Question: 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?

Quiz: Who was Jenny Lind?
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History for 10/7/2023
Birthdays: Hans Holbein, Heinrich Himmler, Caesar Rodney, Joe Hill, Andy Devine, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Henry Wallace, June Allyson, Al Martino, Neils Bohr, Ameil Buraka, Johnny Cougar Mellencamp, Toni Braxton, Yo Yo Ma, Vladimir Putin is 71.

312 BC- THE SUCCESSORS- After the death of Alexander the Great, his generals divided up his empire for themselves. This day Seleucus Nicator – (pronounced Se-le-u-kos)- conquered Babylon and set up his Syrian-Greek kingdom. Others were Ptolemy, who became Pharoah of Egypt, Perdiccas, Antigonus One-Eye, who controlled mainland Greece, Cleitus the Black and Demetrius Destroyer of Cities (Poliocretes). Called Diodochi or The Successors, these generals warred and conspired with each other until the rising Roman Empire knocked them all off.
Seleucus and his heirs figure prominently in the last parts of the Old Testament. The Israelites did well under the Persians and Alexander, but the Successors tried to force pagan worship on them. King Antiochus Theos Epiphanes –” God Made Manifest”, plundered Solomon’s Temple and ordered Jews to eat pork and worship Zeus on pain of death. Many Jews were martyred until an uprising led by Judas Maccabeus restored the Hebrew Kingdom. Ptolemy had the most successful dynasty, ruling Egypt for 300 years, until Cleopatra reached for her asp.

1337- King Edward III of England decides he's not only King of England but King of France as well- the HUNDRED YEARS WAR began. It was actually 111 years, until 1446. They took a time out in 1346 because of the Black Plague. Ironically it was around this time that the English language began to emerge as the common mother tongue of Britons, blending the Norman French of the nobility with the Anglo Saxon of the common folks.

1571- BATTLE OF LEPANTO- Great naval engagement in which the ships of Venice, Spain, Genoa and the Papacy defeat the Grand Turks navy led by Ali Pasha. The last great battle fought with war galleys rowed by teams of rowers. The admiral in charge was the bastard brother of Phillip II, Don John of Austria, a military hero who was supposed to have led the Spanish Armada against England, had he not succumbed to an early fever.
The battle raged from ship to ship until Don Johns ship overran Ali Pasha’s flagship and hoisted his severed head to the top of their mainmast. Among the common sailors in the battle were future writers like Lope De Vega and Miguel de Cervantes, who lost his right hand:" For the greater glory of my left" he joked.

1763- THE ROYAL PROCLAMATION TO NORTH AMERICA- The British Colonial Ministry, trying to reward its Indian allies in the French and Indian War and kill two birds with one stone, told the Americans that any further western colonization to the Mississippi was forbidden, but they were invited to go north and settle in Quebec. This would hopefully mean the outnumbering and eventual assimilation of the French Canadians.
Neither happened, and it only angered the Americans who were never consulted about this idea. The British even toyed with making the Illinois and Michigan territories part of Canada.

1777- SECOND BATTLE OF BEMIS HEIGHTS-British General Johnny Burgoyne trying to break out of a trap, smashed his army against the American defenses in a heavy rain. The defense works were built by Polish patriot Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Washington spelled his name 11 different ways in dispatches, the men just called him " Colonel Koz".
Burgoyne had snubbed his superior officers since his arrival in America, saying he only answered to the War office in London. Now, surrounded in the forest by overwhelming odds he snuck out a message to General Guy Carleton in Canada "I await your Lordship's orders." Carelton recognized this weenie attempt to shift blame and ignored him.

The hero of this battle was Benedict Arnold. Arnold was everywhere, rallying minutemen brigades and crashing them into the enemy without waiting for his commander’s orders. The U.S. commander Horatio Gates spent most of the battle in the rear entertaining captured British officers and discussing the futility of the American cause. The battle only ended when someone shot Arnold in the leg. After Arnold’s treason, Washington decreed that no monument to Arnold ever be allowed. So, the grateful locals raised a statue….to his leg.

1780- BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN- In the later stages of the American Revolution the British Army command shifted from a strategy of using overwhelming conventional force in New England to going South and encouraging American Loyalists to fight a civil war. At Kings Mountain in North Carolina The “Over the Mountain Men”, an army of Scots-Irish frontiersmen under Issac Shelby defeated a Loyalist militia under the command of Col. Patrick Ferguson. Ferguson, who was killed in the fight, was an unconventional Scots Highlander who taught his men to fight American Indian style.

1783- The Virginia House of Burgesses votes to grant freedom to all slaves who fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

1799- Napoleon returned from his Egyptian Campaign without his army but with a new appreciation for antiquities.

1849- Writer Edgar Allen Poe was found sprawled over a barrel in a Baltimore street, dressed in someone else's clothing. He was taken to a hospital where he died raving at the walls. He was 40. It was thought he died from heavy alcohol abuse. Recently scholars theorize he may have died from a brain tumor or diabetes impacted by alcohol sensitivity, which would explain the violent mood swings, and that he drank heavily to deaden the pain. Another scholar also theorized that the symptoms strongly point to rabies. Poe loved cats and there were no rabies shot or test at the time.
Still another theory on Edgar Allan Poe's death has to do with voter fraud. People voted in taverns in those days. Poe was completely sober (he had given up alcohol years before) when he left two friends after a good dinner. He was scheduled to go to Philadelphia to meet the Mother-in-law of his late wife (also his aunt.) He bought the ticket; it was found on his person. Cooping was a type of voter fraud wherein people who could read were kidnapped and held in pens. They were forced an overabundance of alcohol to knock them out of their senses, then forced to vote under alias names they were given. All night they were pushed to vote again and again. They were made to change clothes (so they wouldn't be recognized) and out to vote again. So Poe may have died of died of alcohol poisoning. He was buried in a pauper's grave.

1851- THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.- Several top bishops of the Church of England stunned Victorian High Society by announcing their conversion to Roman Catholicism. Bishop John Newman was the first, followed today by the Archbishop Manning of Chichester. Manning eventually became the Catholic cardinal primate of England and was listed in Lytton Straychey’s book the Eminent Victorians. Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 made John Newman a saint.

1855- THE BORDER WAR- John Brown arrived in Kansas help organize anti-slave men to fight pro-slavers, called the Border-Ruffians. For several years before the Civil War broke out Missouri and Kansas were torn by private gangs of militias murdering each other. The Southern extremists were called Bushwhackers, the pro-Unionists called Jayhawkers or Redlegs.

1861- In the Indian Territory –near what will one day be Tulsa Oklahoma, the councils of the Chickasaw, Cherokee and Choctaw Indian Nations signed an alliance with the Confederate States, smoked the war pipe and renounced any ties to the United States. The Comanche people announced they would stop raids on Texas. Pro-Northern Indians then broke with their tribal brothers and soon there were mini-Civil Wars amongst the tribes. The pro-Northern Indians were forced to march with their families in winter snows to the protection of Pro-Northern Kansas. In 1865 the last Confederate General to lay down his arms was Cherokee Chief Stand Watie.

1864- General Grant received a secret letter from Sherman in Atlanta. Sherman told Grant that he intended not to worry about his supply lines but cut his lines of communication and march through Georgia, totally living off the land, until he reached Savannah on the ocean where he could be resupplied by sea.

1868- After a season of raids by hostile Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors on Kansas settlers, Generals Sherman and Sheridan met with President Grant to draft a 'final solution' to the American Indian. They would no longer chase scattered bands of braves, but introduce their brand of ruthless "Total War". These tactics burned Atlanta and the Shenandoah Valley to end the Civil War. They ordered the US Army to attack villages, kill women & children, burn crops and shoot ponies. Sherman openly described it as a 'Race War". He said." a few savages must no longer be allowed to impede the March of Anglo Saxon Civilization!" They made a policy of attacking villages in winter, just before dawn, because then Indian war parties stayed close to home and were less mobile.

1897-A group of Russian Jews, disgusted by the state sanctioned anti-Semitism of the Czars, formed the Jewish Socialist Bund. They broke with Theodore Herzl and the Zionists who wanted Jews to move to Palestine. The Socialist Bund advocated political reform within Russia. Leon Trotsky, himself Jewish, made fun of the Bund, calling them “Zionists afraid of getting sea-sick”.

1916- The German submarine U-53 boldly sailed into Newport Bay Rhode Island and docked alongside American warships. America was still technically neutral in WWI. Kapitan Hans Rose let civilian women and children tour the sub all day. Irish-Americans, angry at the English crushing the Easter Sunday Rebellion the previous Spring, presented Captain Rose with an Irish Republican flag. But the good will didn’t last long. That evening, U-53 submerged off the coast of Nantucket and sank six ships including a British liner with Americans on board.

1918- The Polish army contingents of the crumbling Russian, Austrian and German empires band together in Warsaw to set up a native government, declaring themselves the Republic of Poland. The Polish State that had disappeared in 1799 was now reborn. Famous concert pianist Jan Paderewski was named president.

1923- Baseball pitching legend Christy Matthewson died of complications from inhaling poison gas in World War I.

1939- Benito Mussolini's Fascist government adopts anti-Semitic laws in line with the Nazis. All Jews were excluded from public office, banking, teaching and the military.

1941- Two months before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt announced that in view of stepped up activity by Nazi U-boats, the United States Navy and Coast Guard had been issued a shoot-on-sight order against any hostile craft.

1947- The Actor's Studio opened, teaching the Stanislavski Method, sometimes called Method Acting. The movement later suffered a feud between it’s two top teachers-Lee Strassberg and Stella Adler and Sandy Meisner. Ask any actor if they were with Lee or Sandy, odds were they sided with one and hated the other.

1955- THE BEATS- Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The reading was intended to promote the new gallery. The poet Kenneth Rexroth organized the reading, and in preparation, he introduced Gary Snyder to Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg introduced everyone to Jack Kerouac, and they became the core of the group of writers known as the Beats. Ginsberg was the second to the last to read, and he started at about 11 p.m. He was 29 years old, and he had never participated in a poetry reading before. He started off in a quiet voice. But as he read, he found his rhythm, and he took a deep breath before each of the long lines in "Howl" and then said each line in one breath. Jack Kerouac chanted "Go, go, go" in rhythm while Ginsberg read, and the audience went wild. Just recently the Russian satellite Sputnik was in the news, so people who adopted the Beat lifestyle were dubbed by the press Beatniks. Like cool, daddy-o.

1957-Dick Clark’s T.V. show American Bandstand debuts.

1959- MARIO LANZA . Philadelphia born Italian–American Lanza was a pop icon opera singer long before there were three tenors in concert. With moviestar good looks and a velvety voice, his records and movies sold millions. But he was temperamental and had angered most of the powers that be in Hollywood, climaxing with skipping a $250,000 promise to perform in Las Vegas. This day in Italy he was found dead at age 38.
For years there were rumors that he was actually done in by the Mafia for offending Lucky Lucciano, but in the 1990s a forensic investigation by his son proved his brutal regimen of binge eating and furious dieting wore out his heart. He would attempt to drop 50 pounds in three weeks, then put it back just as quickly until it gave him a heart attack. He literally dieted himself to death.

1959- Young assassins sent by the dissident Ba’ath Party made an attempt on the life of the Prime Minister of Iraq Sherif Al Kassim. The plotters failed but they sneaked back into the country later. One of them would be one day the ruler of Iraq- Saddam Hussein.

1960- The movie Spartacus opened. Producer/star Kirk Douglas had been using blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo for the script, smuggling him in and out of the lot for story meetings. Finally Douglas got fed up and ordered Trumbo to be brought out in the open as the movie's true writer. This was considered the official end of the Hollywood Blacklist era, which had been raging on since 1947. After director Anthony Mann left the project, Douglas hired Stanley Kubrick, who had such a hard time he left Hollywood afterward, never to return.

1964- ITS FUN TO PLAY AT THE Y-M-C-A! The only big sex scandal of the Lyndon Johnson administration. Walter Jenkins was a top LBJ aide and confidant. Johnson called Jenkins “My vice president of almost everything.” This day Walter Jenkins was busted for lewd behavior with a male Turkish diplomat in a pay toilet at the YMCA just two blocks from the White House. Jenkins claimed he was just dehydrated.

1965- The film, The Agony and the Ecstasy opened in theaters. Sir Carol Reed adapted Irving Stone’s historical novel about the painting of the Sistine Chapel, with Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II, and Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. For the first time movie makers were allowed to film inside the Vatican and Sistine.

1971- Walt Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks premiered at the Odeon Theatre in London.

1974- THE TIDAL BASIN BOMBSHELL- At 2:00 AM Washington DC police stopped a car driving near the White House with its lights off. Inside police discovered powerful Congressman Wilbur Mills, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, drunk as a skunk with an Argentine stripper named Fannie Fox. Mills broke away from the cops and he and Fannie began to cavort in the Tidal Basin pool near the Jefferson Memorial. They were fished out by police. Mills’ sexual escapades had been hushed up by politicos before, but this was just too much. The subsequent publicity brought about hearings and Mills resignation.

1982- London musical 'Cats' opened on Broadway.

1985- Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Italian Mediterranean cruise ship Achille Lauro. They murdered an elderly Jewish American tourist named Leon Klinghoffer and dumped his wheelchair and body into the sea. Composer John Adams wrote an opera about the incident, called The Death of Klinghoffer.

1993- Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" earned $ 712 million dollars just in North American box office.

1994- Tim Burton’s movie Ed Wood opened in wide release..

1996- Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel began.

2001- U.S, British, Australian, Turkish and NATO forces attacked Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9-11 terror attacks. The war led to the temporary overthrow of the Taliban Regime ruling in Kabul and the suppressing of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. But the subsequent occupation was bungled to the point where the Taliban rallied. The US couldn’t establish a stable pro-Western government, so the Taliban got back into power twenty years later.

2003- The state of California had an unpopular Democratic Governor named Grey Davis. A Republican congressman named Daryl Issa who made a fortune making annoying car alarms “step away from the car..” found an obscure codicil in the State constitution calling for a recall election. The recall election soon had 154 candidates including a porn star, old child star Gary Coleman, Porn publisher Larry Flynt, a woman who financed her campaign by selling autographed thongs, and Grey Davis’ own lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante, who couldn’t stand him either. This night, after a farcical election, Californians elected Austrian-born body builder-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

2016- One month before the U.S. presidential election, TV show Access-Hollywood played on air a tape recording of candidate Donald Trump bragging how he assaulted women: "You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just start kissing them," Trump said, speaking on a hot microphone with TV personality Billy Bush. "It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy."
Normally, a statement like that would destroy a candidate’s chances. All major GOP leaders immediately called for Trump to drop out. But Trump was elected anyway, with overwhelming support from Evangelical Christians.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was Jenny Lind?

Answer: Jenny Lind was The Swedish Nightingale. A beautiful singer who gained international stardom in the 1800s doing concerts and operas in many cities. A media star before the invention of recording.

Quiz: Who was Jenny Lind?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: Who first invented the genre of “Kaiju” stories? Of a prehistoric beast or dinosaur running amok in a modern city.
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History for 10/6/2023
Birthdays: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Jenny Lind, George Westinghouse, Janet Gaynor, Carol Lombard, Karol Szymanowski, Thor Heyderthal, wrestler Bruno Sammartino, Britt Eklund, Le Corbusier, Elizabeth Shue is 60, Sean William Scott, Jeremy Sisto is 49, Ioan Guffrudd is 50

In Ireland this is Ivy Day, when Irish folk commemorate the death of the great statesman Charles Stuart Parnell with a sprig of ivy in their buttonholes.

105 BC- Migrating German barbarian tribes called the Cimbri defeated the Roman army at the river Arusia, modern Vaucluse in the Rhone Valley. The defeat gave Gaius Marius the opportunity to reform the training of the Roman legions.

68BC- Roman General Lucullus defeated the Armenians under King Tigranes II at Artaxata.

1502- THE LAST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS -Rejecting the ideas of Amerigo Vespucci, Juan De La Cosa and the Portuguese that what he had discovered was in fact a new continent, Columbus made one more attempt to reach China by sailing west.
He explored down the Central American coastline to Venezuela and Columbia. The Nicaraguans told him that beyond their jungle is another Great Ocean. He surmised that it must be the Indian Ocean so these people must be the Vietnamese (Cochin-China).

1536- Near Brussels, Englishman William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake for committing a crime against the Church, that of translating the Bible into English. 50 years later Tyndale’s writing was the basis of the King James Bible.

1600- THE BIRTH OF OPERA. This day as part of the celebrations of the marriage of French King Henry IV to Marie de Medici, composers Rinconcini and Caecini premiered a new kind of musical drama where soloists sang without the heavy polyphony of madrigals but more directly in imitation of ancient dramas. It was “Eurydice” and it was the first true opera. Many composers including Claudio Monteverdi took up the form.

1683-THE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH- the first recorded German immigrants, Mennonite farmers from the Rhineland, arrived in America. They were invited by Gov. William Penn of Pennsylvania. The reason many German immigrants in Pennsylvania were labeled Dutch was the backwoods Americans inability to distinguish when the German declared “Ich bin Deutsche” from “Dutch”.

1802- The Heiligenstadt Testament- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven left behind a note found among his papers after his death in 1827. Dated this day it was addressed to his brother Karl and another unspecified relative. It was more of a spiritual Last Will than anything else. In the note Beethoven poured out of his heart confessing his faults and his fears of going deaf. It is an amazing insight into the great man’s soul.

1803- Napoleon inspected the restorations to a XVII century French church and veterans hospital called the Les Invalides, unaware that it would become his own tomb 40 years in the future.

1826- A Missouri saddle maker offered a reward of one penny for a runaway apprentice. The boy had joined a Santa Fe bound wagon train and grew up to become Kit Carson, one of the Old West's most famous scouts.

1847- Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre first published.

1860 First telegraph linking L.A. and San Francisco.

1860- During the Taiping Rebellion in China the Ever-Victorious Army, a mercenary western force paid by the Manchu Emperor, recaptured Peking (Beijing). Originally organized by an American named Stoneman, the Ever Victorious was now commanded by British Sir Charles Gordon, for which he received the nickname "Chinese Gordon'.

1863- The first Turkish Bath House is opened in Brooklyn.

1863- The BAXTER SPRINGS MASSACRE- Quantrill’s Raiders bushwhacked Union General Blount’s personal entourage on the road in Kansas and killed 86. It’s called a massacre rather than a battle, because most of the slain were noncombatant office staff trying to surrender. The heartless guerrillas even shot the regimental band. One union soldier with five bullets in him recalled before he lost consciousness, a large horseman standing over him gloating:” When you meet God, tell him the last thing you saw on Earth was Old Billy Quantrill!”

1864- SHERIDAN'S VALLEY CAMPAIGN- The Shenandoah Valley had been a pain in the neck to the U.S. Army throughout the Civil War. Its pro Southern population hid guerrillas like John Mosby, the "Grey Ghost". Stonewall Jackson had humiliated three Yankee armies there. Towns like Winchester and Harper's Ferry changed hands 73 times!
So while Lee and Grant’s armies stood stalemated outside Richmond and Sherman was in Atlanta, feisty Irish-born cavalryman Phil Sheridan was given a large army and ordered to finally bring the Shenandoah Valley to heel. After drubbing the Confederates in battle, he turned away from the rebel army and concentrated on the civilian population. His army burned towns and crops, and hanged men from the trees even remotely suspected of being guerrillas. Sheridan sat, feet up, in a slow moving open buggy and waved his cigar like an orchestra conductor's baton. "Go to it my boys! Have Fun!" Like Sherman’s terror campaign through Georgia, the brutality of Sheridan left a bitter memory to Southerners for generations to come.

1866- The Reno Bros. committed the first recorded train robbery, this one in Indiana.

1880- First classes at University of Southern California or USC.

1889- Paris' naughty nightclub the Moulin Rouge opened.

1908- Since a Peace Treaty of Berlin in 1878 the European Peace had hinged upon the little Turkish province of Bosnia-Herzegovina being administered by Austria while still of Turkey. This compromise was clunky but it worked. This day in reaction to the Bulgarians declaring their independence the Austro-Hungarian Empire announced it was annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina outright. This act destabilized the world situation and began the diplomatic spiral into The Great War 6 years later.

1911- The first transpacific telephone conversation, between Tokyo and San Francisco.

1915- President Woodrow Wilson said he changed his mind, and was now in favor of votes for women.

1917- The terrible WWI Battle of Passchendaele finally ended when Canadian troops took the ridge on the third attempt. 250,000 casualties on both sides.

1918- From the wreckage of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians formed themselves into a new country called the Kingdom of South Slavs or Yugoslavia. It broke up in the 1990s.

1921- In London the society known as PPEN established, for Poets, Playwrights, Editors and Novelists.

1927-"THE JAZZ SINGER" with Al Jolson debuts. Okay, somebody made a sound picture in 1924, and also something called "Footlights of New York" from 1926 but hey, you know what?- who cares! THIS was the movie that made "Talkies" a reality. The success of this film turned Warner Bros from a minor film company into a major Hollywood studio. Within a year of this opening, only a handful of movie theaters were still showing silent movies. 26 year old Walt Disney was in the audience at that opening day, and it made him realize he needed to put sound in his next cartoon about that mouse.
The Warner Bros were not at the opening because they were mourning their brother Sam, who had worked himself into an early grave to finish the picture.

1959- “Pillow Talk” premiered, the first romantic comedy pairing Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Stanley Shapiro won a best screenplay Oscar for it. The film typified the wink-wink attitude about sex before the 1960’s Sexual Revolution and defined Doris Day’s reputation as the wholesome, girl-next-door archetype.

1966- California became the first state to officially declare LSD illegal. Hippies in San Francisco celebrated by rallying in Golden Gate Park in the thousands, and all taking a tab together.

1968- In Huntington Cal, Troy Perry and 12 others started the first Gay & Lesbian Church.

1971- William Freidkin’s gritty cop movie the FRENCH CONNECTION premiered. The film won best picture, director and actor Oscars, made a major star out of Gene Hackman. One unforeseen result was the movie stimulated interest in pursuing the investigation of the real French-Corsican Mafia heroin trafficking in the US. That mob was soon broken up. The two real life detectives the film was based on- Eddie Egan and Sonny Corso, both retired from the NYPD and pursued careers in show biz.

1973- THE OCTOBER WAR or THE YOM KIPPUR WAR. Egypt and Syria surprised attacked Israel on the holiest religious holiday of the Jewish calendar. They also achieved surprise by attacking at 2:00 in the afternoon instead of dawn. The Sinai and Golan Heights saw some of the largest tank battles since World War II. The Arab states received men and material support from the PLO, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Bangladesh and even Idi Amin the dictator of Uganda. America and Russia faced off by heavily re-supplying both sides. Both sides charged Russians and Americans were flying covert combat missions as well.

1976- During a televised debate with Jimmy Carter, President Gerald Ford said he was unaware of any Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, a great surprise to Poles, Czechs, Romanians, Lithuanians and others. Later the American public surprised Gerald by voting him out of office.

1981- Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat was assassinated while viewing parade marking Yom Kippur War anniversary. Commandos hopped out of the back of a troop carrier and blew him away with machine guns. Almost killed next to him was Hosni Mubarak. Although some claim that the chief assassin Khaled Al Islambouli asked Hosni to step aside so not to get hurt. One of the conspirators arrested was Alman Al Zawahiri, who was the little guy with the glasses and grey beard who took over Al Qaeda, after Osama Bin Laden was killed. He was killed earlier this year.

1991- Elizabeth Taylor got married for the 8th and last time, now to construction engineer Larry Fornetsky, at Michael Jackson’s house. They divorced shortly after.

1991- University of Oklahoma Professor Anita Hill testified at the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She alleged that when she was his aide she was subject to constant sexual harassment. Judge Thomas declared her testimony a "symbolic lynching". Thomas' conservative backers countered with a furious media campaign. Despite her credentials as a PhD scholar from a Christian University, they portrayed Prof Hill as a paranoid slut. Those involved in the smear campaign later admitted it was all fabricated. Justice Thomas was confirmed, but the controversy made Sexual Harassment a national issue.

2002- Pope John Paul II canonized Fra Paulo Escriva, the mystic founder of the order Opus Dei. John Paul broke with the more liberal Jesuits in favor of Opus Dei, a super conservative group that wanted direct power over Catholic doctrine and still practiced self- flagellation.

2002- The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delaune was stabbed in the stomach at an all-night Nuit Blanche rock concert. He recovered and remained mayor until 2014.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who first invented the genre of “Kaiju” stories? Of a prehistoric beast or dinosaur running amok in a modern city.

Answer: In 1842 Victorian scientist Richard Owen wrote that certain fossilized bones were the remains of long extinct giant creatures called “dinosaurs”. (Terrible Lizards) This caused much speculation and fantasy. Charles Dickens in his novel Bleak House wrote,” Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a great behemoth walking up the high street?”
The first monster story like this was The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Published in 1912, it was made into a movie in 1925, with Willis O’Brien creating the monsters. He would later do the creatures in 1933’s King Kong, which Ichiro Honda said was the inspiration for his 1954 movie Godzilla. Considered the first Kaiju movie.

Quiz: Who first invented the genre of “Kaiju” stories? Of a prehistoric beast or dinosaur running amok in a modern city.

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What does it mean to be “entering the lists”..?
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History for 10/5/2023
Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the mastermind of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges, Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana "my name Jose Jimenez", Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynnis Johns is 100, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Bernie Mac, Karen Allen is 72, Kate Winslet is 48, Guy Pearce is 56, Jesse Eisenberg is 40

According to Mike Mignola, today is the birthday of Hellboy, born in Hell -1617.

1600- King Henry IV of France married his second wife Marie de Medici by proxy in a grand ceremony in Florence. Flemish master painter Peter Paul Rubens was in attendance, and the Queen asked him to create paintings commemorating the events.

1759- Col. Robert Rogers led his Roger’s Rangers on a forced march to surprise the Abenaki Indians who had been raiding Maine homesteads. At 4:00 am near present day Saint Francis, the Rangers burned the Abenaki village and killed so many that the Abenakis ceased to be a force in the area. Years later Rogers wrote down his principles of irregular warfare- his maxims like "Move Fast and Hit Hard" became the basis of Special Forces training today.

1761- Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, called the Architect of the British Empire, retired from office. He was replaced by Lord Bute, who Frederick the Great called a complete scoundrel. Bute was chosen mostly because young King George III liked to play whist with him. Whist was a card game similar to bridge.

1762- Christoph Gluck premiered his opera Orpheo et Eurydice in Vienna.

1795- THE WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT- The end of the French Revolution. The problem with revolutions is once you start one it’s a real problem how to stop them. The Paris mob had gotten used to overthrowing one government after another since 1789. In 1795 when yet another mob of rioters threatened to overthrow yet another French government the politicians turned to young general Napoleon Bonaparte, who dispersed the crowd by firing cannons at them loaded with buckshot. A self proclaimed "Child of the Revolution" Bonaparte was already considered politically left, so his act of force could not be accused of royalist leanings. This action helped the little general with the funny Italian name becomes a national figure.

1813- BATTLE OF THE THAMES RIVER. Indiana territory- Tecumseh, an Indian visionary who foresaw that only by united action could native peoples hope to drive the white man back to Europe, spent his life convincing tribes to put away their tribal differences and fight as one people. He assembled a huge force of warriors, but this day he was defeated and killed by Gen. William Henry Harrison. Congressman Richard Johnson, who said he personally killed the great chief (nobody saw it happen) later became Vice President and Harrison President. People sang:"Rumpsy-Dumpsey, Rumpsey- Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson Killed Tecumsee."
Tecumseh was one of the few who managed to organize real resistance to the white migration west and as such was one of America's greatest threats. Yet whites were so impressed by his nobility that people like Ohio settler John Sherman named his son and future Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman.

1842-THE BIRTHDAY OF BEER! Lager Beer is perfected in the city of Pilzn-Pilsner. Of course, beer was made by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Gauls, and can be traced back to the Ice Age, but our modern concept of beer requiring an advancement in refrigeration is Pilsner or Lager.

1858- An arsonist burned down NY's Crystal Palace Museum.

1864- A cyclone destroyed the Indian City of Calcutta, killing 60,000.

1877- After a lightning campaign across 1,200 miles Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce found himself surrounded by U.S. armies just 40 miles from the Canadian border. At Bear’s Paw near Chinook Montana, Chief Joseph surrendered to General Nelson Miles.
"From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

1880- John J. Loud patented the first ball-point pen. The modern ballpoint was developed by Laszlo Biro in 1938.

1882- Outlaw Frank James surrendered to authorities six months after his brother Jesse was killed. After doing some prison time Frank went straight and toured in a Wild West Show with fellow outlaw Cole Younger. He died peacefully of old age in 1915.

1892-THE DALTON BOYS RAID COFFEEVILLE, Kansas and try to rob two banks at once. One quick thinking bank clerk told them the bank vault was on a time lock and would open shortly. There was no such time lock, but while the badmen waited, the townspeople broke into the hardware store and armed themselves to the teeth. As the Daltons emerged, they were shot down by the locals, much the same way the Jesse James Gang was wiped out at Northfield Minnesota ten years earlier. 8 were killed. Only Emmett Dalton survived despite 25 gunshot wounds. After getting out of jail in 1907, he also wisely went straight.

1904- According to comedian and playwright Steve Martin, this is the day Pablo Picasso met Albert Einstein at the Cafe Lapin Agile. There was a cafe in Paris called Lapin Agile that Picasso did like to frequent, but he never actually met Einstein.

1905- Happy Birthday T-Rex! Prof. Henry Osborne published a paper on the new bones found in Montana of a sleek hunter-killer dinosaur. He originally called it Dynamosaurus Imperiosis, but changed it to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

1908- Bulgaria declared its independence from Turkey and formed a monarchy under German Prince Ferdinand von Battenburg.

1914- The first airplane was shot down by another airplane. For weeks since the Great War began German, British and French airplanes flew missions of air reconnaissance. When planes encountered each other the pilots would fire pistols and even threw darts and bricks at one another. Finally, someone thought of mounting a machine gun on a plane and aerial combat was born.

1915- Germany issued an official apology to the USA over the loss of life in the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania and promised to pay restitution.

1927- Sam Warner, the Warner Brother most responsible for committing the studio to gambling on a talking picture process, died just as the 'Jazz Singer 'opened and made Warner-Vitaphone a major Hollywood power. He literally worked himself into an early grave. Brother Jack Warner had earlier said "Who the heck wants to hear actors talk?"

1927- A play version of the novel Dracula opened on Broadway. It starred a Hungarian immigrant named Bela Lugosi. It became a huge hit and made him a star. When the Hollywood movie version was made, Lugosi and Everett Sloan (Van Helsing) were the only two from the original play.

1930- THE R-101 The BRITISH HINDENBURG- Lord Thompson of Cardington dreamed of a fleet of passenger zeppelins uniting the British Empire much the way steam did in Queen Victoria's time. Dirigible moorings were built in Karachi, Montreal, Sydney and Ismailia in Egypt. The R-101 was the largest zeppelin in the world when she was launched and had all the luxury of the Cunard ocean liners. Lord Thompson himself decided to take the inaugural flight from London to India and back in time to make a vital Imperial conference. On Oct. 4th as a crowd sang Sir Edward Elgar's hymn 'Land of Hope and Glory" Thompson launched the R-101 "I see this great ship of the air built with the same perseverance and permanency that has built our British Empire and will give us the mastery of the air lanes of the world!"
300 miles out the R-101 was struck by a violent thunderstorm and crashed at Beauvais France. A sergeant was heard saying : "We’re down lads." when the hydrogen gas exploded. All but 6 of her 54 passengers died in the flaming inferno, including Lord Thompson. (compared to 30 out of the 96 Hindenburg passengers and crew died). Even though her sister ship the R-100 made a perfect flight to Canada and back the British public was so shocked by the disaster that all further attempts at a British dirigible service was scrapped.

1932- Talking pictures now in vogue, MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton. Keaton later said giving up his independent studio to work for MGM was the biggest mistake of his life.

1933- Warner Bros musical Footlight Parade with James Cagney premiered.

1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. One of the strike leaders arrested was a background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters, then arrested by police for incitement to riot.

1947- President Harry Truman gives the first speech broadcast nationwide on television. In it he asked Americans to forgo eating meat on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, to build up U.S. grain stocks to feed people still starving in Post War Europe.

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River.

1961- There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here!” The Underdog Show premiered.

1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

1969- Cuban Lieutenant Eduardo Jimenez, who wanted to defect to the USA, flew his Mig-21 fighter jet to Miami and landed it at Homestead Airforce Base. But what was embarrassing was he flew completely through all the U.S. advanced warning defenses and missiles, and landed his Mig right next to Air Force One carrying President Richard Nixon. Doh!

1969- Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy was seen going into a Manhattan cinema to see the Swedish X-rated film I Am Curious Yellow. Jackie-O beat up the photographer who caught her, but her example spawned a fashion among New York high society going to see porn as a Sexual Liberation statement. They called it Porn-Chic.

1970- The Canadian October Crisis. A Quebec terrorist separatist group calling itself the FLQ kidnapped and murdered a Canadian cabinet minister. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent army troops into Montreal and Quebec City to impose order.
Worst civilian disturbances in Canada since 1867.

1986- IRAN-CONTRA- President Ronald Reagan feared Communist expansion growing in a new revolutionary regime in Nicaragua. When the U.S. Congress banned any funds for anti-Communist mercenaries, Reagan's National Security Agency staffer Oliver North created a covert pipeline of arms. On this day Nicaraguan communists shot down an unmarked plane full of smuggled weapons flown by a CIA agent named Eugene Hasenfuss. The revelation of the incident sets in motion the scandal that would tarnish the last years of The Reagan Administration.

1989- The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2000- The Yugoslavian Revolution. –Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’ had spent the eleven years since the death of Tito making war on the various ethnic parts of Yugoslavia as they broke off and founded sister republics. War, misery and genocide were meted out on Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and Kossovar Albanians in turn.
Serbia endured the condemnation of the world and American-Nato bombing raids.
This day after refusing to admit he had lost re-election, 200,000 Serbs marched into Belgrade and in a massive "People Power" revolution threw old Slobodan out. Woycheslav Kostunitse was declared the legal president and old Slovo died in jail.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska, a huge bear attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach. When Treadwell appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year, Letterman joked:" Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?" Werner Herzog did a film about his life. Grizzly Man.

2011- Steve Jobs died at age 56 of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET) that spread to his liver. As he faded away, he looked straight ahead as if he was seeing something and murmured "oh wow....oh....wow...."

2017- The Me-Too/Times Up Movement. Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and later the Weinstein Company was one of the most powerful movie producers in Hollywood. This day the NY Times broke the story of his history of sexually abusive conduct towards women. He was first fired from his company, then ejected from the Motion Picture Academy, and is now serving time in prison. Soon more women and men began to come forward with their stories of sexual abuse. All across Hollywood, celebrities’ dark secrets were exposed and careers collapsed. Louis CK, Garrison Keillor, Les Moonves, Maestro James Levine, opera star Placido Domingo, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and more.
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Quiz: What does it mean to be “entering the lists”..?

Answer: In the Middle Ages, lists were the long rail fences separating jousting knights. So, to be entering the lists means to enter a place to battle or compete against others.

Quiz: What does it mean to be “entering the lists”..?

Yesterday’s Answer below: How many capitol cities has the U.S. had?
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History for 10/4/2023
Birthdays: French King Louis X The Stubborn 1314, Richard Cromwell “Tumbledown Dick, “ Rutherford Hayes, Frederick Remington, Jean Millet, Buster Keaton, Englebert Dolfuss, Charlton Heston, Susan Sarandon is 77, Armand Assante, Damon Runyon, Alvin Tofler author of Future Shock, Anne Rice, Alicia Silverstone is 47, Christoph Waltz is 67, Liev Schreiber is 56, Melissa Benoist is 35.

52BC- Julius Caesar completed the conquest of Gaul by accepting the submission of Vercingetorix, the King of the Gauls, at the Siege of Alesia.

1648- Happy Birthday NYFD! Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam Peter Stuyvesant established the first regular municipal fire department in the New World. Most Fire brigades were volunteers until the late 1800s.

1777- BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN George Washington tried a dawn surprise attack on the British army around Philadelphia. The same tactic had worked at Trenton, but here everything went wrong from the start. In the morning fog the Yankee right flank got turned around and started shooting at the Yankee center. The Center thought they were being attacked by Loyalists and returned fire. Two thirds of the American army shot itself to pieces and ran away before the British even knew what was happening. Washington realized he was going to need some drill instructors....

1798- Lyrical Ballads, a small book of poems published jointly by English poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book opened with the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and finished with Wordsworth’s Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tinturn Abbey.” The book didn’t sell that well. Wordsworth blamed Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner poem for being too long. Some of the best sales of the book were by sea captains who thought The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was a collection of sea shanties.

1846- The First American mayor of Los Angeles, a Lieutenant Gillespie, was apparently such an asshole to the population of Spanish Californians that they rose in revolt and chased him out of town. The Californios under their old Mexican General Andres Pico waged a guerrilla war against the U.S. army for the next few months.

1869- Henry J. Heinz began his condiment company, bottling horseradish in a little shop in Pittsburgh. He was later called the Catsup King, -or Ketchup, if you prefer. Ketchup comes from a Chinese fermented fish sauce called Koe-chiap he adapted.
One of the Heinz Company's greatest stunts was in the 1920s they placed a 40 foot tall electrified pickle on the corner of 23rd and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

1909- St. Louis Missouri was site of the first –and only- airship race in the US. Four dirigibles, the total number in America, ran a course for a purse of $1000 dollars.

1910- King Manuel II of Portugal abdicated. The Portuguese Republic is declared.

1918- The day after he took the job of German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden first telegraphed Washington DC to request peace talks to end World War I. But the note said Germany would not give up any of the territory it conquered in Belgium, France or Poland. President Wilson refused this, so the war went on.

1931- Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy" comic strip debuts.

1943- Actor Clark Gable was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying combat missions over Germany. It was said Gable took these deliberately dangerous missions instead of doing USO shows out of a death-wish he had in grief for his wife Carole Lombard, who was killed in a plane crash the year before. She had been urging Gable to volunteer shortly before her death. Adolf Hitler offered a cash reward of $5,000 to anyone who could bring Gable in alive. Adolf was a movie-fan and loved Gone With the Wind.

1950- The first Peanuts comic strip introducing Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy.

1955- The Brooklyn Dodgers a.k.a. "Da Bums" won the World Series for the first time, and the only time they won it while inhabiting the precincts of Flatbush. The name Dodgers came from the fact that several main trolley car lines intersected in front of Ebbets Field on Atlantic Avenue. To get into the ballpark you had to cross this area dodging the traffic. So they were known as the Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers, then Dodgers.

1957- SPUTNIK- Russia first shot an object into space orbit and inaugurates the Space Age. A basketball sized satellite called" Sputnik-1". Sputnik means Fellow Traveler and the word spawned pop words like Beatnik, Nudnik and Peacenik. Americans used to thinking of themselves as the leaders in all technology reacted with shock. Why weren’t we first? We were losing the space race! Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson complained “I don’t want to sleep under a Commie Moon!”
The gov't reaction caused the creation of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which funneled Defense Dept money into research through leading universities. Besides space, DARPA oversaw the development of computer graphics and the Internet.
Wild rock & roll star Little Richard Penniman thought Sputnik was an omen of the end of the world and resolved to give up sex, drugs and rock & roll and become a born again Christian preacher. Good Golly Miss Molly!

1957-"Leave it to Beaver' debuts on CBS.

1961- The Alvin Show premiered.

1965- Pope Paul VI arrived in the US to deliver a plea for world peace at the United Nations. Then his Holiness visited the World’s Fair and took in a Yankee baseball game.

1969- Diane Linkletter, the daughter of television personality Art Linkletter got high on LSD and leapt out of a window to her death. Her boyfriend snatched at the belt loops of her dress in an attempt to save her, but they tore away. Art Linkletter became a livelong crusader against drug abuse.

1970- Janis Joplin was found dead of a drug overdose at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. Room 105. She was 27. Her song “Me and Bobby McGee” was as yet unreleased but soon topped the pop charts. Joplin left a considerable sum in her will for a party for her friends. The invitation read “ The Drinks are on Pearl”, her nickname.

1986- On a New York street a man named William Tager walked up to CBS News anchor Dan Rather and mumbling “Kenneth, what’s the Frequency?” started furiously punching him. He thought CBS was beaming microwaves at his brain and it was Dan’s fault. Who Kenneth was, remains a mystery.

1993- After a two week power struggle between Russian Parliamentary hard line conservatives and President Boris Yeltsin, Russian troops fire on and attack the barricaded Russian White House (Parliament building). The conservatives, including Yeltsin's own vice-president Victor Chernomyrdin, were arrested and the fragile democracy saved. This Parliament building is where Yeltsin himself was barricaded two years earlier during the failed August Coup.

1998- Rolie Polie Olie premiered on The Disney Channel. The French-Canadian Nelvana production, designed by William Joyce, is today considered one of the earliest animated TV series done entirely on computer.

2001- James Hemingway, the youngest son of writer Ernest Hemingway, was found dead in the women’s wing of a Miami jail. He was a transexual street vagrant, going by the name of Gloria, and was picked up by Miami cops for drug use and exposing himself in public. He was 69.

2006- Julian Assange founded Wikileaks.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: How many capitol cities has the U.S. had?

Answer: Five. Philadelphia 1775-1789, Harrisburg PA after the British Army chased them out of Philadelphia for a time., New York City-1789-1795, Philadelphia again 1795-1799. Baltimore 1800 until the Federal City was built up enough to move into. Then Washington D.C,. from Nov 1800 on.

Quiz: Why, I’ll keel haul you! What does keelhauling mean?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Which city is the furthest to the North? Vienna, Venice, Siena or Florence?
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October 2, 2023
Birthdays: King Richard III, Nat Turner, Mahatma Ghandi, Claus Von Hindenburg, Ferdinand Foch, Spanky MacFarland, Groucho Marx, Bud Abbott, Moses Gunn, Graham Greene, LeRoy Shield (composer of the music in the Hal Roach comedies), Donna Karan, Gordon Sumner known as Sting is 72, Lorraine Bracco is 59, Tiffany, Kelly Ripa

Happy Farm Animals Day

1370- King Charles V makes warrior Bertrand Du Guesclin (De-Goo-Clan) Constable of France, and so in charge of the French side of the Hundred Years War. Du Guesclin was a very noble and able knight; not many artifacts remain of his time, but if you go
to the monastery of Mont. St. Michel in Brittany where he kept his wife, they have
the complete selection of her chastity belts.

1552- Ivan the Terrible captured the Tartar capitol of Astrakhan.

1608- Dutch lens grinder Hans Lipperschei sent to the States General in the Hague
a plan for an invention to see enemies at great distances. It used a tube with concave
lenses on one end and convex lenses on the other. The Telescope. Another Dutch lens
maker asked for a similar patent. But it was Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who
read their doctoral papers. Within a year he had ground his own lenses and created
his own telescope. He was the first to train it on the Universe, and he got all the credit.

1780- The Americans hang British Major John Andre' as a spy by a tavern near
present day Nyack, New York. Andre' was Benedict Arnold's contact. He had
put aside his redcoat uniform to slip through American lines. He was arrested before
he could get back. Washington really wanted to trade Andre for Benedict Arnold if he could, and the British were disgusted that Arnold refused to nobly offer himself in exchange. The hangman chosen was a loyalist prisoner who was promised his freedom. It was felt if the executioner was a Yankee, the man's family might be harmed in revenge.

Up until now the British and their Yankee cousins had been quite civil to each other
and it was not uncommon to see paroled American and British officers dining together
at the height of the Revolution. But the British considered this hanging a barbaric
abuse of a prisoner of war. Everyone knew Andre was not a professional spy or turncoat,
but a gentleman British officer of high standing. John Andre had always been dismissed
as a dandy fop, but it was admitted by all he met his end well. After the Revolution, Benedict Arnold retired to England, but he was never accepted by polite British society.

1807- Napoleon met Goethe at the philosopher's home at Weimar. People expected
sparks to fly as The Great Enslaver of Nations would meet The Champion of the Human
Spirit. Actually they had a pleasant afternoon conversation.

1836- Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle returned to Falmouth England, ending a five
year voyage to Brazil, the Galapagos and New Zealand. The knowledge he gained on
exotic flora and fauna would lead him to write the Origin of the Species.

1914- Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicted this day
would be the beginning of the Apocalypse and the End of the World. When nothing
happened, he responded that it was only the beginning of a process of events that would
lead to the eventual end of the world. - oh.

1918- As the German lines on the Western Front continued to crumble liberal Prince Max of Baden agreed to become Chancellor of a new government in Berlin. He demanded that
that Kaiser relinquish the power to make war and peace to the Reichstag. He also
brought two leading Social Democrat deputies into the cabinet. They and General
Ludendorf urged an immediate peace with the Allies before red revolution broke out
in Germany like it had in Russia.

1919- President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke after a speech at Pueblo, Colorado. For two months he lay paralyzed while the U.S. was run by first lady Edith Wilson. No one told the public, or the Vice President. There are many interpretations of how the government was run in those weeks. Edith claimed to be passing on Wilson's wishes to the government from his sickbed, but many thought Wilson was too incapacitated even for that, and The First Lady was running America herself. When Wilson’s debilitated condition became known in Feb, he still refused to relinquish the presidency, inspiring lawmakers to create the 25th Amendment.

1920 - The only triple-header in baseball history was played on this day, as the
Cincinnati Reds took two out of three games from the Pittsburgh Pirates.

1925-The first bright red Leyland doubledecker omnibuses appear on London streets.

1928 - This was a busy day at Victor Records Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. DeFord
Bailey cut eight masters. Three songs were issued, marking the first studio recording
sessions in the place now known as Music City, USA.

1933- Library of Congress musicologist Alan Lomax met with an Arkansas chain gang
convict named Hudlan Ledbetter, who everyone called Ledbelly. He recorded a cotton picking work song of his called "the Rock Island Line' and “The Midnight Special”.

1936- Mussolini attacked Ethiopia.

1937 - Ronald Reagan, just 26 years old, made his acting debut this day
with Warner Brothers release of "Love is in the Air".

1950- Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip debuts. Good ol' Charlie Brown was the name of an office worker Schulz knew that all the guys liked to play jokes on. Schulz's idea 'Little Folks' was initially rejected by all the major comic syndicates. When it was finally accepted, a syndicate editor suggested he change the name to Peanuts, after the children’s Peanut Gallery in the popular Howdy Doody TV Show. Three months before the strip was accepted his girlfriend broke off their engagement. She was convinced he would never amount to anything.
At the time of his death Charles Schulz had mountains on the moon named for his characters, and he was arguably the richest visual artist on earth.

1954- Elvis Presley was fired from Nashville's Grand Ol' Opry Show after
one performance. He was told: "Son, you ain't a' going no where. Go
back to driving a truck!" The next year he was a major star.

1955 - "Good Eeeeeeevening." The master of mystery movies, Alfred
Hitchcock, presented his brand of suspense to millions of viewers on CBS
on this night.

1957- Raintree County, the first film in Panavision.

1957- The Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean, premiered.

1959- The television show The Twilight Zone debuts. Producer/writer Rod Serling
had fought network execs for months that a mystery-suspense show could compete with
all the Doctor and Cowboy shows on TV. He originally wanted Orson Welles to be
the host of the show, but when Welles asked for too much money, Serling decided to
do it himself. He wrote 90 episodes. He said he got the name Twilight Zone from a
term airline pilots used for the region of the sky at dusk when both the clouds and ground are invisible from view and you lose your bearings.

1967- Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African American to be a Supreme
Court Justice.

1967- San Francisco Police raid the Haight-Ashbury home of the rock band the Grateful
Dead, busting everyone for possession of narcotics.

1968- Just a week before the Olympics were set to begin in Mexico City the Mexican
government shot hundreds of rioting student demonstrators and arrested hundreds
more who were never seen again. Thirty years later the incident is still not acknowledged
by them as ever even happening. In 2001, President Vincente Fox did a South-African style peace commission.

1977 - Following a foiled attempt to steal the body of Elvis Presley from
Forest Hill Cemetery, both Presley's and his grandmother's bodies were moved
to Graceland.

1978- Future TV star Tim Allen was busted in Kalamazoo Michigan for selling cocaine.

1982- Godfrey Reggio’s haunting documentary Koyaanisqatsi premiered at Radio City Music Hall. No dialogue, no narration, no actors. just amazing music by Phillip Glass.

1985- Actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS, just 3 ½ months since he announced he had contracted it. He was 59. The first major celebrity to die of the disease.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which city is the furthest to the North? Vienna, Venice, Siena or Florence?

Answer: Vienna.