Question: What was Country Music called before it was Country Music? Say in the 20s and 1930s.

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Which one never did a voice in an animated film? A-Max Fleischer, B –Walt Disney, C-Tex Avery, D- Brad Bird
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History for 4/7/2009
Birthdays St. Francis Xavier, William Wordsworth, Mongo Santamaria, Francis Ford Coppola is 70, Stan Winston, Walter Winchell, David Frost, Percy Faith, Daniel Ellsberg, Jerry Brown, Alan Pakula, Billie Holiday, Ravi Shankar, Irene Castle, Wayne Rogers, James Garner is 81, Olikirk Christenson-the inventor of Lego toys, Russell Crowe is 45, Jacky Chan is 55

1805- Ludwig Van Beethoven premiered his Symphony # 3 Eroica at Vienna’s Theater-an-der-Wein. It marks his break with the gentle styles of Mozart and Haydn and the evolution of his full mature sound. He originally intended to dedicate it to Napoleon but scratched out the dedication page when he heard Napoleon had renounced Republican liberal values and made himself an emperor. Of all his symphony’s it remained his favorite, despite the opinions of music critics-“ Strange modulations and violent transitions… undesirable originality.”

1827- The first book of matches is patented.

1850 - The California gold rush town of Rough n’ Ready declared itself an independent nation, complete with president, flag and constitution. It lasted about three months, because unknown to them on the other side of the US in Washington, the territory of California was receiving it’s statehood.

1862-THAT DEVIL FORREST! The Second Day of the Battle of Shiloh. Union General Grant, reinforced overnight, counterattacked and recaptured his ground lost the day before by the rebel surprise attack. When General Lew Wallace met him with reinforcements Wallace said :”If stupidity and hard fighting are what you want, here we are.” Grant said: “I’ve had plenty of both already.” The last Confederate under fire was wild cavalry genius Nathan Bedford Forrest.


He led a charge at the Union Army to cover the rebel retreat. At one point the gray-clad horseman found himself cut off and alone in a sea of blue uniforms. The Yankees yelled: "Kill Him! Kill the G-ddamn Rebel! Knock him off his horse!" While Forrest slashed all around him with his saber, a bluecoat pushed his rifle into Forrest's ribs and pulled the trigger. The force of the blast lifted him momentarily out his saddle, but Forrest ignored the wound and kept fighting. To keep from being shot in the back as he galloped to safety Forrest pulled one hapless Yankee up on his horse and used him as a shield, then dropped him down when out of danger. Forrest survived the Civil War " I personally killed ten Yankees and had eleven horses shot out from under me. I finished the war down one horse!"

1865- General Ulysses Grant opened a correspondence with Confederate General Robert E. Lee about the surrender of his army. After the capture of Richmond Grant’s Yankees sensed final victory was close. This night at Farmville Virginia, Grants blue coated troops broke out in a spontaneous torchlight celebration. The sky was illuminated by multitudes of torches and as Grant received their cheers the night sky shook with the sound of “John Brown’s Body” sung by thousands of throats.

1891- Showman P.T. Barnum died of old age. The last words of the man who invented kiddie matinees, the Greatest Show on Earth and coined the word “Jumbo” were "How were the box office receipts today?"

1927- An audience at the Bell Laboratory watched a three inch television screen broadcast an image of US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover with sound.

1927- Abel Gances classic film Napoleon premiered at the Paris Opera. Gances active camera and wild editing were years ahead of their time, climaxed by a triptych of large images on three movie screens linked by synchronized projectors. One American man in the audience, Walter Wallin, was inspired to develop the Panavision wide screen lens, used by many modern movies today.

1933-The Prohibition 18th Amendment is repealed. My grandmother remembered jumping on a beer wagon as they paraded down Fifth Ave. in New York City. Of course, right wing conservatives denounced the decision and predicted the destruction of American morals.



Canadian cities like Moose Jaw Saskatchuan, where Al Capone had set up huge distilleries to run-rum across Lake Michigan, went into mourning. Bootleggers like Josef Bronfman of Seagrams and Joe Kennedy Sr. had to look for other sources of income.

1933- Hitler's regime passed the Professional Civil Service Restoration Act, which ordered Jewish and other political undesirables must be fired from all government posts including university professorships and museum curators and arts funded grants. The mass exile of Germany's intellectual elite began- Bertholdt Brecht, Billy Wilder, George Gropius, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, George Grosz, Kandinsky, Fritz Lang, Michael Curtiz, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy, Max Reinhardt, Oskar Fischinger, and Otto Klemperer -Colonel Klink's dad.

1939-"The Ugly Duckling" the last Disney Silly Symphony short cartoon.

1945-The SUICIDE MISSION OF THE BATTLESHIP YAMATO- The Japanese superbattleship had just enough fuel to cruise into the midst of the American Navy around Okinawa, then it was to sell itself dearly. It never made it though. Because of Ultra, the cracking of the Japanese code, the Americans knew it was coming. The Yamato was bombed and torpedoed by swarms of U.S. planes and went to the bottom before it ever got within range of other surface ships.

1947-The Russians hanged Rudolph Hoess, Nazi commandant of Aushwitz, in front of his villa on the concentration camp grounds. His last words were Seig Heil.

1949-Musical "South Pacific" debuts. Some Enchanted Evening…

1970- The film Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and John Voight won the Best Picture Oscar. The first x-rated film to do so.

1971- In a taped phone conversation, President Richard Nixon complained to Henry Kissinger that none of his cabinet called to compliment him on a policy speech.” Well, screw ‘em ! Screw all the cabinet!”

1972-Gangster "Crazy Joe" Gallo was machine gunned while celebrating his birthday at Umberto's Clam House in the Little Italy section of Manhattan. He had been disturbing the gang peace in New York set up by the council of the Five Families, under the leadership of Godfather Carlo Gambino. Crazy Joe’s headquarters was in the President’s Street section of Brooklyn where supposedly he kept a live African lion as a pet. Finally when Gallo had hit rival don Joe Columbo in broad daylight at a Columbus Day Italian Unity rally the Five Families decided he had gone too far. Ownership of the restaurant was returned in 1994 by the city prosecutors office to the original owner Manny "the Horse" Ianello.

1990- The Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center opened a show of the photographs of Robert Maplethorpe that the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC canceled. Maplethorpe’s explicit depictions of gay and s/m lifestyles shocked neoconservative critics of the national endowments for the arts. A media debate on whether government should subsidize or censor art raged, and Dennis Barry the museum director was tried for obscenity. His acquittal was seen as a victory for free expression but the argument cast a pall on future funding of controversial art.

1998- Pop star George Michael was busted after exposing himself for gay sex to an undercover policeman in a public park men’s room in Beverly Hills.

1998- Lead singer for the Plamatics, Wendy O.Williams, committed suicide with a pistol. She left a note: The act of taking my own life is not something I am doing without a lot of thought. I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me, much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm."


The outrageously mohawked punk rocker was known for stunts on stage like destroying her amplifiers with a chainsaw, skydiving in the nude, autoeroticism with a sledgehammer and crashing a flaming public school bus into a wall of television sets.

2155- According to the show Babylon 5 today marked the first contact between humans and the Centauri Alliance.
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Yesterday’s question: Which one never did a voice in an animated film? A-Max Fleischer, B –Walt Disney, C-Tex Avery, D- Brad Bird

Answer: A- Max Fleischer made appearances in some of his cartoons, but he never did a voice in one.

Quiz: Which one never did a voice in an animated film? A-Max Fleischer, B –Walt Disney, C-Tex Avery, D- Brad Bird

Quiz: Who has never done a voice in an animated cartoon? A- Brad Pitt, B Sean Penn, C- Jeff Goldblum, D- Danny DeVito
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History for 4/6/2009
Birthdays: Raphael of Urbino, Sacajawea, Ram Dass, Butch Cassidy, Gustav Moreau, Lowell Thomas, Merle Haggard, Billy Dee Williams, George Reeves, Michelle Phillips, Andre Previn, Barry Levinson, Roy Thinnes, John Ratzenberger, Zach Braff is 34.

46AD- Battle of Thapsus- Even after Julius Caesar defeated his chief rival Pompey, other enemies kept the Roman Civil War going. This day in Africa, Caesar defeated an army led by a coalition of senatorial foes including Cato the Younger. Caesars troops were angry that they had to fight again the enemies Caesar had pardoned after the Battle of Pharsalia. So after the victory, they went on a killing spree of most of the prisoners. Cato the Younger declared he would spend the rest of his life eating his meals seated upright instead of lying down, which the Romans considered very bad for the digestion.

Then he went on board his flagship at Utica and tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the belly. A doctor bandaged up his wounds. As Caesars officers arrived to arrest Cato, he pulled off the bandages, ripped open his wounds and pulled out his own intestines. “All is well with the General” Cato said and died.

1520- Renaissance artist RAPHAEL of Urbino, died at 37 on his birthday. Vasari wrote of the great artist: " He pursued pleasures and love affairs without moderation. On one occasion he went to excess, and returned home with a violent fever whereof he died soon after." Michelangelo, Leonardo and Titian lived to great old age.

1672- THE LAST DITCH EFFORT. French King Louis XIV invaded Holland with a huge army. England and Germany also declared war and piled on the tiny country. When the Duke of Buckingham advised the Dutch:” Don’t you see your country is lost?” The young William III of Orange replied defiantly” The best way to avoid seeing your country lost is to fight until you die in the last ditch” He coined the phrase “the last ditch effort”. The Dutch under William threw back the invaders from the gates of Amsterdam and eventually recovered all their land back.

1717- BACH BUSTED- Composer Johann Sebastian Bach was court organist for the Duke of Saxe-Weimar but he was frustrated that he couldn’t get the job of court composer- Kappelmeister. Even after the incumbent kappelmeister Johann Drese died instead of Bach the post went to Drese’s son! When the court of the nearby German state of Anhalt-Coethen offered him a better job he went to tell his boss Duke Wilhelm Augustus that he wanted out of his contract. The Duke responded by clapping Bach in prison! Johann Sebastian Bach cooled his heels in the slammer until December when the duke relented and let him go to his new gig. Your Highness, Fugue You!

1817- Princess Charlotte, the only child of the Prince and Princess of Wales, died in childbirth creating a succession crisis. Mad King George III had many children, but they were all amazingly infertile, at least with their legitimate partners. HRH, soon to be George IV, hated his wife and was unlikely to have any more offspring, his younger brother William was childless and their three sisters were spinsters. Lucky for England the Duke and Duchess of Kent just had a new baby girl named Victoria. Later as Queen Victoria she would visit Charlotte’s tomb and meditate on their strange paths of Fate.

1853- The town of Portland Oregon founded.

1862 BATTLE OF SHILOH- One of the bloodiest battles in American on US soil. At dawn the Confederate army surprise attacked the Union army of General Ulysses Grant at a small Tennessee riverboat landing. Orthodox military logic would say Grant should have retreated, however he fought back and won a great, if confused victory. More Americans were wounded or killed in this one battle than all the previous American wars rolled into one. Shiloh is Hebrew for:” Place of Peace”. Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnston, who was said to be as brilliant as Robert E. Lee, was trying to stop his hungry soldiers from sitting down to eat the hot breakfast they scared the Yankees away from. Picking up a tin coffee cup, he told looting rebels 'This is all the plunder I want” He spent the day directing the battle waving his tin cup instead of a sword. He was shot down and bled to death while waiting for his personal doctor to finish treating some captured enemy wounded. A Lieutenant General, Johnston remains the highest ranking American officer killed in action. Other combatants were Welshman William Morton Stanley, who would someday go to Africa and find Dr. Livingston, And General Lew Wallace, who as Governor of New Mexico, when not pardoning Billy the Kid would write the novel Ben Hur. The first day of Shiloh went badly for the North. That night Sherman said in frustration:” Grant, today we’ve had hell to pay!” In the firelight Grant quietly whittled on a stick:” Yep......whip ‘em tomorrow.” he muttered. Which he did.

1868- Brigham Young married Anne Elizabeth Webb, his 27th wife.

1896- The first OLYMPIC GAMES of the modern era opened in Athens Greece. The last was closed by the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius in 391 A.D as a pagan festival. The Games were revived as the idea of Baron Pierre Coubertin, who became the first president of the IOC. These games also saw the first modern Marathon race. Appropriately it was won by a Greek- Spyridion Louis.

1906-THE FIRST ANIMATED FILM- Cartoonist James Stuart Blackton created sensation when Edison filmed him doing sequential drawings and they seemed to come alive. The film was The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Blackton made a fortune, lost it and was hit by a bus in 1941. But his animated antics paved the way for Mickey, Bugs, Bart, Gollum and Laura Croft.



1909- Commander Robert Peary and his African American assistant Matthew Henson claimed to have been the first to reach the North Pole. Their claim was challenged but confirmed by the US Government in 1911. Today scholars say they were slightly off.

1917-THE UNITED STATES ENTERS WORD WAR ONE. Congress approved President Woodrow Wilson’s call for a declaration of war against Germany, and her allies Austria, Turkey and Romania. In 19 months the war would cost 200,000 U.S. lives, cost $56 billion, and created dozens of millionaires. Stock in chemical companies like Dupont or gun makers like Remington, went up 400%. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to sit in Congress, voted against war. At first there was doubt America could join the Allies. America had as citizens one and one half million German, Hungarian and Austrian immigrants, plus millions more of Jewish Americans who hated the Czar of Russia and 16 million Irish Americans who hated England. Plus, American Isolationists who felt Americans should not get involved in overseas arguments. So it was a difficult sell to the public, to say the least.

1929- Mahatma Ghandi and his thousands of followers complete their Salt March and make salt on the shores of the Indian Ocean in violation of the British State monopoly. This was the Indian equivalent of the Boston Tea Party. Ghandi was arrested soon after.

1931- The Little Orphan Annie radio show premiered. Remember kids to drink your Ovaltine and get out your de-coder rings.

1933- the Screen Writer's Guild, later the WGA, formed. It took about seven years for them to unionize screenwriting in Hollywood. Jack Warner called them : "Communists, Radical Bastards and Soap Box Sons of B*tches !" David O. Selznick, who prided himself on running a writer-friendly studio, told them: “You put a picket line in front of my studio and I'll mount a machine gun on the roof and mow you all down !!" Despite these protestations the Guild today represents all Hollywood writers.

1936- A scientist at Dupont invented Teflon.


1945- OPERATION FLOATING CHRYSANTHEMUM- The Japanese attack the U.S. Navy around Okinawa with 355 Kamikazi suicide planes. The concept seems nutty today but it had effect. More U.S. ships were sunk at this battle than in any time since Pearl Harbor. Casualty rates of sailors were so high that the War Dept. ordered a news blackout. The navy actually meditated a withdrawal from Okinawa at one point. Before the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese High Command had 2,200 kamikaze planes hidden in mountain bunkers to await the US invasion of the Japanese home islands.

1951- Happy Birthday AstroBoy! According to the 1951 comic book by Osamu Tezuka, today Professor Elephant completed the little boy with the suction cup feet and pointed hairdo. Originally called Tetsuwan Atomo, he was named Astro Boy when Mushi Prod released the animated version in the US in 1961.

1956- Elvis Presley signed his first movie deal with Paramount Pictures.

1968- Two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, police attacked the Black Panther Party at their Oakland HQ. In the furious shootout a member named Billy Hutton was killed, Eldridge Cleaver wounded and Bobby Seale arrested. This incident seemed to prove the black militants claims of police harassment and caused a firestorm of civic protest. The Black Panthers forged an alliance with the Anti-Vietnam War white students, SDS, and later the Hispanic militants the Young Lords and AIM, the American Indian Movement.

1974- ABBA, a new disco phenomenon from Sweden is introduced to the world when they win a Eurovision song contest. Mama Mia!

1994-The Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi are both killed when their plane crashed. It is never proved why the plane went down but violence broke out in the Rwandan capitol. The ethnic Hutus began a systematic killing of the Tutsi people. It was one of the worst human genocides since the Holocaust.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who has never done a voice in an animated cartoon? A- Brad Pitt, B Sean Penn, C- Jeff Goldblum, D- Danny DeVito

Answer: B-Sean Penn. Brad Pitt was in Dreamwork’s Sinbad and Jeff Goldblum in Prince of Egypt, Danny DeVito was the Satyr in Hercules.

Quiz: Who has never done a voice in an animated cartoon? A- Brad Pitt, B Sean Penn, C- Jeff Goldblum, D- Danny DeVito

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Define ubiquitous.
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History for 4/5/2009
Birthdays: Plato, Swineburne, Booker T. Washington, Josef Lister, Bette Davis, Nadar, Jean Fragonard, Hicks Lokey, Nguyen Van Thieu, historian Robert Bloch, Gale Storm, Washington Atlee-Burpee the mail order seed king, Spencer Tracy, Frank Gorshin, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Greenaway, Gregory Peck, Roger Corman. Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA is 59, Colin Powell is 72

To the ancient Romans this was the Feast Day of the Goddess Fortuna Virilis, or Good Fortune.

To Christians it is Palm Sunday.

622 A.D.- BYZANTINE EMPEROR HERACLIUS began his military campaigns. Heraclius is one of the mysteries of history. He sat lethargic on his throne while the Persian Shah Chosroes II conquered the whole Middle East almost up to his doorstep. Then Heraclius got up, put on his armor and turned into Julius Caesar, Alexander and Rambo all rolled into one. In a lightning campaign he destroyed the Persian army, burned their capitol, sprinkled garbage on the grave of Zoroaster and chased them to the foot of the Himalayas. The Persians assassinated Chosroes just to make Heraclius go away. Then Heraclius went back to his throne and did nothing for the rest of his reign. Moslem Arabs would soon appear from out of Arabia and wipe out both empires, which is why you probably never heard of him. Some speculate that his wife Empress Heracleonas was the real military genius but the scholars recorded the deeds all in the man’s name.

1242-" THE BATTLE ON THE ICE" Lake Pripous. Alexander Nevsky the Prince of Novgorod defeated the German monastic knights The Order of Sword Brothers. These warrior-monks had been sent by Rome to combat pagans in the Baltic lands but after everyone had become Christian they had switched their attention to "Greek Orthodox-Schizmatics". In 1939 Sergei Eisnestein did the famous film Alexander Nevsky about the battle with a musical score by Sergei Prokoviev.

1531- Richard Roose was boiled in oil for trying to poison the Archbishop of Canterbury.

1613- Princess Pocahontas, now baptized Lady Rebecca, married John Rolfe. She had been sold by her cousins to the Jamestown colonists as a hostage for a copper pot. Today many old families in Virginia claim a dynastic link to Pocahontas. John Rolfe is famous for inventing the American tobacco industry. The local Virginia weed was a bit too rough for Englishmen to puff on so Rolfe had tobacco cuttings smuggled out of Brazil and planted in the James River delta. Since the English had found no gold-rich Aztec Indians this settlement was at first viewed as a failure. But this tobacco crop made the Virginia Colony a success to profit hungry investors back home.

1614- English King James I’s second parliament met. It was famous for enacting no laws, basically doing absolutely nothing. Briton’s rejoiced.

1759- A small Dutch fleet blown off course in a Pacific storm discovered a small island. Because it was Easter they named it Easter Island.

1794- French Revolutionaries Danton and Camille Desmoulins go to the guillotine. They were arch-leftists but their old buddy Robespierre wanted them out of the way. So they were convicted of being treasonous counterrevolutionaries. When Danton mounted the scaffold he laughed:" When you take my head off, show it to the people. It will be worth it!"

1815-the volcano Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia killing 12,000 and effecting weather patters around the world. Many quaint Currier & Ives ice skating prints come from this year without a summer.

1827- Englishman Joseph Lister born. Lister was not only the inventor of Listerine but of hygienic medical practices. Before Lister insisted on sterilization hospitals were known as death traps of infection where surgeons would sharpen their scalpels on the sole of their boots before making their incision. He once stopped an epidemic in a hospital by noticing that the interns would go from dissecting cadavers to delivering babies without washing their hands!

1851- New York Mayor Ambrose Kingland proposed that a large park be built in Manahattan for health and recreation. Work on Central Park was begun in 1856.

1860- GARABALDI AND “THE THOUSAND RED SHIRTS” LAUNCH THEIR INVASION OF SICILY. Of the several Italian leaders struggling to unify Italy Guisseppi Garabaldi was the least patient. While the King of Sardinia Vittorio Emanuel and his minister Cavour tried quiet gentle diplomacy, Garabaldi and his "red shirts" launched a unprovoked assault on the Bourbon Kingdom of Two Sicilies and told Vittorio-"You come from the North, I from the South." They met at the middle at Magenta and unified the Italian peninsula for the first time since the Roman Empire fell. While in the south Garabaldi's Northern Italian men wrote home of a new dish they tried- pasta with tomato sauce!

1862- During the Civil War Union General George MacClellan paused in his march through Virginia to attack the old Revolutionary War town of Yorktown. A small force under a rebel leader named MacGruder fooled MacClellan into believing he was facing a large rebel army when he actually outnumbered them 20 to one. MacGruder marched his little force in circles, making multiple camp fires and blowing bugles, trying to look like a larger force than they actually were. When the Yankees finally overran the rebel fortifications they found the heavy cannon pointed at them were harmless logs - Quaker Guns.
In another incident MacClellan held up his main advance several hours while his staff debated how deep a stream was. Finally fearless young cavalry leader George Armstrong Custer walked his horse out into the stream and sat down.”This is how deep it is, General.” Custer said.

1862- Meanwhile in Tennessee Confederate Beauregard and Albert Johnston’s rebel army was sneaking up to surprise attack Ulysses Grants army at Shiloh. But Beauregard was concerned that their undisciplined men were whooping and shooting their guns off and the element of surprise was now lost. Johnston ended speculation by saying:” I intend to fight them tomorrow even if they are a million strong!” Past midnight Yankee General Sherman received reports of rebs skirmishing with his sentries. He told his adjutant to forget it and get some sleep as there would be no battle that day. Shortly afterwards the entire Confederate Army boiled into his camp.

1869- Daniel Bakeman, recorded as the last surviving minuteman of George Washington’s Revolutionary army, died at age 109. A man who looked George Washington in the face lived long enough to be photographed by Matthew Brady.

1874- Johann Strauss Jr.’s operetta Die Fledermaus premiered in Vienna.

1887- Lord Acton wrote: “ Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

1892- THE JOHNSON COUNTY WAR- By the 1890's many great Wyoming cattle ranches were owned by Eastern or European companies. When cattle herds were decimated by the great frost of 1888 a labor dispute arose between the distant employers and the laid off cowboys, many of whom resorted to rustling to make a living. By 1892 the friction became so bad the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association hired a private train and filled it with hired Texas gunfighters and enough ammunition to kill everyone in three states and sent it to Johnson county. This day they pulled out of Cheyenne with orders to shoot or string up any and all rustlers, revolutionists and troublemakers. After killing two men on their list the word got out to the citizens of Casper Wyoming. They gathered en masse and surrounded the Texans in a ranch house laying siege to it, throwing lit dynamite sticks from an armored wagon and shooting at any cowpoke who dared show his face in a window.
The hapless hit men were finally rescued by the U.S. Army, who granted all a general amnesty. The incident was the basis for the movie "Heaven's Gate".

1913- Ebbets Field opened in Flatbush. The Brooklyn Dodgers defeat the New York Highlanders (Yankees) 3-2

1915- Jess Willard knocked down Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion in a title fight in Havana Cuba. The older Johnson retired after the fight. He wouldn’t hold the title long though, on July 4th Willard lost to new kid Jack Dempsey.

1923- Lois Armstrong, King Oliver and the Creole Jazz Band took a train from Chicago to Richmond Indiana to record Chimes Blues. Satchmo’s first record.

1930 -James Dewar invented the Twinkie. Dewar ate two every day of his life and called them “The best darn-tootin idea I ever had!” As an experiment in 1996 five top French master chefs were given the assignment of trying to recreate a Twinkie. They all failed.

1931- Fox Film Company dropped their option on young star John Wayne as a dud not going anywhere. Wayne eked out an existence doing cheap westerns for Republic and Monogram until John Ford made him a star in 1939’s Stagecoach.

1939- For German children, membership in the Hitler Youth corps became mandatory.

1945- The first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

1951- Republican Senator Robert Short read General Douglas MacArthur’s proclamation to the Communist Chinese on the floor of Congress. It read that if they didn’t withdraw from Korea MacArthur would restart the Chinese Civil War and “Rain Nuclear Fire down upon their cities”. Gen. MacArthur had no permission from the State Department to make such a rash statement and it ruined all the behind the scenes maneuvers to get the Chinese to negotiate an end to the Korean War early. Last December MacArthur had received a direct order from the President not to make any public statements about Korean policy, but the General chose to ignore it. President Harry Trumans reacted-“I’m gonna fire that pompous Sunofabitch!”

1951- The Atomic Spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for espionage.

1955- Elderly Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally resigned and retired. He was succeeded as PM by Anthony Eden. Churchill, already the author of several books, joked with his cabinet:” Gentlemen, History shall be kind to us, for I intend to write it!”

1965- Julie Andrews had created the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But when filming the motion picture the studio decided she was not a big enough star so they used Audrey Hepburn with a dubbed singing voice. But Ms Andrews had her revenge .At the Academy Awards My Fair Lady won Best Picture and Rex Harrison best actor but Julie Andrews won the best actress Oscar for Mary Poppins.

1963- The Lava Lamp invented by Dr Edward Craven Walker.

1969- Pope Paul VI abolished those silly big wide brimmed red hats (galeros) the cardinals wore.

1976- Eccentric Billionaire Howard Hughes died at age 76. Hughes had inherited his fathers tool company at 17 and built the mighty Hughes aircraft empire and RKO pictures. But after surviving several test plane crashes, he became addicted to pain killers and became increasing withdrawn from the world. He died a strange shut in, long haired and living on a diet of drugs and saving his urine in mason jars.

1985- Singer David Lee Roth quit the rock band Van Halen to pursue a solo career.

1994- Grunge rock star Kurt Kobain shot himself.

2003- Invading American forces began the Battle for Baghdad.

2030- FIRST CONTACT- According to Star Trek this is the day Professor Zephram Cochran adapted an old World War Three ICBM and invented the Warp Drive, enabling the Earth to begin deep space exploration, and during whose maiden flight he made the first contact with an alien race- from the planet Vulcan.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Define ubiquitous.

Answer: It’s a three-dollar word describing something that seems to be everywhere, under foot, like Kudsu in Georgia, hoodie sweaters, or interviews of me talking about animation in the Good Old Days of Blackwing pencils, Cel Vinyl and time and a half after 8 hours.

Quiz: Define ubiquitous.

Answer to yesterday’s question below- Who coined the term- to start from scratch?
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History for 4/4/2009
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Caracalla, Edweard Muybridge, Maya Angelou, Frances Langford, Irv Spence- Tom & Jerry animator, Gil Hodges, Arthur Murray, Muddy Waters, Cloris Leachman, Dorothea Dix, Elmer Bernstein, Bijan, Robert Downey Jr is 44, Barry Pepper is 39, Hugo Weaving is 48, Heath Ledger would have been 30

If you were a Roman today is the first day of the Megaleasian Festival in honor of Lunus the Moon god. Party! Par-tee!

636AD- Today is the Feast Day of Saint Isadore of Seville, the Patron Saint of the Internet. Don’t believe me? Check out http://www.catholic.org/saints

896 A.D.-THE SYNOD HORRENDIUS-One of the more bizarre incidents in Vatican history. Bishops Stephen and Formosan hated each other. When Formosan became pope Stephen had to bide his time in hiding. After Formosan's death Stephen became pope but was unsatisfied that he couldn't strike back at his old enemy. So Pope Stephen had Formosan's tomb opened and the corpse dressed in bishop's robes, sat up in a chair and put on trial for heresy. The cross examination was pretty strange, the prosecutor said things like :"His very silence is proof of his guilt!" The corpse was convicted, excommunicated, bounced around by a Roman mob and thrown in the Tiber. Pope Stephen VI later became the first pope to be killed in bed with someone's wife.

1561- A strange show in the sky of red discs and crosses was reported over Nuremberg Germany. Perhaps an early UFO sighting?

1581- Queen Elizabeth I visited the Golden Hind, the ship which Francis Drake sailed around the world. The 'Great Pirate of the Unknown Seas" had plundered huge treasure ships and drove Spanish Colonial America crazy. The Spanish Ambassador to London demanded the pirate Drake lose his head, but Queen Elizabeth had a different use in mind for her sword- she knighted the Devon innkeeper's son.
The Golden Hind was kept in a prize anchorage for decades until age and dry rot caused her to fall to pieces. Ben Johnson wrote poems about Sir Francis Drake and Shakespeare's island of wizards in the Tempest may have been modeled on Drake's accounts of the strange stormy islands of Tierra Del Fuego in the Straights of Magellan.

1704 -British sea dog Admiral Rourke and Sir Cloudsley Shovel capture Gibraltar from Spain. Britain still owns it today, which really annoys Spain.

1841-PRESIDENT WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON DIED AFTER ONLY 31 DAYS IN OFFICE. “Old Tippicanoe”caught pneumonia giving his inauguration address in icy drizzle. No U.S. President had ever died in office before and no one knew if the Vice President was now only a caretaker until special elections or was he the president for the next for years. Vice President John Tyler set the rule by staying as President for four full years. People couldn't stand him. They called him "Your Accidency". When he got word of the President's death he was playing marbles with some children and was about to get his knuckles rapped for losing.

1865- LINCOLN IN RICHMOND- Meanwhile against the wishes of his bodyguards that it was still too dangerous Abraham Lincoln toured the newly captured Confederate capitol of Richmond. Most of the white population had fled the smoldering city but crowds of jubilant black slaves pulled his coach and cheered that the Day of Jubilee had arrived. One man kneeled to him and Lincoln raised him up “Father, you no longer have to kneel to any other man, only God. You are Free. Free as air.” Lincoln walked over to the Confederate Executive Mansion and sat in Jefferson Davis’ chair, putting his feet up on his desk. He then visited the family of Rebel General George Pickett of the famous Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. The Pickett’s were friends of Abe and Mary Lincoln before the war and Abe enjoyed bouncing Pickett’s baby boy on his knee.

1932- Louisiana Senator Huey Long tells Congress that 80% of America’s wealth was controlled by 20% of its population. According to Business Week in 1997 80% of America’s wealth was owned by 2% of its population and the top 175 richest people on Earth collectively own 50% of all the total wealth of the planet.

1933- The U.S. Government orders all citizens to turn in their remaining gold dollar coins.

1942- 'THE HUMP' -When the Japanese army overran Rangoon and cut the Burma Road, Allied forces helping Chiang Kai Shek 's Chinese armies and the Flying Tigers were suddenly without supplies. Army Air Corps General Olds and his men begin the daily supply flights of transports from India over the Himalayas to China, or 'Over the Hump'.

1944- During World War Two a South African reconnaissance plane flies over the Auschwitz Concentration Camp and takes photos. When they are analyzed in London the intelligence boys declare it do be nothing more than a synthetic rubber plant.

1952-CARTOON COMMIES- Nationally syndicated columnist Walter Winchell accused the owners of a New York commercial animation studio, Tempo Productions, of Communist sympathies. One of the owners was Disney Layoutman Dave Hilberman, who was a union organizer and was the only artist personally denounced by Walt Disney to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. The F.B.I. began investigating Tempo and their Madison Avenue clients quickly pulled their business. Tempo closed, laying off 50 artists. Mr. Clean, Markie Maypo and the Hamm’s Beer Bear were once again safe from Red subversion.

1954- Arturo Toscanini , who had been making music since the 1880’s, conducted his final concert.

1958- Screen goddess Lana Turner and her gangster lover Johnny Stompanato had a violent argument that ended when Turner’s teenage daughter plunged a large kitchen knife into his chest. She was acquitted as justifiable homicide and some rumors maintain the daughter was covering for her mother’s actions. It was whispered Hollywood society ladies had nicknamed Stompanato’s male organ Oscar for it’s size.

1967- Van Nuys premier head shop Captain Ed’s Heads & Highs first opened for business.

1968- DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ASSASSINATED. The great civil rights leader was struck in the head by a dum-dum bullet fired from a high powered rifle while he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. His last words were teasing Jesse Jackson for not being dressed properly for going out to a dinner. Jesse was wearing a turtleneck instead of suit and tie. Dr. Benjamin Hooks ran to the phone to get help but the switchboard was not working. The motel manager's wife who usually ran the switchboard had seen the shooting and the shock had given her a heart attack. She died the next day. The Memphis police had always surrounded King's party with at least seven officers whenever he was in town. For some unknown reason that morning they were ordered to stand back at least seven blocks. It was the one-year anniversary of the speech where he declared his opposition to the Vietnam War. A man named James Earl Ray was later apprehended in England, confessed to the shooting and was given a life sentence. He later recanted his confession and said the FBI coerced him and he was taking orders from a mysterious contact man named Raul. James Earl Ray died in 1998. The King family reopened the investigation and a civil court ruled that Dr. King was probably killed by a conspiracy. When F.B.I. director J.Edgar Hoover heard about the assassination he did what he did the day John Kennedy was shot, he spent the day at the racetrack celebrating.

1968- When news of Martin Luther King's assassination got out 175 US cities suffered urban riots and street fighting . In Indianapolis Sen. Bobby Kennedy was scheduled to go speak to a mostly black ghetto crowd. His police escort refused to follow him out of fear. Kennedy went anyway, told the shocked audience the terrible news, made a reference to his own murdered brother, then proceeded to read them poetry from the Greek writer Aeschylus "We must tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world." Indianapolis was quiet that night.

1984- In George Orwell’s novel 1984 this is the day Winston Smith started a secret diary and first wrote the dangerous thought-crime “Down With Big Brother”.

1994- Marc Andressen and Jim Clark found Netscape.
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yesterday’s question- Who coined the term- to start from scratch?

Answer: Before formal stadiums were built for sports, the starting line of a footrace or horse race was literally a line scratched in the dirt. If you overshot the start too early, you were told by the judges to go back and start from the scratch.

Quiz- What is the origin of the phrase- to start from scratch?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When thinking of the patriots of the American Revolution, we think of Washington, Lafayette, the Marquis de Galves….., who is that?

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History for 4/3/2009
Birthdays: King Henry IV of England (1361), Washington Irving, William Marcy " Boss" Tweed, Sally Rand the Fan Dancer, Ma Rainey, Iron Eyes Cody, Wayne Newton, Doris Day, Robert Sherwood, Virgil Grissom, Marsha Mason, Melissa Etheridge, Marlon Brando, Amanda Byrnes, David Hyde Pierce, Alec Baldwin is 51, Eddie Murphy is 47

In Ancient Greece the beginning of April was the Aphrodisia- the Festival of Aphrodite. Greeks would offer sacrifices to the Goddess of Love and some would visit the holy prostitutes in the great temple in Corinth. Gimme that Ole Time Religion…..

1312-The Vatican, under the influence of the French King Phillip the Fair, abolished the Holy Order of the Knights Templar. The order was rich in international finance and none of it taxable and because they were monks there were no relatives to sponge it off. They invented the personal check, so a Templar didn’t have to ride from castle to castle with those heavy bags of gold. Just write out a note (or have your scribe do it if you were illiterate) and affix your seal to it. I wonder if they had pretty sunsets printed on them...

1657- Oliver Cromwell formally refused the title King of England and preferred to remain the Lord Protector of the English Republic.

1721-THE FIRST BRITISH PRIME MINISTER-Before this time men who ran the government of England at the kings pleasure held a variety of titles: Lord High Admiral, Chancellor, Mayor of the Palace, etc.. As the complicated checks & balances of democratic government evolved more dependable positions were needed. In 1663 King Charles II formed a Privy Council that met in his private chambers or "cabinet". The king’s cousin the Earl of Shaftesbury invented the idea of a political opposition party that wasn’t treasonous, a loyal opposition.

When in 1720 The British Crown was offered to the German George Ist of Hanover, he was bewildered by how complicated English parliamentary democracy was! Couldn't I just work with one man who could get what I wanted done? So Minister of the Exchequer (treasury) Sir Robert Walpole (father of writer Hugh Walpole), who's party was in the majority in Parliament became First Minister, later Prime Minister .The reason the job evolved out of the Treasury is that minister could grease the rights palms to get things done.

1730 -EMPEROR MOYTOY OF AMERICA- An English conman, Sir Alexander Cummings, had ingratiated himself into the council of the huge Cherokee Nation, then occupying most of Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee. In a scam to make himself look like the spokesperson of all native Americans, Cummings convinced one Cherokee chief named Moytoy to travel to England and do ritual submission to King George II under the title Emperor Moytoy of the Americas! The Indians were confused but went along with what they thought was a gag. Cummings disappeared shortly after the truth came out, undoubtedly a much wealthier man.

1764- Aging Empress Maria Theresa of Austria raised her son Joseph II to be co-emperor. He was the Emperor in the movie Amadeus. This day he was crowned at Frankfurt. He later wrote his mother “ ..a lot of elegant people mouthing idiocies.”

1860-The Pony Express system starts. Relay riders from Saint Louis across the prairies and deserts all the way to Sacramento, California. For all it's romance it failed after just 1-1/2 years. Stagecoaches and telegraph wires soon covered the message business.

1861- Seven days before the Civil War would begin, as tensions between North and South built to the point of explosion at Fort Sumter South Carolina a Boston ship, the R. H. Shannon, with a cargo of ice bound for Savannah puts in a stop at Charleston Harbor.
She sails right in between the itchy fingered Yankee and Rebel cannons. The captain rarely read newspapers so he was completely unaware of the political situation. When he heard a warning shot, he ran up the Stars and Stripes. Suddenly cannons started to boom out all around him. Mystified, he lowered the flag, the gunfire stopped and he sailed on...

1869- First performance of Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor.

1882- JESSE JAMES SHOT-The famous outlaw had been living quietly with his family under the alias of Mr. Howard when he was murdered by his own gang members, his cousins Bob and William Ford. Jesse was shot in the back of the head while he was standing on a chair straightening a picture frame. His last words were: ”My, it’s awfully hot today...” He was 34. Jesse’s older brother Frank took the hint and went straight. Bob Ford went on tour giving lectures, re-enacting how he had killed Jesse. Finally in a mining camp someone blew him away with a shotgun.


Recent research has a challenging new theory. That James staged his own death and killed someone else. Then he moved to Texas, changed his name to James Lafayette Courtney, had kids and grandkids and died peacefully in 1943 at age 96. Some of the proof was when Jesses James mother saw the body she initially said “That is not my son!” Then mysteriously changed her story later. There is no evidence that brother Frank James ever had any contact with this Texas man. James Courtney has the same facial features as Jesse James, James’ mother had one arm and his stepdad a mangled right hand as did photos of Courtney’s parents. Another of Histories Mysteries!

1922- JOSEF STALIN made General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In the scramble for power after the death of Lenin this move allowed him to consolidate his his hold on the top job and push out Leon Trotsky and the other top Bolsheviks like Zioniev, Kamieniev and Krupskaya. He made sure Lenin's last will and political testament was never made public. Stalin's real name was Djugashvili, his other code name that close friends were allowed to call him was 'Kobal'. He once told Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta :"The problem with Americans is your people don't know how to follow orders."

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Emperor of Ethiopia as Halie Selassie. The Jamaican movement called Rastafarians are named for him.

1936-Bruno Richard Hauptmann was electrocuted for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.

1948 -THE MARSHAL PLAN signed into law by President Truman. It called for 5 billion U.S. dollars to be spent to help 16 European countries rebuild their shattered economies after World War Two.

1968- In Memphis Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was supposed to give a sermon
at the Temple Baptist Church but excused himself because of his workload and
stress. Since he had openly come out against the Vietnam War the death threats had
increased and it all weighed heavily on his mind. Rev. Ralph Abernathy telephoned from the church that the crowd was disappointed Dr. King had not showed up. "Martin, they don't want to hear me. They're here to hear you." So Dr King went to the church and delivered off-the-cuff the last great speech of his life: "I have been to the Mountain and have Seen the Promised Land, and though I may not get there with you, it is alright.". At one point he was startled when the wind outside caused a shutter to bang. Then he returned to the Lorraine Motel. He was murdered the next day.



1968- Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. The N.Y. Times review said it was : " Somewhere between hypnotic and boring". Pauline Kael called it "monumentally unimaginative!" In a recent interview screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke said HAL the computer was not a coded reference to IBM . At the Oscars for that year Clarke and Kubrick lost the best screenplay award to Mel Brooks for the Producers. The film won only one Oscar, the only one Kubrick ever won, for visual effects.

1974- Even while the Watergate Scandal continued, this day the IRS reported President Richard Nixon had been paying taxes based on an income of only $15,000 a year, when he was making at least $200,000 a year.

1975- Eccentric chess champion Bobby Fischer was stripped of his World Chess Championship for refusing to play any more matches to defend his title.

1984-THE COFFEE SHOP CONVERSION. Future President George W. Bush was a cocaine-snorting alcoholic who had been busted for drunk driving. This day he claimed he became Born-Again after meeting an evangelist in a coffee shop.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: When thinking of the patriots of the American Revolution, we think of Washington, Lafayette, the Marquis de Galves….., who is that?



Answer: While we remember all the help the French gave America at Yorktown, the Spanish had declared war on Britain also. A Spanish Army under the Marquis de Galves came out of Spanish Florida and campaigned along the Gulf Coast in support of the Franco-American Armies in Virginia. Galves founded a town on the Texas coast- Galveston.