My old Boss, Mentor and Muse Dick Williams is coming out with a DVD to accompany his famous book. He released a sneak peak on Jerry Beck's website CARTOON BREW where he animated the figures on the books cover.



Beautiful stuff. The Old Master is showing all us young pups he still got it. I don't know about you, but I'm going to go get mine soon.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/ and see June 5th entry.

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Question: What does Gung-Ho mean?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: How did Nazis smell? ( hint, it’s not a joke.)
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History for 6/7/2008
Birthdays: Pope Gregory XIII, Beau Brummel, Paul Gauguin, Chick Corea, George Szell, Tom Jones, Jessica Tandy, James Ivory, Virginia McKenna, Liam Neeson, Prince

1191- Richard the Lionheart arrived in the Holy Land for the Third Crusade, he went by ship via Sicily and Cyprus- the easy way. The Crusaders met him on the beach with an old song that today is "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow".

1594- All during Queen Elizabeth Ist reign there were plots and attempts on her life. This day the Queens Spanish-Jewish doctor Rodrigo Lopez was executed on suspicion of his attempting to poison the Queen. The evidence was circumstantial and Elizabeth took several weeks to decide to sign the death warrant. When the news got out there was a wave of Anti-Semitic feeling among the English populace, even though most Jews had been banned from England since 1388. This is seen as the time when William Shakespeare got the inspiration to create Shylock the wicked Jewish money lender in his play the Merchant of Venice.

1654- French Louis XIV "the Sun King" is crowned.

1692- Port Royal, the Jamaican port that became haven for buccaneers and pirates of the Carribbean, was destroyed by a huge earthquake. After Tortuga was cleaned out of pirates by the Spanish Navy Port Royal became the unofficial pirate capitol. At its height with a harbor that could shelter 150 ships she boasted more citizens than Boston and more money per capita than London.

1769- Frontiersman Daniel Boone reached Kentucky by charting a way through the Cumberland Gap. Though they seem quaint hills today in Colonial times the Allegheny Mountains presented an insurmountable barrier preventing further movement west from the colonies of the Atlantic coast. Boone’s achievement was the first penetration of this wall. Daniel Boone was once asked if he ever got lost. “ Nope” he said: “But I was bewildered once.”

1776- In the Continental Congress representative Richard Henry Lee stands up and proposes a resolution calling for American Independence. " Be it Resolved that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States." This began the fateful debate that lasted until July 2nd. John Adams calculated that at this time only one third of the American public was for full independence, one third was for reconciliation with Britain and one third was fence sitting.

1856-CONGRESSIONAL SLUGFEST- During an angry debate on the slavery issue South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks attacks and beat unconscious Massachusetts Representative Charles Sumner right on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"I wore out my cane on his head!” Brooks boasted. Admirers sent Brooks more canes.

1860- Workmen in San Francisco began laying track on Market Street for a light rail system, the famous Cable Cars.

1924- This day marked the last known contact with the George Mallory Expedition. He was the first mountain climber to attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. They disappeared shortly after. Mallory’s bones were finally discovered in 1999. We all know that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenjin Norgai conquered Everest in 1953, but Mallory reach the top first ? Unlike Scott of the Antarctic he left no diary or logbook so we may never know.

1932- During the Great Depression about one third of the independent banks in the U.S. failed. On this day Hollywood was affected because the First Bank of Beverly Hills went under, erasing the assets of many important Hollywood figures.
Greta Garbo lost one million dollars overnight. Louis B. Mayer, ever one to capitalize on a situation, offered her an advance if she would sign an exclusive 7 year contract with MGM. Garbo's back was to the wall so she signed, but then got her revenge in her own way- namely she immediately went on a 6 month vacation to Europe and took a lesbian lover named Mercedes DeAcosta whom she tongue-kissed in public.

1954- Scientist Alan Turing was considered one of the fathers of the digital computer. His developments influenced computer research throughout the 1940s, and he predicted one day computers would be able to think like humans. But when Turing was revealed to be gay he had to chose jail or medical treatment in a mental hospital. Medical procedures to “cure” homosexual inclinations could include electro-shock, lobotomy and narcotics. This day after a humiliating examination, Alan Turing committed suicide at age 42.

1975- Happy Birthday VCR’s ! This day Sony announced the first home videotape playing system, the Betamax. They were about $25,000 each but we were promised as they became more popular the price would come down. Today they average around a hundred bucks.

1993- Rockstar Prince celebrated his birthday by changing his name to that funny symbol no keyboard can reproduce and no one can say. In 2000 he switched back to Prince.

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Yesterday’s question: What did Nazis smell like?

Answer: According to Steven Ambrose book Band of Brothers, a veteran of the 101st Airborne in charge of prisoners, said Nazis :” Smelled of leather and wet wool..”

In addition, this came in from mi old companero Oscar in Old London Town;
"It may sound like a Woody Allen scenario, but medical historians are unanimous that Adolf Hitler was the victim of uncontrollable flatulence. Spasmodic stomach cramps, constipation and diarrhea, possibly the result of nervous tension, had been Hitler's curse since childhood and only grew more severe as he aged. As a stressed-out dictator, the agonizing digestive attacks would occur after most meals: Albert Speer recalled that the Fuehrer, ashen-faced, would leap up from the dinner table and disappear to his room.

In case you don’t believe it- SOURCES/FURTHER READING: Gordon, Bertram, "Fascism, the Neo-Right and Gastronomy: A Case in the Theory of the Social Engineering of Taste," Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery (1987); Heston, Leonard and Renate, "The Medical Casebook of Adolf Hitler: His Illnesses, Doctors and Drugs", (New York, 2000); Irving, David, "The Secret Diaries
Of Hitler's Doctor", (London, 1983);

From the Dani Levi's comedy Mein Fuehrer: The Truly, Truest, Truthful, Truth about Adolf Hitler.

Quiz: What did the Nazis smell like?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who was the first actor to play Tarzan in a movie?
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History for 6/6/2008
Birthdays: Diego Velasquez, Pierre Corneille. Alexandre Pushkin, Nathan Hale, John Trumbull, Thomas Mann, Klaus Tennestedt, Bjorn Borg, Richard Crane, Harvey Fierstein, Aram Kharachaturian, Sandra Bernhard is 53, Paul Giamatti is 41,The Dalai Lama

1683- The worlds first public museum , the Ashmolean, was opened. English archaeologist Elias Ashmole donated his collection of curiosities to Oxford University for the students to study. A building was commissioned from Christopher Wren and the museum opened to the public this day.

1727- BATTLE OF THE DIVAS- In Old London at this time the rage was for Italian Operas. Many international musicians made lucrative livings singing for Britons. Italian soprano Francesca Cuzzoni was the reigning star but a rival arrived in town named Faustina Bodoni. This night at His Majesty’s Theatre Covent Garden with the Princess of Wales in attendance as Bodoni tried to sing Astianatte, Cuzzoni fans booed, hissed and shouted so much a fight broke out. Soon the two rival singers were up on stage tearing each others hair out, fistfights in the pit and scenery being pulled down. Composer George Frederich Handel laughingly accompanied the mayhem with an impromptu solo on kettledrums.

1844 –George Williams formed the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in London, for lonely young men working in the new urban factories to have an alternative to pubs and dance halls.

1918- BATTLE of the BELLEAU WOOD- In World War One as the first U.S. Marine units arrive in the Western Front, Marshal Foch threw them in front of a major German attack. They stopped the Germans only 37 miles from Paris. When the Yanks arrived in the trenches, the French commander announced the entire Allied line was retreating. Marine Major Taylor replied: " Retreat ? Hell, we just got here !" and they went into action. Later in the fighting the same major was heard bellowing to his men:" Come on' you sons a' b-tches! Do you wanna live forever?!"

1925 - Walter Percy Chrysler founded Chrysler Corp.

1939- Playright Eugene O’Neill had hit a dry spell of no writing and fears of impending Parkinsons disease. This day he got the inspiration to sketch out two outlines for two potential plays- The Iceman Cometh, and Long Days Journey into Night.

1941- Actor George Raft wrote a memo to studio head Jack Warner reminding him of his contractual commitment to send Raft only good quality scripts. The latest he got: " The Maltese Falcon" he thought was a lousy substandard idea that has no chance." Humphrey Bogart did the film instead.

1944-D-DAY, the NORMANDY INVASION- General Dwight Eisenhower launched 4,000 ships, 11,000 planes and 150,000 troops on the shores of Nazi occupied France with the order: "Okay. Let's go.". In Moscow where the Soviets had been begging for a second front, there was wild celebrations and Radio Moscow played "Yankee-Doodle" all day. Eisenhower had planned that green troops be used in the first wave. "If they knew what was waiting for them like the veterans know, they wouldn't go." Many technological innovations were tried including floating pre-fabricated harbors "mullberries" and amphibious vehicles. Some were duds like the "swimming tanks" Sherman tanks with a large rubber donut around them. 36 tanks were launched into the waves and 32 sank almost immediately.
In the assault were future Senator Robert Dole, Disney key assistant Dale Oliver and Fleischer animator Willy Bowsky. Sergeant Baumgarden drew on his jacket a large Star of David and wrote "Bronx, N.Y." under it to let Hitler know who was coming. Many of the infantry had rolled condoms onto the muzzles of their guns to keep sand and water out of them. Famed war photographer Robert Capa leaped into the surf before the landing barges reached shore and walking backwards with the whole Nazi army shooting at him photographed the first G.I.s landing on Omaha Beach. His 22 rolls of film were later ruined by an inept lab developer.
The German High command was taken completely by surprise. When the invasion happened many officers were coming home from a weekend seminar on how to fight an invasion, and Hitler had taken a sleeping pill and left orders not to be disturbed.

Robert Capa's famous photo of Omaha Beach. The central is future Disney animation artist Victor Haboush. Vic survived Omaha Beach to contribute designs to 101 Dalmations and Warner Bros The Iron Giant.

1949-Comic strip character Joe Palooka gets married to Ann Howe.

1949-BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING- George Orwell's book about technological tyranny -1984 was first published. Orwell's working title was "The Last Free Man", but the publisher thought it too depressing to sell. So Orwell picked the date 1984, who's only significance was that it was the year he was writing 1948- reversed

1955 - Bill Haley & Comets, "Rock Around the Clock" hits #1.

1972 - David Bowie releases "Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust"

1976- The Glendale Galleria shopping mall in Glendale Cal. opened.

1991 - NBC announced Jay Leno would replace retiring Johnny Carson, winning out over David Letterman. Letterman proceeded moved to CBS.

2007- The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim California, named for a Disney movie, win the Stanley Cup after defeating the Ottawa Senators. It is the first Stanley Cup won by a west coast team since 1925.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was the first actor to play Tarzan in a movie?

Answer: Elmo Lincoln starred in 1918’s hit Tarzan the Ape Man. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs was shocked that his agile creation was being portrayed by this beefy former Arkansas policeman. But women of the time thought he was pretty sexy with his bare, hairy, 52 inch chest.

Quiz: Who was the first actor to play Tarzan in a movie?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What does it mean when you say:” Read them the Riot Act”?
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History for 6/5/2008
Birthdays: Socrates, Pancho Villa, Thomas Chippendale -furniture maker, not male strip club owner, Igor Stravinsky, Archduchess Anastasia Romanov, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Dean Acheson, Bill Moyers, Hopalong Cassidy, Tony Richardson, Kenny G., Lancelot Ware the founder of Mensa, Spaulding Gray, Mark Wahlberg

221B.C. - The Chinese poet Chu Yuan drowned himself as a protest of an unjust Emperor. His memory is remembered by the annual Dragon Boat Festival. People decorate boats like dragons and created dumplings to drop into the river to dissuade fish from eating the remains of the poet.

1455- Poet Francois Villon gets thrown out of Paris again, this time for stabbing a priest in a bar fight. Gotta watch out for priests in bars....

1502- LEONARDO GETS A JOB- This day Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by Caesare Borgia as a military engineer. Borgia was the son of Pope Alexander VI and wanted to conquer Italy for the Church. The artist-scientist Leonardo had promised Borgia he could design horrific war making devices like tanks, flame-throwers and poison gas. Most of these things were impractical for the Renaissance but Borgia used him to map the topography of the lands he intended to conquer. After a few months the Pope died and the new Pope exiled Caesare Borgia. Leonardo went on Renaissance Craiglist again.

1805- The first tornado seen by white men in Tornado Alley, Southern Illinois.

1816- The Year Without a Summer- Volcanic explosions in Indonesia and the Caribbean threw so much ash into the atmosphere that large parts of the U.S. recorded winter temperatures throughout the summer months. This day in New England it was 83 degrees, then it plunged to 42, then the following day saw ten inches of snow. Still, Currier and Ives had more time to paint those cutesy sleighride scenes...

1876- At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition Americans become enamoured of an exotic new food- Bananas.

1884-Retired General William T. Sherman refused the Republican Convention's call to run for President. He was the first to say: " If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve." The "Hero of Georgia" hated politicians and newspapermen. When military governor of the Presidio in the 1850's he was offered the nomination of mayor of San Francisco. He refused by saying:" I do not feel qualified to enter politics-I never graduated from a penitentiary." Another time he commented: "I have a happy life. The day after I announced myself a candidate for office I would read in the newspaper how I poisoned my grandmother. I never knew my grandmother, but there the story would be, in full lurid detail!"

1916- Grand Sherif Hussein of Mecca launched the Great Arab Revolt against the Turkish Empire. We in the west don’t remember Hussein as much as his British military advisor, a moody young man named T.E. Lawrence or Lawrence of Arabia.

1944-In London General Eisenhower received reports that the storm system over Europe would lighten slightly. If he postponed the Normandy invasion any further he risked losing the favorable tide conditions until September. Ike launched the largest amphibious invasion in history with the words: " I don't like it, but I don't see any other way.- Okay, let's go."

1963- BRITAIN ENTERS THE 60'S, BABY...The Profumo Scandal. Sir John Profumo was defense minister, protege of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, and a rising star in Tory politics. This day Profumo resigned in disgrace and brought down the government, when it came out he was keeping a 19-year-old `party-girl' named Christine Keilor as his mistress. She was not only sleeping with married Sir John but was also dating a known Russian spy.

1964 - Davie Jones & King Bees debut "I Can't Help Thinking About Me," The group disbanded but Davie Jones went on to success after changing his name to David Bowie.

1968- FORTY YEARS AGO- SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATED at 12:15 AM in the kitchen area of the Ambassador hotel in LA after winning the California Presidential primary.
Depressed by the slaying of Martin Luther King in April, Bobby Kennedy had said: "The only thing between me and the Presidency is a gun." The assassin was a Palestinian waiter named Sirhan Sirhan. He picked the one-year anniversary of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War to do the deed. "Kennedy you son of a bitch!" he shouted as he fired two shots into the back of his skull. RFK lingered for a day. He was 42. His eldest son watched his father get shot on live television, and never got over it. He died of a drug/alcohol abuse several years later. Sirhan Sirhan is still in jail today and the Ambassador Hotel has been bulldozed for a High School.
Bobby Kennedy’s killing is one of those moments when history takes a sharp turn. Kennedy had the democratic primaries wrapped up, even though Vice President Hubert Humphrey had the mainstream Democratic machine behind him. Arguably, he would have defeated Richard Nixon. The final vote was close, even against the substitute candidate Humphrey. No Nixon means no Watergate, No Cambodian Killing Fields, no Ford, Carter, Reagan, IranContra, Clinton or the Bush Dynasty. Would Bobby have gotten us out of Vietnam four years earlier? He told the press his desire was for negotiations but privately told reporters his first priority would be to get us out immediately. Interesting what might have happened.

1981- The U.S. Center for Disease Control published the findings of scientist Michael Gottlieb on the pneumonia’s of six L.A. patients to be something new called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Cases had been reported as early as 1975 and there is an ongoing argument whether Gottlieb or a French team at the Pasteur Institute discovered the disease first.

1998- Reuters and ABC News erroneously reported the death of 96 year old Bob Hope. Arizona Congressman Robert Stump announced the comedian’s death on the floor of the House, to the great surprise of Hope who was eating breakfast at the time. Bob Hope lived four more years, dying at age 100.

2004- Ronald Reagan, The Gipper, the Great Communicator, The Teflon President, FBI informant T-10, Arrow Shirt model, Forty Mule Team Borax salesman, Hippie bashing California Governor and the oldest living US president, died at age 93.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean when you say:” Read them the Riot Act”?

Answer: The Act Against Riotous and Tumultuous Assembly” was passed in the first year of King George 1st in 1715. It was first used to great effect in the Gordon Riots outside Parliament in 1750. A herald read the degree out loud and you have until he finishes, before the troops started shooting and clubbing people.

"Our sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King."

Just got another box of books from Amazon. I have to find more room on my shelves now. In honor of the anniversary of the birth of Hollywood Ten Writer Alvah Bessie, I wanted to mention that his son Dan Bessie wrote a memoir entitled REELING THROUGH HOLLYWOOD.



It not only talks about his life with his famous but periodically persecuted parent, but that for awhile Dan Bessie was an assistant animator at MGM on Tom & Jerry, as well as Linus the Lionhearted, and other animated shows. He later became a well known independent filmmaker. Thanks to my old friend Maddy Diaz of Van Eaton Gallery for telling me about it.

Robert McKinnon has done a warm biography of the great Warner Bros designer Maurice Noble entitled STEPPING INTO THE PICTURE. I'm glad Robert didn't edit Maurice's salty sense of justice and his political acumen. Maurice was proud of his striking Disney's in 1941 and was always angry when artists didn't stand up for themselves. He never shirked from telling me how a good union-man should act.

Also I finally scored a copy of the late Prof Bill Moritz biography of famed German abstract filmmaker Oskar Fischinger OPTICAL POETRY. Although I never met Oskar, I knew Bill and Oskar's widow Elfriede. Elfriede was a tireless champion of Oskars legacy. The man who is mostly known now for the Toccatta and Fugue part of Disney's FANTASIA had an amazing life, escaping from the Nazis and creating amazing abstract films that were as inspiring to the pioneers of CG as Muybridge was to early film. Bill Moritz died much too early from cancer, but I am pleased he was able to complete his history of the great filmmaker. It is a pretty good read.

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Quiz: What does it mean when you say:” Read them the Riot Act”?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What do George Washington, Casanova and Mozart all have in common?
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History for 6/4/2008
Birthdays: King George III, Alvah Bessie, Rosalind Russell, Gene Barry, Dennis Weaver, Robert Merrill, Bruce Dern, Andrea Jaeger, Dr Ruth Westheimer, Freddy Fender, Noah Wylie, Rachael Griffiths, Angela Jolie is 33

1070- THE BIRTHDAY OF ROCQUEFORT CHEESE. Legend has it on this day in the town of Roquefort a shepherd found in a cave some cheese he had been saving but had forgotten about. He noticed it was covered with mold but he was hungry and ate it anyway, and lo and behold, it tasted much better than before...

1249-King Louis IX of France (St. Louis) arrives in the HolyLand on Crusade.

1259- Kubilai Khan, the grandson of the Genghis Khan, was elected council the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. Kubilai then shattered Mongol tradition by dividing the huge Empire into three pieces. His uncles Kaidu and Batu would rule the Mongol homeland and Western section (the Golden Horde) respectively while Kubilai preferred to rule China as it's emperor. In doing this he was acknowledging the reality that the master plan of Genghis for world conquest was unfeasible. The empire which extended from Korea to Budapest to Baghdad was unmanageable and would break up anyway. Kubilai Khan's Yuan Dynasty in China would last. He was the Chinese Emperor who met Marco Polo.

1666- Moliere’s play"Le Misanthrope"premiered.

1717- FREEMASONS- The Grand Lodge of England was inaugurated in London on St John the Baptist Day. This is considered by some the birth of Freemasonry, but many alleged histories claim the practices of the Brotherhood of the Craft go back to ancient Egypt and was brought to England by the Knights Templar in the 1300’s. There is some validity to the reports of independent Lodges already existing in the 1630’s in England and earlier in Scotland. The Freemason movement spread throughout Europe and became an alternative to religion for many intellectuals in the 1700’s. Mozart, Haydn, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Casanova, Voltaire and many more were members.

1896-Henry Ford tests out his automobile with headlights in a nighttime drive around Detroit.

1916-THE HERO PIGEON OF VERDUN- During the horrific battle of Verdun the Germans had surrounded the French strongpoint of Fort Vaux. The fighting in the underground 15 foot high concrete tunnels of the fort was ghastly, men killed each other with hand grenades and flamethrowers at close quarters while groping through the blackness and gagging at the stench of rotting corpses. The French commander Captain Reynal, his telephone communications cut, sent his last carrier pigeon to get help. The pigeon, despite being badly gassed and perching on the roof of the fort for a little while, got through to the high command. Delivering his message like Phiddipides of Marathon he then fell over dead. Help never got through, and Captain Reynal had to surrender, but the dead pigeon was awarded the medal of the Legion d'Honneur. Go figure.

1916 - Mildred J Hill, one of the two Hill sisters who composed the song Happy Birthday To You, died at 56.

1919- The Women's Suffrage Act passes the Senate by one vote. A chorus of women in the visitor's gallery break into :"Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow". The deciding vote was cast by a Utah senator who wanted to please his mother.

1942- The BATTLE OF MIDWAY. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto committed the bulk of his carrier force to destroy the American Navy once and for all. Recent research of Japanese Imperial files reveal he considered this step a prelude to the invasion of the Hawaiian Islands, which he hoped would force America to negotiate peace. But the path of Yamamoto’s fleet was revealed by the breaking of the top Japanese radio codes and the American fleet laid an ambush for him. It was a battle of carrier-based planes where the opposing ships never see each other. The famous suicide attack of TBY-8, was an attack of U.S. torpedo planes on the Japanese carrier fleet without fighter cover. Of 51 planes, 47 were shot down by faster more agile Zeros. But while the zeros were on deck getting refueled and rearmed a cloud of screaming Dauntless divebombers dropped out of the sky and blew Yamamotos four best aircraft carriers to bits- The Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu and Kaga. One American carrier the Yorktown was sunk. The Japanese fleet would never mount an attack of this size again. Its defeat was seen by the U.S. Navy as the turning point of the Pacific War.

1942- Capitol Records opened for business.

1944- American armies at last enter Rome. An Allied beachhead had been established at Anzio last February only a few miles away and scouts had reported the Eternal City wide open, but the American generals Lucas and Clark hesitated until the Germans could bring up reinforcements and bog them down for weeks. But this day they entered the city to the cheers of the populace. A G.I. cartoonist named Vinny solicited laughs from the troops by appearing on Mussolini’s balcony on the Via Del Corso and doing a mock interpretation of Il Duce.

1947- The film "A Miracle on 34th St." opened. Starring Maureen O’Hara, Edmund Gwen and 8 year old Natalie Wood.

1951- The Supreme Court upholds the anti-Communist Smith Act. This act stated you could be fired from your job or jailed even on a suspicion that you were a communist, no proof required.

1951- Tony Curtis married Janet Leigh. Besides proving Tony wasn’t gay, the result was to produce Jamie Leigh-Curtis.

1965- The Rolling Stones release the single "Satisfaction".

1967- The television show "The Monkees" won the Emmy award for Best Comedy.
go figure... The producers of the Pre-Fab Four raise enough money and clout to fund later projects like the hit movie Easy Rider. This same ceremony saw Bill Cosby become the first African-American to win an Emmy, this for his role in the series I-Spy. The show's producer Sheldon Leonard, used to write for the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show.

1977- The Apple II went on sale. It became the Model T of the cyberworld, the first successful mass marketed personal computer.

1989-THE TIENAHMEN SQUARE MASSACRE. Chinese army troops loyal to Deng Zhao Peng crush the student democracy movement in the center of Bejing. The demonstrations started around a funeral for Hu Yao Bang, a party premier who was ousted for his liberal democratizing policy. The crowds gathered in strength and militancy, students joined by workers and soldiers. There was a hope China’s ruling regime would fall to a "people-power" type revolution that had overthrown Marco’s Philippines and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But Premier Deng brought in soldiers from the rural provinces and brutally cracked down. No figures of total casualties exist but the figure ten thousand is thrown around as conservative. Incidentally this incident probably was the beginning of the world popularity of CNN news. Despite threats from commissars correspondent Mike Chinoy remained at his post and continued to broadcast when all other news teams had fled. Deng Zhao Ping’s name was a pun on the word for "little bottle" so people showed their resistance by smashing dozens of small bottles out on the street.

1990- The New York Daily News quietly discontinued its long running comic strip Ching Chow. Besides being ethnically offensive, the little one panel strip of a stereotype Chinese man with a long hair queue saying silly Confucian platitudes, also was the source of racetrack and numbers racket tips.

2003- Martha Stewart, the self-made millionaire leader of a home recipe empire, was indicted for insider stock trading.
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Yesterday’s Question: What do George Washington, Casanova and Mozart all have in common?

Answer: They were all Freemasons.

What do George Washington, Casanova and Mozart all have in common?

Quiz- Yesterday in Hollywood there was a big fire on the Universal back lot. Why is the area where they film movies called Lots?
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History for 6/3/2008
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Jefferson Davis, Josephine Baker, King George V, Henry Shrapnel, Tony Curtis is 82, Allen Ginsburg, Collen Dewhurst, Alain Renais, Curtis Mayfield, Paulette Goddard, Maurice Evans, Jack Oakey, Jan Peerce, Zoltan Korda, John Dykstra, Tom Arnold, Hale Irwin, Chuck Barris

The First Friday in June is commemorated as DONUT DAY, when we reflect on the origins of the portable cake. It’s birth in 1847 is credited to a Maine sea captain Hanson Crockett Gregory. Out at sea, the old salt had his breakfast interrupted by a New England squall. So he stuck his cake onto the spoke of his ship’s wheel, while he steered out of danger, thereby creating the legendary hole.

1579- Sir Francis Drake, his ship the Golden Hind parked in Drake's Bay or Anchor Bay or wherever, claims California for England. He calls it Nova Albion. Early explorers thought North and South America was one big island. Magellan had found the way around the southern tip. Drake repeated Magellan's route around South America to attack Panama and the Peruvian treasure fleet. After which he sailed north trying to find the northern end of the island so he could sail around the top to get back into the Atlantic. By Mendocino California Drake realized that this was one big mother of an island and it would be wiser to turn around and go home another way. The Northwest Passage isn't discovered until Canadian ice breaker does it in 1958.

1846- General Stephan Kearny with his Army of the West forming in Texas received orders from Washington to invade Mexican Alta-California.

1851- The American clipper ship Flying Cloud began her maiden voyage from Sandy Hook New York. She was so fast she could sail from New York around South America to San Francisco in 89 days, making her the most celebrated Yankee merchant ship and with the British Cutty Sark the subject of numerous model boat kits.

1888-The poem: "Casey at the Bat" by Edward Lawrence Taylor published in the San Francisco Examiner.

1923- Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini gave Italian women the right to vote.

1924- THE FIRST D.J.- Moses Baritz, working for the BBC affiliate in Manchester England, started a radio program where he spun classical records and chatted in-between song cuts, inventing the Disc Jockey format.

1924- Writer Franz Kafka died in Keirling Austria. He left instructions to
to burn all his unfinished manuscripts, including the Trial. Fortunately his friends did not.

1929- Movie stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr married Joan Crawford.

1939- Movie director Alexander Korda married movie star Merle Oberon.

1943- First Day of the ZOOT SUIT RIOTS- In Los Angeles, Navy and Marine servicemen awaiting embarkation to the World War Two Pacific battlegrounds clashed with Hispanic gangs. Truckloads of off-duty servicemen return to town to enlarge the fight. The servicemen could only tell who to beat up based on whether or not they were wearing a zoot-suit. They beat up two 13 year olds sitting in a theater watching a movie. Downtown L.A. becomes an urban war zone.… so, this is something new-?

1944- Nazi meteorologists in Norway predict a storm system over Europe to last all week. German High Command was sure an invasion of Europe was imminent but that Eisenhower would need at least 4 days of good weather to launch an attack. The original date for D-Day was supposed to be tomorrow June 4th but this night Eisenhower canceled the go-ahead until June 6th. The tides would never be this favorable again until September.
Field Marshal Rommel, deciding there would be no invasion that week, goes home to Germany for conferences and his wife's birthday, June 6th.

1946- THE BIKINI went on sale. Parisian designer Jacques Castel invented the two piece women’s bathing suit. Named the Bikini for the Atomic test in the Bikini islands Castel said it would "hit the fashion world like an atomic bomb". The first model to wear it was a stripper because the regular fashion models refused to parade around in 'Castel's flimsy straps'.

1946- A consumer study finds there are only 10,000 television sets in America.
A follow up study five years later finds the number at 12 million.

1949 - Dragnet is 1st broadcast on radio ( KFI in Los Angeles ). Creator Jack Webb wanted to capture the dry, non-theatrical delivery he heard real cops use. He ordered his actors to “stop acting, just read the lines”. Webb wrote the scripts from real LAPD cases and starred as well.

1967 - Aretha Franklin's "Respect" reaches #1. Sockittome,sockittome,sockittome.

1968- Artist Andy Warhol was shot in the gut three times by Valerie Solanas, author of the "SCUM Manifesto". Warhol barely lived but recovered. Solanas was institutionalized.

1971- The First artificial gene created.

1976 –Galileo-Galileo Fig-a-ro! Queen's single "Bohemian Rhapsody" goes gold.

1980- President Jimmy Carter announced the United States would boycott the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow because of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians boycotted the LA Olympics in 1984 and left Afghanistan in 1989. One of the casualties of the boycott was the animated film Animalympics by Steve Lissberger.
Animators who worked on it include Roger Allers, Dan Haskett, Brad Bird, Bill Kroyer, Randy Cartwright, Andy Gaskill, and me.

1986- Attorney Roy Cohn was disbarred by a federal appellate court. It was a symbolic act because Cohn would soon be dead of HIV/AIDS. In his career Cohn had prosecuted the Rosenbergs, helped Sen Joe McCarthy in his anti-Communist witchhunts and defended Mafia dons like John Gotti. Despite being gay himself, one of Cohn’s last acts was to lobby New York State legislators from his deathbed to defeat a Gay Rights Bill.
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Yesterday’s Quiz- Yesterday in Hollywood there was a big fire on the Universal back lot. Why is the area where they film movies called Lots?

Answer: Because in the early days of Hollywood, many movie companies began in storefronts and shot their films in the lot in the back.