Question: On a political show tonight, one pundit joked “ Have you seen Goldstein?” It’s from a famous book. What does that mean?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Why would you hire an Au Pair?
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History for 11/2/2016
Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers, k.d. lang, David Schwimmer is 50

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

472AD- Next to last Roman Emperor Olybrius died.

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

1483- Whether you believe Shakespeare’s portrayal of King Richard III as a hunchback usurper or modern revisionist scholars who call him a maligned monarch, 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.

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.

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 until finally deciding 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 and sank 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 militant 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 opens.

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Halie Selassie Ist, 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.

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 Wallenburgs 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 gulag prison camps. 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 completed until long after it ended.

1950- Writer George Bernard Shaw died at 94. His last 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 killed.

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.

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.

2012- Walt Disney’s Wreckit Ralph opened in theaters.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why would you hire an Au Pair?

Answer: An Au Pair is a kind of live-in Nanny, usually a student, who will help with housework and your kids.

Question: Why would you hire an Au Pair?

Question: What American union first called itself the Society of the White Rats?
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History for 11/1/2016
Welcome to November, Roman Month #9-Novembrius.

Birthdays: Marie Antoinette, President Warren Harding, Stephen Crane, Marcel Ophuls, Benevenuto Cellini, Larry Flynt, Walter Matthau, Fernando Valenzuela, Lyle Lovett, Willie D, Rick Allen of Def Leppard, Jenny McCarthy is 44, Toni Collette is 44

To the ancient Romans this was the Feast of Pomona or Homona, Goddess of the Harvest. Her offerings were bright apples, a staple of the Roman diet. In the Early Christian Church they changed the name to the Feast of All Saints Day. The custom of bobbing for apples at Halloween comes from a pagan ritual.

333BC – BATTLE OF ISSUS- Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army met the main Persian army of Darius the Great King and defeated it. Alexander declared the Greek cities of Ionia (the western coast of Turkey) liberated. Persian power would not return there for 900 years. Alexander captured Darius’s family and household who he treated courteously. After the battle Darius offered Alexander 300 tons of gold to go away, but little Alex was just getting started.
Alexander’s warriors were the first Europeans to try bananas, but they gave them diarrhea so he told them to throw them away. Alexander’s men also learned the painkilling characteristics of opium, the herbal basis of morphine and heroin. They chewed opium bulbs “The Gift of the Gods” to recover from wounds and surgery.

307BC - Agathocles, Greek Tyrant of Syracuse, ran away abandoning his army and his sons in the middle of the Saharan Desert in front of the Carthaginian army, because things weren't turning out that well for him.

79AD- Erupting since last August and destroying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Mount Vesuvius finally calmed down and went back to sleep.

1290- This was the deadline King Edward I Longshanks set for all Jews to leave England. Many drowned in small boats crossing the Channel. Once in France, the French king told them they had to leave in one year. Jews would not be allowed to resettle in England until Oliver Cromwell’s time in the 1650s.

1478- THE SPANISH INQUISITION- At the request of Ferdinand & Isabella, Pope Sixtus IV promulgated a bull setting up the office of the Holy Inquisition in Spain. The royal couple tired of civil infighting among Moslems, Jews, Christians and converts in their country. As they united the land under their one rule, they wanted Spain united under one orthodox doctrine.
The Inquisition, also called La Suprema, dominated life and thought for centuries. Other offices for the Holy Inquisition were set up in Portugal and Brazil. The Inquisition was administered by the Dominican monks and supported by an elite group of nobles called the Santa Hermandad, or the Sacred Brotherhood. In 1709 King Phillip V broke with tradition by refusing to attend an Auto da Fe, a public festival featuring the burning of heretics. The Spanish Inquisition was stopped for awhile by Napoleon’s French invasion of 1808, but restored after liberation. It finally died out in 1819.

1503 –IL PAPA TERRIBLE- Giuliano Della Rovere was elected Pope Julius II. The Holy Father delayed his coronation until his astrologers told him the stars were right. Julius drove out Caesar and Lucretia Borgia and fought in armor more than he prayed. In his 10 year reign he commissioned the Sistine Ceiling, the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, Michelangelo's Moses, Raphael's "The School of Athens", created the Swiss Guard (uniform designed by Michelangelo), dug up the Laocoon, conquered most of Central Italy and left the Vatican a budget surplus for the first time in years. He was one of the greatest of the Popes, called "Il Papa Terrible'" the Terrible Father.

1512- Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling was open to the public for the first time.

1604- William Shakespeare's play "Othello the Moor of Venice" first performed.

1700- The War of Spanish Succession began. King Charles VI "The Mad" died of enteric fever, despite being fed milk with ground-up pearls, freshly killed pigeons placed on his head and the hot entrails of a deer laid on his belly -i.e., the best modern medicine could do. He died leaving daughters and many Catholic countries worked under the tradition known as Salic Law, that women can't inherit property themselves.

So the King of France claims the throne of Spain for his son Phillip D'Anjou, and the Emperor of Germany claims it for his son Maximillian. The English and Portuguese and Dutch all get involved and fight it out all over Europe for 14 years. The Spanish parliament (Cortes) made it's own choice, but it changed nothing. After all, this is the business of kings, who the heck asked the people to butt in? Even in the remote forests of the New World it was called Queen Anne’s War. Orders came across the Atlantic from Europe so South Carolina and Georgia were ordered to attack Spanish Florida and Massachusetts men fought French Canadians.

1755- THE GREAT LISBON EARTHQUAKE-85% of the city destroyed, 50,000 killed, gallows erected around the city to punish looters. The earthquake happened on a Sunday at 9:40AM so most killed were in Church hearing Mass when the roofs collapsed on them. This irony was seized upon by humanist philosophers like Voltaire and Diderot. That a overwhelmingly Catholic city like Lisbon could be devastated in such a way while Paris, Venice and London went on their sinful hedonistic ways. This said to them that the great earthquake was not God’s punishment but a coldly impersonal act of Nature. This notion coupled with Sir Edmund Halley's recent discovery that comets are not a message from God, just a natural phenomena, led to the growing disillusionment with religion called the Age of Enlightenment.

1776- Mission San Juan De Capistrano founded on the California coast.

1800- President John Adams, moved into the White House, first president to do so. First Lady Abigail Adams had her wash hung in the East Room because the walls weren't in yet,hjyl, so it had a nice breeze. The first three buildings erected in Pierre L'Enfant's new federal capitol city are the House of Congress, the White House, and Conrad’s Tavern. The first business in Washington City that was not part of the government was a brewery. Pennsylvania Avenue was still dotted with tree stumps. Abigail Adams wrote that Georgetown was “The very dirtiest hole I have ever seen.”

1835- Davey Crockett, after losing his bid for re-election to Congress tells his Tennessee voters:" You can all go to Hell, I'm going to Texas!"

1848 -The Boston Female Medical School opened with 12 students. It merged with Boston University in 1874

1858- The British Crown takes direct control of India from the Honorable East India Company. The period known as "The Raj" begins.

1880- Pat Garrett elected sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory.

1895- Emil and Max Skladowsky set up a Bioscope Projector in Berlin's Wintergarden. Birth of German Cinema.

1911- During a little war between Italy and Turkey over Tripolitania (Libya) a dangerous new precedent was set. An Italian pilot reached out of his cockpit and dropped three small grenades on a Turkish oasis. The first aerial bombing. Guernica, Rotterdam, London, Dresden, Hiroshima, Hanoi and Baghdad to follow.

1913- Notre Dame quarterback Gus Doreias throws the first "Forward Pass" to center Knute Rockne. The forward pass was the solution to a request to the coach of Notre Dame by Teddy Roosevelt to do something to make the game more mobile and less bone crunching, since parents were beginning to complain about the injuries to their sons.

1918- The Hungarian subjects of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire declared themselves to be the new independent nation of Hungary.

1920- The first issue of American Cinematographer.

1936- Benito Mussolini in a speech coined the term “The Axis” for his new alliance with Hitler’s Germany. “There is now an “axis of mutual interest between Berlin and Rome”

1938- At Pimlico in Maryland, this day was the famous horse race between War Admiral and Sea Biscuit, the two finest thoroughbreds of the age. War Admiral was sleek and aristocratic, sired from the blood of the great champion Man of War. Sea Biscuit by contrast looked ungainly and lame. But in the end The Biscuit he won the race by three lengths. The race was heard live on radio by one in three Americans.

1939- Rockefeller Center in New York City opened.

1945- OPERATION OLYMPIC- If the Atomic Bombs had failed to end the war this was the planned date for the U.S. Invasion of Japan. Based on the casualty figures to take Okinawa and Iwo Jima, Gen. MacArthur estimated 100,000 U.S. soldiers would be killed or wounded to land on the beaches of Kyushu, another 50,000 to take Tokyo and a guerrilla war in the mountains possibly lasting until 1948. The Japanese had stockpiled 2,200 kamikaze planes in mountain bunkers and had mobilized the civilian population to fight with spears for the Motherland. The Soviets were already in the Kurile Islands and had timed their mainland invasion for July. So the resulting actions would probably divide the island into a North Japan, South Japan situation. But things turned out differently...

1946- THE FIRST NBA BASKETBALL GAME- The first professional game was the New York Knicks 68, the Toronto Huskies 66. The first basket was scored by Ozzie Sheckmann.

1950- Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Coralzo and Griselo Torresola, tried to shoot their way to President Truman. Truman was staying at Blair House while the White House was being renovated. The two assassins were shot down by the Secret Service in a furious gun battle at the foot of his stairs. Secret serviceman Leslie Coffelt shot Collazo as he himself was killed. President Truman was awoken from a nap and went to the window to see what the noise was all about. The agents shouted at him,"Get down ya G-ddamn fool !"

1951- As part of their training, US soldiers were made to witness an atomic bomb test at Desert Rock Nevada, then marched across the radioactive field.

1952- The first U.S. Hydrogen Bomb vaporized the island of Elugelab. Once called the Super-bomb project, Dr. Edward Teller's brainchild was nicknamed-"Mike".

1954- Algeria began its uprising for independence. A French colony since 1832, the insurgency would be France’s version of the Vietnam War and last until 1962.

1959- Hockey goalie Jacques LaPlante became the first to wear a face mask during play. Before this many Hockey goalies lost their front teeth.

1968- To replace the outmoded Hays Production Code, the Motion Picture Ratings System introduced-"G, M, R, and X"- Later PG, PG-13, R and NC-17".

1972-John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, who owned the Esso brand of gasoline, changed their name to the Exxon Corporation. Esso- S-O, Standard Oil, get it?

1988- Jeff Goldblum married Gena Davis. They divorced several years later.

2001- Because of Watergate, The Presidential Records Act of 1978 ordered that all Presidential records be made public after 12 years. But not for Bush and Cheney. Today President George W. Bush signed an executive order that declared that the President and Vice President could keep their secret records sealed in perpetuity! Its after 9-11, I wonder what they don’t want us to read? E-mails perhaps?

2003- Walt Disney’s feature Brother Bear.
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Question: What American union first called itself the Society of the White Rats?

Answer: At the turn of the century Vaudeville stage actors formed their first fraternal society. It did not late long, but did yield to the creation of Actors Equity, and later SAG/AFTRA.

Question: What American union first called itself the Society of the White Rats?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was Brunswick Stew?
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History for 10/31/2016 Halloween
Birthdays: Jan Vermeer, John Keats, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, John Candy, Dale Evans, Jane Pauley, David Ogden Stiers, Dan Rather, Lee Grant, Ethel Waters, Juliet Low-founder of the American Girl Scouts, Ollie Johnston,
Vanilla Ice, Stephen Rea, Rob Schneider, Animator Randy Cartwright, Peter Jackson is 55.

HAPPY ALL HALLOWS EVE- The night before the Feast of All Souls, beginning the Christian season of Advent, was confused in Medieval custom with one of the four Druid fire festivals, All Hallows. In Ireland it was called Samhein, at this time all hearth fires in the land are extinguished then re-lit from the fire at the Druids sacred grove. Add to this the early Church's attempt to eradicate the pagan custom of giving food to departed spirits -Greek Anthesterion in Feb., Roman Feralia and Lemuria in May- by moving the date to honor the dead to the Feast of All Souls on November 1st. Nov 1st was the feast of the Roman Goddess of the Harvest Homona. It was considered a good day for pagans to accept baptism. Many cultures had customs of putting food offerings on doorsteps so the spirits would leave you in peace. So today's the last night for the devil and other ghosties to romp before the Holiday Season (Advent) begins.

1517- THE REFORMATION BEGAN- Augustine monk and theology professor Martin Luther had had enough of the growing corruption of the Church. Pope Leo X the party-animal Pope who had succeeded Pope Julius II the Warrior Pope, who succeeded Pope Alexander VI Borgia the “totally-out-of-control” pope, ordered a new sale of Indulgences throughout Europe to pay off a loan on St. Peter's construction to the Augsberg banker Jacob Fugger. An indulgence was sort of " after-life insurance" absolving you of sin. When Wilhelm Tetzel, the local Bishop selling indulgences showed up in his area Luther blew his cork. On a wagon Tetzel had a big barrel that had written on it: "For every Coin tinkles in my Well, another Soul is spared from Hell."

Luther nailed 95 theses or arguments against Roman primacy in religion to the door of the Palace Church, in effect challenging Tetzel to debate, the customary university challenge. He picked today to do it because he knew tomorrow being the Feast of All Saints there would be a large crowd to read it. But Martin Luther wasn't made into toast like Jan Hus or Wycliff, because was he was protected by German princes like Frederick the Wise of Saxony. They were tired of sending as much as a third of their GNP to Italy. Called the Peter’s Pence. This is the official start date for the Protestant Reformation.

1663- THE GREAT PLAGUE OF LONDON- English writer Samuel Pepys noted in his famous diary: “The plague is much in Amsterdam and we in fears of it here”. The plague took another year to reach London but when it did it decimated the population for most of 1665 and 1666 until burned out by the Great Fire of London.

1776- For the first time since the Declaration of Independence was signed, King George III mentioned the American rebellion in his speech from the throne to Parliament. Describing the signers of the declaration, he said “for daring and desperate is the spirit of those leaders, whose object has always been dominion and power, that they have now openly renounced all allegiance to the crown, and all political connection with this country." The King praised Lord Howe for defeating Washington’s army and capturing New York, but acknowledged another campaign would be necessary next year to bring these rebels to heel.

1820- PAPA HAYDN’S HEAD. Famous composer Franz Josef Haydn had died in 1809. The powerful Ezterhazy Family, who were great patrons of classical music, built a beautiful new tomb for him in 1820. There was only one problem. When they exhumed Haydn’s coffin it was found that his head was missing! It seems the Ezterhazy attorney Rosenbaum was a fan of the new science of Phrenology, studying the human behavior by measuring bumps on the skull. He ordered Haydn’s head secretly removed three days after the burial for study. When Austrian police questioned Rosenbaum he hid Haydn’s skull under his wifes’ skirts. (Darling, would you please do me a favor..?) The head bounced around several Viennese musical societies until it was Re-Capitated, i.e. returned to Papa Haydn’s tomb in 1939.

1846- THE DONNER PARTY MADE CAMP- A wagon train of families, pinned down by an early autumn blizzard in the High Sierra Donner Pass made camp at Lake Truckee only 150 miles from help. They took this route because it was advertised back east by a charlatan named Lansford Hastings as an easy short cut. All their oxen were dead and their food almost gone, and it was the worst winter for a generation.
The hapless pioneers weren't rescued until the following April! In the meantime they starved, ate tree bark and dogs, and finally resorted to cannibalism of their dead. Interestingly enough, their Indian guides were the only ones who refused to join in the cannibalistic feast, they ran off. The Donner men caught up with the Indians, killed them and ate them too. So much for calling them savages. Of 86 pioneers, 41 died.....Oh, and the guy who sold them the map was eventually shot and killed by one of the pioneer’s angry relatives.

1864- Nevada statehood. Abe Lincoln had rushed the application of Nevada territory into the union because he needed the new states extra votes to guarantee passage of his anti-slavery and civil rights amendments into the Constitution.

1887- Charles Goodyear takes out the first patent for a rubber tire.

1892- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle gathered all his Holmes mystery stories into its first collection to be published in book form- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1914- In World War I during the First Battle of Ypres, a British counterattack mauled the Second Bavarian Reserve division, then holding a small French chateau. Less than a third of the Bavarians made it out alive, but one of the survivors was private Adolf Hitler.

1916- Charles Taze Russell , founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses, died of a heart attack on a train in Texas. He had predicted the Second Coming of Christ would happen in 1874 but no one would be aware of it and the world would end October 2, 1914. He had asked to be buried in a Roman toga so his followers wrapped him in his Pullman car sheets.

1922- Communist leader Lenin was getting sicker from his many strokes and would not last long. Russians wondered who would rule Russia next. Then people began to notice something curious. Everyone party undersecretary Josef Stalin didn’t like seemed to wind up dead. Felix Frunze, a top Bolshevik leader close to Lenin, went in for surgery of an ulcer. He had a strong constitution and felt healthy, but Comrade Stalin insisted he take precautions and have surgery. And wouldn’t ya know! While in surgery a doctor overdid Frunze’s chloroform and he died. Hmph, accidents will happen.

1925- Albert the Duke of York, gave a broadcast speech to close the British Empire Exposition at London’s Wembly Stadium. It is when the world became aware of Bertie’s secret, that he had a bad speech impediment. The speech was a disaster. Shortly after, Albert engaged the Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, who would help him when he became King George VI.

1926 –The great magician Harry Houdini died. His real name was Eric Weiss but he had seen a French magician named Houdin who had inspired him. Some college boys in Detroit asked the great magician if it was true he could withstand any punch. When he said yes while reading his mail a large student unexpectedly started punching him in the abdomen, rupturing his already aggrieved appendix. Peritonitis set in and he died on this day. He was buried in a coffin he had used for his escape acts. He promised his wife if there really was an afterlife, he would contact her somehow. She held a seance on every Halloween hoping for a message, but none ever came. She gave up after ten years.

1936- NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena call today Nativity Day, because it commemorates the first firing of a liquid fuel rocket under the Galcit program ( Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory California Institute of Technology ) later renamed the Jet Propulsion Lab in 1944.

1938- In a speech President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned of big corporate tycoons who try to use their money to influence American politics. “ Organized Money is as great a threat to American democracy as organized crime!”

1941-the sculpture group of U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore completed. Instead of just their heads artist–designer Judson Borglum wanted the sculpture to go down to the figures waists but he died in early 1941 and with war on the horizon, his son and chief engineer rushed to complete the heads as is.

1945- The "War of Hollywood" Ends. The CSU union strike, the film business's longest and ugliest, falls apart and many of the former members drift into IATSE locals.

1945- The first ever Conference on Computer Technique was held at MIT.

1956- Brooklyn ended all trolleycar service.

1964- Barbara Streisand single “People, People who need People..” goes to number one.

1964- Today in a taped phone conversation FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover gave President Lyndon Johnson tips on how to spot a homosexual: “It’s a thing you just can’t tell sometimes…There are some people who walk kinda funny. That you might think are a little bit off, or kinda queer..” FBI director Hoover was gay himself.

1984- India's Prime Minister Indira Ghandi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards Beant Singh and Satwant Singh in revenge for her ordering the military storming of the Golden Temple of Amritsar earlier that year. While she lay dying her staff argued over who had the right to donate blood first.

1993- Young movie star River Phoenix overdosed and died on the street in front of the Viper Room night club in LA after partying with Johnny Depp and Alicia Silverstone. The club is owned by movie star Depp. It was once the Melody Room owned by mobster Bugsy Siegel. Ironically, as Phoenix was thrashing spasmodically people walked by unconcerned, because it’s a common enough occurrence on the Sunset Strip.

2000- The first working crew blasted off from Kazakhstan to occupy the International Space Station. A NASA spokesman said ‘If all goes well today will mark the first day of Mans permanent colonization of Space. Yesterday was the last day that the cosmos would be completely devoid of human beings.”

2001- The acting Governor of Massachusetts officially overturned the convictions of the last six people executed in the Salem Witch Trials 300 years ago in 1692.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was Brunswick Stew?

Answer: During the Civil War, Brunswick Stew was the name for a stew soldiers made up of whatever they managed to scrounge that could it into a pot. Squirrel, rattlesnake, leeks, garlic. Similar to salmagundi.

Question: What was Brunswick Stew?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was a Five & Ten store?
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History for 10/30/2016
Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,
Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler is 69, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon,
Claude Lelouche, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona, Ivanka Trump is 35

1270- The Pope declared the 8th Crusade to try to save the city of St Jean D’Acre, the last Christian bastion in Palestine. Acre fell to the Saracens two years later.

Oct. 30, 1501-THE BALLET OF THE CHESTNUTS, or His Holiness throws an orgy.
One of the most notorious incidents in PreReformation Rome. Pope Alexander VI Borgia, with his children Cesare and Lucretia Borgia throw a party of parties at the Vatican. The wild revelry was highlighted by a race of nude prostitutes on hands and knees through an obstacle course of silver candlesticks, gobbling up
chestnuts. The pope later gave prizes to the courtiers and ladies who demonstrated the greatest sexual stamina. This was the kind of holy hedonism that drove the Protestant reformers nuts and caused the final rift in the Christian world.
One participant in these revelries was the chef of the French ambassador. He was intrigued to see the popes guests not wasting time to be served dinner, but just getting their own plates of food from large tubs set in a row along the wall. He thought this was a neat way to serve food. His name was Pierre Buffet.

1628- The French City of LaRochelle had been acting as the capitol of an independent
Huguenot nation- electing officers and collecting taxes independent of Catholic
Paris. But France was now in the hands of the wily Cardinal Richelieu. Although a Catholic priest, Richelieu really didn’t care a figgy about Protestants, but this independence thing had to go. The Cardinal had LaRochelle under siege for months.

When the starving citizens finally surrendered it was the Cardinal who entered the city in armor on a white charger. But rather than sack the city, and burn heretics, Richelieu
had his men distribute bread and medicine. He granted freedom of worship to all
Huguenots.

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published.

1864- Gold miners founded the boomtown of Helena Montana.

1891- Henri Boulanger, a French general who dreamed of Napoleonic power before falling into disgrace, shot himself over his mistress’s grave.

1905- THE OCTOBER MANIFESTO- Trying to calm his rebellious subjects, Czar Nicholas II issues an imperial ukase (edict) transforming Russia from a completely autocratic state to a semi-constitutional monarchy. He created the Duma, Russia's elected
parliament. However all didn't go well. When the elected representatives called
for more freedom, release of political prisoners and dismissal of all government
officials not approved by the Duma, Nicholas shut it all down.

1918- The Empire of Turkey signed an armistice at Modras with Britain, France and
America to get out of World War I.

1918- While the last Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl desperately tried to hold his
disintegrating empire together, today even his German speaking subjects declared
themselves to be the new Federal Republic of Austria.

1918- Kaiser Wilhelm moved his staff from riot-ravaged Berlin to Spa on the Belgian
frontier to prepare for the armistice to end the Great War. Socialist leader Franz
Ebert told Chancellor Prince Max of Baden the Kaiser had to abdicate to avoid civil
war. But Wilhelm still imagined that after making peace with the Allies, he could
turn the German army around and put down his own rebellious subjects. But after
four years and two and a half million dead, all the German army wanted to do was
go home. Whole regiments were throwing down their weapons and walking away.

1931- first day shooting on the movie Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic Gold Medal swimming champ Johnny Weissmuller.

1936- London publishers George Allen & Unwin had received a manuscript from an Oxford languages professor named J.R.R. Tolkein. Raynar Unwin, the ten year old son of the publisher, read it and made a report “ This book will be a very good read for children from ages 5-7.” He was paid a shilling. So they published “The Hobbit”.

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, people across the U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New
Jersey. In Hollywood famed actor John Barrymore, drunk as usual, went over to his
kennel of prize winning racing greyhounds and open their cage doors, saying: "Fend
for yourselves!" In 1949 Ecuador and 1969 Buffalo NY, radio stations did updated versions of the broadcast, and they also started panics.

1941-The REUBEN JAMES INCIDENT-Five weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack the neutral U.S. destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German U-boat, drowning dozens of American sailors. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill thought this would be the incident to anger Americans enough into getting into World War II like the Lusitania did a generation earlier. Woody Guthrie sang: "Oh tell me what were
their names, tell me what were their names? Did you have a friend on the good old
Reuben James?" However Adolf Hitler apologized and offered immediate monetary
reparations. Popular anger cooled. Roosevelt told his cabinet:" I think I can keep us out of this war for one more year unless Germany or Japan does something stupid."

1947- Bertholt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and the Threepenny Opera,
testified to the McCarthy HUAC committee. He smoked a large cigar through the whole
session. Next day, as he had once fled Hitler’s Germany, he fled the U.S. and settled
in East Germany.

1961- Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev has his old boss Stalin’s body removed from
its glass case pickled next to Lenin, and has it buried in a simple grave in the back.

1963- The first Lamborghini 350GTV went on sale.

1966- An inventory done at the National Archives revealed that medical evidence
of John F. Kennedy's assassination autopsy were missing. This included JFK’s brain.
They have never been found. Kennedy’s brother Robert was still attorney general
at the time. Some historians think he hid evidence of conspiracy to hide his
brothers mob connections, and so preserve the purity of the Camelot myth.

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air. I can’t write them because children read this column but you all
know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

1975- King Juan Carlos assumed the throne in the restored monarchy of Spain.

1991- Middle East Peace Conference began in Madrid Spain. These first days about
the only thing the Arabs and Israeli’s could agree upon was to politely refuse the
lunch the Spaniards had set out for them- ham sandwiches.

1992- QUANTRILL’S FUNERAL- William Quantrill’s Raiders were infamous during the Civil War for their depredations in Kansas and Missouri. After being shot down in 1865, an admirer dug up his bones and kept them. Passing through several hands the bones were put up for sale, displayed in a glass case and even used by Ohio State fraternities for their initiation rituals. Billy Quantrill’s skull was discovered in a refrigerator behind the tuna sandwiches and Coke in the Dover Historical Society. This day the remains were finally laid to rest in his birthplace of Dover Ohio.

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording
studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.

2005- Disney feature Chicken Little premiered.

2012- The Walt Disney Company announced it was buying out George Lucas holdings (including the Star Wars franchise) for $4.05 billion.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was a Five & Ten store?

Answer: Frank Winfield Woolworth opened the first variety store in Utica New York in 1878. His store advertised as most of its merchandise costing no more than five or ten cents. Woolworth stores and their imitators became known as Five & Dimes, or Five and Tens.

Question: What was a Five & Ten store?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was the first Marvel comic book character to be made the subject of a major motion picture?
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History for 10/29/2016
Birthdays: James Boswell, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Keats, Sir Edmund Halley, Louis Blanc, Fanny Brice, Joseph Goebbels, Richard Dreyfus is 69, Zoot Sims, Winona Ryder, Jesse Barfield, Kate Jackson, Bill Maudlin, Akim Tamiroff, Ralph Bakshi is 78, Rufus Sewell, Neal Hefti-composer of the theme song for TV shows like Batman and the Odd Couple.

1618- Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded on his birthday. Raleigh was once Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, but by now he was getting on King James nerves, by opposing the Kings peace overtures to Spain. Also Raleigh was implicated in a plot to keep James from attaining the throne. The king had him dangling on a commuted death sentence for treason for 15 years. Finally when Raleigh attacked Spanish settlements in Brazil against his direct orders not to, that was enough. Off with his head! On the scaffold Raleigh thumbed the axeman’s blade. He joked:" This is sharp medicine, but it cures all ills." The man credited with introducing tobacco to Northern Europe, he puffed his pipe for one last time before putting his head on the block. His wife kept his severed head in a cabinet for the rest of her life.

1762- Battle of Freiburg. Frederick the Great’s brother Prince Henry defeated the Austrians in the final major battle of the Seven Years War.

1764-The Hartford Current debuts. The U.S.'s oldest continuously running newspaper.

1776- During the American retreat from the British across New Jersey, General George Washington is accidentally handed a letter from one of his officers to another. He read it and it accused him of incompetence: "The only thing worse than a Blundering Commander is an Indecisive one!" Up till then Washington had thought that the writer, Thomas Mifflin, was a friend of his. Washington passed on the note without any comment other than an apology for having opened it.

1787- Wolfgang Amadeus’s opera DON GIOVANNI premiered in Prague. Mozart had partied the night before and after midnight sat down and wrote the overture. As the musicians were sitting down he ran from stand to stand handing out the music. Goethe and Schiller loved it. Giacomo Rossini called it “the Greatest of All Operas”. After Don Giovanni his lyricist Lorenzo da Ponte left Europe for America and settled down in New Jersey. His niece had an affair with the son of Francis Scott Key and married a general who fought at Gettysburg.

1795- NAPOLEON MET JOSEPHINE- After quelling anti-government riots in Paris Napoleon ordered the citizens to turn in all weapons. Beautiful socialite Josephine de Beauharnais came this day to thank the young General for allowing her son to keep his slain fathers sword. Napoleon was at once twitterpated and their love became a legend. He would write her letters from the battlefield like “Don’t send your kisses, they burn my blood!” And “ I shall be home in a week, please don’t bathe until then, I want to smell you!”

1796- The SS Otter out of Boston under Captain Ebeneezer Dorr entered Monterrey Bay, the first American visitor to Spanish Alta-California.

1825- In Dublin, British Marquis de Wellesley married American socialite Miss Margaret Patterson. What makes this society wedding memorable was Miss Patterson's sister Betsy was married to Napoleon's younger brother Lucien Bonaparte. The Marquis of Wellesley was the older brother of the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon had died in 1821 but had he still been alive he would have had his Waterloo nemesis Wellington for a brother-in-law! It would have made for some interesting family gatherings.....

1836- The young nephew of Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, tries again to overthrow the French Government the way his famous uncle did. Instead of cheering, people chased him through the streets of Strasbourg yelling :"Shut Up you Blockhead!" He will eventually become Emperor Napoleon III.

1936- The resolutions of the First Geneva Convention announced. It attempted to regulate the treatment of civilians and prisoners in wartime. It was set up by Henry Dunant, who also helped found the International Red Cross. More Geneva Conventions would be signed by nations in 1925 and 1949.

1901- Leon Czogolsz was electrocuted for the assassination of President William McKinley. Immigrant anarchist Czogolsz had a nervous breakdown, and became so crazy, that even other anarchists avoided him.

1904--Mayor MacClellan opens the New York City Subway System. For 5 cents you could go 722 miles of tunnel under 30 square miles, the largest system in the world. The Mayor was given a solid silver ceremonial throttle, took controls of the first train and drove it around himself. When asked to hand the controls back he refused “Go away, I’m running this train now.” He went full throttle from Bleecker St to 146th. Later that day after the VIP’s concluded the party the subway was opened for the first commuters.

1923-General Mustapha Kemal abolishes the Ottoman Sultans and declared Turkey a secular Republic. For this he is named Ataturk, or "Father of the Turks". To this day Islamic fundamentalism has had a harder time in Turkey, where the example of Ataturk is respected as much as George Washington here. It is a federal crime to even criticize Ataturk.

1923- The musical Running Wild opened on Broadway, introducing the dance craze the Charleston.

1929- BLACK TUESDAY-THE STOCK MARKET CRASH AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS. The falling stock crisis which had been gaining momentum since early September finally culminates in the greatest one day collapse of the U.S. Economy. Millions of people who weren't ruined by last Thursday’s crash were ruined today. One third of all U. S. banks failed- 2,500. Eyewitnesses to that day all remember the strange low roar echoing through the glass canyons of Wall Street, it was the continuous moans of thousands of investors being simultaneously ruined. Businessmen jumped to their deaths from windows. Two executives held hands as they jumped because they had a joint account. The chairman of General Motors William Durant finished his life managing a bowling alley in Chicago.

The Union Club wallpapered it's bar with worthless stock certificates. Venerable firms like Morgan and Lehman Brothers allowed 'apple-breaks' for their brokers to go out on the street and supplement their incomes by selling apples. By years end all U.S. industry was working at 17% of capacity and unemployment would soon soar to 55% in many major cities. The newly built Empire State Building was nicknamed the "Empty State Building".

The Hoover Administration, which espoused the traditional hands-off attitude towards Wall Street, watched in horror as every trick known to financial wizards like Rockefeller and Lamont failed to stop the slide. People questioned whether capitalism itself was now a failure. Hoover's Vice President Charles Curtis, (for whom the nickname "Goodtime Charlie" was invented) continued to party while things collapsed. He responded to hungry, unemployed people protesting during his speech that they were all "Too damn dumb" to understand economics. His sister socialite Dolly Curtis said that she felt that the Depression, such as it was, maybe was already ending. This prompted one newspaper to run the headline:' DOLLY CALLS IT OFF!"

1936- Ella Crawford-Smith was a real estate magnate whose first husband was killed in a gangland hit. She had the Hollywood bungalow where the murder occurred torn down, and brought in Arte-Moderne architect Robert Derrah to create something unique. Today the project, Cross Roads of the World, was dedicated. It was an early form of open-air mall, designed to look like an ocean liner coming into port. It’s still there today.

1938-"SALUD CAMERADE !"The Farewell Parade in Barcelona of the International Brigade. 40,000 men-young intellectuals, German and French anti-fascists groups all united to help in the Spanish Civil War. The losing Spanish Republic had gambled that if they sent the International fighters home Franco would remove his Nazis and Italian allies . It didn't work. Their story was glamorized by writers like Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. Ironically many Americans who fought in the Lincoln Brigade were denied advancement in the U.S. Armed forces when World War II began. The army labeled them "Premature Anti-fascists".

1956-SUEZ WAR-Britain and France were mad at Egypt over the nationalizing of the Suez Canal. They hatched a plan with Israel to start a war with Egypt then reoccupy the canal. This day the first phase went into effect when Israeli forces rolled into Sinai, preceded by a daring stunt. A flight of six Israeli P-51 Mustang fighters flew a top speed barely 12 feet off the ground slicing Egyptian telephone wires with their propellers.

1957- A lunatic tossed a hand grenade into the Israeli Knesset, wounding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.

1957- Louis B. Mayer dies. His last words were: "Nothing Matters..." The head of MGM Studios lorded over Hollywood like a monarch, made and broke moviestars, ordered Judy Garland fed a steady stream of narcotics and had his office redesigned all white to resemble Mussolini, whom he admired. Humphrey Bogart was at his funeral. When asked if he was close to Mayer, Bogie replied: Nah, I'm just here to make sure he's dead!

1969- THE BIRTH OF THE INTERNET- After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Defense Department asked the Rand Corporation to create a communication system that could survive Russian atomic bombs. They conceived of a “net” of computers all in communication with another around the world. Because there was no center, a bomb could not knock out the entire system.
In the basement of UCLA’s Boelter Hall, Lick Licklider, Vincent Cerf, Robert Kahn, Lawrence Roberts and Bob Taylor set up the first call to Stanford. “ We typed the “L” and we asked on the phone “ Did you see the “L”? “Yes, we see the “L,” was the response. Then we typed O and asked Did you see the O?” Yes, we see the O” was the response. Then we typed G, and then the system crashed!” But when they rebooted, and the system sprung to life again. The people at UCLA were able to type in LOG, to which the Stanford folks replied IN.

They called it ARPANET- Advanced Research Projects Agency-NET, a few years later Internet. By 1978 the Defense Department didn’t want to run the thing anymore so they offered to turn over the entire Internet to ATT for free. AT&T said no thanks, we just don’t see the value in it. In 1992 the US government made the Internet public and the gold rush was on.

1975- Years of bad management had brought New York City close to bankruptcy. This day President Gerald Ford announced that the United States Treasury would not help New York City out of it’s fiscal problems with any special loans. Although he reversed his position soon afterwards New Yorkers remembered his attitude. The New York DAILY NEWS paper’s headline “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD!” remained in people’s minds as they voted overwhelmingly for Jimmy Carter.

1993- Tim Burton’s fantasy A Nightmare Before Christmas, premiered in the US.

1994- An emotionally disturbed Colorado upholsterer named Francisco Duran fired a Chinese AK-47 machine gun at the White House. He told authorities a multi-colored Alien told him to kill President Clinton in order to disperse a cosmic mist that had been over the White House for a thousand years. Pretty amazing mist, since the White House is only 200 years old. Bill Clinton was oblivious, watching football on TV.

2012- Hurricane Sandy –a late season hurricane the size of Europe collided with a storm front coming from the west and a cold front from Canada and slammed into the mid Atlantic coastline. 110 killed, 6 million without power and the Wall St area flooded, The Atlantic City boardwalk, Asbury Park and Jersey Shore destroyed.

2012- Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph premiered.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was the first Marvel comic book character to be made the subject of a major motion picture?

Answer: Howard the Duck (1986)