Question: What was the New Orleans neighborhood called Storyville known for?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Hayao Miyazaki has made films like Lupin: The Castle of Cagliostro. Who was the original Cagliostro?
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History for 11/6/2022
Birthdays: Sophocles 495 BC, Joanna La Loca (Crazy Joanie 1479), John Phillip Sousa, Joseph Smith the founder of LDS, Ignacz Paderewski, Charles Dow of Dow Jones, Adolphus Sax inventor of the Saxophone, James Naismith the inventor of Basketball, Mike Nichols, Edsel Ford, animator Eddie Rehberg, Ray Coniff, John Olsen of the comedy duo Olsen & Johnson, Harold Ross the founder of the New Yorker magazine, Jonathan Harris, Maria Shriver is 66, Rebecca Romjin is 50, Thandie Newton, Sally Field is 77, Emma Stone is 34

Today is the Feast of Saint Leonard of Noblac, the Patron of Women in Labor and Prisoners of War. -is there some connection here..?

1528- Conquistador Alva Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked on the coast of Texas. The first white European to set foot in Texas. Cabeza de Vaca means Head of a Cow.

1730- King Frederick William I of Prussia has Lt Hans Hermann von Katte, the gay lover of his 18 year old son Crown Prince Frederick, beheaded by saber. He even forced his horrified son to watch the execution from his window. The king referred to his son as “ An effeminate fool.” Frederick William I was the originator of mechanically strict Prussian discipline that made the German Army infamous. He wanted his men to be more afraid of their drill sergeants than of the enemy.
He was so feared by his subjects that they used to run away when he arrived. The king once caught one wretch in a doorway, and drubbed in the face with his cane, shouting: "WHY ARE YOU AFRAID? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME! YOU SCUM!"
When the old sadist finally died, and Prince Freddy became King Frederick the Great, he slept with whomever he liked.

1793- The youngest brother of King Louis XVI of France, the Duc d' Orleans, tried to survive the Revolution by repudiating his birthright, changing his name to Phillipe Egalitie', he even voted to execute his own brother. Well, it didn't work. Today he too went to the guillotine. His son would rule France in 1830-1848 as King Louis Phillipe. His palace, the Palais Orleans also known as the Palais Royale went from private ownership to property of the nation.

1806- The news reached London of the great naval victory of Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson. Englishmen great and small fell into extreme grief over the death of their naval hero. Samuel Coleridge wrote: 'When Nelson died, it seemed as if no man was a stranger to another, for all were made acquaintances in the rites of a common anguish."

1810- A few days after his youngest daughter Princess Amelia died of tuberculosis at age 27, old King George III lapsed back into the insanity he suffered earlier in his reign. For the remaining 8 years of his life, he remained a blind shut-in.

1812- On this day during Napoleons Retreat from Moscow, it first began to snow.

1844- Spain granted independence to the Dominican Republic.

1850- The first fire brigade formed in Hawaii.

1860- Abraham Lincoln of Illinois won the presidency of the United States. The first Republican to win an election.

1869- Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first college football game.

1893- Famed Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died at age 53. Just a few days before the premiere of his 6th Symphony. The cause of death for the composer was declared to be cholera from drinking un-boiled water in a local St Petersburg restaurant. Recent scholarship floated a different theory. Tchaikovsky was a closeted gay man afraid of being exposed. He had tried marriage to a woman, and hated it so much he tried suicide two weeks later. By this time he had formed an infatuation over his nephew. This allegedly caused a secret "Court of Honor" of alumni of his old civil service academy to confront him and threatened him with exposure and scandal. They threatened to even go directly to the Czar to expose him. So he may have taken poison and it was blamed on cholera which was prevalent in the city then. Fellow composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov though the inquest more oddly rushed and confused than usual. We may never really know.

1916- Elderly Buffalo Bill Cody made his last public appearance in El Paso Texas. El Paso had been as wild a frontier town as Deadwood or Tombstone, but now it was a quiet modern city. Telephone and electricity wires crisscrossed overhead and streetcars clattered down the streets where gunfighters once shot it out. Buffalo Bills parade seemed to make plain to all the final passing of the Old West to the New. The wild cheering brought tears running down the old scout's white mustaches. It was a fitting final bow. Bill Cody died of prostate cancer a few weeks later.

1917- After three months of murderous fighting, Canadian troops finally took the Belgian village of Passchendaele. Also called the Third Battle of Ypres.

1924- Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister of England. Winston Churchill, who had deserted the Conservative Party for the Liberals, now decided to switch back to the Tories and became Home Secretary.

1936-The Screen Children's Guild chartered.

1941- In an evening nationwide radio broadcast, Josef Stalin told the Soviet people that although their losses were heavy, the Germans had already lost 4.5 million men, and were on the run. It was all pure fiction. In reality Leningrad was surrounded, Moscow was threatened and almost 40% of Russia’s population was under Nazis occupation.

1942- German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel began withdrawing his shattered army from the defeat at El Alamein. He then got a direct order from Adolf Hitler to stop the retreat and fight on to “Victory or Death!” Rommel ignored him, and withdrew his men anyway.

1944- Lord Moyne, the British Resident in Cairo, was assassinated by two young Israelis who were members of the Stern Gang, a terrorist organization. Ironically at this same time in London Prime Minister Winston Churchill was assuring Jewish leader Azer Weissman that Lord Moyne was sympathetic to the Zionist cause.

1947- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization- NATO created.

1962- Ted Kennedy first elected to the Senate from Mass. Called The Lion of the Senate, he remained in office until his death in 2009.

1966- A great flood hits the City of Venice. An international effort is mounted to save her priceless artifacts. Venice never suffered floods until the end of the nineteenth century when a deep channel was dug in the Venetian lagoon to accommodate modern heavy shipping to the new harbor of La Spezia. This imbalance messed up the natural flood cycle from the Adriatic. Added to that the whole darn city is resting on thousands of wooden pilings pounded into a sand bar when Attila the Hun was still running around. Venice is still sinking a few inches each century, and still suffers a terrible flood every few years.

1973- Abe Beame became the first Jewish man to be elected Mayor of New York City.

1975- First appearance of the band the Sex Pistols.
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Yesterday’s Question: Hayao Miyazaki has made films like Lupin: The Castle of Cagliostro. Who was the original Cagliostro?

Answer: Count Cagliostro was a famous charlatan who traveled the courts of Europe swindling money out of gullible nobles. He dabbled in the occult like the Kaballah, and claimed he was two thousand years old.

Question: Hayao Miyazaki has made films like Lupin: The Castle of Cagliostro. Who was the original Cagliostro?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Scientists named the planets for Greek and Roman gods, except Earth. Why?
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History for 11/5/2022
Birthdays: Gen. Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, Eugene V. Debs, Art Garfunkel is 82, Roy Rogers, Tatum O'Neill, Elke Sommer- born Baroness Elke Von Shletz is 83, Ike Turner, Vivien Leigh. Will Durant, Joel McCrea, Sam Shepard, John Berger, Robert Patrick is 65, Tilda Swinton is 62

1414- THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE- Since 1378 the Catholic Church had rent itself in pieces over politics, with no less than three Popes claiming the loyalty of Christians. This day the German Emperor Sigismund made Pope John convene at Constance the largest church conclave since the Roman Emperor Constantine. Five thousand priests, bishops, cardinals, patriarchs, princes with an army of servants, secretaries and retainers. Even fifteen hundred prostitutes.
The published the declaration Sanctissima " This Holy Synod of Constance represents the true Church Militant, and has it’s authority directly from Christ, and everybody of whatever rank, including the Pope, is bound to obey." They healed the schism by deposing all three Popes and electing one acceptable to all sides. They also pledged to reform the Church. Then after accepting a promise from new Pope Martin V that he would do so, they dissolved. Martin did no such thing and future Popes worked to ensure a council would ever get that powerful again. Too bad, if the Council of Constance had reformed the Church maybe the Reformation and all the terrible religious wars could have been avoided. The council also confirmed the right of Christians to claim any lands occupied by heathens (non-Christians) in foreign lands.

In Jolly Old England it is
HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY! in -1605 Sir Guy Fawkes, a Catholic nobleman, was caught digging a tunnel under the English Parliament and filling it with gunpowder. His goal was no less than blowing up the King and the entire blinkin' government! Sir Roger Catesby was actually the mastermind of the plot, but Sir Guy gets the fame.
Modern day Brits commemorate this as a kind of April Fools Day with bonfires and merrymaking. Children go from door to door asking : "A penny for Sir Guy, please."
Many English folks I know told me they celebrate the day they tried to blow up the government because wouldn't things have been lovely if he had succeeded!

1688- William and Mary of Orange land in England from Holland to start the 'Glorious Revolution' against daddy James II.

1699- According to Jonathan Swift, this is the day Lemuel Gulliver was shipwrecked on the isle of Lilliput.

1757- Battle of Rossbach- Frederick the Great defeated a French invasion led by two generals Marquis de Soubuise and Hildeburghausen, whose only qualifications were that they were lovers of Madame De Pompadour. King Frederick referred to La Pompadour as Mademoiselle Poisson- Miss Fish.

1805- The Royal Spanish Governor of New Mexico, Joaquin del Real Alencaster, dispatches a cavalry troop under Don Pedro Vial on a secret mission. On this day Vial's force was attacked by hostile Indians on the Arkansas River. Vial drove off the Indians but his command was left too battered to continue and had to return, their mission aborted. What was their mission? To kill or capture the American explorers Lewis and Clark. The Spanish government in Madrid knew full well the object in the American President Jefferson’s mind in sending this "scientific" expedition to plot a land route to the Pacific, over territory Spain claimed as theirs, despite the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark, at this point in the Columbia River Gorge, were unaware of the drama around them.

1820- Old British sea dog Lord Thomas Cochrane had joined the Latin Americans fight to gain independence from Spain. He decided the best way to do that was to capture the flagship of the Spanish Pacific fleet, the 44 gun Esmerelda. This night Cochrane with 80 Chilean sailors rowed up to the frigate and captured her after a brief but violent hand to hand struggle. As they rowed silently past the neutral USS Mendocino they were almost given away by the American sailors cheering them.

1857- Oxford professors at a dinner hear Sir William Trench call for a new Dictionary of the English Language, this time not just a sampler of difficult words but an attempt to inventory all the words used in English at the time. The OED, the Oxford English Dictionary took 70 years to write and was the biggest effort since Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of 1755.

1872- Susan B. Anthony was arrested and fined again for trying to vote in a presidential election.

1895- Invention of the Car Clutch.

1917- After the collapse of the Czar’s government, the council of the Russian Orthodox Church reinstated the office of Patriarch, suppressed by Peter the Great in 1700.

1937- Disney's silly symphony The Old Mill debuted. The first film featuring the multiplane camera technique.

1938- Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings premiered.

1940- President Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented 3rd term. His defeated Republican opponent- Wendell Wilkie, who became the butt of jokes in many Looney Tunes.

1946- Two punk kids fresh out of the Navy were elected to the US House of Representatives- John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

1954- THE WRONG DOOR RAID- Baseball great Joe DiMaggio was fuming over the collapse of his marriage to sexy movie star Marilyn Monroe. He was especially sensitive to the rumors that she was seeing other men. This night Joltin Joe was having dinner with Frank Sinatra and a few friends when a detective brought him a report that Monroe’s car was spotted parked in front of an apartment complex on Kilkea Dr. in West Hollywood. Enraged, DiMaggio, Sinatra and friends drove out to the building and kicked in the back door hoping to catch her en-flagrante. But Marilyn was actually staying at a girlfriend’s apartment upstairs. This was the home of a terrified old lady named Mrs Florence Klotz. We don’t know what she thought about her door suddenly kicked in by Joe DiMaggio, and the Rat Pack, but the press had a lot of fun with it.

1955- The date in 1955 that Marty McFly travels to in the 1985 film Back to the Future.

1956- SUEZ CRISIS ENDS. The United States and Soviet Union bring heavy pressure on Israel, France and Britain to stop their war with Egypt. Egypt kept the Suez Canal, Israel no longer looked like a pathetic little country about to get stomped, and the world now saw that the only countries who’s opinion now mattered were Russia and the U.S.. British historian Jan Morris called it the official end of the British Empire. Israeli diplomat Chaim Herzog was touring Mount Sinai when he got the cablegram to come to New York for the peace talks. He joked:" I am only the second Jew in history to receive a message on Mount Sinai."

1968- After losing to John Kennedy in 1960, Richard Nixon ran for governor of California and lost that too. He was thought politically finished. Today Richard Nixon capped an amazing comeback by being elected President. He won over a democratic majority badly divided over Vietnam, and third party racist nutbag George Wallace.

1975- Mormon lumberjack Travis Walton was abducted by aliens and experimented on for five days, then returned to his home in Snowflake, Arizona. The encounter was seen by seven adult men, who were his co-workers. Walton published a bestseller Fire in the Sky, that was made into a movie.

1977- George W. Bush married Laura Welsh. Laura was once a Democrat who campaigned for liberal George McGovern in 1972.

1979- National Public Radio’s news show Morning Edition started..

1990- In New York City, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was assassinated at the NY Marriott by a man dressed as an orthodox student. The JDL was an extremist organization in America, that advocated violent responses to Arab extremism. Even though he was elected to the Israeli Knesset, Meir Kahane was refused a seat because of his racist views. So no one was too surprised that he was a target. But what was surprising was that the assassin, El Sayyid Nossair, was a member of a terrorist cell operating in the US. His apartment was a "treasure-trove of information" according to NYPD detectives. They found terrorist manuals written in Afghanistan, bomb making instructions and plans to NY city landmarks like the World Trade Center. The NYPD turned over all this intelligence to the FBI, who filed it all away and forgot about it.

1994- Retired President Ronald Reagan gave his last public speech. He confirmed he had Alzheimer’s Disease.

1994- 45 year old fighter George Foreman capped off an amazing comeback by becoming the oldest person ever to win the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

1999- A man was arrested in Minneapolis for stealing and keeping 150 shopping carts in his apartment.

2004- Pixar's The Incredibles , directed by Brad Bird premiered.

2009- Army Major Hassan went mad and shot 13 other soldiers in Ft. Hood, Texas. Major Hassan’s job was as a psychiatrist who helped other soldiers with their emotional stress.
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Yesterday’s Question: Scientists named the planets for Greek and Roman gods, except Earth. Why?

Answer: They didn’t name it as a planet because back then nobody believed the Earth was a planet floating in space like all the others. Earth was from old Saxon Erda, meaning the ground you are standing on.

Quiz: Scientists named the planets for Greek and Roman gods, except Earth. Why?

Yesterday’s Answer Below: What is a denouement?
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History for 11/4/2022
Birthdays: Will Rogers, Art Carney, Illustrator T.S. Sullivant, Disney animation director Ben Sharpsteen, Loretta Swit, Martin Balsam, Gig Young, Darla Hood, Joe Neikro, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ralph Maccio, Andrea McArdle, Walter Cronkite, Matthew McConnaughy is 52, Laura Bush, Kathy Griffin is 21, Aardman animator Peter Lord is 69.

1530- Cardinal Wolsey had been the chief minister of King Henry VIII and dominated English politics for a decade. He was a European power broker and fancied himself a future Pope. But he lost favor with the King over his inability to get him a divorce from his first wife and his alliances on the continent lost them Calais, the last English stronghold on mainland Europe. This day the King's men arrested Cardinal Wolsey for treason. But being old and infirm, he died on the way to the Tower.

1640- THE LONG PARLIAMENT- British King Charles I didn't much like parliaments. He found them pushy, always demanding rights for the common man and such nonsense. It had been 11 years since his last parliament, and he had dismissed that one after three weeks. It was called "the Short Parliament". But he needed money to put down rebels in Scotland. So, Charles I reluctantly convened Parliament. This one stayed in session for the rest of Charles' life and beheaded him in the English Civil War. The Long Parliament was finally disbanded by Cromwell and his army in 1652. After Charles II 's restoration, the English parliament stayed more or less in regular sessions.

1646- The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony started to feel threatened by all the Quakers, Shakers, Anabaptists and other weirdoes coming by the boatload from Europe. So, they announced that the crime of Heresy was punishable by death. And of course, heresy was anything the Massachusetts Bay Colony said it was. After hanging two Quaker preachers and driving others like Anne Hutchinson outside the walls to death at the hand of hostile Indians, this day the heresy statutes were revoked by King Charles II.

1677- William III and Mary of Orange are married at St. James Palace.

1791- ST. CLAIRS DEFEAT- When President Washington sent General Arthur St. Clair to put down the Indian raids on the Ohio Frontier, he advised him" Trust not the Indians, beware of surprise". St. Clair, who had a rather lackluster military career in the Revolution, must have forgotten Washington's advice because this day at dawn near what would be Celina Ohio, St. Clair's camp was surprise-attacked by thousands of Shawnee, Creek and Miami warriors. 900 American casualties including General Richard Butler.
The spectacular defeat was led by Chief Little Turtle, who although he defeated more US soldiers than Sitting Bull, is not remembered today. After the peace treaty in 1795, St. Clair finished life running a tavern. Little Turtle was a guest of George Washington at Mt. Vernon. His grandson graduated from West Point.

1804- LEWIS & CLARK MET SACAJEWEA- The American explorers were spending the winter in a friendly Mandan village when a French Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau offered his services as a guide. He had two wives who were Shoshone women. Sacajewea (Bird Woman) was then 15 and pregnant. Charbonneau won his wife in a bet with some Hidatsa warriors.
Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau not because he would be useful as much as Sacajewea, because she spoke the languages of the western tribes beyond the Rocky Mountians. Sacajewea would speak to Shoshone, Sans Arcs and Nez Perce in their language, then translate into Hidatsa to Charbonneau. He would translate it into French to another trapper named Driar who would speak English to Lewis and Clark.
Despite the clumsiness, this system worked. Sacajewea braved every hardship the expedition faced to the Pacific and back, and with her baby on her back. One scholar said the European conquest of the America's could not have been done without the help of three women: Pocahontas, Malinche' the Aztec Princess and Sacajewea.

1842- Abe Lincoln, 33, and Mary Todd, 23, marry. Mary Lincoln came from a pro Southern Kentucky family and was always at odds with Washington society. At one point Congress even held a hearing on whether the First Lady was a Confederate spy.
Mary was as volatile as Abe was laid back. They would have marital fights right in front of officers and dignitaries causing everyone to hang their heads in embarrassment and stare at the wall. Most of her children had died by the time Lincoln was shot and the grief broke her sanity causing her surviving son Robert Lincoln to lock her up for her remaining years.

1854- THE LADY WITH THE LAMP- English nurse Florence Nightingale arrived at Scutari Turkey, to care for English wounded from the Crimean War. The English Army medical system then was a disaster of outmoded bureaucracy. Hundreds of sick and dying men were piled up bed to bed in a hospital 4 miles square without basic sanitary conditions- no blankets, fresh clothes or fresh food. Rich English aristocrat Florence Nightingale brought her own finances to clothe, feed and care for the sick. Even just doing laundry saved lives because men had clean linens to sleep on. She told her volunteers "The strongest women must stand with me at the washtub!" She had no official status or commission from the government, but she revolutionized the military hospital system and the nursing profession, often fighting stodgy old generals who saw her as a troublemaker. Chief surgeon Sir John Hall growled: "The woman insists on grotesque excess and luxury- after all, what does a soldier want with a toothbrush?"

1861- University of Washington founded in Seattle.

1861- Richard J. Gatling patented the machine gun. "It is to the pistol as the sewing machine is to the simple sewing needle." Soldiers called it “The Coffee-Mill Gun.” Gatling's idea was to invent machines to make war too terrible to be waged any longer. What he succeeded in doing was to indeed make war more terrible.

1879- James Ritty of Dayton Ohio patented the cash register, invented as a way to keep employees from pocketing receipts.

1913- William Mulholland's great aqueduct starts bringing water 200 miles from Northern California to L.A. by the force of gravity alone. Without the extra water L.A. would never have grown any larger than 180,000 people. (L.A.Times estimate.)

1918- Wilfred Owen, one of the great English poets, was killed in combat in World War I, only six days before the final armistice.

1918- Woodrow Wilson was elected on liberal support. But during WWI he suppressed all liberal and progressive voices who questioned the war. Today in midterm elections he was rewarded when his party lost their majority in Congress to the Republicans

1927- HOWARD CARTER OPENED THE TOMB OF KING TUT. Other royal tombs had been opened before but they had always been cleaned out centuries ago by grave robbers. King Tut Ankh Amon’s was the first unspoiled Pharoah's tomb to be discovered in modern times. The site was discovered under a house built for workers excavating the tomb of King Ramses IV.
There was King Tut’s Curse guarding the door, and a few folks like Lord Carnarvon did go to an early grave: allegedly from scratching a zit and getting blood poisoning. Legend has it the same zit was found on King Tut's mummy! But Howard Carter, the man who broke the seal, rifled the tomb and did everything but stick his fingers in Tut's ears, lived to a merry old age and even pocketed a few artifacts he didn't feel like sharing with the British Museum. They were later returned by an embarrassed family descendant.

1928- Arnold Rothstein, top New York gangster who got dancer Jimmy Walker elected mayor, and rigged the 1919 World Series, was shot in the groin during a poker game. It took him hours to die. When asked by the police who shot him, Rothstein’s last words: "If I live, I'll take care of it..."

1931- One of the pioneering trumpet innovators of the new music called Jazz was Buddy Bolden. He was one of the first soloists to improvise within the body of a song, and so doing paved the way for the greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But by 1931 Bolden was forgotten. This day he died broke in the Louisiana Home for the Insane. His family couldn't even afford a Dixieland Band to play at his funeral.

1939- President Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act, declaring the U.S. would not get involved in the growing war between Hitler and Britain and France.

1939- Packard introduced the first air-conditioned automobile.

1952- UNIVAC, the first business computer, accurately predicted Dwight Eisenhower would win in a landslide. The first computer projected results for an election.

1945- Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld first inserts his daughter Nina’s name into one of his cartoons. It was for a Broadway musical review “ Are You With It?” with Johnny Roberts.

1955- In Arizona, Willie Bioff, union official who tried to hijack the Hollywood unions (Including the Disney cartoonists) for Frank Nitti's gang, had turned informer and was in the federal Witness Protection plan. This day he got into his car, turned the key in his Ford pickup and exploded.

1956- The Soviet army crushed the Hungarian Uprising of Inver Nagy.

1958- Angelo Roncalli was elected Pope John XXIII. John 23rd was one of the best-loved popes of the twentieth century. He liberalized the Church through his council Vatican II, changed the Latin Mass into common language, encouraged folk masses and other reforms. Pope John Paul II has made more saints than any other Pope but withheld final sainthood for John XXIII because he was too liberal for his taste. Pope Francis I finally made him a saint in 2015.

1963- The Beatles were part of the Queens Royal Command performance in London. John Lennon told the audience: " Will the people in the cheap seats clap their hands? And the rest of you, would you please just rattle your jewelry."

1968- The day before the presidential election, outgoing President Lyndon Johnson was told the Christian Science Monitor wanted to publish an article that proved Republican Richard Nixon committed treason, consorting with the South Vietnamese government to sabotage peace talks to end the Vietnam war, so he could win as the “Peace Candidate”. LBJ decided to not publish the story to not damage the election process. Nixon won, and the war went on, killing a further 20,000 Americans.

1968- the first issue of Screw Magazine. Former reporter Jim Buckley and former industrial spy for the Bendix Corporation, Al Goldstein, named their magazine Screw after trying Hump, Love, and being told they couldn't name it F*ck.

1977- The Incredible Hulk TV show starring Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby, first premiered as a made for TV movie.

1979- THE IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS- Iranian militants with the approval of the Iranian revolutionary government and the Ayatollah Khomeni attack the U.S. embassy in Teheran and take most of the 90 staff hostage for 444 days. The event infuriated US opinion and there were loud calls to nuke the Mad Mullahs. Truth be told, without condoning such an outrage the US public remained blissfully ignorant of how our CIA helped the overthrow of the democratic regime of Mossadegh in 1953 that established the Shah's autocratic regime and that the coup was directed from within the US embassy, but hey, that's just details.
The crisis seemed to paralyze the Jimmy Carter administration and probably helped elect Ronald Reagan. The incident also proved that the Cold War East-West way of judging world politics was now outdated, since the Ayatollah declared both America and Russia "Great Satans"!

1980- Yomiuri Giants baseball great Saduharu Oh retired after hitting 868 homeruns in his 22 year career.

1993- The Topanga-Malibu fires., Huge brush fries burn expensive homes in Malibu. The fires reached from the Santa Monica Mountains down to the ocean. Eyewitnesses said the 30 foot flames were reflected in the sky and water turning everything orange and the landscape looked more like Mars.

1995- YITZHAK RABIN ASSASSINATED- At a peace rally after making a speech where he declared "Violence will undermine Israeli Democracy" Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot and killed by a young Yeshiva student Ygail Amir. Amir was mad at Rabin for daring to make peace with the Palestinians. The night before Amir attended a Likud political rally where people waved pictures of Yitzhak Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Ironically Rabin as chief of staff of the Israeli army was the strategists of the conquest of the West Bank and Golan Heights.
President Clinton was shocked by the act and said goodbye in Hebrew "Shalom, Haver" –Peace Brother. Despite this slogan becoming a popular bumper sticker in Israel, in the election Likud won anyway.

1999- Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law, drafted by conservative Republican Senator Phil Gramm, repealed many of the government safeguards enacted during the Great Depression against banks speculating in stocks and insurance. It created the free-wheeling Wall Street market that collapsed in 2008 in the Great Recession.

2008- Barack Obama was elected first African-American to be President of the United States.

2020- After a contentious election, Joe Biden defeated the incumbent Donald J. Trump in his re-election bid. Biden won by the same majority that FDR defeated Hoover in 1932. This night, instead of the usual gracious concession, wishing all the luck to the new president, Donald Trump went on national TV not only refuse to concede, but declare the election fraudulent and that he had actually won. This caused a constitutional crisis and a violent insurrection. After tens of millions of dollars wasted looking for imaginary voting irregularities, the result remained the same. Three years later Trump still persists in his “ Big Lie” without ever producing one shred of proof of fraud. The only president in 200 years ever to do so.
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Yesterday's Question: What is a denouement?

Answer: The conclusion of a story, a play, or movie, in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and all matters are explained or resolved.

Question: What is a denouement?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: The Roman system of number counting did not have a symbol for nothing- zero. Who invented the zero?
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History for 11/3/2022
Birthdays: The Roman writer Lucan 39AD, John Montague the Earl of Sandwich, Jubal Early, Walker Evans, William Cullen Bryant, Stephen Austin, Bronco Nagurski, Andre' Malraux, Vincenzo Bellini, Bob Feller, Karl Baedeker author of the guidebooks, Ken Berry, Michael Dukakis, Gustav Tenngren, Lulu, Osamu Tezuka, Jim Cummings is 70.

55 BC- CLEOPATRA MARRIED PTOLOMEY VIII. They were brother and sister. Because the Pharaoh was a god, he couldn't mate with a mortal, and the only available goddesses were in the immediate family. This curious inbreeding in the Royal line insured that the mighty family of Ptolemy, general of Alexander the Great, would produce descendants like Orestes the Flute Blower.

361AD- JULIAN THE APOSTATE BECAME EMPEROR OF ROME, upon the death of his uncle Constantius II. Julian's life was much like Claudius 300 years earlier, except the Imperial Family's official religion was now Christianity. The family of Constantine fought, intrigued, seduced and poisoned each other with great gusto, then went to Church. This had a funny effect on bookish young Julian, and he decided Christianity must be the problem, and everyone was a lot better off worshiping Jupiter, Hercules, Mars and such like in the good old days. He was slain in battle with the Persians after only a five year reign, before he could affect any real change.

631 AD- Caliph Omar, the conqueror of the Holyland, was assassinated in Medina by Abu-Lulu, a Persian Christian.

1394- the Jews expelled from France by King Charles VI.

1503- MONA LISA- This day Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by a Florentine senator Francesco del Giocondo to paint a portrait of his third wife Madonna Elizabetha or Lisa. He fussed over the painting for four years and never gave it to Francesco. He said it was still unfinished and kept it for himself. Eventually he needed money so he sold it to the King of France and today it sits in the Louvre. Was her enigmatic smile because she had lost a child earlier that year and Leonardo was trying to cheer her up? He used to have musicians playing in the room when she posed. Or is she emblematic of Woman smiling at all the foibles of Men? One historian called Mona Lisa, “The Face that Launched a Thousand Reams Upon a Sea of Ink.”

1529- In England, the Reformation Parliament first met. This was the Parliament that supported King Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church, and the adoption of Protestant practices.

1572- TYCHO’S SUPERNOVA. Around this time people began to notice a new light in skies near the constellation Cassiopeia. It was an exploding star (supernova) that soon became visible even in the daytime. It reached its brightest around Nov. 16th and lasted well into the following year. It is called Tycho’s Supernova or Tycho G because Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe first published about it. It was observed by many people around the world including Johannes Kepler and the astronomers of the Chinese Ming Emperor. This phenomenon inspired English astronomer Thomas Diggs in 1576 to declare that Copernicus’s idea of a Region of Fixed Stars did not make sense, since those stars were never supposed to change. Obviously, the Universe was infinite and ever changing.

1623- The Dutch government in the Hague decided Henry Hudson may have discovered something interesting in America after all and ordered the Dutch West India Company to begin plans for a colony. This settlement, called New Amsterdam would become New York City.

1717- Henry Luttrell was a general in the Irish Jacobite army against the forces of William of Orange. At key battles at Aughrim and Limerick, he betrayed his own side, and for that he was richly rewarded by the English. King William even gave him the estates of his own brother, who picked the other side. Needless to say, Henry Luttrell was hated at home. This day while riding in a sedan chair through downtown Dublin, someone walked up to him and shot him in the face. Luttrell died the next day, and nobody on that street seemed to see or recall seeing who did it….

1755- The Massachusetts Colony offered a bounty of 20 English pounds each for scalps of Indian children under the age of 12. Warrior scalps fetched a higher bounty, about 30 pounds.

1761- Battle of Torgau- Frederick the Great had his last big victory over the invading Austrian army. Frederick “ Alte Fritz”- Old Fritz, personally led his men into battle and had three horses killed under him. At one point he was actually struck in the chest with a cannonball, but it had been fired at such a great distance that it had lost velocity and merely knocked the wind out of him.” It’s nothing,” he said, and returned to the battle. If he had been killed then the Prussian kingdom would have collapsed, and the future capitol of Germany would have been Vienna or Frankfurt, rather than Berlin.

1836- Southern California ranchero Juan de Alvarado rallied local ranchers to overthrow corrupt territorial Governor Juan de Micheltorena sent from Mexico City. One of his followers was Pio Pico, who would become a general in the Mexican War. The story of Alvarado may have been an early inspiration for Zorro.

1849-THE PNEUMATIC TRAIN- Alfred E. Beech, the publisher of Scientific American Magazine, first proposed an underground railway be built under New York City to ease traffic snarls. He had invented the pneumatic tube system of delivering messages in tubes pulled through buildings by means of suction and compressed air. He now proposed to build tube shaped railroad cars that would carry people along via suction like a big straw. In 1868 he spent $350,000 to build a Pneumatic train under Broadway that could go one block. Beecher eventually gave up the idea and his tunnel was sealed but the New York City Subway system was inaugurated in 1904.

1883- The Billy Hicks Massacre- near El Obeid a poorly trained colonial Egyptian Army led by British officers under General William Hicks march right into a trap set by Sudanese rebel leader El Mahdi. He led a messianic movement much like ISIS today.

1883- Outlaw Black Bart held up his last stagecoach. He liked to rob the Wells Fargo strongbox and leave behind poems. “ I’ve labored long and hard for bread, for money and for riches. But too long on my corns you’ve tread, you fine-haired sons of bitches!- Black Bart poe-8.” Eventually Wells Fargo agents tracked him down to man named Charles Bowles and he did 6 years in San Quentin.

1888- Jack the Ripper killed his last victim, a prostitute named Mary Reilly.

1918- the Austrians sign a preliminary armistice with Italy to end the Italian Front section of World War I. Soldiers like Benito Mussolini could go home and get into politics.

1930- Amadeo Giannini changed the name of his San Francisco based Bank of Italy to the Bank of America.

1948 -The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the famous premature headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” based on early poll returns. Truman himself was so sure he’d lost the election he went to bed early. When he awoke he discovered he had won and he had a ball mocking the newspapers and doing nasal imitations of hostile news correspondent H.B. Kaltenborn.

1956- The 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, with Judy Garland, was first broadcast on television. Almost 40 million people tuned in that night. It has been run every year since. Possibly the most viewed on TV movie ever.

1957- The first living thing sent into orbit, a Russian dog named Laika. She was a stray found on a Moscow street. She never came back but died in space, but she probably was satisfied knowing she made history- woof.

1963- THE FIRST ALL COSMONAUT WEDDING- Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in Space, marries cosmonaut Andrisyan Nikolayev.

1966- President Lyndon Johnson signed the Truth in Packaging Act, which required all packaged foods to print their real ingredients on the label.

1969- In a speech, President Richard Nixon announced his opposition to young anti-Vietnam War protesters by appealing to the social conservative middle Americans. "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support." It was basically a declaration of cultural war against the Rock & Roll Hippy counterculture.

1971- The first UNIX manual released.

1971- Carly Simon married James Taylor.

1974- Hello Kitty created.

1976- Carrie starring Sissy Spacek opened in theaters.

1977- Disney's Pete's Dragon starring Helen Reddy and Red Buttons.

1979- T.V. sitcom Different Strokes premiered.

1990- GM's car line the Saturn announced.

1981- WALLY WOOD was one of the most influential cartoonists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His amazing versatility enabled him to draw everything from superhero comics to very cartoony to playfully naughty girls like Sally Forth. He drew EC Comics, the Mars Attacks series, Mad Magazine, Weird Science, THUNDER Agents and much more. He had done an infamous drawing of the Disney characters having sex that was so good, people assumed it was done by a rogue Disney animator. But hard living and deadlines took their toll. Suffering from a stroke, and failing kidneys, Wally Wood put a 44 cal pistol to his right temple and pulled the trigger. Today police found his remains. The bullet had passed completely through his head and was in the pillow on the other side.

1986- While American media sat on the story, Lebanese newspaper Al Schirrah first revealed the details of the Reagan Presidency’s illegal sales of weapons to Iran- the Iran Contra Scandal. It embarrassed the final years of Reagan’s presidency. In 1989, Pres. George H.W. Bush gave executive pardons to all involved.

2006- Dreamworks/Aardman film Flushed Away, directed by David Bowers.
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Yesterday’s Question: The Roman system of number counting did not have a symbol for nothing- zero. Who invented the zero?

Answer: Early versions of what we call zero (0) were present in the “Fertile Crescent" cultures (Babylonia, Sumer, etc.) and the Mayans had a concept of zero as well, but the zero as we know it today was created by Arab mathematicians.

Question: The Roman system of number counting did not have a symbol for nothing- zero. Who invented the zero?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What does the old Hollywood phrase mean- Mickey-Mousing?”
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History for 11/2/2022
Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Ray Walston, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers, k.d. lang, David Schwimmer is 56

Today is the traditional day for Dio de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It derives from the Aztecs, who believed the life you are now living is a dream. When you die, you awake to your real life.

472AD- Next to last Roman Emperor Olybrius died. Put in his place was the boy Romulus Augustulus, while the real power was his general, the barbarian chieftain Odoacer.

1164- Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, fled into exile over his dispute with King Henry II of England.

1483- This day Richard III shows his friend the Duke of Buckingham how much he appreciated his help in becoming king by cutting his head off.

1541- Archbishop Thomas Cranmer handed King Henry VIII a spy’s report that his hot young wife Queen Catherine Howard was getting-it-on with at least three other men.

1783- The American Revolution now over, General George Washington published his final orders to his disbanding army, congratulating them for their courage and allowing them all to go home now to their farms.

1789- The French Revolution seized all Church property in France.

1789- President George Washington had borrowed two books from the New York City Public Library that were due this day. The Chief Librarian noted that they were still overdue, in April 2010. A total of $4, 577.00 late dues were owed.

1804- Pope Pius VII was brought by French cavalry from Rome on to French soil so he could crown Napoleon emperor at Notre Dame in Paris. Napoleon later had the Pope locked up from 1809 to 1814. His Holiness excommunicated him. Napoleon said, “ Good. Now I will have more followers.”

1830- American Methodist reformers opposed to bishops met in Baltimore to form the Protestant Methodist Church.

1889- North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted into the Union. They argued for twenty years the position of a joint state capitol. Finally they decided to go separately.

1904- London newspaper The Daily Mirror first published.

1915- Battle of Coronel. In World War I, German Admiral Max von Spee’s battle cruiser fleet defeated a British cruiser fleet of the coast of Chile. This was very upsetting back home, since it marked the first British naval defeat in 100 years.

1917- Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, calling for a national home for Jews in Palestine. Sir Arthur Balfour was the British Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George. Britain once considered Uganda and Argentina for a Jewish homeland before settling on Palestine, then a sleepy border province of the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

1920- The first US Radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began the nation’s first broadcasting with news of election results.

1921- On the fourth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration a huge mob of Palestinian Arabs attacked the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem. After the Great War, sporadic violence had been happening since Arab nationalism had arisen as well as increased Jewish immigration from Europe as a result of the Balfour Declaration. But for the first time the rioters were fought off in a pitched battle by an organized Jewish militia called the Hagannah. This force was formed by Av Avram, and made up of Jewish World War I veterans. The leader of the Palestinians, Al Husseini, would be later elected the Grand Mufti of Palestine. This was the first large clash of Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, and sadly, it would not be the last.

1928- The Little Carnegie Theater in New York opened. Until its closing in 1982, it was one of the premiere art-house cinemas.

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Halie Selassie I, Ethiopian Emperor. The Jamaican movement Rastafarians are named for him.

1932- Young star Katherine Hepburn first shines in the film A Bill of Divorcement, co- starring with John Barrymore.

1936- The School of Industrial Arts founded in New York City. Four art teachers began it in an old building that once housed a WPA theater project. In 1960 it became The High School of Art & Design, a magnet public school for commercial artists. It was my school 1970-1973.

1937- LaGuardia Airport opened. New York City’s first municipal airport.

1944- RAOUL WALLENBURG- The Jewish population of Budapest was driven off to Nazi concentration camps, but not after Swedish envoy Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands by granting Swedish (neutral) passports to them. Wallenberg once walked alongside an SS officer ordered to execute 25 people and pleaded for each person as they were shot. The SS officer finally tired of Wallenburg’s pleas and spared the last two. When Wallenburg’s aide asked him “What good did all that begging do?” He replied: “What Good? We just saved two human lives!” When Hungary was conquered by the Red Army, Raul Wallenburg was arrested and died in one of Stalin's prison camps. This despite being a Swedish national and a diplomat. Russia didn’t officially admit this until 1991.

1947- Howard Hughes pilots his monster wooden airplane, the Hughes H-1 Hercules, known as “The Spruce Goose" for it's only test flight, one minute over Long Beach Harbor. Two hundred tons, Eight engines, a wingspan longer than a football field, it was conceived as an aid to win World War II, but was not ready until long after the war ended.

1950- 94 year old writer George Bernard Shaw died of injuries sustained from falling out of an apple tree he was pruning. His dying words were:" Oh well, it will be a new experience, anyway."

1963- South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were assassinated by a military coup of ARVN generals. President Kennedy was aware of the coup, and pledged the US would not interfere. Still, he was surprised that Diem was murdered.

1964- CBS television purchased the NY Yankees Baseball club. This is one of the dumber business deals in entertainment history. CBS thought they were buying the world champion Murderers Row team, if they had done their research they would have known most the Yankee top stars including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were scheduled to retire. Within a year of the deal the Yankees went from first to last place, and played bad until George Steinbrenner bought them in 1977.

1966- Walt Disney stopped into St. Joseph’s Hospital for pre-op x-rays for an old polo injury to his neck. Examining the x-rays doctors discover a cancerous tumor most of his left lung. They recommend immediate surgery, but Walt left to work at the studio a few more days.

1983- Yielding to nationwide lobbying, President Ronald Reagan created the Martin Luther King holiday in January. Arizona was the last state to officially celebrate the holiday.

2001- Pixar’s Monsters Inc. opened.

2005- The NY Times revealed the CIA was operating black sites in third countries like Poland and Thailand, where they could take Al Qaeda and Iraqi prisoners and torture them free of any oversight.

2012- Walt Disney’s Wreck it Ralph opened in theaters. Appearing in front of it was the short Paperman, by John Kahrs.

2016- Ending generations of frustration, the Chicago Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in ten innings to win one of the more exciting World Series of baseball. The last time the Cubs won a world series was in 1908.

2021-A full year after the presidential election, a huge crowd of conspiracy-loving supporters of disgraced president Trump gathered in Dealey Plaza in Dallas. There some You-Tube Q-whatever types promised them JFK Jr, who died in 1999, and his father JFK Sr, who died in 1963, would magically rise from the dead and restore Donnie back to the Presidency, which has no constitutional basis. After lots of chanting and yelling at cars all day, they all eventually got bored and went home.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does the old Hollywood phrase mean- Mickey-Mousing?”

Answer: On the first decade or two of sound films, scores were often synchronized with the action on screen. This was especially true of the Disney films, hence the “Mickey-Mousing” name, where the action was often planned on bar sheets, very similar to music sheets, so that the music could be composed to punctuate the visuals. So someone milking a cow flicks some spray near a baby, you heard a quick xylophone riff up-scale.