Quiz: What does it mean to have Carte Blanche?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean to "go through your Kubler-Ross"..?
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History for 12/28/2014
birthdays: Woodrow Wilson, Robert Sessions, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Hildegarde Neff, Edgar Winter, Stan “The Man” Lee is 92, Martin Branner the creator of Winnie Winkle, Johnny Otis, Martin Milner (1-Adam-12), Lew Ayres, Lou Jacobi, Terri Garber, Denzel Washington is 60, Maggie Smith is 80, Sienna Miller is 33, Rick Farmiloe is 58

Feast of the Innocents-commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents, when King Herod the Great ordered the first born of Nazareth slain. In Spain and many Latin American countries this is a kind of April Fools Day, the victim of a practical joke being proclaimed an "innocent".

1065- English King Edward the Confessor dedicated a new abbey church west of London. Since in those days a church was also called a minster, it was known as the West-minster Abbey.

1598- The Lord Chamberlains Men troupe of actors had tired of negotiating with a recalcitrant landlord at Blackheath who held the lease on Edward Burbage’s theatre. But Burbage was dead and they suspected the landlord had other plans for the property. So this night the actors moved through the snow and slowly dismantled the theatre and reassembled the pieces on the Southbank of the Thames. The completed theatre was christened the New Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare’s greatest works premiered.

1694- Queen Mary II of England, one half of the husband & wife team William & Mary, died at age 32. She had helped her Dutch husband overthrow her father King James II.

1734- ROB ROY- Scottish nationalist guerrilla Robert McGregor, called Rob Roy, died peacefully of old age in his cottage in the Highlands. Made famous by Daniel Defoe’s novel about him, he spent his last hours making peace with former enemies. His last wish was for a bagpiper to be brought in and pipe a tune as he passed away. Hoot-Man!

1793- Thomas Paine, philosopher of the American Revolution, was arrested by Robespierre's Reign of Terror in Paris. English born Paine was kind of a eighteenth century Che Guevarra and he went to Paris to help spread revolution. The American ambassador, Eldridge Gerry, hated Tom and took his sweet time about getting him out of the guillotine's shadow, but with the diplomatic pressure of James Monroe he eventually convinced the Revolutionary authorities to release him. While in prison in the Luxembourg Palace, Tom Paine wrote the Age of Reason and had a love affair with pretty inmate Murial Alette, who was arrested for being the mistress of an aristocrat.

1832- Southern states rights advocate John C. Calhoun resigned as Vice President under Andrew Jackson. Calhoun felt “King Andrew” was going to betray the South and force them to give up slavery. Calhoun continued on in government as senator from South Carolina. He was the first sitting Vice President ever to resign.

1846- Iowa becomes a state.

1847- Peace Conference of Guadalupe Hidalgo began to try to end the U.S war with Mexico. Diplomat Nicholas Trist was given the tricky assignment of alone seeking out the Mexican authorities, although their government structure was in chaos at the time, and convincing them to sign away half their territory while hostile American armies roamed their heartland..

1869- CHEWING GUM- William Semple of Mount Vernon Ohio received a patent for chewing gum. Since early times frontiersmen and Indians had the habit of chewing on a piece of pine resin or sap. The oldest chewed piece of gum was found in Sweden in a glacier in 1993. It is 9,000 years old and no, it wasn’t found under a theater seat. As early as 1842 Charles Curtis was selling spruce chewing gum from his home in Bangor Maine.
In 1869 a Staten Island photographer named Thomas Adams made friends with exiled Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, he of Alamo fame. Adams noticed the old general didn’t smoke, but he liked to chew a plug of tree sap he called “Chicle”. Adams took the chicle and put a candy shell around it, getting rich on the invention of Gum Balls. Santa Anna hoped the invention would finance his return to power in Mexico City but that never occurred. Gumball machines appeared in 1918, Bubble Gum in 1928.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des Capuchines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience in the front row jumped for fear of getting wet.

1896- THE JAMESON RAID- The German-Dutch Boers of the Transvaal had led a quasi-independent status in South Africa that annoyed British Empire builders like Sir Cecil Rhodes, the DeBeers diamond millionaire who had created the nation of Rhodesia, today called Zimbabwe. "I am not religious, but I always felt God would like me to paint all of Africa in the colors of the Union Jack." Cecil Rhodes financed a freelance military coup by 70 pro-British mercenaries led by his right hand man Col. Jameson. The attack failed and embarrassed the British Government. The German public was outraged at the bald arrogance of the attempt while the British called Jameson a hero. The tensions aggravated by the incident would result in the Boer War two years later and eventually the First World War and the independence of South Africa. In retrospect Winston Churchill said that the decline of the British Empire may have begun with the Jameson Raid.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play CYRANO DE BERGERAC premiered in Paris. There really lived a poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly lovesick big nosed hero who helps another man romance his Roxanne.

1908- A massive earthquake devastates Messina Sicily and causes a tsunami tidal wave that causes more destruction in Sicily and the Calabrian coast. More than 100,000 died. It was the largest quake recorded in Europe, an estimated 7.5 on the Richter scale.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- ON THE TOWN, a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard Bernstein premiered in NY.

1948- Mahmud Nokrashi-Pasha the Prime Minister of Egypt was assassinated.

1958- Cuban Communist forces under Che Guevara won the Battle of Santa Clara. It was a decisive battle in Fidel Castro's campaign to overthrow the dictator Fulgensio Batista. In 1997 when Che's remains were discovered in Bolivia they were reburied with great ceremony in Santa Clara.

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one on the pop charts.

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” first published in Paris. The exposing of the Soviet prison camp and police system was a great success in the west. It gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

1973- Pres. Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. It saved animals like Bald Eagles, Buffalo, Grizzly Bears and Gray Whales from extinction.

1983- Dennis Wilson was the original drummer of the Beach Boys, but he had a pretty bad drug habit,. He was once involved with the Manson Family.
Taking time off from rehab for Christmas he and some friends sat on a yacht doing more drugs and booze near Marquesas Pier. Wilson recalled this very spot was where after breaking up with his first wife he threw her mementos overboard. He wondered if he could get them back and started “pearl-diving “i.e.-diving holding your breath without any scuba equipment. But being stoned after several dives, he miscalculated the depth he had gone to and drowned.
Dennis Wilson was 37. Of all the Beach Boys he was the only one who actually surfed.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean to "go through your Kubler-Ross"..?

Answer: Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her landmark 1969 book On Death and Dying, created a model for dealing with death and bereavement trauma. Her five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

Question: What does it mean to "go through your Kubler-Ross"..?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Famous entertainer Al Jolson had a wife who was also a famous performer. Who was she?
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History for 12/27/2014
Birthdays: Johannes Kepler, Linwood Dunn, Marlene Dietrich, Louis Pasteur, Oscar Levant, Sidney Greenstreet, Anna Russell, William Masters of Masters & Johnson, Leslie Maguire, John Amos, Tovah Feldshuh, Heather O’Rourke, Cokie Roberts, Bollywood star Salman Khan is 49, Gerard Depardieu is 66

In Bhutan- Happy Day of the Nine Evils.

Feast Day of Saint John the Apostle.

1784- Francis Asbury was ordained the first Bishop of the Methodist Church in America.

1820- John Quincy Adams wrote a friend that he was sad that Washington DC didn’t have any good monuments. It could use one to George Washington and a cathedral like Westminster Abbey. If John Q. could only see DC today, it’s a rock garden of statuary,

1831- Charles Darwin sets sail for the Pacific on board the HMS Beagle. The observations he made of exotic species while on this voyage formed the basis of his theories on evolution and natural selection.

1869- RIEL'S REBELLION- The Red River wilderness of Manitoba were home to French-Indian trappers called the Metis. When the Hudson's Bay Company turned their jurisdiction over to the British Empire and English protestant surveyors and settlers began to arrive, the Catholic Metis banded together and declared independence.

On this day they proclaimed Louis Riel "President of the Provisional Republic of Prince Rupertland and the Northwest Frontier"! They had a militia and newspaper-the New Nation. Louis Riel convened the first bi-lingual non-sectarian parliament. The Governor General of Canada was still referring to his French and Indian subjects as 'Un-Britons '.

The U.S. State Department seriously considered recognizing the Metis to curb British-Canadian expansion to the Pacific, but finally decided to stay neutral. In summer 1870 when a British army paddled in bateaux up stream to attack Riel at Ft. Gary (present day Winnipeg), The Metis Republic dissolved and Riel fled across the border. Louis Riel returned in 1885 lead an uprising in Saskatchewan but was finally caught and executed.

1871- The world’s first cat show opened at the Crystal Palace in London.

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes story the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

1892- In New York City, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine starts construction (and is still not finished..) The largest Gothic nave in the world, work was stopped during the Depression and resumed in the 1970s. Part of the problem re-starting construction was finding some Gothic medieval-style stonemasons who were willing to re-locate.

1900- Temperance crusader Carrie Nation staged her first public axe attack on a saloon, the bar at the Carey Hotel in Witchita, Kansas. She shattered a large mirror behind the bar and threw rocks at a titillating picture of Cleopatra nude bathing. She called her actions not vandalism, but “hatchetation”.

1903- The Barbershop Quartet favorite “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written in praise of opera star Adelina Patti.

1904- PETER PAN, OR, THE BOY WHO WOULDN’T GROW UP, a play by James M. Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned children who laughed and cheered all night. Michael Llewelyn Davies, the little boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:” I am not Peter Pan. Mr Barrie is.”, He committed suicide in 1960 at age 75. James Barrie once said to H.G. Wells:” It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle your ears?”

1927- Broadway musical "ShowBoat" debuts at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a story by Edna Ferber, the music was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play made a star out of a tall black baritone named Paul Robeson.” Ol’ Man River..”

1934- The Shah declared the country known as Persia would now be called Iran.

1935- Radio City Music Hall opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater in the world, seating over 6,000.

1940- Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler announced their separation.

1942-THE SMOLENSK COMMITTEES- The Nazis began a recruiting campaign in the vast camps of Russian POWs to set up an Anti-Communist Russian Army. They had good results the previous April recruiting among the Soviet-hating nationalist Cossack groups of the Don, Tartar, Kuban and the Ukraine. These men hated Stalin worse than Hitler, so they signed up. Anti-Communist Russian armies eventually numbered as high as 100,000 men under their generals Vlasov, Komorov and Bach-Zelewski. After the war they tried to surrender to the Americans but by secret agreement with Moscow, they were all repatriated to Russia. Most were executed or died in Stalin’s labor camps.

1943- The movie The Song of Bernadette premiered.

1945- Eleven nations sign the Bretton Woods agreement creating the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

1945- Russia and American agree to divide occupied Korea into two parts and administer it for 5 years until regulated elections could decide the peninsula’s future. That never happened because before the five year time limit was up North Korea and South Korea had each set up rival governments and the division stands to this day.

1947- The "Howdy-Doody Show” debuted on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the Puppet Playhouse.

1949- Happy Indonesian Independence Day.

1951- The Crosley car goes into service for the post office in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is a little jeep with the steering wheel on the right side so the mail deliverer didn’t have to get out of his vehicle to reach every curbside mailbox.

1968- Apollo 8 landed safely on Earth after being the first ship to reach the Moon and come back. The brought back spectacular photos of the Earth from space. One of the three astronauts was also the first to barf in deep space, but they aren’t saying which.

1978- King Juan Carlos ratified Spain’s first democratic constitution in 50 years.

1985-Terrorists organized by Abu Nidal open fire in airports in Vienna and Rome. Sixteen tourists killed. When White House aide Oliver North was giving testimony about the Iran Contra Scandal he fixed upon the threat posed by Abu Nidal as though it was a personal vendetta. In 2001 while the world was distracted by the events of 9-11, Saddam Hussein’s secret police executed Abu Nidal in Baghdad.

2007- Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. She had been leading the opposition to the government of General Pervhez Musharraf.
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Yesterday’s question: Famous entertainer Al Jolson had a wife who was also a famous performer. Who was she?

Answer: Ruby Keeler.

Today’s Quiz: Famous entertainer Al Jolson had a wife who was also a famous performer. Who was she?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Today when you get a new credit card by mail, it is lightly held in place by an easily removable bit of gummed adhesive. What is the technical name of this gummed adhesive?
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History for 12/26/2014
Birthdays: Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, Mao Tse Tung, Charles Babbage, Admiral Dewey, Richard Widmark, Steve Allen, Henry Miller, Carlton Fisk, Chris Chambliss, Alan King, Phil Spector, Fred Schepsi, Jared Leto is 43

St. Stephen’s Day- Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Steven…

In England today is Boxing Day- a Victorian tradition where you boxed up the leftovers of your Christmas feast and gave them to the poor. First Day of the Kwanza Festival. Kwanza is from the Swahili words “Matunda ya kwanzaa” meaning “first fruits” of the harvest. See below-1966. In the Middle Ages this was the Feast Day of the Pagan god Jul, when good Guildsmen would gather in their Guild Halls to eat themselves sick and drink themselves silly. Then in a total stupor they would swear oaths on their patron saints to stick by and protect each other in the new year. Churchmen bristled at the licentious nature of the festival and tried to ban it, but there was no stopping a good rowdy party. Nobody really knew who the pagan god Jul was, just that it was fun to see the priests get so annoyed.

527AD-HAGIA SOPHIA- The Byzantine Emperor Justinian dedicated the newly completed basilica the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in a grand ceremony. Sometimes called St. Sophia, the real name was not for this saint but Hagia Sophia is Greek for The Holy Wisdom or Creative Logos, in other words, God himself. It was then the biggest Church in the world, surmounted by a great dome. Emperor Justinian walked alone to the altar and raised his arms up to heaven:” Glory be to God who has thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work. Solomon, I have vanquished thee!” He was referring to Solomon’s great temple in Jerusalem.

Centuries later when Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Turks and Constantinople’s name was changed to Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque and four complimentary minarets were added to it’s design.

795 AD- Leo III became Pope.

1492- Columbus founded the first European settlement in the New World on the beach on San Salvador. He called it La Natividad because it was founded on Christmas. 1522- The Siege of Rhodes ends. Turkish Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent occupied the island after the Knights of St. John agreed to retreat to Malta.

1776- THE BATTLE OF TRENTON- George Washington was desperate for a victory against a huge British Army that had chased him from New York. He crossed the Delaware and at dawn surprise attacked a Hessian regiment while they were still waking up from their Christmas hangovers. As the dazed Hessians ran out of their barracks and tried to form a battle line, Washington positioned his troops so they would be have to face into a snowstorm.

The Americans captured 1,000 Hessians to just 4 casualties, and killed their commander Colonel Johann Rall. Just before the fatal musket ball entered his chest, Colonel Rall said to his aide: “Fu*k, a bunch of country clowns cannot beat us!” Because part of his army got lost in the dark, Washington couldn’t hold Trenton and had to retreat. But the news of the rebel attack made other British units fall back to the Atlantic Coast and abandoned the Delaware line.

This was the first true offensive action of the American Army in the Revolutionary War. British commander Lord Howe, when hearing the news, exclaimed:” It seems inconceivable that three venerable old regiments made up of men who make war their profession, should lay down their arms to a rabble of ragged, undisciplined farmers!”

1799- In the still unfinished Washington D.C. this day was the memorial service in honor of the recently deceased George Washington. All of the US government was there, except President John Adams. Adams was still angry at him.

1825- Nicholas Ist, the "Iron Tsar" crushed the Russian democratic movement called "The Decembrists". 1860- In Charleston Harbor U.S. Major Robert Anderson found himself trying to hold government forts in a city seething with Southern hostility. South Carolina had just declared herself seceded from the United States so just was the status of US Government property such as military posts and arsenals? As a precaution Major Anderson abandoned Fort Moultrie, Sullivan's Isle and other strong points to consolidate his hold on Fort Sumter, a rock in the middle of the bay. He then requested Washington for instructions. A tense standoff ensued until April when Southerners fired upon Fort Sumter.
1862- The largest mass execution in U.S. History. 38 Sioux warriors were hanged at Mankato, Minnesota. It was revenge for the Great Santee Sioux Uprising that had all Minnesota on fire that summer. The Governor of Minnesota had asked for 300 additional executions but President Abe Lincoln had manumitted all but these 38. Sioux Chief Shackopee heard a train whistle as he ascended the scaffold. He remarked: “ As the White Man comes in, the Indian goes out.”

1865- James Nason of Massachusetts invented the coffee percolator.

1908- Jack Johnson knocked out Canadian Tommy Burns in the 15th round to become the first African American heavyweight boxing champ. Few of the 20,000 white people in the Australian arena cheered. Johnson’s flaunting of racist segregation laws drove mainstream America nuts. Johnson drove race cars, flashed gold teeth and made love to many white women. Muhammad Ali said:” He did this all in the time of Jim Crow and Lynching. I was outspoken, but Jack Johnson was Crazy!” Jack Johnson held the heavyweight title until 1915. 1919- THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO- Boston Red Sox baseball owner Harry Frazier announced the trade of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $126,000. The Yankees become champions and Boston believed Ruth cursed their team so they would never win another World Series, BoSox fans became obsessed with the curse story. They scoured a lake where Ruth supposedly pushed a family piano. A young man named Chris believed he helped break the curse. He lived in Ruth’s Boston home and during a 2004 game he was hit in the face with a pop fly ball, losing two teeth. He called it a Blood Sacrifice. The Boston Red Sox went on to win their first two World Series in 86 years and become a postseason power for years after.

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2 years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland. 1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld had made his first regular caricature for the Broadway Stage. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend took it to The New York Tribune and sold it. He figured here's a nifty way to make a living, so soon he was selling to all the papers including the New York Times.
He will keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and became a legend himself. In the American Theater a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. At age 94 he remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2003 he died just shy of age 100, drawing to the end.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams. 1939- Walt Disney Animation moves from Hyperion to the new Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1941- Goofy cartoon, the Art of Self Defense, premiered.

1943- Battle of North Cape. British battleship the Duke of York sank the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst in the North Sea. Of 2000 crew on board only 36 survived. 1944- Patton's Third Army breaks through to the besieged city of Bastogne. This was the turning of the tide in the Battle of the Bulge

1944- Tennessee Williams play the Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

1946- The Gala Opening day of the Flamingo Casino, the birth of modern Las Vegas. Mobster Bugsy Siegel's $ 6 million dollar gamble in the desert. Despite booking top talent like Jimmy Durante and Xavier Cugat, the promised Hollywood bigshots failed to materialize. The hotel part of the casino wasn't ready for guests yet, so the high rollers couldn't see making the long trip. A violent rainstorm kept still more people away. Also the casinos formal dresscode discouraged the local yokels who liked to gamble in cowboy hats and bluejeans. Bugsy had to close down until the hotel was finished in March, 4 million in the red.
The Flamingo Casino eventually made a profit but not before the angry Mafia riddled Bugsy Siegel with bullets, and cut the throat of his manager, Moe Greenberg.

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

1966- The first Kwanzaa Festival was organized by African studies professor Dr Marulanga Karenga at Cal State Long Beach to celebrate African-American culture.

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

1979- The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Moslem fundamentalist tribesmen called Mujahadin, who hadn’t submitted to any foreign conqueror since Alexander the Great, began a ten year long guerrilla war that became the Russian Vietnam. The Russians quit Afghanistan in 1989 and now we’ve been there even longer.

1985- Gorillas in the Mist author and ape anthropologist Diane Fossey was murdered by machete in her lab in Africa.

1985- Ford introduced the Taurus motorcar.

2003- As part of a promotion for a NJ Islanders-NY Rangers Hockey Game the Nassau Coliseum invited all the fans dressed as Santa Claus to parade on the ice. As the hundreds of Santas marched on to the rink several opened their coats to reveal they were actually Rangers supporters. The Islander Santas objected, some shoving ensued and pretty soon the Nassau Coliseum was packed with fistfighting Santas.

2004-TSUNAMI- One of the strongest earthquakes 9.1, recorded in the last 100 years hit the Indian Ocean. The earthquake sent giant tidal waves covering the coastlines of Sumatra, Thailand, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, killing over 215,000. Whole beach communities were swept away without warning. Poor fisherman to beautiful people vacationers like a Victoria Secret model had to run for their lives.
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Yesterday’s Question: Today when you get a new credit card by mail, it is lightly held in place by an easily removable bit of gummed adhesive. What is the technical name of this gummed adhesive?

Answer: Boogers.

Quiz: Lately when you get a new credit card by mail, it is lightly held in place by an easily removable bit of gummed adhesive. What is the technical name of this gummed adhesive?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: “Good King Wenceslas Looked out, On the Feast of Stephen”. Who the heck is this Wenceslas, anyway?
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History for 12/25/2014 Christmas Day

Birthdays: Clara Barton, Humphrey Bogart, Cab Calloway, Helena Rubinstein, Rod Serling, Charles Pathe, Jimmie Buffet, Quentin Crisp, Mike Mazurki, Conrad Hilton- Paris’ granddad, Anwar El Sadat. Larry Csonka, Burne Hogarth, Ishmail Merchant, Maurice Utrillo, Kid Ory, Barbara Mandrell, Dame Rebecca West, Clark Clifford, Annie Lennox is 61, Howard Beckerman, Karl Rove, Sissie Spacek is 65, CCH Pounder is 62

This was the birth festival of Mithras, the Persian sun god. Mithraism was Christianity's chief competitor for converts during the late Roman Empire. It professed a dualistic theology, that God and the Devil battled equally for the souls of men: light and dark, hot and cold, day and night, etc. It was very popular among Rome’s Legions. There were Mithraic temples from Scotland to Iran. In the Middle Ages it resurfaced as a Christian heresy, Manichaeism and later Catharism. There are 200,000 Zoroastrians around today and 18,000 in North America.

Today is Constitution Day in Republic of China/Taiwan, and
Taisho Tenno-Sai (Anniversary of Death of Emperor Taisho) in Japan

272 A.D. To the Ancient Romans this date was the feast day of SOL INVICTUS, the "Invincible Sun", a hybrid religion popular just before Christianity that attempted an early form of monotheism, worship of the sun. The Roman Emperor Constantine, whose conversion lifted the ban on Christianity, was originally a devotee.

495 A.D.- Clovis, first King of the Franks (French), is baptized. St. Remi said while pouring the Holy water on the old barbarian's head:" Kneel Sicambrian, and Adore what thou once had Burned: and Burn what thou once hath Adored."

800AD- In old Saint Peters Basilica in Rome, Charlemagne knelt in prayer with Pope Leo III celebrating the Christmas feast. The King of the Franks had just come over the Alps to defeat the threat to the Vatican from the Lombards. During the service, Pope Leo whipped out a big jeweled crown and plopped it on Charlemagne’s head. The audience cried out three times in unison the ancient formula: "HAIL CHARLES THE AUGUSTUS, CROWNED BY GOD THE GREAT EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS!" Charles had said he did not want the Imperial crown and was surprised, but nobody believed such an important step was taken without his prior knowledge. Charlemagne ruled a European Empire almost as large as the Old Roman Empire, from Spain to Hungary, and Denmark to Sicily.

885AD- Pope Gregory I formalized what Christians had already been doing for 500 years, namely celebrating the birth festival of Jesus or "Christ’s Mass", on December 25th.

1066- After the great victory of Hastings William the Conqueror had himself crowned King of England in London. Outside when his nervous Norman knights heard the loud shouts of celebration, they mistook them for an uprising and attacked the crowd. They slaughtered many and burned down most of the neighborhood around Westminster Abbey.

1428- During the Hundred Years War, at the siege of the city of Orleans, a six hour truce was declared for Christmas. English warlords Sir William Gladsdale and Sir John Talbot expressed a wish to hear French music, so a band of enemy trumpeters serenaded them from the city walls.

1497-Natal South Africa discovered by Vasco da Gama. It was called Natal because it was discovered on Christmas.

1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgement was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel beneath his famous ceiling.

1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian.

1745-The Treaty of Dresden between Prussia and Austria.

1758- HALLEY’S COMET- Sixteen years after his death, the comet Sir Edmund Halley had predicted showed up right on schedule. This event was seen as significant because for centuries the random unexplained appearance of a comet in the sky seemed to be a direct sign from God. Halley proved once and for all that comets were not supernatural omens of Fate. That they had an erratic orbit but were otherwise natural phenomena.

1776- WASHINGTON CROSSES THE DELAWARE- The closest the American Revolution came to being lost. George Washington's bedraggled minutemen had had their butts kicked by a massive British Army out of New York and across New Jersey. The British Navy controlled the coastline. Washington had lost every battle, lost Americas’ largest city and was about to lose the capitol. From 23,000 men in July he now commanded a paltry 4,000 cold, sulky scarecrows. Washington wrote his family advising them to flee to the Blue Ridge Mountains if the British came near Mt. Vernon. His generals openly complained to Congress that Washington was an incompetent and should be replaced. And now the soldier’s 6-month enlistments were up! Who would re-up with a defeated shambles of an army?

The American Revolution was in danger of complete disintegration. Washington knew he had to do something soon or else it was all over. He drew a line in the snow with his sword and begged the men for one more battle, appealing to their patriotism and the great cause of independence. The response was only a few men crossed the line to volunteer. Frustrated, Washington gave a second speech, the contents of which are hidden from history but eyewitnesses said was more to the point: a lot of swearing and descriptions of how they would be hanged, kept alive long enough to see their wives and daughters gang-raped by foreign soldiers, etc.. This time most of the sulky troops crossed the line.

Washington spent this night ferrying his men across the Delaware at McKonkey’s Ferry to attack a Hessian regiment in their Christmas beds. The boatmen were all from one town, Marblehead Mass, under their Quaker leader John Glover.

The famous painting, Emmanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware" was painted in Dusseldorf Germany in 1894. The painter omitted details like Washington sat all the way across, and there were two black men in the boat, Oliver Cromwell the ships pilot, and Washington's personal bodyguard William Wallace.

1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Natucket.

1855- Ice hockey first played in North America at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

1868- President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean who filled in for the murdered Abraham Lincoln and now a lame duck after losing reelection to war hero General Grant, declared a general amnesty from prosecution for all Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. He was planning to issue this pardon in February, remember then the Inauguration wasn’t until March, but the treason trial of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis was being urged in the courts. Johnson moved up the pardon because many were worried a smart lawyer like Davis would use the platform of a trial to prove there was indeed a constitutional basis for the Southern states seceding the union.

1869- In Towash Texas, John Wesley Hardin went into town for a friendly game of cards. He quarreled over the game with a man named Bradley. The two went out into the street to shoot it out in classic gunfighter style. Bradley’s shot missed. Hardin drilled him dead. John Wesley Hardin wasn’t as famous as Jesses James or Billy the Kid, but he was one of the deadliest gunfighters of the west. His business card read J. Wesley Hardin, Shootist.

1914- During World War I German and Scottish soldiers facing each other across the Western Front held a spontaneous Christmas truce. After midnight the German guns ceased and the sounds of Christmas Carols drifted over the barbed wire. The British and French responded with serenades from their regimental bands. At dawn without any official sanction or orders the soldiers of both sides came out of their trenches. In the middle of No-Man's Land they exchanged laughter, schnapps, scotch, tobacco and even played a good natured soccer game. Next morning the shooting resumed, and the officers who allowed the fraternization were reprimanded.

1917-"Why Marry?" by Jesse Lynch Williams opened. The first play to win a Pulitzer Prize.

1927- Japanese Emperor Hirohito crowned.

1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. An Arabian Nights-type fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use it for their meetings.

1931-The first BBC World Service Network broadcast. An address by King George V called "Around the Empire".

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast.

1946- Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at 67. While in his hospital bed someone saw him reading a Bible. They said:" W.C. what are you doing with that? " Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Spielberg called it the "Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here, was because Chuck Jones & Mike Maltese wrote it specifically for the cartoon.

1957- Disney film Old Yeller premiered.

1963- Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone released. First animated feature directed by Wolfgang,” Woolie” Reitherman.

1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey, Switzerland. He was 86.

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He tells his father he is inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.

1989- Romanian Communist dictator Nicholai Cercescu and his wife were executed on live television. Cercescu ran the last mad-Stalinist tyranny in Eastern Europe. Madame Cercescu, unrepentant, bellowed defiance at the cameras as they were stood up against the wall. They were so hated, that the presiding officer barely had time to get out of the way of the firing squad and say "Ready..Aim.." before the troops started shooting. Instead of being given one round each with the Unknown Blank Cartridge, the men had asked for extra clips. The death penalty was abolished in Romania immediately afterwards.

1989- Hot tempered NY Yankees manager Billy Martin died in a car accident.

1991-Premier Mikhail Gorbachov resigned, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka the USSR or Soviet Union, ceased to exist. In its place is the Confederation of Independent States led by the Federation of Russia under Boris Yeltsin.

1998- Fidel Castro allowed the resumption of Christmas celebrations in Cuba, outlawed since 1960.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: “Good King Wenceslas Looked out, On the Feast of Stephen”. Who the heck is this Wenceslas, anyway?

Answer: Wenceslas I of Bohemia (Svaty’ Vaclav in Czech)was a chieftan of the West Slavs 907AD-937. He fought wars and tried to convert his people to Christianity before he was assassinated by his pagan brother Boleslaw the Cruel. When Czechs accepted Christianity, part of the deal was that they would make Wenceslas a Saint. The Church didn’t mind if they got an entire country in exchange. The famous christmas carol was written by an English prelate from an old Czech poem in 1852.

Quiz: Okay, just who the heck was Old and Good King Wenceslas?

Yesterday’s Answer below: In Paris during the Second Empire of Napoleon III, if someone pointed out the new pissoir to you, what were you expected to do?
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History for 12/24/2014
Birthdays:, Roman Emperor Servius Galba, English King John Lackland, Revolutionary Patriot Dr Benjamin Rush, Kit Carson, Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Michael Curtiz, I.F. Stone, Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet, Mean Joe Green, John Matusak, Susan Lucci, Nicholas Meyer, Ricky Martin, Glen McQueen, Ryan Seacrest

The religion that was runner up to Christianity in the ancient world was the Sun God Mithras. In it, today was celebrated as the birth of Mithras, who was conceived of a virgin, born in the wilderness to be adored by shepherds. Hmmm…?

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast of Saints Adam and Eve. The western theatrical tradition survived in the form of Mystery Plays, acting out stories from the Bible. So this day they would do a play about the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A tree was brought into the church and decorated to represent the Tree of Life, glass balls representing the forbidden fruit. This is one of the origins of the Christmas Tree. The Feast of Adam and Eve was dispensed with during the Reformation.

1247- Sir Robin of Loxley, called Robin Hood, died. Legend has it that he fired an arrow out his window with instructions to bury him where it fell.

1294- Benedict Gaetani elected Pope Boniface VIII. Boniface felt the Roman pontiff was above any other earthly crown so much that he made the triple tiara the Popes are crowned with. The hat that looks like a big gold hairdryer. Dante hatred Boniface so much in his poem Inferno he has two devils stirring a cauldron of boiling lead and calling up :"Hey Boniface? When are you coming down? It’s just about ready!"

1652- In England the Puritan Parliament of Oliver Cromwell forbade any celebration of Christmas. Their brethren the Puritans of Massachusetts would arrest anyone found making merry and fine them three shillings. But after the restoration of King Charles II the partying came back.

1740- In Pope’s Creek Va, A fire burns out the home of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. This included little 8 year old child, George Washington.

1783 - the American Revolution concluded, General George Washington arrived home at Mt. Vernon. It was the first time he had been home in eight years:" The scene is at last closed. I feel myself eased of the load of public care."

1799- After seizing power in France in a military coup 31 year old General Napoleon Bonaparte invented an executive system for the French republic based on an interpretation of the ancient Roman Republic. Nostalgia for classical art and themes were all the rage then. Napoleon makes himself First Consul. He promised to share power with two other consuls in a rotation, Sieyes and Carnot. He never did. He became Emperor of France in 1804.

1800 – THE CARBONIS PLOT- Going to the theater Napoleon was almost blown up by a bomb planted in a wagon near his carriage. The terrorist was a royalist named Jean Carbonis. In a sick twist Carbonis gave the reins of the booby-trapped horse & wagon to a little peasant girl to allay suspicions of the police. Napoleon was safe but 22 others including the little girl were killed. Carbonis was arrested and shot.

1801- Richard Trevithick created a three wheeled vehicle powered by a big steam boiler and drove 7 people down a road in Cornwall England. He couldn’t steer it very well and it hit a wall at barely two miles an hour.

1814- U.S. and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. John Quincy Adams headed the American negotiation team. The British had demanded a independent Indian buffer state in the Great Lakes between the US and Canada, and the US demanded the Pacific Northwest, but all they got was the status quo before the war started. The news wouldn't get across the Atlantic for two months and in the meantime Americans and Englishmen would murder each other one last time at the Battle of New Orleans (Jan 8th).

1818-the song Silent Night first sung at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Obersdorf, Austria. It’s lyrics were written by the minister named Josef Mohr and music by a teacher named Franz Gruber. Their church could not afford an organ, so this first singing of Silent Night was accompanied on a guitar.

1862- Near Mufreesboro Tennessee Confederate guerrilla Col. John Hunt Morgan took advantage of the Christmas truce to get married. The ceremony was conducted by Confederate General Leonidas Polk, who was an ordained Methodist Bishop. Both men would not survive the Civil War.

1865- THE KU KLUX KLAN BORN. Before the Civil War white plantation owners rode together at night to patrol their fields catching runaway slaves. After the South’s defeat, in Pulaski Tennessee in the law offices of Thomas M. Jones some disaffected Confederate veterans formed a secret society of night riders.

They named it based on the Greek letter fraternities just gaining popularity in universities- Kappa-Alpha or Kuklos Adelphon.- Kuklos meaning Circle. There was also a version that it came from a lost Indian tribe called the Kawklats. It corrupted into the Ku Klux Klan.

They donned white sheets and hoods to portray themselves as the avenging ghosts of dead rebel soldiers. They played up the mystical images to terrify the superstitious-Grand Wizards, Cyclops. Ghouls. The first Grand Wizard was General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but he resigned after he felt their violence had become counterproductive. There is a hotly disputed version that the Klan first offered their leadership to Robert E. Lee. He declined in a letter, but suggested they should be an "Invisible Empire". After Congress outlawed them in 1871 the Invisible Empire went underground to thwart reconstruction and Black Civil Rights.

1888- Vincent Van Gogh cuts off a piece of his left ear after an argument with fellow artist Paul Gaugin over the affections of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent his ear to the prostitute. She fainted. Recent scholarship theorizes his ear was sliced off by Gaugin drunkenly waving an antique sword.

1889- Daniel Stover & W. Hance of Freeport Ill. invented the bicycle backpedal brake.

1922- The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

1925- The London Evening News published a story “ In which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh, and some Bees.” By A.A. Milne. The first book comes out the following year.

1934-GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR DUMPED HIS GIRLFRIEND-For two years the divorced general had kept a beautiful young Eurasian mistress he met in Manila. But when he accepted the posting back in Washington she insisted on coming with him. Today he sent an aide to intercept her in the lobby of the Willard Hotel in Washington and buy her off with a newly minted sheet of 100 dollar bills. His chief reason for giving her the boot was the 54 year old four star general was afraid his mother would find out.

1937- Disney short Lonesome Ghosts premiered.

1941- General Homma and the advancing Japanese Army capture the Philippine capitol Manila. General MacArthur withdrew to the island fortress of Corregidor, while his exhausted Philippine-American troops set up a last line of defense on the Bataan Penninsula.

1941- Operation Drumroll. German Admiral Doenitz dispatched advanced 5 long range U-Boats to sink American ships off the US East coast.

1942- Admiral Darlan assassinated. Darlan was a Vichy-Nazi collaborator who the Allies had to cut a deal with so the Vichy French wouldn't fight the Allied landings in North Africa at Casablanca. Having to be nice to this turncoat disgusted Free-French like Charles DeGaulle and apparently disgusted somebody even more...

1944- In some of the last big V-1 attacks on London the Nazis added a sick twist- they filled the buzz bombs with letters home from British POWs. As the bombs exploded in Oldham and Gravesend killing women and children, the letters blew out like confetti.

1950- This night young Scottish nationalists broke into Westminster Abbey and stole the Stone of Scone from under the English throne. It was the traditional seat upon which kings of Scotland were crowned, it was brought to London by King Edward I Longshanks. After three months it was given back, left wrapped in a Scottish flag.

1951- Gina Carlo Menotti’s opera "Amal and the Night Visitors" premiered on NBC TV..

1952- The conservative congress overturned Harry Truman’s veto of the McCaren /Walters Immigration Act. It called for more strenuous screening of immigrants for Communist sympathies, but it also redistributed the quota system along more racist lines. Two thirds of the slots allowed for new immigrants to America went to England, Ireland and Germany with the rest of the world getting one third. The objectionable parts of the act were changed in 1965,…. they said.

1952- First draft script completed on the MGM film Terror Planet, changed to “ Forbidden Planet.”

1964- First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek. Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

1966- Local New York City TV station WPIX premiered The Yule Log. They ran a loop of 6 minutes of a closeup of a log burning in a fireplace in Gracie Mansion. The loop ran from 11:00PM to 1:00AM with Christmas carols playing. It made the TV the symbolic family hearth. New Yorkers loved their kitschy Yule Log tradition, and when WPIX tried to replace it in 1989 hundreds of complaints forced them to put it back. The log was taped once more in 1970, and that’s been the film ever since.

1968- Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders become the first men to reach the moon and win the Space Race. They orbited but did not land, that was for Apollo 11 next year. Borman sent a message to Earth Christmas night by reading from Genesis as they sent back the first images of Earth, a little blue gem in a black cosmos: "And God said: Let there be Light, etc." To a world traumatized by the riots, wars and assassinations of 1968, Apollo 8’s message ended the year on a positive note. That humans could still dream to be better than they were.

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of the Pearl Harbor attack told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in. Japanese sections were directed by Toshio Fukusaku and Masuda, whose previous credit was The Green Slime.

1985- Fidel Castro gives up smoking cigars, on doctors’ orders.

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman.

1992- Outgoing President George H. W. Bush Ist announced Presidential Pardons for all the former Reagan Whitehouse staff implicated in the Iran Contra Scandal. Caspar Weinberger, Bud McFarlane and probably himself.

1997- The first Hanukkah menorah lit in Vatican City.

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it Wants.."
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Yesterday’s Question: In Paris during the Second Empire of Napoleon III, if someone pointed out the new pissoir to you, what were you expected to do?

Answer: Urinate. A pissoir was the word for the first public urinal.