Quiz: What do the actors Pola Negri, Charles Bronson, Kim Novak and Liberace have in common?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Why is questioning someone closely called “ giving them the Third Degree..”..?
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History for 7/7/2014

Birthdays: Joseph Jacquard- of the Jacquard Loom 1752, Gustav Mahler, Satchel Page, Ringo Starr is 74, Doc Severinsen, Robert Heinlein, William Kuntsler, Gian Carlo Menotti, Ken Harris, Shelley Duval is 65, Ted Cassidy-Lurch in the Adams Family, Michelle Kwan, David McCullough, Pierre Cardin, and according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this is the birthday of Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick Dr. John Watson



750 BC- 391AD This was the Roman Feast of Quirinus, then day when Romulus the founder of Rome was taken up to heaven and took his place beside the Gods as the deified Quirinus.



175AD- The future Roman Emperor Commodus attained manhood. There was a special celebration when a Roman boy grew his first beard. He made a ceremony of putting off his boys cloak-tunica and donning the man’s toga. 



1569- Sir Francis Drake boldly sailed into the harbor of Cartagena ( in modern Columbia), the largest port on the Spanish Main, and looted a treasure galleon.



1607- The English anthem God Save the King first sung in honor of King James Ist.



1666- King Charles II and his court quit London in the wake of the Great Plague.



1735-King Stanislas Lescynski lost the throne of Poland to a boyfriend of Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Stan was the father-in-law of king Louis XV of France fortunately, so Louis gave him the Duchy of Lorraine to live in. In the town square of Nancy there is a statue of Stanislas pointing east. Some say he's pointing home to Poland, others say towards the red light district of Nancy, where he spent a lot of his time.



1754- Kings College in New York founded. After the American Revolution the name was changed to Columbia University.



1777- During the Revolution, the British invasion force of General Burgoyne captured the New York fortress of Ticonderoga back from the American rebels. 



1814- Sir Walter Scott published his first novel Waverly. He wrote it under a pseudonym because he worried it would damage his reputation as a poet.



1821- The Latin American liberation army of Jose San Martin captured Lima Peru.



1839-The First European Railroad link opens between Vienna and Prague, thanks to the entrepreneurial investment of Meyer Rothschild, the Austrian branch of the House of Rothschild. Even though the English invented the locomotive years earlier European development moved much slower than in America where vast distances needed to be linked up fast. There was medical concern about people being moved at such high speeds as 35 miles an hour! A Viennese doctor wrote that at if the human body moved faster than 15 mph, blood would squirt out of your eyes and ears. Men would go mad and women sex-crazed. 



1865- Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth's co-conspirators were all hanged Lewis Payne, George Atzenrodt and David Herold. Even weeping old Mary Surrat, who's involvement is still debatable. She may have known of some kind of plot but all they could prove was she the landlady of the boardinghouse where the plotters met. Everyone expected that a last minute amnesty would come from President Johnson but the President stayed silent and she was hanged with the others. Mary Surrat was the first woman executed in the U.S. Large Lewis Payne’s neck didn’t break at first and he kicked and danced in the air for five minutes before he choked. General Dan Sickles said afterward "We do not want to know their names anymore." The large gallows was then broken up and the splinters sold off as souvenirs to tourists.



1894-The Pullman Strike-U.S. troops battle 5,000 Chicago area railroad workers and their families in the streets. Dozens are killed. Troops were called for after marshals and detectives refused to shoot at unarmed working people. Other unions go out in sympathy with the Pullman workers and make the strike nationwide. Union president Eugene Debs is arrested for sedition and treason but acquitted by three grand juries. He later runs for president on the socialist ticket in 1912. President Cleveland before crushing the strike with regular army troops had just set the date for the first Labor Day.



1895-THE FIRST SUNDAY COMICS - The first modern comic strip Hogan’s Alley featuring "The Yellow Kid" by Richard Felton Outcault, debuts in the Sunday edition of Pulitzer's New York World. The strip was so popular it gave the name "Yellow Journalism" to the sensationalist tabloid press. Comic strips at this time became the mass media of the day. For people who couldn’t afford a theater ticket and couldn’t yet speak English, the little characters in the penny papers were extremely popular and made celebrities out of cartoonists like Outcault, Bud Selig George McManus and Winsor McCay. Richard Outcault later inventing the backend deal when he asked for a percentage of all sales from his new comic strip "Buster Brown and his dog Tige"



1898-Congress votes to annex the Kingdom of Hawaii.



1900- Warren Earp, the youngest brother of Wyatt Earp, was killed in a gunfight. He had gotten into an argument in a saloon in Wilcox Arizona. Warren Earp was not at the OK Corral in 1881 but he did help his brothers hunt down the killers of Morgan Earp.



1911- THE AGADIR INCIDENT or "The Panther's Leap' In the tense international climate just before the Great War, Germany sparked a major international incident by making moves to take southern Morocco from France. They sent the battle cruiser Panther to Agadir Harbor to "protect endangered German citizens", There were no Europeans in that part of Morocco so the German ministry cabled a Herr Weiland to rush overland by train to meet the warship. He was nicknamed "The Endangered German". 
After a lot of diplomatic bluffs and threats between Paris, Berlin, London and St. Petersburg, Germany eventually backed down. One Berlin newspaper said:" To think we almost went to war with Britain & France over a country that can only provide sand for our canary cages!" An angry German minister said:" The incident had the same effect as viewing a dead squid. First shock, then amusement, then revulsion."



1925- Afrikaans is recognized as one of the official languages of South Africa, along with English and Dutch.



1930-Work began on Hoover Dam. 



1941- The US military took over British bases on Iceland that protected transAtlanitc convoys. This act was considered by Nazis Germany a further provocation of Neutral America towards joining the war on the Allied side. Earlier President Roosevelt had frozen German assets in the US and expelled their diplomats.



1942- SS chief Heinrich Himmler gave the go-ahead for forced sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.



1943-BANZAI- Climax of the Battle of Saipan- 4,300 Japanese troops stream out of the jungle in a massed Banzai charge on U.S. Marine positions. Fighting devolved into insane hand to hand combat with Samurai swords and rifle-bayonets, more reminiscent of the Civil War than World War II. One of the Marines wounded in the attack was future movie star Lee Marvin, nicknamed Captain Marvel by his buddies for his gung-ho attitude. Almost all the Japanese were killed.
Later in a cave the Marines found the bodies of General Saito and Admiral Nagumo, the fleet commander at the Pearl Harbor attack. They had committed hari kari when the attack had failed. This event also caused Prime Minister Hideki Tojo's government to fall, since Tojo had pledged the U.S. could not take Saipan, an island which placed Japan within range of US long range bombers.



1946-Mother Cabrini made the first American Saint. She was an immigrant from Italy. Later St. Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first native born American saint.



1947- THE ROSSWELL INCIDENT- An official news report from the USAF 509th bomber command -the same unit that dropped the Hiroshima bomb- stated they had recovered the wreckage of a UFO in the New Mexico desert near Rosswell and were examining it. The next day the commanding general of the 8th Air Force flew to Rosswell. He announced to the press that the earlier report was in error, and it was only a downed weather balloon. The wreckage was removed under heavy-armed guard.



Complete secrecy was then imposed. The communications officer Major Jesse Marcey, who posed for an official photo showing him with the balloon wreckage, later told his son it was faked. Marcey, who died in 1967 and his adjutant Lt. Haut still stick to the original version of their story. Lt. Haut also claimed the base commander Col. William Blanchard thought it was UFO debris. This report coming only two weeks after the first modern sighting of "flying saucers" over Mt. Reynier in Oregon sparked the Flying Saucer craze that gripped America throughout the 1950’s.



1949-"I’m Friday"- The program Dragnet first debuted on radio. Jack Webb conceived, wrote, directed and starred in the show. His hardest job was urging actors "not to act" but to speak the lines normally like the average person does.



1960- First demonstration of a practical laser beam. In Russia it had been theorized since 1951. Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or LASER.



1967- Vivien Leigh, the actress who played Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, died in a mental institution at age 53.



1967 - Beatles' "All You Need is Love" is released. Queen Elizabeth II said it was one of her favorite songs.



1967 – The Doors' "Light My Fire" hits #1.



1976- First women cadets enroll at West Point Military Academy.



1981- Judge Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.



1982- A drunken lunatic named Michael Fagin with a bleeding left hand broke into Buckingham Palace, got past all the security and startled Queen Elizabeth in her bed. Her personal bodyguard was out walking the royal dogs. The Queen kept the man engaged in conversation at the foot of her bed until guards dragged him away.



2005-THE 7-7 ATTACK- Four Al Qaeda terrorist bombs exploded in the London subway Tube and a doubledecker bus, killing 50 and injuring one thousand..


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Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is questioning someone closely called “ giving them the Third Degree..”..?

Answer: It came from FreeMasonry. When you entered the Masons you are a first degree Mason. Part of becoming a master mason, or Third Degree mason, involved a ritual where the masters you are questioned very closely about your grasp of masonic ritual.

Quiz: Why is questioning someone closely called “ giving them the Third Degree..”..?

Yesterday’s questions answered below: What does it mean to “cross the Rubicon”…?
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History for 7/6/2014
Birthdays: John Paul Jones, Czar Nicholas Ist, Frida Kahlo, Della Reese, Bill Haley,
Nancy Reagan is 93, Sylvester Stallone is 68, Merv Griffin, Janet Leigh, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sebastian Cabot, James Bordrero, The Dalai Lama, LaVerne Andrews of the Andrews Sisters, Geoffrey Rush is 63, Ned Beatty is 77, Former President George W. Bush is 68, 50 Cent is 39, Jennifer Saunders is 56.

Happy St. Fermin's Day, the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Remember when running the trick to it is keeping ones self directly in front of the bull’s head. This area between his eyes is his blind spot.

83 B.C. Sulla the Dictator stormed Rome and defeated the supporters of Marius. This first civil war amongst powerful Roman factions is known as the" Wars of Marius & Sulla" or “the Social Wars”. Sulla published lists of hundreds of political enemies called the Proscribed. If you were on that list anybody could kill you without trial or appeal.. Sulla had on his staff a student intern who recently changed sides. His name was Julius Caesar.

1190- Death of Henry II, King of England and the Angevin Empire – he ruled a territory almost as great as Charlemagne but his reign was marred by the martyrdom of
Thomas à Becket and quarrels with his family. Henry had pledged to go on Crusade to liberate Jerusalem and after his death his Crusade was taken up by his son Richard the Lionhearted. In the end Henry was so disgusted by the feuds with his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and sons Richard, Geoffrey and John Lackland, that his dying breath was a curse on his own family.

1480- The hunchback Duke of Gloucester was crowned King Richard III. He is referred to as the Last Plantagenet, meaning the last of the bloodline of Geoffrey of Anjou and Richard the Lionhearted. He was defeated and killed by Henry VII of the House of Tudor. The recent discovery of his remains proved he really had a spinal deformity. Whether he was the villain as Shakespeare and Hollingshed portrayed him, is a matter for scholars to argue over. Shakespeare was writing plays for the granddaughter of the man who killed him, so that would obviously color his interpretation of events.

1495-Battle of Fornovo- King Charles VIII of France begins a new round of European kings invading Italy by marching on Naples and defeating a combined army of the Italian city states. The warrior king Charles of France eventually died back home by banging his head on low doorway.

1560-The Treaty of Edinburgh- after a small war victorious Scottish Presbyterian rebels compel Mary Queen of Scots dismiss her French troops from Scotland and declare freedom to worship, which meant Scotland was going Protestant. Representatives of Queen Elizabeth of England also demanded Mary renounce forever her claim to the throne of England. Mary’s mother was King Henry VIII’s sister. Mary refused that.

1685- THE BATTLE OF SEDGEMOOR AND THE BLOODY ASSIZES.-The illegitimate son of King Charles II, the Duke of Monmouth, tried to overthrow his Catholic uncle King James II with the help of many old Roundheads, angry that the Catholic monarch was planning to subvert the liberties won by Cromwell in the English Civil War. This day Monmouth hightailed it for the hills while his army was cut to pieces in battle.

After the battle the punishment of the rebels under Judge Jefferies was so brutal it was nicknamed the Bloody Assizes. An assize was another name for circuit court. Hundreds were beheaded, tongues cut out, limbs branded with hot irons then transported as slaves to the Bahamas and Barbados to cut sugar cane. White sugar was a new delicacy sweeping the nation. To this day many white skinned Bahamians can claim descendant from these condemned rebels. In the 1890s Rafael Sabatini wrote a novel about one slave who escaped to become a pirate named Captain Blood, later made into an Errol Flynn movie.

180-? THE IMMORTAL BELOVED LETTERS.- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven never married, but not for want of trying. The bad tempered loner loved several women but never had a serious relationship. After his death, several love letters were found. The letters written this day were of a supremely passionate nature where he begged some unknown woman to keep an appointment with him at some unstated rendezvous in Hungary. “Though still in bed my thoughts go out to you, My Immortal Beloved…” The letters were never sent and have no addresses or names. Who is this Immortal Beloved Beethoven yearns for?

1809-Battle of Wagram- Napoleon defeated the Austrian army of Archduke Charles. The Austrian soldiers wore white uniforms, so the French called them: "Soldats de la creme'". Napoleon planned this battle out so well that as soon as he was satisfied the enemy was toast, even though fighting still raged all around him he took a nap on a leopard skin rug.

1853- In Ripon, Wisconsin Free-Soil Whigs and other lefty radicals form the new Republican Party. They were called the Anti-Nebraska Men, then Black-Republicans for awhile because of their strong anti-slavery stance.

1885- Louis Pasteur gave the first inoculation to cure rabies.

1886 - Horlick's of Wisconsin offers the1st malted milk to public. It began as an attempt to create a new type of baby formula.

1895- A businessman named William Sydney Porter returned from Honduras where he had fled after being indicted for embezzlement. He had returned because he had learned of the illness of his wife. Porter was sent to prison and while there began writing little stories which he later published under the name O. Henry.

1906- THE GREAT FUNERAL OF JOHN PAUL JONES- The heroic sea captain of the American Revolution died a bitter old man in Paris in 1792. Ill and forgotten, he had no friends. Writer Thomas Carlyle said Jones “resembled an empty wineskin.” The few mourners at the little Paris cemetery were he was interred were all admiring Frenchmen and children he had given coins to on the street during his walks through the Luxembourg Gardens. The American ambassador skipped his funeral because of a dinner party he didn’t want to miss. A Frenchman named Simonot had embalmed Jones in brandy in a lead sealed coffin because he figured the American government wanted to take him home. He was amazed when they were too cheap to cover the transport fees. Jones’ sword and medals were pawned to pay for the funeral.

A century later America had become a great power. Scientists set about to look for John Paul Jones remains. They discovered the lead casket in Paris’ Old Protestant Cemetery. The brandy embalming kept him so well preserved they could do an autopsy on the body. Jones had died of bronchial pneumonia and kidney failure at age 45. President Teddy Roosevelt shared Jones’ dream of a powerful US Navy. He used the occasion to stage a grand re-internment in Annapolis Naval Academy.

So on his birthday rows of battleships booming salutes and mile-long processions of marching US Marine and French honor guards gave John Paul Jones the grand funeral he always felt he deserved, just 113 years late.

1917 – As Lowell Thomas’ newsreel cameras rolled, Lawrence of Arabia and Bedouin Sheik Ouda Abu-Tai captures the Red Sea Port of Aqaba from Turkish troops. The battle was dramatized in the 1962 David Lean epic Lawrence of Arabia.

1928- The film "The Lights of New York" premiered at the Strand theater on Broadway. 1927's the Jazz Singer popularized sound movies while still being half silent. This film was the first with an all dialogue track.

1938- THE EVIAN CONFERENCE- No, it wasn't about bottled water. Before Hitler started putting all Jews and political undesirables into concentration camps, he was happy to see them leave the country. Since 1933, the refugees fleeing the Reich grew to tens of thousands. President Franklin Roosevelt called for a summit of Western powers at Evian France to discuss the issue of the rising numbers asking asylum in the democracies. The conference turned into a parade of diplomats making excuses. It accomplished nothing. From 1938 to 1944 only half the quota for U.S. visas allowed were ever filled. The rest were held up by red tape while the Holocaust raged. Also the British Mandate authority bowed to Arab anger to restrict immigration to Palestine. Saudi Prince Ibn Saud said:” Why should we be punished for the sins of Europe?” The only nations on Earth who accepted unrestricted Jewish immigration from the Nazis were Holland and Denmark. Young delegate and future Israeli leader Golda Meir was asked what she hoped to get out of the conference. “All I want to see before I die is for my people to get something else beyond Expressions of Sympathy.”

1944- A fire broke out in the main tent of Ringling Bros Circus during a children’s matinee in Hartford Connecticut. The big top had been waterproofed with a paraffin solution thinned with gasoline and now that mixture engulfed the tent in flames. 168 died and 682 more were injured, mostly children. In 1950 a deranged arsonist named Robert Segee admitted setting the Hartford Circus Fire.

1957-Chuck Jones short "What’s Opera, Doc?" debuts. “Kill da wa-bitt, kill da wa-bitt..."

1957-16 year old John Lennon first met 15 year old Paul McCartney at a church picnic near Woolton, England. Lennon invited McCartney to join his first band called the Quarrymen, but McCartney missed their first engagement because of a boy scout trip.

1964 - Beatles' film "Hard Day's Night" premieres in London. The bands iconoclastic, antics portrayed by Richard Lesters surreal free style direction set the style for the music videos of the future.

1965- TV sitcom F-Troop premiered. Shortly after the series began production it was learned that lead actress Melody Patterson (Wrangler Jane) was actually underage- 16 years old. She kept her part, but the writers had to tone down any sexual innuendo in the scripts.

1965 - Rock group Jefferson Airplane formed.

1967- The state of Biafra tried to win it’s independence from Nigeria. In the Civil War that followed a million of it’s citizens died of malnutrition and the images shocked the world.

1974- The first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keilor’s ode to a small town in Minnesota. Brought to you by Powdermilk Biscuits.

1994- Forrest Gump opened in theaters.

1998- French workers at Disneyland Paris theme park went on strike for better pay and not having to smile all the time like Americans do.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to “cross the Rubicon”…?

Answer: When Julius Caesar completed his conquest of Gaul, his enemies got the Senate to order him to disband his army and come to Rome to face charges. In a similar way Scipio Africanis the defeater of Hannibal was humiliated. Instead, Caesar marched on Rome. The Rubicon was the border of Roman territory, so crossing it meant Civil War. When he did cross, Caesar said “ The die is cast.” So Crossing the Rubicon means you’ve made your choice and it’s too late to change your mind.

Quiz: What does it mean to “cross the Rubicon”…?

Quiz: Okay, 1960’s pop culture fans, who was Pat Paulsen?
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History for 7/5/2014
Birthdays: P.T. Barnum, Beatrix Potter, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, Jean Cocteau, Admiral David Farragut, Len Lye, George Pompidou, Shirley Knight, Huey Lewis is 64, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Milburn Stone (Doc on Gunsmoke), Warren Oates, Henry Cabot Lodge IV, Eva Green is 34, Edie Falco is 51

1779- TRYON’S NEW HAVEN RAID- During the American Revolution, Royalist Governor Tryon of New York thought a way to bring the American rebels back to their allegiance was to launch a raid across Long Island Sound to rebel strongholds in Connecticut the day after their Independence Day celebrations.

Forty boats of redcoats landed at New Haven and looted, burned and brutalized the inhabitants. After he urged his students to fight back, the elderly Dean of Yale University was beaten to death with rifle butts. Civilian homes were ransacked and several women gang raped in their homes. The redcoats then burned Norwalk and Scranton before returning back across the water to occupied New York. British policy was that the majority of Americans are good subjects but just deluded by bad leaders. Tryon was frustrated with the endless guerilla fighting. So he lashed out with a brutality that accomplished more outrage than good.

1814- Battle of Chippewa- During the War of 1812 an American force turned back a British counteroffensive across the Canadian border.

1820- THE TRIAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE- Forget Charles & Di, this was the greatest marital scandal ever to hit the British Monarchy. George the Prince Regent had been estranged from his wife Caroline since 1796 and she had been living a wild life in Italy while George chased skirts at court. When his elderly mad father George III finally died and 'Princee' became King George IV, nobody expected Caroline to suddenly show up in England and still want to be Queen.

On this day George forced a bill into the House of Lords to grant him a divorce so he could be free to marry his mistress Lady Cunningham nicknamed 'the Vice-Queen'. The evidence in the trial were juicy anecdotes of the Queen's own sexual shenanigans with a number of Italians. The whole sordid affair was terribly embarrassing and split the nation into factions. Some loyal to the King, others the Queen's defender's of Women's Rights and the Family. The King's public appearances were greeted with cries of 'Nero!" the Duke of Wellington was hissed and had rocks thrown at him and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool was so upset he could not address Parliament without a dose of ether first.

Eventually the divorce bill was dropped and the King crowned with the Queen shut out of the cathedral. A popular doggerel in Punch made a joke of Christ's advice to the Adulteress-
" Most Gracious Queen we thee implore, to Go Away and Sin No More...
But if that effort Be too Great, Just Go Away at Any Rate.."

1830- The last Bey of Algiers was driven into exile by the invading French Army. This was the end of the Barbary Corsairs, active since 1517. Algeria would be a French colony until 1962. Part of the invading force was a new unit made up of Paris street riff-raff and foreign exiles called the French Foreign Legion.

1839- THE FLORA HASTINGS AFFAIR- The first great scandal of Queen Victoria's reign. After the sexual escapades of her predecessors the new 20 year old queen dwelt in a closed moral atmosphere. One day she noticed one of her ladies-in-waiting, a Lady Flora Hastings, had an enlarged belly, like she was pregnant. The idea that this unmarried grande dame may have been pregnant was made worse by the idea that the father may have been the detested lover of Victoria's mother, Sir John Conroy.

The tittering eventually accelerated into a full-fledged political scandal involving the Prime Minister and the entire government. The slandered Lady Hastings had to submit to a humiliating doctor's examination to prove she was still a virgin and even that didn't silence the gossip. Finally it came out that her belly swelling was caused by a large tumor on her liver, and had she paid more strict attention to it instead of the gossip she might have lived. This day she died and everyone blamed the young queen of persecuting and slandering Lady Hastings. Victoria was hissed in the streets for the remainder of the year.

1865- In London, William Booth formed the Salvation Army.

1865- After two days of torrential rain at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee began withdrawing his broken Confederate army south to Virginia. He had enough ammunition for one more day's battle, and he was hoping the Yankees would destroy themselves assaulting his strong defensive works. But the Yankees, much to Lincoln's annoyance, remained quiet in camp. This is the reason you don’t hear of the name of the winning Yankee General, George Meade, as much as you heard of Grant and Sherman.

1892- THE HOMESTEAD MASSACRE- Jacob Frick, the partner of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, decided to solve the problem of uppity unions by surrounding his Homestead plant with barbed wire and guns then announcing to the astonished employees that they were getting a 20% pay cut. 3,000 workers fought with police and non-union replacements, 7 killed, the union leaders arrested for incitement to riot.

1910- Writer O. Henry died of cirrhosis and tuberculosis at 47. His last words were "Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark." He became a writer while serving a jail term for embezzlement.

1933-The Germans began building the Autobahn, a system of highways that became the envy of the world. The Bauhaus designers of the autobahn invented the ideas we take for granted today- the Cloverleaf Exit, Blending Lanes and the central meridian.

1934- THE SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL STRIKE- A longshoreman strike had brought harbor traffic along the West Coast to a standstill. California Governor Frank Merriam decided to send in the National Guard. When the longshoremen picketline was rushed by armored trucks full of scab replacements, they rioted and the troops opened fire. Hundreds were hurt and two killed. Blood flowed on the Embarcadero. One policeman who killed a demonstrator later said: "The man was a Communist so my only regret was that I did not kill more !" Flowers, candles and memorials to the slain men were kicked over by the S.F. police.

As a spontaneous unorganized reaction to the violence 100,000 San Franciscans refused to go to work for 4 days. The third largest city in the U.S. was completely paralyzed. Governor Merriam declared martial law but the tanks in the street were helpless. To a nation struggling in the Depression there was widespread fear that this incident was the beginning of a Soviet style revolution. The Russian Revolution had started with general strikes. Then, on the 5th day San Franciscans all went back to work.

1935- The Wagner Act passed congress, decreeing all American workers have the right to collective bargaining and to form unions.

1943- Betty Grable married bandleader Harry James.

1945- The First British General Election held in ten years. Winston Churchill and his Tories were turned out for Labor candidate Clement Atlee. When his aides accused the British voters of ingratitude, Churchill said they had been through a lot and wanted to move on. But Churchill called Clement Atlee "a Sheep in Sheep’s clothing."

1945- OPERATIONS OVERCAST and PAPERCLIP- The U.S. Army intelligence arranged for top Nazi rocket Scientists to be brought to the U.S. for our future space program. Pres. Truman had passed a law forbidding visas for anyone with a Nazi past. But the War Dept Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency chief Bosquet Wev declared:" We’re not going to beat a dead Nazi Horse!" Experts doctored the dossiers on these scientists and changed descriptions like: "Fanatical Unrepentant Nazi" to "Politically Neutral".

Head of the unit Dr. Werner Von Braun was the inventor of the clustered liquid fuel engine rockets which Hitler had named the Vengence-2 and fired at London. Dr. Arthur Rudolphe the designer of the Saturn-5 moon rocket was deported in 1984 when a British documentary exposed his running a slave labor camp in 1943. Dr. Herman Becker-Freysing, the man who built John Glenn's space suit, got his knowledge about the effects of atmospheric pressure and oxygen loss on humans from experiments he did on the inmates of Dachau.

1952- London Transport scrapped the last of their electric streetcars in favor of diesel polluting double-decker buses.

1954- Elvis Presley recorded "That’s All Right" at Sun Records in Memphis. Some call it the first true Rock & Roll song, but that is disputed by Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock, Ike Turners Delta 88 and many other R&B hits. “That’s All Right” was written by black bluesman Arthur Big-Boy Crudup, who never profited from the song’s success and died living in a shack.

1954- Tomoyuki Tanaka announced the beginning of production on the movie Godzilla.

1963- The Vatican finally says it’s okay for Catholics to be cremated, since the world is running out of land to make into cemeteries.

1968- In Vietnam, after months of brutal fighting in a battle the mainstream media equated with Iwo Jima and Gettysburg, the US Marines were ordered to abandon their firebase at Que Sanh. Many Marines were enraged that they had to give up a place they had lost so many brothers over. But the Pentagon felt it was too vulnerable to enemy artillery. In Marine annals Que Sanh is still counted as a victory. Any blame for the withdrawal put on General Westmoreland, who had just been replaced as overall commander in Vietnam. This frustrating misuse of soldier’s sacrifice typified the Vietnam experience.

1975-Tennis player Arthur Ashe becomes the first African-American to win Wimbledon.

1975- Independence of the Cape Verde Islands.

1989- White House aide Lt. Colonel Oliver North sentenced for his role in the Iran Contra Scandal. North spent his last evenings before testifying shredding incriminating documents. Colonel North appeared in court in his Marine uniform while being interrogated by Hawaii Senator Dan Inouye, a real combat war hero who lost an arm fighting in World War II. Pundits enjoyed the irony of one who could say "I bled for my Country," while the other "I Shred for My Country!" His conviction was later overturned by a conservative judge on a technicality. Oliver North is today a conservative talk show host.

2002- International Professional Women’s Tennis had become dominated by two amazing American sisters, Venus and Serena Williams. This day Serena defeated Venus to win Wimbledon. Of 11 Wimbeldon Women’s singles between 1999 and 2010, the Williams sisters won 9 of them.
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Quiz: Okay, 1960’s pop culture fans, who was Pat Paulsen?

Answer: Pat Paulson was a comedian who was famous for his bumbling yet deadpan delivery. On the infamous Smother’s Brothers Comedy Hour, he was doing deadpan editorials on political issues which developed into a bit where he ran for President. It took off (today, we’d say it "went viral”). He ran every presidential year from the late '60’s through the mid ’90’s. Got some votes, too.

Quiz: Okay, 1960’s pop culture fans, who was Pat Paulsen?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Who first said “ Badges? We don’t have any badges. We don’t need any stinking badges!”
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History for 7/4/2014 U.S. Independence Day
Birthdays: Jean Pierre Blanchard the balloonist-1753, George M. Cohan, Stephen Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Calvin Coolidge, Rube Goldberg, Louis Armstrong*, Edward Walker the inventor of the Lava Lamp, Mayer Lansky, Tokyo Rose, Louis B. Mayer, George Murphy, Emerson Boozer, Neil Simon, Mitch Miller, Eve Marie Saint is 89, Gina Lollabrigida is 87, George Steinbrenner, Ann Landers, Ron Kovic, Geraldo Rivera, Victoria Abril, Pam Shriver, Rene Laloux, Gloria Stuart

• Louis Armstrong always claimed his birthday was July 4th 1900, although records show his birth was August 4th 1901.

1054- A supernova in the constellation Taurus created a star visible in the sky for 23 days. The residue of the blast is visible today as the Crab Nebula.

1187- BATTLE OF THE HORNS OF HATTIN- Sultan Saladin lured the Christian Crusader army out into the desert, far away from water. The Saracens started a brush fire to confuse the Crusader formations with choking smoke. Old Duke Raymond of Tripoli realized what was happening but was helpless to stop it. When he saw his knights turning to fight, he cried out:" We're lost! We are already dead men!"

In one big battle the entire hierarchy of Crusader Palestine or Outremer as they called it, was dead or taken. Saladin also captured Christian holy relics like the wood of the True Cross and Holy Lance, and sent them to the Caliph in Baghdad.

Saladin's sister had been captured while on the pilgrimage to Mecca and raped by a crusader named Raymond du Chatillion. Chatillion bragged that he planned next to march on Mecca and “piss on the grave of that lying old mule trader Mohammad!” Raymond was taken alive, so Saladin spent that evening torturing him to death. Hattin was The battle that decided that the Holy Land would not be an outpost of Christian Europe. Raymond of Tripoli escaped back to his castle to die of old age.
1630- Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus lands in Germany to help the Protestant side in the Thirty Years War. Nobody remembers now, but back then little Sweden was a butt-kicking berserk military power. She always had the problem of a small population of 4 million while she took on nations like France and Russia with tens of millions.

1636- The town of Providence Rhode Island founded.

1653-THE BAREBONES PARLIAMENT- Puritan General Oliver Cromwell had beheaded King Charles I and dispensed with Parliament. This day he tried a semblance of legality by naming a new parliament but with no royalists, Catholics or Presbyterians, in fact they were all his handpicked Puritan followers. It was nicknamed the Barebones Parliament because one it’s leaders was an itinerant Puritan preacher named PraiseGod Barebones. After a few months Cromwell dispensed with even this rubber stamp Parliament, and ruled directly as a dictator.

1712- A slave uprising in colonial New York City killed 9.

1744- Representatives of the Crown Colony of Pennsylvania negotiate a peace accord with the Iroquois Confederacy of the 5 Nations. The great Onondaga chief Canastego lectured the whitemen : " Our wise forefathers established union and amity between the five tribes, it has made us formidable. We are a powerful confederacy and by following the same methods you too can acquire great powers." A secretary named Benjamin Franklin took his advice to heart. Their symbol, five arrows tied together is still held in the claws of the eagle in the Great Seal of the United States.

1776- U.S. INDEPENDENCE DAY- The actual vote for independence was on July 2nd, two days were required for rewrites, but the 4th was the day of the vote to approve the amended Declaration and the official announcement. After 46 revisions and deletions Tom Jefferson showed the finished document to Ben Franklin, he smiled :”Now we may proceed.” The 56 men who signed the document knew that this was their death warrant as they were committing high treason. Many of them had their personal fortunes ruined as a result.

1776- It took two months for the news to cross the Atlantic. In London King George III wrote in his diary for July 4th, 1776:" Nothing important happened today..."

1802-The Hudson River fortress of West Point is inaugurated as a military academy.

1804- Already pledged to fight a duel to the death in a week, Vice President Aaron Burr and former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton have to sit next to each other at an Independence Day dinner in New York City.

1826- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams last words were: "Jefferson...Jefferson still lives...” . Jefferson breathed his last at 1:30PM at Monticello Virginia, Adams at 6:00PM at his home in Quincy Massachusetts. Adams left holdings amounting to $100,000, Jefferson left debts amounting to $100,000. Jefferson freed only six out of 200 slaves, all of the Hemmings Family but not Sally Hemmings his mistress for 38 years. Jefferson’s youngest daughter clandestinely freed her with a pension for her old age.

1831- former President James Monroe, veteran of Washington’s Army and called the Last Founding Father, also died on the 4th of July.

1848- The Communist Manifesto published by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels.

1850- President Zachary Taylor "Old Rough and Ready" gets sick from eating too many raw cherries and raw milk at a ceremony laying the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. He died 5 days later. Modern historians wondered if he was poisoned, being a Southern statesman who openly opposed slavery, but an examination of his exhumed remains in 1993 proved natural causes. 1855- Henry Davis Thoreau moves to Walden Pond. He was the first U.S. writer to espouse nature as a thing of beauty instead of an enemy to be conquered. This date is considered the birth of the American Conservation Movement.

1855- Walt Whitman published his quarto of poems The Leaves of Grass. Many people were shocked at it’s frank description of sexual desire. Whitman’s mother said :”Walt is a good boy, but strange.”

1862- Oxford mathematics professor Charles Dodgson rowed ten year old Alice Liddell and her sister up the Thames in a small punt. The little girls begged him for a story, so Dodgson made up fantastic tales of March Hares, Mad Hatters and the Queen of Hearts.
Dodgson later wrote them down and published them in 1865 as Alice in Wonderland. He used the penname Lewis Carroll, which was a joke on the fact that Renaissance scholars adopted big stuffy Latin names like Ludovicus Carolus Magnus. 1863- The day after the Battle of Gettysburg both armies sat motionless while a torrential rains pour down. Lee had no more reserves and was practically out of cannonballs, U.S. General Meade still had a third of his army untouched and ready to go. But Meade infuriated Lincoln because he refused to resume the attack.

1863-VICKSBURG- The Confederate fortress-city of Vicksburg surrendered to Union General Grant. Pennsylvania-born rebel General James Pemberton led 29,000 men into captivity. He said: " In know the Northerners. We can get better terms if we give up on the 4th of July than any other day." Grant was so confident he would win that while the battle was still going on he telegraphed the town's main hotel and booked a room reservation for July 4th.
This completed the Yankee control of the Mississippi from the north down through Memphis to New Orleans. It severed the jugular of the Confederacy for it cut her in half. Lincoln in his announcement said: "The Father of the Waters flows unvexed to the Sea." The citizens of Vicksburg would not celebrate the Fourth of July for eighty years, until 1945.

1863- In the far West, the town of Boise Idaho founded. 1879- Battle of Ulundi- After several Zulu victories earlier in the year, the full weight of the British Empire is brought in to crush the Zulu people. It was the first time the British used Canadian, Indian and Australian regiments outside of their own territories. A large Victorian monument to British dead in the battle was erected and only in 1989 was a monument allowed to the native Zulu who died defending their homeland.

1883- Buffalo Bill staged his first Wild West Show in North Platte Nebraska. Bill and his partners took the show all over the US and played for the crowned heads of Europe until 1916..

1898- The US flag first raised over Wake Island in the Pacific.

1905- Los Angeles developer Abbott Kinney had broke with his partners over the Santa Monica Pleasure Pier. He moved down the coast to some marshy wetlands and built a new community with canals, lagoons and gondolas. VENICE California opened this day. In 1925 the City of LA got rid of most of the canals and gondolas. Venice went on to be a seaside mecca for Beatniks, Hippies and weightlifters like young Arnold Schwarzenegger.

1911- The first rollercoaster on the Pacific Coast opened on Santa Monica Pier.

1914- First day of filming on D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of an Nation.”

1915- Heavyweight Champion Jess Willard who had taken the championship from Jack Johnson was himself beaten by a new kid named Jack Dempsey, the Manassas Mauler. Dempsey chewed pine tar to make his jaw hard and washed his face in ocean brine to toughen his skin against cuts. He became a popular media figure by appearing with many Hollywood Movie stars. After he retired he opened a bar-restaurant called Dempseys in Times Square, the first sports-bar.

1917- The US First Division paraded through Paris in advance of the main American armies still to come. General Blackjack Pershing laid a wreath on the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette and proclaimed:” Lafayette- nous voisci! Lafayette, we are here!” Jake Strauss the owner of Macy’s Department Store changed it to “Gallerie Lafayette, we are here!”

1917- The July Coup. Lenin and the Bolsheviks tried to overthrow the Russian Government early but were put down. They fled into exile, trying again in October.

1926- Hungarian film director Mihaly Kertesz arrived in Hollywood. He changed his name to the more manageable Michael Curtiz and directed great classic films like Captain Blood and Casablanca. His brother Andre Kertesz lived in New York and became a famous photographer.

1930- 1,300 delegates formed the National Unemployment Council. They agitate Washington to create national unemployment insurance.

1933- In San Francisco Bay, the work began on the Oakland Bay Bridge. 1943- Nazis panzer divisions began the Battle of KURSK. Thousands of tanks swirled around in the flat dusty Ukrainian steppeland and blew each other to pieces. The Russians considered Kursk the real turning point of World War II because they stopped a full on Nazi blitzkrieg. For the first time the Nazis began a retreat in the summer.

1946- The Independence of the Philippines is declared.

1947- THE WILD ONES- 400 motorcyclists converge on a small California town called Hollister to party hard. The local police arrest 49 and call for State reinforcements. The national media sensationalized the wild bikers terrorizing a small town, calling them "Hell's Angels" three years before the first chapter was formed. Truth be told many residents remember the incident fondly and said it livened things up.

Many of the bikers weren’t teenage delinquents but World War II veterans who used motorcycles to recapture the thrill and camaraderie of action. The Life Magazine that dramatized the Hollister incident had a cover photo showing a depraved biker swilling beer. The shot was staged and the man in the photo was actually a Hollister local who never went near a Harley. The Marlon Brando film 'The Wild One" was based on the Hollister incident.

1954- Dr Sam Shepard returned to his suburban Cleveland home to find his wife beaten to death and a man fleeing the scene. Dr. Shepard himself was convicted of his wife’s murder in a controversial trial. People still argue today whether he was guilty or not.
In 1998 Dr. Shepards son got DNA evidence to prove there was another man at the scene the night of the murder, but in 2000 the court threw out his wrongful imprisonment suit. The TV show and film The Fugitive was based on Dr. Shepard.

1956- MIT’s TX-1 Whirlwind computer added a keyboard to enter data. First computer keyboard.

1966- President Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act.

1969-“ Give Peace a Chance.” released by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band.

1976-What’s Love Got to Do With It? Singer Tina Turner left Ike Turner.

1976- The first true Punk Band, The Ramones, arrived in England for a tour. They greatly inspired future bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols. When playing at the Palladium the Sex Pistols said they couldn’t get tickets to get in so the Ramones pulled them in through the men’s room window. Hey, Ho, Lets Go!

1982- Jimmy Connors defeated John McEnroe for his last Wimbledon Championship.

1982- Ozzie Ozbourne married Sharon Ozbourne.

1984- First Lady Nancy Reagan began the campaign to combat drugs among kids by saying “Just Say No”. Two of her Secret Service bodyguards were cocaine snorters.

1990- 2 Live Crew released the song Banned in the USA.

1997- NASA landed Pathfinder on Mars and deployed Sojourner, the first ever autonomous robotic rover. Expected to function for only two months, the rover collected data on the Red Planet for the next ten years.

2003- Pres. George W. Bush bragged to the Iraqi insurgents “ Bring it on!” Insurgent attacks on American forces went up 300%.

2011- The London Guardian newspaper reported that reporters from Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper News of the World had hacked into the private phone records of Milly Dowler, a 13 year old girl who was raped and murdered in 2002.
The outrage against the Murdoch journalists shook Fox NewsCorp to its roots. One whistle blower committed suicide, The 166 year old newspaper News of the World was shut down, and the chiefs of London Police quit in disgrace.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who first said “ Badges? We don’t have any badges. We don’t need any stinking badges!”

Answer: It was said by the bandito leader, Gold Hat (Alfonso Bedoya) to prospector Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) in 1947 “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." Here is the exchange:

Gold Hat: We are Federales. You know, the mounted police.

Dobbs: If you're the police where are your badges?

Gold Hat: Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!
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Quiz: Who first said “ Badges? We don’t have any badges. We don’t need any stinking badges!”

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Who invented the maxim “ Just say no.”….?
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History for 7/3/2014
Birthdaze: King Louis XI of France "the Spider King"1423, Franz Kafka, Mr. Preserved Fish -New York Congressman1819, Dave Barry, Leos Janacek, John Singleton Copley, Ken Russell, Tom Stoppard, George Sanders, Peter Fountain, Tom Cruise is 52, Kevin Hart is 34

Today is the Feast day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, “Doubting-Thomas,” the patron saint of architects.

1754- During the French & Indian War, young Virginia militia Captain George Washington surrendered his post, Fort Necessity, to the French. Up till now his major ambition in life was to be an officer in the British Army. Now his first command was a defeat, and to top it all off, because one of his allied Indians tomahawked a surrendered French officer, he was almost arrested for war crimes. When Washington signed the surrender document, a murder confession was slipped into the terms. It was in French, so he didn’t understand it.

1826- Elderly, dying Thomas Jefferson was drifting in and out of consciousness at his home in Monticello. He would be cognizant long enough to ask “ Is it the 4th of July yet?” The author of the Declaration of Independence was grimly hanging on, determined to see one more Independence Day.

1863-PICKET'S CHARGE-CLIMAX OF GETTYSBURG-Robert E. Lee launched his last fresh divisions in a grand frontal attack to win the war. 15,000 troops walk across one mile of open ground, while being shot at from the whole Yankee Army. Even against such long odds they almost break the Union center. The entire attack took thirty minutes.

Picket’s division suffered 50% casualties including all his leading generals. General Lewis “Lo” Armistead put his hat on his sword point and shouted "Who will follow me?" Lo Armistead’s uncle had commanded Fort McHenry during the “Rockets Red Glare” British attack in 1814. Armistead reached the union artillery before he was killed. When one North Carolina flagbearer survived murderous gunfire from all sides and lived to reach the union wall, the men in blue instead of killing him, shook his hand.

Finally the Southern assault spent itself and started to recede. Men retreated backwards because they didn’t want to be shot in the back. Lee rode out and told the survivors: “This is my fault. All of this..” That night he wrote his resignation to Richmond. But no fault would stick on their beloved old general.

After the Civil War George Pickett were ostracized by Southern society for daring to criticize Lee’s decision to attack. Pickett bitterly said:" That old man destroyed my division." Pickett was family friends with the Lincolns. When Picketts’ son was born Yankee generals sent baby gifts with a white flag through the lines.

1863- Santee Sioux chief Little Crow had led a large uprising against the whites in Minnesota. This day near the town of Hutchinson he was picking berries with his son when he was ambushed and killed by settlers seeking the $25 dollar bounty on Indian scalps. His body was thrown on an offal pile at a cattle slaughterhouse, and later put on exhibit by the Minnesota Historical Society. Eventually both bones and scalp were returned to the Sioux for proper burial.

1866-Battle of Sadowa-Koniggratz- climax of the Seven Weeks War, also called the "BrudersKrieg" or "Brother's War" because in it Prussia fought the other German speaking nations Austria and Bavaria to see who would be the dominant power.
As a result of Koniggratz, Berlin and not Vienna would be the capitol of a united Germany.

1890- Idaho statehood.

1898-Battle of Santiago Harbor- U.S. fleet under Admiral Sampson defeated the Spanish in Cuba. The U.S fleet so heavily outgunned the Spanish ships that the Spanish admiral is remembered at home as a hero for even attempting the fight to keep up the national honor.

1916-Hetty Green "the Witch of Wall Street" dies at 80. Her eccentric cheapness created the millionaire-bag lady myth. The richest woman in America, worth around $100 million, she lived in a dumpy apartment in Hoboken, refused to pay for a doctor when her son broke his leg, and stole bread off the tables at fashionable restaurants.

1931- The Cab Calloway Orchestra recorded 'The St. James Infirmary Blues."

1937- In California the Del Mar Racetrack opened. Part owner Bing Crosby personally welcomed the first customers to his track.

1946- Millionaire aviator Howard Hughes crashed an experimental airplane into four homes in Beverly Hills. Hughes had crashed planes before without much injury, but this crash left him near death. His slow recuperation addicted him to morphine and codine.

1969- Brian Jones, having been kicked out of the Rolling Stones just days before -- drowned in his swimming pool. His home was once the estate of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne.

1969- On the same day, John and Yoko are almost killed in a car crash, along with
John's son Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko.

1971- The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison, was found dead of a heart attack in his bathtub in Paris. He was 28.

1971-In Sweden, the First laser eye surgery performed.

1985- Robert Zemeckis’ hit film Back to the Future opened.

1988- U.S.S. Vincennes accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger airliner killing three hundred civilians. They thought the Airbus commercial plane was an Iranian fighter jet sent to attack them.

2002- Powerpuff Girls the Movie, premiered.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who invented the maxim “ Just say no.”….?

Answer: It was the slogan of First Lady Nancy Reagan’s anti-drugs campaign in the 1980s.