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?

Yesterday’s Quiz: What Christmas Carol was NOT written in the Twentieth Century? a) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, b) White Christmas, c) Silent Night, d) Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
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History for 12/23/2014
Birthdays; Joseph Smith -Founder of Mormonism, Paul Hornung, Ruth Roman, Otto Soglow -cartoonist of 'the Little King', Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz actor) Jose Greco, Elizabeth Hartmann, Harry Guardino, Claudio Scimone, Vincent Sardi of Sardi’s restaurant in NY, Harry Shearer is 71, Bob Barker, Frederick Forrest is 78, Japanese Emperor Akihito is 81, France’s former First Lady Carla Bruni is 46

1588- Henri Duc d'Guise, Catholic leader of a powerful anti-Protestant league in France is called into the private chambers of King Henry III. Inside the chambers with the king are a dozen murderers hired to off the duke. Seems his league was a bit too powerful. After Monsieur le Duc was sliced up, the king came out of his hiding place, put one foot on the perforated body and said; "There! He doesn't look so tall now!" The King himself was assassinated a few months later.

1740-King Frederick the Great of Prussia attended a masked ball, finished his coffee, said good night, mounted his horse and invaded Silesia. He described it as “my own little masquerade".

1753- A twenty year old buckskin clad surveyor almost drowned when a raft his party was pulling across the Allegheny River capsized. Miraculously, despite his inability to swim and the icy water, he made it to safety. His name was George Washington.

1786- HMS Bounty sets sail from Portsmouth. Their mission to the South Seas was to bring back breadfruit plants and see if the breadfruit could be a cheap dietary staple like potatoes from America, except these would be used to extend the lives of the slaves in Jamaica and Barbados tending the sugar cane fields. But Mr. Christian and the crew would mutiny against tyrannical Captain Bligh and set him adrift in a rowboat.

1823- SANTA CLAUS BORN. This day the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously in The Troy Sentinel, a New York newspaper. . Several years after the authorship was claimed by a Bronx Bible teacher, the Reverend Clement Clarke Moore, and he was celebrated in his time as the father of Santa Claus until his death in 1863. In 2000 a literary-forensic specialist challenged Clement Moores authorship. He claimed an Revolutionary War veteran from Poughkeepsie named Major Henry Livingston actually wrote the poem. He uses as evidence the poetry style of Livingston being much closer to the anonymous poem than Rev Moores. But we may never know.

The poem completed the synthesis of English and Dutch folk traditions that were merging in New York into our modern concept of Santa. The Dutch Klaus-in-the-Cinders" or Kris Kringle was an elf who climbed down chimneys to give children toys. He merged with the British Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas who was a big fat jolly bishop with a white beard in a red suit.

In an 1859 reprint of the famous poem famed cartoonist Thomas Nast (who created the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey) drew the first likeness of Santa Claus. Because of residual rivalry from the Civil War claiming Santa was a Yankee or came from old Dixie, in 1867 Nast ended the argument by declaring Claus’s true address to be the North Pole. The likeness we all recognize was created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom for a Coca-Cola ad campaign in 1934.

1834- In London Joseph Hansom patented Hansom cabs. This is the one horse, two wheeled cab with the driver in back. Cab is shortened from Cabriolet.

1857- Ex-army officer, failed businessman and town drunk Ulysses Grant pawned his watch so he could buy Christmas presents for his wife and son. From this rock bottom he would eventually rise to win the Civil War, become President of the United States and the most celebrated American of his time.

1893- Humperdinck's opera "Hansel und Gretel" debuts in Weimar Germany.

1894- Claude DeBussey’s “Afternoon of a Faun” premiered in Paris.

1912- France’s leading literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise rejected a new novel by an author named Marcel Proust “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu” “Remembrance of Things Past”. One critic wrote: “Maybe I’m dead from the neck up, but I can’t see why the author needed 20 pages to describe how he got out of bed in the morning!” Remembrance of Things Past became one of the great works of the Twentieth Century.

1912- The Max Sennett short comedy “Hoffmeyer’s Release” premiered, the first comedy featuring the Keystone Cops.

1913- Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, creating the first federal banking reserve since the Bank of the United States was dismantled by Andrew Jackson in the 1830's.

1913- Young Italian Rudolph Valentino arrived in America to seek his fortune. He was so poor that after a year he sent his parents a photo of himself in a borrowed tuxedo to allay their fears. He worked as a nightclub dancer and gigolo until becoming a Hollywood film star in 1921.

1930- Young actress Betty Davis signed her first contract with Universal Studio.

1935- Walt Disney sent a detailed memo to art teacher Don Graham outlining his plans for retraining his animators to do realistic feature films.

circa-1935- This was the traditional day for Republic Pictures to fire all their employees and hire them back after New Years so they wouldn't have to pay them holiday pay. Republic billed itself on it’s business cards as The Friendly Studio.

1941- WAKE ISLAND. A large Japanese invasion force finally overwhelmed the tiny garrison of Marines and construction workers defending Wake Island. The hopeless stand of Col. Devereux, Hammerin-Hank Elrod and their men inspired the country still shocked by the relentless Japanese advance across the Pacific since the Pearl Harbor attack. The surviving Marines were shipped to POW camps in occupied Shanghai, but civilian construction workers were kept on the island to build an airbase for the Japanese. After they finished, they were all executed. The Japanese commander responsible was hanged for war crimes in 1948.

1941- A Japanese submarine torpedoed and sank the S.S. Montebello off the central California coast. Fifty five years later in 1996 a research sub found the wreck with it's three million gallons of crude oil still intact.

1941- A meeting of business leaders and union officials make a deal that there would be no strikes or lockouts in American industry for the duration of World War Two.

1942- The German Sixth Army was surrounded at Stalingrad and could not hold out much longer. General Von Manstein’s 16th Panzer Division was trying to break through and rescue them. But after two weeks of heavy fighting in blizzard like conditions, the 16th was bogged down. Hitler ordered Von Manstein to break off the attempt and stabilize the front in other areas, in effect, abandoning 250,000 men to their deaths.

This day while frozen, hollowed eyed men scanned the horizon for signs of rescue, the tanks of the 16th Panzer turned around. The commander of the last tank stood in his turret, solemnly snapped a crisp salute in the direction of his doomed comrades, then dropped down the hatch and drove off.

1944-The Germans had timed their surprise offensive “The Battle of the Bulge” to coincide with a heavy storm system over northern Europe. The snow and poor visibility kept Allied airforces helpless and grounded. As Third Army was moving northward to rescue soldiers trapped in the surrounded Belgian town of Bastogne General Patton called the Third Army’s chaplain to him. “Captain!” Old Blood & Guts growled:” I want a prayer for good weather! Have it in my hands in an hour!”

Dutifully the prayer was written and recited throughout the army. This day on cue the sky cleared and the sun shined for the first time in a week. The slow moving German Tiger Tanks proved easy pickings for Allied fighter planes. Gen. Patton’s reaction: “That chaplain! Make him a Major!”

1947- Two Bell laboratory scientists invent the Transistor. Nobody was quite sure what to do with the little thing until Texas Instruments invented the portable radio in 1954.

1948- Former Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and 6 others were hanged for war crimes. Tojo had tried to commit Hari Kari but guards bound his wounds and nursed him back to health. General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, was granted death by firing squad by MacArthur to save him the indignity of dying like a criminal.

1954-the First Organ Transplant. 23 year old Richard Herrick was dying of kidney disease. Dr Joseph Murray of Harvard removed a kidney from his brother Ronald Herrick and used it to replace his brothers diseased one. The idea of operating on a healthy person just so he could help someone else was a radical idea. Tens of thousands of organ transplants of kidneys, hearts, livers and corneas followed.

1971-First B-1 bomber flight. The B-1 was supposed to replace the aging B-52 long range bomber fleet in service since 1958, but after billions of dollars and embarrassed faces at Congressional hearings, the B-1 didn’t accomplish much. Then after spending billions more the B-2 Stealth Bomber was developed. In 2001 in Afghanistan and 2003 in Baghdad the majority of all air strikes were by 30 year old B-52s.

1972- The Immaculate Reception. Football’s Pittsburgh Steelers were trailing the Oakland Raiders 7-6 with one second to go, when QB Terry Bradshaw unloaded a Hail-Mary pass across the field to Franco Harris. The feared and brutal Oakland DB Jack Tatum batted the ball away back towards the Steelers, and Harris (still running upfield) made a shoestring catch (around the 20 yard line) and weaved through the stunned and basically unaware Oakland defenders into the end zone to win.

1973- Soap Opera “the Young and The Restless” premiered.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What Christmas Carol was NOT written in the Twentieth Century? a) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, b) White Christmas, c) Silent Night, d) Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Answer: Silent Night was composed in 1818.

Quiz: What Christmas Carol was NOT written in the Twentieth Century? a) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, b) White Christmas, c) Silent Night, d) Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a catamite? Someone who likes cats?
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History for 12/22/2014
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Diocletian 245AD, Josef Stalin- real name Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 52.

1737- Preacher John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, was chased out of Savannah Georgia. The townspeople thought Pastor Wesley applied the Law of God a bit too harshly. He finally refused to grant an old girlfriend the rights of marriage because she had not been to confession enough in the past three months. This day he took ship back to England before he was arrested.

1807- President Thomas Jefferson was desperately trying to steer a neutral course in the struggle between Britain and Napoleon’s France, each wanted the US to choose their side. This day Congress passed his Embargo Act, cutting off trade with both European powers.

1808-DA-DA-DA- DUMMMM- Beethoven premiered his 5th Symphony.

1849-Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky had been a political radical. On this day the Czar's secret police the Ohkrana broke his spirit by a cruel ruse. They arrested him for treason. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was given a last meal, received Last Rites from a priest, blindfolded and stood before a firing squad. But before the guns would go off the squad stopped and his sentence was commuted. He was sent instead to Siberia for four years. This naturally had an adverse effect on his sensitive nature and he spent his final years a raving conservative.

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

1864- General Sherman marching through Georgia, today telegraphed Lincoln :” I present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah”. Uncle Billy spared Savannah the depredations his men committed in the rest of the state, many say because he had friends there before the war, but also because he needed a deep water port for a winter base that the US Navy could supply him from.

1898-THE DREYFUS CASE- Early in 1898 the French Army High Command discovered they had a spy on their staff leaking secrets to Germany. The man was a Colonel Count Esterhazy an aristocrat pretty high up in the chain of command. The Generals worried that news of the scandal would humiliate and weaken the army's prestige. So they looked for a lower ranked scapegoat to pin Esterhazy's crimes on. They chose a Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was working class and Jewish. They had Dreyfus courts martialed for espionage and treason and exiled to Devil's Island. As his sword and medals were being publicly stripped from him he shouted out loud "Citizens of France ! I am innocent !!"

Dreyfus's family refused to give up hope and brought in the famous author-activist Emile Zola, who uncovered the plot in the news article "J'Accuse !"I accuse. The scandal tore the French military and public opinion apart. Esterhazy fled to Germany and one top general shot himself. In 1906 Dreyfus was cleared of all charges and when the Great War came General Dreyfus was entrusted with the defense of Paris.

The Dreyfus case to French scholars is as contentious as the “Did Thomas Jefferson boink his Slaves?” controversy is to Americans. In 1998 on the hundredth anniversary of the Dreyfus Case everyone was still arguing over the interpretation of events.

1921- LENIN'S TESTAMENT- Soviet Russian leader Vladimir Lenin was in failing
health after an assassination attempt and a stroke . He knew of the internal
struggle within the Communist Party between Trotsky and Stalin to succeed
him.

This day he dictated a series of notes spelling out his analysis of the
situation and where he thought the future of the revolution should go. He
felt Stalin was too dangerous to be in charge" Comrade Stalin is devoid of
the most elementary human honesty". So Trotsky should come after him as
leader of the Soviet Union. Lenin called it "Letter to the Party Congress"
because he intended it to be published.

Upon Lenin's death Stalin seized power and made sure this document was never made public. It didn't come out for thirty-three years, until after Stalins death in 1953.

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car crash in L.A.

1941-Now that America was officially at war with the Axis, Prime Minister Winston Churchill slips across U-Boat infested waters to spend a month at the White House planning strategy with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A White House butler described;" Mr. Churchill awoke to a tumbler of sherry. At noon scotch and sodas, champagne at dinner finished off with 90 year old brandy then light a cigar and begin the day's work- from 9:00 PM- 2:00 AM. Churchill liked to dictate memos from his bath. When Roosevelt was told he could enter the room he was embarrassed and excused himself to leave. Churchill stood up from the tub wearing nothing but soapsuds and the cigar in his teeth and declared: "THE PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN HAS NOTHING TO HIDE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES !" When a friend later asked FDR what was Churchill like, the President mused: "He's pink...all over."

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge a German officer was sent under a white flag to Gen.McAulliffe's American troops in Bastogne. His message was “You are surrounded with no hope of relief. Surrender or be annihilated!” General McAuliffe sent him a simple reply:" NUTS!' McAulliffe's force was eventually rescued by Patton. In later years McAullife grew tired of the fame of being the general who said "nuts". At a party a Manhattan socialite once said to him: "How do you do, General Nuts".

1951- Yves Montand married Simone Signoret.

1964- In Chicago Comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes, the jury laughed out loud. Lenny complained about the policeman’s delivery. After Lenny Bruce no one has ever again been convicted in the U.S. for telling jokes.

1973- The 55 miles per hour speed limit was set for all US interstate highways.

1984- Nerdy shopkeeper Bernard Goetz shot four black men on a NYC subway train. They had asked him for money and one man had a sharpened screwdriver. Goetz had been robbed before of a liquor store payroll and pushed through a plate glass store window. Two of the men died and one was left paralyzed. Like OJ Simpson ten years later, the Subway Vigilante divided people along racial lines. Was Bernard Goetz a homicidal racist, or a mild man pushed over the brink?

1988- In Brazil ecologist and rubber workers union activist Chico Mendes was shot and killed by plantation owners.

1993- The Hubble Space telescope cost $1.5 billion but it had a flaw. It’s lens was ground incorrectly so it was nearsighted. This day Space Shuttle Endeavour flew into space to fit the Hubble with an optical corrective system called CoStar, in effect, giving it a set of glasses.

2000- The Cohen Bros. Depression Era comedy Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Opened.

2001- THE SHOE BOMBER. Would-be terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Rome to Orlando by trying to ignite a substance concealed in his sneakers. He was stopped and beaten to a pulp by his fellow travelers, including a 6’8 pro basketball player returning home from the Italian leagues. Reid is why we all have to take our shoes off in airports now.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is a catamite? Someone who likes cats?

ANSWER: A catamite is the passive partner in man-on-man intimacy. Named for Catamitus, the Latin version of the Greek Ganymede.

Quiz: What is a catamite? Someone who likes cats?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Why are Poinsettas associated with Christmas?
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History for 12/21/2014
Birthdays: Benjamin Disraeli, Josh Gibson- the Home Run King of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Pat Weaver-TV exec who created the Today Show and father of Sigourney Weaver, Frank Zappa, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Florence Griffith Joyner, Chris Evert, Phil Roman, Jane Fonda is 77, Paul Winchell born Pinkus Wilchinski, Keifer Sutherland is 48, Samuel L. Jackson is 66, Ray Romano is 57, Jane Kaszmarek, Judy Delphy is 45, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 64

1375- The writer Boccaccio died, not of the plague, and not during a party like in his book the Decameron.

1376- END OF THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY- After a lot of lobbying from St. Catherine of Siena and Saint Brigid of Sweden, Pope Gregory XI moved the Vatican back to Rome from Avignon. Gregory mysteriously died shortly after he arrived. Roman mobs, angry at the poverty caused by the absence of the Holy See, attacked the mostly French cardinals selecting the next pope. They crowded around their building shouting: "Death or an Italian Pope!' and threw javelins at the ceiling knowing the points would pop out of the floor and prick their feet.

The terrified cardinals dragged any old bishop out of the Vatican library, made him an Archbishop, then Cardinal, then Pope, then ran for the hills. The librarian became Pope Urban VIII, the "Beast of Naples".

1776-American diplomats Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane arrive in Paris to negotiate an alliance and money for the rebellious colonies with France, Holland and Spain. It took them a year. Their secretary, William Bancroft, was a British spy.

1788- Emperor Quang Tung of Vietnam was crowned.

1863- Congress created the Medal of Honor, at first only for Navy personnel for gallantry, but later extended to all branches of the military.

1866- THE FETTERMAN MASSACRE- Foreshadowing by ten years what Custer would get, the Sioux led by Crazy Horse surrounded an army detachment and wiped them out. The commander of Fort Phil Kearny, Colonel Carrington sent out the troop to drive away some hostiles molesting a woodcutting detail. It turned out to be an elaborate trap planned by Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. It was said Carrington was such an snooty aristocrat "the way he would prefer to deal with the Sioux would be to socially ostracize them".

Now as his men went down under a hail of arrows Carrington could hear the firing in the distance but didn't think they needed any help. Captain Fetterman and his second in command Brown were among the last survivors. Fetterman had said the threat of the hostiles was overrated and "With 80 men I could ride through the entire Sioux Nation !" Brown had gone against orders on the mission because he promised his family back east a real Indian scalp for Christmas. Now surrounded and not wishing to be tortured by the Indians, they held their revolvers to each other's temples and on the count of three...

1909- The first Junior High School or Middle School set up in the US in Berkeley Cal.

1913-THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE-The first Crossword Puzzle appeared in the New York World.

1914- The premiere of the first feature length film comedy- Tilly’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and a young Charlie Chaplin.

1919-THE PALMER RAIDS- THE RED SCARE- American businessmen watched the growing Communist regime in Russia with fear. Soviet groups were also moving to take over Germany, Hungary and Austria." Bolshevism is worse than war.”-Herbert Hoover
Under emergency wartime sedition legislation (even though World War I had been over for a year) U.S. marshals raid newspaper and union offices and deported 249 immigrants, including women's rights advocate Emma Goldman. The raids were organized by a young executive in the treasury dept. named J. Edgar Hoover.

1925- Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic masterpiece Battleship Potemkin premiered in Moscow. The films pioneering use of montage and allegorical imagery intercut inspired a generation of filmmakers.

1933- Twentieth Century Fox signed 5 year old Shirley Temple to a seven year contract.

1937-Walt Disney's " Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" had its grand premiere at the Cathay Circle Theater. The first feature length American cartoon, it became the box office champ of 1938, earning 4 times more than any other film that year.

1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner of the Three Stooges, was killed in a bar fight. One legend has it that actor Wallace Beery and some gangsters did the fatal pounding. Another rumor is one of the gangsters was young Albert Cubby Broccoli, who forty years later would produce the Bond movies and win an Irving Thalberg Award at the 1982 Oscars. The Three Stooges do much better without Healy.

1939- In the year that saw them signing a non aggression pact, Adolf Hitler in Berlin sent Holiday Greetings to his new buddy Marshal Stalin in Moscow. Merry Christmas you Zionist-Bolshevik UnterMensch! Thank you and the same to you, you Fascist Tool of International Capitalism!

1940- Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (44) died of a heart attack at Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham's house. She had just left the house to buy him some candy.
His last words were 'Hershey bars will be fine..."

1944- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros premiered in Mexico City.

1945- General George “Blood & Guts” Patton died from injuries suffered in an auto accident in Manheim Germany on Dec. 9th.

1953- Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the Atomic Bomb, is accused of being a Communist. When he was asked in 1940 to head the Manhattan Project the government knew he was a Berkeley eccentric who had joined every leftist group in town but he was brilliant. This act is now viewed more as the government revenge for his flat refusal to help Edmund Teller in developing the Hydrogen Bomb.

1958- Charles DeGaulle elected President of the 5th French Republic.

1964-The British Parliament voted to ban the death penalty.

1968- The Apollo 8 spacecraft was launched to the Moon. Besides winning the Space Race, and doing the famous Christmas Night reading of Genesis from lunar orbit, Apollo 8 had one board one of the very first mini-computers. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was one cubic foot in size, had stored memory, a language (DSKY) and a digital display. It’s the forerunner of the personal computer.

1969- Famed football coach Vince Lombardi coached his last game- Dallas beat Washington 20-10.

1971- Richard William's animated TV special "A Christmas Carol" with Alastair Sim reprising his Scrooge.

1972- 14 members of an Uruguayan rugby team were found alive on an Andes mountain peak after their plane crashed. They survived the harsh conditions by turning cannibal and eating the dead. Umm..Goalie Empanadas!

1975- International terrorist Carlos the Jackal attacked an OPEC oil meeting in Vienna and took 11 ministers hostage. He escaped to Algeria and wasn’t finally caught until 1994 while trying to get an operation on his testicle.

1978- Chicago police investigating the disappearance of a 15 year old boy searched the home of contractor John Wayne Gacy. They found the remains of 33 boys in the crawl space. Gacy in his spare time did volunteer work as a clown entertaining sick children.

1979- Disney’s Sci-Fi flop The Black Hole opened in theaters.

1982- Thom Riley, one of the stars of the TV cop show ChiPS was busted for driving stoned on Quaaludes.

1989- PanAm 747 jumbo jet Flight 103 from London to New York explodes over Lockerbie Scotland killing most of the passengers. The bomb was planted in Munich by Libyan agents.

1989- The Romanian army joined the people protesting in the streets and overthrew the hated Communist dictator Nicholai Cercescu. While most of the nation starved in a stagnant economy, Cercescu lived in luxury. His son drove sports cars and lost fortunes at roulette tables in Monte Carlo. Young Cercescu kept a “raping room” for women who caught his fancy. As the Communist regimes of Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany collapsed, Romanians realized their time had finally come, and they poured out into the streets.

1989- Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 official Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled- beakon. In 2007 President George W. Bush sent out Hanukah cards featuring the White House Christmas tree.

2003- Just in time to spoil the spirit of Christmas, Homeland Security Secty Tom Ridge gave a national news conference to announce the color-coded threat level was raised to the highest state of alert since the 9-11 Attack. The Al Qaeda terrorists were going to attack the United States at any minute! After terrifying us all, nothing happened. In 2009 it was revealed the data was based a conman named Dennis Montgomery, who fooled the CIA into believing he had special software that he could use to intercept Al Qaeda secret messages broadcast on the Arab news network Al Jazeera. It was all bull-hummus.

2012- The Era will come to an End, according to the ancient Maya Calendar. The Maya believed that the world as they knew it occasionally was turned upside down. The word for earthquake also meant revolution. Translating Mayan can be open to interpretation, so end of an era may also mean beginning of a new age of enlightenment.

2012- The Walt Disney Company spent $4.06 billion to buy Lucasfilm, ILM and the Star Wars rights. George Lucas retired to do philanthropic pursuits.

2089- According to Ridley Scott, today the good ship Prometheus lands on the Original Planet.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why are Poinsettias associated with Christmas?

Answer: Poinsettias are a flower that puts out a large bright red blossom always around Christmastime. They were introduced into the US from Mexico in 1829 by the U.S. ambassador, Jacob Poinsett. Its Aztec name was Cuetlaxochitl.

Quiz: Why are Poinsettias associated with Christmas?

Answer to yesterdays question below: A baby cow is a calf. A baby goose is a gosling. What is a baby oyster?
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History for 12/20/2014
Birthdays: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Branch Rickey, George Roy Hill, Dr. Samuel Mudd, Jenny Aguitter, Uri Geller, Irene Dunne, Cecil Cooper, Albert Dekker, Amby Paliwoda, Charlie Callas, John Spencer, Harvey Firestone, John Spencer, Elsie De Wolfe, Jonah Hill is 31.

69AD- Roman General Vespasian occupied Rome with his legions, declared himself emperor and executed his predecessor, Aulus Vitellius. Vespasian was the winner in a long year of civil war that started with Nero committing suicide, then Sevius Galba, Otho, and Vitellius all in one year took the throne and were knocked off. The Romans called A.D. 69, the "Long Year". Vespasian was not an aristocrat like Casear, but a humble man who rose up through the ranks. He was once caught sleeping during one of Nero’s harp recitals.

Feast day of Saint Dominic of Brescia.

1192- Richard the Lionhearted was returning from the Crusades when he was imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria. Leopold blamed Richard for the death of his relative Conrad of Monferrat in Palestine. The King of France Phillip II and Richard’s own brother John send large bribes to the German Emperor Henry to keep Richard locked up.

1688- William and Mary of Orange’s army occupied London.

1780- Britain declared war on Holland over the Dutch covertly aiding the rebel American colonies.

1790- The first successful U.S. cotton mill opens in Pawtucket RI, it’s inventor Samuel Slater had memorized British technology for use in America. He also thought child labor would be most useful in his factories.

1803- The Louisiana Purchase completed as the French flag came down and the Stars and Stripes went up over the Cabildo in New Orleans. New Orleans continued to be a magnet for French people dispossessed by the politics in Europe. Ten years after Waterloo the French royalist charge de affaires would complain to the U.S. state department that the New Orleanaise would still wave the banned revolutionary tricolor flag at arriving French ships. In 1817 the mayor financed two ships with a 19th century 'Delta-Force" of mercenaries to sail to Saint Helena and free Napoleon. The plan never went through.

1811- Napoleon made another attempt to go hunting in the Forest of Boulogne. Even though they were both great generals, Napoleon and Wellington were terrible hunters and bad shots. While hunting Napoleon shot out the eye of one of his generals. and Wellington was constantly hitting barn doors and stable boys by accident. Napoleon kept the royal shooting park at St. Cloud as a game preserve, and a captain once saw him feeding snuff to the deer.

1860- SESSSION! to the sound of cannon and church bells the first Southern State, South Carolina, voted to secede from the Union. Until the Confederacy formed, South Carolina called itself "the Palmetto Republic". Judge Pettigru, who was against this drastic move, said:" South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."
In Washington D.C. Northerners at first reacted with apathy. One Washington department store advertised: THE UNION IS DISSOLVING BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T STILL FIND SAVINGS WHEN YOU SHOP FOR CHRISTMAS AT LEHMANS!

1860- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published his most famous poem- The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Oh listen my children and you shall here, of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere. Although he got most of the facts wrong, it was a great success. Longfellow intended it to rouse Americans of his day to the threat of Southern Secession and Slavery.

1891-BASKETBALL INVENTED. Methodist Minister and former rugby player James Naismith worried how his students could do team sports in the harsh New England winters. So he nailed up two peach baskets on opposite ends of a gymnasium at a YMCA in Springfield Mass. and invented the game of basketball. He originally asked for square boxes but the man he sent out mistook his instructions and brought round peach baskets instead. The NBA regulation height of the baskets of ten feet was determined by the gym in Springfield having a second floor running track and two nails were conveniently waiting at this height. Naismith played himself frequently, and married one of the first female players, named Amelia.

1892- Alexander Brown and George Stillman of Syracuse New York invented inflatable pneumatic automobile tires, replacing wagon wheel and bicycle rims.

1892- According to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days this was the day Phileas Fogg returned to London to complete his trip.

1920- English song & dance man Leslie Townes became an American citizen and changed his name to Bob Hope.

1937- Nazis Josef Goebbels noted in his diary that this day he sent his boss Adolph Hitler a Christmas present of a dozen Mickey Mouse Cartoons from America. Officially der Fuehrer called Mickey ‘vermin’ but privately enjoyed his animated antics.

1941- THE FLYING TIGERS debut in the skies over China, surprising and shooting down 9 out of 10 in a Japanese bomber squadron flying from Hanoi. General Claire Chennault had come to China as an advisor to organize the Chinese Air Force and stayed on to coordinate U.S. efforts in Mainland China after Pearl Harbor. His men were all volunteer adventurers who flew their P-40's with the tiger teeth insignia against overwhelming odds. They were awarded a bounty of $500 for every Japanese plane downed. Eventually they were incorporated into the regular U.S. Air Force.
Chennault argued frequently with Washington, MacArthur and his army partner in China General 'Vinegar Joe' Stillwell. Just before the final victory in 1945 Chennault was forcibly retired and resumed his post as advisor to Chiang Kai Shek. He was the U.S. general most times under hostile fire. He flew combat missions and personally had 60 kills, which made him an Ace. Yet Chennault was deliberately not invited to the Grand Surrender Ceremony on the Missouri in Sept ‘45.

1942- Japanese planes bombed Calcutta, India.

1943- Stalin changed the national anthem of Russia from the revolutionary Internationale to the Hymn of the Soviet Union.

1944- German forces in the Battle of the Bulge surround the US 101st Airborne in the Belgian town of Bastogne. The Screaming Eagles of the 101st held out until relieved by Pattons’ Third Army just after Christmas.

1945- After the defeat of Japan in World War II Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent nation. France reacted by heavily cracking down on nationalists in Hanoi and Saigon. This began an eight year war against the French to be followed, by a civil war, and another 8 year war against the Americans.

1950- Harvey premiered starring James Stewart and a 6 foot invisible rabbit.

1952- Bridgette Bardot married director Roger Vadim.

1955- Sir Lawrence Olivier’s film version of Richard III premiered.

1962- The Osmond Brothers premiered on the Andy Williams Show.

1957- Elvis Presley received his draft notice. G.I. Blues!

1968- Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day premiered.

1970- ELVIS MEETS NIXON or "The President Meets the King." Citizen Presley volunteers his services in the war on drugs and gave Nixon a gold plated 44 cal. pistol. The President thanked him with a White House security officer's badge for his collection of police badges. A recent biography of Presley described the dozen or so patent medicines he was on while Nixon was naming him honorary chairman of the War on Drugs.

1971- Twentieth Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck blames his own son CEO Richard Zanuck for Fox's monetary problems and fires him. This sets off a power struggle among the board of directors. When Zanuck's estranged wife Libby throws her support against the mogul, Darryl F. Zanuck is overthrown and fired from his own company. He was the last of the original Hollywood moguls.

1974 Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too came out with the film Island at the Top of the World.

1989- Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invades Panama to oust General Manuel Noriega, for being a dictator, drug pusher and not returning the C.I.A.'s washroom keys. When the general, known to Panamanian citizens as “Pineapple-face” took sanctuary in the Vatican Embassy, the U.S. army surrounded the building and drove him out by playing Jimi Hendrix and Motown through loudspeakers 24 hours a day. Tony Orlando or the Bay City Rollers would drive me out.
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Yesterday’s question: A baby cow is a calf. A baby goose is a gosling. What is a baby oyster?

ANSWER: A spat.

Quiz: A baby cow is a calf. A baby goose is a gosling. What is a baby oyster?

Yesterday’s QUIZ answered below: Which TV Christmas Special was first? A) A Charlie Brown Christmas, B) Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, C) The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, D) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
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History for 12/19/2014
Birthdays: King Phillip V of Spain (1683), Edith Piaf, Edwin Stanton, Thomas 'Tip' O'Neil, Cicely Tyson, Sir Ralph Richardson, Robert Urich, Robert Sherman, Jennifer Beals is 51, David Susskind, Fritz Reiner, Mel Shaw, Alyssa Milano is 42, Jake Gyllenhaal is 34

1154- Coronation of King Henry II of England. He was the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou and Empress Matilda, the daughter of William the Conqueror. His coronation settled a period of dynastic civil wars in England between the Conqueror’s children known as the 'Wars of Stephen and Matilda". Henry and his siblings Richard Lionheart and John Lackland are also called the Angevin dynasty, because of the part of France (Anjou) their family came from, and also because medieval scholars like to overcomplicate things.

1686- According to Daniel Defoe, this was the day Robinson Crusoe was rescued from his deserted island.

1732- The Pennsylvania Gazette announced the publication of a new enterprise by Dr. Benjamin Franklin writing under the penname Richard Saunders. The work was Poor Richard’s Almanac, an international best seller that made Franklin famous.

1783- William Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister of Great Britain at only 24 years old." A sight to make the Nations stare, A Kingdom trusted to a Schoolboy's care."

1793- The Anglo-Spanish fleet evacuates Toulon after the cities strong points are stormed by the French army led by a pushy 23-year-old artillery major with a funny Italian name- Napoleon Bonaparte.

1903- NY City’s Williamsburg Bridge opened, the second major span across the East River. It linked Manhattan’s Lower East Side with Williamsburg Brooklyn.

1914- Earl Hurd patented animation 'cels' (celluloids) and backgrounds. Before this cartoonists tried drawing the background settings over and over again hundreds of times or slashed the paper around the character and tried not to have it walk in front of anything. By the late 1990’s, most cels & cel paint had been replaced by digital imaging.

1915- Earl Douglas Haig replaces Sir John French as commander of British troops on the Western Front. His nickname was Whiskey Doug because his family owned a well-known distillery. Haig had won the Boer War by bloody frontal assaults, and he had learned nothing from the experience. He had no use for new gismos like machine guns and airplanes, even after he watched large numbers of his troops mowed down by them. In the attack called Passchendale in 1917 he lost hundreds of thousands of men in stand up frontal assaults. He reacted "Good Lord, have we lost that many?"

1918- Robert Ripley began his "Believe It Or Not" column in the New York Globe.

1926- The U.S. government passed a law that women authors can only legally copyright their works under their husband's names.

1932- BBC Overseas Service Radio broadcasts begin.

1941- After two weeks of bombardment and air strikes the Japanese occupy British Hong Kong. The Japanese assault teams had been told to take no prisoners and committed horrible atrocities on British, Canadian and Australian defenders. In Berlin, Adolf Hitler told his dinner guests " The Japanese are all over those islands and will soon be in Australia. The White Race will disappear from those regions."

1957- The musical ‘The Music Man’ starring Robert Preston first debuted. "Seventy Six Trom-bones in the Big Parade.."

1958- First airing of the Disneyland TV holiday special “ From All of Us, to All of You.”

1959- Confederate General Walter Williams, who claimed to be the last living veteran of the Civil War, died at age 117. The claim was later proved false, but it was a good story.

1971- Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ premiered. Based on a novel by Anthony Burgess. In America the film received an X Rating, more for sexual situations than violence. The sensation over the film caused so many incidents of urban violence, that with Kubrick’s permission, it was banned in England for three decades.

1974- The first personal computer went on sale. The Altair 8800, named for the planet in the 1955 sci-fi movie classic Forbidden Planet. The computer came in a kit that you had to build and it cost $397. The next year, two kids at Harvard named Bill Gates and Paul Allen created a programming language for it called BASIC.

1997- MTV dropped airing the rap song Smack My Bitch Up, by Prodigy.

1998-IMPEACHMENT- The Republican dominated House of Representatives voted two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The vote was along strict party lines and most of the Democrats stormed out in protest. Despite the impeachment, President "Slick Willy" Clinton was acquitted by trial in the Senate in February and completed his second term. To complete the circus-like atmosphere, pornography publisher Larry Flynt announced he had proof that incoming Republican Speaker of the House Bob Livingston, a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had had at least six affairs while a congressman including one of his staff and a lobbyist. Livingston resigned before his hand could touch the gavel. Three other of the loudest callers for impeachment, Senators David Vitter, John Ensign and South Carolina Gov Pete Sanford, were soon after caught in equally tawdry affairs.

2001- Peter Jackson’s film ‘The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring’ first opened.
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Yesterday’s question: Which TV Christmas Special was first? A) A Charlie Brown Christmas, B) Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, C) The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, D) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Answer: B) UPA’s Magoo’s Christmas Carol, directed by Abe Levitow came out in 1962. Rudolph came out in 1964, Charlie Brown in 65 and Grinch in 66.