Quiz: What was Copernicus real name?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is Newspeak?
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History for 7/10/2021
Birthdays: John Calvin, Marcel Proust, James McNeill Whistler, Nicholas Tesla, Carl Orff, Camille Pissarro, Adolphus Busch the founder of Budweiser, George DiChirico, Jacky "Legs" Diamond, Arlo Guthrie, Jake LaMotta, Joe Shuster- one of the creators of Superman, Fred Gywnne, David Brinkley, Arthur Ashe, Camilla Parker Bowles, Jessica Simpson is 41

138AD- Death of the Roman Emperor Hadrian at age 62. Antoninus Pius became emperor after promising to adopt as his heir young Marcus Aurelius. Hadrian, although suffering a lingering illness, had arranged that Antoninus would have no rivals by ordering the deaths of anyone even thinking of wanting to be emperor. He even ordered the killing of his brother-in-law Servianus, who was ninety years old.

1040 - Lady Godiva (Godgifu) goes for a ride on horseback in the nude through the streets of Coventry to embarrass her husband, Leofric, the Earl of Mercia, to lower taxes on the poor.

1099- The magical-mystical knight of Spain, Rodrigo de Bivar, called El Cid, died at the castle of Valencia. Rodrigo had taken a loosely written promise from King Alfonso of Castile that he could keep any territory he took from the Moors, and used it to build a private army. He captured the city of Valencia and ruled it like an independent prince. Nine years after his death, his wife Jimena surrendered Valencia to the Almohavid Moors. But the legend of El Cid Campeador, lived on.

1460 - Wars of Roses: Richard of York defeats King Henry VI at Northampton.

1554- The day after King Henry VIII’s sickly son Edward died at 15, Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed as England’s’ Queen. This was a desperate gamble of powerful Protestant factions to keep Henry’s eldest child Mary from ascending the throne. Mary was a bigoted Catholic and made no secret her desire to punish all those who turned from the Roman Church. So they found 16 year old Lady Jane, a niece with a thin claim on the throne. It didn’t work, Mary became queen, Jane lost her head.

1588- French philosopher Michel de la Montaigne spent one night in the Bastille prison. The Bordeaux native had arrived in Paris in the midst of the nasty political fight between Huguenots and Catholics and was arrested as a traitor. Queen Mother Catherine de Medici ordered his prompt release.

1649- The Battle of ZBARAZH- Ukrainian Cossack rebel Bogdhan Khmielnitski besieged Polish warlord Prince Jeremy Wisnowiecki with the aid of the Crimean Tatars under Tugai Bey. After an epic battle, The Polish King Jan Casimir bribed the Crimean Khan into changing sides, which forced Bogdan to make peace. But the peace confirmed Bogdan Khmeilnitski as the Hetman of an autonomous Cossack Ukraine. In 1654 Bogdan pledged allegiance to the Russian Czar in Moscow and the Ukraine would not be free of Russian rule until 1989.

1815- After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the allied armies occupying Paris start to squabble with one another. The Prussians (Germans) were disappointed they didn’t get to shoot Napoleon, burn Paris or do any other fun stuff. At least they wanted to blow up a Seine River bridge Nappy named for their humiliating defeat, the Pont de Jena. When the Duke of Wellington denounced this action as barbaric, General Von Gneisenau sneered: “you would do the same if there was a Pont du Yorktown here!” the big British defeat in the American Revolution. Wellington wouldn’t speak to von Gneisenau afterwards.
The Prussians got to set off gunpowder charge, but the bridge was built too solid and wouldn’t collapse. They compromised and changed its name to Pont de Louvre.

1832- President Andrew Jackson vetoed the charter of the Bank of the United States. Jackson felt a strong centralized bank would concentrate too much power away from the states and invite abuse, while proponents felt it was necessary to regulate banking like the Bank of England did. It was the most hotly debated issue of his presidency. He was roundly criticized as 'King Andrew I ' for defying Congress and public will. After several more decades of frequent financial panics and recessions, The Federal Reserve act of 1913 finally duplicated the same benefits as a national bank.

1873 - French poet Paul Verlaine wounded Arthur Rimbaud in a pistol duel.

1881 -Jesse James robbed his last bank, The Davis and Sexton Bank of Iowa. Then he changed his name to Mr. Howard and tried to live quietly with his wife Zerelda Mimms in Missouri. He called her “Z”.

1890- Wyoming became a state.

1892 - 1st concrete-paved street built in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

1925- THE SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL-Tennessee school teacher John Thomas Scopes went on trial for violating a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution to children. Scopes was defended by famed lawyer Clarence Darrow sent by the ACLU, the prosecutor was William Jennings Bryan.
The trial evolved (forgive the pun) from a small claims misdemeanor to a debate on Charles Darwin’s theory itself. This day the media descended upon the little town of Dayton Tennessee, which had hoped to attract attention for its slumping economy. It was the first trial broadcast live on Chicago radio WGN nationwide.
Hundreds of spectators attended from hillbillies with squirrel rifles, a chimpanzee in a suit called Mr. Joe Mendy to columnist H.L. Mencken, packing 4 bottles of bootleg scotch and a typewriter. Darrow humiliated Bryan in the debate by pointing out the contradictions in the Bible, but Scopes was found guilty anyway. The ban on teaching evolution remained in Tennessee until 1967.

1932- In a baseball game against the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indian pitcher Eddie Rommel perfects the knuckleball pitch.

1940- THEIR FINEST HOUR- First German bombing raids over London known as the "Battle of Britain". The Luftwaffe's mission, in preparation for a Nazi amphibious invasion of England- Operation Sea Lion, was to destroy the RAF and British industrial and supply areas, mostly around southeast London. This is why today the areas east of the Tower of London have so many modern buildings. Despite being outnumbered by three to one, the RAF prevailed, prompting Churchill's famous: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much, owed by so many, to so few."

1941- Jazz great Jelly Roll Morton died at 50 in Los Angeles from complications of asthma. He liked to call himself the inventor of jazz. As debatable as that claim was, he was one of the first musicians to develop a personal solo style distinct from the rest of his band. His mother practiced voodoo in New Orleans and she told him the reason for his fame and fortune was because she had pledged his soul to the Devil. He spent his last hours in a panic with his wife anointing his head with Holy oil.

1943- Allied Armies hit the beaches in Sicily.

1950 - "Your Hit Parade" premieres on NBC (later CBS) TV.

1953- NIKITA KHRUSCHEV took power in Moscow. After the death of Josef Stalin there was the inevitable shuffle of party bureaucrats jockeying for top job. Commissars Bulganin, Malenkov and Molotov tried to hold power, but the little bald Ukrainian with the big smile had the last laugh. At a secret meeting of the Presidium, Khrushchev arrested Laventi Beria, Stalin's dreaded chief executioner. Beria broke down and wept for his life before he was shot. Khrushchev was more merciful with his other rivals: Bulganin was made manager of a Siberian power station, Molotov was made ambassador to Outer Mongolia. The colorful Comrade Khrushchev held power until 1964.

1976- the last wooden slide rule produced. The K&E company gave it to the Smithsonian.

1985 - Coca-Cola Co admits New Coke was a big mistake and announced it would resume selling old formula Coke.

1987- The environmental group Greenpeace first called attention to themselves by a large ship called the Rainbow Warrior used to enter atomic tests sites to protest. This day in Auckland Harbor, The Rainbow Warrior was sunk by a bomb placed on her hull by French commandos. The blast killed a photographer. Rainbow Warrior had been in the Pacific to protest France’s nuclear testing there. The Government of New Zealand determined the French were responsible. In the ensuing scandal the French Defense minister resigned and the commandos went to jail.

1987- The Brave Little Toaster premiered in theaters.

1979 - Chuck Berry sentenced to 4 months for $200,000 in tax evasion. The old rocker said:” It never fails, every ten years I wind up in jail for something.”

1985- “ We Don’t Need Another Evil. “ Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome opened in theaters.

1991-Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office as first popularly elected President of Russia.

1992-A U.S. federal judge sentenced Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega to 40 years in prison for being a drug pusher, dictator and never returning the CIA washroom keys.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is Newspeak?

Answer: Newspeak was a language invented by George Orwell in his novel of future technological tyranny, 1984. It is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary, designed to limit personal thought and intellectual dialogue by reducing complete thoughts to simple terms of simplistic meaning. Nowadays it is used to describe speech that subsumes language and meaning for political purposes. Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty Ministry of Plenty. So when you reach for a spot remover like StainOut…

Quiz: What is Newspeak?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below:What is a jalopy?
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History for 7/9/2021
Birthdays: Schopenhauer, Elias Howe, Ottorino Respighi, David Hockney, Samuel Elliot Morrison, Sir Edward Heath, Kelly McGillis, Barbera Cartland, J. Paul Getty II, H.V. Kaltenborn, Daniel Guggenheim, John Tesch, Fred Savage, Chris Cooper, O.J. Simpson, Courtenay Love is 61, Debbie Sludge is 71, Brian Dennehy, Tom Hanks is 65, Sofia Vegara is 48

586 BCE. -Jerusalem fell to Nebuchanessar II. He removed the Israelites to Babylon and the period called the Babylonian Captivity began.

271B.C.- Greek philosopher Epicurus died at age 72. A strict vegetarian, he suffered from kidney stones and dysentery.

1540- Henry VIII had his marriage annulled to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Because the match was made for strictly political reasons, in contrast to Henry's other queens, she was not beheaded, but had a nice quiet life afterward. Still, because it was his idea, Henry had his minister Thomas Cromwell beheaded. You gotta have some fun.

1595 - Johannes Kepler theorized a geometric construction of the universe.

1686- The Treaty of the League of Augsburg. French king Louis XIV’s ambition to build his kingdom without a thought to who he offended managed to unite most of Europe- against him. Germany, Sweden, Spain, Holland, Austria and England all signed a secret alliance against France. Years ago these same nations were bitter enemies over religion, and kept apart by the diplomacy of Cardinal Richelieu. But Richelieu was long dead and even though Louis was a great catholic champion, the Pope hated him too. This treaty set the stage for the next century of European conflict.

1772- THE GASPEE’ INCIDENT- Another provocation leading to the American Revolution. Britain’s insistence her colonies trade through Britain exclusively made Americans a race of smugglers. Many New England businessmen had money tied up in ships doing illegal business. So, when the captain of the Royal Navy ship HMS Gaspee’ was overly diligent in catching coastal smugglers, local people were indignant. This day the Gaspee ran aground in the shoals off Rhode Island. That night a group of patriots seized the captain and crew and set fire to the ship. The next day the crew were released and everyone in the vicinity suddenly caught amnesia.

1776- The Declaration of Independence read out to Washington's army defending New York City. The people of New York celebrate by pulling down a large statue of King George III at Bowling Green. They melted the lead statue into 42,000 bullets. This was all done while knowing a huge British invasion fleet was just outside their harbor about to attack. The happy mobs also went after suspected loyalists including NY Mayor David Matthews, Royal Governor Tryon, and one of General Washington’s own bodyguard.

1815 -1st natural gas well in US is discovered.

1816- Happy Argentine Independence Day!

1864- Battle of the Monocacy. Jubal Early's Confederates threatened Washington D.C., to try and pull Grant away from his deathgrip on Richmond. This day they fought a large skirmish with Union forces in the area and resume their march towards the US Capitol.

1842 - Notary Stamp Law passes.

1910 - Walter Brookings becomes 1st to pilot an airplane up to an altitude of one mile!

1918- Depressed after his sweetheart Estelle married another man, writer William Faulkner left his Oxford Mississippi home to go to Canada and enlist in the RAF. He never saw combat, because World War I ended as his training was completed.

1929- The first airline service set up between New York City and Los Angeles (Glendale Airport). It was set up by Clement Melville Keyes, and Jack Maddux, running Ford Tri-Motor airplanes. First called Maddux Airlines, then later TWA.

1937- A fire at the Fox Studio film vaults destroyed thousands of stored nitrate prints. Entire careers were erased from film history. Stars like Theda Bara and William Farnum had most of their work destroyed. A tragedy to film history.

1940- VICHY- After the terrible defeat by the Germans, the remains of the French government set up a Nazis puppet state with elderly Great War hero Marshal Phillipe Petain as president. Because Paris was occupied by the Nazis, they met in the mineral water resort town of Vichy. The Vichy Republic was born. To this day the debate rages in France whether Petain was a traitor or whether he sacrificed his honor to salvage what he could of France from the wreckage of the defeat. Remember the scene at the end of the film "Casablanca" when Claude Rains pours himself some mineral water, but when he sees the label says Vichy, he tosses it into the trash.

1942- Anne Frank and her family go into hiding from the Nazis in the warehouse attic above her father’s office.

1943- Secret agent Jan Kauszka had been smuggled out of occupied Europe so he could travel to Washington. Today he told President Franklin Roosevelt that the Polish Underground Resistance (AK) had undeniable proof that Hitler’s secret plan was to murder all of the Jews of Europe.

1945- Shortly before he boarded the battleship Augusta to travel to Potsdam to confer with Churchill and Stalin, US President Harry Truman fired his Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau. Henry had been FDR’s treasury head for 12 years, the longest serving cabinet officer since founding father Albert Gallatin. Henry Morgenthau masterminded FDR’s battle with the Depression, The New Deal, and financed the World War II victory. But Truman chaffed at being lectured by old Roosevelt stalwarts. He now called Morganthau a "blockhead", idiot," and "he don’t know sh*t from apple-butter!"

1955 - "Rock Around Clock", arguably the first Rock & Roll song, hits #1 on Top 100 chart\

1956 - Dick Clark's 1st appearance as host of American Bandstand.

1972- David Bowie first appeared as his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust.

1981 - Walt Disney's the "Fox & The Hound," released. The first animated feature Walt Disney had no input on. Although the film has brief screen credits, it marks the torch being passed from the Nine Old Men golden age generation to the modern generation of animators. A complete personnel roster would include Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Woolie Reitherman, Tim Burton, John Lasseter, Bill Kroyer, Don Bluth, Lorna Cook, Henry Selick, Brad, Bird, John Pomeroy, Dan Haskett, Steve Hulett, John Musker, Jerry Rees, Rebecca Rees, Randy Cartwright, Glen Keane and many more.

1983- The Police’s single "Every Breath You Take" goes to #1.

1993- Industrial Light & Magic completed its transition to digital technology by shutting down its Howard Anderson Optical Printer. The Optical Printer system of mattes had been the way Motion Picture visual effects had been done since Melies in 1909, but the Digital Revolution had changed everything.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a jalopy?

Answer: Early XX American slang for a beat up old automobile.

Quiz: What is a jalopy?

Yesterday’s question answered below:What does it mean when you say something is problematic?
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History for 7/8/2021
B-Dazes: Jean de LaFontaine, John D. Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller, Kathe Kollwitz, Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin, Louis Jordan, Billy Eckstine, Steve Lawrence, Percy Grainger, Cynthia Gregory, Phillip Johnson, Kim Darby, Marty Feldman, Roone Arledge, Kevin Bacon is 63, Billy Crudup, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Angelica Huston, Raffi , Jeffrey Tambor

951AD- Happy Birthday Paris! The Roman city of Lutetia- muddy place- was built on the site of a village inhabited by a tribe of Gauls called the Parisi. This date was when the chronicles say the Franks established a castle on the present day site of the Louvre. Despite Viking raids and floods, the city slowly began to grow.

1099- The Crusaders tried to storm the walls of Jerusalem but were repulsed. They decided it was God telling them they were unworthy of the Holy City because they were sinful. So they drove out their camp followers and marched barefoot around the walls of Jerusalem praying and chanting. The Egyptian mercenary defenders hadn't really understood yet what this Christian Jihad stuff was all about. So they thought it was all pretty funny. They liked to urinate on the Christian knight's heads from the walls.

1249- Death of King Alexander II "the Peaceful" of Scotland. During his reign the border was established, and his heraldic symbol, the Red Lion Rampant on a Yellow field, became the symbol of Scotland..

1386- The Battle of Sembach- Leopold of Austria discovers why you leave the Swiss alone and let them stay neutral. His army of knights were intent on chastising this land of uppity goat herders, but they were destroyed instead. They at first held off the raging Schwyzers with a wall of spears. But then legend has it that great hero and really big schwyzer Arnold von Winkelreid shouted "Brothers! Take care of my wife and children!" and gathered up a dozen enemy spear points and shoved them into his own chest. As he fell he pulled them down with him, that opened a gap in the Austrian line that the Swiss swarmed through to victory.
Duke Leopold was found in a ditch with a pole-axe in his skull and two more rammed up his butt. It’s theorized the last two were more for insults sake.

1497 - Vasco da Gama departs for his trip to India by way of the Horn of Africa.

1673- William of Orange elected Stadholder of Holland while the country was fighting an Anglo French invasion. In electing him the Dutch chose an aristocratic prince over the republican party of the Great Pensioner Jacob De Witt. William was for no compromise with invaders, while De Witt favored a humiliating peace. De Witt was murdered by a mob. William called for national resistance and the Dutch opened their dykes and flooded the land around Amsterdam to stop the French army. William won and he eventually became King of England as well.

1755-THE BATTLE OF THE MONONGAHELA or BRADDOCKS DEFEAT- The French and Indian War, the North American installment of the greater European conflict known as the Seven Years War began. British General Braddock, marching to surprise French held Ft. Duquesne in western Pennsylvania, was ambushed on the Monongahela River by the French and their Indian allies. Out that far in the wilderness no one was sure if the war between France and England had even been declared, so it certainly was a surprise. Braddock and all the officers were killed except for a young militia captain named George Washington. Daniel Boone was also there as a young scout. After the war Ft. Duquesne became British and renamed it after Prime Minister William Pitt, so it became Pittsburgh.

1758- French general the Marquis de Montcalm with 3,000 men at Ft. Ticonderoga, New York, throw back a British attack of 15,000 under General Abercrombie.

1775- Before the Declaration of Independence was even conceived, the more conservative members of the American Congress first tried a compromise. They drafted an appeal to the King to resolve America’s differences with London and stay part of the British Empire. They called it the Olive Branch Petition. It was written by John Dickinson and carried to London by William Penn III. But King George’s blood was up with these unruly Yankees. He had just got the reports of his redcoat casualties from the Battle of Bunker Hill. So when this weenie petition came, he brushed it aside.” Our colonists in North American must now decide whether they are our subjects or our enemies.” Still, Dickinson argued against independence up to the final vote.

1776- The new Declaration of Independence was celebrated in Philadelphia with parties and parades. With great solemnity the Royal Coat of Arms was taken down from the State House judges bench and tossed on a bonfire.

1801- Touissaint L’Ouverture created a new constitution for the island of French Saint Dominique’, now called Haiti. Even though Haiti became only the second democratic republic in all the Americas, and Americans loudly called on all nations to assert their freedom, the Founding Fathers could not bring themselves to recognize a republic of rebellious slaves.

1815- The British army occupied Paris after Waterloo. A camp of white tents set up in the Bois du Boulogne. The allied bayonets returned the fat elderly Bourbon king Louis XVIII to the throne in place of Napoleon.

1822- Poet Percy Shelley drowned when a storm sank his yacht the Simon Bolivar off Leghorn, Italy. His body was cremated but his heart was embalmed in lead and presented to his wife Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley. Lord Byron swam offshore during the cremation so they could observe Shelley's spirit rising to Heaven.

1835- The Liberty Bell cracked. It rang for the Declaration of Independence and was being rung for the death of Chief Justice John Marshall.

1838- THE TRAIL OF TEARS- Cherokee Removal Treaty goes into effect. President Andrew Jackson, Indian name: "Sharp Knife", forced the entire Cherokee Nation to evacuate Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. 17,000 people were marched off to Oklahoma. One third died along the way. The token amounts paid for their land could not help their heartbreak at leaving their ancestral home. Warriors would touch or kiss trees as they trudged away to the amusement of the soldiers.
The Supreme Court ruled the harassment of the Cherokee Nation was unconstitutional, but President Jackson ignored them. Jackson said:" Chief Justice has ruled, now let him try to enforce it." One Georgia man later said:" I fought through the Civil War and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered in the thousands, but the Cherokee Removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."

1853- BLACK SHIP DAY-Commodore Perry sailed into Yedo Bay and convinced the Japanese to open trade by threatening to bombard Yokohama. This ended Japan's 300 year old isolation from the outside world. The Shogun's envoys receive the Americans by laying straw mattes under their feet and talking to them in a special pavilion. The Yankees thought this was special treatment, but actually after they left the mattes and building were burned so they could say the foreigner's feet never polluted Japanese soil.

1881- Soda fountain owner Ed Berners of Two Falls, Wisconsin first drizzled chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream and invented the Ice Cream Sundae. It was called that because he only served it on Sundays as a treat after attending Church.

1889- The Wall Street Journal first published.

1889-The last great bareknuckle championship fight. John L. Sullivan defeated Jake Kilrain in Mississippi for a purse of $20,000. After 60 rounds one of Sullivan’s eyes was shut, he was covered with welts, and blood was showing above his shoes. When his manager recommended declaring a draw, Sullivan said:" Hell no. I want to kill him!" He won at sundown, after 75 rounds. Sullivan was one of the first flamboyant prizefighters and the first American fighter to declare himself Champion of the World. He’d travel from town to town building his legend:" I’m John L. Sullivan and I can lick any man in the house!"

1896- William Jennings Bryan" The Son of the Plains", electrifies listeners at the Democratic Convention with a speech denouncing the gold standard: "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!" Whether federal currency should be backed by gold or cheaper silver divided Americans along class lines. Modern people only recall Bryan as the attorney Clarence Darrow made look silly in the Scopes "Monkey Trials". But Bryan was a fiery populist orator and strong rogue political force, who made several tries at the Presidency. He was a Bernie Sanders with Pat Robertson and some Ethel Merman thrown in.

1907-The First Ziegfield Follies, staged on the roof of the New York Theater, now called the New Amsterdam Theater.

1911- Burbank incorporated as a city.

1918- A young American ambulance driver serving in Italy during World War I was badly wounded by by a mortar shell. As he was being carried off, he was also hit by machine gun fire. His name was Ernest Hemingway. His long recovery and love affair with his nurse he later worked into his novel "A Farewell To Arms".

1922- Horn player Louis Armstrong left his hometown of New Orleans to go to Chicago and play in King Oliver’s Jazz band.

1932- THE DEPRESSION STOCK MARKET HITS ROCK BOTTOM - free falling since the Great Crash of October 1929, and compounded by the Hawley-Smoot trade act of 1931, which started a trade war that killed off overseas exports. From a Dow Jones high in the Roaring Twenties of 262, today’s average hit bottom at 58. Only 720,278 shares exchanged. One local club wallpapered the bar with unsold bond certificates. The Bond market lost around ten million in value, Total output of heavy industries like steel production were working at only 12% of capacity. 25% of the U.S. workforce was unemployed, 50% of New York City, 80% of industrial cities like Detroit and Toledo. Top Wall Street securities firms like Morgan and Salomon Brothers encouraged "Apple Days"- one day a week for brokers to go on the street to sell apples to supplement their income. One songwriter wrote a song about the unpopularity of stock traders: " Please Don't Tell Mother I Work on Wall Street, She Thinks I Play Piano in a WhoreHouse. " The just completed Empire State Building was nicknamed the "Empty State Building." because there were no businesses to move into it. Yet President Herbert Hoover could only spout unrealistic slogans like "the economy is fundamentally sound" and "prosperity is just around the corner." Mt. Rushmore sculptor Judson Borglum said: "If you put a flower in Hoover's hand, it would wilt !"

1932- Tod Brownings disturbing movie "Freaks" about a family of circus sideshow performers, premiered. One of Us, One of Us!

1943- Jean Moulin, French Resistance leader who coordinated all the separate underground groups to unite under DeGaulle, was betrayed to the Nazis and tortured to death.

1951- The first meeting of American, United Nations, North Korean and Chinese officials to discuss peace terms to end the Korean War. The talks dragged on for months and eventually signed as the Treaty of Panmunjom. At this first meeting the reds and allies noted little psychological victories. The North Koreans drove up in a captured American jeep. When the chief Communist negotiator General Nom Il wanted a smoke he pulled out a Russian cigarette. But after striking 14 Peoples Democratic Chinese matches he still couldn’t get it to light. So he was finally forced to light his cigarette by borrowing from the Americans a good old capitalist Zippo lighter.

1961-YEAH, BABY YEAH! Upon arriving at Cliveden, Estate of Lord and Lady Astor, Britain’s Secretary for War Sir John Profumo was introduced to Christine Keilor, a 19 year old party girl swimming nude in the pool. Profumo and Lord Astor chased Christine around the pool trying to pull her towel away while bejeweled guests arrived for a party. It was bad enough that the married Profumo started a hot affair with Christine, but also her manager Stephen Ward was connected to an East German Communist spy ring. Profumo resigned in disgrace, and Ward committed suicide. The Profumo Scandal brought down the MacMillan Government in 1963.

1969 - Thor Heyerdahl and his raft Ra II landed in Barbados 57 days from Morocco. He was trying to prove ancient mariners could have traveled from Africa to the Americas using a ship made from papyrus reeds. It also may explain the phenomenon that some Egyptian mummies have been found to have traces of tobacco and chocolate in their stomachs.

1978- 100,000 rallied in Washington D.C. in support of the Equal Rights Amendment- the ERA.

1982- Walt Disney's TRON- the first film featuring computer graphics premiered. It only was about 20 minutes of actual CGI, and the computer images were still printed onto traditional animation cells and painted, but it was still a significant achievement. Remember in 1981 there were no off-the-shelf graphics software. The big deal at the time was that MAGI had just solved the "hidden Line" problem.

1998- An original 1477 William Caxton copy of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"
became the world's most expensive book when it was sold for £4,621,500 to
billionaire oil heir Paul Getty.

Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean when you say something is problematic?

Answer: a thing that constitutes a problem or difficulty.

Quiz: Who said “ Russia is a Mystery, wrapped in an Enigma, set in a Riddle”?

Yesterday’s questions answered below: When exercising, what are your obliques?
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History for 7/6/2021
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Czar Nicholas Ist, Frida Kahlo, Della Reese, Bill Haley,
Nancy Reagan, Sylvester Stallone is 75, Merv Griffin, Janet Leigh, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sebastian Cabot, James Bodrero, The Dalai Lama, LaVerne Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Geoffrey Rush is 70, Ned Beatty, President George W. Bush is 75, Fifty Cent is 46, Jennifer Saunders is 63.

Happy St. Fermin's Day, the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Remember when running the trick to it is keeping ones self directly in front of the bull’s head. This area between his eyes is his blind spot.

83 B.C.- Sulla stormed Rome and defeated the supporters of Marius. This first civil war amongst powerful Roman factions is known as “The Wars of Marius & Sulla" or “the Social Wars”. As dictator, Sulla published lists of hundreds of political enemies called the Proscribed. If you were on that list, anybody could kill you without trial. Sulla had on his staff a student intern who recently changed sides. His name was Julius Caesar.

1190- Death of Henry II, King of England and the Angevin Empire – he ruled a territory almost as great as Charlemagne but his reign was marred by the martyrdom of
Thomas à Becket and quarrels with his family. Henry had pledged to go on Crusade to liberate Jerusalem and after his death his Crusade was taken up by his son Richard the Lionhearted. In the end Henry was so disgusted by the feuds with his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and sons Richard, Geoffrey and John Lackland, legend has it his dying breath was a curse on his own family.

1480- The crookedback Duke of Gloucester was crowned King Richard III. He is referred to as the Last Plantagenet, meaning the last of the bloodline of Geoffrey of Anjou and Richard the Lionhearted. He was defeated and killed by Henry VII of the House of Tudor. The recent discovery of his remains proved he really did have a spinal deformity. Whether he was the villain as Shakespeare and Hollingshed portrayed him, is a matter for scholars to argue over. Shakespeare was writing plays for the granddaughter of the man who killed him, so that would obviously color his interpretation of events.

1495-Battle of Fornovo- King Charles VIII of France begins a new round of European kings invading Italy by marching on Naples and defeating a combined army of the Italian city states. The warrior king Charles of France eventually died back home by banging his head on low doorway.

1560-The Treaty of Edinburgh- after a small war, victorious Scottish Presbyterian rebels compel Mary Queen of Scots dismiss her French troops from Scotland and declare freedom to worship, which meant Scotland was going Protestant. Representatives of Queen Elizabeth of England also demanded Mary renounce forever her claim to the throne of England. Mary’s mother was King Henry VIII’s sister. Mary refused that.

1685- THE BATTLE OF SEDGEMOOR AND THE BLOODY ASSIZES.-The illegitimate son of King Charles II, the Duke of Monmouth, tried to overthrow his Catholic uncle King James II with the help of many old Roundheads, angry that the Catholic monarch was planning to subvert the liberties won by Cromwell in the English Civil War. This day Monmouth hightailed it for the hills while his army was cut to pieces in battle.
After the battle the punishment of the rebels under Judge Jefferies was so brutal it was nicknamed the Bloody Assizes. An assize was another name for circuit court. Hundreds were beheaded, tongues cut out, limbs branded with hot irons, then transported as slaves to the Bahamas and Barbados to cut sugar cane. Refined sugar was a new delicacy sweeping the nation. To this day many lighter skinned Bahamians can claim descendant from these condemned rebels. In the 1890s Rafael Sabatini wrote a novel about one slave who escaped to become a pirate named Captain Blood, later made into an Errol Flynn movie.

1809- THE IMMORTAL BELOVED LETTERS- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven never married, but not for want of trying. The bad tempered loner loved several women but never had a serious relationship beyond prostitutes. After his death, several love letters were found. The letters written this day were of a supremely passionate nature, where he begged some unknown woman to keep an appointment with him at some unstated rendezvous in Hungary. “Though still in bed my thoughts go out to you, My Immortal Beloved…” The letters were never sent and have no addresses or names. Who was this Immortal Beloved Beethoven yearns for?

1809-Battle of Wagram- Napoleon defeated the Austrian army of Archduke Charles. The Austrian soldiers wore white uniforms, so the French called them: "Soldats de la creme'". Napoleon planned this battle out so well that as soon as he was satisfied the enemy was toast, even though fighting still raged all around him, he took a nap on a leopard skin rug.

1853- In Ripon, Wisconsin, Free-Soil Whigs and other lefty radicals form the new Republican Party. They were first called the Anti-Nebraska Men, rejecting the Nebraska Compromise, then Black-Republicans for awhile because of their strong anti-slavery stance.

1885- Louis Pasteur gave the first inoculation to cure rabies.

1886 - Horlick's of Wisconsin offers the first malted milk to public. It began as an attempt to create a new type of baby formula.

1895- A businessman named William Sydney Porter returned from Honduras where he had fled after being indicted for embezzlement. He had returned because he had learned of the illness of his wife. Porter was sent to prison, and while there began writing little stories which he later published under the name O. Henry.

1906- THE GREAT FUNERAL OF JOHN PAUL JONES- The heroic sea captain of the American Revolution in Paris in 1792. Ill and forgotten, he had no friends. Writer Thomas Carlyle said Jones “resembled an empty wineskin.” The few mourners at the little Paris cemetery were he was interred were all admiring Frenchmen and children he had given coins to on the street during his walks through the Luxembourg Gardens. The American ambassador skipped his funeral because of a dinner party he didn’t want to miss. A Frenchman named Simonot had embalmed Jones in brandy in a lead sealed barrel because he figured the American government wanted to ship him home. He was amazed when they were too cheap to even cover the transport fees. Jones’ sword and medals were pawned to pay for the funeral.
A century later America had become a great power. Scientists set about to look for John Paul Jones remains. They discovered the lead barrel in Paris’ Old Protestant Cemetery. The brandy embalming kept him so well preserved they could do an autopsy on the body. Jones had died of bronchial pneumonia and kidney failure at age 45. President Teddy Roosevelt shared Jones’ dream of a powerful US Navy. He used the occasion to stage a grand re-internment in Annapolis Naval Academy.
So on his birthday rows of battleships booming salutes and mile-long processions of marching US Marine and French honor guards gave John Paul Jones the grand funeral he always felt he deserved, just 113 years late.

1917 – As Lowell Thomas’ newsreel cameras rolled, Lawrence of Arabia and Bedouin Sheik Ouda Abu-Tai captured the Red Sea Port of Aqaba from Turkish troops. The battle was dramatized in the 1962 David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia.

1925, Walt and Roy Disney place a $400 deposit ($5,750.00 in modern money) on a lot located at 2719 Hyperion Avenue, in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Their aim is to build a big new studio.

1928- The film "The Lights of New York" premiered at the Strand theater on Broadway. 1927's the Jazz Singer popularized sound movies while still being half silent. This film was the first with an all dialogue track.

1938- THE EVIAN CONFERENCE- No, it wasn't about bottled water. Since 1933, the refugees fleeing the Hitler’s Third Reich grew to tens of thousands. President Franklin Roosevelt called for a summit of Western powers at Evian France to discuss the issue of the rising numbers asking asylum in the democracies. 32 nations participated. The conference turned into a parade of diplomats making excuses. It accomplished nothing. From 1938 to 1944 only half the quota for U.S. visas allowed were ever filled. The rest were held up by red tape while the Holocaust raged. Also the British Mandate authority bowed to Arab anger to restrict immigration to Palestine. Saudi Prince Ibn Saud said:” Why should we be punished for the sins of Europe?” The only nations on Earth who accepted unrestricted Jewish immigration from the Nazis were Holland and Denmark. Young delegate and future Israeli leader Golda Meir was asked what she hoped to get out of the conference. “All I want to see before I die is for my people to get something else beyond Expressions of Sympathy.”

1944- A fire broke out in the main tent of Ringling Bros Circus during a children’s matinee in Hartford Connecticut. The big top had been waterproofed with a paraffin solution thinned with gasoline and now that mixture engulfed the tent in flames. 168 died and 682 more were injured, mostly children. In 1950 a mad arsonist named Robert Segee admitted he started the Hartford Circus Fire.

1957- Chuck Jones short "What’s Opera, Doc?" debuted. “Kill da wa-bitt, kill da wa-bitt..."

1957-16 year old John Lennon first met 15 year old Paul McCartney at a church picnic near Woolton, England. Lennon invited McCartney to join his first band called the Quarrymen, but McCartney missed their first engagement because of a boy scout trip.

1964 - Beatles' film "Hard Day's Night" premieres in London. The bands iconoclastic, antics portrayed by Richard Lester’s surreal free style direction set the style for the music videos of the future.

1965- TV sitcom F-Troop premiered. Shortly after the series began production it was learned that lead actress Melody Patterson (Wrangler Jane) fibbed on her paperwork and was actually underage, she was 15 years old. She kept the part, but the writers had to tone down any sexual innuendo in the scripts.

1965 - Rock group Jefferson Airplane formed.

1967- The state of Biafra tried to win its independence from Nigeria. In the Civil War that followed a million of its citizens died of malnutrition and the images shocked the world.

1974- The first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keilor’s ode to small town life in Minnesota. Brought to you by Powdermilk Biscuits. His last broadcast was in 2016, and was forced to leave his company in 2017 due to Me-To allegations of sexual misconduct with his employees.

1996- Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump opened in theaters.

1998- French workers at Disneyland Paris theme park went on strike for better pay and not having to smile all the time like Americans do.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: When exercising, what are your obliques?

Answer: External Abdominal Obliques are your flank muscles, the ones on either side connecting your ribcage to the top of pelvis. Best used to dance the Twist.

Quiz: When exercising, what are your obliques?

Quiz: What was the Punic Wars? Who were the Punics?
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History for 7/05/2021
Birthdays: P.T. Barnum, Beatrix Potter, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, Jean Cocteau, Admiral David Farragut, Len Lye, George Pompidou, Shirley Knight, Huey Lewis is 71, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Milburn Stone (Doc on Gunsmoke), Warren Oates, Henry Cabot Lodge IV, Eva Green is 42, Edie Falco is 58

1779- TRYON’S NEW HAVEN RAID- During the American Revolution, Royalist Governor William Tryon of New York thought a way to bring the American rebels back to their allegiance to the Crown was to launch a punitive raid across Long Island Sound to rebel strongholds in Connecticut the day after their Independence Day celebrations.
Forty boats of redcoats landed at New Haven and looted, burned and brutalized the inhabitants. Most of his soldiers were hoodlums who were given the choice of prison or the army. The elderly Dean of Yale University was beaten to death with rifle butts. Civilian homes were ransacked and several women gang raped in their own beds. The redcoats then burned Norwalk and Fairfield before returning back across the water to occupied New York.
Crown policy was that the majority of Americans are good subjects, just deluded by bad leaders. But Tryon was frustrated with the endless guerilla fighting. So he lashed out with a brutality that accomplished more outrage than good. Gov. Tryon was soon recalled to London. For some reason there is a park named for Tryon in Upper Manhattan near the George Washington Bridge.

1814- Battle of Chippewa- During the War of 1812 an American force turned back a British counteroffensive across the Canadian border.

1820- THE TRIAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE- This was the greatest marital scandal ever to hit the British Monarchy. 
George the Prince Regent had been estranged from his wife Caroline for 25 years. She had been living a free life in Italy while George chased skirts at court. When his elderly, mad father George III finally died, and 'Princee' became King George IV, nobody expected Caroline to suddenly show up in England and still expect to be Queen. 
On this day George forced a bill into the House of Lords to grant him a divorce so he could be free to marry his mistress Lady Cunningham, nicknamed 'the Vice-Queen'. The evidence in the trial were juicy anecdotes of the Queen's own sexual shenanigans with a number of Italians. 
The whole sordid affair was terribly embarrassing and split the nation into factions. Some loyal to the King, others the Queen's defender's of Women's Rights and the Family. The King's public appearances were greeted with cries of 'Nero!" the Duke of Wellington was hissed and had rocks thrown at him and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool was so upset he could not address Parliament without a dose of ether first. 
Eventually the divorce bill was dropped and the King crowned, with the Queen shut out of Westminster Abbey. A popular doggerel in Punch made a joke on Christ's advice to the Adulteress-
" Most Gracious Queen we thee implore, to Go Away and Sin No More...
But if that effort Be too Great, Just Go Away at Any Rate.."

1830- The last Bey of Algiers was driven into exile by the invading French Army. This was the end of the Barbary Corsairs, active since 1517. Algeria would be a French colony until 1962. Part of the invading force was a new unit made up of Paris street riff-raff and foreign exiles called the French Foreign Legion.

1839- THE FLORA HASTINGS AFFAIR- The first great scandal of Queen Victoria's reign. After the escapades of her predecessors, the new 20 year old queen dwelt in a closed moral atmosphere. One day she noticed one of her ladies-in-waiting, a Lady Flora Hastings, had an enlarged belly, like she was pregnant. The idea that this unmarried grande dame may have been pregnant was made worse by the idea that the father may have been the detested lover of Victoria's mother, Sir John Conroy.
The tittering eventually accelerated into a full-fledged political scandal involving the Prime Minister and the entire government. The slandered Lady Hastings had to submit to a humiliating doctor's examination to prove she was still a virgin and even that didn't silence the gossip. Finally it came out that her belly swelling was caused by a large tumor on her liver, and had she paid more strict attention to it instead of the gossip she might have lived. This day she died and everyone blamed the young queen of persecuting Lady Hastings. Young Victoria was hissed in the streets for the remainder of the year.

1865- In London, William Booth formed the Salvation Army.

1863- After two days of torrential rain at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee began withdrawing his broken Confederate army south to Virginia. He had enough ammunition for one more day's battle, and he was hoping the Yankees would destroy themselves assaulting his strong defensive works. But the Yankees, much to Lincoln's annoyance, remained quiet in camp. This is the reason you don’t hear of the name of the winning Yankee General, George Meade, as much as you heard of Grant and Sherman.

1892- THE HOMESTEAD MASSACRE- Jacob Frick, the business partner of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, decided to solve the problem of uppity unions by surrounding his Homestead plant with barbed wire and guns then announcing to the astonished employees that they were getting a 20% pay cut. 3,000 workers fought with police and non-union replacements, 7 killed, the union leaders arrested for incitement to riot.

1910- Writer O. Henry died of cirrhosis and tuberculosis at 47. His last words were "Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark." He became a writer while serving a jail term for embezzlement.

1930- In West Texas, Bonnie met Clyde.

1933- The Germans began building the Autobahn, a system of highways that became the envy of the world. The Bauhaus designers of the autobahn invented the ideas we take for granted today- the Cloverleaf Exit, Blending Lanes and the central meridian.

1934- THE SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL STRIKE- A longshoreman strike had brought harbor traffic along the West Coast to a standstill. California Governor Frank Merriam decided to send in the National Guard. When the longshoremen picketline was rushed by armored trucks full of scab replacements, they rioted and the troops opened fire. Hundreds were hurt and two killed. Blood flowed on the Embarcadero. One policeman who killed a demonstrator later said: "The man was a Communist so my only regret was that I did not kill more!" Flowers, candles and memorials to the slain men were kicked over by the S.F. police.
As a spontaneous unorganized reaction to the violence 100,000 San Franciscans refused to go to work for 4 days. The third largest city in the U.S. was completely paralyzed. Governor Merriam declared martial law but the tanks in the street were helpless. The regiment of National Guardsmen from Berkeley declared they would refuse to aim weapons at their fellow workers. To a nation struggling in the Depression there was widespread fear that this incident was the beginning of a Soviet style revolution. The Russian Revolution had started with general strikes. Then, on the 5th day everyone went back to work.

1935- The Wagner Act passed congress, decreeing all American workers have the right to collective bargaining and to form unions.

1943- Betty Grable married bandleader Harry James.

1945- The First British General Election held in ten years. PM Winston Churchill and his Tories were turned out for Labor candidate Clement Atlee. When his aides accused the British voters of ingratitude, Churchill said they had been through a lot and wanted to move on. Churchill’s wife Clementine told him, “ This may well be a blessing in disguise.” To which Winston replied,” Maybe, but if so, it is quite effectively disguised.”

1945- OPERATIONS OVERCAST and PAPERCLIP- Pres. Truman had passed a law forbidding visas for anyone with a Nazi past to emigrate. The U.S. Army intelligence arranged for top Nazi rocket Scientists to be brought to the U.S. for our future space program. But the War Dept Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency chief Bosquet Wev declared:" We’re not going to beat a dead Nazi Horse!" Experts doctored the dossiers on these scientists, and changed descriptions like: "Fanatical Unrepentant Nazi" to "Politically Neutral".
Head of the unit Dr. Werner Von Braun was the inventor of the clustered liquid fuel engine rockets which Hitler had named the Vengence-2 and fired at London. Dr. Arthur Rudolphe the designer of the Saturn-5 moon rocket was deported in 1984 when a British documentary exposed his running a slave labor camp in 1943. Dr. Herman Becker-Freysing, the man who built John Glenn's space suit, got his knowledge about the effects of atmospheric pressure and oxygen loss on humans from experiments he did on the inmates of Dachau.

1952- London Transport scrapped the last of their electric streetcars in favor of diesel polluting double-decker buses.

1954- Elvis Presley recorded "That’s All Right" at Sun Records in Memphis. Some call it the first true Rock & Roll song, but that is disputed by Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock, Ike Turners Delta 88 and many other R&B hits. “That’s All Right” was written by black bluesman Arthur Big-Boy Crudup, who never profited from the song’s success and died living in a shack.

1954- Tomoyuki Tanaka announced the beginning of production on the movie Godzilla.

1963- The Vatican finally says it’s okay for Catholics to be cremated, since the world is running out of land to make into cemeteries anyway.

1968- In Vietnam, after months of brutal fighting in a battle the mainstream media equated with Iwo Jima and Gettysburg, the US Marines were ordered to abandon their firebase at Khe Sanh anyway. Many Marines were outraged that they had to give up a place they had lost so many brothers over. But the Pentagon felt it was too vulnerable to enemy artillery. In Marine annals Khe Sanh is still counted as a great victory. Any blame for the withdrawal put on General Westmoreland, who had just been replaced as overall commander in Vietnam. He blamed the racial mixing in the ranks. This frustrating misuse of soldier’s sacrifice typified the Vietnam experience.

1975- Tennis player Arthur Ashe becomes the first African-American to win Wimbledon.

1975- Independence of the Cape Verde Islands.

1989- Reagan White House aide Lt. Colonel Oliver North sentenced for his role in the Iran Contra Scandal. North spent his last evening before testifying shredding incriminating documents. Colonel North appeared in court in his Marine uniform while being interrogated by Hawaii Senator Dan Inouye, a real combat war hero who lost an arm fighting in World War II. Pundits enjoyed the irony of one who could say "I bled for my Country," while the other "I Shred for My Country!"
His conviction was later overturned by a conservative judge on a technicality. Oliver North is today a conservative talk show host.

1989- The first episode of the TV sitcom Seinfeld.

1994- In Bellevue, Washington, a man named Jeff Bezos started a company named Cadabra. Shortly after he changed its name to Amazon. In 2021, Bezos stopped down from his company on the same day.

2002- International Professional Women’s Tennis had become dominated by two amazing American sisters, Venus and Serena Williams. This day Serena defeated Venus to win Wimbledon. Of 17 Wimbledon Women’s singles between 1999 and 2016, the Williams sisters won 12 of them. Surena hurt her leg last week, otherwise she planned to play today.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What was the Punic Wars? Who were the Punics?

Answer: The three Punic Wars were the name of the conflict between Rome and Carthage. Punic was another term for Africa, where Carthage was.