TomSito.com - TOM'S BLOG

Quiz: The last Walt Disney’s Silly Symphony was The Ugly Duckling (1939). What was the first?

Yesterdays quiz answered below: Has anyone ever run for president while in jail?
-----------------------------------------------------
History for 4/9/2023
Birthdays: Tamerlane, Eadweard Muybridge, Lenin, Paul Robeson, Jean Paul Belmondo, Ward Bond, Seve Balesteros, Carl Perkins, Michael Learned, Tom Lehrer, Paula Poundstone, Cynthia Nixon, Hugh Hefner, Dennis Quaid is 69, Elle Fanning is 25

192AD- Septimius Severus hailed Emperor of Rome by the African Legions.

641AD- Babylon falls to the advancing armies of Arab Islam. Moslems saw their two greatest enemies to be the Christians and the Persian Mithraists, the philosophy of Zoroaster and the Magi. Even today in Iran there is a small Zoroastrian minority.

999 AD. Sylvester II made pope, the first Frenchman. He reformed the way Popes were selected by organizing the College of Cardinals. Before that Popes were selected out of infighting between several leading Roman families. Tradition also says Sylvester was a sorcerer because he experimented with the medicinal properties of herbs, and he is credited with inventing the modern pendulum clock.

1241- BATTLE OF LEIGNITZ- Ogodai, the son of Genghis Khan, wanted to complete his father’s plan for world conquest. To do this he dispatched four armies –one to China, one to Korea, one to Europe, the fourth was pushing south through Baghdad, Egypt and Palestine. This day the Mongol horde of Subotai, Vuldai and Paidar clashed with the cream of East European knighthood on a plain in Poland. This was the first meeting of the Mongols and Western Knights.
The Mongols slaughtered them all easily. Paidar sent back to his overlord Batu Khan nine sacks of left ears taken from the slain, and King Henry of Bohemia’s head on a spear. The only reason the Mongols didn’t continue on to Paris and London as planned was back in Mongolia the Great Khan Ogodai died. Since the Mongol Empire was never more than an enlarged tribal system, custom decreed all Mongol elders had to stop everything they were doing and return home to Karakorum for a council -the Grand Kurlutai.
The Mongols rode away from Europe as mysteriously as they had arrived.

1553- French comic writer Francois Rabelais died. His last words were: ” I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

1682- Explorer Sieur De Lasalle claims Louisiana and the Mississippi for France.

1747- Famed British actor David Garrick signed a contract to take over the management of London’s Drury Lane Theatre.

1778- In Paris the philosopher Voltaire is initiated into the Masonic Order of the Nine Sisters on the arm of his friend, Benjamin Franklin.

1780- George Washington wrote Richard Lawrence the American emissary in Paris, about our chances of winning the American Revolution:” We here are at the end of our tether. If we do not receive help soon all will be lost.”

1812- THE SACK OF BADAJOZ-The Duke of Wellington’s English army storms into a Spanish city held by Napoleons French forces. The battle typified the ferocity of the war in Spain. The French and pro-French Spaniards dropped explosives and rocks on the heads of the attacking English and lined the tops of the city walls with broken glass and knife blades. The loss of life was so ghastly that when the redcoats finally breached the cities defenses they went berserk- looting, raping, and killing the civilian population.
This is when Wellington called his men scum.
Wellington always went through a depressed state after a battle, even his victories. At one point, tough old General Sir Thomas Picton noticed Wellington was openly weeping. He reacted: ”My God Arthur, what the devil are you blubbering on about?”

1859- Mark Twain received his Mississippi riverboat pilot’s license.

1865- APPOMATTOX COURTHOUSE, THE END OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. Robert E. Lee surrendered the remains of his army to Ulysses Grant (11,000 men to Grant’s encircling 150,000). Grant had had a migraine headache all morning until he received the note from Lee requesting terms. Grant’s staff understood that Lee’s note meant the end of the greatest cataclysm in U.S. history. One staff officer called for three cheers but the men could only manage one weak hurrah, then they all broke down in soft weeping. All realized that at last the killing was truly over.
Lee arrived wearing his best dress uniform, Grant rode in from the field wearing an old muddy private’s jacket. Grant recalled when they met during the Mexican War but Lee didn’t remember him. Grant was happy to make small talk until Lee brought them back to the business at hand. Grant’s secretary was a Seneca Indian named Captain Ely Parker. Lee paused to say ”I’m glad there’s at least one real American here.”

The house they met in was owned by a man named Wilbur McClean, who moved his family from Bull Run to Appomattox to get away from the fighting. He managed to keep his belongings safe for four years of war. Now, after Lee and Grant left the historic meeting, Yankee officers looted the place for souvenirs, George Custer riding off with the little surrender table perched on his head.

1914- THE TAMPICO INCIDENT- In the port of Vera Cruz a shore party from the USN gunboat Tampico was arrested by Mexican authorities while getting supplies. They were soon released and the Mexican Government apologized. But the American Admiral Mayo then demanded the Mexicans give the Stars & Stripes a 21gun salute. The Mexican army said they would if the USN did the same salute to the Mexican flag. Washington didn’t want to do this because it would have meant the US recognized the dictatorship of General Huerta, who had overthrown the legally elected President Madero.
So the US attacked Vera Cruz on April 21st, 20 Americans and 200 Mexicans killed. A newspaper at the time commented:” I can’t believe we almost went to war over some points of diplomatic etiquette!”

1914- The first all color film” The World, The Flesh and the Devil” premiered in London.

1917- Shortly after declaring war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson was confronted by old former President Teddy Roosevelt. 59 year old TR volunteered to lead a new regiment of Rough Riders into the World War I trenches. Wilson said thanks, but no thanks. He said of Teddy, “ He is really a great big boy. You can’t help but like him.” At the same time he also declined an offer from Annie Oakley to lead a company of lady sharpshooters into the trenches “Oakley’s Amazons”.

1921- The Fly-In Lunch Party. Leslie Brand was a millionaire who developed Glendale California north of Los Angeles. This day he invited guests to a special garden party provided they call arrived in their own airplanes. The little biplanes parked all around his grounds, today known as The Brand Library.

1938- In an interview with Liberty Magazine, Walt Disney said he, “had plans to put animation to various well-known pieces of music, with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being only the start.” He was beginning to think of expanding the short into a concert feature. The result of which would be Fantasia.

1940- Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. Innocent looking civilian German freighters holed up in Danish and Norwegian ports suddenly disgorged hordes of steel helmeted Nazi soldiers. Copehagen, Oslo and Trondheim were quickly overrun. Mysteriously the British Navy didn’t use its superiority to stop the Germans crossing the Baltic. The admirals were worried about the German divebombers. It showed the world that Sea Power had finally bowed to Airpower.

1942- Black opera star Marian Anderson gives her concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to an audience of 75,000. She was snubbed from giving a recital at the Daughters of the American Revolution Hall which caused a furious Eleanor Roosevelt to resign from the DAR and arrange this concert.

1943- A U.S. Patents court concluded that Gulgielmo Marconi had used several of Nichola Tesla’s patents to create Wireless Broadcasting. So in effect, Tesla was the real inventor of radio broadcasting. Vindication came too late. Marconi died a rich Nobel-Prize winner, and Tesla died alone and penniless.

1943- First battle of the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews revolt in a desperate struggle against the conditions the Nazis held them in. All guns and supplies were precious. One character of the street fighting was nicknamed Moishe the Bolshevik, who ran from corpse to corpse under heavy fire dragging bandoliers of bullets, grenades and several helmets on his head.

1948- Variety columnist Lee Mortimer had been needling Frank Sinatra for his advocacy of liberal causes. He accused Old Blue Eyes of draft-dodging, and hinted maybe he had pro-Communist sympathies. This day as Sinatra passed Mortimer in front of Ciro's restaurant on Sunset Blvd. he heard Mortimer call him a “dirty Dago”. Frank went at Mortimer and punched his lights out.

1948- Massacre of Deir Yasin- During the Israeli war of Independence a rogue Jewish militia called the Irgun on orders from Likud founder Menachem Begin entered a Palestinian village and shot 150 men women and children. Israeli leader David Ben Gurion apologized for the massacre and ordered the Irgun and other independent units merged into the Israeli Army. But the massacre helped trigger the mass exodus of Palestinian Arabs into exile.

1951- The day before he fired General Douglas MacArthur- President Harry Truman secretly sent to Korea five unassembled atomic bombs. These were to be armed and used if only the situation looked totally hopeless. They were never used.

1952- The quiz show “I’ve Got A Secret” hosted by Gary Moore premiered on the Dumont Network and ran for 15 years.

1953- The first issue of the T.V. Guide.

1959- NASA introduced the first seven astronauts to the public, The Mercury Astronauts: Donald Slayton, Alan Shepard, Walter Schirra, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, Leroy Cooper, and Malcolm Carpenter- all military test pilots instead of scientists.

1962- The musical West Side Story swept the Academy Awards.

1963- Animator Vernon Stallings (1891-1963) He is known for inventing the animation disc while working on Felix the Cat in the 1920s.

1965- Mickey Mantle hits the first indoor home run as the Astrodome opens with an exhibition game with the Astros hosting the Yankees. President Lyndon Johnson was supposed to throw out the first pitch but arrived late. Phillie catcher Bob Boone commented about the Astrodome "This is a tough yard for a hitter when the air conditioning is blowing in.."

1966- actress Sophia Loren married producer Carlo Ponti, with whom she had been living with for a decade but not allowed to marry because Catholics did not allow divorce from their previous spouses.

1974- Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds Restaurants was the owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team. After yet another sorry performance, losing 8-0, Kroc stormed over to the broadcast booth, grabbed the mike and out shouted ” You Guys Stink!” Despite this morale booster, the Padres eventually did win championship pennants and get to the World Series.

1975- As North Vietnamese armies approached the South Vietnamese capitol of Saigon, President Gerald Ford issued an advisory to all Americans to evacuate the country.

1991- The last Horn & Hardardt Automat was closed on 42nd St in Manhattan. Philadelphia restaurateurs Joseph Horn and William Hardart saw German experiments in mass market automated restaurants, and imported the equipment to start one in Philadelphia in 1902.

1999- American planes flying for NATO bombed the Serbian factory that made the economy car the Yugo. Car enthusiasts rejoiced.

2003- Baghdad fell to invading US and British armies.

2004- Archaeologists in Cyprus discover a 10,000 year-old grave of a New Stone Age man. With him were the remains of a cat that looks like it was deliberately placed there. This is the oldest evidence of man domesticating cats. So rest in peace- Gronk and Fluffy.

2005- Prince Charles wed Lady Camilla Parker-Bowles, his mistress of thirty years. They were not allowed to marry in Saint George’s Chapel in Windsor, the Queen avoided the ceremony and his father Prince Phillip didn’t feel like interrupting his trip to Germany; and because of a delay to respect Pope John Paul II’s funeral, all the commemorative cups and dishes had the wrong date on them. Among the thirty invited guests, were Mrs. Bowles divorced husband. Next month they will be crowned King and Queen of England.

2008- Stuntman Rupert MacDonald built a full-size Viking ship out of 15 million popsicle sticks.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: Has anyone ever run for president while in jail?

Answer: In 1920, Eugene Victor Debs ran for president on the Socialist ticket while serving jail time for protesting U.S. participation in WWI. He lost, obviously.
In 1992 Lyndon LaRouche, another rogue 3rd party candidate ran from his prison cell. I think he was in for mail fraud. He lost also.

Quiz: Has anyone ever run for president while in jail?

Yesterdays quiz answered below: What do you mean by describing something as Lovecraftian?
------------------------------------------------------
History for 4/8/2023
Birthdays: Gautama Buddha –as commemorated by Japanese custom-Kambutsue, Ponce De Leon, King Albert of the Belgians, Mary Pickford, Yip Harburg, Betty Ford, Sonja Henje, Catfish Hunter, Jacques Brel, Darlene Gillespie, Julian Lennon, Carmen McCrae, Shecky Green, Douglas Trumbull, Robin Wright is 58, Patricia Arquette

64AD- An advertisement found on a wall in Roman Pompeii: “TWENTY PAIRS OF GLADIATORS sponsored by Decimus Lucretius Satrius Valens, lifetime priest of Nero Caesar and TEN PAIRS OF GLADIATORS sponsored by Decimus Lucretius Valens Minor (his son) will fight on April 8th –12th, There will also be a suitable WILD ANIMAL HUNT. THE AWNING will be opened. “I wonder what the Latin was for PayPal?

217AD.-The Roman Emperor Caracalla was stabbed in the back while taking a pee during the Moon God Festival. He got caught with his toga down. The assassin Martialis leapt on a horse and tried to gallop away, but he was brought down by a well-thrown javelin. The Praetorian Prefect Macrinus became Emperor.

1476- In Florence, Leonardo da Vinci was anonymously accused of sodomy with his 17-year-old male model. He was acquitted in a preliminary hearing, but in his sketchbook, he designed a lock-busting tool, just in case.

1520- on a beach somewhere in what would be Argentina, Fernand de Magellan
has three of his captains beheaded for trying to mutiny and turn back home. Of the 200 men and five ships in his expedition only one ship with 16 skeletal men will ever see Spain again.

1778- John Adams arrived in Paris to help Ben Franklin negotiate an alliance with the French Court. Their secretary Bancroft was a British double agent. The dour New Englander Adams was annoyed by Franklin’s superstar popularity among the French- Queen Marie Antoinette referred to him as Le Ambassadeur Electrique, as well as his habit of resting nude with the windows open -his “air baths”.

1793- CITIZEN GENET ARRIVES IN THE U.S.- The ambassador from the French Revolutionary Republic presented a dilemma for the George Washington Administration. The France that helped America win her independence was royal France, but Edouard Genet represented a fellow democratic republic, so far the only other one in the world. Common people in Philadelphia and New York danced and sang in the streets when they heard of the storming of the Bastille. The French Convention displayed a Stars and Stripes in their hall. A fashion started in America of calling each other “Citizen’ and “Citizeness”.

Secretary of State Tom Jefferson was pro French, John Adams and Hamilton were anti. Washington was pro-French until the Revolution had arrested his friend Lafayette. Rich Americans were afraid of the class anger the French revolutionaries were stirring up. Citizen Genet didn't help matters by openly trying to bribe American officials and publishing a list of all the prominent men of Boston whom he felt deserved to be guillotined.

Finally, President Washington wa vs asking for Genet's recall. Then Genet learned HE was next on Robespierre's list to be guillotined when he returned home! So Genet requested asylum and became a good American citizen.

1810- Admiral Thomas Cochrane, MP for Westminster, entered the British House of Parliament with a keg of gunpowder under his arm. The old Sea Wolf was trying to make a point in debate about defending his political allies.

1826- Congressman Henry Clay and Congressman John Randolph got so mad at each other they fought a duel. They popped away at each other with pistols not doing any harm.

1856- The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Company renamed themselves the Western Union Telegraph Company. In twenty years it became the largest corporation in the United States. Western Union stopped the personal telegram service in 2006.

1861- LINCOLN'S MOVE- Ever since Lincoln's election and the southern states declaring themselves an independent Confederacy, the thorny issue was the status of U.S. military bases on Confederate soil. The rebels sent commissioners led by Ex-president John Tyler to Washington to negotiate the peaceful transfer but Lincoln refused to meet them. The commander of Fort Leavenworth surrendered his post to Texas and Fort Pickens to rebel Florida. Only Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor South Carolina defiantly flew the Stars and Stripes. By now the U.S. garrison was running out of food and surrounded on all sides by hostile guns. Everyone wondered who would fire the first shot.

On this day Lincoln informed Governor Pickens of South Carolina that the U.S. government was sending a relief force to re-supply the fort. Jeff Davis had to make the decision to fire on the fort before the relief fleet could get there, thereby starting the shooting war. Davis recognized that Lincoln had deliberately outmaneuvered him into this situation, so as not to look like the U.S. would fire first.

1864- Battles of Pleasant Grove and Mount Pleasant. Union General Nathaniel Banks Red River operation was to try and take Shreveport Louisiana and invade East Texas. But he bungled his chance in two battles with Confederates under General Richard Taylor, an old lieutenant of Stonewall Jackson’s. Other commanders among the Texas volunteers was General Tom Greene who had fought under Sam Houston for Texas independence and Marquis Etienne du Polignac, a French aristocrat whom the Texas cowboys called “General Polecat”. The Red River Campaign failed so badly that the disgusted Yankee soldiers refused to even honor Banks with the title of General; they referred to him as “Mr. Banks”.

1865- LEE'S DECISION- The Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E. Lee had to abandon the Confederate capitol Richmond, and was now being pursued by two huge Union armies. At a small intersection named Appomattox Courthouse they found the last open road blocked by a third Yankee army. Lee had 10,000 starving effectives to put against 150,000 bluecoats. Grant was offering negotiations.

This night Lee held a last council of war to decide what to do. The younger officers proposed dispersing the army with instructions to rally in the Blue Ridge Mountains and continue fighting as guerrillas. But Lee dismissed this: "I'm getting too old for that sort of thing.' I must act on the wishes of the government. " General Gordon snapped: "Oh, to Hell with the Government! You are the Confederacy now !" All that's left of it is here!" After one more dawn attempt to break out of the trap, Lee concluded with a sigh:" I guess all that is left now is to go see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths."

1876- Amilicare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda debuted. The ballet portion is famous as the Dance of the Hours.

1879- Milk first sold in glass bottles.

1904- THE ENTENTE CORDIAL. Britain and France end centuries of open hostility and signed the first of a series of alliances. In every war since William the Conqueror, Germany and Britain were always allies against France. For several years British foreign minister Joseph Chamberlain had been trying to negotiate the same exact kind of alliance with the Germans. In Berlin in 1895 he gave the toast “Our (England) natural enemy will always be France.”
Germany was shocked by the news. Kaiser Wilhelm exclaimed, "What would Wellington and Old Blucher think?" -the allies who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

1911-Vitagraph released Winsor McCay's short cartoon "Little Nemo" theatrically.

1913- The 17th Amendment passed that called for U.S. senators to be elected by popular vote instead of named by their state legislatures.

1933-The WPA- Works Progress Administration, later renamed the Works Projects Administration founded. It was the Franklin Roosevelt administration’s massive jobs program to heal the Depression by putting unemployed people back to work. They built bridges, dams, roads, federal buildings. The WPA arts projects employed artists like Grant Wood, Berenice Abbott and Thomas Hart Benton and put on plays with Orson Welles and John Houseman.

1942- The US government ordered all remaining heavy industry convert to war production for the duration of World War II. From now until 1946 no new automobiles were made, no tin toys, there were almost no labor strikes. Sugar, rubber and gas were strictly rationed. But any lingering unemployment of the Depression finally disappeared.

1945- Only days before his concentration camp would be liberated by allied armies, Lutheran theologian Deitrich Boenhoffer was hanged for his public opposition to Hitler.

1949- A three year old girl named Kathy Fiscus fell into a well in the LA suburb of San Marino California. After a concerted effort by authorities to rescue her, she was found dead. What makes this sad incident memorable, was it was the first time a news event was followed by television cameras and reported live as it happened.

1952- A nationwide steel strike was going to cripple steel production in the President Harry Truman ordered the US government to take direct control of the steel mills and threatened the strikers that if they didn’t go back to work he would draft them into the army. While such drastic methods may have been necessary in wartime, Truman was dangerously overstepping his bounds as president by this action.

1966- Lenoid Brezhnev became Secretary General of the Communist party and leader of the Soviet Union.

1973- Pablo Picasso died at age 91. His last words at a dinner with friends was a toast 'Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can’t drink anymore'. On his night table was a collection of spot cartoons drawn by former Disney animator Vip Partch.

1974- Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record of 714 home runs set in 1935. Hammerin' Hank hit #715 off Dodger pitcher Al Dowling. Aaron had tied the Babe’s record at the end of the previous season and had to endure an entire winter of stress and racial threats before he could come up to bat again and break the record on opening day of the new season. His locker had sacks of vicious hate mail alongside it. Henry Aaron retired with a new record of 755, done without steroids. Pitcher Al Dowling joked: "I never say 7:15 anymore. I only say, 'It's a quarter after seven'."

1975- Frank Robinson becomes the first black manager in major league history as his Indians defeat the Yankees 5-3. The Tribe's new player-manager hits a home run in his first at-bat as the designated hitter.

1986- Actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of the town of Carmel, California.

1994- Chan Ho Park becomes the first Korean to play in the US major leagues as he makes his Dodger pitching debut.

1994- Grunge rocker Kurt Kobain’s body was discovered by a security system electrician three days after he blew his own head off with a shotgun.

1995- Disney’s A Goofy Movie premiered.
===============================================================
Yesterday’s question: What do you mean by describing something as Lovecraftian?

Answer: H.P. Lovecraft was an influential 20th Century writer of science fiction and horror. Describing something as Lovecraftian generally means it is dark, weird, nightmarish. (Thanks FG.)

Quiz: Did Daniel Boone ever fight for George Washington?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What was the difference between a Pilgrim and a Puritan?
--------------------------------------------------------------
History for 4/5/2023
Birthdays: Plato, Swinburne, Booker T. Washington, Josef Lister, Bette Davis, Nadar, Jean Fragonard, animator Hicks Lokey, Nguyen Van Thieu, historian Robert Bloch, Gale Storm, Washington Atlee-Burpee the mail order seed king, Spencer Tracy, Frank Gorshin, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston, Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Greenaway, Gregory Peck, Mary Costa, the voice of Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Roger Corman, Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA is 73, Colin Powell, Pharrell Williams is 50.

To the ancient Romans this was the Feast Day of the Goddess of Good Fortune, Fortuna Virilis.

622 A.D.- BYZANTINE EMPEROR HERACLIUS began his military campaigns. Heraclius is one of the mysteries of history. He sat lethargic on his throne while the Persian Shah Chosroes II conquered the whole Middle East almost up to his doorstep. Then Heraclius got up, put on his armor and turned into Julius Caesar, Alexander and Rambo all rolled into one. In a lightning campaign he destroyed the Persian army, burned their capitol, sprinkled garbage on the grave of Zoroaster and chased them to the foot of the Himalayas. The Persians killed Chosroes just to make Heraclius go away.
Then Heraclius went back to his throne and did nothing for the rest of his reign. Muslim Arabs would soon appear from out of Arabia and wipe out both empires, which is why you probably never heard of him. Some speculate that his wife Empress Heracleonas was the real military genius, but the scholars recorded the deeds all in the man’s name.

1242-" THE BATTLE ON THE ICE" Lake Pripus. Alexander Nevsky the Prince of Novgorod defeated the German monastic knights The Order of Sword Brothers. These warrior-monks had been sent by Rome to combat pagans in the Baltic lands, but after everyone had become Christian, they had switched their attention to "Greek Orthodox-Schizmatics". In 1939 Sergei Eisenstein did the famous film Alexander Nevsky about the battle with a musical score by Sergei Prokoviev.

1531- Richard Roose was boiled in oil for trying to poison the Archbishop of Canterbury.

1613- Princess Pocahontas, now baptized Lady Rebecca, married John Rolfe. She had been sold by her cousins to the Jamestown colonists as a hostage for a copper pot. Today many old families in Virginia claim a dynastic link to Pocahontas. John Rolfe is famous for inventing the American tobacco industry. The local Virginia weed was a bit too rough for Englishmen to puff on, so Rolfe had tobacco cuttings smuggled out of Brazil and planted in the James River delta. Since the English had found no gold-laden Aztecs, this settlement was at first viewed as a failure. But this tobacco crop made the Virginia Colony a success to profit hungry investors back home.

1614- King James I’s second parliament met. It was famous for enacting no laws, basically doing absolutely nothing. Britons rejoiced.

1759- A small Dutch fleet blown off course in a Pacific storm discovered a small island. Because it was Easter, they named it Easter Island.

1794- French Revolutionaries Danton and Camille Desmoulins were guillotined. They were arch-leftists but their old buddy Robespierre wanted them out of the way. So they were convicted of being treasonous counterrevolutionaries. When Danton mounted the scaffold he laughed:" When you take my head off, show it to the people. It will be worth it!"

1814- Now that Napoleon had agreed to abdicate, he wanted to assure his son would keep the throne of the French Empire. But the victorious allied monarchs in occupied Paris told Nappy’s emissary Caulaincourt that they refused negotiate with them any further. At the same time one of Napoleon’s generals and closest friends Marshal Marmont made his own deal and took his army over to the enemy. Marmont was the Duke of Ragusa and for the next few decades a Raguser became a synonym for traitor like Benedict Arnold or Quisling.

1815-The volcano Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia killing 12,000 and effecting weather patterns around the world. Many quaint Currier & Ives ice skating prints come from this year without a summer.

1827- Englishman Joseph Lister born. Lister was not only the inventor of Listerine but of hygienic medical practices. Before Lister insisted on sterilization hospitals were known as death traps of infection where surgeons would sharpen their scalpels on the sole of their boots before making their incision. He once stopped an epidemic in a hospital by noticing that the interns would go from dissecting cadavers to delivering babies without washing their hands!

1840- Six drunken friends met in a tavern in Baltimore and pledged they would never drink again. They formed the Washingtonian Society, the earliest Temperance League.

1851- New York Mayor Ambrose Kingland proposed that a large park be built in Manhattan for health and recreation. Work on Central Park was begun in 1856.

1860- Garibaldi and his Thousand Red Shirts launched their invasion of Sicily. Of the several Italian leaders struggling to unify Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi was the least patient. While the King of Sardinia Vittorio Emanuel and his minister Cavour tried quiet gentle diplomacy, Garibaldi and his "red shirts" launched an unprovoked assault on the Bourbon Kingdom of Two Sicilies. He told Vittorio-"You come from the North, I from the South." They met at the middle at Magenta and unified the entire Italian peninsula for the first time since the Roman Empire. Garabaldi's Northern Italian men wrote home of a new dish they tried in the South- pasta with tomato sauce!

1862- During the Civil War Union General George McClellan paused in his march through Virginia to attack the old Revolutionary War village of Yorktown. A small force under a rebel leader named MacGruder fooled McClellan into believing he was facing a large rebel army when he actually outnumbered them 20 to one. MacGruder marched his little force in circles, making multiple campfires and constantly blowing bugles, trying to look like a larger force than they actually were. When the Yankees finally overran the rebel fortifications they found the heavy cannon pointed at them were harmless logs painted black. They called them Quaker Guns.

1862- Meanwhile in Shiloh Tennessee, Confederate Beauregard and Albert Johnston’s rebel army was sneaking up to surprise attack Ulysses Grants army. But Beauregard was concerned that their undisciplined men were whooping and shooting their guns off and the element of surprise was now lost. Johnston ended speculation by saying:” I intend to fight them tomorrow even if they are a million strong!” Past midnight, Yankee General Sherman received reports of rebs skirmishing with his sentries. He told his adjutant to forget it and get some sleep, as there would be no battle that day. Shortly afterwards the entire Confederate Army attacked his camp.

1869- Daniel Bakeman, recorded as the last surviving minuteman of The American Revolution, died at age 109. A man who looked George Washington in the face lived long enough to be photographed by Matthew Brady. He married at age 12 and he and his wife stayed married for 91 years.

1874- Johann Strauss Jr.’s operetta Die Fledermaus premiered in Vienna.

1887- Lord Acton wrote: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

1892- THE JOHNSON COUNTY WAR- By the 1890's many great Wyoming cattle ranches were owned by Eastern or European companies. When cattle herds were decimated by the great frost of 1888, a labor dispute arose between the distant employers and the laid off cowboys, many of whom resorted to rustling to make a living. By 1892 the friction became so bad the Wyoming Cattlemen's Association hired a private train and filled it with hired Texas gunfighters and enough ammunition to kill everyone in three states. They had orders to shoot or string up any and all rustlers, revolutionists and troublemakers. The word got out to the citizens of Casper Wyoming. A mob gathered, and surrounded the Texans in a ranch house, laying siege to it, throwing lit dynamite sticks from an armored wagon and shooting at any cowpoke who dared show his face in a window.
The hapless hit men were finally rescued by the U.S. Cavalry, who granted all a general amnesty. The incident was the basis for the movie "Heaven's Gate".

1913- Ebbets Field opened in Flatbush. The Brooklyn Dodgers defeat the New York Highlanders (Yankees) 3-2.

1915- Jess Willard knocked down Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion in a title fight in Havana Cuba. The older Johnson retired after the fight. Jess Willard wouldn’t hold the title long though, on July 4th Willard lost to new kid Jack Dempsey.

1923- Louis Armstrong, King Oliver and the Creole Jazz Band took a train from Chicago to Richmond Indiana to record Chimes Blues. Satchmo’s first record.

1930 -James Dewar invented the Twinkie. He said he got the name when he drove by a billboard advertising "Twinkle-Toe Shoes" and modified it to Twinkie. Dewar ate two every day of his life, and called them, “The best darn-tootin idea I ever had!”

1931- Fox Film Company dropped their option on young star John Wayne as a dud not going anywhere. Wayne eked out an existence doing cheap westerns for Republic and Monogram until John Ford of RKO made him a star in 1939’s Stagecoach.

1939- For German children, membership in the Hitler Youth corps became mandatory.

1945- The first Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

1951- Republican Senator Robert Short read General Douglas MacArthur’s proclamation to the Communist Chinese on the floor of Congress. It read that if they didn’t withdraw from Korea, MacArthur would restart the Chinese Civil War and “Rain Nuclear Fire down upon their cities”.
MacArthur had no permission from the State Department to make such a rash statement, and it ruined all the behind the scenes overtures to get the Chinese to negotiate an end to the Korean War early. The previous December, MacArthur had been given a direct order from the President not to make any public statements about Korean policy, but the General chose to ignore it.
President Harry Truman concluded-“I’m gonna fire that pompous Sonofabitch!”

1951- The Atomic Spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for espionage.

1955- Elderly Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally retired. He was succeeded as PM by Anthony Eden. Churchill, already the author of several books, joked with his cabinet:” Gentlemen, History shall be kind to us, for I intend to write it!”

1963- The Lava Lamp invented by Dr. Edward Craven Walker.

1965- Julie Andrews had created the role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But when filming the motion picture, the studio head Jack Warner decided she was not a big enough star, so he used Audrey Hepburn with a dubbed singing voice. But Andrews had her revenge. At the Academy Awards this night My Fair Lady won Best Picture, but Julie Andrews won the best actress Oscar for Mary Poppins. She famously said "I would like to thank Jack Warner for making this award possible!"

1969- Pope Paul VI abolished those silly big wide brimmed red hats (galeros) the cardinals wore.

1975- The Best Animated Short Oscar went to Closed Mondays, claymation from Will Vinton.

1976- Eccentric Billionaire Howard Hughes died at age 76. Hughes had inherited his fathers oil rig tool company at 17, and built the mighty Hughes aircraft empire, and ran RKO pictures. He was a well-known Hollywood playboy and dated beautiful women like Jane Russell. But after surviving several test plane crashes, he became addicted to pain killers and became increasing paranoid and withdrawn from the world. He died a strange shut in, long haired and living on a diet of drugs, and saving his urine in mason jars.

1985- Singer David Lee Roth quit the rock band Van Halen to pursue a solo career.

1994- Grunge rock star Kurt Kobain shot himself. His body wasn’t discovered until two days later.

2003- Invading American forces began the Battle for Baghdad.

2063- FIRST CONTACT- According to Star Trek, this is the day Professor Zephram Cochran adapted an old-World War III ICBM missile and invented the Warp Drive, enabling the Earth to begin deep space exploration, and during whose maiden flight he made the first contact with an alien race- from the planet Vulcan.
===============================================================
Yesterday’s Question: What was the difference between a Pilgrim and a Puritan?

Answer: Puritans was the name given to members of the Church of England who thought their church was turning too Catholic and desired to return to a more Calvinist purity. Pilgrims believed only a complete break with the mainstream church would solve things. They wanted to practice their faith only among themselves and be left alone. We call them Pilgrims, but they called themselves Separatists.

Quiz: What was the difference between a Pilgrim and a Puritan?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Just where exactly is Silicon Valley?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 4/4/2023
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Caracalla, Eadweard Muybridge, Maya Angelou, Frances Langford, Irv Spence-Tom & Jerry animator, Gil Hodges, Arthur Murray, Muddy Waters-born McKinley Morganfield, Cloris Leachman, Dorothea Dix, Elmer Bernstein, Bijan, Bea Benaderet, Heath Ledger, Robert Downey Jr is 58, Barry Pepper, Craig T. Nelson is 79, Hugo Weaving is 63

If you were a Roman, today is the first day of the Megaleasian Festival in honor of Lunus the Moon god. Party! Par-tee!

In China, today is Ching-Ming Tomb Sweeping Day.

527AD- Byzantine Emperor Justin named his nephew Justinian as his successor.

636AD- Today is the Feast Day of Saint Isadore of Seville, the Patron Saint of the Internet. Don’t believe me? Check this out. http://factually.gizmodo.com/the-patron-saint-of-the-internet-is-isidore-of-seville-1595023500

896 A.D.-THE SYNOD HORRENDIUS-One of the more bizarre incidents in Vatican history. Bishops Stephen and Formosan hated each other. When Formosan became pope Stephen had to go into hiding. After Formosan's death Stephen became pope but was unsatisfied that he couldn't strike back at his old enemy. So, Pope Stephen had Formosan's tomb opened, the corpse sat up in a chair, and put on trial for heresy.
The cross examination was pretty strange, the prosecutor said things like: "His very silence is admittance of his guilt!" The dead body was convicted, excommunicated, tossed around by a Roman mob, then thrown in the Tiber. Pope Stephen VI later became the first pope to be killed in bed with someone's wife.

1561- A strange show in the sky of red discs and crosses was reported over Nuremberg Germany. Perhaps an early UFO sighting?

1581- Queen Elizabeth I visited the Golden Hind, the ship which Francis Drake sailed around the world. The 'Great Pirate of the Unknown Seas" had plundered huge treasure ships and drove Spanish Colonial authorities crazy. The Spanish Ambassador to London demanded the pirate Drake lose his head, but Queen Elizabeth had a different use in mind for her sword- she knighted the Devon innkeeper's son.
The Golden Hind was kept in a prize anchorage for decades until age and dry rot caused it to fall to pieces. Ben Johnson wrote poems about Sir Francis Drake. Shakespeare's island of wizards in the Tempest may have been modeled on Drake's accounts of the strange stormy islands of Tierra Del Fuego in the Straights of Magellan.

1704 -British Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovel captured The Rock of Gibraltar from Spain. Britain still owns it today, which really annoys Spain.

1841- PRESIDENT WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON DIED AFTER ONLY 31 DAYS IN OFFICE. “Old Tippecanoe” caught pneumonia giving his inauguration address in icy drizzle. When Vice President Tyler got word of the President's death, he was playing marbles with some children, and was about to get his knuckles rapped for losing. No U.S. President had ever died in office before, and no one knew if the Vice President was now only a caretaker until special elections, or was he the president for the next for years? John Tyler set the rule by staying President for four full years. Many people couldn't stand him. Instead of “Your Excellency, they called him "Your Accidency".

1850- The City of Los Angeles was incorporated under U.S. law.

1865- As the bedraggled Army of Northern Virginia retreated from Richmond, Robert E. Lee had a slim hope that if he could put distance between himself and the pursuing Union armies he might be able to join together the remaining Confederate forces in the Carolinas and keep fighting. These hopes were dashed this day. When Lee’s army reached Amelia Courthouse, the waiting trainloads of promised food turned out to be only ammunition. There weren’t enough trains to convey his men. Lee lost an entire day resting his army while scavenging for food. This allowed Grants Yankee army to catch up and slowly surround him. Lee remarked bitterly that while his men starved, the Confederate Congress could only “debate and shell peanuts!”

1865- LINCOLN IN RICHMOND- Meanwhile against the wishes of his bodyguards that it was still too dangerous, Abraham Lincoln toured the newly captured Confederate capitol of Richmond. Most of the white population had fled the smoldering city, but crowds of jubilant black slaves pulled his coach and cheered that the Day of Jubilee had arrived. One old black man kneeled to him. Lincoln raised him up “Father, you no longer have to kneel to any other man, only God. You are Free. Free as air.” Lincoln walked over to the Confederate Executive Mansion and sat in Jefferson Davis’ chair, putting his feet up on his desk. He then visited the family of rebel General George Pickett of the famous Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. The Pickett’s were friends of Abe and Mary Lincoln before the war and Abe enjoyed bouncing Pickett’s baby boy on his knee.

1900- In Brussels, a protester shouting 'Vive Les Boers!" fired four shots at the Prince of Wales and Princess Augusta (Future King Edward VII). They all miss. He was protesting the British war on the whites Afrikanners of South Africa. Queen Victoria survived six assassination attempts in her lifetime.

1901- Russian author Leo Tolstoy broke with the Russian Orthodox Church when he sent a letter to the Patriarch this day declaring that prayers offered to Jesus Christ were “the worst type of sacrilege”.

1924- On a dry lakebed in California, Tom Milton ran a Miller race car at 151 mph.

1932- Louisiana Senator Huey Long told Congress that 80% of America’s wealth was controlled by 20% of its population. According to Business Week, today 80% of America’s wealth was owned by 1% of its population, and the top 150 richest people on Earth collectively own 50% of all the total wealth of the planet.

1933- The U.S. Government orders all citizens to turn in their remaining gold dollar coins.

1933- The U.S. airship Akron crashed in a storm, killing the crew and an admiral.

1942- 'THE HUMP' -When the Japanese army overran Rangoon and cut the Burma Road, Allied forces helping Chiang Kai Shek 's Chinese armies and the Flying Tigers were suddenly without supplies. Army Air Corps General Olds and his men begin the daily supply flights of transports from India over the Himalayas to China, or 'Over the Hump'.

1944- During World War II a South African reconnaissance plane flew over the Auschwitz Concentration Camp and took photos. When they are analyzed in London, the intelligence boys declared it to be a synthetic rubber plant.

1952- CARTOON COMMIES- Nationally syndicated columnist Walter Winchell accused the owners of a New York commercial animation studio, Tempo Productions of Communist sympathies. One of the owners was Disney Layout man Dave Hilberman, who was a union organizer and was the only artist personally named by Walt Disney to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. The F.B.I. began investigating Tempo and their Madison Avenue clients quickly pulled their business. Tempo closed, laying off 50 artists. Mr. Clean, Markie Maypo and the Hamm’s Beer Bear were once again safe from Red subversion.

1954- Arturo Toscanini, who had been making music since the 1880’s, conducted his final concert. Toscanini’s studio space at NBC is today the set of the Saturday Night Live TV show.

1958- Screen goddess Lana Turner and her gangster lover Johnny Stompanato had a violent argument that ended when Turner’s teenage daughter plunged a kitchen knife into his chest. She was acquitted as justifiable homicide. Rumors maintain the daughter was covering for her mother’s own actions. It was whispered Hollywood society ladies had nicknamed Stompanato’s willy Oscar for its size.

1967- Van Nuys premiere head shop Captain Ed’s Heads & Highs first opened for business.

1967- In a speech at the Riverside Baptist Church in Manhattan Rev Dr. Martin Luther King announced his opposition to the Vietnam War. This put him in direct conflict with the heretofore friendly Lyndon Johnson administration. Whereas LBJ had Dr. King and the Southern Christian leadership up to the White House often, and had done much to fight discrimination, the volatile LBJ now called Dr. King “that backwoods n--- preacher!”

1967- Snoopy’s little bird friend Woodstock debuted in the Peanuts comic strip.

1968- THE SETTLERS MOVEMENT- The Israeli government was trying to sort out what to do about the West Bank territories conquered in the Six Day War. This day a small group of ultra-conservative Jews called Gush Eymunim moved into a hotel the Arab city of Hebron and declared themselves a settlement. Minister Moshe Dayan wanted Jewish settlements, but he wanted them to be alongside Arab communities, not displacing them. This was the first provocation by conservative settlers that would bedevil Palestinian-Israeli relations for the next fifty years.

1968- DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ASSASSINATED. The great civil rights leader was struck in the head by a .30 cal bullet fired from a high-powered rifle, while he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He was 39. Dr. King and his team had been clowning around that morning, throwing pillows at one another. On the balcony Dr King’s last words were teasing Jesse Jackson for not being dressed properly for going out to dinner. Jesse was wearing a fashionable turtleneck instead of suit and tie.
Dr. Benjamin Hooks ran to the phone to get help, but the switchboard was not working. The motel manager's wife who usually ran the switchboard had seen the shooting, and the shock had given her a heart attack. She died the next day. The Memphis police had always surrounded King's party with at least seven officers whenever he was in town. For some unknown reason that morning they were ordered to stand back at least seven blocks. It was the one-year anniversary of the speech where he declared his opposition to the Vietnam War.
A man named James Earl Ray was later apprehended in England, confessed to the shooting and was given a life sentence. He later recanted his confession and said the FBI coerced him, and he was taking orders from a mysterious contact man named Raul. James Earl Ray died in 1998. The King family reopened the investigation and a civil court ruled that Dr. King was probably killed by a conspiracy. When F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover heard about the assassination he did what he did the day John Kennedy was shot, he spent the day at the racetrack celebrating.

1968- When news of Martin Luther King's assassination got out, 175 US cities suffered urban rioting. In Indianapolis, Sen. Bobby Kennedy was scheduled to go speak to a mostly black crowd. His police escort refused to follow him out of fear. Kennedy went anyway. He told the audience the terrible news, made a reference to his own murdered brother, then proceeded to quote them poetry from the Greek writer Aeschylus "We must tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world." The crowd wept and prayed together. Indianapolis was quiet that night.

1973- The World Trade Center Twin Towers first opened to the public.

1984- In George Orwell’s novel 1984, this is the day Winston Smith started a secret diary and first wrote the dangerous thought-crime “Down With Big Brother”.

1987- Ronald Reagan’s hand-picked FCC voted to repeal The Fairness Doctrine, which mandated news services report unbiased news, reflecting all opinions. This set the stage for the highly partisan news reporting of today.

1988- Arizona governor Evan Meacham was impeached, the first US governor to get the boot in 60 years. Meecham had made Arizona the only state in the U.S. to refuse the Martin Luther King holiday. Meecham had once referred to African Americans as “pickaninees” and had ordered a list drawn up of all state employees who were gay.

1994- Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark started Netscape. Clark also founded Silicon Graphics, Inc.

2007- Bob Clark, the director of the holiday classic film A Christmas Story, was killed in a head on car crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. He was 67.

==========================================================
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s question- Just where exactly is Silicon Valley?

Answer: In California, between San Francisco and San Jose along the southern bay. Centered around Stanford University, who owned much of the land. In the 1930s the University adopted a policy of discounted leasing land for company startups, provided the new companies focused on high tech. Towns include Palo Alto, San Mateo, Mountainview, Menlo Park, Redwood City.