Quiz: What is a coonskin cap?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Who first said,” Money is the root of all evil”?
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History for 3/27/2024
Birthdays: French King Louis XVII –the boy during the Revolution who died in prison after his Royal parents were guillotined, Patty Smith Hill 1868- The composer of the song Happy Birthday to You, Edward Steichen, Gloria Swanson, Sarah Vaughn, Maria Schneider, Mies Van der Rohe, Snooky Lanson, Wilhelm Roentgen the discoverer of X-Rays, Nathaniel Currier of Currier & Ives, Donald Duck artist Carl Barks, cellist Mtisislav Rostropovich, Michael York is 80, Quentin Tarantino is 59, Mariah Carey is 52

The ancient Romans called today Washing Day, the origin of our concept of Spring Cleaning.
The ancient Egyptians had a similar holiday.

47BC – In Alexandria, Julius Caesar defeated the royal Egyptian forces of Cleopatra ‘s brother Ptolomey VII.

33AD- Ecce Homo- Behold the man, Traditional date for when Roman Governor Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to death.

715 AD- Saint Rupert was a Frank who did missionary work around Austria and Bavaria. When he arrived at the abandoned Roman town of Juvenum he revived the areas salt works and named it The Salt-Fortress, or Salzburg.

922- By order of the Caliph Persian mystic Al Halij Mansur was beheaded at age 64.

1513- Juan Ponce De Leon first sighted the coastline of Florida. He thought it was an island. He claimed it for His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain. For years Spanish maps called all of North America- Las Floridas.

1536- Swiss Cantons sign the First Helvetic Confession, declaring their common support of the Protestant religion.
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1599- Queen Elizabeth I appointed her toyboy the Earl of Essex to be Governor General of Ireland. In his 6 months there he was ordered to put down the rebels under Earl Tyrone of O’Neill, which he couldn’t; not to make any peace treaties without consulting London, which he did; and not to leave Ireland without permission, which he left. Eventually Essex thought he could handle the Queen. He lost his head instead.

1625- King Charles I ascended the throne of England. The king who lost his head in the English Civil War. Dutch painter Jan Van Dyck had a premonition about him. When doing his portrait he said the English monarch had” The saddest face he’d ever done.”

1790- The invention of modern shoelaces. Lacing foorwear goes back to the Greeks, Romans and Chinese, but this is our modern version.

1802-The Peace of Amiens- A rare three years of peace interrupted the constant warfare in Europe. Around this time Napoleon was being annoyed by an oddball inventor from America named Robert Fulton, who had plans plan for a ship with no sails, only steam powered paddle wheels! He even proposed another ship that could travel underwater! He had first tried the British Admiralty, who threw him out. Napoleon had him design some craft for him, but it never went anywhere. Eventually, Fulton gave up and returned to America.

1814- THE BATTLE OF HORSESHOE BEND-The last great Indian battle in the American South. The War of 1812 coincided with Shawnee chief Tecumseh's called for all Indians regardless of tribe to unite to drive away the white man. Chief Red Eagle and the Creek Nation fought Gen. Andrew Jackson and his volunteer army of frontiersmen down in the Alabama territory. Jackson's army included Davey Crockett, Sam Houston and future Senator Thomas Hart Benton.
Jackson (Indians named him "Sharp Knife") defeated the Creeks in one huge battle. In a switch on Hollywood image, in this battle the Indians fought from inside a wooden walled fort and the whites charged around it. After the carnage Jackson ordered his men to cut off the dead brave's noses so he could make an accurate count. Andy Jackson became a national hero and carried a lead bullet around in his shoulder for the rest of his life, Sam Houston got shot in the groin, and Chief Red Eagle put on a suit & tie, became a Methodist, and changed his name to William Weatherford.

1836- The first Mormon temple is set up in Kirkland Ohio. Mormon ladies broke up their fine china to mix into the plaster so the walls had a sparkling effect.

1836- GOLIAD- After wiping out the Texas rebels at the Alamo, Mexican Gen. Santa Anna surrounded the next little fort at Goliad. Their commander, Colonel Daniel Fanin, seeing the result that resistance brought the men of the Alamo, tried the other tack and surrendered. Santa Anna, who was infuriated by the losses he suffered at the Alamo, wanted to make an example of the Yanqui Texans. He had Fanin and his whole command executed. But instead of being intimidated, Texans just got madder.

1855- Canadian doctor and part time scientist Abraham Gesner patented Kerosene. As a source of light, it burned brighter and was cheaper than whale oil. The first product made from crude oil.

1865- The City Point Conference. Lincoln, Grant and Sherman meet on the steamboat River Queen about how to finish off Robert E. Lee and end the Civil War. Lincoln stressed that after the war the South should be treated mildly, no mass treason trials, mass hangings or reparations.” Let’s let ‘em up easy.” It is the last time Grant and Sherman would ever see Lincoln alive.

1866- Andrew Rankin received the first patent for the upright porcelain urinal.

1883- When Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria was collapsed in grief. She was lifted out of her funk by her Scottish horse groom at Balmoral, named John Brown. For over a decade they had an inseparable friendship, which may or may not have been intimate. This day John Brown died. Victoria had a life size statue made of him for the front of Balmoral house. After Victoria’s death, her son King Edward VII had Brown’s statue moved to a far corner of the estate, so he didn’t have to look at it. Recent archival discoveries proved that as she knew she was dying Queen Victoria left instructions that she be buried with personal tokens of Mr. Brown as well as Prince Albert.

1884-The first long distance telephone call-New York to Boston.

1886- GERONIMO! After a whirlwind campaign across Arizona being chased by three U.S. armies, Geronimo and his Chiracuha Apaches surrendered. With only 32 braves and their families, Geronimo evaded 5,000 troops. The Apaches nicknamed their pursuing enemy General George Crook, "General Day-After-Tomorrow" for his inability to keep up with them.
Finally, they were cornered and forced to give up. Geronimo and the Chiracua were shipped off to a Florida swamp for ten years before being allowed to return to their homelands. Many White Mountain Apaches who hated Geronimo acted as scouts for the army. Afterwards they were rewarded by being shipped off as well.

1908- Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt & Jeff debuted.

1912- Washington DC received its famous cherry trees, 3,020 in number, a gift from the Japanese government.

1914- In Belgium, the first successful blood transfusion was performed.

1939- Madrid fell to Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his fascist forces.

1940- “Rebecca,” the first Hollywood movie by Alfred Hitchcock opened.

1941- After democratic Yugoslavs overthrew the pro-Nazi regime of Prince Paul, Hitler ordered an invasion.

1943- Companies in Los Angeles doing war work were forbidden to discriminate by race.

1945- Nazis fired their last V-2 rockets at London before the Allied armies overrun their launchpads. The last rockets hit Stepney and Kent. Chief scientist Dr. Werner Von Braun and his scientists started taking English lessons.

1945- Argentina declared war on Nazi Germany. This is seen as a bit of political theater since President Juan Peron openly admired Hitler and Mussolini and Argentina gave haven to many top Nazis after the war.

1952- U.P.A.’s cartoon “Rooty-Toot-Toot” premiered. Its music score was by jazzman Phil Moore, the first African American to receive a screen credit for scoring a movie.

1952- “Singing in the Rain” starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor premiered.

1957- California Reverend Robert Schuller opened the first Drive-In Church.

1958- Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet Premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.

1958- At the 30th Academy Awards, the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay went to Pierre Boule for The Bridge on the River Kwai. But Boule was not there. He wrote the novel it was based on, but the actual screenplay was written by two Blacklisted writers in exile- Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. Boulle’s name was entered as a cover.

1964-THE ANCHORAGE, ALASKA EARTHQUAKE- The largest in the western hemisphere in the Twentieth Century, 9.2 on the Richter Scale. It created a tsunami tidal wave that hit the coastlines of Alaska, British Columbia and Hawaii with a 100 foot wall of water. 164 people died.

1968- Russian Major Yuri Gargarin, in 1961 the first man in Space, died in a small plane crash during a routine private flight.

1973- In one of the more celebrated stunts in Hollywood history, when Marlon Brando won an Oscar for his role in The Godfather, he sent a buckskin clad model named Sashin Littlefeather to refuse the award and delivered a protest about treatment of Indigenous Americans.

1974- Mariner 10 visited the Planet Mercury.

1977- In the largest aviation disaster in history. A KLM 747 jumbo jet taking off crashed into another PanAm 747 jumbo jet landing at Tenerife Canary Islands. 582 people were killed.

1978- The first draft script of the film Norma Rae completed. The film dramatized the life of Christa Lee Jordan, a mill worker who was blackballed by the J.P. Stevens millworks for wanting a union.

1989- Who Framed Roger Rabbit earned four Oscars at the Academy Awards. Sound Effects, Visual Effects, Film Editing and a special one for Richard Williams for the animation. At that same ceremony, Pixar’s Tin Toy won best animated short. The first Pixar short to win.

1996- Fearful of mad cow disease, The European Community banned the export of beef from Britain for one year.

2022- At the Academy Awards, Best Actor winner Will Smith slapped and cursed out comedian Chris Rock on camera in front of the whole world for making a joke about his wife Jada Pinket Smith.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who first said,” Money is the root of all evil”?

Answer: St. Paul in the New Testament. Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is the root of all of evil. “

Question: What is Rembrandt Lighting?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When Dante has a guide who led him through the realms of the afterlife in his epic poem The Divine Comedy. Who is his guide? (Hint: another famous poet)
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History for 3/25/2024
B-Days: King Henry II Plantagenet, Joachim Murat, Gutzon Borglum, David Lean, Mary Flannery-O’Connor, Arturo Toscanini, Aretha Franklin, Bela Bartok', Howard Cosell, Bonnie Bedelia, Jerry Livingston (writer of Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo), Richard O’Brien (Rocky Horror), Elton John, Simone Signoret, Gloria Steinem is 90, Sarah Jessica Parker is 60.

In ancient times this was the feast of Thalia, the goddess of comedy, one of the Nine Muses. In Latin she was called Hilaria. According to the historian Pausanias there was a town that was sacred to Thalia. When you arrived, you had to tell a joke to the locals or they would kill you.

In the medieval London this was Lady Day when streetlights no longer had to be lit after dark.

3019 TA- Frodo Baggins destroyed the one true ring, causing the death of Sauron.

421AD- People fleeing the depredations of Attila the Hun go into the marshes and found the city of Venice.

1306- Robert the Bruce crowned King of Scotland.

1330- Battle of Zebras de Acholes (Tula)- On his deathbed, Scottish king Robert the Bruce asked Earl Douglas of Argyle to take his heart to the Holyland. Black Douglas went on Crusade with the Bruce's heart embalmed in a little lead box, hanging from a silver chain around his neck. In Spain, the Earl was ambushed by a large force of Moors. When Black Douglas realized his hour had come, he hurled the box into the thickest of the foe, and plowed after it, long sword in hand, to go down fighting.

1441-During the Council of Clermont, the Vatican invited Czech Jan Hus under an amnesty to come and explain his Protestant doctrines. After he explained his case, they burned him at the stake. Supposedly we got the expression ‘his goose is cooked’ from the martyrdom of Hus. Hus was the old German word for goose.

1521- FIRST MAN CIRCUMNAVIGATES THE GLOBE- No, it was not Magellan. It was Magellan's 16 year old Malay slave, Enrique. Enrique was taken from his native Sumatra, then Arab merchants brought him to Madagascar where Portuguese sailor Magellan purchased him. He brought him by sea around Africa to Lisbon, then to Spain.
Later Magellan took him with his fleet west to South America and around the Cape into the Pacific and finally to the Philippine Islands. On this day on the isle of Cebu, Enrique found he could converse with the locals. Magellan knew he had done it and reached the Indies by sailing west. After Magellan was killed by natives, while captains stood around wondering what to do next, Enrique jumped overboard and swam home.

1524- Explorer Giuseppe Verrazano with a French fleet going up the coast of North America drop anchor off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Verrazano could not see the Carolina coastline beyond the thin isthmus of Diamond Shoals, so he decides the American Continent must become really-really thin in the middle before widening out to Canada. His men strain their eyes for signs of China, beyond what he thinks is the" Pacific". For a century European maps reflected this silly mistake, and Verrazano was later eaten by cannibals.

1586- Margaret Clitherow was a Yorkshire butchers wife who converted to Catholicism in Queen Elizabeth’s time. She held secret masses and sheltered outlawed priests. For this she was “pressed”. Meaning she was laid on the ground with a stone against her back, a door was placed on top of her. On that door they piled 700-800 pounds of stones until she was squished. The Catholic Church declared her a saint in 1970.

1634-The good ships Dove and Ark drop anchor in America bringing 128 English Catholics. The Colony of Maryland founded by Caelius Calvert- Lord Baltimore under former Virginia Gov. De La Ware (Delaware). For the first time in English America a Catholic Mass was held.

1668-First recorded horse race in America.

1815- After Napoleon seized back power in Paris he asked Europe for peace. This day the assembled powers meeting in Vienna declared him an outlaw and enemy of Europe. The issue was decided on the field of Waterloo.

1843- In London, the Thames Tunnel opened. The first tunnel under a major river.

1865- The Battle of Fort Steadman. Robert E Lee tried to break a hole in Ulysses Grants encircling army so he could rush reinforcements to Joe Johnston’s rebel army. They were trying to stop Sherman in South Carolina from marching north and uniting with Grant. It didn’t work.

1911-THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE- 145 seamstresses, mostly teenage Jewish immigrant girls, burned to death in a horrible office building fire. They could not escape the flames because their employer padlocked them into their sweatshop so they wouldn't take so many breaks, or talk to union organizers. The pavement was littered with dead girls who jumped ten stories to their death rather than burn, while a helpless crowd looked on in horror. They would hold hands and leap to their deaths together.
The factory owners were never charged with any crime. The owners soon opened another clothes factory that was cited for fire safety violations. The tragedy was a major cause of the formation of the ILGWU now called UNITE and the first job safety laws. One of the eyewitnesses to the horror, Frances Perkins, later became Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. The last survivor of the fire died in 2001 at age 107.

1915- The first modern submarine disaster. The US F-4 went down with 21 sailors.

1916 - Ishi, the last survivor of his Yaqui Indian tribe, died.

1928- Young American composer George Gershwin first arrived in Paris.

1931- The Scottsboro Boys. In Alabama nine young black men were accused of raping two white women in a freight car. Although convicted the case was appealed and retired four times, and only the spotlight of national attention prevented any from being lynched.

1931- Shortly after the invention of automobiles, there were automobile races. This day in the dry lake beds of Muroc California saw the first race car speed trials sanctioned by the American Automobile Assoc. It was the beginning of NASCAR.

1932- Motion Picture Academy President William DeMille, the brother of Cecil B., tried starting a 'Squawk Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their studio heads. (and this way they wouldn't try to unionize). The first boss on the hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and catcalls. The forum quickly devolved into a screaming free-for-all. Mayer furiously stormed out and preceded to fire all those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was quickly abandoned. Workers continued to organize into craft unions.

1933- Nazis Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels offered famed director Fritz Lang a job. Fritz said he’d think about it, then immediately packed his bags for Hollywood.

1943 - The first Japanese anime film premiered " Momotarō no Umiwashi (桃太郎の海鷲,
Momotaro's Divine Sea Eagles" by director Mitsuyo Seo. Momotaro or Peach Boy, was a popular character with children. It was made as wartime propaganda. It ran only 37 minutes.

1944- During World War II, over the Dover coastline, Flight Sgt. Nicholas Alkemade bailed out of his burning Spitfire, and his chute failed to open. He fell 18,000 feet. In a freak occurrence, high on shore winds slowed his descent, and he hit a wet beach that broke his fall. Sgt. Alkemade suffered only a broken ankle. It was a million to one shot. English film director Michael Powell made the incident the basis of his fantasy film with David Niven called "A Matter of Life and Death", released in the US as "Stairway to Heaven”.

1945- The 322 fighter group escorted a large contingent of bombers from Italy to Berlin and back. During the dogfights over Germany the unit’s P-51 fighter planes shot down three German ME-262 jet fighters. No bombers were lost and the 322rd was awarded a special unite citation for bravery. The 322rd Fighter Group were the Tuskeegee Airmen, the Red-Tails, all black pilots. Their commander Benjamin Davis became the first African-American to become a US General.

1945- General Eisenhower told Marshal Stalin that the allied armies would hold back and let the Soviet Red Army take Berlin.

1953- NUMBER 10 RILLINGTON PLACE. A new tenant to this modest flat in London made an awful discovery- behind the walls were the bodies of 4 women, with one more buried under the pea patch. The previous tenant Jack Christie confessed to the murders and was executed. Christie became the most infamous British serial killer since Jack the Ripper.

1954- RCA began mass production and marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an automobile, 12 inch screen and there was very little programming in color.

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258 copies Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl printed in the UK on the grounds it was obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore printed the poem, he was arrested.

1957-The Rome Treaty establishing the European Economic Community.

1960- Thirty-five years after it was written and published in Europe an American judge ruled that D.H. Lawrence's novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not pornography and could finally be sold in the U.S. Whaddaya think of that, John-Thomas?

1960- The Moulin Rouge Agreement. After a lot of agitation and arm twisting from Frank Sinatra, the owners of the Las Vegas casinos agreed to integrate. It was so named for the Moulin Rouge Casino, which up to then had been the only casino that allowed black and white patrons to mix freely.

1965- Viola Gregg Liuzzo was a fiesty red-haired wife of a Detroit Teamster official who was so moved watching Martin Luther King’s freedom marchers being beaten up by cops that she drove down to Alabama to offer her help. When her children feared they would never see her again Mrs Liuzzo replied she would "live to pee on your graves".
This night she was driving black marchers from Selma to Montgomery when three Ku Klux Klansmen pulled along side her car and shot her at point blank range. Her case reached up as high as the White House where President Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover spent several anxious meetings over what to do. The Klansmen were rounded up but acquitted by an all-white Alabama jury, then a Federal court gave them six years for violating Mrs. Liuzzo’s civil rights. Viola Liuzzo was the only white woman ever murdered in the 60’s Civil Rights Movement.

1966 - Beatles pose with mutilated dolls & butchered meat for the cover of the "Yesterday & Today" album, It was later pulled.

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

1969- John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam.

1975- King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was assassinated by a nephew. The nephew was beheaded.

1990- The Happy Land Social Club fire. A Cuban man broke up with his girlfriend over drinks in a crowded Latino bar in New York City. The bouncers threw him out when he got abusive. He left the club then returned and splashed gasoline around the one entrance and set it on fire. 87 people died, some so fast that their remains still had their drinks in their hands. It was the worst fire in New York since the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, ironically on this same date.

1996- Pixar’s John Lasseter awarded a special Oscar for Toy Story, and Colors of the Wind from Disney’s Pocahontas won Best Song.
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Quiz: When Dante has a guide who led him through the realms of the afterlife in his epic poem The Divine Comedy. Who is his guide? (Hint: another famous poet)

Answer: His guide was the Roman poet Virgil. Composer of the Aeneid.

Quiz: When Dante has a guide who led him through the realms of the afterlife in his epic poem The Divine Comedy. Who is his guide? (Hint: another famous poet)

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What’s the difference between Aquaman and Prince Naymor?
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History for 3/24/2024
Birthdays: Steve McQueen, Lawrence Ferlingetti, John Wesley Powell, Harry Houdini aka Eric Weisz, Edward Weston, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde, Bob Mackie, Robert Carradine, Jesus Alou, Laura Flynn-Boyle, Alyson Hannigan, Joe Barbera, Cal Howard, R. Lee Ermey, Peyton Manning, Kelly LeBrock, Sir Elton John is 77, Jessica Chastain is 47


1185- Battle of Dano-Ura. Huge Japanese samurai battle fought at sea. The Minamoto Genji Clan defeated the Taira-Heiki Clan and seized the throne. When Dan-no-Ura is clearly lost, the redoubtable Lady Nii took her grandson, the 7 year old child emperor Antoku in her arms, and told him “Down there beneath the waves, another capitol awaits you!” They jumped into the sea with their retainers where they all drowned. To this day local fishermen find small crabs with shells like samurai face masques on them.

1241- Mongol armies were sent into Europe by Genghis Khan’s general Subotai. While one pincer marched into Hungary, another force under Vuldai and Paidar burned the Polish capitol of Krakow. A trumpeter trying to sound a warning from a church tower was shot through the throat with an arrow. Since then, in his memory in the town square every hour on the hour, a trumpeter plays the bugle call and stops short at the same note -The Heynal.

1603- Queen Elizabeth I of England died of a gum inflammation, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I Stewart of the United Kingdom. Elizabeth was 69 and had ruled England since she was 25. She was famous for being frugal but she loved nice clothing. At her death she left 2,000 dresses. When an Anglican bishop in a sermon tried to criticize her for vanity, the Queen stood up and warned the good bishop to hold his tongue,”ere ye may attain Heaven before your time”.

1663- King Charles II granted lands in the newly forming American settlements called Carolina to noblemen who supported him in the recently ended English Civil War.

1765- the British Parliament passed the American Quartering Act, which means you have to let a redcoat soldier sleep in your home whether you like it or not! You even had to give them your extra food and candles at no charge! Up to now all the British army was on the frontier protecting against Indians, now it seemed the redcoats were moved into towns and settlements to keep an eye on the Americans! This and the Stamp Act was another of the sort of thing that bugged Americans about being a colony.

1794- Hero of the American Revolution Thaddeus Kosciuszko raised the banner of Revolt to liberate Poland from the Russians, Austrians and Germans. They were unimpressed. In spirit of American and French liberty, he appeared in the great square of Krakow in a peasants jacket and declared a fight to the death. He finished the war in a Russian prison. Eventually released, he visited America in 1797 and was paid $3,947 in back pay as an American army officer. He spent all the money buying black slaves and freeing them.

1808- Napoleons’ French army entered Madrid.

1843- THE BATTLE OF HYDERABAD- Sir Charles Napier and the British Army of India defeated the Balouki tribesmen and Talpur Emir and conquered the region in modern Pakistan called the Sindh.
One problem generals always have after a big battle is coming up with a good name. This battle was fought near a village called Dabaa, but in Hindi, Dabaa meant greasy animal skins. Charles Napier didn’t want to be knighted in Westminster Abbey as the Viscount Greasy Animal Skins, so he sent an officer to ride around until he found a town with a more suitable name. Finally they chose the town of Hyderabad. Back in London Lord Napier was hailed as the Conqueror of Sindh. Punch magazine punned that his report consisted of one word-PECCAVI- Latin for “ I have Sinned.- get it? “ Victorian humor!

1882 -In Berlin, German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus that caused Tuberculosis, enabling a vaccine to at last be created. T.B. or consumption, was the dreaded pandemic of the 1800's- killing everyone from Frederic Chopin, Henry Clay, Doc Holliday, Aubrey Beardsley, to Mimi in La Boheme.

1900- Mayor Robert Van Wyck turned over the first shovel-full of dirt on the project to build the New York City subway system.

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s adventure novel The Lost World, first published in magazine installments. Conan Doyle was inspired when he in 1905 he attended a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society, when an Amazon explorer described finding dinosaur bones. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs type stories. In 1925, Willis O'Brien made the Lost World into the first dinosaur monster movie.

1918- A top magician on the London stage was Chung Ling Soo. His real name was Bill Robinson from Westchester, NY, but he got up in yellowface and pretended to be a magical mandarin. His best routine was when someone fired a pistol at him and he caught the bullet with his teeth. On this day his trick gun failed, and he was really shot and killed. Ta-Daaa!

1934-The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour debuted on radio. It became a national craze to see who could be a future star. Frank Sinatra was among their finds. The show eventually moved to television and later spawned the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Chuck Barris the Gong Show, Star Search, American Idol and The Voice.

1939- The film The Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. They became famous interpreters of the characters and went on to make a dozen more films.

1944- In Rome after a car bomb that killed 33 Germans, The Nazis retaliated by pulling innocent people at random off the street and shooting them.

1944- THE GREAT ESCAPE- 60 Allied POWs dug a tunnel and escaped from an elite German prison camp in Poland. But unlike the popular movie all but 5 were recaptured, and 40 were executed.

1945- Warners Life With Feathers, the first Sylvester the Cat.

1949- MGM’s The Little Orphan won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

1954- The Nash-Kelvinator Company and the Hudson Car Company merge to form American Motors Corporation or AMC automobiles.

1955- Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" debuts at Broadway's Marosco Theater. Barbera Bel-Geddes was the first Cat, and Burl Ives was "Big Daddy".

1958- Elvis Presley inducted into the Army. G.I. Blues!

1962- No one had been a more loyal supporter of President John F. Kennedy than Frank Sinatra. The singer got his Ratpack friends to stump for the candidate, and even got Mafia money to support a man whose brother Bobby was busy busting the rackets. But the President was warned that association with such a known libertine would cost him family votes. So when President Kennedy next visited Palm Springs he not only refused an invitation to stay with Sinatra, he stayed with more wholesome singer Bing Crosby, a Republican! Sinatra in a rage took a sledgehammer to the private helicopter landing pad he was preparing for JFK, and broke off his friendship with JFK’s brother-in-law, actor Peter Lawford. By the end of the 60s Old Blue Eyes was a supporter of Nixon.

1973- In Buffalo, a drunk fan bit singer Lou Reed on the ass.

1987- Michael Eisner and Premier Jacques Chirac sign the protocol to build Euro-Disney, later called Disneyland Paris.

1989- The supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound Alaska. It was claimed its Captain Joseph Hazelwood was drunk. But insiders claim Exxon fabricated the drunk-captain story to excuse their inadequate detection and warning equipment. The route was well charted and easy to maneuver. Despite lots of promises from Exxon to clean it up completely, today much of Prince William Sound is still contaminated, and the wildlife is still trying to recover.

1999- The U.S. and NATO began to bomb Belgrade over Serbian attacks in Kossovo.

2005- A Colorado Rockies big league baseball game was called off on account a swarm of bees. The bees were attracted by the coconut oil in the starting pitcher’s hair gel.

2006- 13 year old Miley Cyrus debuts on TV as Disney’s Hanna Montana.
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Yesterday’s Question: What’s the difference between Aquaman and Prince Naymor?

Answer: Besides the differences in their origin stories, character development, super powers and weaknesses, etc, the biggest difference between Prince Namor (i.e. the Sub-Mariner) and Aquaman is that Namor is a character in the Marvel Universe and Aquaman exists in the DC Universe. (FG)

Question: What’s the difference between Aquaman and Prince Naymor?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Who was Helen of Troy?
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History for 3/23/2024
Birthdays: US Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Akira Kurosawa, Joan Crawford, Dr. Werner Von Braun, Juan Gris, Chaka Khan, Paul Grimault, Sidney Hillman, Jack Ruby, Joan Collins, Eric Fromm, Fanny Farmer, Catherine Keener is 64, Hope Davis is 59

In ancient Rome today was the Tubilustrum, the Festival of the Sacred Trumpets of Minerva. Yes, the word is the origin of the word Tuba, although the modern tuba wasn’t invented until 1835.

Today is the Feast day of the Irish Saint Gwinear. Gwinear loved animals so much that once when he was thirsty he struck the ground with his staff to make a clear pool appear, then again to make another one for his dog and horse.

1721- Johann Sebastian Bach sent the first copy of his Brandenburg Concertos to his patron the Margrave of Brandenburg. When the Margrave died, an inventory was made of his holdings in Berlin, the value placed on each concerto was six groschen, or about $5 each.

1775- During the debate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry said the only way to deal with England was :"I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY FOLLOW, BUT FOR ME -GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH !" Henry became Gov. of Virginia, but later he was forgotten in the formation of the new nation, especially after he declared publicly that the Constitution was a big mistake, and Tom Jefferson was an incompetent coward.

1806-After exploring the Pacific coast around the mouth of the Columbia River, Lewis and Clark start back for home.

1857- Stewart's department store in New York installs the first of Mr. Elisha Otis's new invention, the elevator. There were earlier steam elevators, but the danger of falling frightened off customers. Mr. Otis’ system of brakes and cut offs in the event of a cable failure made elevators popular and made the age of skyscrapers possible.

1877- Mormon elder John D. Lee was convicted of the murder of 120 settlers when he ordered his men to attack a pioneer wagon train as it passed through Utah in 1857, the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre. On this day John D. Lee was marched to the massacre site, stood beside his own coffin and shot by firing squad.

1877- the first telephones installed in the White House.

1894- Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan-Doyle was in Davo Switzerland helping his wife recover from tuberculosis at a spa in the Alps. While there, the Swiss introduced him to a new sport that he quickly took to. This day he wrote to London enthusiastically about Ski-Running, or Skiing. Conan-Doyle predicted in the Strand Magazine “Within a generation, thousands of English people will be coming to the Alps to ski.” Today there is a statue of Sir Arthur in Davo, Switzerland.

1903- Orville and Wilbur Wright kept looking for someone to build them a motor light enough to power their airplane design. Finding no taker, they built the thing themselves and the propeller. This day took out an U.S. patent on The Airplane. They didn’t actually fly in it until nine months later.

1909- Two weeks after leaving the presidency, Teddy Roosevelt disembarked from New York, bound for a big game hunt in Africa. Banker J.P. Morgan said,” Every American hopes the African lions will do their duty.”

1918- In a final attempt to break French defenses during World War I, the Germans begin firing their giant "Big Bertha" cannon at Paris. The shells fly 77 miles and took three minutes to reach their targets. The first shell hit Place De La Republique. A gunner said the discharge of the cannon sounded like, “an enormous vomiting dachshund'.

1919- Benito Mussolini founded the Parti Fasci di Combatimento or Fascist Party in Italy. He started his career as a socialist union leader but swung to the other side later (better benefits?) He named his ultra-right group after the wrapped bundle of sticks with an axe sticking out that was carried before ancient Roman consuls, the fasces, it symbolized Roman power. In a previous generation Garabaldi's men were called Red-Shirts so Mussolini adopted the Black-Shirts. Later Hitler made his storm troopers Brown-Shirts.

1936- Ollie Johnston got his first job at the Walt Disney Studio, as Fred Moore’s assistant.

1945- THE FIRST JET FIGHTER ATTACK- In a last-ditch attempt to stop the allied armies entering Germany, the Luftwaffe mounted an attack on two captured Rhine river bridges by fifty jet fighters. The Messerschmidt ME-262 Schwalbe (Swallows).
Half never get off the ground, others got lost and the rest don't accomplish anything. The Luftwaffe aces like Adolph Galland thought the jets were ideal for shooting down big B-17 bombers, but Hitler insisted they carried bomb loads, which slowed them down enough for propeller planes to hit them. The experimental jet fuel was so unstable that it had to be mixed by a chemist as it was being poured into the gas tank. If the mixing was done improperly the whole thing could explode on the runway.

1945- Later that day General George Patton led a group of journalists and photographers out to the center of the Rhine bridgehead. One journalist asked his thoughts now that he was breaching Hitler’s vaunted Siegfried Line and daring to go where no foreign soldier had stepped since Napoleon.
As cameras clicked the Patton undid his fly and took a long healthy pee in the Rhine River. “I waited all morning to do that! Yessir, the pause that refreshes!” My father remembered signal corps photo lab assistants made a brisk business selling copies of the famous incident on left over scraps of enlargement paper. That photo was taken by Tech Sgt. Paul Dougherty of the 737 Tank Battalion.

1951- Disney short Corn Chips, with Donald Duck and Chip & Dale. Directed by Jack Hannah.

1957- Art Clokey's Gumby Show. Clokey created the green clay fellow for his USC college thesis film Gumbasia.

1971- US Congress lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

1973-White House attorney John Dean tells President Nixon:" There's a cancer on the Presidency...."

1976- Panamanian middleweight Roberto Duran was being honored in Havana. Fidel Castro casually remarked to Duran “Hey, what do you think would happen if my fighter Teofilo Stevenson met Muhammad Ali?” Duran laughed,” Him? Ali would kill him!” Duran was on a plane home that night.

1977- The first Richard Nixon-David Frost interview.

1983- STAR WARS- President Ronald Reagan announced in a nationwide speech the Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed the Star Wars Program. He said US scientists were going to create a protective umbrella of laser satellites in orbit that would shoot down hostile nuclear missiles.
This program would cost trillions and even if it worked it could never stop all the missiles launched in a Soviet first strike. Conservative apologists said that the re-escalation of the cold war arms race drove the Soviets crazy and their inability to keep up with arms spending sped up their economic collapse. Star Wars wasted billions of U.S taxpayer dollars before it was stopped.
On the day of the 9-11 World Trade Center Attack National Security Advisor Dr Condoleeza Rice was scheduled to make a major speech announcing the Bush White House resuming of the Star Wars program. To this date, we still do not have satellites shooting other satellites with lasers. Recently Vladimir Putin has been making noises about putting nukes in space.

1987- After meeting creator Matt Groening, animators David Silverman, Wes Archer and Bill Kopp began animating the very first Simpson’s short for the Tracy Ullmann Show.

1989- COLD FUSION- Two physicists named Ponds & Fleischman make incredible claims that they had discovered a way to make electric power from Cold Fusion. This would mean limitless cheap power that left little waste. It could even use nuclear waste as a fuel. After a lot of excitement, upon closer scrutiny it was discovered it didn’t really work. Oh well.

1990- President George H.W. Bush banned broccoli from the White House.
He joked; "Read My Lips ! I hate Broccoli !"

2003- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, Beating out Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet. Twenty One years later he won again for The Boy and the Heron.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was Helen of Troy?

Answer: Beautiful Helen was one of the children born to Zeus, who seduced Leda in the form of a swan. Helen was married King Menelaus of Sparta, but she ran off with Paris a prince of Troy. Menelaus got together with the other Greek kings Agamemnon and Odysseus sailed together to attack Troy. So Helen is known as “ The face that launched a thousand ships.”

Quiz: Okay, so who was Helen of Troy?

Yesterday’s Quiz: What was chiraro-scurro? (Hint: artwork)
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History for 3/22/2024
Birthdays: Anthony Van Dyck, Marcel Marceau, Stephen Sondheim, Karl Malden, Werner Klemperer, animator Milt Kahl, George Benson, James Gavin, Allen Neuharth, Milt Kahl, Charlie Downs, Mort Drucker, Fanny Ardant is 75, Lena Olin is 69, Bruno Ganz, Reese Witherspoon is 48, Keegan Michael-Key is 53, William Shatner is 93.

In ancient Rome this day was the Festival of the Entry of the Tree- when the priestesses of Cybele, the Magna Mater, would lead a procession through the streets carrying pine or palm branches. In later times the Christians took this custom and called it Palm Sunday.

1622- POWHATAN INDIANS ATTACKED JAMESTOWN- While the Pilgrims were still thinking of coming to America and Plymouth Rock was just another rock, Jamestown Virginia was the only English settlement in North America.
After the deaths of Pocahontas and Powhatan, Opescanacough- pronounced Opee-cantanoo, became Mamanatowick- overall chief of the Virginia Powhatan Confederation. He hated the English since the days of John Smith. So, he resolved to rid his land of the white men once and for all with a simultaneous assault on them from all sides on the same day.
The settlers were taken completely by surprise, many while tending their fields. 300 were killed, among them John Rolfe, the husband of the late princess Pocahontas.
Despite such heavy losses, the English recovered and in a slow war of attrition eventually killed Opescanocough and wiped out the Powhatan people.

1687- Jean Francois Lully was court composer to Louis XIV the "Sun King”. In an age when the baton had not come into use for conductors, Lully conducted his orchestra by beating a large pole on the ground to the tempo of the music. One day during a performance he poked a hole in his own foot with the pole and died of blood poisoning.
On his deathbed he asked a priest for Last Rites but the priest refused unless he burned his latest opera "Atys" which the church considered blasphemous. Lully admitted his sins and burned the manuscript of ATYS in front of the priest, who then gave him the sacrament. A friend came in afterward and said:" How could you burn your work?" Lully smiled:" Don't worry. I have another copy of it here in my desk. "

1719- King Frederick Wilhelm I announced the end of serfdom in Prussia-Germany.

1820 - Commodore Stephen Decatur was killed in pistol duel with Commodore James Baron outside Wash. D.C. Stephen Decatur was a naval hero of the War with Tripoli and War of 1812, who said "My Country Right or Wrong" .

1882- Congress outlawed polygamy.

1894- First Stanley Cup Game- Montreal 3, Ottawa I.

1901- Japan announces that Russia better keep their hands off Korea.

1905-WELTSMACHT (world power) Kaiser Wilhelm in a speech for a dedication ceremony in Bremen tells the Germans that it is their natural right to rule the world. It was another of his rash statements that sent chills through an already tense world situation.
We sometimes think German officials all were like the Nazis, robotic and fanatical. But in the Kaiser’s time many of his officials were just as cynical as you or me. German diplomats despaired whenever Wilhelm put his foot in his mouth. One attaché tried to release an edited text to the press. The Kaiser complained: “Bauer, you left out all the good parts!”
Another time after the Kaiser did an interview for the London Globe & Mail where he called the English people a "Race of Mad Bulls." This caused the German ambassador in London to say to a colleague "Oh Well, we might as well start packing right now..."
Another diplomat said,” The Kaiser’s speeches have the same effect as when first viewing a dead octopus. First shock, then revulsion, then amusement.”

1913- Jack London (White Fang, The Call of the Wild) wrote fellow writers HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill, and asked them how much do they get paid? He was unsure what to charge.

1933- The first SS concentration camp Dachau opened.

1935- Walt Disney Silly Symphony “ The Golden Touch”.

1935- TV SHOWS-The first true television service in the world began in Berlin as Deutscher Fernseh Rundfunk. Broadcasting from the Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, it used a 180-line system, and was on air for 90 minutes, three times a week. Very few receivers then were privately owned, so viewers went instead to Fernsehstuben (television parlors). During the 1936 Summer Olympics, broadcasts up to eight hours a day took place in Berlin and Hamburg.

1944- When the evidence became overwhelming, President Franklin Roosevelt in a national radio address first told the American people of Hitler’s holocaust of the Jews. He warned that all persons aiding in these war crimes would be hunted down. Still no attempt was ever made to bomb Auschwitz, Dachau or even the railroad links to them. US Immigration quotas had been restricted since 1938. Although Jewish groups had complained for years, the US public never really grasped the full horror of the death camps until the film footage returned from the land armies a full year later.

1945- Several Arab nations including Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt form the Arab League. Their goal is the eventual unity of all Arab peoples from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, but about the only thing they all agreed on was hostility to a Jewish state in Israel.

1947- President Truman signed an Executive Order # 9835 ordering background checks of all government employees to see if they were commies, and to take an Oath of Loyalty to the United States. Two million took the oath, only 129 were sacked for refusing.

1958- Hollywood producer Mike Todd was killed in a small plane crash. He produced hit movies like Around the World in 80 Days and romanced starlets like Gypsy Rose Lee and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Todd had been married for one year and she was devastated by the accident. Years and many marriages later Taylor said Mike Todd was the only man she ever really loved.

1960- Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes patented the laser beam. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER. Pussycats rejoice!

1970- The Beatles began their up. Paul McCartney filed papers in a London court for a formal dissolving of the Fab Four’s partnership. A year later John Lennon signed the final papers at Disneyworld Florida.

1972- Concluding a five-year study, the National Commission on Drug Abuse recommended ending all penalties and laws prohibiting marijuana. No one in authority listened to them.

1972- Congress passed the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, forbidding any discrimination by sex. The ERA was first proposed by women’s rights groups in 1923. With the heady atmosphere of Women’s Liberation in the early 70s the amendment seemed a no-brainer, even Ronald Reagan supported it. However, the Conservative backlash led by anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly slowly stunted its ability to win over states for ratification. The ERA died unratified in 1982.

1976- In Tunisia, George Lucas’ first day filming Star Wars.

1978- Karl Wallenda, 73 year old scion of the daredevil family the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death from a tightrope between two resort hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1991- Ivana Trump divorced Donald Trump. A celebrated court case ensued to see how the huge Trump fortune would be divided up. Newspapers cried, Ivanna More Money! When she died he had her buried in an unmarked grave on this Florida golf course.

1995- First day of shooting on that utterly classic film- Dinosaur Valley Girls!

2004- Israeli missiles blew up Sheik Ahmed Yasin, the quadriplegic founder of the Palestinian group Hamas.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What was chiraro-scurro? (Hint: artwork)

Answer: Chiaroscuro translated from the Italian basically means "light to dark.” It refers to works of art that use modulated textures, accented shadows and especially bold contrasts between light and dark areas to increase the drama and dimension of the artwork. Very popular in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, the 16th century painter Caravaggio’s works are synonymous with the style. (Thanks FG)