Question: Last week I asked which movie came out first? Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Now I’m asking what BOOK came out first? (Thanks Chaz)

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In art, what does it mean to work chiaroscuro or chiaro-scuro?
---------------------------------------------------------
History for 8/1/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Claudius, Emperor Pertinax, Francis Scott Key, William Clark of Lewis & Clark, Herman Melville, Robert Todd Lincoln, Geoffrey Holder, Yves St. Laurent, Giancarlo Giannini, Dom Deluise, Jerry Garcia, Coolio, Sam Mendes, Jason Mamoa is 44.

31 B.C. Marc Anthony fell on his sword. It wasn't an accident, that’s how they did themselves in back then. Most people felt the final showdown between Marc Anthony and Augustus would be much bloodier than the war between Caesar and Pompey. But after the naval defeat of Actium, Anthony’s supporters melted away and he was alone.

14 A.D. The Roman Senate voted to change the name of Sextilis Mensis (month number 6) sacred to Ceres (Demeter) to the Month of the deified Caesar Augustus, or August.
Except for February, the calendar system of Julius Caesar alternated one month at 30 days with the next month at 31. But the family of the emperor Augustus did not like that Julius Caesar's month July had 31 days, while theirs had only 30! So, they ordered the Senate to borrow a day from February, a month nobody liked anyway, which went down to 28.

1096- Peter the Hermit's Crusade, an enormous horde of chanting, bloodthirsty peasants, arrived at Constantinople. Their nominal leaders were the monk Peter and Walter Sans Sou or Walter the Penniless. They had spent the march through Europe looting and massacring Jewish enclaves in many cities, and the Byzantine Emperor Alexius didn’t want them turning his city into a war zone. So, he had them ferried them over to Asia without allowing them to enter his gates. They were soon destroyed by the first large Saracen force they encountered. The real First Crusade army arrived months later.


1291- SWITZERLAND BORN- The rebellious peasants of three Helvetian cantons gather on Rutli meadow and pledged to unite in an everlasting league against foreign oppression. The Rütlischwur. Some say William Tell was there, some say no. Some say this happened in November. Some say no. Some say nothing happened on Rutli meadow other than cows grazing, but it’s a good story anyway.

1485 - Henry VII Tudor’s army invaded England to overthrow King Richard III.

1690- The besieged city of Londonderry was rescued by the army of William of Orange.

1714- George Louis/Ludwig, German Elector of Hanover, became George I King of Great Britain upon the death of Queen Anne, last of the Orange dynasty. He never trusted his English subjects, they had too many revolutions, too many confusing Parliamentary checks and balances and had once beheaded their king. George spoke no English ”The English asked me to Rule them, not to Speak to them!”.

1716- The first sculling race, down the Thames from London to Chelsea. Stroke! Stroke!

1740- Thomas Arne's song "Rule Britannia" is performed for the first time.

1744- British chemist Joseph Priestley isolated oxygen, first calling it "dephlogisticated air". His contemporary in France, Lavoisier, had reached a similar conclusion. Before this, doctors knew how the heart, lungs and blood operated, but no one was sure why. Sir William Harvey discovered the circulatory system, but thought it brought only nutrients from food. Some thought the heart was a little furnace that kept the blood warm, others thought it sifted blood as it passed through the ventricle walls like a cheesecloth. Leonardo da Vinci accurately drew the chambers of the heart, but he didn’t know either. Priestley is also credited with inventing the TimeLine of events.

1793 – Revolutionary France became the 1st country to use the metric system.

1797- According to C.S. Forrester, his British naval hero Horatio Hornblower received his captain's commission today.

1798- BATTLE OF ABU KIR or ABOUKIR BAY. Also called THE BATTLE OF THE NILE so it doesn’t confuse it with a land battle of Aboukir happening at the same time. The Nile itself is 20 miles away from Abukir Bay, but it sounds better in dispatches. British Admiral Horatio Nelson caught Napoleon's fleet in an Egyptian harbor and destroyed it in a spectacular night battle.
Nelson bore down upon the French ships even though it was already past 4 p.m.. The furious cannonading lit up the evening sky and caused the windows to rattle in nearby Alexandria. The English ships each had four lanterns hung on their stern rails so they could tell each other apart in the dark. The French complained about the English sailors disconcerting habit of cheering like a football match whenever an enemy ship went down or was dismasted. The French Admiral Brousse', his legs blown off by a cannonball, was propped up in an armchair on his poopdeck and died directing the fight. Nelson was wounded in the head by flying splinters and was temporarily blinded by his own blood.
Fighting was over by dawn as the exhausted sailors dropped from their guns dead asleep. The victory ruined Napoleon's efforts to destroy the British Empire through Egypt and Turkey and link up with Indian Maharratta Tippoo Sahib in India.

1805- Aaron Burr has dinner with Gen. Andrew Jackson in Nashville. The former Vice President was still wanted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton, and was plotting a mercenary invasion of the northernmost territory of Spanish-America called Texas. After President Jefferson had Burr arrested for treason, Jackson denied this dinner ever happened. Twenty-five years later, when Andy Jackson was president, the elderly Aaron Burr tried to greet him in public in New York. It was reported when Pres. Jackson saw Burr, “He turned pale, and recoiled as though he had been shot."

1861- The Empire of Brazil became one of the few nations to recognize the independence of the Confederate States of America.

1873 - San Francisco's first cable cars begin running, operated by Hallidie's Clay Street Hill Railroad Company.

1876- Colorado became a state. Because it happened in the year of the American centennial, Colorado calls itself the Centennial State.

1881- Angel Island in San Francisco Bay was established as a US gov quarantine station. Soon it was converted into an immigration station to control the influx of newcomers from China and Japan. Angel Island became the Pacific version of Ellis Island.

1893 - Henry Perky & William Ford patented Shredded Wheat cereal.

1914- Count Friedrich von Portales, the German ambassador to Russia, suffering from nervous exhaustion after a sleepless week of negotiations, appeared in the office of the Czar's foreign minister Nikolai Sazonov. He asked if Russia had reconsidered Germany's ultimatum that Russia demobilize. Sazonov said they did not. Whereupon Portales pulled a paper out his pocket and read the Declaration of War: "His Majesty the Kaiser, my august sovereign, accepts the challenge in the name of the empire and now considers himself at war with Russia!"
Portales then burst into tears and was comforted by his old friend Sazonov. Late that night Czar Nicholas II was lowering himself into his bathtub with a glass of tea when a final telegram pleading for peace came from Kaiser Wilhelm. "Silly man! Hadn't he just declared war on me?" Nicholas remarked. He wrote he slept soundly that night.

1917- Frank Little, native-American union organizer for the I.W.W. (the Wobblies) was beaten by a mob and hanged from a railroad trestle. His murder had originally been offered to new young Pinkerton detective named Dashell Hammett, who refused.

1919- In the postwar chaos of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bela Kun seized power in Budapest and tried to set up a Soviet regime like Lenin in Russia. This day he was deposed and Admiral Horty began a purge of all leftists. The violence in Hungary inspired young scientist Dr Edward Teller to be a livelong opponent of Communism. Teller developed the Hydrogen Bomb. Bela Kun fled to Moscow where Josef Stalin had him shot.

1924- Six months after his death, Russian Leader Nikolai Lenin’s mummified body is unveiled in his great tomb in Red Square. After the USSR fell in 1991, there were many calls to finally bury the Commie-Under-Glass, but in 2001 the decision was made to leave him as is.

1933- The WPA Arts Project set up to employ starving artists on large public works projects like murals for libraries and bridges, etc. Artists like Grant Wood, Andrew Wyeth, Dorothea Lang, Jackson Pollock, Orson Welles and Bernice Abbott got commissions.

1936- Carl Stalling first day as music director for Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes and Merry Melodys. Stalling became famous for blending classical music seamlessly with modern swing tunes. Many young people say it was their first exposure to classical music.

1936- The opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Berlin. The first Olympic torch lighting ceremony. United States was the only nation to refuse to dip their flag in salute to the host head of state- Adolf Hitler. Filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl was given unlimited access to document the Games. She pioneered the use of slow motion, tracking shots and closeups to revolutionized the way modern sports was filmed.

1940- Hitler released War Directive #17, calling for increased air and sea operations against the British Isles. Operations were to commence August 5th which der Fuehrer called “The Day of the Eagle”. We call it the Battle of Britain.

1943- Late at night off the coast of Borneo the little torpedo boat P.T. 109 was rammed and sunk by the Japanese destroyer Amaqiri. Lieutenant John F. Kennedy and his crew swam to an uncharted island. They will be rescued when a native in a canoe delivers a message from Kennedy scrawled on a coconut. “Naru Is. Native knows it. 11 alive, need small boat.” When President, Kennedy had the native man to the White House and kept the coconut on his desk in the Oval Office. In June 2002 Dr. Robert Ballard, who had discovered the Titanic, found the wreckage of the PT 109 on the ocean bottom.

1946- Congress authorized all the leftover World War II army surplus to be sold off and the money given out as educational scholarships. The Fullbright Scholarships. This is when every small town had an Army Surplus store.

1946- Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act. It nationalized atomic energy research but created a civilian commission to review peacetime uses of atomic energy.

1946-The first drive-in bank teller opens in Chicago.

1952- The first Mad Magazine hit the newsstands.

1953- The Alan Ladd movie Shane released.

1960 - Chubby Checker released "The Twist" and started a worldwide dance craze.

1960 –A young Baptist preacher’s daughter who had sung nothing but gospel went into a recording booth to try her hand at R & B. Aretha Franklin’s career began.

1966- TEXAS TOWER WHITMAN- Lunatic Charles Whitman barricaded himself into the high steeple of Texas University and shot 44 people at random during a day long gun battle with police. The tragedy reached comic proportions when Texas recreational gun owners hauled out their pieces and blazed away alongside the police. Whitman's Marine training was cited for his excellent marksmanship and his eccentric behavior, like constantly polishing his shoes during the day long battle.

1970- The first San Diego Comicon. Shel Dorf, Richard Alf, and Ken Keuger’s idea of a national comic book & fantasy fan convention. The SDCC has run continually ever since and had brought in the Hollywood studios. There have always been other comicons in other cities, but San Diego’s has become the premiere event, averaging hundreds of thousands of attendees.
. Special guests for the very first convention were comic book artist Jack Kirby and science fiction authors Ray Bradbury and A.E. van Vogt.

1971- The Rock Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison. The first charity-fund raising rock-concert.

1971- The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour debuted.

1971- PBS started a new television series called Masterpiece Theater hosted by Alastair Cooke. It’s first presentation was The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The high-quality BBC and Thames Television programs became so popular in the USA, that people said PBS stood for Preferably British Shows.

1972- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s first articles in The Washington Post exposing the depths of the conspiracy in the Watergate Scandal. The two journalists claimed they were fed information by someone very high in the Nixon White House who would only give his name as Deep Throat. In 2005 his identity was at last revealed as W. Mark Felt, the assistant head of the FBI. Their story was dramatized in the film- All The Presidents Men.

1972- 187th Tactom Flight Group of the Air Texas National Guard suspended the flight privileges of Lieutenant George W. Bush for failing to take a drug test. The future US president went AWOL (away without leave) from May 1972-to May 1973 to work on his dads’ congressional campaign. It was well known then that some National Guard units were an easy way for rich kids with connections to avoid being sent to the real combat in Vietnam. His unit was called a Champagne Unit.

1973- With the tag line “Where were you in ’62?” the film American Graffiti opened in theaters. The hit made skinny young director George Lucas a player in Hollywood, and made stars of kids like Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard, and Susanne Somers.

1975- Billy Martin became manager of the New York Yankees. The hard-drinking, bad tempered Martin became one of the more colorful managers to lead the pinstripe crew.

1976- Elizabeth Taylor had married Richard Burton a second time. Today she divorced Richard Burton a second time. This was her 6th marriage.

1976- The expansion team The Seattle Seahawks play their first NFL game. They lost their preseason opener to the SF 49ers 27-20.

1981-I WANT MY MTV! MTV goes on the air, rock videos 24 hours a day. The idea was funded by a consortium of investors including Mike Nesmith of the Monkees, then on the board of 3M Paper company. If you put on the TV this day you saw a slide of an astronaut for several hours, then finally a voice said:” Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Rock & Roll.” The first rock video played was by a British New-Wave Band called the Buggles entitled “Video Killed the Radio Star.” followed by a Pat Benatar single.

1986- Howard the Duck premiered. George Lucas’ first major flop.

1991- Elderly movie queen Heddy Lamarr was busted in Tampa Florida for shoplifting.

1994- NASDAQ stock trading on Wall Street was halted for 35 minutes because a squirrel gnawed through a main fiber optic cable at the organization’s computer center in Connecticut.

2007- THE MINNEAPOLIS BRIDGE COLLAPSE. The I-35 Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi through the center of Minneapolis, collapsed during the afternoon rush hour, plunging 113 cars into the river. It killed 13 people and injured 145. The tragedy was a wake up call to America’s neglected infrastructure. Most American bridges were 40-70 years old and built only intended to last 75 years. In Los Angeles in 2014, a ninety-year old water pipe burst spilling 12 million gallons, this during a drought. Chunks of the Brooklyn Bridge keep falling off into the East River. In 1958 the U.S. spent 12% of the Federal Budget on infrastructure, in 2007, 2%.

2014- Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy opened in theaters. I am Groot.

2018- The NY Mets lost to the Washington Nationals by a score of 25-2, a team record loss.
===============================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: In art, what does it mean to work chiaroscuro or chiaro-scuro?

Answer: It means dark-to-light. To contrast your figures in dramatic dark shadows. Most famous artist doing this was Carravaggio.

Question: In art, what does it mean to work chiaroscuro or chiaro-scuro?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In Britain, when one asks for two guineas, how much is that in modern money?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

History for 7/31/2023
Birthdays: Liberace, General George H. Thomas the "Rock of Chickamagua", Sebastian Sperling Kresge the founder of S.S. Kresge stores, Milton Friedman, Sherry Lansing, Geraldine Chaplin, Kurt Gowdy, Dean Cain, Leon “ Bull “Durham, Primo Levi, Fred Quimby, animator Ken Harris, Ted Cassidy who played Lurch in the Adams Family, Wesley Snipes is 61, and according to J.K. Rowling, today is the birthday of Harry Potter

1358- The Mayor of Paris Etienne Marcel was killed trying to defend his city from the King of France’s royal army. Marcel tried to use the chaos of the English Hundred Years War to gain independence for Paris like the city-states of Italy. He governed the city with a bodyguard of Malletards, workmen who wielded huge two-handed sledgehammers instead of swords. After Marcel fell, Paris was governed by a royal appointee. There would be no Mayor of Paris until the Revolution in 1789. Today the Mayor of Paris is considered a direct step to the French Presidency.

1498- Christopher Columbus discovered Trinidad.

1620- The Pilgrims set sail for America. They were aiming for Virginia but washed up in Massachusetts instead. Comedian Eddie Izzard noted:” The Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth and landed in…. Plymouth! How convenient for them!”



1703- In London, writer Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) was made to stand in the public pillory for writing critical satires of the Her Majesties government and Church. The pamphlet was The Shortest Way with Dissenters.

1720- Height of the Great Plague of Marseilles- A bubonic plague of such ferocity hits the city that the regional parliament at Aix en Provence drew a line around the city and forbade anyone to enter or leave. Order within the city collapsed and the Bishop of Marseilles with his Jesuits took over the day-by-day functions. Everyday the Bishop, seated on a huge wagon of corpses pulled by convicts chanting the "Miserere' would lead a procession to church. Ahh, the good ole' days.. In later years people never forgot the heroism of the prelate. When the French Revolution ordered the despoiling of churches, the people of Marseilles refused to throw down the statue of their hero bishop.

1763- Battle of Bloody Bridge. British Captain Dalyell tried a surprise attack on Chief Pontiac’s camp to relieve the Indian siege of Fort Detroit. But Pontiac was forewarned. His warriors shot up Dalyell and his men. Pontiac slew the captain and ate his heart.

1776- Francis Salvador, a South Carolina plantation owner was killed in a skirmish with British troops. He became the first of the Jewish faith to die for American Independence.

1790- The U.S. Patent Office opened.

1793- THE BIRTH OF THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM IN AMERICA- Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson informed President George Washington of his intention to resign. Jefferson was frustrated with his endless feuds with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Adams. Although he told Washington he wished to retire to Monticello, in reality he planned to direct the strategy of his new opposition party the Democratic-Republicans. The party that became the Democratic Party was first called the Republicans, the term “democrat” was then seen as an insult. Jefferson called Hamilton’s Federalist party “the Monocrats” because he felt they had royal ambitions. From now on with few exceptions the U.S. President’s cabinet would not be a coalition of differing viewpoints but all from one party. The modern Republican Party would not be born until Lincoln’s time, 60 years in the future. Washington was appalled that his old friend and fellow Virginia planter Jefferson would take partisanship so far that he would desert his cabinet. George Washington thought political parties a bad idea because it encouraged people to put the needs of their party over the needs of their country.

1798- Admiral Horatio Nelson sighted Napoleon's fleet anchored in the bay of Aboukir at the mouth of the Nile. Since it was too late that evening to fight, the one-eyed, one armed admiral ordered dinner to be served. Over port he told his captains; "Gentlemen, tomorrow I shall gain either a peerage, or a crypt in Westminster Abbey."

1813- The British invaded New York State at Plattsburgh.

1830- The Revolution of the Ten Days- King Charles X of France overthrown and replaced with his cousin Louis Phillipe d' Orleans as a constitutional monarch, The event was remembered by Delacroix in his painting "Liberty Leading the People". The Royal French Army was deliberately held back from suppressing the rebellion by their leaders. They were Napoleon’s old Generals Marmont and Soult. Honore Daumier liked to draw new King Louis Phillipe“ The Bourguois Monarch” as a fat pear in a top hat. Prince Metternich the premier of Austria correctly predicted this uprising would signal a new round of revolutionary ferment throughout Europe: ”When Paris Sneezes, Europe catches the cold.” King Louis Phillipe’s descendants, the D’Orleans branch of the Bourbon family, are the present heirs to the throne, should the French Nation ever desire a monarchy again.

1904- Russia completed the Trans-Siberian Railroad, linking the Ural Mountains and European Russia with the Pacific Coast.

1914- Europe spirals down into world war. The Czar of Russia changed his mind one more time and ordered the Russian Army to mobilize. He told his chief of staff ” You may smash your telephone now, for I will not change my mind again.” The French government decided to reject a last minute German warning to keep away from their coming war with Russia. France ordered general mobilization. 

The leader of the French Socialists and best hope for European peace, Jean Jaure' had helped diffuse a similar crisis the previous year by chairing a last minute international summit in Switzerland. This night Jean Jaure’ was sipping wine in a Paris café, when a bullet came through the window and killed him. Someone obviously didn’t want him to spoil the fun.

1914- Meanwhile in America the reaction to the war in Europe was THE WALL STREET PANIC OF 1914. American investors feared the coming war would cut off European markets for their goods and thus be disastrous for business. So many sell orders deluged the exchange that on the advice of Treasury Secretary MacAdoo and J.P. Morgan, Jr. the New York Stock Exchange closed down completely until December. 

Brokers began to meet in the street around Wall and Nassau streets and make deals anyway. These 'Gutter-Brokers" were the world's only open functioning stock market for several months. Ironically the war proved a boon to U.S. industry (stock in Dupont went up 400%) and caused the U.S. to supplant England as the world's largest creditor nation.

1917- The PASSCHENDALE OFFENSIVE also called the Third Battle of Ypres began- Field Marshall Sir Douglas "Whiskey Doug" Haig proved he learned nothing from the last 3 1/2 years of trench war by ordering a massed standing infantry attacks right into massed German machine guns. Even today the War Office is vague on the losses, but the estimate is between now and November, tens of thousands of young Britons and Canadians were slaughtered to move the front line 1/2 a mile. When hearing of the high casualties, Sir Douglas said:" Oh dear, have we really lost that many?" Poet Siegfrid Sassoon later wrote, “ I died in Hell, and they called it Paschendaele.”

1922- Ralph Samuelson invented water skis.

1930- Radio mystery show “The Shadow” premiered. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows…heh, heh, heh.” Orson Welles did the voice of the crime fighting Shadow for a year in 1937 for $185 a week.

1945- Still at the Potsdam conference, Pres. Harry Truman gave the orders to use the Super Cosmic Bomb (a-bomb) on Japan, but not before Aug 2nd, to see if Japanese peace overtures through the Swedish Embassy were sincere. He conferred with General Eisenhower in Europe, but Ike was against the idea:” It was unnecessary to use that thing on those people.”

1945- Allied authorities capture arch-collaborator Pierre Laval hiding in Austria. Laval was the premier and chief organizer of the pro-Nazi Vichy French government under Marshal Petain. He cooperated in the transporting of thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps, and many others Frenchmen to slave labor camps. After a sensational trial Laval, tried to poison himself, but was nursed back to health long enough so he could hang.

1948- President Truman dedicated New York City’s second major airport Idlewild Field. In 1963 it was renamed JFK Airport.

1954- Steve Allen married Jayne Meadows.

1966- Birmingham Alabama held a massed rally to burn Beatles records after John Lennon casually joked that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus.

1960- Elijah Mohammed set up the African-American movement the Nation of Islam, called by some the Black Muslims.
1962- Malaysian independence.

1968- Charles Schulz introduced Franklin, the first black character into his Peanuts comic strip.

1970- Black Tot Day- The British Navy officially ended its centuries old custom of giving a ships crew a ration of rum.

1971- Apollo 15 astronaut went for a drive on the surface of the moon in their land-rover.

1977- Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz had kept normally unflappable New York City in the grip of fear for one year. This night he killed his last victim. He was caught because of his Volkswagen beetle being illegally parked. When writing the ticket the policeman noticed the 44 cal. pistol sticking out of a paper bag on the seat. Berkowitz was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences and today says he is a born-again Christian and he doesn’t like to dwell on the past. While in Attica he made friends with Mark David Chapman, the murderer of John Lennon.

1992- Bebe’s Kids released, the first animated feature directed by an African American, Bruce W. Smith.

1992- The Robert Zemeckis’ comedy Death Becomes Her opened. With Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis. It is the first film that widely used the new digital matte technique to replace traditional optical printing.

1995- The Walt Disney Company bought the ABC Network, the Discovery Channel and ESPN.
1999- Premiere of Brad Bird’s movie The Iron Giant.

2006- Elderly Cuban dictator Fidel Castro handed over leadership to his brother Raul Castro and went into retirement.

2020- The Twitter accounts of famous people like former Pres Obama, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk were hacked for a sophisticated bitcoin scam. The person arrested was not a foreign agent or terrorist, but a 17 year old High School student from Tampa, Fla., named Graham Clark.

2022- George Jetson of the 1960s TV show The Jetsons was born. The show is set when George was age 40, in 2062.
=========================================================

Yesterday’s Question: In Britain, when one asks for two guineas, how much is that in modern money?

Answer: About 2 Pounds, 10 Pence. A Guinea was a gold coin introduced in England in 1663. A quarter ounce of gold minded in a place in Africa called Guinea. It lost its significance when the currency was reformed in 1814, then again in 1971. But the name still pops up in slang.

Question: In Britain, when one asks for two guineas, how much is that in modern money?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is an Arriviste?
================================================
History for 7/30/2023
Birthdays: Georgio Vasari, Henry Ford, Emily Bronte', Casey Stengel, Roy Williams, Vladimir Zworykin, Arnold Schwarzenegger is 76, Ed "Kookie" Byrnes, Peter Bogdanovich, Delta Burke, Henry Moore, Anita Hill, Lawrence Fishburne is 62, Jean Reno is 74, Hilary Swank is 49, Christopher Nolan, Lisa Kudrow is 60

101 B.C.- Marius of Rome defeated two migrating hordes of German barbarians, the Teutons and Cimbri, at Raudine Plains. Marius built a fortified camp in their path and held them off until he was ready and his men got over their fear of these strange looking wildmen. Warriors taunted the Romans: “Do you have any messages for your wives? For we shall be with them soon!” When one frustrated German warchief marched up to the gates and challenged Marius to single-combat, Marius laughed and sent out a gladiator, "Here, fight him. He loves to fight." When he felt they were at last ready Marius marched out his legions and they defeated the barbarians.

1540- When King Henry VIII broke England away from the Catholic Church, he spent some time trying to decide just how Protestant England should be. The confusion was made manifest this day when at Smithfield, he burned at the stake three Catholics for not wanting to be Protestant, then three Protestants for questioning Catholic doctrine.

1619- The Virginia House of Burgesses formed, the first legislative body in the US.

1700- The British Succession Crisis- The 11year old Duke of Gloucester, only surviving child of Princess Anne and the grandson of King James, died of smallpox. This left England with no future prince, only a gouty old princess who had 17 miscarriages or dead children, and widowed King William III of Orange- childless, and tuberculate. The exiled Catholic king James II Stuart was living in Rome, waiting to be recalled. Many Whig politicians even wanted to chuck the whole system and make Britain a Republic! Odds Fish! Parliament solved the crisis with the Act of Settlement of 1701- That Anne would reign as Queen after William of Orange died, and then the Protestant family of her cousin the German elector of Hanover, George I would reign. This act reinforced the law that a Catholic could never again rule England.

1729- The City of Baltimore founded. Named for Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore.

1733- The first lodge of Freemasons in the US opened in Boston.

1792- LE MARSEILLAISE- During the French Revolution, an officer named Rouget de Lisle wrote a song called Chant for the Army of the Rhine.
A young volunteer from Montpellier called François Mireur sang it at a patriotic gathering in Marseille. The local national guard liked it so much they adopted it as their marching song. By the time The Marseilles guards made their entrance into Paris the fame of their song had spread. Le Marseillaise quickly became the clarion call of the Revolution and the national anthem.
In the 1970s The first lady of France Mitterand, caused a furor when she suggested changing some of the more bloodthirsty lyrics of the song. Like “ We’ll water our fields with the blood of our enemies.”

1810- Father Miquel Hidalgo, who began the Mexican revolution against Spain, was shot by firing squad. But the revolt continued until Mexico achieved independence in 1823.

1847 - Queen Victoria noted in her diary today she took a swim in the ocean for the first time. She entered a cottage on wheels called a bathing house and while she changed into her fully covered bathing costume the cottage was rolled into the water by means of cranks and pulleys. Another time she was at the beach at Ostend, Belgium, she noticed the curious habit there of women swimming with their hair loose " down to their hips, like penitents."

1864- Confederate raiders led by Jubal Early looted and burned the Northern town of Chambersburg Pennsylvania, in retribution for Yankee depredations down south.

1864- THE CRATER- One of the strangest battles of the Civil War. A Pennsylvania coal mine engineer convinced General Grant to dig a tunnel under Robert E. Lee's army and fill it with 8 million pounds of gunpowder. The massive explosion blew 4,500 troops into the air and created the first man-made mushroom cloud. It created a crater 30 feet deep and 200 yards wide. No one had ever seen anything so terrible. However the follow up Union attack was so badly bungled the rebels had time to recover from their shock and fight back. Instead of using a highly trained fresh black regiment, Grant instead sent in two exhausted frontline regiments who were told they were going to a rest area. He didn’t want to be accused of racism. The Union troops were supposed to attack around the rim of the crater, Instead they went down into it through a bottleneck and were massacred by the rebs from above as they tried to climb up the steep 30 foot walls. Troops bayoneted each other trying to get out of the slaughter pen. Another chance to end the war early was ruined. Grant sacked the commander, a General Ledlie, who spent the battle drinking brandy in the rear. "The generals dismissal was a great loss to the enemy" one officer wrote. It all accomplished nothing. One soldier said: "I hope we never make war like that again".

1867- After the Civil War the conquered states of the South were divided up into districts of military occupation. On this day General Phil Sheridan was removed from the military governorship of Texas and Louisiana for being too harsh. During his two years in charge, Sheridan sacked the Governors of Texas and Louisiana, as well as the mayors of New Orleans, Shreveport and Galveston. He hated Texans as unreconstructed rebels that should have gotten what Atlanta got. "If I owned both Hell and Texas and was forced to choose, I'd sell Texas and live in Hell!"

1889- Start of the Sherlock Holmes mystery, the Naval Treaty.

1915- WWI, At the Battle of Hooge, the Germans first introduced hand-held flamethrowers as a weapon.

1916- The Black Tom Pier Explosion- Throughout World War I German spies and saboteurs were active on American waterfronts. On this day German agents Kurt Jahnke and Lothar Witzkhe detonated two million pounds of explosive destined for the European battlefields on a New Jersey pier behind the Statue of Liberty. It caused 45 million dollars in damage, windows on Wall Street shattered and the Statue's arm was knocked slightly loose. In later years the park service would forbid tourists from climbing up to the torch. The success of German agents in America in World War I was a reason why in World War II-army intelligence struck a deal with the Mafia to keep peace on the waterfront.

1917- Two New York hotel detectives caught Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them off with $20 each. "I thought I wouldn't get off for under a thousand!" he told a friend. Later as President, Harding always kept a guard at the door.

1929 -The Hollywood Bowl musicians go on strike.

1932-Walt Disney’s “Flowers and Trees” the first Technicolor Cartoon. Disney had worked out a deal with Technicolor creator Dr. Herbert Kalmus to use his technique exclusively for two years to show larger Hollywood studios its quality.

1932- The first Los Angeles hosting of the Olympic Games in their spanking new Coliseum. Gold medalists in swimming Larry Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller later became movie stars. Another medalist, the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, began to teach the Californians about a new sport- surfing!

1935- The first paperback book. Andre Maurois 'Ariel, a Life of Shelley', published in this new form by Penguin Books of London.

1936- Producer David O. Selznick bought the movie rights to the best-selling novel “Gone With The Wind” from an ailing Irving Thalberg. The "boy genius" Thalberg was hoping that Selznick would ruin himself in the process of making this film. Thalberg was convinced that GWTW would prove to be a massive flop because "Costume dramas are box office poison."

1938- Adolf Hitler awarded the Third Reich’s highest civilian medal to American industrialist Henry Ford. He admired Ford’s anti-Semitic views. Ford paid for copies of the racist book Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be placed in American libraries. CBS reporter William Shirer noted when interviewing Hitler, that he had translations of Ford’s own newspaper the Dearborn Independent on his desk. The Chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce also got a medal from Der Fuehrer in recognition the international corporate support of the Nazi regime. They admired the way Hitler suppressed unions, the 8 Hour Work Day and other bad-for-business items.

1948 - Professional wrestling premieres on prime-time network TV (DuMont)

1954 - Elvis Presley joins Local 71, the Memphis Federation of Musicians.

1955 – Pres. Eisenhower signed the bill declaring "In God We Trust" to be the official motto of the USA replacing E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one). It had been on coins since 1864. This was around the same time "under God" was also added to the Pledge of Allegiance.

1959- Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor patented the integrated circuit.

1962- Italy adopts a total ban on cigarette advertising. Consumption of cigarettes doubled.

1963 –Escaped British spy Kim Philby was found living in Moscow.

1965- President Lyndon Johnson signs the Medicare Act and issues the first medicare card (#00001) to former president Harry Truman.

1966 - BATMAN: THE MOVIE, and based on the 1966 BATMAN television series, opened. Directed by Leslie H. Martinson and starring Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin,

1972- John Boorman’s thriller Deliverance, with Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty.

1974- President Richard Nixon turned over his White House tapes on Watergate after being forced to by the Supreme Court. That same day the House Judiciary Committee voted three acts of impeachment against the President.

1975- Teamster union boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared while on the way to a lunch meeting with Teamster officials at a small Detroit restaurant. He once said: "Bodyguards? Who needs bodyguards?" He hated Bobby Kennedy so much that when he learned of his assassination, he ordered the half-masted flag at his union office run back up to the top and spent the day at the track celebrating. Rumor has it he currently resides under the goalposts at Giants Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. Another story is that he was strangled by a Mafia hit man named Sal Briguglio, then his body was taken to an auto fender factory, cut up and the pieces thrown into vats of boiling zinc. Briguglio was himself whacked in 1978.

1986- Walt Disney released “Flight of the Navigator”, directed by Randal Kleiser, featuring early photo-real CG VFX done by Canadian studio Omnibus.

1988- The last Playboy Club in America closed. It was in Lansing, Mich. In 2006 Hugh Hefner opened a Playboy Club themed casino in Las Vegas.

1999- The Blair Witch Project opened in theaters. The low-budget indy became a huge hit due to an on-line grass roots campaign claiming that the footage of teenager encountering the supernatural was genuine.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: What is an Arriviste?

Answer: A ruthlessly ambitious person, especially one who has recently acquired wealth or social status. An unscrupulous social-climber.

Question: What is an Arriviste?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?
======================================================
History for 7/29/2023
Birthdays: Alex de Tocqueville, Benito Mussolini, Clara Bow, Natalie Wood, Paul Taylor, Sig Romberg, Dag Hammarskjold, Peter Jennings, Michael Spinks, Maria Ouspenskaya, Dave Stevens creator of the Rocketeer, Ken Burns is 69, Booth Tarkington, David Warner, Steven Dorff, Professor Irwin Corey, William Cameron-Menzies, Peter Jennings, William Powell, Will Wheaton

1014- Battle of Kleidion, BalaThistau- Byzantine Emperor Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer defeated an entire Bulgar horde. He had 15,000 captured warriors blinded, leaving one man in one hundred with one eye to lead them all home. When Samuel the Bulgar Khan beheld his mutilated army limping back, he dropped dead in shock.

1030- Battle of Stiklestaad- One of the largest Viking battles ever- King Olaf the White went down fighting the still pagan Norsemen of Denmark and Sweden and became St. Olaf the Martyr. Olaf's method of converting Vikings to Christianity was similar to his uncle King Olaf Tryggvason, which was to sail a big fleet of dragon ships up and down the coast and chop anybody who didn't want to be baptized.
But while Tryggvason's death in battle at Svoldr spawned some great epic poems and music by Edvard Grieg, Olaf the Saint's death spawned miracles and shrines and he was canonized a year later. Anxious Vikings who wanted to fence-sit in this struggle over religion took to wearing an amulet that turned one side resembled the Cross, while turned over became the Hammer of Thor.

1527- King Charles of Spain informed his ambassador in England that he would advise the Pope to refuse a divorce for King Henry VIII and his wife Catharine of Aragon. And since King Charles had the Pope in prison, I would say that about settled the matter.

1565 - Mary Queen of Scots married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.

1567- The ten month old baby James VI, the offspring of Lord Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots was named King of Scotland in Edinburgh. It’s the last James would ever see his mother. His father was murdered and his mom beheaded by Queen Elizabeth, but after a number of guardians James had the last laugh. Eventually he become King of both Scotland and England.

1588- The SPANISH ARMADA DEFEATED. The great armada was sent originally to ferry the Duke of Parma's army from Holland over to England. Elizabeth didn't have much in the way of militia so the crack Spanish troops once landed probably could have taken London without too much difficulty. The admiral in charge of the fleet, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia was a replacement for the late famous captain Don John of Austria and the equally dead Marquis of Santa Cruz. Medina-Sidonia admitted he knew nothing about ships.

This day was the BATTLE OF GRAVELINES, largest engagement of the Armada and the English navy under Francis Drake. They pounded one another and after Medina Sidonia discovered he could not pick up Parma’s army he resolved to sail home. The bulk of the Armada was destroyed by a North Sea storm off Ireland. When Medina-Sidonia appeared before King Phillip II, he replied: “I told Your Majesty I knew nothing about ships!”
Although this great victory of the British Navy saved England, Queen Elizabeth's budget for them was amazingly stingy. More British sailors died from rancid food than Spanish gunfire. The English fleet had to break off its attack when they ran out of cannonballs. Spain sent other armadas at England over the next few years, but this was the most famous.

1693- Battle of Neerwinden- With the command “En Advance!” the French under Marshal Turenne attacked William of Orange with these newfangled "bayonets", combining the power of a pike with a musket. One of the French leaders was Pierre Montesqiou Comte D'Artagnan, the model for the hero of Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers.

1792- Maximillien Robsepierre stood up in the National Assembly and for the first time openly called for the dethronement of their King Louis XVI.

1813- General Junot, boyhood friend of Napoleon, and veteran of a dozen battles, suffered a nervous breakdown and jumped out of a window to his death. It was said he went mad, but could it possibly have been an early example of PTSD? Despite being so tight with Bonaparte, he couldn’t rise above the rank of general of division because he just didn’t have the ability. Ironically there was a costume ball that night and he jumped in his costume.

1848- The Tipperarry Revolt. At the height of the great potato famine William Smith O’Brien and his Young Ireland Movement tried to declare Independence. After a skirmish with police in a cabbage patch, they were rounded up and shipped to New Zealand.

1890- Near Auvers-sur-Oise, artist Vincent Van Gogh went behind a hay bale and was shot. He lingered for two days and died of blood poisoning. He was 37. His brother Theo was so distraught he died six months later of a brain disease and melancholia.
For many years everyone believed Van Gogh committed suicide. Recent scholarship established that van Gogh may not have shot himself, but tussled with a group of neighborhood children who liked to taunt the “Crazy Man”. A boy named Rene’ Secretan acted like a cowboy and carried a pistol. In the melee’ his pistol went off. Van Gogh later said he did it to himself to spare the children any jail. Decades later as an old man, Rene’ Secretan confessed he fired the fatal shot.

1900- King Umberto I of Italy was shot and killed by anarchists. The assassin was Angelo Bresci, a silk merchant from Patterson New Jersey who had returned to the old country to rid Italy of monarchs.

1914- Czar Nicholas of Russia changed his mind about mobilizing his army, writes his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany in English, their common tongue, and warned that rising pressures were forcing him to declare war. "Could not the Austro-Serbian dispute be settled by the Hague Conference? Your Loving Nicky".
Wilhelm scrawled in the margin "Rubbish". Later Wilhelm too had second thoughts about blowing up Europe and went up to his Bavarian hunting lodge to sulk about it. The German army chief of staff Von Moltke talked him out of his funk." How could you let down all those wonderful guys working long hours at the general staff by declaring peace?"

1918- At Grey’s Inn in London, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill first met Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then US Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Twenty years later, they would become close friends while running a much larger war.

1920 - 1st transcontinental airmail flight from NY to SF.

1922- In Kansas City, Walt Disney released his first Laugh-o-Gram short- Little Red Riding Hood, animated by Rudy Ising.

1927- Dr Phillip Drinker and Dr Louis Shaw installed the first Iron Lung breathing apparatus at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

1931- George Bernard Shaw traveled to Moscow and met Josef Stalin.

1938- Three Missing Links- a Three Stooges comedy with the boys as cave men and Ray Crash Corrigan in a gorilla suit.

1942- Orson Welles left Rio De Janiero after RKO fired him and stopped production of "It's All True". RKO also had “the Magnificent Ambersons” re-cut to a more acceptable 90 minutes and fired the executive producer first who brought him to Hollywood.

1944- THE WARSAW UPRISING-As the Red Army under Marshall Voroshilov approached the eastern Praga suburbs of Warsaw, Radio Moscow broadcast a cryptic message to Poles inside their occupied capitol to “resist the occupying forces”. The Polish underground resistance the Home Army, or the AK, took this as the signal to rise and take the city the way the French underground taken key point of Paris. But Stalin tricked them. He had no intention of cooperating after the war with an independent Polish force. He let the AK battle the Nazis for weeks alone and the Red Army didn’t move into downtown Warsaw until they were all dead.

1946- In Los Angeles, Jazz great Charlie Parker had learned of the death of his baby daughter back in New York. He showed up for a recording session so drunk and high his producer had to hold him up in front of the mike. Later that night he fell completely apart, ran naked down the street, set fire to his hotel room smoking in bed. The cops had to shake him violently to wake him, he fought with them and they beat him up and threw him in jail. He was committed to the Camarillo Mental Hospital.

1948- Former Disney assistant-animator Hank Ketcham’s comic strip "Dennis the Menace," 1st appeared.

1952 - 1st nonstop transpacific flight by a jet.

1957-Happy Birthday NASA! President Eisenhower signed the bill creating the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA to oversee the space program, separate from the military.

1957- Tonight with Jack Paar premiered.

1962- The film “Dr No” premiered, introducing the world to the suave spy James Bond 007. They first considered Cary Grant, David Niven, Patrick McGoohan, and James Mason, who all turned them down. So, the producers chose young Scots actor Sean Connery. Ian Fleming wrote of the choice, “Disaster!!” Connery had just starred as the villain in a Tarzan film, and they wanted him to film the sequel. But he asked for a time off to go do “a little spy picture.”

1965 - Beatles movie "Help" had its Royal World premiere at the London Pavilion in the West End. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon in attendance. The film actually opened a month later. People said the movie was filmed “in a haze of marijuana smoke” and most people on the film didn’t know what was next as they were writing it as they went along.

1974- Mamas and the Papa's chubby singer Mama Cass Eliot died of a stroke, not as was widely believed from choking on a sandwich. She was 32.

1976 -SON OF SAM- Demented postman David Berkowitz committed his first murder in the Bronx. Berkowitz believed his neighbor’s dog Sam was Satan and was telling him to go out and kill. He would point his 44 cal. gun at random at a young couple on the street or in a car and shoot them. As the year went on and he was undetected he wrote letters taunting the police and New York newspaper columnist Pete Hamill. See next entry.

1977- THE DAY OF HATE- Son of Sam Killer David Berkowitz announced in the press that he would kill again on the one year anniversary of his first shooting- he declared it to be the Day of Hate. By now New York City was thoroughly in a panic. The seeming randomness of the killings got under the skin of the usually blasé’ New Yorkers. Nightclubs and discos closed, women clipped and dyed their hair because Sam liked to shoot long haired brunettes. Even the Godfather John Gotti pledged the services of the Mafia to catch the lunatic. After a tense night nothing happened. Berkowitz was arrested two days later.

1981- Prince Charles of England married Lady Diana Spencer. The ill-fated fairy tale wedding was seen around the world on live television. Unknown to Di at the time was Prince Charles was already romantically involved with Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles.

1987- Ice cream makers Ben & Jerry announce the flavor Cherry Garcia, named for rock singer Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Jerry is gone, but the ice cream rocks on.

1989- Miyazaki’s film Kiki’s Delivery Service premiered in Japan.
=========================================================
Yesterday’s Question: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?

Answer: Two bits was slang for .25 cents. When coins were scarce in the Colonies, before the Revolution, they would cut up a Spanish silver reale coin into eight pieces to make change. These were called 'bits'. Hence 'pieces of eight' 'two bits' and 'four bits'. (Thanks NB)

Quiz: “ Shave and a Hair-cut. Two Bits.” How much in real money is two-bits?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is the law of eminent domain?
---------------------------------------
History for 7/28/2023
Birthdays: Beatrix Potter, Jacqueline Kennedy, Richard Rogers, Ibn al’ Arabi- philosopher 1165, Marcel Duchamp, Rudy Vallee. Sally Struthers, Peter Duchin, Vida Blue, Joe E. Brown, Jim Davis the creator of Garfield, Frankie Yankovic the Polka King, Elizabeth Berkley, Earl Tupper the inventor of Tupperware, Hugo Chavez

450AD- Roman emperor Theodosius II died without a designated heir. Rome had already fallen so nobody was too fussed about it.

754 A.D. Pope Stephen III crowns Pepin the Short King of the Franks or French. Pepin was the son of Charles Martel and the father of Charlemagne. Pepin had asked for the Pope’s help to legitimatize his overthrow of the last king of the Merovingian Dynasty, Childeric IV, whom he had locked up in a monastery. In return he gave his military guarantee to the Vatican’s hold over a buffer state in the center of Italy. The Papal States would remain a political reality for 1,100 years until absorbed into united Italy in 1870.

1428- The Aztecs overthrew the Tepanec kingdom and begin their rise to empire. While the Inca of Peru were a homogeneous empire the Aztec ruled Mexico by conquest and subjugation of other tribes. So, when Cortez and the Spaniards arrived in 1519 they found lots of native tribes happy to help them against the Aztecs.

1540- Henry VIII married his fourth queen Catherine Howard. This was seen as an old man's autumn fancy. Henry was in his 50's and Catherine a teenager who still had the hots for boys her own age, a bad idea if she wished to keep her head.

1586 - Sir Thomas Harriott first introduced potatoes to Europe. At first people thought they were poisonous because their blossom resembled that of toxic nightshade.

1588- The English sea captains Thomas the Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Drake were playing a game of bowls when they were told the Spanish Armada had been sighted off the coast of Cornwall. The Armada was so big, just the front row of ships reached seven miles across. Leicester coolly said:" Come Drake, there’s time to finish the game." They finished their game, then defeated the Armada the next day.

1609- Sir George Somers was shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of Bermuda.
He stayed to build a settlement, claiming the island for Britain.

1615- French explorer Samuel de Champlain reached Lake Huron.

1655- Poet, playwright and duelist Cyrano de Bergerac died in Paris. The famous play about him and his big nose was written by Edmond Rostand in 1895.

1750- Composer Johann Sebastian Bach died at age 65. He had suffered blindness in his old age but is eyesight returned shortly before his fatal stroke. One of his final compositions was a chorale prelude: "Come, Kindly Death- come for my life is dreary, and of earth I am weary, etc."
He and his wife Anna Magdelena had 17 children, and 7 more by his first wife. Many of whom became composers Johann Christian Bach, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, etc. Bach’s music was soon forgotten until rediscovered by Mendelssohn and others in the 1820s.. Albert Einstein’s brother Alfred said Bach’s music" almost makes one want to become Christian."

1788- Master British portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds visited the other master British portrait painter Sir Thomas Gainsborough, who was dying or cancer. They had been enemies for years, but now at the end they made up. When Reynolds left him, Gainsborough said "Goodbye until we meet in the Hereafter, Van Dyck in our company."

1794-The Thermidor Reaction, The end of the "Reign of Terror". After thousands of deaths, a group of French politicians called the Directorate overthrew Maximilien Robespierre and have him and his Jacobin followers guillotined. Robespierre didn't go quietly, a soldier named Charles Merda shot him in the face shouting Vive la Republique!" His brother Augustin Robespierre tried to escape out a window but just succeeded in breaking his hip.
At the guillotine Robespierre’s second in command Saint-Just was defiant to the end:
" I curse the dust I'm made of! I give it to you! Scatter my bones and Republics shall spring from them!" Robespierre wasn't so eloquent on the scaffold. He just bellowed in pain from the jaw wound. A woman shouted at him:" Go to Hell, Villain, and go knowing with you go the curses and maledictions of every wife, every mother!" When his head plopped into the basket Parisians cheered for 15 minutes. Then they smashed the fearsome guillotine. As dictator Napoleon was careful to keep few political prisoners and if he executed any he used a firing squad. He renamed the place where the guillotine was Place de la Concord.
In 1891 a hit play about this event opened in Paris called “Thermidor” for the month in the French Revolutionary calendar. The chef of the Café de Paris created a new seafood dish in its honor, Lobster Thermidor.

1808- The Turkish Janissaries, the royal guard, deposed Sultan Mustapha VI and replaced him with his cousin Mehmed II. The Janissaries were the real power in Istanbul at this time, keeping a supply of royal princes in the harem, to be taken out as needed. Sultans sometimes picked what Harem girl they would favor that night by how many garlic cloves she could hold in her bellybutton.

1809- Battle of Talavera. General Sir Arthur Wellesley defeated the French army in Spain and for that was made Viscount Wellington. Sir Hugh Gough, who would later earn fame conquering the Punjab in India, was young officer at the time. In this battle Gough was so grievously wounded he was left for dead on a pile of corpses. Wellington happened to be riding by and was commenting to his staff upon his bravery, when to prevent being buried alive, Hugh Gough signaled by pushing his arm up out of the corpses and waved his hat at the startled Wellington." You-hoo..M’Lord, I’m not dead yet…"

1812- General Light Horse Harry Lee was a Revolutionary War hero and had eulogized George Washington as "First in War, First in Peace, First in the Hearts of his Countrymen".
But this day the old general got involved with mob violence in Baltimore while trying to protect a publisher friend who was against "Mr. Madison’s War with the British”, what we now call the War of 1812. Despite his fame, Lee was dragged by a mob and beaten senseless, one of his eyes almost gouged out. He went to the West Indies to convalesce –and escape his creditors, but he never fully recovered. His 5-year-old son was future Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

1821- Peru declared independence from Spain.

1839- Italian revolutionary Guisseppe Fleschi wanted to assassinate the king of France, King Louis Phillipe. He rigged up a strange device that could fire 25 gun barrels simultaneously. He pointed this machine at the king during a military parade and pulled the string. All the guns went off but not one hit their intended target. Ironically, the only person killed was the elderly war minister Marshal Mortier, an old general of Napoleon's, who had spent thirty years amid shot and shell and had never even been scratched.

1841- The body of Mary Cecilia Rogers was pulled out of New York Harbor. The sensational murder of the “Beautiful Cigar Girl” inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”

1858- The French photographer Nadar went up in a balloon and took the first aerial photograph.

1866- BUFFALO SOLDIERS- An act of Congress called for the creation of two all black cavalry regiments to serve in the peacetime army's frontier duty. These units, the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry became the famous "Buffalo Soldiers". They were so named by the Indians because an African Americans’ hair resembled the tuft of hair between a buffalo's horns to them, a symbol of strength. Buffalo Soldiers defeated the Apaches and charged up San Juan Hill right alongside Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Their captain in Cuba named John Pershing was given the nickname Blackjack Pershing not for a love of cards, but for preferring leading black troops to white.

1867- The Daughters of St. Crispin, the first women's labor organization.

1896- Happy Birthday Miami! The City of Miami incorporated.

1882- Parsifal, the last opera of Richard Wagner was produced at Bayreuth. As a way to ensure its financial solvency Wagner left instructions to never tour Parsifal but it should forever stay at Bayreuth. This lasted a few decades.

1898- Spain asks for peace talks with the United States to end their war. The Spanish American War began in April and ended in December.

1914- THE RUSH INTO WORLD WAR I ACCELERATED. Britain suggested an international conference to settle Austria’s grievances against Serbia. Austrian Foreign minister Berchtold informed the British ambassador that it was too late for mediation because Austria had already declared war. The German Kaiser was having second thoughts but slipped out of Berlin to go yachting to avoid the Russian ambassador who was trying to make him commit to discussing peace. Part of the muddle that aggravated the meltdown of diplomacy, was many of the top European statesmen were on their summer holiday while this crisis deepened.

1932- The movie White Zombie with Bela Lugosi opened.

1932- THE BATTLE OF ANACOSTIA FLATS- Capitol Hill was surrounded by 20,000 Bonus Marchers- unemployed World War I veterans and their families who desperately marched to Washington to demand help from the ravages of the Depression and their promised back pay.
On this day, President Hoover's response was to order the US Army to drive them away by force. Gen. Douglas MacArthur with his aides Patton and Eisenhower send tanks, saber wielding cavalry and bayonet armed troops to break up the homeless peoples dwellings. Facing them on the makeshift barricades eyewitnesses saw a black man waving a large American flag and Charles Frederick Lincoln, a direct descendant of Abraham Lincoln. These poor veterans and their families had come from as far as Honolulu. No record was kept of how many were killed or died on the walk home.
Pres. Hoover was jubilant that order was restored, and the public was jubilant when they voted him out of office later that year.

1933- The first singing telegram. It was delivered to singer Rudy Valee by Western Union operator appropriately named Lucille Lipps.

1945- Congress endorses United Nations Charter. Congress' refusal to join the League of Nations in 1919 help doom that organization.

1945-A B-25 Mitchell bomber flying in thick fog struck the 78th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City. It killed a dozen people, including some when one of its 1,500 lb. engines shot through the building and down onto 33rd street. One woman in an elevator had the cables cut and fell 80 stories at 200 miles an hour to the basement. Miraculously she lived.
Despite the devastation, the building did not collapse but stayed sound. As a result, US and World air traffic control standards were stiffened, air traffic controllers finally got the power to order planes down, and large planes are kept away from flying over large urban areas.

1948- In honor of the death of D.W. Griffith, all Hollywood studios observed three minutes of silence.

1948- The Premiere of " Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" For you hardcore film trivia fans this film is the only other time than the original Tod Browning movie that Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula on film.

1954- The film On The Waterfront opened. Producer Sam Spiegel originally wanted Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly as the leads. But Kelly took Hitchcock’s Rear Window instead, and Marlon Brando and Eva Marie-Saint became available, much to the annoyance of Sinatra.

1958- HAPPY LEGO DAY! Danish toymaker Gotfried Kirk Christiansen patented the interlocking plastic bricks. The LEGO empire began.

1965- VIETNAM- President Lyndon B. Johnson had been wrestling with a problem since June 5th. In Vietnam, the war against the Communist guerrilla Viet Cong was going badly. Strategic bombing of the North has failed to stop incursions in the South and the latest government in Saigon had fallen and been replaced by a group of generals led by Ngyen Kao Key. Johnson had to decide to pull, out or expand US commitment. Retired presidents Truman and Eisenhower advised him against going in.
This day, at a routine Friday 12:30 PM press briefing, calculated to not be well attended, LBJ made the announcement that US forces in Vietnam would be expanded dramatically from 75,000 to 125,000- eventually to 450,000 by the end of 1967. What LBJ wasn’t saying was he had now decided that US ground troops would carry the bulk of the fighting. Not just to prop up the South Vietnamese army, but defeat the North Vietnamese Army, without ever invading North Vietnam. He would still try to do his Great Society Programs while running a trillion-dollar war that all his experts doubted was winnable.
This one decision destroyed Johnson’s Presidency and cracked the thriving post war economy creating recession and domestic political turmoil.

1971- Photographer Diane Arbus probed increasingly darker subject matter, circus freaks, severe birth defects. This day she committed suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, then slitting her wrists.

1978- National Lampoons Animal House directed by John Landis opened.

1987- Disney's Oilspot and Lipstick premiered at Siggraph Anaheim. Directed by Michael Cedeno. It was an early experimental all CGI film.

1998- In Afghanistan the Taliban ordered mass destruction of television sets. They also forbade the Internet and shaved the heads of their national soccer team for daring to wear shorts.

1999- Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco declared today Marilyn Chambers Day, in honor of the San Francisco native, and star of classic porn like Behind the Green Door.

2061- The next predicted appearance of Halley’s Comet.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: What is the law of eminent domain?

Answer: The state reserved to itself the right to seize your land for the creation of large public works, like the building of railroads or roadways. They can’t always snake around everyone’s private property. James Madison added it into the Constitution as part of the Fifth Amendment. Eminent Domain superseded any legal deeds, the state gave you monetary compensation. And if you were lucky, it might actually be what the land was really worth.