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October 5th, 2010 tues.
October 5th, 2010

Quiz: Who coined the term Art for Art’s Sake?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What is of higher rank, Brigadier General or Major General..?
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History for 10/5/2010
Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President.Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges" , Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana, Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynis Johns, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Bernie Mac, Karen Allen is 59 ,Kate Winslet is 37,


1600- King Henry IV of France married his second wife Marie de Medici by proxy in a grand ceremony in Florence. Flemish master painter Peter Paul Rubens was in attendance, and the Queen would ask him to create paintings commemorating the events.

1759- Col. Robert Rogers led his Roger’s Rangers on a forced march to surprise the Abeknackie Indians who had been raiding Maine homesteads. At 4:00 am near present day Saint Francis Maine the Rangers burned the Abeknackie village and killed so many people that the Abeknackies ceased to be a force in the area. Years later Rogers wrote down his principles of irregular warfare- his maxims like "Move Fast and Hit Hard" are the basis of Special Forces training today.

1795- THE WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT- The end of the French Revolution. The problem with revolutions is once you start one it’s a real problem how to stop them. The Paris mob had gotten used to overthrowing one government after another since 1789. In 1795 when yet another mob of rioters threatened to overthrow yet another French government the politicians turned to young general Napoleon Bonaparte, who dispersed the crowd by firing cannons at them loaded with buckshot. A self proclaimed "Child of the Revolution" Bonaparte was already considered politically left so his act of force could not be accused of royalist leanings. This action helped the little general with the funny Italian name becomes a national figure.

1813- BATTLE OF THE THAMES RIVER. Indiana - Tecumseh, an Indian visionary who foresaw that only by united action could native peoples hope to drive the White invasion back to Europe, spent his life convincing tribes to put away their tribal differences and fight as one people. He assembled a huge force of but was defeated and killed by Gen. William Henry Harrison. Congressman Richard Johnson, who said he personally killed the great chief (nobody saw it happen) later became Vice President and Harrison President. Democrats sang:"Rumpsy-Dumpsey,Rumpsey- Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson Killed Tecumsee." Tecumseh was one of the few who managed to organize real resistance to the white migration west and as such was one of America's greatest threats. Yet whites were so impressed by his nobility that people like John Sherman named his son and future Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman.

1842-THE BIRTHDAY OF BEER!- Lager Beer is perfected in the city of Pilsen -Pilsner Beer. Of course beer was made by the Egyptians and traced back to the Ice Age, but our concept of beer requiring an advancement in refrigeration is Pilsner or Lager.

1877- After a lightning campaign across 1,200 miles Nez Perce Chief Joseph found himself surrounded by U.S. armies just 150 miles from the Canadian border. At Bear’s Paw near Chinook Montana Chief Joseph surrendered to General Nelson Miles.."From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

1880- Alonzo T. Cross patented the first ball point pen.

1882- Outlaw Frank James surrendered to authorities six months after his brother Jesse was killed. After doing some prison time Frank went straight, and started a wild west show with fellow old outlaw Cole Younger.

1892-THE DALTON BOYS RAID COFFEEVILLE, Kansas and try to rob two banks at once. One quick thinking bank clerk told them the bank vault was on a time lock and would open shortly. There was no such timelock, but while the badmen waited, the townspeople broke into the hardware store and armed themselves to the teeth. As the Datlons emerged, they were shot down by the locals, much the same way the Jesse James Gang was wiped out at Northfield Minnesota ten years earlier. 8 were killed. Only Emmet Dalton survived despite 25 gunshot wounds. After getting out of jail in 1907, he also wisely went straight.

1905- Happy Birthday T-Rex! Prof. Henry Osborne published a paper on the new bones found in Montana of a sleek hunter- dinosaur. He originally called it Dynamosaurus Imperiosis, but changed it to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

1930- THE R-101 The BRITISH HINDENBURG- Lord Thompson of Cardington dreamed of a fleet of passenger zeppelins uniting the British Empire much the way steam did in Queen Victoria's time. Dirigible moorings were built in Karachi, Montreal, Sydney and Ishmalia in Egypt. The R-101 was the largest zeppelin in the world when she was launched and had all the luxury of the Cunard ocean liners. Lord Thompson himself decided to take the inaugural flight from London to India and back in time to make a vital Imperial conference. On Oct. 4th as a crowd sang Sir Edward Elgar's hymn 'Land of Hope and Glory" Thompson launched the R-101 "I see this great ship of the air built with the same perseverance and permanency that has built our British Empire and will give us the mastery of the air lanes of the world!"

300 miles out the R-101 was struck by a violent thunderstorm and crashed at Beauvais France. A sergeant was heard saying : "We’re down lads." when the hydrogen gas exploded. All but 6 of her 54 passengers died in the flaming inferno, including Lord Thompson. (compared to 30 out of the 96 Hindenburg passengers and crew died). Even though her sister ship the R-100 made a perfect flight to Canada and back the British public was so shocked by the disaster that all further attempts at a British dirigible service was scrapped.

1932- MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton.

1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK.- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. One of the strikeleaders arrested was a background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters, then arrested for incitement to riot.


1947-President Harry Truman gives the first speech broadcast nationwide on television. In it he asked Americans to forgo eating meat on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, to build up U.S. grain stocks to feed a still starving Post War Europe.

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River.

1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

1969- A Cuban Colonel who wanted to defect to America flew his advanced Mig-21 to Miami and landed it at Homestead Airforce Base. But what was embarrassing to the US was he flew completely through all US advanced warning defenses undetected and landed his plane next to Air Force One carrying President Nixon! Doh !

1969- Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy was seen going into a Manhattan cinema to see the Swedish x-rated film I Am Curious Yellow. Jackie-O beat up the photographer who caught her, but her example spawned a wave called Porn-Chic.

1970-The Canadian October Crisis.- A Quebec terrorist separatist group calling itself the FLQ kidnapped and murdered a Canadian cabinet minister. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent military troops into Montreal and Quebec City to impose order.
Worst civilian disturbances in Canada since 1867.

1986- IRAN-CONTRA- President Ronald Reagan feared Communist expansion growing in a new revolutionary regime in Nicaragua. When the U.S. Congress banned any funds for anti-Communist mercenaries, Reagan's National Security Agency staffer Oliver North created a covert pipeline of arms. On this day Nicaraguan communists shot down an unmarked plane full of smuggled weapons flown by a CIA agent named Eugene Hasenfuss. The revelation of the incident sets in motion the scandal that would tarnish the Reagan Administration.

1989- The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2000- The Yugoslavian Revolution. –Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’ had spent the eleven years since the death of Tito making war on the various ethnic parts of Yugoslavia as they broke off and founded sister republics. Serbia endured the condemnation of the world and American-Nato bombing raids.

This day after refusing to admit he had lost re-election, 200,000 Serbs marched into Belgrade and in a massive "People Power" revolution threw old Slobodan out. Woycheslav Kostunitse was declared the legal president and Slovo died in jail.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska those bears attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach.

When Treadwell appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year, Letterman joked:" Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?" Werner Herzog did a film about his life. Grizzly Man.
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Quiz: What is of higher rank, Brigadier General or Major General..?

Answer: Promotions above Colonel go like this- Brigadier General (one star), Major General (two–three stars), Lieutenant General (four stars), and General of the Army (five stars)


October 4th, 2010 mon
October 4th, 2010

Quiz: What is of higher rank, Brigadier General or Major General..?

Yesterday’s Answer below: Who painted Whistler’s Mother?
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History for 10/4/2010
Birthdays: President Rutherford B. Hayes, Frederick Remington, Jean Millet, Buster Keaton, Englebert Dolfuss, Charlton Heston, Susan Sarandon, Armand Assante, Damon Runyon, John Atanasoff, Alvin Tofler, Anne Rice, Alicia Silverstone, Liev Schreiber

1648- Happy Birthday NYFD! Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam Peter Stuyversant established the first regular municipal fire department in the New World. Fire depts. were volunteer brigades until the late 1800s.

1777-BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN-George Washington tried a dawn surprise attack on the British army around Philadelphia. The same tactic had worked at Trenton, but here things went wrong from the start. In the morning fog the Yankee right flank got turned around and started shooting at the Yankee center. The Center thought they were being attacked by Loyalists and returned fire. Two thirds of the American army shot itself to pieces and ran away before the British even knew what was happening. Washington realized he was going to need some drill instructors....

1798- Lyrical Ballads, a small book of poems published jointly by English poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book opened with the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and finished with Wordsworth’s Lines composed a few miles above Tinturn Abbey.” The book didn’t sell that well. Wordsworth blamed Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner poem for being too long. Some of the best sales of the book were by sea captains who thought a Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was a collection of sea shantys.

1869- Henry J. Heinz begins his condiment company, bottling horseradish in a little shop in Pittsburgh. He was later called the Catsup King, -or Ketchup, if you prefer. One of the Heinz Company's greatest stunts was in the 1920s they placed a 40 foot tall electrified pickle on the corner of 23rd and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

1909- St. Louis Missouri was site of the first –and probably only- airship race in the US. Four dirigibles, the total number in America, ran a course for a purse of $1000 dollars.

1910-King Manuel II of Portugal abdicated. The Portuguese Republic is declared.

1918- The day after he took the job of German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden first telegraphed Washington DC to request peace talks to end World War One. But the note said Germany would not give up any of the territory it conquered in Belgium, France or Poland. President Wilson refused this, so the war went on.

1931- Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy" comic strip debuts.

1943- Actor Clark Gable was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying combat missions over Germany. It was said Gable took these deliberately dangerous missions instead of doing USO shows out of a death-wish in grief for his wife Carole Lombard, who was killed in a plane crash.

1950- The first Peanuts comic strip introducing Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy.

1955- The Brooklyn Dodgers a.k.a. "Da Bums" win the World Series for the first time, and the only time they ever won it while inhabiting the precincts of Flatbush. The name Dodgers came from the fact that several main trolley car lines intersected in front of Ebbets Field on Atlantic Avenue. To get into the ballpark you had to cross this area dodging the traffic. So they were known as the Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers, then Dodgers.

1957-SPUTNIK- Russia inaugurates the Space Age and first shoots an object into space orbit. A basketball sized satellite called" Sputnik-1" . Sputnik means Satellite and the word spawned pop words like Beatnik, Nudnik and Peacenik. Americans used to thinking of themselves as the leaders in all technology reacted with shock. Why weren’t we first? We were losing the space race! Senate leader Lyndon Johnson complained “I don’t want to sleep under a Commie Moon!” Wild rock & roll star Little Richard Penniman thought Sputnik was an omen of the end of the world and resolved to give up sex, drugs and rock & roll and become a Born Again Christian preacher. Good Golly Miss Molly!

1957-"Leave it to Beaver' debuts on CBS.

1965- Pope Paul VI arrived in the US to deliver a plea for world peace at the United Nations. Then his Holiness visited the World’s Fair and took in a Yankee baseball game.

1969- Diane Linkletter, the daughter of television personality Art Linkletter got high on LSD and leapt out of a window to her death. Her boyfriend snatched at the belt loops of her dress in an attempt to save her, but they tore away. Afterwards Art Linkletter became a livelong crusader against drug abuse.

1971- Janis Joplin was found dead of a drug overdose at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. She was 27. Her song “Me and Bobby McGee” was as yet unreleased but soon topped the pop charts. Joplin left a considerable sum in her will for a party for her friends. The invitation read “ The Drinks are on Pearl” her nickname.

1986- On a New York street a man named William Tager walked up to CBS News anchor Dan Rather and mumbling “Kenneth, what’s the Frequency?” started furiously punching Rather. He thought CBS was beaming microwaves at his brain and it was Dan’s fault. Who Kenneth was, remains a mystery.

2001- Gregory Hemingway, the youngest son of writer Ernest Hemingway, was found dead in the women’s wing of a Miami jail. A cross-dressing transsexual, he had gone by the name of Gloria, and was picked up by Miami cops for drug use and exposing himself in public. He was 69.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who painted Whistler’s Mother?

Answer: Whistler. James McNeill Whistler to be exact. He called his painting Arrangement in Gray and Black, but everyone else called it Whistler’s Mother.


October 3rd, 2010 sun
October 3rd, 2010

Question: Who painted Whistler’s Mother?

Yesterday’s Answer below: What movie from Warner Bros was a hard-boiled detective story that was first going to be called” The Gent From Frisco.”-?
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History for 10/3/2010
Birthdays: Gore Vidal is 85, Mikail Lermontov, Harvey Kurtzman, Chubby Checker, James Herriot, Eleanor Duse, Emily Post, Leo McCarey the director of the Marx Brothers Duck Soup and many Laurel & Hardy shorts, Steven Reich, Dave Winfield, Tommy Lee, Neve Cambell is 37, Clive Owen is 46

1226- Saint Francis of Assisi died at 44. He seldom bathed and he asked his followers to strip him naked so he could leave the world as he came in. They all sang his Canticle of the Animals, then he exclaimed 'Welcome, Sister Death." His gravesite was kept secret until 1818.

1779- After the epic battle between the USS Bonhomme Richard and the HMS Serapis Captain John Paul Jones limped his battered ships into the nearest Dutch harbor near Amsterdam. The French and American strategists told him to do this, to drive the British crazy and get Holland into the war. The Dutch not only wouldn’t hand Jones over the British, they even allowed his men to guard his British POW’s under arms in a Dutch fort. Britain declared war on Holland soon after.

1855- American James McNeill Whistler arrived in Paris to study painting. He had tried to apply to West Point for a military career, but failed the entrance exam. Years later he joking told friends "If I hadn't identified phosphorous as a gas I'd be a major general by now!'

1895-The Red Badge of Courage first published. Despite being one of the best books on the average soldiers experience, author Stephen Crane was never in the Civil War or any army. He died of tuberculosis at age 26.

1903- Dr Horatio Nelson Jackson, the first man to drive an automobile across the American continent, was given a ticket in his home town for driving faster than 6 miles an hour.

1910- English comedians Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel first arrive in the U.S. with a touring British vaudeville company.

1918-THE LOST BATALLION During the Meuse Argonne Offernsive the 577th Battalion of the US Rainbow Division moved too far ahead of other attacking units and was cut off and surrounded by superior German forces. Called upon to surrender the doughboys fought off all attacks in a heroic stand for five days. Six hundred men went in, barely two hundred came out. After the war their commander Major Wittelsey was awarded the Medal of Honor but he never got over the trauma. Three years later he shot himself.

1928- The Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang armies complete the unification of China. After the Manchu Emperor was overthrown China had fallen to pieces and was run by small warlords and foreign armies. The Kuomintang created a new national assembly, constitution and elect Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek as their president. Chiang only had to deal now with those pesky Communists led by Mao Tse Tung.

1941- Warner Bros. THE MALTESE FALCON "premiered. Screenwriter John Huston asked if he could direct an adaptation of this old Dashell Hammett story, which had been already made into movies twice. This version became the most famous. The name was kept despite producer Hal Wallis wanting to change it to THE GENT FROM FRISCO. Jack Warner was amazed that homely looking little character actor Humphrey Bogart had shown the potential to be a romantic leading man in 'Petrified Forrest', now the Maltese Falcon established him as a major draw. Warner joked to Bogie about his looks in referring to his contentious brawls with his wife Mayo-"I don't know what women see in you, but the more pots and pans she hits you in the kisser with, the more the dames love you!"

1942- In Pennemunde Germany, a group of Nazi scientists led by Dr. Werner Von Braun successfully launch a 12 ton rocket that flies 200 miles. The good thing is Braun proves his thermos-bottle type liquid-fuel rocket engines arranged in a cluster of three can work. After the war they become the basis of NASA's and Soviet rocket programs in the 1950's. The bad thing is the Nazis named them the Vengance-2, (V-2) fill them with explosives and started shooting them at England.

1951- The Shot Heard Round the World- Bobby Thompson's bottom of the ninth, last out, home run which enabled the N.Y. Giants to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers for the National League Pennant.

1955- 'Good Morning, Captain.' The Captain Kangaroo kiddy Show debuted on television.

1955- The Mickey Mouse Club TV show premiered. “Who’s the leader of the Band that’s Made for you and me…?”

1957-Walter Lantz's The Woody Woodpecker T.V. show debuts.

1957- Jayne Mansfield met Greta Garbo and asked for her autograph.

1961- The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered. It made stars of Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore and was written by ex-Sid Caesar writer Carl Reiner and Rocky & Bullwinkle writer Alan Burns.

1967- Folksinger and union activist Woodie Guthrie died of Huntington’s Chorea. His family dumped his ashes in New York Harbor then went to Nathans on the Coney Island Boardwalk for hot dogs, Woody’s favorite.

1972- After much backroom arm twisting by the Nixon White House, the House Banking Committee denied funds to the Packman Committee investigating the Watergate scandal.
This all but insured that the Watergate scandal would not break out in the open until after the 1972 Presidential election. Nixon won re-election by a landslide and the Watergate scandal made him leave office in 1974.

1986- THE K-219 INCIDENT- In the final years of the Cold War duel between the US and Soviet Union large nuclear submarines packed with missiles played a deadly game of hide and seek in the waters off the US and Russian coastlines. These submarine duels were dramatized by Tom Clancy’s novel the Hunt for Red October.
But recently evidence was declassified about a real incident. Either from mechanical failure or collision with an American sub the Soviet nuclear submarine K-219 had an explosion and reactor fire 250 miles west of Bermuda. As American ships looked on the Russian crew fought fire, acid fumes and radiation. The sub sank but not before Captain Alexei Britanov was able to evacuate119 crewmen to a rescue ship. 4 crewman died including a young sailor named Pamynin, who gave his life to shut down the reactors with a hand wrench before they melted down. This young Russian sailor prevented the U.S. East Coast from being bathed in deadly nuclear radiation. A statue was dedicated to Pamynin in 1996. There were similar accidental sinkings of Russian nuclear subs in 1964-the K-19 and the Kursk in 2000.

1990- The rift between East Germany and West is declared officially over.

1992- Bald Irish pop star Sinead O’Connor caused a fuss by tearing up a picture of the Pope on the show Saturday Night Live. She was later booed off stage during a concert at Madison Square Garden.

1993- THE RAID ON MOGADISHU- US troops were deployed with other UN forces to the civil war wracked nation of Somalia to aid the starving population. Once there they found themselves plunged in a chaos of heavily armed warring clans. This day a Delta Force was sent into the capitol city Mogadishu to apprehend lieutenants of the faction leader Mohammed Farah Idide. Once there two helicopters were shot down by hand held missiles and the Deltas were surrounded in the narrow streets by swarms of hostile militia. The US forces fought their way out with the aid of UN Pakistani mountain troops. But the images of dead American troops being dragged through the dusty streets by gleeful Somalis soured the American public back home and the forces were soon withdrawn. Idide was later assassinated and the chaos continued. The Ridley Scott film BLACK HAWK DOWN dramatized the incident.

1995- After a long sensationalist trial turned into a media spectacle, celebrity O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the double murder of his second wife Nicole and Ron Goldman. He was later convicted in a wrongful death suit brought in Civil Court by Nicole’s family. Recently OJ got a ticket in Florida for running his speedboat over a Manatee sanctuary.

2002- Disgruntled Gulf War vet John Allen Mohammed and his 17 year old stepson John Lee Malvo went on a shooting spree in the suburbs of Washington DC as the DC Sniper. They shot thirteen people at random with one bullet each and terrorized Maryland and Virginia before they were caught. Even Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz was employed from prison to appeal to the Sniper to stop.

2003- The Siegfried and Roy magic show in Las Vegas comes to an end after a large Bengal Tiger attacks Roy Horn and tears his throat open in front of an audience. Most thought it was part of the act.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What movie from Warner Bros was a hard-boiled detective story that was first going to be called” The Gent From Frisco.”-?

Answer: The Maltese Falcon, see above-1941.


October 2nd, 2010 sat
October 2nd, 2010

Quiz: What movie from Warner Bros was a hard-boiled detective story that was first going to be called” The Gent From Frisco.”-?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Tony Curtis was laughed at for years over the line “ Yonder lies da castle of my fadduh.” In his thick Bronx accent. What movie was that from?
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October 2, 2010
Birthdays: Richard III, Nat Turner, Mahatma Ghandi, Claus Von Hindenburg, Ferdinand Foch, Spanky MacFarland, Julius Marx known as Groucho Marx, Bud Abbott, Moses Gunn, Graham Greene, LeRoy Shield (composer of the music in the Hal Roach comedies), Donna Karan, Gordon Sumner known as Sting is 59, Lorraine Bracco is 56, Tiffany, Kelly Ripa


1780- The Americans hang British Major John Andre' as a spy at a tavern near
present day Nyack New York. Andre' was Benedict Arnold's contact and had
put aside his redcoat to slip through American lines. He was arrested before
he could get back. Washington really wanted to trade Andre for Arnold if he could,
and the British were disgusted that Arnold refused to nobly offer himself in exchange.
The hangman chosen was a loyalist prisoner who was promised his freedom. It was
felt if the executioner was a Yankee, the man's family might be harmed in revenge.

1836-Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle returned to Falmouth England, ending a five
year voyage to Brazil, the Galapagos and New Zealand. The knowledge he gained on
exotic flora and fauna would lead him to write the Origin of the Species.

1914- Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicted this day
would be the beginning of the Apocalypse and the End of the World. When nothing
happened, he responded that it was the beginning of a process of events that would
lead to the eventual end of the world. - oh.

1925-The first bright red Leyland doubledecker omnibuses appear on London streets.

1933- Library of Congress musicologist John Lomax met with an Arkansas chaingang
convict Hudlan Ledbetter, who everyone called Leadbelly. He recorded a cotton picking
work song of his called "the Rock Island Line'. Leadbelly became famous
and recorded his own version 3 years later. Lomax died in 2002.

1936- Mussolini attacked Ethiopia.

1937 - Ronald Reagan, just 26 years old, made his acting debut this day
with Warner Brothers release of "Love is in the Air".

1950- Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip debuts. Good ol'
Charlie Brown was the name of a fellow post office worker all the guy's liked
to play jokes on. Schulz's idea 'little folks' was initially rejected
by all the major comic syndicates. At the time of his death Charles
Schulz was arguably the richest visual artist on earth.

1954- Elvis Presley is fired from Nashville's Grand Ol' Opry Show after
one performance. He was told :"Son, you ain't a' going no where. Go
back to driving a truck!"

1955 - "Good Eeeeeeevening." The master of mystery movies, Alfred
Hitchcock, presented his brand of suspense to millions of viewers on CBS
on this night.

1957- Raintree County, the first film in Panavision.

1958- The Huckleberry Hound show.

1959- The television show the Twilight Zone debuts. Producer/writer Rod Serling
had fought network execs for months that a mystery-suspense show could compete with
all the Doctor and Cowboy shows on TV. He originally wanted Orson Welles to be
the host of the show but when Welles asked for too much money, Serling decided to
do it himself. He wrote 90 episodes. He said he got the name Twilight Zone from a
term airline pilots used for the area when both the clouds and ground are invisible
from view and you lose your bearings.

1967- Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African American to be a Supreme
Court Justice.

1967- San Francisco Police raid the Haight-Ashbury home of the rock band the Grateful
Dead, busting just about everyone there for possession of narcotics.

1977 - After a month following an attempt to steal the body of Elvis Presley from
Forest Hill Cemetery, both Presley's and his grandmother's bodies are moved
to Graceland.

1978- Future TV star Tim Allen was arrested in Kalamazoo Michigan for selling cocaine.

1985- Actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS. The first major celebrity to die of the disease.
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Yesterday’s Question answered below: Tony Curtis was laughed at for years over the line “ Yonder lies da castle of my fadduh.” In his thick Bronx accent. What movie was that from?

Answer: The Black Shield of Falworth, a 1954 movie based on Howard Pyle’s novel Men of Iron.


October 1st, 2010 fri
October 1st, 2010

Question: Tony Curtis was laughed at for years over the line “ Yonder lies da castle of my fadduh.” In his thick Bronx accent. What movie was that from?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: what was the Philadelphia Experiment?
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History for 10/1/2010
Welcome to Month Number 8, Octubrius to the Romans. In 138 AD the Roman Senate wanted to rename month eight as Faustina, after the wife of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. But being a rare modest empress, she declined the honor.

Birthdays: Vladimir Horowitz, Julie Andrews is 75, Walter Matthau, Richard Harris, Phillipe Noiret, James Whitmore, Pres.Jimmy Carter is 85, Everet Sloane, Rod Carew, Stanley Holloway, Tom Bosley, Chief Justice William Rheinquist, Max Morath, Mark McGuire, Randy Quaid, Cindy Margolis, Zack Galifanakis is 41

331BC. BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA or Arbelum - Alexander the Great's greatest victory over the Persian army of King Darius IV. Darius had sought to once and for all destroy this Greek troublemaker by assembling an enormous army from all over his kingdom. But this multinational, polyglot force had no cohesion and the disciplined Macedonian-Greek veterans knifed through their ranks. Alexander ordered his elite Companion Cavalry to make right for Darius, since he was the only factor holding his army together. Darius had to run for his life and his army broke up soon after seeing their Great King fleeing. The Persian kingdom collapsed and Alexander soon captured his capitol and family.

326 A.D. Emperor Constantine the Great bans sentencing criminals to Gladitorial schools, effectively ending Gladitorial Combat. Games continued on a little while longer using prisoners of war but the fun and professionalism had gone out of it. The last recorded bout in Rome was in 407AD.

1202- To the sound of massed trumpets and singing the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, the knights of the Fourth Crusade left from Venice for the Holy Land.

1273- German Electors choose Duke Rudolph of Hapsburg as Holy Roman Emperor. The Hapsburg family was the most successful dynasty in Europe. They remained in power (with one or two interruptions) for 645 years, finally being deposed in 1918. And several Hapsburgs are still around in case Austria gets tired of republican democracy. Dr. Otto von Hapsburg is a member of the European Parliament. When a Hapsburg chided Napoleon for having no royalty in his blood he snapped back" I prefer to be the Rudolph of my race!'

1791- The first day of the French Legislative Assembly, the second French parliamentary body after the Assembly National that had started the French Revolution adjourned itself. In this assembly for the first time the conservatives sat on the right side of the hall, the liberals on the left side and the moderates in the center. This gives us the designation today used around the world for political Leftists and Right Wingers.

1800- By the secret Treaty of San Idelfonso Spain returns Louisiana to France in exchange for the Italian Duchy of Parma. Spain had owned Louisiana for her part in the French and Indian War (Seven Years War) victory. Napoleon needed it back for his planned worldwide colonial challenge to Britain. But when Santo Domingo revolted against French rule and Nelson sank the French navy Napoleon soured on his colonial plans. He decided to sell Louisiana to the one country he knew would annoy the British most, the United States.
And Spain never did get Parma.

1810- The first Berkshire Cattle Show.

1857- Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary premiered in magazine installments. Flaubert was tried for pornography but acquitted.

1880- John Phillip Sousa was named leader of the Marine Corps Band and began his career as the March King.

1903- First World Series of Baseball. The Boston Pilgrims had lost the first game today to the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-3, even though Cy Young was the starting pitcher. But Boston went on to win the series in best of nine games. Yes, that’s not a typo, Boston did win a World Series. There was no 1904 World series because the owners couldn't agree on a format.

1908- Ford announces the Model "T" the "Tin Lizzie" the first mass produced affordable car. It was called the Model T because it took Twenty prototypes to perfect it. The Model T cost $825 dollars and paid on installments with as little as 10 dollars down. It’s top speed was 45 miles and hour and 15 million were sold. When they asked Henry Ford what color should it be, he replied: "Any color so long as it's black.' The auto goes from being a rich mans plaything to something every home could afford.

1911- A bomb blew up the L.A. Times building, killing 23 people. The Times had a hostility to unions and two union organizers the McNamara Brothers were arrested. Despite having Clarence Darrow as a lawyer they were convicted, possibly because halfway through the trial the brothers confessed and Darrow had to beat a charge of jury-tampering. As the MacNamaras were hanged they shouted 'Hurrah for Anarchy!'

1919- THE FIX IS IN- First game of the 'fixed' world series.The Chicago White Sox had the best team in baseball at the time but Charles Comisky paid them wages lower than most minor league teams. They were nicknamed the Black Sox because Comisky was too cheap to pay for laundering their uniforms. So this year five players accepted bribes from gangster Arnold Rothstein to throw the world series. Pitcher Eddie Cicotte ,who spent much of the previous night sewing $10,000 into the lining of his overcoat, at first threw a perfect fastball strike, then hit the batter in-between the shoulderblades on the next pitch- a signal to the gangsters that "The Fix was In" Cincinnatti won this game 9 -1 and eventually the series.
The scheme was uncovered a year later and Baseball Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned all the Sox players from ever playing again. The White Sox have never made it to a World Series since.

1923- The first football game in the L.A. Coliseum- USC defeated Pomona.

1931- Construction completed on the new Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The original Waldorf Astoria from the XIX Century was demolished to make way for the Empire State Building. The new Waldorf boasted the Waldorf Towers, where kings, presidents and other Hoi-Paloi could enter by a private lobby and stay for weeks at a time.

1932- Babe Ruth's "Called" Home Run. Ruth was hitting against a Chicago Cubs pitcher when he pointed with his bat towards right field. He then swung his bat and hit a home run over the right wing bleachers.

1937- After heavy lobbying by millionaire publisher William Randolph Hearst the first Federal law banning Marijuana goes into effect. The law was sought chiefly by southwestern states, that wanted to have an excuse to deport Mexican immigrants. Plus Hearst had many powerful paper manufacturers behind him who wanted wood pulp to be the chief source of paper products rather than hemp, which grows, well…. like a weed.

1942-The test flight of America’s first experimental jet aircraft- the XP59A Comet.

1943-THE DANISH MIRACLE- This day the Nazis were to begin deporting Denmark's Jewish population to death camps. The Danish people meanwhile had quietly smuggled the entire Jewish population to the coast and onto ferries to neutral Sweden. The Germans only found a few hundred stragglers. Earlier in a show of defiance when the Nazi authorities ordered all Jews to wear a large yellow Star of David, every Danish citizen including the King wore one.

1944- Nazis doctors in Buchenwald concentration camp began conducting experiments on homosexuals.

1945- Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin left the cartoon business to work full time at Paramount doing live action movies. He wrote for the Marx Brothers and later directed the Dean Martin Jerry Lewis comedies.

1946- NUREMBERG-The verdicts read in the International Military Tribunal Trials of top Nazi war criminals. Herman Goering, Hans Franck, Jodl and 8 others got death sentences, their bodies later to be burned in the very crematoriums they created. Others like Rudolf Hess life prison terms. Admirial Doenitz, the leader of the U-Boats, got a lighter sentence by appealing to US Admiral Nimitz. Nimitz admitted that US submarines sinking the Japanese merchant marine learned their stuff studying the German tactics. Japanese submarines never sunk US cargo ships because sinking other than a war ship was dishonorable.

1947-THE BIRTH OF THE BURBS- William Levitt's postwar dream, a planned community of affordable pre-fab homes on the outskirts of New York, called Levittown, is born. Mr. and Mrs. Bladykas moved into the first 2 bedroom house, which cost $7,990 bucks. The first true suburb.

1949- THE EAST IS RED - Mao declared the Peoples Republic of China. "Now Let the World Tremble! " he said. In China today is a holiday –National Day. Contrary to paranoid conservative American politicians who feared the growing global Communist Conspiracy, Soviet dictator Stalin continued to support Chiang Kai Chek’s nationalist government and always hated Mao. During World War Two, Mao sent his wife to Moscow for safety. Stalin locked her up in a lunatic asylum just to piss him off.

1952- This Is Your Life TV show hosted by Ralph Edwards premiered.

1957- Los Angeles outlaws garbage incineration to try and cut down smog levels.

1958- NASA born. The National Aeronautics & Space Agency. The U.S. government takes the space program out of the hands of the military and sets up a civilian space agency to get us into orbit.

1960- The independence of Nigeria.

1962- Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show, after host Jack Paar in a rage walked of the set and resigned. Paar was annoyed at network censors for cutting a comedy sketch that featured the sound of a toilet flushing.

1964- THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT- It’s hard to believe now, but once upon a time most US universities had strict laws against students holding political protests on campus. It changed when this day on the campus of Berkeley, Cal., Jack Weinberg was arrested by Oakland police for distributing Civil Rights pamphlets. A mob of students surrounded the police car he was handcuffed in and would not let it proceed. The crowd held the car for 32 hours as speakers stood on the roof and made speeches denouncing the ban and other issues. The University lifted the ban on public political rallies and set the stage for the Ant-War protest of the 60’s.

1966- Largest demonstrations in China of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

1968-George Romero's weird film "Night of the Living Dead' premieres.

1982- Disney's EPCOT opens.

1992 -The Cartoon Network started.
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Yesterday’s Question: what was the Philadelphia Experiment?

Answer: The Philadelphia project was a WWII experiment where physicists tried to create teleportation based on Einstein’s Unified theory. They supposedly made a destroyer, the USS Eldridge and it's crew disappear from Philadelphia Harbor and reappear a hundred miles away in Baltimore. But they couldn't control it, the crew kept appearing and disappearing. So the Army shut it down. The rumors, never been proven.


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