Quiz: What was the name of the comic strip where Popeye and Olive Oyl first appeared?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who said “ Man Proposes, God Disposes..”….?
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History for 7/13/2015
Birthdays: French Admiral Bailly de Suffren, Cheech Marin, Father Flannagan, Cameron Crowe, Woye Solenka, Dave Garroway, Chef Paul Prudhomme, Michael Spinks, Film special effects artist Jim Danforth, Dr. Erno Rubik inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, Patrick Stewart is 74, Harrison Ford is 72, Tom Kenny the voice of Spongebob Squarepants is 53

1174- The Battle of Alnwick, in which Scottish King William I "the Lion" was
taken on a raid in Northumberland. He was held hostage by King Henry II until he recognized England's authority over Scotland.

1568 - Dean of St Paul's Cathedral perfects a way to bottle beer. What ever the process was it had to wait three hundred more years to be put to use.

1704- BLENHEIM-the great battle in Bavaria where the Duke of Marlborough destroyed the French army of Louis XIV. In the three centuries since Agincourt the reputation of English arms had faded in Continental Europe, preoccupied as they were by their internal Wars of the Roses and English Civil Wars. While the British Navy's reputation was growing, on land King William III trusted his Dutch generals more than his British. Blenheim changed all that. In one day Britain became the dominant powerbroker in Europe. John Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough was the great ancestor of Winston Churchill.

1787-THE NORTHWEST ORDINANCE PASSED- This unprecedented plan masterminded by Tom Jefferson stipulated that as new territory passed into the United States, their populations could organize their own government and enter the union as a state, an equal partner of the original older states. So Utah would have as much political power as Pennsylvania. Nothing like this had ever been imagined much less implemented.
Before The Northwest Ordinance the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania were claiming all the land west of them to the Mississippi as their territory. Virginia even claimed the jurisdiction of Bermuda and Nassau in the Caribbean!

1798- Poet William Wordsworth visited Tinturn Abbey and was inspired to write his famous elegy on the ruins.

1832- Geologist Henry Schoolcraft discovered the source of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca, Minnesota.

1865- P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City burned down in a spectacular fire. Barnum rebuilt but after that one burned as well, he got the idea of getting into the circus business. In his American Museum , more a sitting menagerie and sideshow than a museum as we know it, Barnum invented the idea of advanced hype and created kiddie matinees.

1868 - Oscar J Dunn, a former slave, was installed as the first African American governor of a state. Louisiana’s post Civil War elections were supervised by the occupying Union army and it ordered that no citizens who took up arms against the United States could vote. Since that was most of the white male population, the newly freed black population dominated the voting. But in ten years whites had reversed that situation and implemented Jim Crow laws to cheat black people out of political power until the Civil Rights movements of the twentieth Century.

1898-Giusseppi Marconi patents wireless transmissions, the Radio. Marconi believed that sound never dies, it just grows fainter. In his old age he was trying to invent a machine that could pick up the traces of the voice of Jesus.

1923- Paleontologist George Olsen while digging in the Gobi Desert discovered the first fossilized dinosaur eggs.

1925- Walt Disney and Lillian Bounds marry. Lillian was one of the first female animation ink & paint artists.

1930- Six thousand people in formal evening wear crowded into London’s Albert Hall to hear a special message from Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. It was extra special, because everyone knew Conan-Doyle had died just five days ago. Arthur Conan-Doyle was an advocate of spiritualism. He declared if anyone could get a message through from beyond the grave, he would. An empty chair was placed on stage in hopes of his apparition would take a seat. Hymns were sung and after long embarrassing silences, a clairvoyant medium cried out that she could see Sir Arthur.
Most saw nothing and thought it was all a big humbug.

1930 – David Sarnoff the head of the NBC radio network said in the NY Times that " The new invention of Television would be a theater in every home". Sounded crazy back then. Critics said it would require one room of the house be darkened, and they doubted people would just sit still that long.

1939- Frank Sinatra recorded his first album, this one with the Harry James Orchestra.

1939- Pete Pantos was an Italian immigrant and fearless crusader for longshoremen’s rights. He spoke openly against the Mob stranglehold on New York waterfront unions led by Murder Inc. hitman Al Anastasia and his brother Tough Tony. On this day Pantos went to a secret meeting and never returned. A mob informer identified his body in a lime pit one year later. Graffiti covered the docks for weeks- WHERE’S PETE PANTOS? The mobs’ power on the docks was mostly broken up by in the 1960’s.

1949- Hollywood Studio exec David O. Selznick left his first wife Esther, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, to marry actress Jennifer Jones.

1950- General Walton “ Bulldog” Walker was sent by MacArthur to assume overall command of all US and South Korean forces fleeing the North Korean invasion in the Pusan Perimeter. He stiffened the defense so MacArthur could launch his counterattack at Inchon. Bulldog Walker was one of George Patton’s top tank men and adopted Patton’s style of leadership. He once flew dangerously low over the battlefield in a small spotter plane waving his generals three star ensign at his retreating troops and bellowing at them:” Turn around and fight, ya yellow sons of bitches!!” Ironically like Patton he was killed not in battle but in a car accident.

1960- Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts nominated for President by the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. The day continued with rounds of fierce backroom deals to decide the running mate. Although the Kennedys wanted Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri it finally was decided to go with Lyndon Johnson. He was the powerful Senate leader from Texas.

Johnson had asked his Texas mentor John Nance Garner if he should accept the job. Cactus Jack was Franklin Roosevelt’s Veep for his first two terms. The 90 year old Garner said:” Lyndon, the Vice Presidency ain’t worth a bucket a warm spit!” Bobby Kennedy considered offering Lyndon the Vice Presidency a token gesture to mollify his anger at losing the nomination. But he was surprised when Johnson accepted. Before going to Ciro’s with Frank Sinatra to celebrate the nomination, Presidential aide Kenny O’Donnell recalled JFK making the best of it:” The Vice Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m forty three and I don’t plan to die in office….”

1964- At the Republican Convention the delegates cheered far rightwing candidate Barry Goldwater, and booed Nelson Rockefeller for denouncing right wing extremism in the party.

1966- In Chicago, psycho killer Richard Speck broke into a woman’s dormitory hotel where he raped and murdered 8 nurses as they came home from work. He spent the rest of his life in prison. Richard Speck became a posterboy for the death penalty. On a smuggled video recorder he bragged about how much fun he was having in prison at public expense, getting all the sex and drugs he wanted. Just before his death in 1999 he was asked if he had any remorse about the horrible things he did to those nurses. All he would say was “I guess it wasn’t their night.”

1977- The Great New York City Blackout of '77. For the second time in 20 years the whole darn East Coast power grid breaks down. Unlike the 1964 Blackout it was much longer, much hotter, and there was no full moon to illuminate the city.

1984- The film The Last Starfighter with Robert Preston opened. The first movie where all the spaceships and effects were done with computers instead of miniature models.

1985- Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldorf organized a massive live concert called LIVE AID. Televised and seen by 1.5 billion people, it raised money for African famine relief. Madonna, Santanna, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys and reunions of Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who and Led Zeppelin.

1985- A cancerous growth was removed from President Ronald Reagan’s colon. Comic Paul Rodriguez said:” Reagan is amazing: He got cancer in his nose, he got cancer in his butt, he got shot full of bullets- he’s like the Terminator President.”
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Yesterday’s Question: Who said “ Man Proposes, God Disposes..”….

Answer: From the 1417 philosophical work by Thomas a’ Kempis, An Imitation of Christ.
"For the resolutions of the just depend rather on the grace of God than on their own wisdom; and in Him they always put their trust, whatever they take in hand.
 For man proposes, but God disposes; neither is the way of man in his own hands"

Question: Who said “ Man Proposes, God Disposes..”….?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does it mean to Bowdlerize something?
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History for 7/12/2015
Birthdays: Gaius Julius Caesar is 2,115 years old, Henry David Thoreau, Impressionist painter Eugene Boudin, Oscar Hammerstein, Kirsten Flagstad, Andrew Wyeth, Pablo Neruda, George Eastman, Milton Berle, Cheryl Ladd, Van Cliburn, Buckminster Fuller, George Washington Carver, Josiah Wedgewood- of Wedgewood china and pottery, Michelle Rodriguez, Richard Simmons, Krysty Yamaguchi, Bill Cosby is 78, Ben Burtt- George Lucas’ sound effects guru who created the sounds of Darth Vader and R2D2, is 67.

783AD – Queen Bertha "with the big feet" died, the wife of Frankish King Pippin III.

1174- King Henry II of England does public penance on his knees and allowed him self to be whipped for the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Thomas Beckett.

1290 –All Jews were expelled from England by order of King Edward I Longshanks. A few lived on secretly in British society- Queen Elizabeth’s doctor Rodrigo Lopez was Jewish. Jews would not officially be allowed back into England for four hundred years, when Oliver Cromwell lifted the ban in the 1650’s.

1389- King Richard II appointed writer Geoffrey Chaucer to the choice job of Chief Clerk of the Kings Works at Westminster.

1543- Henry VIII marries his sixth and last wife Catharine Parr.

1562- Spanish monks burn hundreds of priceless books and scrolls of the ancient Mayan Civilization as works of the Devil.

1679 - Britain's King Charles II ratified the Habeas Corpus Act.

1690-THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE: William of Orange's English defeated his father-in-law James II Stuart's Irish army. Even though James mainly wanted his English crown back, this battle is seen as the last organized Irish resistance to British rule until the IRA campaigns of the twentieth century. Protestant Irish Orangemen see it as the victory that confirmed British rule in Ulster. It seems there were French Protestant (Huguenots) exiles among the English and French Catholic allies sent by Louis XIV among the Irish. These Frenchmen kept stubbornly fighting each other into the night long after the English and Irish had driven each other off the field.

1742- Battle of Bloody Marsh- As part of a larger European war, James Oglethorpe’s English colony in Georgia was attacked by a large Spanish force under Florida’s colonial governor Don Manuel de Montiano.

1776- During the American Revolution, the British 44 gun warships HMS Phoenix and HMS Rose showed how little they thought of George Washington’s puny rebel defenses, by boldly sailing right up to New York City, and firing on the town.

1759- British General Wolfe began to bombard the French held city of Quebec.

1789- At the Palais Royale in Paris, radical lawyer Camille DesMoulins climbed up on a table in front of the Café du Foy to address a crowd. The people of Paris had been seething since the king had brought Swiss and German mercenary troops into the city to restore order. DesMoulin alleged that the true object of the King's foreign troops were to kill all Frenchmen who wanted freedom. For the first time the Parisian streets rang with the cry: "Aux Armes, Citoyens!" -to arms, citizens! A mob marched to the Place Vendomme where they showered the troops with rocks and bottles, until a volley from their guns dispersed them. The French Revolution would begin in two more days.

1794- At the siege of Calvi in Corsica, young Captain Horatio Nelson lost his right eye.

1808-With the encouragement of Governor Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis & Clark fame, the first newspaper west of the Mississippi is founded, The Missouri Gazette and Louisiana Advertiser.

1817- For the first time in many years America wasn’t at war with anyone and political feuding had died down. James Monroe was elected President in what was considered a decidedly boring election. A Boston newspaper named the Columbian Sentinel described the climate of the times as “The Era of Good Feeling”. The name stuck.

1843- Mormon prophet Joseph Smith said God told him in a revelation that it’s okay to marry more than one wife.

1861- The McCandles Massacre, the most famous Western shootout until the OK Corral. James Hickock earns his nickname Wild Bill by killing ten desperadoes in a free for all with sixguns and bowie knives. Interviewed by Harpers Weekly Mr. Hickock said :”I was wild and I struck savage blows.”

1863-The NEW YORK CITY DRAFT RIOTS- Arguably the largest civil disturbance in American History. Poor immigrant laborers, sick of the Civil War and being forced into the army while rich men bought their way out, ran wild in the streets in three days of looting.

The riot was sparked by the opening of a new draft office on 46th St & 3rd Ave. They began calling names while by coincidence the first lists of the dead from the Battle of Gettysburg were being published. A mob of 15,000 attacked and burned the Draft Board offices and overwhelmed the police. Writer Herman Melville watching the flames from a rooftop said: “The Rats have taken over the City.” Newspaperman Horace Greely defended his New York World office with a small cannon in his lobby. The New York Times posted Gatling Guns on it’s roof and Wall St. banks boiled oil to drop from the rooftops like something out of the Middle Ages.

Labor history mentions that most of these laborers worked a 12-14 hour day, seven days a week. So fighting slavery seemed a moot point to them. The mob attacked well dressed men “There goes a three hundred-dollar man!” Modern apologists for the rich rather to focus on the racism of the mob. Indeed the Irish poor, targets of racism themselves, singled out black people as the cause of all their misfortunes and hanged many from lampposts. They even torched a black little girl’s orphanage. The children had to be escorted by bayonet wielding militia to a barge in the East River for safety.

N.Y. Governor Horatio Seymour, who’s own public contempt for Lincoln's policies help encourage the riots, had to borrow Union Army regiments from the battlefields to restore order in New York City.

1863- After the defeat at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee's retreating army was pinned for awhile against the rain flooded Potomac River. As the surrounding Union army massed to attack, a local minister went up to Yankee General Meade and protested fighting a battle on a Sunday. When Meade tried to reason with him, the minister replied:" As God's emissary I denounce the defiling of His day! Look ye to the heavens!" Almost as if on command a rainstorm burst out over their heads. Meade cancelled the attack.

1864- Jubal Early's Confederates tried to attack Washington D.C. Early didn’t think he could hold Washington but he was determined to loot and burn it and maybe in so doing draw Grant away from Richmond. Rebel skirmishers got as close as Georgetown, they could see the gleaming white dome of the US Capitol. Despite Union forces in the area being pathetically unprepared, Quartermaster General Meigs had to arm his accountants, and they bussed out hospital invalids with guns, they still managed to turn Early away.

President Lincoln went out to Fort Stevens near present day Walter Reade Medical Center to watch the fight. During the shooting Col. Oliver Wendell Holmes called out to the man in the $8 dollar stovepipe hat peering over the parapet:" Get down ya damn fool! You’re drawing fire. You wanna get us all killed?!" The last and only time a sitting U.S. President was under direct enemy fire.

1870- Celluloid film patented. The inventor had been trying to find a substitute for ivory billiard balls. Inventor George Eastman later perfected the sprocket and hole system of roll film for cameras, replacing the large glass plates.

1870- THE DISPATCH OF EMMS- The spark that ignited the Franco Prussian War, which caused the World Wars of the Twentieth Century. The Spanish had deposed their nymphomaniac Queen Isabella IX and the French and Germans each had a new candidate for the throne. When the Prussian (German) King Wilhelm removed his candidate to diffuse international tension the French Empress Eugenie pushed it by demanding an apology as well.

King Wilhelm was at the Baths at Emms when he got the demand for an apology. He wrote a short note refusing to meet the French ambassador. Wilhelm's chancellor Bismarck, who wanted a war with France to unite the separate states of Germany against their old enemy, intercepted the kings letter before it went out and rewrote it to be a real slap in the face. The furious French Empire declared war two days later, just as Bismarck had hoped.

1876- Gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock arrived in Deadwood South Dakota to prospect for gold, see some old friends like Calamity Jane, and play a little poker.

1901 – Baseball pitcher Cy Young wins his 300th game.

1906 – French Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was cleared of all charges of treason and espionage.

1914 – Young reform school graduate Babe Ruth makes his baseball debut, as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.

1928 - 1st televised tennis match.

1937- The US Government passed the Marijuana Liscensing Act, the first of many laws to try and regulate and eventually eliminate marijuana growing. The act was ruled unconstitutional in 1969, but by then marijuana was top on the list of illegal substances.

1948 - 1st jets fly across the Atlantic -6 RAF de Havilland Vampire bombers.

1949- The Chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson Sr., predicted that one day all the moving parts of machines would be replaced by electronics.

1960: The first Etch-a-Sketch goes on sale. Frenchman Arthur Granjean, invented it. (he called it L’Ecran Magique, or “The Magic Screen”). After failing to get some of the bigger toy companies to bite, he sold his invention to the Ohio Art Company.

1962 – The Rolling Stones 1st performance at the Marquee Club, London. One band member named Elmo Lewis, changed his name to Brian Jones.

1979- Carmine "The Cigar" Galante, boss of the Gambino Mafia family, was blown away over coffee and spumoni at a small Brooklyn restaurant called Joe & Marys. He was finished off with a 45 cal. slug through the eye, his cigar still in his lips. The hit was ordered by Paul Castellano. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post set a new journalistic low when a reporter shimmied up a drainpipe and got a photo of the Don's bullet riddled body before the cops could throw a sheet over it. The Post put it in color on the front page.

1979- Disco Demolition Night. Chicago Fans could get into Comisky Park for 98 cents if they each brought a Disco record to burn. Thousands of records were thrown at the players like Frisbees while they were trying to play, so Chicago was forced to forfeit the game. “I love the Nightlife, I love the Nightlife…”

1984- Geraldine Ferrarro named the Vice Presidential running mate of Walter Mondale. They lose in a landslide to Reagan-Bush.

1990- TV series Northern Exposure premiered.
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Yesterday’s question: What does it mean to Bowdlerize something?

Answer: Bowdlerize means to heavily edit something. The connotation is that Bowdlerizing is radically puritanical, distorting the meaning and style of the project being edited to the point of damaging the work. The word comes from a fellow named Thomas Bowdler, who once edited the works of Shakespeare to remove the vulgar bits.
(Thanks FG).

Quiz: Adolf Hitler was called the Fuehrer of Germany. Who was the second Fuehrer?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: During the Nuremburg Nazi War Crimes Trials, when Admiral Karl Doenitz was accused of atrocities for running the U-Boat campaign in the Atlantic, his only defense was, “ Ask Admiral Nimitz.” That got him a reduced sentence. What did he mean?
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History for 7/9/2015
Birthdays: Schopenhauer, Elias Howe, Ottorino Respighi, David Hockney, Samuel Elliot Morrison, Sir Edward Heath, Kelly McGillis, Barbera Cartland, J. Paul Getty II, H.V. Kaltenborn, Daniel Guggenheim, John Tesch, Fred Savage, Chris Cooper, O.J. Simpson, Courtenay Love is 55, Debbie Sludge is 61, Brian Dennehy is 77, Tom Hanks is 59

586 BCE. -Jerusalem falls to Nebuchanessar II. He removed the Israelites to Babylon and the 'Babylonian Captivity' begins.

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

1540-Henry VIII had his marriage annulled to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Because the match was made for political reasons, in contrast to Henry's other queens, she was not beheaded but had a nice quiet life afterward.

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

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

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

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

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

1816- Happy Argentine Independence Day!

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

1842 - Notary Stamp Law passes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1993- Industrial Light & Magic completes its transition to digital technology by shutting down its Anderson Optical Printer. The Optical Printer system of mattes had been the way Motion Picture visual effects had been done since Melies in 1909, but the Digital Revolution had changed everything.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: During the Nuremburg Nazi War Crimes Trials, when Admiral Karl Doenitz was accused of atrocities for running the U-Boat campaign in the Atlantic, his only defense was, “ Ask Admiral Nimitz.” That got him a reduced sentence. What did he mean?

Answer: Admiral Nimitz in the Pacific admitted copying the tactics of Admiral Doenitz in unrestricted submarine warfare. He used them to sink the Japanese merchant marine so completely that by late 1944 there were no more freighters left to sink.

Quiz: During the Nuremburg Nazi War Crimes Trials, when Admiral Karl Doenitz was accused of atrocities for running the U-Boat campaign in the Atlantic, his only defense was, “ Ask Admiral Nimitz.” That got him a reduced sentence. What did he mean?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, were any ever captured by the British?
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History for 7/8/2015
B-Dazes: Jean de LaFontaine, John D. Rockefeller Sr, Nelson Rockefeller, Kathe Kollwitz, Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin, Louis Jordan, Billy Eckstine, Steve Lawrence, Percy Grainger, Cynthia Gregory, Phillip Johnson, Kim Darby, Marty Feldman, Roone Arledge, Kevin Bacon is 57, Billy Crudup, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Angelica Huston, Raffi , Jeffrey Tambor is 71

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

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

1249 Death of King Alexander II "the Peaceful" of Scotland who strengthened
his throne by marrying into the English royal family –his wife was called Joan MakePeace. during his reign the existing border was established and his heraldic symbol, the Red Lion Rampant on a Yellow field, became the symbol of Scotland..

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

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

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

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

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

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

1776- The new Declaration of Independence was celebrated in Philadelphia with parties and parades. With great solemnity the Royal Coat of Arms was taken down from the State House judges bench and tossed on a bonfire. Congressman John Dickinson, who argued passionately against independence, nevertheless demonstrated his love for America by joining the Continental army fighting in New York.

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

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

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

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

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

1881- Ed Bernes of Wisconsin invented the Ice Cream Sundae.

1889-The Wall Street Journal first published.

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

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

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

1911- Burbank incorporated as a city.

1918- A young American ambulance driver serving in Italy during the First World War gets badly wounded by shrapnel fire. His name was Ernest Hemingway. His long recovery and love affair with his nurse he later worked into his novel "A Farewell To Arms".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1998- An original 1477 William Caxton copy of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"
became the world's most expensive book when it was sold for £4,621,500 to
billionaire oil heir Paul Getty.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, were any ever captured by the British?

Answer: Of the 56 signers of the Declaration, five were captured by the British. None were hanged, but treated as prisoners of war. One of them, New Jersey representative Richard Stockton was so beaten down from having his home destroyed, his fortune ruined, and being held in chains in a leaky prison ship, that he recanted his allegiance to America and renewed his vow of loyalty to the British Crown.
After the Revolution no one faulted him, considering all that he went through.

Quiz: Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, were any ever captured by the British?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who was William Wilberforce?
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History for 7/7/2015
Birthdays: Joseph Jacquard- of the Jacquard Loom 1752, Gustav Mahler, Satchel Page, Ringo Starr is 74, Doc Severinsen, Robert Heinlein, William Kuntsler, Gian Carlo Menotti, Ken Harris, Shelley Duval is 65, Ted Cassidy-Lurch in the Adams Family, Michelle Kwan, David McCullough, Pierre Cardin, and according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this is the birthday of Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick Dr. John Watson



750 BC- 391AD This was the Roman Feast of Quirinus, then day when Romulus the founder of Rome was taken up to heaven and took his place beside the Gods as the deified Quirinus.



175AD- The future Roman Emperor Commodus attained manhood. There was a special celebration when a Roman boy grew his first beard. He made a ceremony of putting off his boys cloak-tunica and donning the man’s toga. 



1569- Sir Francis Drake boldly sailed into the harbor of Cartagena ( in modern Columbia), the largest port on the Spanish Main, and looted a treasure galleon.



1607- The English anthem God Save the King first sung in honor of King James Ist.



1666- King Charles II and his court quit London in the wake of the Great Plague.



1735-King Stanislas Lescynski lost the throne of Poland to a boyfriend of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Stan was the father-in-law of king Louis XV of France fortunately, so Louis gave him the Duchy of Lorraine to live in. In the town square of Nancy there is a statue of Stanislas pointing east. Some say he's pointing home to Poland, others say towards the red light district of Nancy, where he spent a lot of his time.



1754- Kings College in New York founded. After the American Revolution the name was changed to Columbia University.



1777- During the Revolution, the British invasion force of General Burgoyne captured the New York fortress of Ticonderoga back from the American rebels. 



1814- Sir Walter Scott published his first novel Waverly. He wrote it under a pseudonym because he worried it would damage his reputation as a poet.



1821- The Latin American liberation army of Jose San Martin captured Lima Peru.



1839-The First European Railroad link opens between Vienna and Prague, thanks to the entrepreneurial investment of Meyer Rothschild, the Austrian branch of the House of Rothschild. Even though the English invented the locomotive years earlier European development moved much slower than in America where vast distances needed to be linked up fast. There was medical concern about people being moved at such high speeds as 35 miles an hour! A Viennese doctor wrote that at if the human body moved faster than 15 mph, blood would squirt out of your eyes and ears. Men would go mad and women sex-crazed. 



1865- Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators were all hanged Lewis Payne, George Atzenrodt and David Herold. Even weeping old Mary Surrat, who's involvement is still debatable. She may have known of some kind of plot but all they could prove was she the landlady of the boardinghouse where the plotters met. Everyone expected that a last minute amnesty would come from President Johnson but the President stayed silent and she was hanged with the others. Mary Surrat was the first woman executed in the U.S. Large Lewis Payne’s neck didn’t break at first and he kicked and danced in the air for five minutes before he choked. General Dan Sickles said afterward "We do not want to know their names anymore." The large gallows was then broken up and the splinters sold off as souvenirs to tourists.



1894-The Pullman Strike-U.S. troops battle 5,000 Chicago area railroad workers and their families in the streets. Dozens are killed. Troops were called for after marshals and detectives refused to shoot at unarmed working people. Other unions go out in sympathy with the Pullman workers and make the strike nationwide. Union president Eugene Debs is arrested for sedition and treason but acquitted by three grand juries. He later runs for president on the socialist ticket in 1912. President Cleveland before crushing the strike with regular army troops had just set the date for the first Labor Day.



1895-THE FIRST SUNDAY COMICS - The first modern comic strip Hogan’s Alley featuring "The Yellow Kid" by Richard Felton Outcault, debuts in the Sunday edition of Pulitzer's New York World. The strip was so popular it gave the name "Yellow Journalism" to the sensationalist tabloid press. Comic strips at this time became the mass media of the day. For people who couldn’t afford a theater ticket and couldn’t yet speak English, the little characters in the penny papers were extremely popular and made celebrities out of cartoonists like Outcault, Bud Selig George McManus and Winsor McCay. Richard Outcault later inventing the backend deal when he asked for a percentage of all sales from his new comic strip "Buster Brown and his dog Tige"



1898-Congress votes to annex the Kingdom of Hawaii.



1900- Warren Earp, the youngest brother of Wyatt Earp, was killed in a gunfight. He had gotten into an argument in a saloon in Wilcox Arizona. Warren Earp was not at the OK Corral in 1881 but he did help his brothers hunt down the killers of Morgan Earp.



1911- THE AGADIR INCIDENT or "The Panther's Leap' In the tense international climate just before the Great War, Germany sparked a major international incident by making moves to take southern Morocco from France. They sent the battle cruiser Panther to Agadir Harbor to "protect endangered German citizens", There were no Europeans in that part of Morocco so the German ministry cabled a Herr Weiland to rush overland by train to meet the warship. He was nicknamed "The Endangered German". 
After a lot of diplomatic bluffs and threats between Paris, Berlin, London and St. Petersburg, Germany eventually backed down. One Berlin newspaper said:" To think we almost went to war with Britain & France over a country that can only provide sand for our canary cages!" An angry German minister said:" The incident had the same effect as viewing a dead squid. First shock, then amusement, then revulsion."



1925- Afrikaans is recognized as one of the official languages of South Africa, along with English and Dutch.



1930-Work began on Hoover Dam. 



1941- The US military took over British bases on Iceland that protected transAtlanitc convoys. This act was considered by Nazis Germany a further provocation of Neutral America towards joining the war on the Allied side. Earlier President Roosevelt had frozen German assets in the US and expelled their diplomats.



1942- SS chief Heinrich Himmler gave the go-ahead for forced sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.



1943-BANZAI- Climax of the Battle of Saipan- 4,300 Japanese troops stream out of the jungle in a massed Banzai charge on U.S. Marine positions. Fighting devolved into insane hand to hand combat with Samurai swords and rifle-bayonets, more like the Civil War than World War II. One of the Marines wounded in the attack was future movie star Lee Marvin, nicknamed Captain Marvel by his buddies for his gung-ho attitude. Almost all the Japanese were killed.
Later in a cave the Marines found the bodies of General Saito and Admiral Nagumo, the fleet commander at the Pearl Harbor attack. They had committed hari kari when the attack had failed. This event also caused Prime Minister Hideki Tojo's government to fall, since Tojo had pledged the U.S. could not take Saipan, an island which placed Japan within range of US long range bombers.



1946-Mother Cabrini made the first American Saint. She was an immigrant from Italy. Later St. Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first native born American saint.



1947- THE ROSSWELL INCIDENT- An official news report from the USAF 509th bomber command -the same unit that dropped the Hiroshima bomb- stated they had recovered the wreckage of a UFO in the New Mexico desert near Rosswell and were examining it. The next day the commanding general of the 8th Air Force flew to Rosswell. He announced to the press that the earlier report was in error, and it was only a downed weather balloon. The wreckage was removed under heavy-armed guard.



Complete secrecy was then imposed. The communications officer Major Jesse Marcey, who posed for an official photo showing him with the balloon wreckage, later told his son it was faked. Marcey, who died in 1967 and his adjutant Lt. Haut still stick to the original version of their story. Lt. Haut also claimed the base commander Col. William Blanchard thought it was UFO debris. This report coming only two weeks after the first modern sighting of "flying saucers" over Mt. Reynier in Oregon sparked the Flying Saucer craze that gripped America throughout the 1950’s.



1949-"I’m Friday"- The program Dragnet first debuted on radio. Jack Webb conceived, wrote, directed and starred in the show. His hardest job was urging actors "not to act" but to speak the lines normally like the average person does.



1960- First demonstration of a practical laser beam. In Russia it had been theorized since 1951. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER.



1967- Vivien Leigh, the actress who played Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, died in a mental institution at age 53.



1967 - Beatles' "All You Need is Love" is released. Queen Elizabeth II said it was one of her favorite songs.



1967 – The Doors' "Light My Fire" hits #1.



1976- First women cadets enroll at West Point Military Academy.



1981- Judge Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.



1982- A drunken lunatic named Michael Fagin with a bleeding left hand broke into Buckingham Palace, got past all the security and startled Queen Elizabeth in her bed. Her personal bodyguard was out walking the royal dogs. The Queen kept the man engaged in conversation at the foot of her bed until guards dragged him away.



2005-THE 7-7 ATTACK- Four Al Qaeda terrorist bombs exploded in the London subway Tube and a doubledecker bus, killing 50 and injuring one thousand..


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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was William Wilberforce?

Answer: He was a British politician who was one of the greatest voices in getting the slave trade outlawed in the British Empire. Many redcoats in America were followers of Wilberforce. They made a point of liberating American slaves in every place they occupied, including Thomas Jefferson’s home Monticello.