Quiz: What does it mean to raise your hackles?

Yesterday’s Quiz: What kind of work employed guys like Lauritz Melchior, Richard Tauber and Ragnar Ulfung?
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History for 4/27/2017
Birthdays: Ulysses S. Grant, King Edward IV, Samuel Morse, Mary Wollenstonecraft, Edward Gibbon, Anouk Aimee, Sheena Easton, Sandy Dennis, Coretta Scott King, Kasey Kasem, Jack Klugman

1278-Today is the Feast day of Saint Zita of the Magic Beans, the patron saint of domestic servants.

1521- HAPPY LAPU-LAPU DAY! Fernan' De Magellan was the explorer who found a way around the Americas into the Pacific. Although he was ordered by the King of Spain to conquer the Portuguese Moluccas, he paused after his discovery of the Philippines to convert the population to Catholicism. Magellan tried to demonstrate the power of the Spanish to the Lord of Cebu, by attacking a village called Mactan, who was his enemy.

Almost at once everything started to go wrong. First the village was too far inland for his ships cannon. So his men had to wade ashore. In doing so their powder got wet, so their guns were useless. Then while fighting hand-to-hand, a lucky fishbone tipped spear hurled through Magellan's helmet visor and killed him. The Lord of Cebu was unimpressed. The Spanish captains tried to barter for his body, but the tribesmen said such a powerful enemy must stay for dinner, as the main course. The Chief of Mactan who killed Magellan was named Lapu-Lapu, and today he is considered a national hero.

1567- THE DUKE OF ALBA was given by King Phillip II of Spain the job of Governor General of the Netherlands and ordered him to "stamp out all Heresy, Rebellion and Freedom". Alba recruited an army of 10,000 soldiers and two thousand registered prostitutes and set up shop in Antwerp. His "Council of Troubles" prosecuted thousands of Dutch Calvinists, sometimes arresting 1500 a day. The Dutch called it the "Council of Blood". The largest mass execution in the US history was 60 Sioux warriors in 1864. Throughout 1568 alone, The Duke of Alba executed 60 Dutch per day. This reign of terror gave Breughel such grim inspiration for his paintings.

1642- The English city of Hull refused to open its gates for King Charles Ist when he directly commanded them to. The King’s forces were still too weak to do anything but slink away. This was the first open act of defiance to Royal authority in what would become the English Civil War.

1667- Blind poet John Milton sold his masterpiece "Paradise Lost" to publisher Samuel Simmons for ten pounds. Ten years earlier under Oliver Cromwell’s patronage Milton was getting over a thousand pounds each for his poems

1763- PONTIAC’S REBELLION. After France surrendered Canada to England, the Great Lakes Indian tribes were offended by their treatment from their new British masters. The redcoats ended many of the subsidies and gift giving the French provided.
This day an Ottawa chief named Pontiac called a secret council on the Ecorse River about ten miles below Detroit. More than 400 chiefs and warriors from the Huron, Sauk, Fox, Pottawatomis , Miamis and Ottawas attended. Chief Pontiac spoke of the words he heard from the mysterious Delaware Prophet. Delaware Prophet said he had traveled up to the Spirit World to meet the Master of Life himself, who said he was sad that the Indian had fallen victim to the White Man. The whites should be driven back across the waters to the lands the Great Spirit had set aside for them and stay there. Pontiac said only by all tribes uniting as one could they drive away the white man.

The assembled Indians pledged to join him on an attack on Fort Detroit and were soon joined by other Great Lakes Tribes. Chief Pontiac organized a simultaneous attack on all thirteen forts in the Great Lakes states, a powerful offensive now known as Pontiac’s War.

1784- Over the protests of King Louis XVI, Pierre d’Beaumarchais play The Marriage of Figaro premiered at the Opera Comique in Paris. It was the first play to openly criticize the nobility for being no better than anyone else except for being born with money. This concept alone was radical and it caused a sensation. Napoleon described it as "The Revolution already in action".

1805-THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI- William Eaton led a small group of U.S. Marines and some Greek mercenaries capture Derna, stronghold of the Barbary Pirates and end the War with Tripoli.

1813- In the War of 1812, U.S. troops burn Toronto, then called York. They couldn't hold the territory and quickly withdrew back into New York State. The American commander Zebulon Pike, for whom Pike's Peak is named, was killed when a slow burning match left by the retreating redcoats ignited the fort's powder magazine.

1861- President Lincoln suspended the Right of Habeas Corpus for the length of the Civil War. The old municipal jail where the modern Supreme Court Building is now began to fill up with critics of the government, pro-southern journalists and suspected spies.

1865- SULTANA DISASTER- Union P.O.W.'s liberated from the horrible prisons of Andersonville and Libby crowd onto a Mississippi steamboat called the Sultana for the ride home. After embarking from Vicksburg the boat's boiler accidentally exploded, killing 1,700.

1884- The British government declared that Christopher Wrens 1675 observatory at Greenwich would be the central meridian point for calculating time zones. This would aid in calculation of longitudes, which is crucial in navigating the worlds oceans. Starting at Greenwich, they divided the world into 24 time zones each 15 longitudinal degrees apart.

1918- Former race car driver Eddie Rickenbacker, now a fighter pilot in WWI, shot down his first enemy plane. By Nov. he shot down 63 planes and became America’s premiere ace.

1919- In the chaos of postwar Germany leftist and right wing paramilitary groups battled in the streets for political power. This day in Munich Communist gangs broke into a military barracks to arrest a corporal they heard was an anti-Communist orator. They took 16 men as hostages but the corporal fended them off with a pistol. Later the hostages were found in a ditch all murdered. The lucky corporal who escaped was Adolf Hitler.

1940- SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction of a new concentration camp in Poland near Krakow called Auschwitz.

1950- South Africa passes the Group Areas Act, one of the first official acts separating the races and creating the system known as Apartheid.

1964- The John Muir National Wilderness created.

1970- THE FIRST ATM- Automatic bank teller machine, opened at the Surety National Bank in downtown Los Angeles.

1975- The South Vietnamese capitol Saigon was surrounded by North Vietnamese forces.

1979 -Navajo Indians protest Gulf Oil drilling for uranium on a sacred mountain.

1981- Ringo Starr married Barbera Bach, his costar on the film 'Caveman'. UngaBunga!

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. After wasting an hour speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles.

2005- Maiden flight of the world's largest passenger plane- the Airbus A-380.

2014- With retired Pope Benedict in attendance, Pope Francis declared previous Popes John XXIII and John Paul II to be saints of the Catholic Church.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What kind of work employed guys like Lauritz Melchior, Richard Tauber and Ragnar Ulfung?

Answer: They were opera tenors, German Heldentenors to be specific.

Quiz: What kind of work employed guys like Lauritz Melchior, Richard Tauber and Ragnar Ulfung?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What do these men have in common? Anton Chekov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Che Guevara, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
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History for 4/26/2017
Birthdays: Marcus Aurelius, French Queen Marie De Medicis, Pasquale Paoli, John James Audubon, Frederick Law Olmstead, Eugene Delacroix, Syngman Rhee, Dr. Lee DeForrest, John Grierson founder of the National Film Board of Canada, Rudolf Hess, Bobby Rydell, Anita Loos, I. M. Pei, Carol Burnett is 84, Eyvind Earle, Giancarlo Esposito is 61, Kevin James, Amos Otis, Joan Chen is 55, Jimmy Giuffre, Rocker Duane Eddy- 77, Jet Li- born Li Lian jie is 54

1478-THE PAZZI CONSPIRACY- Pope Sixtus planned to take over Florence by arranging a hit on Duke Lorenzo de Medici "The Magnificent". Francesco Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini attacked the Duke in church just as the consecrated Host was being raised. Lorenzo escaped harm but his brother Giuliano was cut down.
Furious Florentines fell on the felons (repeat three times fast) and nailed their smoking hearts to the door of the cathedral. People blamed Archbishop Salviati for being part of the plot. The mob chased the archbishop up the bell tower, wrapped the bell chords around his neck and tossed him out to ring the bells for awhile. The people shouted "Long Live the Balls!" for the six gold balls that were the heraldic emblem of the Medici Family Bank. This emblem of three gold balls has come down to us as the universal sign for pawnbrokers.
Michelangelo created a beautiful tomb for murdered Giuliano de Medici. Duke Lorenzo ordered artists to paint the portraits of the murderers corpses. Giuliano’s illegitimate son became Pope Clement VII.

1607-THE ENGLISH LAND AT JAMESTOWN. The good ship Susan Constant and two small pinnances land 150 men. These men were mostly professional adventurers and gentlemen. Capt. Martin and Capt. Archer served with Sir Francis Drake. Of the 150 only 12 men actually could do a trade other than fighting. Their actual purpose was to find Aztec Empires like the Spaniards found in Mexico and send gold back home. In a years time all but 50 of them would be dead from fever and cholera.
Oh yeah, there was that John Smith guy too. He wouldn’t meet Pocahontas until around Christmas.

1846- Since annexing Texas, the U.S. and Mexico quarreled over where the border was. Mexico said it was the Nueces River while the U.S. said it was the Rio Grande. President Polk ordered an army into a disputed border area in the hope Mexico would attack them and then Washington could declare war with a clear conscience. This day outside Matamoros, Mexican General Arrista ordered his men fired on some Yankee woodcutters. General Zachary Taylor wrote to Washington " Hostilities have commenced" The War with Mexico was on.

1865- Near Bowling Green Virginia, President Abe Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth was cornered in the barn of Garretts tobacco farm. The troopers set fire to the barn, and as Booth emerged he was shot by Sgt. Boston Corbett. Booth died looking at his hands muttering "Useless, useless..."Corbett was a religious fanatic who had castrated himself with a bayonet to be free of sin. Years after killing Booth, Corbett committed suicide.

1877- The people of Minnesota held a state-wide day of prayer to ask the Almighty to deliver them from a plague of grasshoppers infesting their farmland. It must have worked because they were gone by the end of the summer.

1878- The Oxford dons who oversaw the Oxford University Press charged Scottish scholar James Murray with completing the first complete Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. This would be the first comprehensive dictionary of the King’s English since Dr Johnson’s in 1755. The project had been started by the son of the poet Samuel Coleridge but he died of consumption. James Murray was a self taught scholar who as a boy tried to teach his cows to respond to commands in Latin.

1926- The British General Strikes- Unions across Great Britain joins in sympathy with miners to paralyze the nation. Troops and tanks are stationed in WhiteHall for fear of a Bolshevik-style rising. The horrible poverty resulting from defeating the strikers accelerate the Depression already gripping postwar Europe.
When the Prince of Wales (future Edward VIII) was shown the medieval squalor the Midlands miners lived in he was deeply shocked, but eyewitnesses said after returning to Kensington Palace for a bath and a whiskey & soda, he had quite forgotten about it.

1928- Los Angeles City Hall dedicated.

1933 The Nazi government forms an internal police force called the Gehime Staatspolitzei- the Gestapo.

1937- GUERNICA- In Spain the Stuka bombers of the German Condor Legion, Nazi subcontractors for Franco, bombed an innocent basque village killing 5,000 and provoking an international outcry and a painting by Picasso. Attacking at the height of the market time for three hours the planes bombed and strafed the helpless civilians with no military target in sight. Combatants in WWI tried to avoid harming civilians, but this act and the simultaneous Japanese attacks in China signaled a new tactic, sowing terror by treating civilians as targets.

1941-An organ is played for the first time at a baseball game in Chicago.

1945- The War Department in their new headquarters in the Pentagon issued orders to General Eisenhower in Europe to begin Operation Paperclip- "to preserve from destruction and take under your control records, plans, documents files and other information and data belonging to German organizations engaged in military research." Included in the haul were dozens of German rocket scientists who regardless of their political sympathies were spirited away for the burgeoning US missile program.

1965- Fred Smith, a student at Yale, got his economics paper back with a "c'" and a note stating the idea he espoused was impractical. The idea was an overnight air-freight service which he founded six years later as Federal Express.

1969- PAUL IS DEAD. The height of a strange rumor that excited the rock & roll world that Paul McCartney of the Beatles had died and the news was being kept a secret. Evidence was presented in the cryptic lyrics of "I am the Walrus", songs played backwards and the record album photo where Paul is the only figure with his back to the camera.
A TV special hosted by attorney F. Lee Bailey, the Nancy Grace of his day, explored the controversy. Finally, this day Paul and Linda McCartney held a news conference and declared he was very much alive and what on Earth was everyone on about?

1977- In New York City, Studio 54, the mecca of 70’s Disco culture opened.

1982- Argentina gave in to Britain's demands ending the Falklands War. The military junta ruling in Buenos Aires fell a year later.

1986- CHERNOBYL- The Chernobyl nuclear reactor explodes. While the Soviet Government acknowledged 400 deaths, accounts put it as high as 9,000. 100,000 square miles of the Ukraine contaminated and tainted food shipped to 65 million people. Historian Igor Medvedev (who died from radiation induced cancer) reported on the bizarre fumbling at the beginning of the crisis.

When one engineer entered the reactor core, he saw the devastation of the explosion while absorbing the radiation equivalent of 23 Hiroshima atomic bombs. He went out and told his supervisor: "Reactor Number Three has exploded." His supervisor told him: "That’s impossible! Go back and look again." So he dutifully re-entered the reactor core, absorbing another 23 atomic bomb’s worth of radiation and came out and said:" Yes, it’s true, it’s really blown up." And he died shortly afterwards.

1986- Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Conan the Republican, married Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy.

1993- NBC announced former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live comedy writer Conan O’Brien would take David Letterman’s old Late Show spot.

2004- Michael Eisner of Disney named to Forbes list of the Worst CEO’s in America.
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Yesterday’s question: What do these men have in common? Anton Chekov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Che Guevara, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Answer: They all began their careers as doctors.

Quiz: What do these men have in common? Anton Chekov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Che Guevara, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: How long is a fortnight?
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History for 4/25/2017
Birthdays: Roman emperor Otho -32AD, English King Edward II-1284, Oliver Cromwell-1599, Guiseppi Marconi, Edward R. Murrow, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Pacino is 77, Jason Lee is 47, Meadowlark Lemon, Talia Shire, Paul Mazursky, Hank Azaria is 53, Rene Zellwellger is 48, Ron Clements

TODAY is the feast of the god Robigus, Roman god of Rust and Mildew.

It is also the part of the Festival of Venus for the male prostitutes of Rome to celebrate.

404BC- ATHENS SURRENDERED TO SPARTA- After the victory of Aegespotamoi, Spartan General Lysander had the Long Walls of Athens demolished to the sound of flutes. It ended the Peloponnesian War and the Athenian dominance of Greece. Lysander had delayed the surrender at one point to allow for the funeral procession of old Sophocles the playwright to move between the lines.
Spartan domination of Greece was short lived. They were defeated by a coalition led by Epaminondas of Thebes and in 323 Macedonian armies led by Alexander the Great’s father Phillip crushed all resistance to his uniting Greece under Macedonian rule.

799AD- Pope Leo III was attacked by a Roman mob. He was beaten up and he had to hide in a monastery until Frankish King Charlemagne came to rescue him.

It is also the FEAST OF ST. MARK- the evangelist whose mummy was smuggled by Venetians out of Egypt in a case of pig fat in 981A.D. Venetian clerics later made up a great story to justify the act. St. Mark was rowing a boat in the marshes where Venice would one day stand. Suddenly God appeared to him and said: "Pax Tibi Marce, Evangelista Meus- Tues Corpus Reposituam." "Peace be with you Mark, my Evangelist, here your bones will lay".(after the pig fat) You see this inscription on most Venetian stuff along with the saint’s symbol, a winged lion..
Italians returned his bones to Egypt in the 1970’s.

1185- Battle of Dan-no-mura. Epic Japanese sea battle when legendary warlord Minamoto Yuritomo defeated the Taira Clan.

1684- The thimble invented.

1719- The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe first published.

1792-THE NATIONAL RAZOR- Highwayman and murderer Nicholas Pelletier becomes the first man guillotined. Dr. Guillotine’s invention was considered a more humane way to kill a person than breaking on the wheel, which was the way of execution in France of lowborn malefactors. Ironically in the memoirs of the court executioner Charles Samson it is alleged that no less than King Louis XVI himself suggested the distinctive angled blade in place of a semicircular one. The King would discover for himself it’s killing power the following January.
Contrary to myth Dr. Guillotine didn't die by his own device, he died in bed of old age. During World War II the Nazis added their own personal touch, turning the victim on his back so he could watch the blade come down. The last man guillotined was in 1977.

1792- A captain from Arras named Roget du Lilse wrote a patriotic song for his Marseille regiment. LA MARSEILLAISE is sung for the first time in Strasbourg. It became the French National Anthem and one of the most stirring revolutionary hymns ever written. In 1986 French first lady Mrs. Francois Mitterand tried to get the more bloodthirsty parts of the song re-written, but ultimately failed. Aux Armes Citoyens!

1850- Paul Julius Baron de Reuter used 40 carrier pigeons to carry stock market prices between Paris and London. He went on to form Reuters, the first international news agency.

1859- First sand dug for the Suez Canal. It took ten years to finish. It’s been estimated that maybe as many as 100,000 Egyptian peasants died while digging. Egyptian sources said every family in the country wound up mourning a father, husband or a son. Ever since that time black became the traditional costume of women in Egypt.

1862- Union superior General William Henry Halleck rewarded Ulysses Grant for his victory at Shiloh by having him removed from command. Halleck was an administrator and intellectual who was nicknamed Old Brains. But in command of armies he was a loser. After the rebels made him look stupid at the siege of Corinth, Lincoln restored Grant to command.

1865- Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Grant left Joe Johnston commanding the second largest army of Southern troops, still facing Sherman in North Carolina. After several meetings and confused negotiations this day Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered General Johnston to resume fighting and fall back towards Texas. Johnston, like Lee, felt any further bloodshed was now pointless. He chose to ignore his president and accept Sherman’s surrender terms.

1886- In the Gilded Age most American workers worked a 10-12 hour day, seven days a week. This day The New York Times attacked the outcry among American union workers for an 8-hour workday as: A Seditious, riotous notion that would collapse the American economy and lead to sloth, drunkenness and debauchery. It was probably the idea of foreign extremists."
The eight-hour day doesn’t become a norm in America until 1913 (in animation until 1941) and is still under attack today.

1898- THE US DECLARED WAR ON SPAIN America’s first war to announce itself a world power. Secretary of War John Hays (who was once Abe Lincoln's secretary) called it: "A splendid little War'. It was the first time men from all the states would come together since the Civil War. Eyewitnesses were amazed that all the old regional anger was gone.

1901- New York State became the first to require automobiles to show license plates.

1915- ANZAC DAY- GALLIPOLI - This was young First Sea Lord Winston Churchill's idea to knock Turkey out of World War I. A British-Anzac force amphibiously landed on the beaches south of Constantinople to capture the enemy capitol. It turned into one of the biggest British fiascos of the war and knocked Churchill into resignation. The army of Gen. Ian Hamilton did surprise the Turks but then they sat on the beaches for weeks while reinforcements were brought up by a dynamic young Turkish General named Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, who would later become President of Turkey.
The Australian and New Zealand regiments fighting at Gallipoli rose from their trenches and charged headlong into the massed Turkish guns to achieve death and glory and not much else. The Peter Weir movie Gallipoli staring a young Mel Gibson dramatized the event.

1926- Giacomo Puccini's last opera Turnadot premiered in Milan. Puccini died before it's completion so students had to finish the work based on the masters notes. Conductor Arturo Toscanini put down his baton at the beginning of the Third Act, turned to the audience and said:" Here is where the Maestro died." He then left the podium and let another finish. He was too upset to complete the performance.

1928- The German shepherd named Buddy became the first seeing-eye dog for the blind.

1945- U.S. Army advancing from Normandy and the Soviet Army advancing since Stalingrad finally meet each other at the Elbe River in Germany.

1953- Watson & Crick announced the DNA Molecular Construction Theory. The world sees for the first time the twisted ladder model. A female researcher named Rosalind Franklin may have actually done all the real research, but Watson & Crick took the credit. The facts are still in dispute. This day, Watson went down to his local pub and told the barkeep:" Set up a round of lager, for I just discovered the Secret of Life!"

1956- Elvis Presley’s song Heartbreak Hotel goes to #1 in the pop charts.

1970- Policeman Frank Serpico’s story of rampant corruption in the NYPD explodes on the pages of the New York Times. The practices of decades of graft are exposed by the Knapp Commission and the police commissioner and several captains resign in disgrace.
Serpico’s story was made into a film starring Al Pacino.

1972- Witty, urbane actor George Sanders (All About Eve, Samson & Delilah, Sher Khan in Jungle Book) had turned age 65. He complained he had been famous and rich, and was not looking forward to old age, and having a nurse wipe his bottom. So he committed suicide and left a witty, urbane note. "Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored. Adieu, I leave you with your worries in this sweet cesspool."

1981- Dixie, the worlds oldest living mouse died at age 6 1/2.

1982- In accordance with the Camp David Peace Accord, Israel completed its withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, turning over to Egypt the resort port of Sharm El Sheik.

1996- "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk" opened on Broadway.
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Yesterdays Question: How long is a fortnight?

Answer: Two weeks. From the Old English for fourteen. fēowertyne niht, "14 nights "

Quiz: How long is a fortnight?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Was Ben Franklin ever married?
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History for 4/24/2017
Birthdays: Daniel Defoe, William de Kooning, St. Vincent de Paul, Morgan Earp, Jack E. Leonard, Dame Ethel Smyth, Jill Ireland, Eric Bogosian, Sue Grafton, Robert Penn Warren, Barbera Streisand is 75, Cedric the Entertainer is 54, Shirley McLaine is 83

1184 B.C. (est.)- TROY FALLS TO THE GREEKS- Despite the warnings of the seers Cassandra and Laocoon, the Trojans bring Ulysses' great wooden horse into the city, and at night the Greeks climb out and open the city gates to destruction. The reason we have any date was this was the day the Romans celebrated a festival commemorating the event.
The Romans loved the myth that they were descended from the Trojan survivors led to Italy by the hero Aeneas. This seemed way more cool than being a grubby little Latin tribe who got their act together before their neighbors.
They loved this myth so much that in 190B.C. when the legions of Publius Scipio Asiaticus marched into Turkey to make war on Antipater the Greek king of Syria, they paused first to go to the plains of Illium (the field where Troy once stood).
The writer Livy states" There the grim warriors embraced and wept aloud like babes, for after countless generations, the children of Troy had come home at last." (Livy, History: Book XXXVII: 35)

1584- Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi ordered the Heii Shrine in Edo (Tokyo) to dedicate a new heraldic design - the red disc Asahi - Rising Sun flag is created.

1800- The U.S. Congress set up the Library of Congress. By 1814 it had three thousand volumes, but they were destroyed when a British Army burned Washington. Thomas Jefferson then donated his own private library to restart the collection. Today it numbers in the millions of volumes.

1833- The Soda Fountain is patented.

1861- The minister of the independent German city-state of Bremen, Johann Schlieben, offered his services to Abraham Lincoln to open shuttle diplomacy with the rebellious Confederate States. He carried a message or two between Washington and Richmond. Eventually Lincoln told him thanks but no thanks. Blood had been shed and the flag insulted; it was too late for negotiations.
Similar offers of mediation by a delegation of Virginia moderates led by former President John Tyler were also refused.

1874- Jesse James married Miss Zerelda Mimms, who he called Z.

1901-The First American League baseball game. The Cleveland Blues vs. the Chicago White Stockings.

1913- The Woolworth Building was dedicated in lower New York. It’s cornices decorated like the campanile of Saint Marks in Venice. At the time it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. President Woodrow Wilson illuminated its electric lights by flipping a switch long distance in the White House.

1915- THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE- The Ottoman Turkish Empire had always been an amalgamation of ethnic peoples. As their Empire aged and became the 'Sick Man of Europe', one by one these subject peoples- Greeks, Serbs, Egyptians, asserted their independence and broke away.
So when the Armenians also demanded autonomy, the Sultan Abdul Hamid IV came up with a bloodthirsty solution. After a botched Turkish offensive into Russia was defeated, this day the first 200 Armenian elders of a village were shot, signaling a general nationwide pogrom that would eventually kill over 1.5 million people. The first person to bring the massacre story to the world was a German, Dr. Armen Wegner. On the scene for the Red Cross he complained to the Kaiser and the Berlin press. The refusal to even discuss this event is a sore point dividing the nations to this day.

Supposedly when a top Nazi suggested to Adolf Hitler that his plans for the Jews would bring down on Germany the condemnation of the world, Hitler replied “…and who remembers the Armenians?”

1916- THE IRISH EASTER SUNDAY UPRISING -Patrick Pearse, Richard Connolly, Michael Collins, Eamon De Valera and followers seize the O'Connell Street post office in downtown Dublin and proclaim the Irish Republic. After furious streetbattles with British troops diverted from the World War I battlefields, the rebellion is put down. All the ringleaders were executed. Connolly was so badly wounded that they had to prop up his stretcher before the firing squad, and pinch his cheeks so he'd be awake for his own death. Eamon De Valera used his U.S. citizenship to avoid execution. Initially the Irish people hadn't wholly supported the futile rising, but the fierce police crackdown had the effect of arousing sympathy. It sparked the major IRA campaigns in the 1920's and eventual Independence.

1933- Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.

1944- Film Noir classic film Double Indemnity premiered.

1945- As the Russian Army fought their way into the center of Berlin, Adolf Hitler gathered his remaining staff in his bunker deep under the Reich Chancellery. He told his people that all was lost and that they should escape the city as best they could. Most decided to stay and discuss how best to commit suicide. The Fuehrer himself lapsed into apathy. His secretary recalled seeing Hitler sitting quietly in a hallway, cradling a puppy in his lap, rocking back and forth, staring off, hollow-eyed.

1949- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed.

1948- The Chinese Communists under their leader Mao zse Tung and their generals Chu Teh and Lin Piao began their final campaign to unite all of China under their rule.

1954- Handsome English actor Peter Lawford married John F. Kennedy’s sister Patricia Kennedy. This union would give JFK his link to Hollywood, Frank Sinatra and the RatPack.

1961- First day of shooting on the film King of Kings, the Christ story starring Jeffrey Hunter. Called by one critic” I was a Teenage Jesus” In 1966 Jeffrey Hunter turned down a TV series after doing the pilot episode. His wife worried that he’d be typecast. The role of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, went instead went to William Shatner.

1967- Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov became the first acknowledged fatality in the conquest of Space, when the parachute of his re-entering capsule got snarled and he fell four miles to Earth.

1980- After months of fruitless negotiations to get the U.S. hostages held in the American Embassy in Teheran freed, President Jimmy Carter tried force. A Delta Force of eight helicopters met at their staging area in the Iranian desert. Once there it was discovered three of the helicopters had mechanical problems and they had fallen badly behind schedule so the mission was scrapped. As they were leaving one of the helicopters crashed into a transport plane killing 8 soldiers. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned in protest. No more military adventures were planned and the Iran Hostage Crisis dragged on throughout 1980. The hostages were released in exchange for arms in January 1981 shortly after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

1981- Small companies like Apple and Commodore had dominated the personal computer market while giants like IBM stuck with large business systems. Now IBM weighed in with The IBM PC –personal computer, with basic software language DOS provided by Microsoft. It soon came to dominate the market.

1983- THE HITLER DIARIES HOAX- Gerd Heideman, a top correspondent for Germany’s top magazine Die Stern was contacted by a mysterious Professor Fischer that he had in his possession the long lost personal diary of Adolph Hitler. Heidemann was an eccentric who collected fascist memorabilia like Herman Goerings yacht and a pair of Idi Amin’s underwear. Fischer sold him the Hitler diary manuscripts for $4 million.
After Heidemann got British Historian Sir Hugh Trevor Roper and several handwriting analysts to declare them genuine, the Hitler Diaries went public in Die Stern and Rupert Murdoch’s London Times. When Sir Hugh began to express doubts over the authenticity of the diary, Times mogul Rupert Murdoch reacted in typical fashion: ”F**k him. I’m in the entertainment business!”
This day a Bonn laboratory declared the diaries high quality but completely phony. Professor Fischer was actually an art forger named Konrad Kujau who knew suckers when he saw them. He had an expensive girlfriend and wife to keep so he was writing the diaries in his garage on 1940’s vintage paper and ink. Careers were ruined and everyone looked pretty stupid. Even when they were all in jail, Gerd Heidemann refused to believe the truth. Konrad Kujau sent him a letter in Hitler’s handwriting admitting he did the forgery.

1984- David Kennedy, the eldest son of Robert F. Kennedy, was found dead in his hotel room of a drug overdose. As a child he had watched his father assassinated on live television and had never gotten over it. He was a drug addict by 15 and dead at 28.

1990- The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Challenger.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Was Ben Franklin married?

Answer: Dr. Franklin married Deborah Reed in 1730. Free spirits, they had been living together by mutual consent. They only married so Ben’s illegitimate son by another, William, could be called legal and stand a chance in society. Together they had one daughter.

Question: Was Ben Franklin ever married?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Media is harping on Trumps First Hundred Days, like they used to about Obama’s first Hundred Days. What is the big deal about a president’s the first hundred days?
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History for 4/23/2017
Birthdays: William Shakespeare, James Buchanan, Sergei Prokoviev, J.M.W. Turner, Vladimir Nabokov, Senator Stephen Douglas the Little Giant, Shirley Temple, Roy Orbison, Halston, Sandra Dee, Valerie Bertinelli, Lee Majors is 76, Judy Davis, Simone Simon, Michael Sporn, Tony Esposito, Michael Moore is 63, Herve Villechaise

This was the ancient Roman Feast of the Vinalia, the feast of the first grapevine plantings.

301AD- This is the Feast of St. George. George of Nicomedia was a native of Illyria (Croatia) and a member of the Praetorian Guards, who went up to the Emperor Diocletian’s palace and tore up his edict banning Christianity. Then Diocletian had George torn up. And what about St. George fighting the dragon? In the old tradition of borrowing from pagan myths, the Coptic Christian monks took from the Ancient Egyptian religion the famous battle between Horus and his evil uncle Seth, God of Sandstorms, often represented in temple art as a dragon-like animal.

1014- BATTLE OF CLONTARF- Irish High King Brian Boru defeated the Vikings and drove them from Ireland. Boru himself was too elderly to fight, so he was praying in a church when a renegade group of Danes surrounded the church and set it on fire.
Oh well, at least he won...

1348- The Order of the Garter created in England.

1374- The King of England grants a pension to the writer Geoffrey Chaucer that includes a pot of wine every day for the rest of his life. What more could a writer ask for!

1500- Explorer Pedro Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal.

1538- Protestant theologian John Calvin was asked to leave his ministry in Geneva for being, uhh, well.. too Puritan. Geneva went party wild. Two years later the city fathers called Calvin back to clean up the town.

1616- After a night out partying with Ben Johnson, John Draydon and other old buddies from Ye Old Mermaid Tavern, William Shakespeare caught a fever and died on his fifty third birthday.

1746- THE GLASS HARMONICON- German composer Johann Christoph Witobald Gluck had premiered his first opera La Caduta de Giganti in London to weak box office . Today he hit it rich by playing an entire concerto on twenty-six drinking glasses with water raised to different levels to effect the pitch. He played it by rubbing his fingers along the rims. The crowd went wild. Another triumph of musical taste.

1784- Congress adopted Thomas Jefferson’s plan to extend government to territories west of the Appalachian Mountains, the Old Northwest. They reject his suggestion that ten states be organized with classical names like Metropotamia and Polypotamia. Some of his suggestions for Indian names like Michigania and Illinoia sounded better however.

1789- President-elect George Washington and Martha move in to their temporary U.S. capitol of New York City. Traveling from Virginia up to New York every town he passed through greeted him with huge parades and celebrations. When moving through Philadelphia the artist John Singleton Copley had designed a triumphal arch that as Washington moved under it sprang a strange mechanical device that plopped a gold laurel wreath on his head. Annoyed, the startled statesman tore it off.

Once set up as President, Washington realized that the first Presidential residence Franklin House had no furniture, and Congress was broke. He had to pay out of his own pocket for all the furnishings and dinnerware, large enough for state dinners of thirty or more. When he left office in 1796 he offered to John Adams to sell him his furniture. When the frugal New Englander balked at the price, Washington left the new President of the United States an empty mansion with a few candle sticks and one crystal punch bowl.

1809- Napoleons army captured Ratisbon ( Regensburg ) from the Austrians and Robert Browning did a nice poem about it.

1867- William Lincoln patents the zoetrope, an optical toy predating motion pictures..

1896-THE FIRST PROJECTED MOVIES IN THE U.S.- The first projection of Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope film by means of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope at Koster & Bials Music Hall on 28th street and Broadway in New York City. Edison had to be nagged into this by his engineer W.K.L. Dickson. Edison thought projecting movies like the Lumiere Brothers were doing in Europe would never catch on, and the future of film was in nickelodeon machines. The movie show featured the sultry Annabella the Dancer and a boxing match, but the real hit of the evening was footage of Waves Hitting the Rocks on Shore, which made people instinctively duck to keep from getting wet.

1900- A celebration held in Russian Georgia was addressed by a young revolutionary who had been expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary where he was studying to become a priest. Josef Dzugashvili was encouraged by other revolutionaries to change his name so the Czar’s police wouldn’t pick up his family. He changed his name to Steel- Stalin.

1903- The first game of the New York Highlanders (later Yankees) baseball team. They defeated the Washington Senators, 7-2.

1914- Chicago’s Wrigley Field opened.

1942-The Baedecker Raids- In reprisal for an allied bombing raid on Lubeck the German Luftwaffe began bombing medieval English cities like Norwich and Canterbury based on their rating in the Baedecker Tourist guidebooks. If a place got three or more stars it was hit.

1945- As the Red Army was reaching the suburbs of Berlin, S.S. Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler quietly contacted Swedish diplomat Count Bernadotte and requests peace terms with the Allies. From his hiding place in Bavaria Hermann Goring was also trying to make peace as well. When Hitler found out from Martin Borman, he was furious and ordered both of them placed under house arrest.

1951- Comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested for a stunt where he dressed as a priest and solicited funds in a leper colony.

1971- Vietnam veterans protest the continued U.S. presence in the war by ceremoniously returning their medals, in some cases tossing them over the White House fence. One angry combat veteran who tossed his medals was future Senator John Kerry. Meanwhile, Lt. George W. Bush was in the Texas Air Guard, tossing his cookies.

1985- Coca Cola introduces New Coke. They decided to make the basic formula slightly sweeter to appeal to younger people. Its reception by the public was so overwhelmingly bad that the company returned to the original formula 90 days later. The chairman of rival Pepsi Cola exulted: " We've been eye to eye for decades and I think the other guy's just blinked! New Coke became a symbol for large-scale executive incompetence,

1998- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows 98 to a 4,000 industry leaders. When he ceremonially opened the first window, the system crashed-.Doh!

2003- Boston area Catholic priests began to get busted for child molestation and the cover up by the Archdiocese was exposed by the Boston Globe. One priest, a Father Shayne, was an openly registered member of the Man-Boy Love Society (NAMBLA). Outraged parishioners demanded the resignation of their Cardinal Bernard Law. Instead Cardinal Law was recalled to Rome were he was made pastor of the Church of Maria Maggiore.

2005- The first You-Tube video was uploaded- Me At the Zoo.
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Yesterday’s question answered below: Media is harping on Trumps First Hundred Days, like they used to about Obama’s first Hundred Days. What is the big deal about a president’s the first hundred days?

Answer: In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected with a Democratic Congress. He moved quickly to pass legislation in the new congress first session to combat the collapse of the Great Depression. He passed so many laws and created new agencies to change American society, it set a standard for future presidents.