It's fun to do a google image search of yourself and find photos you don't remember. This was a shot of my partner Piet Kroon and I when we were directing OSMOSIS JONES for Warner Bros ten years ago.



This is a shot of art director Hans Bacher and I working on pre-production on Disneys Beauty and the Beast, twenty years ago in London, 1989.



The map of France to the right was not for yet another planned Anglais invasion. It was a vitner's map to plan our research tour of the Loire Valley, for ideas for the Beast's Castle. In case you wonder what our results were- we used Chambord and Azay Le Rideau for inspiration.

chambord castle

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Question: Who first called the D-Day invasion The Longest Day?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Was Napoleon short?
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History for 6/7/2009
Birthdays: Pope Gregory XIII, Beau Brummel, Paul Gauguin, Chick Corea, George Szell, Watergate congressman Peter Rodino, Tom Jones, Jessica Tandy, James Ivory, Virginia McKenna, Liam Neeson is 57, Prince is 51

1099- After three years of marching and fighting, the massed hordes of the First Crusade finally sight the Holy City of Jerusalem.

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".

1520-THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD- A Renaissance international summit organized by Cardinal Woolsey. King Henry VIII of England, King Francois Le Bel of France and Emperor Karl of Germany, all pitched their expensive gold cloth tents together, and held feasts, revels and tournaments while discussing politics.

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.

1692- Port Royal, was the Jamaican port that became a haven for buccaneers and pirates of the Carribbean. Today it 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. Trade was so extensive that among the treasure, divers found a Japanese samurai sword.

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 for the colonies from the Atlantic seacoast. 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.

1810- THE TREATY of TILSIT- Another international summit. While dozens of conquered and allied princes stood in the rain, Napoleon conferred with Czar Alexander I of Russia on a raft moored in the middle of the Neiman River. It was the height of the little corporal's power. Napoleon said of the young Czar:" He is so beautiful ! If he was a woman I would fall madly in love with him !" And he later said of Queen Marie Louise of Prussia: " She is so strong she is the only real man in Germany." Obviously Napoleon was having issues with gender association .

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. The slavery argument had become so ugly Congressman took to carrying concealed pistols and daggers to Capitol Hill. The news outraged abolitionists.

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

1863- A French army sent by Emperor Napoleon III entered Mexico City to set up Austrian Archduke Maximillian & Carlotta as rulers of Mexico. Napoleon III was the first to refer to Spanish and Portuguese speaking states in South America as Latin America.

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 who helped break the German Enigma Code, was considered one of the fathers of the computer. Early computers were called Turing Machines. He predicted one day computers would be able to think like humans, and in 1945 he said one day we would play games on our computers. But when Turing was revealed to be gay, he had to chose jail or medical treatment in a mental hospital. Medical procedures to “cure” homosexuals could include electro-shock, lobotomy and narcotics. Turing chose suicide.


Alan Turing was a big fan of the Disney film Snow White. This day he laced an apple with cyanide and bit into it. He was 42. Today one of the most prestigious awards a computer designer can win is the Turing Award.

1955- The t.v. quiz show The $64,000 Question premiered.

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.
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Yesterday’s question: Was Napoleon short?

Answer: He was 5’6 inches. Which is not really short, more average height. The image may come from the fact that after twenty years of Revolution and fighting, the generals around him were all big tough guys. The idea may also come from the concept that Napoleon was perceived as being of humble origins, an upstart, not from an ancient royal bloodline, hence a little man. His troops called him “ Le Petit Caporale, The Little Corporal” or “ Le Tondu”, meaning little short hair.

Congratulations to all my friends at the UCLA Animation workshop, who are having their end of the year show today. They are giving the first UCLA ANIMATION AWARD to their illustrious alumni DAVID SILVERMAN, he who is the director of the Simpson's Movie and Monsters Inc.

Remember tonight is also the screening of Raul Garcia's THE MISSING LYNX at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica.

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Quiz: Was Napoleon short?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: The Zamboni is the rolling device that cleans ice hockey rinks. Where was it invented? Halifax? Buffalo??
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History for 6/6/2009
Birthdays: Diego Velasquez, Pierre Corneille. Alexandre Pushkin, Nathan Hale, John Trumbull, Thomas Mann, The Dalai Lama, Klaus Tennestedt, Bjorn Borg, Richard Crane, Harvey Fierstein is 57, Dr. Karl Braun, Walter Chrysler, Isaiah Berlin, Aram Kharachaturian, Jason Issacs, Sandra Bernhard is 54, Paul Giamatti is 42

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.

1740- Prussian King Frederick the Great instituted a new medal. Originally called the Order of Generosity, Frederick called the little blue Maltese cross Order Pour Le Merite fur Offizeren. Frederick liked to say things in French. The medal became famous as the Blue Max, coveted by World War I flying aces.

1797- The Lake Poets meet. In the Coxwolds region of England Samuel Taylor Colderidge walked across a field and visited William Wordsworth in his cottage. This began one of the great collaborations in literature. Coleridge had just finished the Rubiyat of Omar Khayam. The married Mr Colderidge even had a platonic affair with Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy and later Wordsworth’s sister-in-law Susan Hutchinson.

1833- President Andrew Jackson becomes the first President to ride a train.

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.

1857- THE SIEGE & MASSACRE OF KANPUR- The most infamous episode of the Indian Sepoy Rebellion against the British. The Hindu Maharrata of India and the Moslem Moghul Emperor Bajadur had thrown their support behind the Sepoys, the rebellious Indian troops attacking British posts throughout India. At Kanpur the rebels surrounded a garrison of British troops with their wives and children in a little hospital compound. After a two weeks of fighting and starving in100 degree heat the British surrendered on a promise of safe conduct. After giving up their weapons the Indians murdered them all, using professional butchers to chop up the captive women and children and fill a dry well with their body parts. 600 died. The incident horrified Victorian society, which adopted a harder attitude towards their Indian subjects. Captured Sepoys were tied across the mouths of cannon and blown to bits.

1867- THE KA-KA COMPROMISE- The Austrian Empire quiets its nationalist Hungarian subjects by turning their country into a dual monarchy. Hapsburg Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth go to Budapest and are crowned King and Queen of Hungary. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was called in German `Kaiserlich-Koniglich' or K.K. The regime's opponents called it KaKa, and they had understood the pun just as we do.

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.

1933-The first Drive In movie opens in Camden, New Jersey.

1934- President Roosevelt signed the Securities and Exchange Act, which set up a regulatory commission to rein in the under the table shenanigans of brokers and financiers that had caused the Great Depression. The chairman of the SEC was Joseph Kennedy Sr.

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.

1942- Two days after the Battle of Midway the abandoned burning wreck of the carrier USS Yorktown was torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-162. In 1997 the Yorktown was found on the bottom of the Pacific by Dr. Robert Ballard, the same scientist who found the Titanic. To give you an idea of the depth of the Pacific compared to the Atlantic, Ballard said it took 1 1/2 hours for his submersible to descend to the Titanic, but it took three full hours one way to visit the Yorktown.

1942 – Test pilot Adeline Grey did the first nylon parachute jump in Hartford Conn.

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 Warner artist Victor Haboush. 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.

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.

1978- Proposition 13 property tax cut approved by California voters.

1982- Russian Alexi Pajitnov invented the game Tetrus

1984- Climaxing two years of fighting Sikh Nationalists, Indian forces are ordered by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi to storm the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. 1000 are killed. Later that year Mrs. Ghandi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in revenge. The current PM of India, Verdat Singh, is a Sikh.

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: The Zamboni is the rolling device that cleans ice hockey rinks. Where was it invented? Halifax? Buffalo??

Answer: It was invented by the Zamboni Family in Paramount California, a southern suburb of Los Angeles.

A friend of mine from Disney sent on her memories of that June in China during the Tienahmen Sq crackdown.



Wow, I had forgotten, I was there, the artists of Pacific Rim animation studio, all of ink and paint working on The Little Mermaid ( in 1989, when the studio in Burbank was overwhelmed and the deadline looming, Disneys sent some Mermaid work overseas, especially the bubbles, which had to be hand inked. The studio was south of the capital in Jiangshu Province.)

All of my girls and the rest of the studio marched in protest and support for the students in Beijing, the guys in the background dept came down to ink and paint and "borrowed" chip board from the Mermaid scenes to make protest signs. ( chip board were large, stiff, cardboard cards that are used to wrap animation scenes in.)

I watched them all march into the great park next to the studio, myself and Leo Sullivan looking out the window. Leo saying:" This is history", and "what would you do if the police opened fire on your kids right now?" I said I would go down and stand with them, Leo replied "No you would not, you would go home, we all would go home."

Who knew? That event took place the week before June 4th 1989.

I reused the chip boards and sent them back to Disney Burbank. I know somewhere in the studio archives today, someone has some yellowing animation paper, wrapped with a "live free or die "on the chip board.

Cartoonist Selby Kelly (1917-2005) once said:" Everything in Life is Politics. You just can't stay out of it."

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Quiz: The Zamboni is the rolling device that cleans ice hockey rinks. Where was it invented? Halifax? Buffalo?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Are airplane black boxes, actually black?
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History for 6/5/2009
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 is 75, 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.

1305-"The BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY"- King Phillip the Fair of France makes a deal with a cardinal to help him become elected as Pope Clement V. The cost is Clement has to move the entire Vatican from Rome to Avignon in French territory. The Holy See stayed in France about 150 years.

1455- Poet FrancoisVillon 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 Craigslist again.

1661- Isaac Newton admitted as a student at Trinity College Cambridge.

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. 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!"

1915- Britain’s greatest general Earl Horatio Kitchener the Sirdar of Omderman drowned when the HMS Hampshire was sunk by a German mine in the English Channel. The British recruiting poster with the image of Kitchener pointing at you with fierce eyes fixed saying I WANT YOU! was later copied by American James Montgomery Flagg, substituting Uncle Sam for the general.


Kitchner was Secretary for War but by this time had lost much of his influence in government. P.M. Lord Asquith was moved to comment "the man makes a better poster than a leader".

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.

1940- The synthetic rubber tire invented.

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.

1967- The Arab-Israeli SIX-DAY WAR began. Egypt’s President Gamal Nasser sent tanks into the United Nations mandated Sinai Peninsula and cut off Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Tyran. Israel knew the coming war with its four neighbors was imminent. This day without waiting, Israel launched it’s own preemptive strike. Leaving only twelve jets to protect the entire country, at dawn they sent out their entire 300 plane airforce to attack the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air forces on the ground. 400 planes were destroyed in two hours. Israeli commander Ytschak Rabin said by then the war was already over. The Israeli tank division Ugdah Peled rolled into the West Bank and attacked Jordanian armor near Jenin.

1968- 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.

1976- In a wine competition outside Paris, California wines won for the first time. Santa Maddelena Chardonnay for whites and Stags Leap Cabernet for the red. It marks the moment when the dominance of French wines was broken, and California wines went from being a joke to world class status.

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.

1989- Toronto’s Skydome Stadium opened. Home team Blue Jays lose to the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3.

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: Are airplane black boxes, actually black?

Answer: They are orange actually, and at times wrapped in plastic.

I will see UP this weekend. One thing I noticed during all the years of enjoying PIXAR films is the personal growth of all the artists there. I recall back in the early 90s' when all these young computer guys flocked up to the Bay Area, to work long hours and live on pizza and Diet Coke.

Their first big film TOY STORY, was about a bunch of young single guys hanging out, (plus Bo Peep and Mrs. Potatohead, of course.)

TOY STORY II was a young guy torn between girlfriend and family.

egads! Responsibility! courtesy Disney/Pixar

MONSTERS INC. was about a young daddy and a toddler.

FINDING NEMO was about a young daddy and a school age son

THE INCREDIBLES was about a Dad dealing with Middle Age disillusionment and alienation from their teenage kids.

Now UP is about a retired old man and a kid.

I'm wondering when I'm going to see the PIXAR dad as a three time divorcee' with a combover, riding a Harley, growling about alimony and shacking up with a High School Senior.



Bravo, Gang!
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Quiz: Are airplane black boxes, actually black?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?
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History for 6/4/2009
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 34

Happy Birthday to Youuuu

Happy Saint John the Baptist Day.

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...

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.

1940- The last day of the Miracle of Dunkirk. British sea transports and small pleasure craft cross the English Channel and withdraw most of the British Army trapped against the sea. 280,000 British men and 100,000 allies were saved, 40,000 men go into captivity.

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.

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" win 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.

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 trading.

2004- THE HOMEMADE TANK- In the small town of Granby Colorado, a muffler salesman named Jim Heemeyer got so annoyed at the town, that he welded iron plates on to a large bulldozer to create a kind of homemade tank. While policemen fruitlessly shot at his tank, he razed to the ground most of the public buildings before shooting himself. If you can’t fight City Hall, bulldoze it.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?

Answer: St Augustine Florida was founded in 1515, more than a hundred years before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.

Quiz: Where is the oldest town in the continental USA?

Quiz- Who said- The Pellet with the Poison is in the Vessel with the Pestle?
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History for 6/3/2009
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Jefferson Davis, Josephine Baker, King George V, Henry Shrapnel, Tony Curtis is 84, 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 is 80

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.

1778- MOTHER ENGLAND OFFERS A DEAL- After the French, Dutch and Spanish decide to intervene in the American Revolution, and pile on Britain, The British Government under Lord North offered the rebellious American colonies all of their grievances, taxation, seats in Parliament. Everything short of full independence. The Continental Congress says too late, you're dealing with a separate country now.

1779-HMM, WHAT TO DO WITH DANGEROUS PRISONERS..? British General Sir Henry Clinton had a problem. He had just captured Charleston South Carolina and accepted the surrender of the largest number of American rebels- 4000, as many as his own army. Now orders from London were to leave Lord Cornwallis with a force to subdue the South and return to New York. But what about the prisoners? Today Clinton published an edict that all rebels who take an oath of loyalty to the Crown will be released. His subordinate grumbled:”Sir Henry doesn’t understand that these rebels swallow an oath to their King then an oath to their Congress, with the same ease his Lordship swallows a plate of poached eggs!”

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.

1864- BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR- The Civil War battles between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant had settled into something resembling the trench warfare of World War One. This day General Grant, mistakenly believing Lee was abandoning his impregnable Petersburg defense lines, launched huge frontal attacks near Cold Harbor. Seven thousand men were cut down in 20 minutes. Before rising from their fortifications to the attack, Union men wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to their shirts so their bodies could later be identified. One Massachusetts private wrote in his journal: "June 3rd. I was killed today." He went out and was indeed killed. By the third assault the Yankee army was near mutiny. A captain reacted to the order to attack: "I won't go back out there if Christ Almighty himself came down and ordered me to!"

In two months battle Grant had lost 20,000 men, more than Lee had in his entire army. The newspapers started to call him “the Butcher”. But Grant knew if he held on, he would defeat the Confederacy, if only by sheer weight of numbers. Still, for the rest of his life he regretted his attack at Cold Harbor.

1875- Harper's Weekly Newspaper reported the Kansas Pacific Railroad was bowing to editorial pressure from back east and would no longer allow it's passengers to shoot at buffalo from their moving trains. It had become quite a tourist attraction.

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 Friends to burn all his unfinished manuscripts including the Trial, but fortunately his friends did not.

1929- Movie stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr married Joan Crawford.

1928- General Chang Zhao Lin was one of the last Chinese warlords to give in to the ascendant Kuomintang Nationalist front led by Chiang Kai Shek. Chang yielded his control of Peking to the Kuomintang and went into retirement . But soon after boarding a train to Manchuria he was killed by a bomb. It was blamed on Japanese agents, but no one is sure. The intrigue and internal chaos of the time inspired several films and novels like Shanghai Express, the Bitter Tea of General Yen and Lost Horizons.


1943- First Day of the ZOOT SUIT RIOTS- In Los Angeles Navy and Marine servicemen awaiting embarkation to the Pacific battlegrounds clashed with Hispanic gangs. Truckloads of off-duty servicemen return to town to enlarge the fight. The servicemen would choose who to beat up based on whether 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 for several days…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 and lingerie shop owner Louis Reard 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-Micheline Bernardini, 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.

1948- The Hale telescope at the Mount Palomar Observatory in California dedicated. The 200 inch mirror had taken 11 years to polish and the observatory two decades to build. Called the “Giant Eye” it gave us out first looks at nebulae, black holes and doubled our depth perception of the size of the Universe.

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 in them as well. At the end of a days’ recording, the crew adjourned to Webb’s room where he mixed martinis.

1965- Edward White becomes the first American to walk in space in Gemini VII. Cosmonaut Sergei Leonov walked in space several years earlier.

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 survived. Solanas was institutionalized.

1971- The First artificial gene created.

1976 –Scaramouche, scaramouche, can you do the Fan-dango? 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. We've been stuck there since 2001.

1986- Attorney Roy Cohn was disbarred by a federal appellate court. It was a symbolic act because Cohn Was dying 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- Who said- The Pellet with the Poison is in the Vessel with the Pestle?

Answer: Danny Kaye in his comedy The Court Jester (1955). But the Flagon with the Dragon has the Brew that is True..!