him so much, in his poem "The Inferno" he has two devils stirring a boiling cauldron of lead and calling up to the world above:" Hey Boniface! When are you coming down? It's almost ready!"

1424- Czech general John of Ziska died of plague at age 64. He had never been defeated and led battles even when almost blind. When dying, he ordered that his body be skinned, and the skin dried and used to make a drum for his army. Tough Czech.
1492- As the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria continue sailing west, Christopher Columbus' fear crazed men began to see signs that land was close at hand: floating driftwood, a carved stick, moths, a seabird.

1531- Battle of Kappell- Civil war broke out between the Swiss cantons that were Catholic and the Protestant ones. In this battle the Catholics won. Among the killed was Ulrich Zwingli, the great Protestant theologian.

1649- Oliver Cromwell and his Ironside army captured the Irish town of Wexford and massacred all the inhabitants. A month earlier when the town of Drogheda was stormed, many thought the massacre was due to the stubbornness of its defense. But the slaying of the defenders of little Wexford showed that Cromwell intended to use terror as a weapon to pacify Ireland. No pity would be shown.

1737- A huge earthquake in Bejing China killed 300,000. 1776- The Battle of Valcour Island- American patriot Benedict Arnold built a little navy on Lake Champlain and let himself get shot up to slow down a huge British invasion force under Canadian Governor-General Sir Guy Carleton. Because of Arnold's delaying tactics it became too late in the year to cut off Washington's army retreating from New York and crush the Revolution in it's first year. Sir Guy Carleton's force had to return to Canada and wait until April for the Spring thaw. Valcour Island sometimes is called the first action of the U.S. Navy. One of Arnold’s little boats was recovered and today is in the Smithsonian.
1779- Battle of Savannah- During the Revolution, Polish immigrant Count Casimir Pulaski was killed leading a cavalry attack against British positions. He had been involved in a plot to kidnap the King of Poland, was a lover of Catherine the Great, and was in debtor's prison in Marseilles before running into Ben Franklin who sent him to America. He was the only officer to ever hold the rank in the U.S. Army of Master of Horse.

1800- The remaining French army trapped in Egypt and abandoned by Napoleon, made a deal with the Egyptians and their English allies to be evacuated back to France. One of the things that had to give up was the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Ancient Hieroglyphics. Another thing the French troops brought back to Europe was marijuana, easily purchased in Egyptian bazaars. The old soldiers said the weed didn’t give you a hangover like drinking brandy did and made recovering from wounds easier.
1809- MERIWETHER LEWIS’ SUICIDE- Colonel Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame, shot himself -twice. He missed and wounded himself in the head the first time. He was 35. Meriwether Lewis was governor of Upper Louisiana (Missouri, Wisconsin, Montana, Illinois) and was the personal protégé of Presidents Jefferson and Monroe. It’s not inconceivable to assume that he would have been president one day.
Some contend that Lewis didn't commit suicide but was murdered, because it was at a small tavern on the Natchez Trace, he had been arguing with some men along the road, and he was found with two head wounds, and his belly slashed with a bowie knife. Another scholar recently theorized Lewis was suffering from delirium caused by advanced syphilis, which he may have contracted from a Shoshone woman while on the great trek over the Rockies. His friends Thomas Jefferson and Captain Clark maintained Lewis was emotionally overwrought and was drinking too much. Back then alcoholism was not considered as bad a vice as venereal indiscretions. What an important United States Territorial Governor was doing riding all alone with no staff on a country road is still a mystery.

1867- General George Armstrong Custer was courts-martialed for leaving his post without permission to see his wife Libby, ordering his men to shoot deserters in peacetime, and marching his troops too excessively. He was found guilty but only given a years suspension of pay.

1868- Telegraph operator Thomas Edison patented his first invention. It was a device that recorded the votes of legislators automatically. It proved unpopular with politicians because it eliminated their ability to rig votes.

1890- The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) formed. 1899- THE SECOND ANGLO-BOER WAR. Ever since the British took over South Africa they had to contend with the fiercely independent German Dutch settlers called Afrikaners or Boers. Warfare flared up in 1886 but was settled temporarily.
Now egged on by the German Kaiser, and threatened by the nationalistic pressures of English speaking immigrants (Uitlanders), President Kruger of the Transvaal ("Oom Paul" -Uncle Paul) attacked the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony to throw off British domination. The Boers were defeated after three bloody years which saw the development of military barbed wire, khaki uniforms replacing redcoats (from the Persian word for dust, advocated by Arthur Conan-Doyle) and concentration camps. Twenty five thousand Boers died, of them only five thousand were soldiers, the rest were uprooted civilians stuffed into camps with inadequate sanitary conditions.
Despite his belligerent talk, the Kaiser begged off sending any aid, despite pleas from the Queen of Holland. When German-American societies asked Vice Presidential candidate Teddy Roosevelt to condemn British policy, Teddy replied: " It is right and natural that stronger nations should gobble up weaker ones!”

1906- The San Francisco Board of Education ordered children of Chinese and Japanese ancestry placed in segregated schools. This act caused outrage back in Japan who thought the Americans were their friends after helping settle their war with Russia. President Teddy Roosevelt intervened and forced San Francisco to rescind their law.
1910- Teddy Roosevelt becomes the first U. S. President to fly in an airplane.

1939- Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt describing the feasibility of atomic weapons, and urging the US to begin an atomic program before Hitler created an A-Bomb. Years later with atomic weapons a reality, Einstein said of his letter of Oct.11, “ It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

1942- As the Russian Army continued to collapse before the Nazi invasion, dictator Josef Stalin reacted in the best way he knew- an act of terror. This day he signed Order # 227. It ordered no further retreat and the penalty of death for cowardice. The Russian Secret Police NKVD planted troops behind the combat soldiers called blockers who machine-gunned anyone falling back. They also set up Penal Battalions of solders arrested for cowardice (Straftbat). The only way out of these suicide squads was to show a wound got in battle, in which case your record would read” Atoned with his own blood”. Just last week in the modern Ukraine war, Putin has re-established penal battalions in the Russian Army.

1944-“ To Have and to Have Not,” written by Ernest Hemingway premiered. The movie paired Humphrey Bogart with a sultry Harpers model turned actress Betty-Lou Persky, now renamed Lauren Bacall. Bacall originally had a higher voice, but director Howard Hawks told her every day to go behind the soundstage and scream for an hour, to bring her voice down to a dusky, sexy alto. It worked on Bogart, who fell in love and married her despite his being 44 and she 20 years old. They called each other Slim and Steve after the characters in the film. “If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow.”

1956- The Muppets first appeared on national TV, on the Steve Allen Show.

1960- The Bugs Bunny Show premiered on TV. “Overture, Curtain, lights! This is it, we’ll hit the heights, and oh what heights we’ll hit…..etc..”

1962- Pope John XXIII convened the 2Nd Ecumenical Council. Nicknamed Vatican II, it instituted major reforms in the Catholic Church including ordering the Mass said in the vernacular instead of Latin, and toleration of Judaism and other faiths. Many conservative Catholic splinter groups including the one Mel Gibson’s family belonged to are still mad about Vatican II.

1962- McHales Navy TV show premiered. Starring Ernest Borgnine, Tim Conway and Joe Flynn.

1967- The NY Times printed an image of a nude by Bell Lab artists-in-residence Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton. Titled Study in Perception I, It was done on a computer as a digital mosaic of thousands of numbers. It was an early breakthrough in digital imaging or CGI.

1968- Apollo 7 blasted off. The first of the Apollo Program, replacing the Gemini program.
1975- NBC needed a Saturday replacement for the Best Of Carson reruns, so Lorne Michaels’ TV show SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered. Featuring the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players: John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Chevy Chase, Lorraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin and Michael O’Donaghue. First guest host George Carlin did his opening monologue while stoned.
Albert Brooks did a short film and Andy Kaufman did his Mighty Mouse lip sync bit.
Paul Shaefer conducted the music and the show was held in NBC’s Studio 8H, which was built originally for Maestro Arturo Toscanini and The NBC Symphony of the Air. At the last moment a sketch by young Billy Crystal was cut from the show.
The show also revived the career of announcer Don Pardo, who had trouble finding work since the original Jeopardy quiz show was canceled. He was the announcer for the show until his death in 2014 at age 96.

1975- Bill Clinton married Hillary Rodham.

1976- After the death of Chairman Mao, Chinese authorities arrest his widow Chiang Ching and three followers and accused them of plotting a coup- the Gang of Four.

1978- Sex Pistols bass player Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sid was too stoned to explain why he had killed her. It’s assumed they had a suicide pact. Sid Vicious died of an overdose before his trial.

1987- The AIDS Quilt was first displayed on the National Mall in Washington.

1991- Comedian Redd Foxx was famous for doing bits like faking a heart attack. This day on the set of his new TV series The Royal Family, while joking with Della Reese, he clutched his chest and fell over. Everyone thought he was faking and laughed. But this time he wasn’t. He died at the hospital an hour later.

2001- V.S. Naipul won the Nobel Prize for literature.

2005- Angela Merkel named Chancellor of Germany. She is the first woman to lead Germany and the first head of state from the former East Germany.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a cat o’ nine tails?

Answer: In Lord Nelson’s Navy it was a whip with nine leather straps, usually festooned with metal stars to increase the victim pain. A “kiss of the cat” meant to be flogged as punishment.

Question: What does it mean to have someone “over a barrel”?

Quiz: What is a cuttlefish?
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History for 10/9/2023
Birthdays: Camille Saint Saens, E. Howard Hunt, Jacques Tati, Alastair Sim, Bruce Catton, Joe Pepitone, cartoonist Mike Peters, Savannah, John Lennon would be 82, his son Sean Lennon, E. Howard Hunt, Scott Bakula, Peter Tosh, Charles Rudolph Walgren-the inventor of the modern Drugstore, Guillermo Del Toro is 58, Tony Schaloub is 70, Pete Doctor is 55.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! Societies have celebrated bringing in the harvest since primitive times. About forty years before the pilgrims of Massachusetts, English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew exploring Canada celebrated at a harvest feast with the indigenous peoples in 1578. The first official celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving was in November of 1879, and in 1957, it was set as celebrate the second Monday in October.

270AD- Saint Denis and several followers were sent to preach in Paris (then Lutetia, home of a tribe of Gauls called the Parisi). The local Roman authorities had them rounded up and beheaded on a small hill north of town. The hill is today called the Hill of Martyrs, or Montmartre. The legend goes Saint Denis was so indignant at this lack of hospitality, that he picked up his head and walked out of town. Where he reached the city limits his body dropped down lifeless. This is where basilica of St. Denis (1122) stands.

1000AD- VIKINGS DISCOVER AMERICA. Viking Leif Ericsson beached his dragonships in Labrador, Canada. He calls it Vinland. There are several theories why: one was because of an abundance of grapevines he discovered. Another is that the old Norse crossed with Latin Vinland could also be described as Land of Pastures. The Vikings settled a colony in America but it didn't take, and was withdrawn for unknown reasons. Perhaps the mini-Ice Age temperatures that made the winters tough even for Scandinavians. The second expedition under Thorfinn Karlsefni called the natives they met Skraelings, and claimed they met a race of one legged men.

1192- Richard the Lionheart left the Holyland. End of the Third Crusade. He planned to return in 1196 and take back Jerusalem from Saladin, but he died first.

1609- Invalid Captain John Smith is put on a ship back to England. Smith had earlier gotten stung by a stingray and almost died. This time a powder horn exploded on his hip and blew out part of his side. While Smith was leader of the Jamestown Colony, he had many enemies among the jealous gentry. Some don't think it was an accident. Opinions also differ as to why the Jamestown settlers put Smith through a two-month Atlantic crossing that would kill even healthy men. Some say they were hoping he wouldn't make it.
He did survive, but never returned to Jamestown. Nobody told Pocahontas, and when she visited the camp, the men told her he was dead and forget about him. She would meet him ten years later in England when she was a wife and mother of the children of settler John Rolfe. Eyewitnesses said he was “shocked” when she ran into Smith alive and well.

1635- Pilgrim Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts colony for saying the government should not be involved in determining someone’s religion.

1701- Yale University chartered.

1744- Peace of Kleinschellendorf- Frederick II the Great makes peace with Maria Theresa of Austria ending Prussian participation in the War of Austrian Succession.

1779- THE LUDDITES- A movement of English peasants and tradesmen started by a man named Ned Lud who felt that all this newfangled machinery was going to cost them their jobs. The Luddites roamed the countryside smashing any looms, pistons, flywheels or other such devices they encountered. A similar movement in France. French peasants would remove their wooden clogs, called sabots, and throw them into a machine's gears to jam them, and coined the term- Saboteurs.

1781- George Washington and the Comte du Rochambeau commenced the bombardment of English positions opening the Battle of Yorktown. Not much credit is given to Rochambeau that even though he considered himself the more experienced tactician, he deferred to Washington as the commander of the allied army. Privately, Rocheambeau didn’t think the American rebels had much of a chance. Still, when the Yankee payroll dried up, he paid the US troops out of his own fortune.

1809- The first Royal Jubilee celebrated in England. The monarchy had taken a number of hits lately. King George III was a blind, insane shut in and the Prince Regent and Princess of Wales were separated and quarreling. So, an old widow named Mrs Biggs came up with the idea of a celebration of King George's 50th anniversary of his reign as a way to boost morale. It worked and it's been a custom ever since.

1855- James Stoddard patents the steam calliope.

1888- The Washington Monument finally opened to the public. Construction on it was begun in 1840 and discontinued for a decade during the Civil War. Work was also held up when Protestant workmen refused to use marble donated by Pope Pius IX. It was dedicated the previous year by President Arthur. But he did it in February, and only 300 people showed up in the cold.

1899- Chicago writer and travelling salesman L. Frank Baum wrote a friend that he had just finished a new children’s book called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. “It is the best thing I’ve written, so they tell me. We’ll see if the queer and fickle public will like it.” It became a huge bestseller.

1905- The World Series resumes after a one-year haggle between the owners of the American and National leagues. A best of seven contest between the N.Y. Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics. It would continue undisturbed until 1994 with the players strike.

1919- After a year overseas serving in WWI, young volunteer Walt Disney arrived back home in America and was mustered out.

1938- Eugene O'Neill's play 'The Iceman Cometh' opened.

1951- RKO Pictures asked Marilyn Monroe to please wear panties while working? She was distracting the film crew.

1963- Uganda became a republic from a British Colony.

1981- Sir Hugh Hudson’s movie Chariots of Fire, about British Olympians at the 1924 Paris Olympics became a sleeper hit. The decision to let Greek composer Vangelis score the period film with an all-electronic synthesizer soundtrack became a sensation. Soon most of the movies of that time had synthesizer tracks. People said symphony orchestras, Jazz quintets and garage bands would all be obsolete.

1983- Ronald Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt was forced to resign. Watt was a former oil industry lawyer who galvanized popular anger over his views on ecology, such as what's wrong with a few MacDonald’s hamburger stands in the Grand Canyon? Yet he refused to allow the Beach Boys to perform at a public 4th of July concert in DC because he felt they attracted: ”An unsavory element”. The thing that proved Watt’s downfall was a comment he made about a government panel he had just convened. Quote Secty Watt:” We have all bases covered. We have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple!”

1986- People said there would never be more than three networks. Today the first show of the fourth network, The Fox Network's the Late Show with Joan River's, premiered. That show failed, but future hits like The Simpson's, Married With Children and the X-Files made Fox a major network within ten years.

1989- First edition of Penthouse Magazine in Hebrew. Oy Vey!

2009- President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a cuttlefish?

Answer: Related to squid and octopus, cuttlefish have eight legs and two tentacles and can secret ink. They are smart and can change their pigment in many different iterations in order to communicate, defend or disguise themselves. Cuttlefish are good eatin’ for lots of predators, including humans. (Thanks FG)

Artistic trivia: The brown/black cuttlefish ink, called “sepia” since ancient times, is the origin for the word we use today to describe the popular warm brown-ish tone.

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Quiz: What is a cuttlefish?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Ford motorcars was begun by Henry Ford. Chevrolet was begun by the brothers Chevrolet. But Cadillac was begun by a guy named Henry Leland. So, who was Cadillac?
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History for 10/8/2023
Birthdays: Eddie Rickenbacker, Rev Jesse Jackson, Juan Peron, David Carradine, Art Babbitt -the creator of Goofy would be 116, Chevy Chase is 80, Paul Hogan, Ruben Mamoulian, Edward Zwick, Johnny Ramone, Bruno Mars, Sigourney Weaver is 74, Matt Damon is 53

Today is the feast day of Saint Demetrius of Thesalonikki

451AD- The Council of Chalcedon opened.

1777- During the Revolution, British General Clinton tried to get a message through to Burgoyne and his army trapped at Saratoga. He sent a Tory-Loyalist with a message rolled up and hidden in a solid silver capsule. When he was intercepted by the Americans, the messenger swallowed the capsule before he was searched. He was given a heavy emetic "whereupon he soon produced the capsule, which he proceeded to grab and swallow again. Another emetic was administered and he produced the capsule again." The message was opened and read, then the man was hanged as a spy."

1846- The Battle of Old Woman's Gun (also called The Battle of Dominguez Ranch). In 1846 During the Mexican War, United States forces had taken the pueblo of Los Angeles. But after a few weeks the first Yankee mayor, a Lt. Gillespie, was so hated, that the Mexican citizens drove them out of town. On this day the US forces came up from their fleet anchored in San Pedro Harbor and tried to re-take the town. Mexican forces led by a rancher and son of the former governor Jose Carillo routed the Yankees with an old 4 pounder signal cannon, that an old lady had buried in her front yard. She had hid the old gun when Gillespie ordered the population disarmed. The Angeleanos had no gun carriage so they lashed the old gun to a wagon harness.
Six months later, the US forces finally overcame LA resistance and the town stayed American.

1862-THE BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE- Union forces defeat General Braxton Bragg's Confederates and prevent Kentucky from joining the Confederacy. Abe Lincoln said: " I hope I have God on my side, but I Must have Kentucky." The Confederates had actually pushed the Yankees off the field and were at the edge of victory, but Bragg overestimated the enemies strength the next day and ordered a general retreat, wasting everything they gained. His second in command General Kirby Smith resigned in disgust. The commander of the Union Army Gen. Don Carlos Buell, was so distracted with other business that he was unaware that his army had fought a battle. He was soon replaced.

1871- THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE- Legend said in a shed behind 137 DeKoven St, Old Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocks over a lantern and starts a fire that burns down 17,500 buildings and kills 300 including Mayor Roswell Mason. The fire jumped the Chicago River and people rode their carriages into Lake Michigan and even jumped into open graves to escape. Eventually the firemen’s pumpers ran out of water and the Northside kept burning past Fullerton until it burned itself out when it hit open prairie. 300,000 were left homeless. One of the only downtown buildings to survive the inferno was Chicago’s beloved old water tower. The slaughter houses and grain elevators also survived so business could go on. Ironically the O'Leary house stayed intact, just the barn burned. Two journalists later admitted inventing the O’Leary cow story to sell newspapers.

1871-THE GREAT PESHTIGO FIRE- The most deadly fire in North American history occurred on the exact same day as the Chicago Fire, but this one was in Peshtigo Wisconsin. A forest fire started by loggers burning debris built into a firestorm (actually a flaming tornado) and destroyed a wooden town killing 1,200 in a town of 1,750, five times as many deaths as the Chicago Fire. The tornado caught dozens of people during church services. Three hundred died trying to escape across a wooden bridge that caught fire and burned from both ends. Survivors saw "people and cows stagger a few feet and go down burning brightly, like so many pieces of pitch pine." A heavy rain fell the next day. One day late.

1906- In Paris, Swiss inventor Ludwig Pressler demonstrated the first electric 'permanent -wave' hair curler.

1907- Charles Frederick Dow, one of the founders of the Wall Street Journal, started his system of charting the average performance of industrial stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

1915- The Battle of Loos. British troops released poison gas at the German lines. The wind suddenly shifted and blew the gas back on their own men. D’oh!

1918- SERGANT YORK- simple Tennessee hillbilly Alvin York was drafted into the U.S. Army where his crack shot talents enabled him this day to shoot up an entire German regiment. When his captain asked “ What did you do Alvin? Shoot the entire German Army?” He replied “ Nossuh, just 132 of them…” He captured 300 prisoners alone, with only his single shot Springfield rifle. He got the Medal of Honor and a tickertape parade. Then went back to the Ozarks where he resumed his life of making moonshine, avoiding tax collectors, and other rustic pursuits.

1929- British Imperial Airways shows the first in-flight movie.

1933- HOLLYWOOD ACTORS FIRST MASS PROTEST- When Franklin Roosevelt created the NRA to fix wages and prices to try and solve the Depression, he even went as far as to try to regulate Motion Picture rates and fees. The catch was the rates were drafted with the advice of friends of the studio heads.
The actors went ballistic when they saw new rules, such as a cap on actors salaries of $100,000 a year (the producers had no such cap), restriction of actors independent agents, and terms of an old salary contract could stay in effect even after the contract expired, until it was renegotiated.
This night, at the El Capitan theater, hundreds of actors met to draft a petition calling for rewriting of the codes. The activists included Paul Muni, Frederic March, Jeanette MacDonald, Bettie Davis, Groucho Marx and Boris Karloff. Earth tremors from the Long Beach Earthquake made the actors move across the street to Graumans Chinese parking lot .
SAG president Ralph Morgan the brother of Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz) was considered politically too left to face FDR, so he stepped down in favor of comedian Eddie Cantor, who had helped Vaudeville acts unionize. Cantor went to the president's retreat at Warm Springs Georgia with the petition, and had the hated articles taken out of the code.

1935- Ozzie Nelson married Harriet.

1945- "Bloody Monday" During a big strike three hundred and fifty armed thugs club their way through picketing Warner Bros. film workers. Jack Warner had stationed sharpshooters behind the studios billboards. A logo on the studio wall said:" Better Movies through Better Citizenship", which the union folk changed to "Better Movies through Better Marksmanship". Similar scenes were happening in front of Fox and MGM.

1945- Percy Spencer was a researcher working on military radar for the Raytheon Corp. One day he accidentally walked through a beam of electronic microwaves, and noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. Intrigued, he placed some corn kernels near the beam and watched them pop. This day he filed a patent for the first microwave oven.

1957- Walter O'Malley announced the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles.

1957- Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his hit Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire.

1958- Swedish Arne Laarsen received the first artificial implanted heart pacemaker. Over the years he had 17 operations and a dozen more pacemakers put in him as the designs improved. Without the pacemaker he would have died at age 40, instead he died in 2000 at age 86 of skin cancer. Arne Laarsen outlived all his original doctors.

1967- In Bolivia guerrilla leader Ernesto Che' Guevara was captured and shot. Che' started as an Argentine doctor and was wracked with asthma most of his life. He had gone to Bolivia after quarreling with Fidel Castro about whether it was more important to export Cuban revolution the rest of Latin America or concentrate on building Cuba's economy. Thirty years later in 1997 his remains were identified and returned to Cuba for burial.

1968- The movie Romeo & Juliet premiered. Director Franco Zeffirelli caused a sensation by casting young people to play the young people! Olivia Hussey was barely 16, and Leonard Whiting was 17. In the play she was supposed to be 13. Great score by Nino Rota (the Godfather). Romeo & Juliet was the last time a film version of a Shakespeare play was ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

1970- Dissident Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Soviet State kept him in internal exile and refused to let him travel to accept his prize. He was exiled to America in 1974 and returned to Russia after the fall of communism.

1971- John Lennon first released the song Imagine.

2004- Home decorating guru Martha Stewart began serving her 5 month prison term for perjury and insider trading.

2005- A massive earthquake in Pakistan killed 73,000.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Ford motorcars was begun by Henry Ford. Chevrolet was begun by the brothers Chevrolet. But Cadillac was begun by a guy named Henry Leland. So, who was Cadillac?

Answer: Leland named it for the French explorer who founded Detroit in 1701, Antoine de la mothe-Cadillac. Detroit is French for the straight of Lake Erie “le détroit du Lac Érié,"