Question: Why were police vans in the late XIX and early XX Centuries called Paddy Wagons?

Yesterday’s Question answered Below: Who do these organizations all have in common? The Okrana, the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB, the FSB.
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History for 3/17/2017
Birthdays: Jim Bridger the mountain man, Nat King Cole, film composer Alfred Newman, Mercedes McCambridge, Leslie Ann Down, Patrick Duffy, Rudolph Nureyev, Gary Sinise, Kate Greenaway, John Sebastian, Ben Washam (warner bros. animator), Ken Anderson (Disney animator), John Wayne Gacy, Kurt Russell is 66, Rob Lowe is 53

-Ancient Roman Festival Bacchanalia-the wine festival.

44BC- Mark Anthony called the first meeting of the Roman Senate since Julius Caesars assassination. Caesar’s murderers Brutus and Cassius were annoyed that the Roman people didn’t rise up in joy over their deed, but instead remained ominously quiet. Instead of seizing the government, Brutus and the conspirators went off to sulk. Meanwhile the Senate, not knowing who would win the coming power struggle, fence straddled by passing all of Caesars bills, then voting amnesty for his killers.

180AD- The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius died at his army camp Vindobona- the future Vienna. He was 59 and was succeeded by Commodus. He left behind a book of private thoughts entitled To Myself, that we call The Meditations. It has become one of the great works of Western Philosophy.

461AD- HAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY - St. Patrick was a Romanized Gaul named Patricius Magonus Sucatus who as a boy was taken as a slave to Ireland by raiders, then escaped and became a Christian Bishop at Auxerre. He returned to Ireland in 432. Patrick converted the daughters of Irish King Laoghaire and cast down the great pagan idol of Crom Cruach in Letrim. As far as snakes go, some say that was a metaphor for the pagans. He died on this day in Ireland 461AD.
The holiday was a religious festival in Ireland but in America the feast day of Ireland's patron saint became a chance to show ethnic pride and political strength in the face of anti-Irish prejudice.

965. AD- Pope Leo VIII died of a stroke while in bed with a lady en flagrante delicto.

1394- FREE LANCERS - Sir John Hawkwood died. During a time-out in the Hundred Years War in France Hawkwood formed a company of unemployed English knights and went to Italy to become “condottierie”-mercenaries, fighting for money in the feuds between all the little Italian city-states. Their distinctive brightly polished silver armor gave them the name “The White Company”. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle wrote a novel by that name about them.
This is around the time the term 'free lance' had been coined, meaning a knight who was free of any Shield-Oath to a noble lord.

1525- THE GERMAN PEASANTS WAR BEGAN- Excited by the new Protestant movement throwing off the yoke of the Church, German peasants decide to throw off the yoke of their nobles as well. Preacher Thomas Munzer led a mob of peasants to kick out the Bishop-Dukes of Mulhausen and established rule by “Eternal Council”.
Martin Luther was shocked by the violence. He alienated many of his followers by disassociating himself from the revolts and urged their suppression. The rebellious mobs of peasants flying black flags across Germany, Austria and Alsace were only put down after terrible massacres.

1526- King Francis I of France had been captured in battle with Emperor Charles V and kept a prisoner in Madrid. A year later, after signing a lot of peace treaties he had no intention of honoring, he was finally set free on the Spanish-French border near Hendaye. He jumped on a horse and shouted “I am King Again!” Then he jumped on an 18 year old blonde his mother Louise of Savoy had brought him. Gee, thanks Mom!

1692- After the Quaker community refused to support a war with France the English Crown declared Governor William Penn deprived of his powers and the colony of Pennsylvania would be administered directly as a crown colony.

1737- The Irish Charitable Society of Boston held a dinner to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. Earliest known commemoration in America.

1762- in New York City, Irish militiamen against orders marched down Broadway to Hull's Tavern to a St. Patrick's Day breakfast. The first recorded St. Patty's Day parade. In 1848 several Irish-American organizations marched together and the parade became large enough to bring out the Mayor to preside.
As immigration grew so did the parades and the political patronage. Pulaski Day, Steuben Day, Columbus Day, Puerto-Rican Day, etc.
In the 1890’s politician Teddy Roosevelt seemed to be at so many ethnic parades saying he had relations that were Irish, German, Dutch, etc. that opponents called him "Old Mister 57 Flavors".

1768- Black slaves on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat rise up against their plantation overlords. Because many of the white overseers were Protestant Irish, the slaves guessed they would be distracted by Saint Patrick’s Day partying when they attacked. At the last moment someone gave the plot away. The rebellion was crushed and nine leaders hanged.

1776-This day the British Navy of 150 ships hoisted sail and left the City of Boston. Lord Howe had concluded an armistice with colonial General Washington that in exchange for an unmolested evacuation they would not burn the city. It was seen as a great early victory for the Americans. Boston Harbor was opened for the first time in three years. The British troops were heartily glad to leave. A lieutenant Sheffield wrote:” I curse Columbus and all the other discoverers of this diabolical land!”

1780 General Washington ordered his army to commemorate St. Patrick's Day in sympathy with "An ancient people's struggle for independence." One of the Pennsylvania regiments had so many Irish volunteers that it was called The Line of Ireland.

1808- ROYAL SCANDALS- William the Duke of York, second son of King George III had to resign his position as head of the British Army over an investigation that he kept a tootsie named Mary Clarke, who used her influence to cash in with army contractors. William’s dad the insane king was locked up and his older brother the Prince Regent later George IV didn't complain because he was hiding an illegal Irish wife named Mrs. Fitzherbert and another girlfriend named Lady Cunningham from his estranged wife Caroline the Princess of Wales, who was herself having sex with most of the men of Italy.
All this scandal couldn't defeat Napoleon, but it did knock Boney out of the British newspapers for awhile, and help Prime Minister Pitt the Younger drink himself into an early grave.

1811- The first sidewheel Mississippi riverboat The New Orleans was launched.

1845- Rubber Bands invented.

1857- John Stephens founds the Fenian Brotherhood in Dublin. This group is the forerunner of Sinn Fein (Shin Fain). The Fenians tried numerous insurrections in the old country and even a conquest of Canada from New York State using former Union army veterans in 1867. Like political leaders today worry about ISIS, Queen Victoria would cast a nervous eye over her shoulder for Fenians.

1874- MACY'S- Jacob and Isadore Strauss, two German Jewish peddlers whose first job in America was selling Confederate War Bonds, buy a dry goods store from a retired Quaker whaling sailor named R.H. MACY. They decide to keep the name to divert anti-Semitic customers. The store was later so successful that in 1904 Macys’s moved to it's present location on 34th St. The location was close by the new Penn. Station and also across the street from the two largest brothels in New York. When Macy was a sailor, he had a red star tattoo on his arm. That red star remains the Macys logo.
Izzy Strauss later went down with the Titanic in 1912 and Jacob's kids founded Strauss stores. When Jacob visited Paris in 1919, he joked on General Pershing's comment "Lafayette Nous'Voici" to:"Galerie Lafayette we are here!" Galerie Lafayette is a French department store...(don't blame me, it's a department store joke...)

1879- New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace stopped work on his novel Ben Hur long enough to meet face-to-face outlaw Billy the Kid to discuss an amnesty.

1884- To quiet the fears of New Yorkers that the Brooklyn Bridge was too dangerous to cross, circus-master P.T. Barnum led a herd of his circus elephants led by Jumbo the Elephant across the bridge safely.

1898- First test of a practical submarine. Americans had experimented with underwater travel since 1776 with Bushnells "Turtle" then the Civil War CSS Hunley. In the ocean off Staten Island a diesel-electric battery powered sub built by the John A. Holland Electric Boat Company of Georgia ran underwater for an hour and forty minutes then resurfaced. As a child Holland was inspired by Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea".

1901- At a grand exhibition of his paintings at Bernheim-Jeune Palace in Paris, the world discovered the brilliance of a poor Dutch lunatic who had shot himself a few years back- Vincent Van Gogh.

1905-Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt marry. They were cousins. Eleanor was actually more directly related to Theodore Roosevelt than Franklin was -she was TR’s niece. Franklin was a distant cousin.

1906- Teddy Roosevelt in a speech to the Gridiron Club coins the term "Muckraker".

1912- The Camp Fire Girls created.

1941- The National Gallery of Art opens in Washington D.C.

1949- The first car show for Porsche sportscars.

1965- Chicago began the Saint Patrick’s Day tradition of dyeing the Chicago River green.

1967- Senator Robert Kennedy first openly broke with the Lyndon Johnson administration and in a speech denounced the US participation in the war in Vietnam.
Johnson called Bobby “ Pipsqueak and his Massachusetts Mafia.” Kennedy called LBJ and the first lady “ Colonel Cornpone and the Little Piggy.”
Historians debate whether his brother John F. Kennedy who first committed US troops to the conflict would have accelerated or stopped the war had he not been assassinated. But according to reporters and confidants Robert Kennedy told them while running for the presidency in 1968 that if he won, his first priority was to get us out. Kennedy’s assassination ended that dream and the war for America dragged on until 1973.

1982- Politically conservative Hollywood actors led by Charlton Heston broke with the Screen Actor’s Guild and form a rival group called AWAG ( American Working Actor’s Guild). They were angered by SAG president Ed Asner’s taking their union into national politics by condemning Pres. Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America, capped by the SAG board refusing Reagan (their former president) the Guild lifetime achievement award.
As a result Ed Asner’s hit TV show “Lou Grant” lost sponsors and was cancelled, and Heston’s career cooled as well, beyond heading the NRA and writing cranky letters to the L.A. Times calendar that Ben Hur wasn’t gay.

1983- On trial for libel, and refusing to name sources, wheelchair bound porn publisher Larry Flynt showed up in a US Federal court wearing a diaper made from an American flag. This was calculated to mock a conservative demand for a Constitutional amendment against burning the flag.

1991- Irish Gays and Lesbians first barred by the Ancient Order of Hibernians from marching in the New York and Boston St Patrick’s Day Parades. They took it to the Supreme Court who ruled the Hibernians could bar from marching who ever they wanted to. They ban Irish anti-abortion activists too. In 2014 the mayors of NYC and Boston skipped the parades because of the ban on LGBT.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who do these organizations all have in common? The Okrana, the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB, the FSB.

Answer: They were all names for the Russian secret police, from Czarist times to the present.

Question: Who do these organizations all have in common? The Okrana, the Cheka, the NKVD, the KGB, the FSB.

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In the Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown’s nemesis is Lucy. What is Lucy’s last name?
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History for 3/16/2017
Birthdays: James Madison, Conrad Nagel, Dr. Josef Mengele the Angel of Death, Teresa Berganza, Christa Ludwig, Pat Nixon, Alice Bonheur, Harper Goff, Gore Verbinsky, Jerry Lewis is 91, Bernardo Bertolucci is 77, Eric Estrada, Kate Nelligan, Isabelle Huppert is 64, Lauren Graham is 50

597 BC- Babylonian King Nebuchanesser II captured Jerusalem and ended the Old Kingdom of Israel. He forced the Jewish people to relocate to Babylon. This period was called the Babylonian Captivity. After Cyrus the Persian king attacked Babylon and allowed the Jews to go home, they noticed two tribe had disappeared- the Lost Tribes of Israel.
These events were the basis for the term Babylon to be associated with ultimate evil in so much Judeo-Christian apocalyptic writings. It’s been speculated by some scholars that the Israelites at this time worshiped many gods but by the time they left captivity they had trimmed down to one god, the storm god Yahweh.

In the ancient Roman religion this was the first day of nine days of fasting leading up to the Day of Blood, sacred to the Goddess Cybele. Although Jesus fasted in the wilderness, he never asked expected anyone else to. This pagan festival may be where the Christian Church got the Lenten Fast.

50BC- After maneuvering Pompey and his senatorial enemies out of Rome, Julius Caesar entered the city and proclaimed a general amnesty. Between now and his murder in 44 he drained marshes, built forums, opened the first public libraries and started the first newspaper in human history. The Acta Diurna –The Daily Doings- a one sheet of the acts of the Senate and events. It was pasted on city walls or read aloud by heralds.

37 AD- The Roman Emperor Tiberius had lived to a great old age and spent his last years at his private villa on the Isle of Capri. He had raised his sister Agrippina’s son Caligula to succeed him upon his death. This day after weeks of failing health Tiberius seemed to breathe his last. Caligula took the signet ring from his finger and went out to receive the adulation of the Praetorian Guard and Senate as the new emperor. But suddenly word came that Tiberius had opened his eyes and was asking for wine. The embarrassed Caligula went back into the sickroom and himself smothered the old man with a pillow.

455 A.D.- Roman Emperor Valentinian III was assassinated by kinsmen of Aetius, the half barbarian Roman general who Valentinian had killed the previous September.

1758- THE ST. SABAA MASSACRE- The Apache had invited the westward expanding Spanish colonists to move into the Texas hill country near where Austin would one day be. This brought them into direct conflict with the fierce Commanche nation, just as the Apache had hoped. This day the Commanches descended upon the new Spanish Mission of St. Sabaa and wiped them out. 200 dead. After punitive expeditions failed, the Spaniards left the territory alone. It remained Commancheria until the American settlers overran it in the 1850s.

1778- In Paris, Benjamin Franklin first met Voltaire.

1792 -King Gustavus III Vasa of Sweden was assassinated at a masked ball. He had been warned and went incognito but the killers recognized him because of the bejeweled medals all over his costume. He was a good ruler to Sweden but like Catherine the Great of Russia had no use for democratic parliaments and ruled like an absolute monarch.

Giusseppi Verdi later wrote an opera based on the incident, "Un Ballo en Maschera" and invented a love story where the King falls for the wife of his Prime Minister. He was later forced to revise his story however because the Swedish government resented their late king portrayed as an adulterer. The King’s enemies in his time had accused him of being a child-molester. So to avoid any more hassle, Verdi made him the Duke of Boston.

1802- The fortress at West Point New York becomes the United States Military Academy. 40 student cadets without uniforms. Today West Point graduates about 4000 officers a year. The Long Grey Line.

1830- DULLEST DAY IN HISTORY OF STOCK MARKET- only 31 shares traded for a grand total of $ 3,740 dollars.

1848- King Ludwig Ist of Bavaria abdicated over the scandal of his mistress LOLA MONTEZ . Lola started off as an Irish nymph named Betty James who changed her name and passed herself off as an Argentine flamenco dancer. Ludwig was so besotted with her that after awhile she was hiring and firing gov't officials as the Bavarian economy careened towards bankruptcy. Ludwig protested publicly that all Lola and he ever did was spend evenings reading aloud from Thomas a' Kempis "An Imitation of Christ". Privately he confessed she possessed extraordinary internal muscles...ahem....
He gave the crown to his brother Maxmillian and she published a best selling book on beauty tips and toured the U.S..

1850- Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter published.

1861- TEXAS voted to join the Southern Confederacy over the protests of elderly governor Sam Houston. Houston argued that a better course to follow was to invade Mexico again and this time conquer all of it, after which Americans would elect Houston President and he would redress all Southern grievances. Sam seemed a little out of it by now….
As the Texas legislature called out 7 times for Sam Houston to take the Oath to the Confederacy, Houston sat quietly in his chair whittling on a stick. He then retired to his ranch and died a year later. Thousands of Texans died in the Civil War and the state was under military occupation until 1877.

1906- The Rolls-Royce Motorcar Company incorporated. Mr. Charles Rolls and Sir William Royce quickly realized that they couldn’t compete with the mass produced low cost motorcars made by Henry Ford, so they appealed to the high end buyer with elegant hand made craftsmanship.

1898- Artist Aubrey Beardsley died of tuberculosis at 25. Having a religious conversion at the end of his life, but still the stickler for detail, his last words were :" Destroy all my erotic drawings...all the bad ones too...." Luckily for history his friends did neither.

1921- On the final day of the 10th Communist Party Congress Lenin laid down the statutes barring dissent in Russia. From now on Anarchism, Socialism, Centrism, Trade Unionism, in fact any dissent or disagreement with the Soviet Communist Party from Right of Left would be seen as Counter-Revolutionary Dead-Meatism.
Tired of arguing with old Bolsheviks over how Russian society should be transformed, he in effect stamped out the last sparks of democracy in Russia. The slogans of Russia belonging to the workers and peasants became just that- slogans. Russia really belonged to a small central committee controlling the Communist Party.

1926 -Robert Goddard launches the first liquid fueled rocket in Auburn Massachusetts. In later years he was invited to join Cal Tech and the Galcit group in forming the embryonic Jet Propulsion Lab. Goddard refused because at such a government facility he would no longer be the center of attention but just another scientist. Goddard also set up the first testing grounds in Rosswell New Mexico.

1934- Disney’s short The Three Little Pigs won an Oscar for best animated short.

1935- ADOLF HITLER surprised the world by announcing Germany's refusal to be bound by the Versailles Treaty anymore. He calls for universal conscription for a 100 division army, and reveals the secret massive illegal German arms buildup and the Luftwaffe, now the world's largest air force. He then waited for the Allies reaction, which was nothing.

1961- Walt Disney comedy The Absent Minded Professor with Fred MacMurray premiered.

1968-THE MY-LAI MASSACRE- U.S. troops shot 400 Vietnamese civilians. The GI's were disgusted with the endless invisible ambushes and not being able to tell civilians from guerrillas. So this day they annihilated an entire village that intelligence said had aided in an ambush of an earlier patrol. They lined up people in front of an open pit and shot them down. They got so carried away that a Huey helicopter gunship had to place itself between the soldiers and the fleeing women and children and threatened to fire if they didn't stop.
Atrocities conducted under wartime stress are sadly common in all wars, but this one and the clumsy attempt to cover it up particularly horrified the American public. The ensuing media coverage fostered a harsh public attitude towards returning veterans, unprecedented in American wars. Only one person, Lt. William Calley, ever went to jail. The surviving crew of the helicopter that halted the massacre were finally acknowledged for their bravery in 1998 by President Clinton.

1985- A.P. correspondent Terry Anderson kidnapped by terrorist militia in Beirut. He was held captive for seven years.

1994- Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding was arrested for obstructing the prosecution of the case of the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan.

2007- Author Michael Crichton was the author of classics like The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. He had been called the H.G. Wells of modern times. But today he shocked the scientific community by denouncing the theory of Global Warming.

2005- Old actor Robert Blake was acquitted of the murder of his wife Bonnie Lee Blakeley. She was shot in the head while in their car after having dinner together. Blake claimed he had returned to the restaurant to retrieve his gun. (?)
Another suspect has never been found.

2008- J.P. Morgan bought-out collapsing superbank Bear Sterns (BSC), the first major firm to fall in the great global economic collapse of 2008. One factor in the crisis was unregulated lying to stockholders and falsifying records. Just two of Bear-Stearns hedge-fund managers, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, lost $1.6 billion, all while telling investors that everything was fine.
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Yesterday’s Question: In the Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown’s nemesis is Lucy. What is Lucy’s last name?

Answer: Lucy Van Pelt.

Question: In the Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown’s nemesis is Lucy. What is Lucy’s last name?

Yesterday’s Question: Caesar was warned “ Beware the Ides of March.” What are Ides?
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History for 3/15/2017
Birthdays: Andrew Jackson*, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg is 74, Eva Longoria is 42, David Silverman

508BC-525AD- In the Roman Republic this was the traditional day the newly elected Consuls and Senate assumed their offices and began governing.

44 BC -BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH- While attending the first day of the new Senate, Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by radical senators beneath the statue of his old rival Pompey Magnus. Two of the murderers, Brutus and Cassius were former officers of Pompey to whom Caesar granted amnesty. Marcus Brutus was a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the Roman democracy. He was even rumored to have been Caesar's illegitimate son, since his mother Servilla had an affair with Jules.
Even though Caesar was stabbed 23 times, it still took him several hours to die, left lying alone on the floor. Unlike Shakespeare, Julius Caesar never said "Et Tu Brute'" Even you, Brutus? in Latin. His last words were the equivalent in Greek-"Touto kai teknon mou" which translates, "Even this my child?". Greek was to the Romans like French is to us.
At the time, Caesar was preparing a new campaign to attack Persia via Arabia Felix
(Saudi Arabia).

1079-The Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan assassinated by followers of his old Vizier, Nizam Al Mulk. The vizer had been killed by the Assassins, the original terrorists of the Islamic world, hired by Alp Arslan. Witness to all this was Omar Al Khayyam, poet, mathematician and astronomer. Legend said Alp Arslan had mustachios so long he had to pin them up on his turban so he could shoot his bow. Arslans successor was Gelalladin or the Malik Shah. His reign was considered the high point of Seljuk civilization.

1493- Columbus returned to Palo, Spain from his first voyage to America. The Santa Maria had broke up on reefs in America and Captain Pinzon had taken the Pinta on ahead to take credit for himself, or so Columbus worried. He himself got home in the little bark the Nina and at one point had to put in at a Portuguese port where he and his men were impounded for a few days. Captain Pinzon did reach home first, but fortunately King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella refused to listen to him. When Pinzon got his own voyage to the New World, all the attention was on his navigator- Amerigo Vespucci.

1517-Pope Leo X was left a full treasury by his predecessor Pope Julius II. But being a major party animal he quickly blew it all. This day he decided to pay his bills by ordering a new campaign to sell indulgences. Indulgences were sort of "after-life insurance" By paying a donation the bearer could be forgiven some sins and time in Purgatory. Leo extended it to forgive sins you may intend to commit in the future. You could also buy a reprieve to someone already dead. When this refinance scheme reached Germany it was the provocation that sent Martin Luther to pin up his 95 Theses challenging the authority of Rome and start the Reformation.

1582-WILLIAM OF ORANGE ASSASSINATED. The Spanish Viceroy of the Netherlands the Duke of Parma didn’t know how to cope with the Dutch Independence movement led by William of Orange, also called William the Silent. They defeated him in battle but they could never capture him or destroy his forces. Finally Parma came up with a solution. He published a decree declaring William "A criminal and outcast from God and Society" That anyone who killed William would receive 25,000 gold pieces and be made a noble. Such a deal!
Within three days a man shot William in the head, but he recovered. Then a year later this day Belgian Bartholomew Girard shot William three times and killed him. Girard was executed, but his family received the reward, and his severed head was displayed in Cologne Cathedral like a holy relic. For year afterwards and German Catholics tried to get Girard made a saint. William of Orange was dead but his 12 children carried on the fight for Dutch Independence and his family still rules Holland today.

1780- BATTLE OF GUILFORD COURTHOUSE, Virginia. Colonial General Nathaniel Greene battled British Lord Cornwallis to a draw but Cornwallis had to withdraw to Delaware for supplies. At one point Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire into his own redcoats to get through to the rebels- not exactly a great morale booster. Back in London, Sir Horace Walpole remarked: " Lord Cornwallis has conquered. He has conquered his troops out of shoes and provisions and conquered himself out of troops."

1781-THE NEWBURGH CONSPIRACY- The closest the United States ever came to a military dictatorship. George Washington's officers were fed up with the indecision of their bankrupt Congress. The Revolutionary War was over, but the army hadn’t been paid in months. Like Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army in Britain a century before, there were loud calls to march on the Congress and chuck the rascals out! They talked of establishing a junta of generals to run the United States! But what of their commander? The ringleaders assured: "we can handle the old man."
This day General Washington called a staff meeting at his HQ at Newburgh, New Jersey and faced down his angry troops. He appealed for understanding and patriotism. Tears were shed when he put on his spectacles, implying he'd broken his health and had aged prematurely in the service of his country. He was only 49, yet he looked much older. That won them over. George Washington not only wasn’t "handled", but convinced his sulky soldiers to go back their farms peacefully, paid with nothing but a paper IOU.

1782- The English House of Commons, fed up with his bungling of the American Revolution and the heavy-handed style of Lord North’s government, voted the first ever vote of no-confidence. The Lord North government resigned five days later.

1820- Maine became a state.

1865- Confederate Guerrilla Sue Mundy was hanged in Kentucky. Long haired soldier Jerome Clark once got drunk, and for a gag his buddies put him in a dress and declared him Queen of the May. Instead of being insulted, Clark liked being in drag and ravaged the countryside as the guerrilla leader Sue Mundy. Until the Yankees caught him no one was quite sure whether he was a man or woman.

1869-The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team. Players had been taking payments under the table for years to concentrate on their skills, now it was out in the open. Still some newspapers accused them of being "Shiftless young men debasing the game with their greed."

1890- Kaiser Wilhelm II forced Chancellor Otto von Bismarck into retirement and decided to run Germany himself. Bismarck "the Old Pilot" who had unified Germany had set up a highly centralized autocracy that he ran from behind the throne. His relations with the other statesmen like Disraeli assured Europe had thirty years of complete peace. He never imagined he would be sacked by the young, emotionally unstable grandson of his old friend Wilhelm Ist.

1892- The first voting machines in the US went into service. After 1972 metal voting machines were phased out in favor of the cheaper punch card system but the controversy over presidential elections fraud continues to cause new change.

1909- Harry Gordon Selfridge, formerly manager of Chicago’s Marshal Fields, opened Selfridges, London’s first Department Store. Selfridge invented the Bargain Basement, the Annual Sale, and the motto “ The Customer is Always Right.”

1913- President Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential news conference.

1915- Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming. He used so many of his relatives in production that Ogden Nash quipped: "Carl Laemmele has a very large Fammele." Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as its birthday.

1917-CZAR NICHOLAS II ABDICATED THE THRONE OF RUSSIA with a note scribbled in pencil. He had tried to abdicate in favor of his younger brother Archduke Michael as regent for his son Alexis, and save the dynasty. But Michael wanted none of it and the revolutionary forces tearing at Russian society. He ignored his pleas. After 303 years, the Romanov Dynasty was at an end.

1919- American veterans of World War I founded a veterans society on the model of the Civil War’s vets Grand Army of the Republic. They called it the American Legion.

1929- Scarface Al Capone was called before a Chicago grand jury to explain his involvement in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Big Al’s alibi was he was in Key Biscayne Florida at the time having lunch with the Dade County prosecutor. They couldn’t pin nothing on him and no one was ever charged with the massacre.

1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesingers Looney Tunes cartoon studio.

1941- The daughter of Cecil B. DeMille, Katherine DeMille, had married actor Anthony Quinn. This day tragedy struck the family. On a visit to Cecil B.’s estate the couple’s three year old son Christopher walked off into neighbor W.C. Fields yard where he fell into Fields unsupervised swimming pool and drowned. The parents were so shattered they divorced afterward. Anthony Quinn refused to talk about the rest of his long life. Fields was so depressed he had the pool filled in and landscaped so no reminder of the tragedy would remain.

1944- The DeHAVILAND CASE- A judge ruled actress Olivia DeHaviland free of her exclusive seven year personal contract to Warner Bros.. For years movie stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney had been fighting in court the system of exclusive contracts the studios used to keep them under control. They had no choice in the type of films they did, no residuals and studios could rent them out to other studios for higher fees and keep the money.
If the actor complained they were put on disciplinary leave by the studio without pay and the penalty time added onto the end of their contract. Garbo called it the closest thing to White Slavery. Some contracts even ordered some stars not to get married for fear it would erode their sex appeal. The DeHaviland Case broke that system and allowed actors to make their own deals.

1956- Lerner & Lowe’s musical "My Fair Lady" premiered.

1962- The discovery of anti-matter.

1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time.

1964- The book The Feminist Mystique by Betty Freidan first published. The first major book to point out women were unhappy with their second class domestic roles. And it coined the term Feminist.

1969- Worst clashes between Soviet Russia and Red China across their long mutual border. While the free world feared a monolithic global Communist conspiracy, the fact was the animosity between Russia and China got so bad it threatened to go nuclear.

During a lighter incident the Chinese People’s Liberation Army showed what they thought of their Russian comrades by lining up along a river bank, dropping their trousers, bending over and giving them a mass-mooning. The next time the Chinese did it the Russians were ready. As their butts went up the Russians held up portraits of Mao Tse Tung, the Chinese leader. The mooning stopped.

1969- Two young heirs to the Polident false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.

1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.

1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show?

1985- THE SAVINGS & LOAN SCANDALS- The Reagan White House’s policy of removing all business regulation played havoc with the savings & loan system. The problem became a public issue when this day Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio suspended business in thrift banks in his state to stop the complete collapse of the system. One of the most underreported and little understood stories of the 1980’s was the cost of the Savings & Loan mess. It came out to be near $28 billion dollars, double the total cost to win World War II. Scores of crooked Savings & Loan execs like Charles Keating and Neil Bush accumulated vast fortunes, leaving you and I to pay the bills.

1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered private domain site on the Internet.

2002- Blue Sky’s hit animated film Ice Age premiered.

2004- Cal Tech Scientists announce the discovery of Planet Xenia, the tenth planet orbiting our Sun, beyond Pluto. Some want to call it Sedna, an Inuit goddess who lived under the ice.

2012- The Syrian Civil War broke out. For over fifty years the Assad Family ruled Syria as absolute dictators. This day the reforming wave of the Arab Spring protests tried to bring about change, and was met with a brutal response, including chemical weapons. Further complicating the issue was that secular dictator Bashir al Assad was being challenged by rebels who were Muslim fundamentalists formed into a rogue state called ISIS. The US, Iran, Turkey, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia soon became involved.
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Yesterday’s Question: Caesar was warned “ Beware the Ides of March.” What are Ides?

Answer: The Roman month was divided into three sections (weeks), of ten days each. The first was the Calends, the second the Ides, and the third week the Nones. So a Roman would call today The Fifth Day of the Ides of Mars.

Question: In the 1790s Captain Vancouver founded a town on the Pacific coast named Granville. What is it know as today?

Yesterdays Question answered below: What time period is known as the Jacobean Era?
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History for 3/7/2017
Birthdays: Maurice Ravel, Piet Mondrian, Roman Emperor Geta, Luther Burbank, Tammy Fae Baker, Willard Scott, Lynn Swann, Franco Harris, Daniel D. Travanti, Rachel Weisz is 46, Michael Eisner is 75, Wanda Sykes is 53, Peter Saarsgard is 46, Bryan Cranston is 61

322 BC- the Greek philosopher Aristotle died of indigestion.

161AD- The death of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Marcus Aurelius became Emperor. Marcus named his brother Lucius Verus as co-emperor, but Verus died after a few years. Marcus Aurelius became famous as the philosopher-emperor, ruling justly and leaving behind his Meditations, one of the great works of western philosophy.

1274- Saint Thomas Aquinas died in Italy. Everybody knew the great teacher was so holy he undoubtedly would be made a saint (the medieval equivalent of being called to the Hall of Fame). So rather and wait for opportunity to sell his bones as relics the people sped up the process of decomposition by boiling his remains in lye.

1765- PARLIAMENT PASSES THE STAMP ACT. Ever since winning Canada and India from France, England had to come up with ways to pay for her massive war debt as well as garrisoning and administering of all the new possessions. The Stamp Act ordered that all purchases and exports to and from America have a royal stamp (i.e. tax) on them, sort of like the stamp you see on liquor bottle caps. These taxes were already in place in England, so Whitehall felt nobody would mind. Americans went ballistic and overnight became a nation of smugglers. They most strongly objected to the idea that the tax was levied without their consent. No one consulted their elected representatives and there were no American seats in Parliament.

Even though the unpopular act was repealed a year later after Benjamin Franklin successfully argued in Parliament, the resentment against the mother country lingered. The British in turn were surprised and annoyed by the all the fuss. They felt the Yankees were an ungrateful people they had defeated French for.

1774- To combat rampant smuggling and teach a lesson to the increasingly uppity New Englanders, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts General Thomas Gage ordered the Port of Boston closed. This act all but ensured that the first outbreak of violence in the American Revolution would happen there.

1809- French Balloonist Jean Pierre Blanchard died from injuries sustained from crashing his balloon in the Netherlands. Blanchard with a man named Jeffries had crossed the English Channel by air and for years he had demonstrated the wonders of air flight for audiences like Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon.

1850- THE 7TH OF MARCH SPEECH- The only address given to Congress that is known only by it's date. Senator Daniel Webster stood up and electrified the nation with a three hour address backing the Clay Compromise: "Mr. Speaker ! I rise not as a Massachusetts man, or a Northern man, but as an American !!" This Northern abolitionist backed the fugitive slave law and other concessions to the South in exchange for California entering the union as a non-slave state.

New England supporters were furious. His controversial stand probably cost him his last chance of ever becoming president and he died bitter two years later, but John F. Kennedy said in "Profiles in Courage" that by doing this act Daniel Webster helped delay the Civil War for ten more years, which allowed the north to grow more industrially powerful. So he saved the United States in a way.

1862- THE BATTLE OF PEA RIDGE- Yankees under General Curtis defeated a Confederate army under Gen. Stirling Price, keeping Missouri in the Union. It was a confused battle with militias, frontier scouts like Wild Bill Hickock and Creek Indians under Confederate Colonel Stand Watie. Curtis directed the battle in an old brown corduroy jacket and nuzzled a shotgun in his lap. The Creeks captured a Union battery but stopped their advance to dance with the scalps of the Yankees.

1862- BULLETHOLE ELLIS- Rebel Guerrilla leader William Quantrill and his raiders shoot up the Kansas town of Aubrey. During the raid Quantrill fired his Colt revolver at a man in a second story window named Abraham Ellis. The bullet was slowed by smashing through the windowsill and embedded in the man’s skull, but just missed touching his brain. Quantrill apologized to Ellis. Ellis had helped him get a teaching job before the war. The raiders left him for dead, but Abe Ellis recovered. Old Bullethole Ellis lived to a ripe old age, just with a large round dark hole in the center of his forehead.

1877- Bill Reed, a Union Pacific Railroad worker discovered a vast field of dinosaur fossils at Como Bluff Wyoming. "The bones extend for seven miles and are by the ton!"

1906- Finland becomes the first nation to give women the right to vote.

1916- BMW- The manufacturing firms of Karl Rapp and Gustav Otto merged to form the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG -Bavarian Aircraft Works. The company would later become the Bayerische Motor-Werke -Bavarian Motor Works or BMW. The Logo circle represents a white propeller turning against a blue sky- the colors of the old Kingdom of Bavaria, the heraldic shield of the ruling Wittelsbach Dynasty. After the world wars, BMW was prohibited from manufacturing aircraft engines, as their engines had powered the fiercest fighters like the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf 190. So BMW focused on making high quality cars.

1932-BATTLE OF THE RIVER ROUGE- At the depth of the Great Depression unemployment in Detroit was up to 50% of the population. 10,000 desperately unemployed auto workers stage a protest march on Henry Ford's Rouge River plant, the largest factory in the world. They are met by police and thugs who fired into the crowd, killing 3 and wounding 25. Henry Ford, (who personally made $10 million that year) had machine guns mounted on his home's roof and advised his chief executives to carry sidearms. Fords private in-house police were called by the Orwellian misnomer the Service Department.

1936-HITLER RE-OCCUPIED THE RHINELAND- Since the Versailles treaty the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr valley was under neutral and sometimes Anglo-French occupation. Imagine trying to restart your stagnant economy with Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh under foreign control. Today Hitler took the biggest gamble of his career and ordered the still infant Wehrmacht army to reoccupy the Ruhr, in defiance of all previous treaties. He dared the Allies to do something about it, and they stayed quiet. German generals were amazed that France and England could have easily invaded at any time and squashed them, but they did nothing.

1942- The Japanese army captured Rangoon and cut the Burma Road, severing Anglo- Chinese supply lines. After this supplies would have to be brought in 'Over the Hump" meaning flown by unescorted transport planes from India over the Himalayas.

1945- THE BRIDGE AT REMAGEN- A hostile army had not crossed the Rhine into Germany since Napoleon in 1806. The Germans called their defense of the border the Siegfried Line. The Nazis had ordered all Rhine bridges destroyed, but the bridge at Remagen was detonated with inferior charges. So it stayed intact as the U.S. Third Army approached. Sgt. Alex Drabik of Ohio ran across the bridge, weaving back and forth like a football fullback, with the enemy firing at him from all sides. Just as he reached the other side a Nazi popped out, pointed a Lugar pistol in his face and pulled the trigger. The gun was empty. The Siegfried Line was breached, and Sgt. Drabik died of very old age in 1993.

1947- Winston Churchill, while giving a speech in America about the Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe uses the term "Iron Curtain". " From Zagreb on the Adriatic to Stettin in the Baltic, an Iron Curtain has descended across Europe." The phrase had been invented earlier by German Admiral Doenitz, but Churchill popularized the phrase. The Iron Curtain ended in 1989.

1951- The Prime Minister of Iran- General Ali Rasmara was assassinated by Islamic extremists.

1965- BLOODY SUNDAY- THE EDMUND PETTUS BRIDGE-As Dr. Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights marchers reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Gov George Wallace had Alabama police ambush them with firehoses, teargas, bullwhips and attack dogs. Dozens of peaceful marchers were beaten and hospitalized. Three were killed. The brutal images on television shocked the nation had probably did more to ensure passage of the National Civil Rights Bill than anything the police could do to stop it.

1969- Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel.

1988- 300 pound female impersonator Harry Milstead, better known as Divine in the John Waters films, died of sleep apnea.

1999- Film director Stanley Kubrick died just five days after completing his final film Eyes Wide Shut.
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Yesterdays Question: Quiz: What time period is known as the Jacobean Era?

Answer: The time in English history after the Elizabethan Era. A time of high English achievements in the arts & science- Shakespeare, Bacon, Inigo Jones. It’s named for King James 1st, 1603-1635, Jacob being the Hebrew form of James.

Quiz: What time period is known as the Jacobean Era?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is poitin’ or pochine?
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History for 3/6/2017
Birthdays: Michelangelo Buonnarotti, Cyrano De Bergerac, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Phil Sheridan, Lou Costello, Ivan Boesky, Ring Lardner, Gabriele Garcia-Marquez, Valentina Tereschkova the first woman in space, Tom Arnold, Kiri Te Kanawa, Rob Reiner is 70, Alan Greenspan, DC Mayor Marion Barry, Stephen Schwartz is 69, Ed McMahon, Shaquille O’Neal is 45, Will Eisner would be 100!

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Fridolin the Wanderer.

1521- Fernan de Magellan discovered the Pacific island of Guam.

1554- The future King of Spain Phillip II married the Catholic Queen of England Mary Tudor long distance, by proxy. When Phillip came to England, and realized Mary had waited to long to have children and was now too old and ill, he sent emissaries to see if her half-sister Elizabeth was interested.

1834- The Ontario settlement of Fort York is incorporated as the new City of Toronto.

1836- THE ALAMO- The Mexican army of General Santa Anna overwhelmed a small garrison of rebellious Texans in an old mission.
The tragic stand of 189 men led by colorful frontiersmen like Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie against 5,000 troops has become part of American mythology. That they ignored Sam Houston's direct orders to blow up the mission and join his main army with their valuable cannon is forgotten. Apologists contend that if they didn’t stall, Santa Anna's army he would have swooped down on Washington-on-the-Brazos and squashed the Texas Rebellion while Texan leaders were still quibbling over their constitution.

The attack began at 4:30 a.m. in the predawn darkness and was all over in 90 minutes, a little after 6 a.m. Jim Bowie was bayoneted in his hospital bed. The notes of a Texas officer named Dolson who interviewed a Mexican officer named Sanchez after the battle were discovered in 1961. It revealed that maybe Davey Crockett didn't go down heroically using his rifle "Old Betsy" as a club- like in the movies, but tried to surrender. His wife was Mexican, and he was a politician after all. Santa Anna had him and any surviving white men shot. Sanchez wasn’t sure if it was Crockett. We'll never know for sure.
There were 16 Alamo survivors, the women and children, and Colonel Travis' black servant Joe. Santa Anna made sure they were each given two pesos and a blanket and set free. The battle cry of Texans became Remember the Alamo!

1837- Col Travis black slave Joe fought on the barricades of the Alamo alongside his master. After the battle Joe was thanked for his services by being returned to Travis’ family in Alabama to remain a slave. On the one-year anniversary of the battle Joe escaped to freedom. He remained in hiding for 30 years, long after the Civil War and Emancipation, emerging for a newspaper interview in 1877.

1850- Gustav Flaubert was the French writer who was once tried for pornography for creating Madame Bovary. This day while in Egypt he kept an appointment with the countries most famous belly dancing prostitute Kuchuck Hanem.

1853- Giusseppi Verdi’s classic opera La Traviata premiered at Teatro alla Fenice in Venice. It was based on Dumas novel Le Dame Aux Camelias. Verdi wrote in his diary about the premiere:" The evening was a disaster! Was it my fault or the fault of the singers? Only time will tell..."

1856- LONG BEFORE AMAZON- Mr. Simon met Mr. Schuster while buying a piano in New York City and discovered they had a common love of books. They formed Simon & Schuster, one of the most famous publishers in the U.S.

1857- THE DREDD SCOTT DECISION. One of the incidents leading to the Civil War and one of the most infamous Supreme Court rulings in US History. A slave, Dredd Scott, sued in court for his freedom on the grounds that he no longer lived in a slave state, because his master had moved his home to a free state.
The Supreme Court of Chief Justice Taney, whom the N.Y. Tribune had described as "5 slaveholders and two doughfaces", handed down the decision that not only was Scott still a slave, but he and his descendants could never have rights of U.S. Citizenship, no matter where they lived. In effect, all African-Americans even if born free in the North were still not people but property.
This idea exploded the already enraged public opinion in the North. Four years later the same justice Taney swore in Abraham Lincoln as president.

1860- Presidential candidate Abe Lincoln in a speech said:" Thank God we have a system where workers have the Right to Strike."

1864- THE NAVAJO LONG WALK- After being defeated when their Navajo-Fortress in Canyon de Chelly was stormed by US Cavalry under Kit Carson, the Navajo and their families were forced into a death march in the winter cold several hundred miles to a reservation. Years later Washington decided it didn't want their ancestral lands after all and let them return.

1884-Susan B. Anthony led 100 women’s rights advocates to a meeting with President Chester Allen Arthur. The demanded he give his support for giving women the vote. President Arthur said he would think about it, but he did nothing.

1899- The wonder drug of the age and the first patent medicine- Aspirin, is patented. Felix Hoffman isolated the compound salicin from ground willow bark, an old Indian pain remedy. Ancient Romans drank willow water for pain.

1911-THE YELLOW PERIL- In the bizarre game of diplomatic chess the great powers played before World War I, the issue of race was a favorite topic. The" Battle between the White Forces of Christian Civilization against the limitless Yellow Hordes of Asia" was an idea the German Kaiser Wilhelm liked to talk at length on.
On this day the Kaiser's agents convinced the U.S. public via the US tabloid press that Japan had concluded an alliance with Mexico and was preparing to seize the Panama Canal, and that a Japanese Army was even now marching up Baja to invade California! To quiet public fears President Taft was actually forced to mobilize 2/3 of the U.S. Army and Navy and sent it to the Mexican border "for maneuvers".

When the Great War did come Japan was on the American side, and the Kaiser tried fruitlessly to make an alliance with an unsympathetic Mexico.

1917- Woman’s rights advocate Margaret Sanger is released from prison where she was jailed for trying to open the first Planned Parenthood clinic. She married the inventor of the Three-In-One Oil Company and used to smuggle abortion medicines in cans of oil. During prohibition she smuggled diaphragms in cases of innocent-looking bootleg whiskey. She lived into the 1960s, long enough to see the Birth Control Pill and the Women’s Movement.

1918- The Navy destroyer USN Cyclops disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, and has never been found since.

1921- The film Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse premiered. The first Hollywood film to earn over one million dollars, and it made a major star out of Rudolf Valentino..

1933- Two days after inauguration Eleanor Roosevelt became the first First Lady to hold her own separate press conference. She insisted only female journalists could attend.

1936- Mr. Clarence Birdseye introduced frozen vegetables.

1944- The first great daylight bombing raid on Hitler’s capitol Berlin. In one of the largest air battles of World War Two 800 US B-17 and P-51s battled hundreds of Luftwaffe fighters. Over 80 US planes were shot down losing 690 airmen and 45 German but the message was sent, Berlin would now get the kind of destruction that Rotterdam, Warsaw and London got.

1978- Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt was shot and crippled by a lunatic.

1979- The film The China Syndrome premiered. It was about an accident at an American nuclear power plant. Three weeks later the real Three Mile Island accident occurred, boosting the box office. " It's spooky, it's enough to make you religious" said star Michael Douglas.

1981- CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite retired. Dan Rather succeeded him after CBS learned ABC was offering Rather big bux to jump networks. Roger Mudd, who was thought to be the real successor to Cronkite, left the network to anchor the History Channel. Dan Rather was the CBS anchor until 2004.

1989- Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications to become Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world. They were bought by AOL in 2000 but AOL proved to be dead weight and they resumed control as TimeWarner in 2003.

1992- The film The Lawnmower Man premiered. It featured early motion-capture CGI imagery, and claimed to have the first virtual reality sex scene.

1998- The Big Lebowski opened in theaters. The Dude Abides…
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Yesterday’s Question: What is poitin’or pochine?

Answer: Clear Irish moonshine distilled from potatoes and sugar beets.