Quiz: Why is an American soldier called a G.I. ?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is a crustacean?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 5/28/2023
Birthdays: Solomon 970 BC, Noah Webster, Dr. Joseph Guillotine, William Pitt the Younger, General Pierre Beauregard, Ian Fleming, Jim Thorpe, The Dion Identical Quintuplets 1930, Gladys Knight, Jerry West, Dietrich Fisher-Deiskau, Sandra Locke, T-Bone Walker, Taffy Abel (one of the first professional hockey stars), John Fogarty is 78, Carey Mulligan is 38, Carol Baker.

585 BC- THALES ECLIPSE An early recorded Solar Eclipse. It struck blind people who dared to look at it, and it scared away the armies of King Cyaxerxes of Media and King Alyattes of Lydia who were about to fight a battle. Not wishing to anger the Gods any further, they immediately made peace.

20AD- Tiberius’ general Drusus celebrated a triumph over the Pannonians (Hungary).

1358- THE JACQUERIE- In the Middle Ages the oppression of the peasantry coupled with the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War reached their breaking point. Major peasant revolts began to break out all over Europe. In Italy they’re called the Ciompi, in England, Wat the Tyner’s revolt, and outbreak today in France was called the JACQUERIE (after "poor Jacques" or peasant). The outraged peasants burned manor homes and castles and massacred nobility without any real plan. To English and French knights class meant more than national feuds, so they took time out from their Hundred Years’ War to join together to chop up their uppity peasants.

1453- The night before his final assault on Constantinople, Turkish Sultan Mehmed II, addressed his troops:" I give you the capitol of the ancient Romans, the greatest city in the world! I give you her women and children, her silks and jewels. All I ask is that you leave me her buildings and monuments. I want the city for myself!" Then battalions of belly dancers danced for the men, but no sex was permitted until the battle ended.

1494- The official "birth" of Scotch - though it probably had been around much earlier, on this date, the Scottish Exchequer recorded a purchase of malt by a friar to make "aqua vitae", the first written reference to spirits in Scotland. Scottish King James IV particularly liked the stuff. Called in Gaelic “Uisge beatha”, this got corrupted by English speakers into “Whisky”

1742 - 1st public indoor swimming pool opens at Goodman's Fields, London.

1786- French explorer the Comte de Perouse became the first European to set foot on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. "The climate of Mowhee is quite delightful." He wrote. Then spending only three days there he hurried his ship on to the Northwest coast of America.

1853- THE CRIMEAN WAR BEGAN- England and the French Empire declared War on Russia over Russia’s trying to beat up Turkey and annex the Bosporus. England and Russia spent the nineteenth century in a tactical struggle for supremacy in Central Asia not unlike the Cold War the Soviet Union fought with America after World War II. The name for the Anglo-Russian duel was "the Great Game". It only heated up once, producing such artifacts as the Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava Helmets and Florence Nightingale. Roger Fenton also followed the army to the Crimea as the first war-photographer.

1871- THE COMMUNE OF PARIS CRUSHED- As the occupying Prussian Army looked on, the regular French army loyal to the conservative government of President Alphonse Thiers recaptured Paris from the workers-revolutionary government called the Paris Commune. In the fierce house to house fighting the Hotel Du Ville -city hall was completely destroyed, as well as the Royal Palace of the Tuileries (the open area of the Louvre in front of there the glass Pyramid is.) and the Palace of Saint Cloud.
One hundred and fifty revolutionaries were lined up against the wall in Pere Lachaise Cemetery and shot. Today the Wall of the Communards is still there, and you can see the bullet holes. In Russia young Nikolai Lenin studied the Commune and when he formed his Bolshevik Party he took as his flag the red banner of the Commune.

1892- The Sierra Club formed.

1905- Second day of the Battle of Tsushima Straights- Japanese Admiral Togo, having shot up the first half of the Russian Navy waits for the other half.... They were slowly chugging their way around the world being sent from the Black and Baltic seas to the Sea of Japan.

1928 - Dodge Brothers Automobile Inc & Chrysler Corp merged.

1929 - 1st all color talking picture, "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC).

1935- Tortilla Flat published. The first novel by John Steinbeck.

1940- Throughout World War I the tiny Belgian Army held out heroically against huge German forces. In World War II the story was different. As the Allied frontlines crumbled before the relentless Nazis armored Blitzkrieg, this day the Belgian Army surrendered unconditionally. The surrender left retreating British and French forces dangerously exposed, were it not for quick thinking divisional commander who plugged the line and enabled the escape to Dunkirk. General Bernard Law Montgomery first caught the notice of Churchill and the English high command.

1941- THE WALT DISNEY STRIKE- Labor pressures had been building in the Magic Kingdom since promises made to artists over the success of Snow White were reneged on, and Walt Disney’s lawyer Gunther Lessing encouraged a hard line with his employees. The union claimed they had a majority of employee rep-cards signed, which Walt Refused to acknowledge. On this day, in defiance of the federal Wagner Act, Walt Disney fired animator Art Babbitt, the creator of Goofy, and thirteen other cartoonists for demanding a union. Babbitt had emerged as the union movements’ leader. Studio security officers escorted him off the lot. “Would you mind if I collect my pencils?”
That night in an emergency meeting of the Cartoonists Guild at Hollywood Legion Hall, Art’s assistant Bill Hurtz, made a motion to strike, and it was unanimously accepted. Bill Hurtz will later go on to direct award-winning cartoons like UPA’s "Unicorn in the Garden". Picket lines go up next day in Hollywood animation’s own version of the Civil War.

Walt Disney nearly had a nervous breakdown over the strike, and a federal mediator was sent by Washington to arbitrate. In later years, Uncle Walt blamed the studio’s labor ills on Communists. The studio unionized completely, but the hard feelings remained for their rest of their lives.

1948- During the Israeli War of Independence the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem surrendered after a long siege by the Arab Legion. The Legion was a force organized and led by a British soldier of fortune Sir John Bagot-Glubb or Glub-Pasha. The main Jewish community was in west Jerusalem but the Holy places of the Old City were in the eastern part. Jews lost the Wailing Wall until retaken in the Six-Day War of 1967.

1954- Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 3D premiered.

1957- The National League Baseball owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants to move west to California.

1960- George Zucco 74, a character actor who specialized in horror movies like Blood from the Mummies Hand, died. One version says he died of fright in a mental hospital in San Gabriel California. He was convinced that H.P. Lovecraft's Great God Cthulu was after him. He actually died of natural causes in a nursing home.

1961- Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded. It was the result of an Appeal for Amnesty, written in the London Daily Observer by Peter Benennson, who read of several Portuguese students who were arrested because they were overheard in a cafe making a toast to Freedom.

1966- the It’s a Small World exhibit, which had been created for the 1964 NY Worlds Fair, reopened at Disneyland, California.

1977- George Lucas film Star Wars opened in wide release across the country.

1981- The Bambi Murders- Police hunt Playboy Bunny Bambi Bembenek for shooting her husband’s ex-wife in Milwaukee. She was captured but escaped prison in 1990.
Just follow the little stiletto high heel footprints.

1983- “What a Feeling” the theme from the film Flashdance by Irene Cara and Giorgio Moroder reached the top of the pop charts. Everyone began dancing with leg warmers and baggy sweaters torn at the neck.

1987- A young German student named Matthias Rust rented a Cessna airplane in Helsinki, and flying low to avoid radar flew right into the heart of the Soviet Union. Evading a forest of missiles, radar and anti-aircraft weapons, he landed his little plane right in the middle of Red Square at the Kremlin. The ensuing furor and humiliation cost many Russian generals their jobs.

1998- After a dinner at Buca di Beppo in Encino, Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman was shot to death by his wife Brynne as he slept. She was a heavy drinker and pill user. At 6:00am as the LAPD were knocking Brynne turned the gun on herself. Hartman’s last role was doing the English dub of Gigi the cat in Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.

2004- Lorenzo, animated short came out with the Disney film Raising Helen. Directed by Mike Gabriel, from an idea created decades ago by 95 year old storyman Joe Grant.

2005- The great London clock Big Ben mysteriously stopped for 45 minutes.

2005- Actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed passed out drunk in her car shortly after a court hearing for a DUI.
=============================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What is a crustacean?

Answer: The genus category of shellfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns, langoustines, etc.

Question: What is a crustacean?

Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean in Japanese to write in Kanji?
----------------------------------------------------------------
History for 5/27/2023
Birthdays: James 'Wild Bill' Hickock, Julia Ward Howe, Aemelia Jenks-Bloomer, Dashell Hammett, Leopold Goldowsky (the inventor of Kodachrome film), Hubert H. Humphrey, Herman Wouk, Harlan Ellison, Joseph Feines, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Richard Schiff is 68, Peri Gilpin, Paul Bettany is 52, Dr. Henry Kissinger is 100

605AD, Today is the Feast day of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who saw children in the slave docket and when told 'Those are Angles"-The barbarian tribe that England is named for. Augustine replied: Non Sunt Anglicai, Sunt Angeli” -Those are not Angles, those are Angels" -please forgive my Latin grammar. Augustine of Canterbury should not be confused with the Saint Augustine of Hippo, who wrote the Confessions.

1647-The first witch execution in Salem Massachusetts. Contrary to popular perception, more witches were hanged than burned at the stake.

1647- Peter Stuyvesant inaugurated as Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam. The one-legged old soldier was a strict Calvinist sent by The Dutch West India Company to “clean up the town”.

1703- Czar Peter the Great laid the cornerstones for his new capitol Saint Petersburg. The Baltic Port was called at one time Petrograd, then Leningrad, but was changed back to the original name in 1989. Peter made it the capitol until Lenin moved it back to Moscow in 1917.

1831- Mountain man Jedediah Smith was killed fighting Comanches.

1874- Prostitution was outlawed in Los Angeles central business district.

1895 - British inventor Burt Acres patented a film camera/projector

1905- BATTLE OF THE TSUSHIMA STRAIGHTS- Grand Admiral Togo and the Japanese Navy destroy the Imperial Russian fleet in a battle that announced to the world Japan had become a world power. It had been only 55 years since Admiral Perry forced the opening of its feudal society. Mahatma Ghandi said also the victory was a beacon to all colonialized peoples that the Europeans could be defeated at their own games.
Of course the Japanese weren't fighting for altruistic motives but to see who would take over Manchuria and Korea. One-eyed Admiral Togo was trained as a samurai until their profession was abolished in 1877. When a midshipman cadet in England, had been nicknamed "Joe Chinaman" by the tars. After this battle he became one of the most respected naval strategists of the age. Ishiroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of Pearl Harbor, was his ensign at the time.

1930- HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTCH TAPE -Chemist Richard Drew of Saint Paul Minnesota invented cellophane tape, marketed by the 3M Company under the brand Scotch. It was called Scotch after the stereotype perception that Scots people are frugal with money, so it’s a good value. Three years later Drew invented Masking Tape as a way for car manufacturers to paint cars two tone.

1933- Disney’s cartoon “The Three Little Pigs” premiered, whose song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” became a national anthem of recovery from the Great Depression.
Director of the short Burt Gillette left Disney afterwards to run the Van Beuren Studio in New York.

1935- The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (The NRA) program. Roosevelt responds by unsuccessfully trying to stack the court with judges more to his liking. He referred to them as 'The Nine Old Men', a sobriquet Walt Disney would borrow in 1949 for his top animators.

1937- San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened.

1941- The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by massed Royal Navy ships and torpedo planes. The British sailors of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales helped the German sailors out of the water saying: ”Now you, one day it may be us.” That December, the Prince of Wales sent to the Pacific where it was sunk by the Japanese.
The Bismarck’s pet cat was rescued floating on a piece of wood. The British destroyer that picked him up was torpedoed and sunk a few months later. The cat was rescued from that sinking too. That cat, named “Unsinkable Sam”, survived the war and lived a long happy life at the retired sailors home in Belfast.

1942- Top Nazi official in occupied Czechoslovakia, Reynhard Heydrich, was assassinated by a resistance agent, who casually lifted a bomb out of a vase of flowers and tossed it into his car as it drove by. Hitler angrily responded by ordering the SS to select a Czech village at random and destroy it. They picked Lidice; they leveled it and murdered all its innocent inhabitants.

1942- The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor after being shot up in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The crew expected to be sent Stateside for weeks of major repairs, but the word came down from Admiral Nimitz that the Yorktown had to be ready for battle in just three days! Nimitz needed all his forces for an anticipated Japanese strike at Midway. 1,500 dockworkers labored around the clock patching her up. The Yorktown left on schedule to achieve the victory at Midway Island on June 5th.

1943- In a secret meeting in German occupied Paris, young French resistance leader Jean Moulin got all the various separate underground movements to unite under Charles DeGaulle's Free French. Moulin was eventually captured by the Gestapo and tortured to death, but le Maquis- i.e. resistance, continued the fight until the liberation.

1948- Walt Disney feature Melody Time released, featuring Pecos Bill.

1949- Actress Rita Hayworth married playboy Prince Aly Khan. Prince Aly Khan, 1911-1960, was born in Italy a son of dispossessed Pakistani royalty to the Aga Khan II. He lived his life as an international playboy, socialite and sportsman, making love to women from actress Rita Hayworth to Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela Churchill-Harriman. Cole Porter wrote him into a song. He died when he crashed his sportscar in France.

1961 – The first black light is sold.

1969 – Construction on Walt Disney World Florida began..

1968- At this time 350 Americans a week were dying in Vietnam, and in 12 days George W. Bush’s student deferment was up! But never fear, his family was pulling strings. So even though the normal wait was a year, this day George W. Bush was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard on the first day he applied.

1977- Punk band The Sex Pistols release their hit God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime, in time for the Queen’s Jubilee year. Her Majesty preferred the Beatles’ All You Need is Love.

1991- The Milwaukee police question serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer after finding a distraught, bleeding young Laotian immigrant in the street. The boy was struggling to shake off the effect of date-rape drugs given him by Dahmer. After deducing that it was merely a spat between gay lovers, the police returned the boy to Dahmer, who killed and ate him later.

1994 – Nobel Prize winner and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after a twenty-year exile.

1995- Actor Christopher Reeve was left paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in an equestrian event in Charlottesville,Va. He became a spokesman for stem-cel spinal chord research, but his efforts in the US were frustrated by powerful religious-right lobbyists. Christopher Reeves died in 2004.

1997- President Bill Clinton liked to appease his critics by appointing conservative judges despite popular perception of him as a Liberal. This day this practice came back to bite him when the conservative Supreme Court of William Rheinquist unanimously rejected Clinton’s plea that a President should not be subject to a private lawsuit while in office. A woman named Paula Jones with heavy funding from the religious right was suing him for sexual harassment. Of course, when President Trump was in office he was being sued by several women for sexual harassment, yet none of those cases were ever allowed to proceed until he was out of office.
=========================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean in Japanese to write in Kanji?

Answer: It is the most formal style of calligraphy, using classical Chinese characters. In was also the style of Japanese print used in Manga comics.

Quiz: Many famous American entertainers are of Jewish ancestry. Which one of these people is NOT Jewish? a) Jerry Seinfeld, b) Lady Gaga, c) Larry David, d) Lewis Black.

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: What does it mean to ostracize someone?
-------------------------------------------------------------
History for 5/25/2023
Birthdays: Miles Davis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Josef Broz Tito, Igor Sikorsky, Pontormo, Bennett Cerf, Claude Akins, Leslie Uggams, Bill Bojangles Robinson, Frank Oz (Richard Frank Oznowicz), Beverly Sills, Robert Ludlum, Anne Heche, Irwin Winkler, Mike Myers is 60, Ray Stevenson, Ian McKellen is 84

194BC- The Roman temple of Fortuna Virilis was dedicated on the Quirinal Hill.

1085- King Alfonso VI of Aragon took Toledo from the Moors.

1521- German Emperor Charles V declared Protestant reformer Martin Luther a heretic and an outlaw. The German states that rallied to Luther’s new teachings fought their emperor in the Schmalkalden Wars. Even Charles’ own sister became a Lutheran.

1720- John Copson became the first Insurance Agent in the New World.

1787- First meeting of delegates in Philadelphia to write the U.S. Constitution.
Interestingly enough, nobody really asked them to. They were only summoned by Congress to iron out some bugs in the Articles of Confederation. However, James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York hatched a plan to chuck the whole system and write a whole new document. They called it The Virginia/New York plan.

1810- When Napoleon conquered Spain, the colonies of Latin America puzzled about where to send their taxes to? To the French occupation government in Madrid? Or the Spanish Royal family in exile in Naples? This day Argentina had a better idea. They formed a national assembly ( Primera Junta) and in July declared the Republic of Argentina.

1865- Mary Lincoln and her son Tad moved out of the White House where she had been holed up in seclusion since the night of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. She had been too traumatized to attend the funeral or accompany the body back to Illinois.

1878- Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore or The Lass that Loved a Sailor premiered at the Savoy in London.
When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

1895- Author and playwright Oscar Wilde sentenced to prison for sodomy.
The terrible conditions of his imprisonment in Redding Gaol broke his health and lead to his early death in exile in 1900. In a 1995 ceremony honoring him in Westminster Abbey it was revealed the laws that sentenced Wilde were still on the books in England.
The Victorian hypocrisy was compounded by the fact that so many great men of the British Empire privately acknowledged a preference for their own sex- Gordon of Khartoum, Sir Cecil Rhodes, Lawrence of Arabia, Nicholson the Tiger of the Punjab, and more. Queen Victoria once said after a meeting with Earl Kitchener of Omdurman: ”I was told my lord does not prefer the company of women. Still, I found him to be a pleasant speaker.”

1906- Putting on the Ritz! Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz opened London’s Ritz Hotel. The first hotel to feature unheard of luxuries like a telephone and an indoor toilet in every suite!

1911-The beginnings of Mexican Revolution forced longtime dictator Gen. Jose Porfirio Diaz into exile. As a young man Diaz had fought the French under Juarez, but he later seized power for himself and ruled for thirty years. Under him Mexico industrialized and gained railroads, electric power, telephones and schools. He once said:" My poor Mexico. Too far from Heaven and too close to the United States."

1911- Thomas Mann visited Venice Italy. On the Lido Beach he was inspired to write A Death in Venice.

1915- Following up on the widespread massacres of Armenians, today the Ottoman Turkish government began mass deportations of their Armenian citizens.

1917- In World War I, Germany bombed London for the first time not with zeppelins but with new Gotha biplane bombers.

1923- Britain and France recognized the Hashemite Kingdom of TransJordan, ruled by Abdallah Ibn Hussein.

1927- Ford had put America on wheels with the Model T, the most successful car in history. Today they stopped making the Model T after 15 million cars, costing on average $300 each, $26 dollars down with monthly payments.

1932- Flamboyant New York Mayor Jimmy Walker testified before the Seabury Commission. The corruption scandals of his administration will force him to resign.

1932- Mickey’s Revue, the first Disney cartoon that featured the character that would eventually be called Goofy.

1935- Babe Ruth hit his final home runs. The Bambino was in his last year, working out his contract with the Boston Braves. This day in Pittsburgh, the Babe showed his old form when he hit three home runs and a single. His record of 714 home runs held for over sixty years.

1942- First day shooting on the film “Casablanca”.

1944- Yugoslav partisan leader Marshal Tito escaped a German attack designed just to kill him.

1946- Chuck Jones cartoon Hare Raising Hare, where Bugs meets a large shaggy monster originally named Rudolf, later Gossamer, “Monsters are such interesting people…”

1950- Brooklyn Battery Tunnel opened in NYC.

1957- Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows ended after nearly a decade. The show built a legendary writers room, employing future star writers like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allen and Neil Simon. The show also pioneered the executive strategy of producer Sylvester “Pat” Weaver to not let the show be owned by an entire sponsor, but the network would produce the show and would sell the sponsor commercial time in 30 second chunks. Pat Weaver’s daughter is Sigourney Weaver. Your Show of Shows was finally bested in the ratings by The Lawrence Welk Show.

1961- THE SPACE RACE- The United States had been chafing about how far ahead the Soviet Union was in the exploration of space. In an address to Congress this day President John F. Kennedy pledged the wealth and resources of the U.S. to beating the Soviets to the Moon. "Our pledge is within the next ten years to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth… We choose to go to the Moon not because it will be easy but because it is hard!" The Moon landing was achieved in 1969. Today it is acknowledged that without the motivation of the Cold War the conquest of the Moon would have happened much more slowly.

1965- The Saint Louis Gateway Arch dedicated.

1968- The Rolling Stones released the song Jumping Jack Flash.

1969- John Schlesinger’s film Midnight Cowboy premiered. The first X-rated film to ever win the Oscar for Best Film. This is the film where Dustin Hoffman yells “Hey! I’m walking here!”

1977- The premiere of George Lucas’ movie Star Wars. The movie opened on the 28th. After Universal passed, Twentieth Century Fox picked up the distribution but let the backend profits go to Lucas. First because they had taken a loss with the failure of Dr. Doolittle, and second because they didn't think the film would do any serious business. Even George Lucas didn’t expect the film to break even. Fox's market research department told studio head Alan Ladd Jr: 1). don't make this movie; no one will go see a science fiction movie; and 2). change the title; no one will go see a movie with "War" in the title. Fox executives had predicted the studios hit for that summer would be "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry" with Peter Fonda and Susan George.
Star Wars was a monster hit. It was like there were no other movies playing that summer. It sold out Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood 50 weeks in a row. George Lucas became a seriously rich man and developed THX sound, digital animation and Industrial Light and Magic special effects. The film’s popularity ran so ahead of expectations, that at Christmas when you purchased a Star Wars game you got an empty box with a pink IOU note in it pledging to get you the game when they printed more.

1979- Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Alien opened. It featured the exotic designs of Swiss artist H.R. Giger, and John Hurt with a classic case of chest pains!

1980- Evangelist Oral Roberts claimed he saw a 900-foot Jesus over his bed.

1983- Return of the Jedi opened. It was originally Revenge of the Jedi, but George Lucas changed the name just a month before.

1986- Hands Across America stunt to help hunger has 7 million people at one time holding hands at noon.

1994- First International Conference on the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee and CERN talked on how to unify existing internet systems into the new World Wide Web.

2000- NUKE THE MOON. During the Cold War, it was revealed that in 1958 in the panic over Sputnik, US scientists proposed to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon. There would be no mushroom cloud because that requires an atmosphere, and the flash would only be visible for a few seconds. What the purpose would be other than to scare the BeeJeezus out of the Russkies no one knew. This dumb-ass idea was soon scrapped.

2020- George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, was arrested for allegedly buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. Officers handcuffed him on the ground and sat on him. Then Officer Derek Chauvin knelt with his full weight on Floyds neck for over 8 minutes while he choked to death, moaning “I can’t breathe”.
Floyd’s death set off massive protests across the USA and around the world. For two weeks, hundreds of thousands marched and battled police in the streets. President Trump fled to a bunker under the White House and had to be talked out of having the National Guard fire on the crowd. The massive show of police and military firepower on the streets to confront this protest all managed to be mysteriously missing on Jan. 6, 2021 when the US Capitol was attacked.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yesterdays Quiz: What does it mean to ostracize someone?

Answer: Ostracism was a system in Ancient Athens to vote to exile someone. This way the democracy assured some individuals never got too powerful. Top general Alcibiades aided an old man with weak eyesight write his name on the ballot of ostracism.

Quiz: Why is a virus belonging to the family Flaviviridae called Yellow Fever? Does it turn you yellow?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: In WW2 slang, what did you mean by “ a bunch of brass hats.”?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 5/23/2023
Birthdays: Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Scatman Crothers, Rosemary Clooney, Artie Shaw, Alicia de Larrocha, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Melissa McBride, Frank McHugh, Drew Carey is 65, Joan Collins is 90

Today in ancient Rome was the feast of Vulcan.

37BC- Herod the Great captured Jerusalem back from a Greek pretender named Antigonus with the help of a Roman legion loaned by his friend Marc Anthony. He reigned 37 years under Roman dominance and rebuilt the great temple of Solomon.

1498- In Rome, mystic monk Savonarola was hanged and his body burned for defying the Borgia Pope Alexander VI. Savonarola dominated Florence for a time like a Christian Ayatollah. Artists Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Sandro Botticelli and Luigi Della Robbia were admirers of his. Among his reforms were to hold a large Bonfire of the Vanities.

1533- King Henry VIII of England has his first wife Catharine of Aragon's marriage to him annulled. Henry's interest in multiple marriages wasn't merely a case of a roving eye, his father had won his throne in a bloody 30 year civil war (The War of the Roses) and it could all happen again if he didn't produce a male child fast. Despite his efforts, his Tudor dynasty was remembered for his female offspring, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

1618- THE DEFENESTRATION OF PRAGUE- The Protestant officials of Bohemia let the Catholic German Emperor know what they thought of his ultimatums by throwing his emissaries out of a window. "De-fenestrate" or to toss out a window. It was a low second floor window and a dung pile broke their fall, so only pride was injured. Catholic writers said they were caught by angels.
This event started the THIRTY YEARS WAR, a European Civil War, when Catholic and Protestant nations whose pent up anger had been boiling for decades broke forth. They battled for years, until nobody could remember who started the whole thing to begin with. Germany lost one quarter of her population and would not see this kind of devastation again until World War 2.

1633- An edict of the King of France declared that only good Catholics would be allowed to settle in their colony of New France, already being called Canada. French Huguenots headed for the Anglo Dutch territories in Maryland, and New Amsterdam.

1701- Captain Kidd was hanged in London for piracy, robbery and killing a sailor with a bucket. His last letter was written to try to bribe the judge with his buried treasure. His body was coated with tar and left hanging in a cage suspended over Execution Wharf on the Thames for years afterward, as a warning to other would-be pirates.

1706- BATTLE OF RAMILIES- the Duke of Marlborough destroyed the main French army of Louis XIV under Marshal Villeroi. Carried away by the excitement, Marlborough personally led a cavalry charge sword in hand against the Maison Du Roi – the French elite Guards Cavalry. In the melee' he was knocked off his horse, trampled, and had to run for his life. As he was climbing up on another horse, the aide holding the reins had his head struck off by a cannon ball. His enthusiasm for hand-to-hand combat cooled, Marlborough spent the rest of the day in the rear directing the battle like a good general should.

1785- Ben Franklin invented bifocal glasses.

1861- Virginia, the most populous state and home of many presidents announced it was leaving the United States and joining the new Confederate States.

1865- Over a month after Richmond’s fall and Lee’s surrender the last bloodshed of the Civil War occurred. In Texas, Confederate General Magruder defeated a small Yankee force near Galveston Bay.

1865- UNION VICTORY DAY-To celebrate the end of the American Civil War today was the Union Victory Parade in Washington D.C.- The massed Grand Armies of the Republic marched down Pennsylvania Ave. to celebrate their victory over the Confederacy. They passed President Andrew Johnson and Generals Grant and Sherman. Sherman refused to shake hands with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton because of Stanton's criticism of Sherman's surrender terms to the Confederate western armies.
27 year old Gen. Custer, showing off for the crowd, with his golden locks flowing, managed to pass the reviewing stand twice. He claimed his horse was skittish.
Despite the fact that 180.000 African American men fought in the war, no black regiments were allowed in the parade. Even the 54th Mass who did the heroic attack on Fort Wagner was refused permission to march. The flags in the nation’s capital were returned to full mast for the first time since Lincoln's assassination. Union veterans later formed the first professional veterans aid association the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a forerunner of the VFW and the American Legion.

1873- The first Preakness horse race. The winner's name was Survivor.

1903- MOTHER JONES CHILDRENS CRUSADE- Seventy-three-year-old activist and union organizer Mary "Mother Jones" Harris led a strike of 16,000 Philadelphia mill workers, all children under 12 years old, to demand a 55 hour workweek down from 60 hours a week. That July she led a march of thousands of working children from Philadelphia to President Teddy Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay New York to demand an end of child labor.

1911- President Taft dedicated the central branch of the New York Public Library.

1931- In Max Fleischer's Silly Scandals, the girl character first seen in Dizzy Dishes is first called by name Betty Boop.

1934- BONNIE & CLYDE were blown away in a hail of machine gunfire as they drove down a road near Gisland, Louisiana. She was 24, he was 25. The ambush was set up by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. An estimated 107 shots were fired in less than two minutes. Each body had about 28 bullets in them. Hamer smiled:" It’s a shame I had to bust the cap on a lady." Their bullet ridden car still pops up at auto shows from time to time.

1941-Hollywood union boss George Brown and assistant Willard Bioff (also a Frank Nitti bagman) were indicted on federal racketeering charges. Brown had been a Chicago operative and it was said 'he could drink 100 bottles of beer in one day". Their main contact among the Hollywood studio heads was Nicholas Schenck, the chairman of Loews Theaters and on the board of MGM. Willie Bioff had tried to help Louis B. Mayer defeat the screen actors guild and hijack the Disney animator's union. After their jail time Bioff blew up in his car after turning government witness, and Brown 'disappeared...' Nicholas Schenck meanwhile was pardoned by President Truman himself.

1945- Reinhard Gehlen was the head of Nazi intelligence and kept numerous agents in Washington, London and Moscow. After hiding for a month after the fall of Berlin, on this day he surrendered himself to the Americans. Initially, they wanted to put him on trial for war crimes, until he revealed his agents in Moscow were still on his payroll. This greatly interested General Wild Bill Donovan, who was reforming the O.S.S. for its new cold war role as the CIA. So Generalobherst Reinhard Gehlen came to the U.S. and began his second career as a founder of the CIA.

1945- SS leader Heinrich Himmler committed suicide by biting a cyanide capsule shortly after being captured by the British authorities. When he heard the news, a British army guard growled "The bastards’ beat us!".

1951- China formally annexed Tibet, a nation they invaded the year before.

1960- Nazi Adolph Eichmann was one of the architects of the Final Solution. He had been hiding in Argentina since the war ended. In 1957 a German prosecutor tipped off Israeli intelligence of Eichman’s whereabouts. This day Mossad agents kidnapped him in Buenos Aires and brought him to Israel for a public trial.

1969- The Who released their rock opera Tommy.

1980- Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, opened. Here’s Johnny!

2003- In US occupied Iraq, American occupational viceroy L. Paul Bremmer overruled CIA and Pentagon advice and disbanded the Iraqi Army, internal security, Presidential Guards and police forces, about 500,000. With this one decree, thousands of angry, humiliated career officers were unemployed, robbed of their pensions and benefits, but allowed to keep their side arms. The Anti-American guerrilla insurgency exploded soon after. Many of the military leadership of ISIS were former Iraqi commanders. Paul Bremmers’ excuse was he was only following orders, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney claim they were surprised by the move.
=======================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: In WW2 slang, what did you mean by “ a bunch of brass hats.”?

Answer: A bunch of superior officers. For the brass insignia decorating their service hats.
The other non-WWII definition referred to demonstration automobiles, kept in pristine condition and sold at a discount when the new models came out. ( Thanks FG)

Quiz: In WW2 slang, what did you mean by “ a bunch of brass hats.”?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: To what country are the Balearic Islands part of?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 5/22/2023
Birthdays: Sir Lawrence Olivier, Mary Cassatt, Richard Wagner, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, T. Bone Pickens, Herge’ (Tintin), Irene Pappas, Paul Winfield, Richard Benjamin, Susan Strassberg, George Baker (Sad Sack), Paul Winchell, Tommy John, Naomi Cambell, Dr. Robert Moog –inventor of the music synthesizer, Ginnifer Goodwin is 45

In Kodiak Alaska, today is the Kodiak Crab Festival.

Happy National Bartender's Day

337AD- Emperor Constantine the Great, who raised Christianity from an illegal cult to the official religion of the Roman Empire, died after a ruling for 37 years. He himself didn't accept baptism until on his deathbed. It was a tradition among leaders to put off baptism until almost the end, so the act baptism would cleanse all your sins and you entered Heaven clean as a whistle. His coins had Christ on one side and Sol Invictus, the Imperial Sun god on the other. To maintain order in the Empire until his son Constantius could be contacted and safely installed as leader in Constantinople, the embalmed corpse of Constantine continued to receive ambassadors and preside over meetings for the rest of that year.

1276- Today is the feast day of Saint Humility of Faenza, a nun who insisted she be bricked up into her cell, with only a hole cut for food, water and to hear Mass and slept on her knees. After twelve years of this she was talked out of her prison to become an abbess.

1455- Battle of St. Albans- First battle of the WAR OF THE ROSES. The conflict wasn't about differing views on horticulture but a dynastic struggle between two powerful branches of the royal family of England. It seems a hundred years earlier King Edward III had a lot of lusty sons. His two eldest and lustiest were Edward the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. Edward lusted after Joan the fair Maid of Kent and John lusted after the throne. The Black Prince should have become The Black King, but he died young. Even then John couldn't be king because the rules said the throne went to the eldest Black Princeling, Richard II. So, John of Gaunt had some lusty sons himself and they became the Lancaster branch of the family, after John's title as Earl of Lancaster- represented by the Red Rose. The Black Prince's progeny were the York family represented by the White Rose. They warred and conspired and murdered and had a lusty time until they wiped each other out and were replaced by a third family, the Welsh Tudors.

1761-The first life insurance policy issued in the U.S.

1782- In a letter to one of his officers, George Washington rejected the calls to declare himself King of the United States. " It pains me to hear such ideas are circulating within the army. I regard such ideas with horror and condemn it severely. It seems pregnant with the greatest misfortunes that could ever befall our country."

1800- The US Congress voted to disband the US Army as being unnecessary and expensive. We would make do with militia to deal with Indians and a coast guard.

1809- Battle of Aspern-Essling. Napoleons army was crossing the Danube when the rivers flood washed out two bridges cutting his army in two. Austrian general Archduke Charles jumped on the opportunity and attacked, driving back Nappys troops against the river. Marshal Lannes, one of Napoleon’s top combat officers, was killed.

1843- Wagons Ho! The Great Migration- One of the largest wagon trains ever set out from Independence Missouri. One thousand settlers driving five thousand head of cattle set off west along the Oregon Trail. Dr. Elijah White, a Presbyterian missionary who made the trip the year before, served as guide.

1854- The NEBRASKA COMPROMISE-One of many stop-gap legislative measures to try to stall the Civil War a few more years. In an attempt to keep the balance between slave states and free states entering the Union, Whig Congressmen strike a deal where Kansas and Nebraska could decide for themselves whether they wanted to enter the union as free or slave states. Nobody was pleased with this deal. Guerrilla war broke out in Kansas and the Whig party disintegrated from dissent. The dissident Whig politicians like Freemont and Lincoln soon formed a new political party. At first called the Anti-Nebraska Men, they later became the Black-Republicans or simply Republicans.

1856- San Francisco City supervisor James Casey was hanged by San Francisco City Vigilance Committee for murder. Casey had sought out the editor of the Evening Bulletin James King and shot him down on the street for insulting him in print. The vigilantes of the Barbary Coast then went into action.

1868- The Reno Gang robbed an Indiana express train of $96,000. The train was carrying the payroll of railroad and mine workers.

1915- The San Fernando Valley voted to become part of Los Angeles.

1920- THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT- Henry Ford was a brilliant inventor with unique opinions. He overpaid assembly line workers, gave equal raises and promotions to black and Latino workers, but he hated Jews. He had purchased the newspaper the Dearborn Independent in 1918 and ran editorials in it with no advertising, totally his own opinions. This day the Independent Anti-Semitic campaign began with the headline -"The International Jew: The World’s Problem." 119 leading prominent Christian leaders including President Woodrow Wilson signed a petition demanding the slanderous publications be stopped, but Ford just ignored them. In 1934 when CBS correspondent William Shirer interviewed Chancellor Adolf Hitler in Berlin, he noticed Hitler had translations of the Dearborn Independent on his desk.

1922-The U.S. Supreme Court rules Baseball is not a monopoly but a sport. This is the Achilles heel issue everyone jumps on when arguments about baseball owners use of salary fixes and other group actions reach crescendo.

1925- First day of shooting on Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis.

1942- In a dark basement room in Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy Cryptographic Unit spent weeks at primitive computers breaking the Japanese radio codes. Cmdr Joe Rochefort paced the small room in his red smoking jacket, downing pots of coffee, and coming up with answers to riddles.
This day Joe Rochefort solved the most important riddle of his career. He deduced from intercepted radio messages that on June 4th Japan was going to feint a strike at the Aleutian Islands then launch its main battle fleet at Midway Island. Midway was a little dot of an island halfway between Japan and Hawaii. When Admiral Nimitz received this report he had to decide whether it was a trick or the real thing before committing his own aircraft carriers. If Nimitz was wrong and the fleet outmaneuvered, Hawaii, Australia and even the California coast might come under Japanese attack. Nimitz chose to fight at Midway, and Rochefort proved to be right. The Battle of Midway would be the victory to turn the tide of the Pacific War.
In the month following the victory, the Chicago Tribune published the headline "Navy Breaks Jap Code" which cause Tokyo to change all their codes, so the work had to start all over again.

1949- Admiral James Forrestal was a top strategist during World War II, and was serving as President Truman’s Secretary of Defense. But the pressures of command in first the World War, then the Cold War may have been too much for him. Several days after President Truman awarded a medal to Forrestal he was admitted to the Bethesda Naval Hospital for nervous exhaustion. This day he leapt out a window with his bathrobe cord knotted around his neck. It was ruled a suicide.

1954- Bob Dylan’s Bar Mitzvah. Maseltov!

1954- Chuck Jones “Claws for Alarm” with Porky and Sylvester.

1955-The Golden Age of Radio ended when after 22 years the Jack Benny show was canceled. Once the top broadcast show in the nation, Benny went into television.

1957- A U.S. B-36 bomber accidentally dropped a Hydrogen Bomb on Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bombardier, Lt. Robert Carp lost his balance in the bomb bay area and grabbed for a handle that released the nuke. He ran back to the cockpit yelling: "I didn't touch anything! I didn't touch anything!" The bomb blew up a mesa and killed a cow but miraculously the thermonuclear triggering mechanism didn't kick in. This all was kept a classified secret until the late 1980's.

1964- In a speech at Ann Arbor, President Lyndon Johnson called for The Great Society. Johnson is remembered as the Vietnam War president, but many of his Great Society social programs like Medicare and Medicaid are still in effect today.

1966- Bill Cosby became the first African-American to win an Emmy Award for starring in a television series- I-Spy.

1967- T.V. children's show Mr. Roger's Neighborhood debuted.

1972- The land of Ceylon declared itself the Republic of Sri Lanka.

1973- Scientist Bob Metcalfe of Xerox PARC patented the Ethernet.

1981- Peter Sutcliffe was convicted in the Yorkshire Ripper trial of murdering 13 women.

1985- Top Disney animation director Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman, who directed the Jungle Book among other films, died in a car crash following lunch at the Smoke House in Burbank. He was 75.

1992- The film Encino Man premiered, with Brendan Frazier and Pauly Shore. Aaoooh!

2001- Ted Turner and Jane Fonda divorced.

2002- The Ayatollahs of Iran outlaw Barbie dolls. They denounced Barbie as "agents of subversive Zionist Western propaganda."

2004- The heir to the Spanish throne Prince Felipe of Asturias married a TV news anchorwoman. The first commoner in the Spanish Royal family. He became King Phillip VI in 2014

2004- Manmohar Singh was sworn in as Prime Minister of India. The first Sikh ever to hold this office. His Congress party had been led by Sonya Ghandi, but she declined the job. Let me see, if my husband P.M. Rajiv Ghandi was blown up by a suicide bomber, and my mother-in-law Indira was machined gunned by her own bodyguards, and my great uncle the Mahatma was gutshot, maybe this job isn't a good career move for me?

2012- SpaceX, the world’s first privately owned spacecraft, blasted off to bring supplies to the International Space Station.
============================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: To what country are the Balearic Islands part of?

Answer: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza. They are part of Spain. A short flight from Barcelona.