Quiz: Did the ancient Pharaohs drink wine?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Is the Twilight Zone a real place?
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History for 7/17/2015
Birthdays: James Cagney, John Jacob Astor I, Hyacinth Rigaud, Bernice Abbott, Chill Wills, Brian Trottier, Phoebe Snow, Daryl Lamonica, Prof. Peter Schickele a.k.a. PDQ Bach, Earl Stanley Gardner the creator of Perry Mason, Art Linkletter, Diane Carroll, David Hasslehoff is 63, Donald Sutherland is 80, Phyllis Diller

In ancient Rome, today was the feast of the god of Honor, Honorous.

924 – The death of Edward "the Elder", King of the West Saxons. During his reign, he annexed Wessex and the Danelaw up to the Humber River. Danelaw was the name for English territory governed by Danish Vikings.

1429- Charles the Dauphin is crowned King Charles VII at Rheims, thanks to the victories of Joan of Arc.

1453 Battle of Chatillon. The last battle of the Hundred Years War. English knight Sir John Talbot was blown away by the French with their newfangled cannons. Other names for the cannon were bombardons, culverins, and a variation on the catapult name for rock thrower- Mangonnel, shortened to Gonne or Gun.

1647- A Neopolitan fishmonger named Maisaniello led 100,000 Italians in a revolt against high taxes and tariffs. Maisaniello held power in Naples for ten days until his was assassinated this day by agents of the Spanish Viceroy the Count de Orsuna. One of Maisaniellos ideas was he reduced the price of bread by half, and if a baker didn’t comply, he was roasted in his own oven.

1789- Three days after the Bastille was stormed, King Louis XVI appeared on a balcony at Paris city hall the Hotel Du Ville and wore a red, white and blue cockade in a red Phyrgian liberty cap to the cheers of the multitude.

1793- Charlotte Corday, the assassin of French Revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat, went to the guillotine. When her decapitated head was lifted out of the basket the executioner gave it a smack on her cheek for being a naughty little girl, to the laughter of the crowd.

1803- James T. Callender, editor of the Aurora newspaper, was among the worst scandal mongering journalists in early America. He broke the story of Alexander Hamilton’s extramarital affairs and Thomas Jefferson’s sleeping with his slaves. He called John Adams a "pernicious Hermaphrodite" and George Washington’s Farewell Address the "Last ravings of a diseased mind". Everyone hated him. This night his body was found floating the James River. Without an investigation, a court decided he fell in while drunk. But many wonder if he was not pushed.

1841 - British humor magazine "Punch" 1st published.

1867 - 1st US dental school, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, established

1873- The U.S. Secretary of War William Belknap approved the revised set of cavalry regulations called "Upton's Rules". It became the standard for the U.S. Cavalry throughout the Indian Wars. Belknap was forced to resign for pocketing defense funds in 1874.

1876- Battle of Warbonnet Gorge. Skirmish between the US 5th Cavalry pursuing hostile Indians soon after Custers Last Stand. The battle is remembered chiefly because Gen Phil Sheridan asked his old friend Buffalo Bill Cody to return from his play acting back east and scout for the army one more time. He looked rather incredible riding the prairie in his theatrical black velvet silver studded Mexican Vaquero britches and coat.

Bill Cody was challenged to single combat by a Cheyenne Chief named Yellow Tail. Bill killed the chief and scalped him, waving the hair in the air to the cheering troopers and announcing "The first scalp for Custer!" Buffalo Bill then returned to the East where his new stage production "The First Scalp for Custer" ran for weeks to sold out audiences.

1879 - 1st railroad opens in Hawaii.

1893- Representatives of fourteen stage unions meet to form IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical & Screen Engineers of the U.S. & Canada.

1917-President Woodrow Wilson approved U.S. troops to join an Anglo-French mission to Russia. Originally intended to help the Russians from the German Army, the mission became an attempt to help anti-Bolshevik forces overthrow Lenin and reopen the second front against the Kaiser. In effect the U.S., France and Britain invaded Soviet Russia.

The American general was named Graves; the British were led by General Ironside, a 6 foot 4, killing machine his friends nicknamed "Tiny". The Michigan wolverines sent to Archangel and Vladivostok were told they were going to capture German U-boat bases. This excuse wore thin when the Great War ended and they were still fighting Bolsheviks, without ever seeing a German.

They were never given any real instructions about what to do except support Anti-Bolshevik forces, who were pathetically few in number. The Allied forces were withdrawn from Russia in 1922.

1928- President of Mexico Alvaro Obregon was at a large banquet for former veterans of the Mexican Revolution. Part of the party was having an artist stroll about making caricatures of the guests. Obregon said to cartoonist Leon Toral: "Make sure you make me look good." Toral responded "Oh, I will.." and pulled a gun and shot the President to death. An assassin but still a professional artist, he actually completed the drawing before reaching for his pistol. Gotta watch them cartoonists….

1935 - Variety's famous headline "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" meaning audiences in rural areas were not attending movies with a rustic theme.

1936-. The Spanish Civil War begins. A Spanish Fascist army led by Francisco Franco invaded Spain from North Africa. The first moves were to occupy the Canary Islands. The Fascists figured the takeover would only take a few days, but all over Spain the common workers, farmers, artists, even women and children took up guns to fight.

1937- the Nazis open an art exhibit of banned artworks and artists called Entartete Kunst- Degenerate Art.- Works of Dali and Duchamp, Grosz, Lippschitz, Kandinsky and Miro, with appropriate insults underneath. The next day Hitler dedicated the Great German Art Collection, having cleansed the German art world for National Socialist art, mostly bad deco-greco nudes and dumb Nordic medieval fantasy scenes.

1938- WRONG WAY CORRIGAN was the last of the pioneering aviators. A former mechanic for Lindbergh, Doug Corrigan bought a plane out of a junk heap and modified it for long distance travel. He asked permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly from New York City to Ireland. They denied his request, on the grounds that his plane was in poor condition. He seemed to accept the ruling, but when he took off for California, he banked sharply to the east and headed over the ocean.

He landed in Ireland, and complained of a faulty compass. No one believed his excuse, and he lost his pilot's license, but he was greeted as a hero back in New York. Over a million people came out for a ticker-tape parade. Supposedly his first words to the locals upon landing were. "Hello. I’m Corrigan, Where am I?"

1944- Top German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was strafed by an Allied fighter plane as his open car sped down a French country road. Germans nicknamed these roaming planes JABOS, for jaeger-bomber or hunter bombers. By now Rommel was in the Generals Plot to overthrow Hitler. His last conversation was with an SS Panzer Division General named Sepp Deitrich. Rommel asked him cryptically": Would you obey an order from me, even if it ran counter to the wishes of the Fuehrer?" Deitrich said he would.

But the plane attack cut short his career as a conspirator. When the General's Plot to kill Hitler went off in three days Rommel, who the conspirators planned to make President of the new Reich, was in a coma in the hospital.

Even though the bomb failed to kill Hitler, if a healthy Rommel, who's fame was second only to Hitler, went on nationwide radio and announced an army coup against the Nazis and an immediate unilateral peace, it's intriguing to think what might have happened.

1944- The Port Chicago explosion. In Oakland Harbor, African American sailors were given the dreary but dangerous duty of loading ammunition onto ships. This day an accident with high explosives blew up 321 men. The blast broke windows in San Francisco across the bay and was heard as far away as Boulder City Nevada.

When the base commander ordered the men to immediately resume loading with no change in pattern or promise of investigation- the black sailors refused. They were court-martialed for mutiny and treason.

1945-THE FIRST POTSDAM MEETING-New President Harry Truman met Stalin and Churchill in a suburb of war ravaged Berlin. Halfway through the talks Churchill learned that he was defeated in parliamentary elections and would be replaced by Clement Atlee. Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb and was surprised that Stalin wasn’t surprised. Stalin already knew because of spies he had at Los Alamos. Stalin told Truman the Japanese government was requesting peace talks asking that Russia act as intermediary, which they had no intention of doing.

Stalin called the Anglo-Americans his "soyuznicki" Little Allies. Truman called him "Uncle Joe". Paranoid Stalin disliked the name because he thought it was meant to be an insult.

1955 DISNEYLAND OPENED- Walt Disney's dream of a perfect family amusement park, called 'The Happiest Place on Earth" was declared open with movie celebrities like Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter and the Mouseketeers in attendance. Walt Disney was so worried the no one would show up, he requested employees to come with their families to beef up the crowd for the TV camera. Walt hoped to get 10,000 visitors that first day. He got 100,000. Facilities broke down from the huge crowds and the haste with which the park was built. Concrete pavement which was poured the night before was still soft under people's feet, there were no working water fountains and the car parking was a nightmare. To the Disneyland workers opening day was nicknamed 'Black Sunday". But despite all, Disneyland became a huge success.

1955 - Arco, Idaho becomes 1st US city lit by nuclear power.

1967– The Monkees performed at Forest Hills NY, Jimi Hendrix was their opening act.

1968- In Iraq, the Bath party seized power under President Ahmad Hussain Al-Bakr. The following year his chief of police Saddam Hussein would overthrow him.

1968- The Beatles musical cartoon feature The Yellow Submarine premiered in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Look Out ! It’s the Blue Meanies!!

1975-The Apollo-Soyuz space linkup. A second linkup would not happen until 1995.

1979- Nicaraguan rebels called Sandinistas overthrow dictator Anastasio Somosa. He escaped to Miami with CIA help. The Reagan White House spent most of the 1980’s obsessed with these Communist rebels as a new escalation of the Cold War.

1988- A home video tape was released of actor Rob Lowe making whoopee with two underage girls in his hotel room.

1996- TWA Flt.#800- a jumbo jet flying from New York to Paris exploded over Long Island Sound shortly after take-off. Disturbing rumors of a missile bringing down the plane was squashed by authorities, despite the Air France pilot immediately behind and eyewitnesses describing a streak of light in the sky before the explosion. In Paris, elderly Kennedy spokesman Pierre Salinger reported it as a missile and was derided as senile. The official reason the FAA gave was "fumes ignited in a wing tank", but that explanation failed to satisfy the grieving relatives. Why a plane with a 30 year safety record should just blow up, and none have blown up that way since, remains a mystery.

2004- Katsuhiro Otomo’s film Steamboy premiered. Japanese interest in the idea of SteamPunk began to spread worldwide.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Is the Twilight Zone a real place?

Answer: Yes. For oceanographers the Twilight Zone is the area just below where sunlight mingles with the sea water, and a variety of unusual fish live. For pilots the Twilight Zone is the period at dusk just before the first stars come out, when haze make the horizon line and sky indistinguishable. When John Kennedy Jr crashed his plane in 1999, he was not FAA qualified to fly in this type of weather.

Question: Is the Twilight Zone a real place?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: The Greek drachma had an owl on it, in honor of ancient Athenian currency. Why an owl?

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History for 7/16/2015
Birthdays: Andrea Del Sarto, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Ginger Rogers, Pinchas Zukerman,
Orville Redenbacher, Roald Amundsen, Sunny Tufts, Barbera Stanwyck, Reuben Blades, Mary Baker-Eddy the founder of Christian Science, Phoebe Cates, Will Farrell is 48

1054 –The GREAT SCHISM- Eastern Greek Orthodox and Latin Roman Catholic Churches split. The Patriarch Of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius and Pope Leo IX mutually excommunicate one another. When Catholic Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1209 they put a prostitute on the Orthodox Patriarch's throne just for laughs. The Greek Patriarch referred to the Vatican in Rome as a "Synagogue of Satan!"

Historian Ernle Bradford stated that his event marked the moment when Christianity ceased to be a supra-national force for unity in Europe the way Islam was in the Arab world. Europeans would now turn to nationalism as their identifying creed and Christianity took a backseat.

1099- JERUSALEM FALLS TO THE CRUSADERS- The knights of the First Crusaders broke into the city and committed horrible massacres of the population. The rampaging knights even cut down Armenian & Syrian Christians, because they looked dark and were dressed like Arabs. In an ironic twist of history the Jewish population fought shoulder to shoulder alongside their Arab cousins. When the massacre started they withdrew to a central synagogue where the Christians barred he doors and burned them to death.

The Crusaders then declared the Holy City free, and warlord Geoffrey de Boullion declared himself "Protector of the Holy Sepulcher" instead of king since in his opinion "There is no King here but Christ". After he died his younger brother Baldwin made himself King of Jerusalem.

1212-BATTLE OF LAS NAVAS DE TOLOSA- Christian Kings of Spain defeat the Moors and begin the "Reconquista", the gradual winning back of the Iberian peninsula lasting until 1492. King Pedro of Aragon was nicknamed Pedro the Lecher, because of his sexual appetite. Legend has him having to be helped into the saddle after taking on 100 women in one night !

1439 - Kissing is banned in England to stop diseases from spreading.

1690-After the collapse of his cause in the Battle of the Boyne, King James II Stuart fled Ireland for exile.

1721- Guilliame DuBois, archbishop of Cambrai was ordained a Cardinal. The Bishop was one of the most sexually promiscuous men in France, out done only by his master Phillipe D’Orleans, Regent for the boy King Louis XV. The memoirist Sainte Simon wrote His Eminence the Cardinal “had a face like a ferret and was a Cloaca Maxima of depravity” named for Rome’s largest Sewer. Yet despite his sexual appetite he ran Frances’ foreign policy almost as well as Cardinal Richelieu did a century earlier. France was at peace for 27 years. His only fear as Cardinal was that his wife would renege on the blackmail he paid her, and go public.

1769- Fra Junipero Serra founded his first Mission settlement in California- San Diego de Alcala, now present day San Diego. The master plan was to create a string of missions from San Diego to San Francisco one days ride apart- San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, San Gabriel, Santa Maria Reina de Los Angeles, etc.

1777- I WILL FIND YOU! -In frontier Kentucky outside of Boonesborugh Jemima Boone and her girlfriend are set upon by a Shawnee Indian warparty and kidnapped. Her daddy Daniel Boone with seven men tracked the warparty. This day after a sharp fight they freed the women. Despite killing the son of the Shawnee chief, Boone was later adopted into the tribe in his place. This incident was widely reported in the colonies and was the basis for James Fennimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans.

1779- American colonial General "Mad" Anthony Wayne attacks the British garrison at Stony Point, New York.

1862- In Paris the French Emperor Napoleon III received John Slidell, the ambassador of the Confederate States. But France declined to intervene in the American Civil War.

1877- THE GREAT UPHEAVAL- The B&O Railroad cuts their workers wages 10% for the second time that year. (there had been a recession raging in the U.S. economy since 1873 ). Workers and engineers at Martinsburg Virginia went out on strike and started sabotaging trains. The strike soon spread coast to coast and became America's first nationwide strike. The laws protecting workers union rights were still far in the future so strikes were put down by troops randomly shooting into crowds, mass firings and vigilante murder of union leaders.
The violence shocked the rest of the world. Karl Marx wrote Engels "did you hear what is happening in America?” He always thought industrialized countries like America and England would go communist long before Russia and China.

1918-CZAR NICHOLAS ROMANOV AND FAMILY MURDERED. After abdicating the Czar's family was imprisoned in a house in Siberia. The anti-Communist While armies were about to capture the area. So from Moscow Vladimir Lenin sent orders that they all be killed. In the middle of the night commissar Yakov Sverdlov told the Czar they were to be moved and were ordered to wait in a basement room of their house. Outside Red guards revved a truck motor to mask the sound of the guns. Then a group of soldiers came in the room pulled out their pistols. Nicholas’ last word before the guns went off was "Schto? " What the-? They even shot the family doctor, the boys sailor bodyguard and the family dog.

The anti-Communist forces captured the area two weeks later and told the world about the crime. Seeing what happened to the Russian Czar may be part of the reason the Kaiser and Austrian Emperor slipped away quietly into exile after losing the Great War. Remains weren't discovered until 1988 and in 1993 DNA testing proved them to be the true remains of the Czar and his family. DNA Testing on the remains of a woman who died in 1984 named Anna Andersen, who claimed to be the child Duchess Anastasia was negative.

The reason the children's remains weren't in with the others was because the Bolsheviks first tried destroying their remains with sulfuric acid but found it took too long, so they cremated the rest. Czar Nicholas II and his family were made saints of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1994.

1932- Cecil B. DeMille shot the scene in his film Sign of the Cross where Claudette Colbert took a bath in asses milk. Legend has it that DeMille insisted on real milk in the bath and that by the second day the hot studio lights had curdled it to a smelly cheese. But production notes show the scene was all shot in one day. DeMille always got away with sexy semi-nude scenes by putting them in biblical settings. After all, who would criticize a morality tale from the Good Book?

1935- The first parking meter set up in Oklahoma City.

1936 - 1st x-ray photo of arterial circulation, Rochester, NY

1945-THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB EXPLODED at Alamagordo New Mexico (site code name was "Trinity'). Called at first the Super Cosmic Bomb, nicknamed "The Gadget". The Manhattan Project scientists weren't sure that once you started the chain reaction detonating particles of light when it would stop, if ever. Physicists Richard Fenyman and Enrico Fermi wagered a case of beer that they would incinerate the state of New Mexico. (funny guys). They were led by General Leslie Groves, a by-the-book army engineer who supervised the construction of the Pentagon, and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist and Berkeley radical who read Sanskrit to relax. When he saw the force of the blast, Oppenheimer recalled the Hindu verse: "Now have I become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds..."

1951- J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" published.

1954- Groundbreaking for the construction of Disneyland.

1956 –The Last time Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey Circus performed under a canvas circus tent.

1963- Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6.

1964- Conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater was nominated to run against Lyndon Johnson for president. Goldwater set the tone by his speech:" Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." LBJ’s campaign portrayed him as a dangerous warmonger and he lost in a landslide. In later years Goldwater’s conservative views were eclipsed by the even more conservative Reagan and Bush.

1966- Mao Tse Tung takes a swim in the Yangtzse River and gives permission for his young Red Guards to start the Cultural Revolution.

1969- Congress passed Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their spacecraft.

1973- WHO HAS THE TAPES ! Presidential attorney Alexander Butterfield admitted to the Senate Watergate Committee that President Richard Nixon had bugged the Oval Office and had recorded tapes of all of his conversations. The tape system was actually installed by Lyndon Johnson. When Nixon took office he was going to have it all removed. But his aides convinced him to keep the system to document his place in history. Why Nixon never destroyed these tapes that brought him down remains one of the mysteries of history.

1994- Comet Schoendacher-Levy 6 impacted with the Planet Jupiter, giving scientists a spectacular ringside seat to the processes of the creation of the Universe.

1999- JOHN-JOHN -Thirty years after the death of his father and uncle, 38 year old John Kennedy Jr. fell victim to the Kennedy curse when his small plane crashed on the way to a wedding in Martha’s Vineyard. His wife had delayed to have a pedicure, so he had to take off at dusk. He was too inexperienced to fly on instruments at dusk in fog and he lost his bearings, hitting the water at 150 miles per hour. The Kennedy’s have a history of bad luck with planes- Kathleen Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy’s parents and JFK’s older brother Joe Kennedy all died in small plane crashes. Senator Ted Kennedy barely survived a crash. Teddy refused to ever fly with John Jr., and died of old age in 2009.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The Greek drachma had an owl on it, in honor of ancient Athenian currency. Why an owl?

Answer: The owl was considered the favorite of the goddess Athena, the patron of Athens. Ancient Athenians nicknamed their money “Owls”, the way Americans call their money Bucks.

Quiz: The Greek drachma had an owl on it, in honor of ancient Athenian currency. Why an owl?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Which was not a real rock band? a) Bachman Turner Overdrive, b) Iron Butterfly, Moose Knuckles, Hole, Baked Clams from Outer Space.
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History for 7/15/2015
Birthdays: Rembrandt van Rijn, Inigo Jones, Sir Thomas Bullfinch, Mother Cabrini, Clemont Moore, Julian Bream, Linda Rondstadt, Alex Karras, Jan Michael Vincent, Lola Davidovich, Forrest Whitaker is 54, Brigette Neilsen, Jesse Ventura, Terry O’ Quinn is 63

Feast of St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain.

765 A.D.- Mayan Scientists hold a conference at Copan to discuss astronomy and adjust their calendar. By 1492 the Mayan civilization was already 2,000 years old. Their calendar was so perfect, the difference between it and our modern atomic clocks calculation of a lunar month is just 24 seconds! They used hieroglyphic writing but also a system of numbers including zero, which the Greeks and Romans never figured out. Among their surviving documents are calculations on the orbit of Venus.

Tikal, one of their cities, covered 23 square miles ( Rome of the Caesars covered 8 ) and had a temple that was the tallest structure in America until the completion of the U.S. Capitol dome in 1863.

1205- Pope Innocent III declared that because they have rejected Christ, the Jewish people must be subjected to perpetual servitude and subjugation, It took several more centuries of oppression and holocaust for the Vatican to officially "forgive" Judaism in 1947. Pope John Paul II apologized in 2000.

1410- Battle of Grunwald, King Jagiello of Poland, Witold Wytautas of Lithuania and their Tartar allies defeated the Prussian Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Sword Brothers under Grand Master Ulrich Von Junnigen.

1685- James the Duke of Monmouth was executed. Monmouth was the bastard son of King Charles II and tried to overthrow his step-uncle James II in Monmouth’s Rebellion.
Monmouth New Jersey had been named for him.

1780- American Colonial General Benedict Arnold sneaked a coded message to British General Sir Henry Clinton. In it, he offered to betray the fortress of West Point to the British for 20,000 English pounds. Arnold wasn’t even West Point’s commander yet, but he expected Gen. George Washington to confirm him in the job any day. The only person who warned that Gen. Arnold might be up to something, was a female spy planted in British Headquarters in occupied New York. Her cover was kept so complete, that her name is lost to history. We only know her as agent “355”.

1789- Astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly is proclaimed first mayor of Paris. Since Medieval days when the Hero Mayor Etienne Marcel had defied the King, Paris had no mayor but was under direct royal control through an appointed prefect. Today the mayor of Paris is such an important position it is considered the stepping stone to the Presidency of the Republic.

1795 - "Le Marseillaise" became officially the French national anthem.

1806- American captain Zebulon Pike set off on his trek of discovery through the new Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado territory. Near Santa Fe New Mexico he was eventually apprehended by Spanish Authorities for trespassing and put on a boat back home. In Colorado Pike discovered the mountain named for him- Pike’s Peak.

1815- Napoleon boards HMS Bellerophon for the trip to St. Helena. On the trip he teaches himself English and makes friends with the British sailors to such an extent that their officers reprimand them. He says to his Irish doctor O'Meara:" So you are a doctor and I am a general. How many men have you killed? I'll wager more than me!"

1861- During the Civil War a beautiful Washington D.C. socialite named Rose Greenhow moved in the highest circles of government and was personal friends with top Congressmen and Generals. But Rose was also a Southern spy. This day she got out a message to Confederate General Beauregard that the main Union army would commence their march on Richmond that week. This bit of espionage would contribute to the great Union disaster at Bull Run. Rose Greenhow was later arrested and her home turned into a women’s prison.

1862- THE WILD RIDE OF THE C.S.S. ARKANSAS- Union Admiral David Farragut (the 'Damn the Torpedoes!' guy) had moved his big battle fleet up the Mississippi above the Confederate fortress town of Vicksburg and was preparing to bombard the town. Southern Captain Issac Brown was told he would take command of an ironclad called the Arkansas, and sailed it right into the middle of the Union navy, firing on all sides. One ship attacked 34 warships!

Farragut was taking a nap and was so surprised he fought the battle in his nightshirt. Although pounded by dozens of heavy cannonballs Brown's homemade ironclad not only held up but she inflicted so much damage on Farragut's wooden ships he was forced to leave Vicksburg and retreat to the Gulf. At one point Capt. Brown was knocked senseless by some shrapnel and when he woke up he had been laid out on a pile of dead corpses. But he had done his job. No further attempts to attack Vicksburg occurred until the end of that year. One ship had defeated a navy.

1863- Yankee leaders were so frustrated by the actions of Confederate guerrillas in Missouri and Kansas that they resorted to a controversial solution. They arrested the wives, sisters and girlfriends of the guerrillas and lodged them in Kansas City. They hoped to ship them to rebel held Arkansas, thinking this would draw off their menfolk. But on this day an unforeseen tragedy struck. The old Grand St Hotel they were in collapsed, killing many of the innocent women. The country was shocked and the rebels vowed revenge. Cole Younger lost his mother and two sisters. He never believed the collapse was an accident. Bloody Bill Anderson rode into battle tearfully shouting his baby sisters name.

1870 -The Hudson's Bay Company sells Prince Rupertland to Canada, which was the entire Canadian west from the Ontario border to the Pacific and from the Montana border up to the Arctic Circle. Up to then it had been a corporate businessman's dream, the largest land mass ever managed by a board of directors, almost as large as the United States. The Hudson's Bay CEO, Sir Roger Simpson had been called the 'Emperor Simpson' by his detractors. Canada suddenly became bi-coastal. But the French-Indian fur trappers called the Metiz understood the threat Anglo town settlers would bring to their way of life and rose in revolt under their leader Louis Riel.

1882- In Springfield Illinois, “The Crazy Old Lady” who lived alone in the big house with the curtains always drawn finally died. Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln, had always been high strung and a little paranoid. Now, her spirit was broken by her husbands murder and all of her children dying except her eldest son Robert. And he kept trying to get her committed to a lunatic asylum before she spent all of their family fortune. Mary wore nothing but black, constantly wept, packed and unpacked trunks all day, and lived on chloral hydrate, opium and other narcotics. This day she finally got her fondest wish, to join her husband in death.

1915- A Secret Service agent was presented with a suitcase left by a German diplomat on a New York City subway seat. In the satchel was a complete list of known German spies and saboteurs working in the U.S., a nation still officially neutral in the war between Britain, France and Germany.

1928- The first Enigma Machine invented.

1938- Popeye cartoon "With the Jeep" introduced Eugene the Jeep. The funny little character later gave it’s name to the army’s new General Purpose Vehicle, the G.P. or Jeep.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt sent federal mediator Stanley White to try and solve the labor strike between Walt Disney and his cartoonists.

1945- President Truman was shown intercepted communiqués from Japanese military command that all that was left of the Japanese army was massing on the Southern beaches of Kyushu preparing to meet the expected American invasion.

1951-A Syrian nationalist shot and killed the Lebanese Prime Minister Riyadh Bey-Ehrsault in Beirut.

1953- English serial killer Jack Christie was executed. In his home at Number 10 Rillington Place police found the bodies of several women buried in the garden. Two bodies weren’t even Christies, they were credited to an abortionist who was a previous tenant who had botched two and they died of internal bleeding.

1953- The film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes premiered starring Marylyn Monroe and Jane Russell.

1971- President Nixon announced he had accepted an invitation to visit Red China.

1971- Producer Steve Krantz announced the production of the first X-rated cartoon, Fritz the Cat, to be directed by newcomer Ralph Bakshi.

1979- THE OIL CRISIS. In a nationwide address, President Jimmy Carter laid out the oil/gas crisis. He stated flatly that the U.S. and the world would be trapped in an increasing dependence on diminishing stocks of foreign oil unless we moved fast to develop solar and other alternative fuels immediately. “ When we import oil, we import rising prices and unemployment. He said we should establish a Solar Bank to eventually take on 20% of the nations energy needs. But the media focused on his negative tone, his speaking of a “ crisis of confidence” They called it the “national malaise” speech, even though he never said that. The next President, Ronald Reagan, ignored Carter’s initiatives and tore off the solar panels from the White House. The cost of gas then was .86 a gallon.

1982-Coca-Cola introduced Diet Coke. Coke officials are proud of the fact that within a year it's sales top that of Tab, but Tab was owned by Coke as well. ( duh..?)

1997- Famed clothing designer Gianni Versace was murdered outside his Miami mansion by a deranged serial killer on a spree since leaving Minnesota. The killer, Andrew Cunanan, was later found in a houseboat with a self-inflicted bullet in his head.

2011- Disney’s Winnie the Pooh and the Ballad of Nessie opened in theaters.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Which was not a real rock band? a) Bachman Turner Overdrive, b) Iron Butterfly, Moose Knuckles, Hole, Baked Clams from Outer Space.

Answer: Moose Knuckles.

Quiz: What was the name of the comic strip where Popeye and Olive Oyl first appeared?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who said “ Man Proposes, God Disposes..”….?
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History for 7/13/2015
Birthdays: French Admiral Bailly de Suffren, Cheech Marin, Father Flannagan, Cameron Crowe, Woye Solenka, Dave Garroway, Chef Paul Prudhomme, Michael Spinks, Film special effects artist Jim Danforth, Dr. Erno Rubik inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, Patrick Stewart is 74, Harrison Ford is 72, Tom Kenny the voice of Spongebob Squarepants is 53

1174- The Battle of Alnwick, in which Scottish King William I "the Lion" was
taken on a raid in Northumberland. He was held hostage by King Henry II until he recognized England's authority over Scotland.

1568 - Dean of St Paul's Cathedral perfects a way to bottle beer. What ever the process was it had to wait three hundred more years to be put to use.

1704- BLENHEIM-the great battle in Bavaria where the Duke of Marlborough destroyed the French army of Louis XIV. In the three centuries since Agincourt the reputation of English arms had faded in Continental Europe, preoccupied as they were by their internal Wars of the Roses and English Civil Wars. While the British Navy's reputation was growing, on land King William III trusted his Dutch generals more than his British. Blenheim changed all that. In one day Britain became the dominant powerbroker in Europe. John Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough was the great ancestor of Winston Churchill.

1787-THE NORTHWEST ORDINANCE PASSED- This unprecedented plan masterminded by Tom Jefferson stipulated that as new territory passed into the United States, their populations could organize their own government and enter the union as a state, an equal partner of the original older states. So Utah would have as much political power as Pennsylvania. Nothing like this had ever been imagined much less implemented.
Before The Northwest Ordinance the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania were claiming all the land west of them to the Mississippi as their territory. Virginia even claimed the jurisdiction of Bermuda and Nassau in the Caribbean!

1798- Poet William Wordsworth visited Tinturn Abbey and was inspired to write his famous elegy on the ruins.

1832- Geologist Henry Schoolcraft discovered the source of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca, Minnesota.

1865- P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City burned down in a spectacular fire. Barnum rebuilt but after that one burned as well, he got the idea of getting into the circus business. In his American Museum , more a sitting menagerie and sideshow than a museum as we know it, Barnum invented the idea of advanced hype and created kiddie matinees.

1868 - Oscar J Dunn, a former slave, was installed as the first African American governor of a state. Louisiana’s post Civil War elections were supervised by the occupying Union army and it ordered that no citizens who took up arms against the United States could vote. Since that was most of the white male population, the newly freed black population dominated the voting. But in ten years whites had reversed that situation and implemented Jim Crow laws to cheat black people out of political power until the Civil Rights movements of the twentieth Century.

1898-Giusseppi Marconi patents wireless transmissions, the Radio. Marconi believed that sound never dies, it just grows fainter. In his old age he was trying to invent a machine that could pick up the traces of the voice of Jesus.

1923- Paleontologist George Olsen while digging in the Gobi Desert discovered the first fossilized dinosaur eggs.

1925- Walt Disney and Lillian Bounds marry. Lillian was one of the first female animation ink & paint artists.

1930- Six thousand people in formal evening wear crowded into London’s Albert Hall to hear a special message from Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. It was extra special, because everyone knew Conan-Doyle had died just five days ago. Arthur Conan-Doyle was an advocate of spiritualism. He declared if anyone could get a message through from beyond the grave, he would. An empty chair was placed on stage in hopes of his apparition would take a seat. Hymns were sung and after long embarrassing silences, a clairvoyant medium cried out that she could see Sir Arthur.
Most saw nothing and thought it was all a big humbug.

1930 – David Sarnoff the head of the NBC radio network said in the NY Times that " The new invention of Television would be a theater in every home". Sounded crazy back then. Critics said it would require one room of the house be darkened, and they doubted people would just sit still that long.

1939- Frank Sinatra recorded his first album, this one with the Harry James Orchestra.

1939- Pete Pantos was an Italian immigrant and fearless crusader for longshoremen’s rights. He spoke openly against the Mob stranglehold on New York waterfront unions led by Murder Inc. hitman Al Anastasia and his brother Tough Tony. On this day Pantos went to a secret meeting and never returned. A mob informer identified his body in a lime pit one year later. Graffiti covered the docks for weeks- WHERE’S PETE PANTOS? The mobs’ power on the docks was mostly broken up by in the 1960’s.

1949- Hollywood Studio exec David O. Selznick left his first wife Esther, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, to marry actress Jennifer Jones.

1950- General Walton “ Bulldog” Walker was sent by MacArthur to assume overall command of all US and South Korean forces fleeing the North Korean invasion in the Pusan Perimeter. He stiffened the defense so MacArthur could launch his counterattack at Inchon. Bulldog Walker was one of George Patton’s top tank men and adopted Patton’s style of leadership. He once flew dangerously low over the battlefield in a small spotter plane waving his generals three star ensign at his retreating troops and bellowing at them:” Turn around and fight, ya yellow sons of bitches!!” Ironically like Patton he was killed not in battle but in a car accident.

1960- Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts nominated for President by the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. The day continued with rounds of fierce backroom deals to decide the running mate. Although the Kennedys wanted Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri it finally was decided to go with Lyndon Johnson. He was the powerful Senate leader from Texas.

Johnson had asked his Texas mentor John Nance Garner if he should accept the job. Cactus Jack was Franklin Roosevelt’s Veep for his first two terms. The 90 year old Garner said:” Lyndon, the Vice Presidency ain’t worth a bucket a warm spit!” Bobby Kennedy considered offering Lyndon the Vice Presidency a token gesture to mollify his anger at losing the nomination. But he was surprised when Johnson accepted. Before going to Ciro’s with Frank Sinatra to celebrate the nomination, Presidential aide Kenny O’Donnell recalled JFK making the best of it:” The Vice Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m forty three and I don’t plan to die in office….”

1964- At the Republican Convention the delegates cheered far rightwing candidate Barry Goldwater, and booed Nelson Rockefeller for denouncing right wing extremism in the party.

1966- In Chicago, psycho killer Richard Speck broke into a woman’s dormitory hotel where he raped and murdered 8 nurses as they came home from work. He spent the rest of his life in prison. Richard Speck became a posterboy for the death penalty. On a smuggled video recorder he bragged about how much fun he was having in prison at public expense, getting all the sex and drugs he wanted. Just before his death in 1999 he was asked if he had any remorse about the horrible things he did to those nurses. All he would say was “I guess it wasn’t their night.”

1977- The Great New York City Blackout of '77. For the second time in 20 years the whole darn East Coast power grid breaks down. Unlike the 1964 Blackout it was much longer, much hotter, and there was no full moon to illuminate the city.

1984- The film The Last Starfighter with Robert Preston opened. The first movie where all the spaceships and effects were done with computers instead of miniature models.

1985- Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldorf organized a massive live concert called LIVE AID. Televised and seen by 1.5 billion people, it raised money for African famine relief. Madonna, Santanna, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys and reunions of Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who and Led Zeppelin.

1985- A cancerous growth was removed from President Ronald Reagan’s colon. Comic Paul Rodriguez said:” Reagan is amazing: He got cancer in his nose, he got cancer in his butt, he got shot full of bullets- he’s like the Terminator President.”
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Yesterday’s Question: Who said “ Man Proposes, God Disposes..”….

Answer: From the 1417 philosophical work by Thomas a’ Kempis, An Imitation of Christ.
"For the resolutions of the just depend rather on the grace of God than on their own wisdom; and in Him they always put their trust, whatever they take in hand.
 For man proposes, but God disposes; neither is the way of man in his own hands"

Question: Who said “ Man Proposes, God Disposes..”….?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What does it mean to Bowdlerize something?
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History for 7/12/2015
Birthdays: Gaius Julius Caesar is 2,115 years old, Henry David Thoreau, Impressionist painter Eugene Boudin, Oscar Hammerstein, Kirsten Flagstad, Andrew Wyeth, Pablo Neruda, George Eastman, Milton Berle, Cheryl Ladd, Van Cliburn, Buckminster Fuller, George Washington Carver, Josiah Wedgewood- of Wedgewood china and pottery, Michelle Rodriguez, Richard Simmons, Krysty Yamaguchi, Bill Cosby is 78, Ben Burtt- George Lucas’ sound effects guru who created the sounds of Darth Vader and R2D2, is 67.

783AD – Queen Bertha "with the big feet" died, the wife of Frankish King Pippin III.

1174- King Henry II of England does public penance on his knees and allowed him self to be whipped for the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Thomas Beckett.

1290 –All Jews were expelled from England by order of King Edward I Longshanks. A few lived on secretly in British society- Queen Elizabeth’s doctor Rodrigo Lopez was Jewish. Jews would not officially be allowed back into England for four hundred years, when Oliver Cromwell lifted the ban in the 1650’s.

1389- King Richard II appointed writer Geoffrey Chaucer to the choice job of Chief Clerk of the Kings Works at Westminster.

1543- Henry VIII marries his sixth and last wife Catharine Parr.

1562- Spanish monks burn hundreds of priceless books and scrolls of the ancient Mayan Civilization as works of the Devil.

1679 - Britain's King Charles II ratified the Habeas Corpus Act.

1690-THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE: William of Orange's English defeated his father-in-law James II Stuart's Irish army. Even though James mainly wanted his English crown back, this battle is seen as the last organized Irish resistance to British rule until the IRA campaigns of the twentieth century. Protestant Irish Orangemen see it as the victory that confirmed British rule in Ulster. It seems there were French Protestant (Huguenots) exiles among the English and French Catholic allies sent by Louis XIV among the Irish. These Frenchmen kept stubbornly fighting each other into the night long after the English and Irish had driven each other off the field.

1742- Battle of Bloody Marsh- As part of a larger European war, James Oglethorpe’s English colony in Georgia was attacked by a large Spanish force under Florida’s colonial governor Don Manuel de Montiano.

1776- During the American Revolution, the British 44 gun warships HMS Phoenix and HMS Rose showed how little they thought of George Washington’s puny rebel defenses, by boldly sailing right up to New York City, and firing on the town.

1759- British General Wolfe began to bombard the French held city of Quebec.

1789- At the Palais Royale in Paris, radical lawyer Camille DesMoulins climbed up on a table in front of the Café du Foy to address a crowd. The people of Paris had been seething since the king had brought Swiss and German mercenary troops into the city to restore order. DesMoulin alleged that the true object of the King's foreign troops were to kill all Frenchmen who wanted freedom. For the first time the Parisian streets rang with the cry: "Aux Armes, Citoyens!" -to arms, citizens! A mob marched to the Place Vendomme where they showered the troops with rocks and bottles, until a volley from their guns dispersed them. The French Revolution would begin in two more days.

1794- At the siege of Calvi in Corsica, young Captain Horatio Nelson lost his right eye.

1808-With the encouragement of Governor Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis & Clark fame, the first newspaper west of the Mississippi is founded, The Missouri Gazette and Louisiana Advertiser.

1817- For the first time in many years America wasn’t at war with anyone and political feuding had died down. James Monroe was elected President in what was considered a decidedly boring election. A Boston newspaper named the Columbian Sentinel described the climate of the times as “The Era of Good Feeling”. The name stuck.

1843- Mormon prophet Joseph Smith said God told him in a revelation that it’s okay to marry more than one wife.

1861- The McCandles Massacre, the most famous Western shootout until the OK Corral. James Hickock earns his nickname Wild Bill by killing ten desperadoes in a free for all with sixguns and bowie knives. Interviewed by Harpers Weekly Mr. Hickock said :”I was wild and I struck savage blows.”

1863-The NEW YORK CITY DRAFT RIOTS- Arguably the largest civil disturbance in American History. Poor immigrant laborers, sick of the Civil War and being forced into the army while rich men bought their way out, ran wild in the streets in three days of looting.

The riot was sparked by the opening of a new draft office on 46th St & 3rd Ave. They began calling names while by coincidence the first lists of the dead from the Battle of Gettysburg were being published. A mob of 15,000 attacked and burned the Draft Board offices and overwhelmed the police. Writer Herman Melville watching the flames from a rooftop said: “The Rats have taken over the City.” Newspaperman Horace Greely defended his New York World office with a small cannon in his lobby. The New York Times posted Gatling Guns on it’s roof and Wall St. banks boiled oil to drop from the rooftops like something out of the Middle Ages.

Labor history mentions that most of these laborers worked a 12-14 hour day, seven days a week. So fighting slavery seemed a moot point to them. The mob attacked well dressed men “There goes a three hundred-dollar man!” Modern apologists for the rich rather to focus on the racism of the mob. Indeed the Irish poor, targets of racism themselves, singled out black people as the cause of all their misfortunes and hanged many from lampposts. They even torched a black little girl’s orphanage. The children had to be escorted by bayonet wielding militia to a barge in the East River for safety.

N.Y. Governor Horatio Seymour, who’s own public contempt for Lincoln's policies help encourage the riots, had to borrow Union Army regiments from the battlefields to restore order in New York City.

1863- After the defeat at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee's retreating army was pinned for awhile against the rain flooded Potomac River. As the surrounding Union army massed to attack, a local minister went up to Yankee General Meade and protested fighting a battle on a Sunday. When Meade tried to reason with him, the minister replied:" As God's emissary I denounce the defiling of His day! Look ye to the heavens!" Almost as if on command a rainstorm burst out over their heads. Meade cancelled the attack.

1864- Jubal Early's Confederates tried to attack Washington D.C. Early didn’t think he could hold Washington but he was determined to loot and burn it and maybe in so doing draw Grant away from Richmond. Rebel skirmishers got as close as Georgetown, they could see the gleaming white dome of the US Capitol. Despite Union forces in the area being pathetically unprepared, Quartermaster General Meigs had to arm his accountants, and they bussed out hospital invalids with guns, they still managed to turn Early away.

President Lincoln went out to Fort Stevens near present day Walter Reade Medical Center to watch the fight. During the shooting Col. Oliver Wendell Holmes called out to the man in the $8 dollar stovepipe hat peering over the parapet:" Get down ya damn fool! You’re drawing fire. You wanna get us all killed?!" The last and only time a sitting U.S. President was under direct enemy fire.

1870- Celluloid film patented. The inventor had been trying to find a substitute for ivory billiard balls. Inventor George Eastman later perfected the sprocket and hole system of roll film for cameras, replacing the large glass plates.

1870- THE DISPATCH OF EMMS- The spark that ignited the Franco Prussian War, which caused the World Wars of the Twentieth Century. The Spanish had deposed their nymphomaniac Queen Isabella IX and the French and Germans each had a new candidate for the throne. When the Prussian (German) King Wilhelm removed his candidate to diffuse international tension the French Empress Eugenie pushed it by demanding an apology as well.

King Wilhelm was at the Baths at Emms when he got the demand for an apology. He wrote a short note refusing to meet the French ambassador. Wilhelm's chancellor Bismarck, who wanted a war with France to unite the separate states of Germany against their old enemy, intercepted the kings letter before it went out and rewrote it to be a real slap in the face. The furious French Empire declared war two days later, just as Bismarck had hoped.

1876- Gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock arrived in Deadwood South Dakota to prospect for gold, see some old friends like Calamity Jane, and play a little poker.

1901 – Baseball pitcher Cy Young wins his 300th game.

1906 – French Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was cleared of all charges of treason and espionage.

1914 – Young reform school graduate Babe Ruth makes his baseball debut, as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.

1928 - 1st televised tennis match.

1937- The US Government passed the Marijuana Liscensing Act, the first of many laws to try and regulate and eventually eliminate marijuana growing. The act was ruled unconstitutional in 1969, but by then marijuana was top on the list of illegal substances.

1948 - 1st jets fly across the Atlantic -6 RAF de Havilland Vampire bombers.

1949- The Chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson Sr., predicted that one day all the moving parts of machines would be replaced by electronics.

1960: The first Etch-a-Sketch goes on sale. Frenchman Arthur Granjean, invented it. (he called it L’Ecran Magique, or “The Magic Screen”). After failing to get some of the bigger toy companies to bite, he sold his invention to the Ohio Art Company.

1962 – The Rolling Stones 1st performance at the Marquee Club, London. One band member named Elmo Lewis, changed his name to Brian Jones.

1979- Carmine "The Cigar" Galante, boss of the Gambino Mafia family, was blown away over coffee and spumoni at a small Brooklyn restaurant called Joe & Marys. He was finished off with a 45 cal. slug through the eye, his cigar still in his lips. The hit was ordered by Paul Castellano. Rupert Murdoch's New York Post set a new journalistic low when a reporter shimmied up a drainpipe and got a photo of the Don's bullet riddled body before the cops could throw a sheet over it. The Post put it in color on the front page.

1979- Disco Demolition Night. Chicago Fans could get into Comisky Park for 98 cents if they each brought a Disco record to burn. Thousands of records were thrown at the players like Frisbees while they were trying to play, so Chicago was forced to forfeit the game. “I love the Nightlife, I love the Nightlife…”

1984- Geraldine Ferrarro named the Vice Presidential running mate of Walter Mondale. They lose in a landslide to Reagan-Bush.

1990- TV series Northern Exposure premiered.
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Yesterday’s question: What does it mean to Bowdlerize something?

Answer: Bowdlerize means to heavily edit something. The connotation is that Bowdlerizing is radically puritanical, distorting the meaning and style of the project being edited to the point of damaging the work. The word comes from a fellow named Thomas Bowdler, who once edited the works of Shakespeare to remove the vulgar bits.
(Thanks FG).