Quiz: What is a monstrance? An overcoat for Frankenstein?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: The Greek philosopher Diogenes was known to carry a lamp in the daylight. What was the meaning of this?
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History for 6/23/2014
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Augustus, Josephine Bonaparte, Alan Turing, Bob Fosse, James Levine, Dan Ogilvy of Ogilvy & Meyers, Joss Whedon, Dr Alfred Kinsey the sex researcher, Edward the Duke of Windsor, Selma Blair, Justice Clarence Thomas, Frances MacDormand is 57

1565- Siege of Malta -the fortress of St. Elmo fell to furious Turkish assaults. Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent was shocked at how many fine troops were lost to reduce the smaller of two forts defending Valetta, the capital of Malta. He could imagine the cost to take the larger fort, St. George. So Sulieman gave up the siege. The victorious Knights of St. John Hospitaller, looking for a home since the Crusades, would now be the Knights of Malta. Their emblem, the Maltese Cross, is four barbed arrowheads forming a cross.

1611- In Hudson’s Bay, Canada, explorer Henry Hudson's crew mutinied and set him and his son adrift in a rowboat. They were never seen again. When back in Holland the mutineers were never charged because they claimed to have discovered the Northwest Passage to the Indies, which luckily they never were called upon to prove.

1683- William Penn signed a treaty with the Lenni-Lenapi Indians at Shackamaxon under the Treaty Elm to start his new Quaker colony called Pennsylvania. Penn wrote of the Indians: "Their language is narrow, yet lofty like the Hebrew…one word suffices in place of three."

1757- Battle of Plassey- Sir Robert Clive with 900 English and 1300 Indians defeated an army of 50,000 under Siraj-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Bengal who perpetrated the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. Daula was killed and the victory assured the British domination of India.

1789- Since June 20th, when the French Estates General had adjourned to a Tennis Court and declared itself the National Assembly, everyone wondered what King Louis XVI would do. This day the King held a mass meeting called a Royal Levee with the legislators and court to announce his decision.

From a golden throne Louis said that while he agreed to most of their political reforms, the idea that a regularly sitting Parliament of common people could overrule royal authority he declared was "illegal and void". He would stay an absolute monarch answerable only to God, thank you.

After the King ended the meeting, the Royal Herald called upon the legislators to go home. They refused. The orator Mirabeau said" We shall not leave this hall except by the power of the bayonet!" When told this the King sighed" Oh... the Devil with them. Let them stay." The stand off persisted until July 14th when the attack on the Bastille started the French Revolution.

1793- During the French Revolution, Josephine De Beauharnais is condemned to be guillotined. In a prison filled with nobles and intellectuals she found her first husband Alexandre the Vicomte du Beauharnais. They had been estranged for years and she had become quite a scandalous woman. When the jailer read out the names to go to the blade that day he read: "DeBeauharnais!" without specifying which DeBeaharnais was to go. The husband stepped forward and said: "Madame, just this once allow me to go first." When the Reign of Terror was overthrown she was released and she became the love of Napoleon.

1810- The Pacific Fur Company was set up by John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant merchant. His ambition was to set up a string of fur trading posts along the route traveled by Lewis & Clark. It is the beginning of the great Astor fortune.

1815 –A week after his defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon abdicated for good. He abdicated to his son 4-year-old Napoleon II then being held in Austria, but everyone ignored that wish.

1859- Battle of Solferino- Garabaldi and Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army. This victory and the next battle of Magenta freed Milan and the Po Valley. All Italy is united for the first time since the Roman Empire. The completion of the unification process Italians called The Irredenta. In return, Italy gave France the city of Nice.

After the carnage of the battle the suffering of the wounded was so pitiable that a Swiss volunteer doctor named Dr. Henry Dunant was inspired to found the International Society of the Red Cross. He was soon bankrupt and forgotten but his organization was taken up at the first Geneva Convention in 1864 and made international law.

1865- The U.S. Secret Service set up.

1865- Two months after Lee surrendered to Grant, at Fort Towson in Indian Territory, General Stand Watiee, aka De-Ga-Ta-Ga, surrendered his Cherokees. This is the last Confederate force in the Civil War. Confederate Jo Shelby rather than give up rode his Iron Legion of rebel cavalry across the Rio Grande into Mexico. After two years exile he returned and excepted the Yankee amnesty.

1868- Christopher Latham Scholes patents the typewriter. In 1873 he sold his patent to the Remington Company. In 1874 Mark Twain secretly admitted to a friend that he enjoyed writing on the newfangled technology.

1940- HITLER THE TOURIST. After the defeat of France, Adolph Hitler takes his one vacation out of Germany. A plane flies him to Paris in the early morning and he is driven around to see the sites. While his Mercedes is waiting at a traffic light a newsboy, not realizing who he was, stuck a morning newspaper under his nose yelling "le Matin! Le Matin!” Hitler was back in Berlin that evening.

1944- Franklin Roosevelt's last fireside chat on the radio.

1971- Three Soyuz 11 cosmonauts were found dead in their space capsule upon landing. The capsule must have had a pressure leak upon re-entry. Soviet accidents in space were kept secret until after the fall of communism in 1990.

1972- Title IX passed by the US Government. It called for women’s collegiate sports to be funded equally as the men’s sports.

1976- Toronto’s CN Tower opened. Called the world’s tallest free-standing structure.

1979- The Knack released the single My Sharona.

1989- Tim Burton’s film " Batman" opened.

1992- Head of the New York Mafia John Gotti was sentenced to life in prison for murder and racketeering. It had been so hard to pin anything on Gotti that he was nicknamed the Teflon Don. Finally, city prosecutor Rudy Giuliani secured the testimony of the Dons top henchman Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano. For turning informant, Sammy dodged any penalties himself, despite admitting killing 32 people, including his own brother in law, whose body parts he buried in his backyard. John Gotti died in prison in 2002.

1993- Lorena Bobbit had tired of her abusive husband John Wayne Bobbit. So this night while he was drunk, she severed his penis and drove off, casually tossing it into a nearby field. Doctors recovered the free willy and reattached it, starting a media sensation. They divorced and John Bobbitt for a while became a porn star.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The Greek philosopher Diogenes was known to carry a lamp in the daylight. What was the meaning of this?

Answer: He was making a statement on the corruption of society. In broad daylight he walked through crowd of people like he was lost in the dark. He’d say “ I’m looking for an honest man…”

Quiz: The Greek philosopher Diogenes was known to carry a lamp in the daylight. What was the meaning of this?

Yesterday’s question answered below: The Medieval artist Ghiselbertus was not as famous as Giotto or Da Vinci. What is he remembered for?
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History for 6/22/2014
Birthdays: Captain George Vancouver, Eric Maria Remarque, John Dillinger, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Mike Todd, Billy Wilder, Joe Papp, Bill Blass, Oskar Fischinger, Pistol Pete Maravich, Klaus Maria Brandauer is 70, Ed Bradley, Emmanuelle Seigner, Prunella Scales, Meryl Streep is 65, Konrad Zuse, Kris Kristofferson is 78, Matt Doherty, Floyd Norman is 79.

168 BC -Battle of Pydna- Roman General Lucius Aemelius Paulus defeated the Macedonian army of King Perseus. This victory, besides giving Rome control over Greece, destroyed the faded reputation of the army of Alexander the Great, and announced to the world Roman supremacy. The old tactics of the Greek Phalanx was eclipsed by the more versatile Roman Legion.

109AD- The Baths of Trajan opened to the Roman public.

1342 – According to JRR Tolkeins’ book the Hobbit, this day Bilbo Baggins returned to his home in the Shire with the Ring.

1535- Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop John Fisher were beheaded for refusing to support King Henry VIII's divorce, and the King's assertion that he was head of the English Church. The Vatican made them both saints. Moore said on the scaffold: "I die the King's good servant, but God's first." The stairs up to the scaffold were rickety. Moore quipped to the guards “ I pray you warden see me safe up. As for the coming down leave me to shift for myself." The Pope had named Bishop Fisher a cardinal. After Fisher’s decapitated head was stuck on a spike on London Bridge, King Henry laughed “Now he can go to Rome and get his Cardinal’s Hat.”

1675 - Royal Greenwich Observatory established in England by Charles II.

1774- THE QUEBEC ACT- We like to remember the American Revolution as our forefathers rebelling against unjust persecution, but the Quebec Act irritated them as much as the Stamp Act or the Tea tax because it ordered toleration of Roman Catholicism!
The Royal Governor of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, seeking to heal the anger between English and French Canadians since the French and Indian War, wrote and shepherded this act through Parliament. It made Quebec one huge province extending to the Ohio River, cutting the Yankee colonies off from western expansion. Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois would be part of Canada.

But the allowance of the practice of the Catholic religion is what really drove the New England Yankees crazy: "Popish, Romish Heathen Idolatry and Slavery! This is a great threat to American Civil Liberties and the Protestant Religion! We must now learn the art of war." Said Dr. Joseph Warren who was killed at Bunker Hill. Thomas Jefferson mentioned the Quebec Act in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence.

One year later when the Revolution had broken out and Americans invaded Quebec, even though George Washington had warned his troops not to disrespect the Catholic population, the French Canadians remembered and would not help "Les Bostonnais".

1876- Gen. Custer and the Seventh Cavalry ride out of Fort Lincoln. Custer was to scout for a larger army under General Terry and not to engage the Indians when he found them but wait for the main army to catch up. Custer turned down an offer of two companies of Colorado militia, artillery and Gatling guns for fear it would slow him down. Many men upon leaving the fort immediately emptied their canteens and refilled them with rotgut whiskey bought from peddlers. As Custer rode by Gen. Gibbon called out: "Remember George, save some Indians for us!" Custer laughed: "No I won't!"

1893- British Admiral Sir George Tryon ordered his fleet to accomplish a complex grand maneuver that ended up with his battleships ramming into one other. OOPS!

1894 - Harry Houdini marries Bessie Rahner. She remained devoted to him even after his death. Every Halloween for twenty years she held a séance to try and contact him.

1897- THE BRITISH EMPIRE- Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. Now considered the zenith of the British Empire. In Victoria's reign the empire grew ten times its early size, encompassing one quarter of the globe and one third of the world's population. The little queen dressed in her habitual black with a little gray bonnet started the festivities by pushing an electric button that send a congratulatory message around the world simultaneously to Delhi, Capetown, Ottawa and Sydney. Praises poured in from notaries like Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle and her grandson the German Kaiser.

1898- US Troops including Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders landed on the Cuban coast near the town of Daiquiri. This is when the mixed drink named Daiquiri was introduced to American drinkers as well as the Cuba-Libre, which we now call a Rum & Coke.

1903- The Williamsburg Bridge opened. The second spanning of New York’s East River after the Brooklyn Bridge was not as celebrated but very functional.

1910- Dr Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet. German scientist Dr Paul Ehrlich announced the definitive cure for syphilis, a disease that had bedeviled mankind since Columbus’ sailors brought it from the New World.

1933- In Germany, the Nazis outlawed all other political parties.

1938- In Yankee Stadium in the Bronx Joe Louis "the Brown Bomber" KO's German Max Schmelling in one round to regain the world heavyweight title. There was wild partying in the streets of Harlem The bout had the heavy ideological overtones of Nazis claims to be a master race. Schmmeling ironically was anti-Nazi and had hid Jews from arrest. After the loss Hitler would have nothing to do with him and Schmelling joined the army.

1941- THE CURSE OF TAMERLANE- In the 15th century Timur Khan or Tamerlane conquered an empire almost as large as Genghis Khan’s. This day in 1941 Russian archaeologists in Samarkand first broke into his tomb. The grave had an inscription:” Do not disturb my Tomb, ere a Fate Worse than Mine awaits You.” This same day the Nazi invasion of Russia began.

1941-BARBAROSSA- The code word “Dortmund” issued to leading Wehrmacht units. Operation Barbarrossa, the Nazi invasion of Russia begins. Three million steel helmeted troops and three thousand tanks in three huge pincers pierce the Russian heartland.
Hitler called it: “The Final War of Extermination with the World Conspiracy of Jewish-Bolshevism.” Jews found this sadly ironic, because Stalin himself was anti-Semitic.

While 695,000 Americans died in World War II almost all of which were military personnel, 27 million Russians died, 20 million were civilians. More than half the 7 million German casualties in the war, 3 out of every 5, were caused by the Red Army.

1942- Second Battle of Tobruk. The British holding North African seaport of Tobruk had bedeviled Rommel’s Afrika Corps for weeks. This time Rommel’s attack was much more successful.

1942- A Japanese submarine fired its cannon at Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon.

1943- British tanks and Indian troops broke the Japanese siege of Imphal. Since March the Japanese 15th Army had attacked from Burma into India in what Japanese troops hoped was “ The Drive to Delhi”. They fought for months with tanks, planes, samurai swords and Gurkhas wielding their Kukhris- the famous boomerang shaped knife.

1944- Congress passed the Rankin-Barden Servicemen’s Adjustment Act, better known as the "GI Bill" giving college and home loans to returning veterans.

1948- Answering the need for manpower in a war-depleted economy the first ship load of immigrants from the Caribbean arrived in England. They had no place to stay so for awhile the government reopened the Clapham Junction WWII bombshelter. This day marked the beginning of the pluralization of British society.

1955- Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp released.

1966 – The film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" opened. Based on the play by Edward Albee and starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. It was the first to use four letter words. Just a year before comedian Lenny Bruce had gone to jail for saying the same words, although everyone including President Johnson swore in everyday parlance.

1969- Singer actress Judy Garland OD’s on sleeping pills. She was 46. Whether it was an accident or a suicide we will never know. A pillhead from early age, she had gotten hooked when MGM chief Louis B. Mayer ordered studio nurses to put her on amphetamines so she would have the energy to finish the Wizard of Oz. Fellow contract actress June Allyson explained- “You didn’t argue when the nurses brought them to you. They told us they were vitamins!”

1970- President Nixon signed the law lowering the voting age in the U.S. from 21 to 18.

1977- Walt Disney’s The Rescuers opened in theaters.

1978 - James Christy's discovery of Pluto's moon Charon announced.

1990- "Checkpoint Charlie" the main dividing gate between East and West Berlin was dismantled. John Le Carre' and other spy novel writers mourn. There is a replica and a Cold War Museum at the site today.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: The Medieval artist Ghiselbertus was not as famous as Giotto or Da Vinci. What is he remembered for?

Answer: He was the first artist to sign his work. He inscribed Giselbertus Hic Fecit, Giselbertus made this.

Question: The Medieval artist Ghiselbertus was not as famous as Giotto or Da Vinci. What is he remembered for?

Yesterday’s Question: Who said" We fear nothing, except, maybe that the sky shouldn't fall on our heads.”
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History for 6/21/2014
Birthdays: Martha Washington, Alexander Pope, Berke Breathed, Al Hirschfeld, Al Martinez, Jean-Paul Sartre, Judy Holliday, Benazir Bhutto, Jane Russell, Mariette Hartley, Bernie Koppel, Rick Sutcliffe, Maureen Stapleton, Joe Flagherty, Juliet Lewis, Tony Scott, Prince William the Duke of York is 32.

Happy Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. The sun, at dawn, aligns perfectly with the entrance to Stonehenge. In Persia, the Zoroastrians would light ceremonial fires on altars to the sungod Ahura Mazda.

217BC- Hannibal defeated a Roman army on the shore of Lake Trasimenio in central Italy.

1527- Political theorist Niccolo' Macchiavelli died. - His last words were:
"I hope I shall go to Hell, for there I shall meet kings, popes and princes.
In Heaven one can only meet beggars, monks and apostles."

1582- Japanese warlord Nobunaga Oda assassinated. He was the most pro-western of Japan's feudal lords and in western Japan, a folk hero, sort of a samurai Robin Hood. Under his protection the Catholic missionaries flourished, and Oda liked to parade around in his western-imported suit of armor. His enemy Tokugawa Ieyasu later became Shogun and banned all contact with the outside world.

1789- RATIFICATION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION- New Hampshire becomes the 9th state to ratify the new document giving the majority of two thirds of the states. This despite angry anti-federalist sentiment from critics like Patrick Henry and John Hancock. They felt the new system was too centralized and could be tyrannical. Copies of the constitution were burned by mobs in Albany and Williamsburg. But eventually everyone got behind the system. Benjamin Rush noted: "We are now a Nation."

1791- THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES- After the fall of the Bastille in 1789, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette tried to work things out as constitutional monarchs but moderates like Mirabeau and Lafayette were losing control of the angry people, exploited in medieval poverty for so long. So the royals decided to sneak away and escape across the border.

The escape plot was organized by Count Axel Fersen, a lover of Queen Marie Antoinette. They slipped away in the dead of night and traveled 150 miles to the Belgian border before they were stopped. At Varennes they were recognized and brought back to Paris by the city's fishwives led by Jean-Baptiste Drouet, the postmaster of Ste. Menehould. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were eventually both guillotined and their son Louis XVII died rotting in prison. Ironically, a troop of loyalist cavalry, who were to meet them on the road and escort them, got lost a quarter mile away.

1791- The first Ledger entry.

1813- Battle of Vittoria- Wellington defeats the French in Spain to end the Peninsular War and Beethoven writes a really silly overture to celebrate it. The Overture to Wellington's Victory has musical scoring for cannons and musket volleys. It was commissioned by a mechanical calliope inventor named Wilhelm Deitzel. It actually made Beethoven more money than anything else he ever wrote.

1815- Napoleon reached Paris after his defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon had regained power in France with the understanding he would rule as a constitutional monarch. As enemy armies closed in around Paris, the Chamber of Deputies now voted itself in permanent session and began arguing his fate. Royalists and the old Marquis De Lafayette called for his abdication.
Napoleon still had 100,000 men and the common people were with him. Napoleon’s brother Lucien advised him to ignore the Deputies and rule as dictator. But curiously enough, despite his reputation as a warmonger, Napoleon never could bring himself to start a civil war. He said “The fate of one man is not worth drenching Paris in blood.”

1854 -During service in the Baltic in the Crimean War –Ships Mate C D Lucas, Royal Navy, HMS Hercla, received the a new medal called the Victoria Cross, or VC.

1864- FATHER ABRAHAM- President Abraham Lincoln visited General Grant’s Union army attacking Lee in Petersburg, Virginia. One highlight of the tour was when Lincoln was shown the 18th corps, a unit of black soldiers. General Grant complimented their excellent discipline and courage under fire. The black troops broke ranks and cheered wildly for Lincoln, their liberator. Hundreds strained just to touch his coat. One said: Now I know I shall go to Heaven, for I have seen Father Abraham, he that hath struck off my chains, and the Day of Jubilee is nigh!” For Lincoln it was a cathartic moment. Whatever his real motives for freeing the slaves, political expediency or moral obligation, he was deeply moved by the demonstration. Tears flowed freely down his face and for once he was speechless.

1866- First recorded train robbery by Jesse James.

1871- The Los Angeles Star newspaper announced the first trainload of pretzels had reached town!

1877-10 members of the Molly Maguires hanged. Irish immigrants in the Pennsylvania coal mines formed secret societies to combat inhuman working conditions and prejudice. At one point they went on strike to reduce their working day to 13 hours! The Molly Maguires was the name of a supposed terrorist fringe that assassinated company informers.

1879 - F W Woolworth opens his 1st five and ten cent store.

1893- The FERRIS WHEEL -George Washington Ferris, Jr. decided that the Columbia Exhibition, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery, needed to surpass the French Eiffel Tower (introduced during the centennial celebration of the French Revolution). So he created his wheel so each compartment could hold 12 people plus a butler in a parlor-like atmosphere and rotate them 250 feet in the air. People were afraid they would gasp for oxygen up so high but it was a big hit anyway.

1907 - E W Scripps founded United Press Agency.

1913 - Tiny Broadwick is the 1st woman to parachute from an airplane.

1916- General Blackjack Pershing had violated Mexican territory with US troops to hunt down Pancho Villa. This day the diplomatic mess got worse when Pershing’s troops were attacked by regular Mexican army troops at Carrizal. Pershing never did catch Villa and US troops were withdrawn in Jan 1917 because World War I in Europe beckoned.

1919- In Scapa Flow, Scotland, German Imperial Admiral Von Reuter scuttled 21 of his interned battleships rather than turn them over to the victorious Allies. On shore, vacationing Scottish schoolchildren cheered, thinking it was a fireworks display for their benefit.

1939-Eugene O’Neill’s wife Carlotta wrote in her diary- Gene kept me up all night talking about his outline for a new play about his family- The Long Days Journey into Night. It took him two years to write and it almost killed him.

1940- In a theatrical act of revenge Adolph Hitler forced France to sign her surrender in the same railroad car in Compiegne that the Germans surrendered in 1918. They broke into a museum to pry loose the exact same Wagon-Lit train car so it could be moved to the exact spot. The treaty meant half of France was occupied by Germany while the other half was French governed from the mineral water spa town of Vichy by a puppet government led by old Marshal Petain.

1948- THE ATALENA INCIDENT- THE ISRAELI CIVIL WAR- Before the Independence of Israel there were two underground militia groups fighting for a Jewish homeland- the Hagnnah and the more violent Irgun. After the State of Israel was declared, Leader David Ben Gurion ordered both to form the new Israeli Army. But the Irgun resisted assimilation. While a tenuous four-week truce with the Arabs held the Irgun filled a ship, the Atalena, with weapons and fighters in France and this day it arrived off the coast of Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion gave a direct order to turn over the weapons to the Army and assimilate the fighters but Irgun leader Menachem Begin refused.

When Israeli troops converged on the beached ship to unload it, the Irgun opened fire on them with machine guns. In the gun battle, Jews killed Jews in front of Tel Aviv. Begin screamed he wanted to go down with the ship. The captain replied that that was unlikely since the ship had run aground. The ship caught fire and the captain had the cargo of high explosives dumped overboard and when Begin became hysterical the captain had him, too, dumped into the sea. After several deaths, the Irgun surrendered and agreed to cooperate.

Ben Gurion called them all traitors but was compelled to be lenient because of the greater threat of the Arab armies. Menachem Begin was rehabilitated, formed the Likud Party and won the Nobel Peace Prize.

1947- To silence a jeering crowd of racists at a Dodgers-Cincinnati game, Kentucky native PeeWee Reese put his arm around Jackie Robinson.

1948- At the University of Manchester, John McCauley started up the first modern computer, the Manchester Mark I, that could store a program in it’s memory and reopen it.

1948- The last Japanese holdout defenders surrender on Okinawa, unaware that the war had been over for three years.

1948- Columbia Records introduced the 33 1/3-rpm long playing record, the LP. Inventor Peter Goldmark was annoyed that he had to change his 78 rpm records several times to hear just one Brahms Symphony. He decided to invent a way to fit all of a symphony on one side of a record. His immediate supervisors told him to stop it because people would not throw away all their 78 rpm records to replace them with his. So Goldmark went over their heads to CBS chief William Paley and Paley loved the idea. RCA and David Sarnoff tried to compete with the 45-rpm record, but all it was good for was singles. The 33 1/3 dominated recording until replaced by the Compact Disc in the 1980’s.

1964- In Mississippi, Ku Klux Klansmen murdered three Civil Rights volunteers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schermer and dumped their bodies in a swamp. The subsequent FBI investigation and trials further pushed the rural south towards desegregation. The mastermind of the murders, Edgar Ray Killen, was not convicted until 2005.

1965- the Byrds release record Hey Mr. Tambourine Man.

1978 - Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's musical "Evita," premieres in London.

1982- John Hinkley was found innocent by reason of insanity in the assassination attempt on President Reagan.

1988- Who Framed Roger Rabbit premiered at Radio City Music Hall.

1989- The Supreme Court rules in the case Texas vs. Johnson that burning a US flag is a form of free speech and is so legally protected under the First Amendment. While more important issues are at hand the Neo-Conservative dominated Congress spent the next few years in repeated attempts to amend the Constitution. Pundits joked that the next constitutional amendment righteous NeoCons would demand would be that cheeseburgers have only American cheese on them.

1998- Paleontologists in Canada announced the discovery of the largest Tyrannosaurus turd yet found. The search intensified for a T-Rex with a relaxed look on his face.

2002- Lilo & Stitch premiered.

2004- The first flight in the privatization of Space, Bert Routans’ company financed by Microsoft head, Paul Allen, sent SpaceShip 1 up to the edge of the atmosphere. Test pilot Mike Nelvil was the first civilian astronaut.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who said" We fear nothing, except, maybe that the sky shouldn't fall on our heads.”

Answer: According to the historian Arrian, who interviewed many eyewitnesses and veterans, before Alexander the Great began his conquest of Asia, he first subdued the Gaulish tribes on Macedon’s northern border. Alexander asked the fierce Gaul warriors “ Do you fear anything? Their reply was " We Gauls fear nothing! Except, maybe, that the sky shouldn't fall down on our heads.” This line was written by Rene Goscinny into the Asterix the Gaul comic books.

Question: Who said" We fear nothing, except, may that the sky shouldn't fall down on our heads.”

Yesterdays Question answered below: Which one of these was NOT named for a British Prime Minister? 1-Melbourne Australia, 2-Pittsburgh, 3- Earl Grey tea, 4-Vancouver, British Columbia.
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History for 6/20/2014
Birthdays: Wolf Tone, Jacques Offenbach, Lillian Hellman, Errol Flynn, Audie Murphy,
Andre Watts, Cyndee Lauper, Bob Vila, Chet Atkins, Stephen Frears, Brian Wilson, Robert Rodriquez, John Goodman, Martin Landau is 86, John Mahoney is 74, Nicole Kidman is 47

1218- Simon De Monfort, Leader of the Crusade against the Albigensian heretics of southern France, was squished by a catapult stone whilst besieging Toulouse. Legend says the lucky catapult shot that nailed Simon was fired by the women & children of Toulouse who knew they could expect no mercy from him.

1389 -Battle of Kosovo Polje, where a coalition of Serbs, Croats, Bulgars and
Albanians under Prince Lazar I of Serbia were annihilated by a Turkish army under young Sultan Bajazet called Ilderim- Lightning. The Sultan was presented with King Lazar’s head on a spear. The Ottoman Turkish Empire would rule in the Balkans for 500 years.

1397- The Union of Kalmar unites Sweden, Norway and Denmark under one crown.

1605-The False Dmitri invades Russia. A defrocked Lithuanian priest named Grishka declared himself the dead infant son of Czar Ivan the Terrible grown up and convinced a powerful Polish noble family, The Mniszechs, to back him. Historians wrongly call this a Polish-Russian War but actually it was a privately run freelance invasion.

Dmitri succeeded in toppling Czar Boris Gudunov and occupying Moscow. When the Polish Army went home the Russians killed him, burned his body, mixed the ashes with gunpowder, stuffed it in a cannon and fired it back in the direction of Poland.

1747- Persian King Nadir Shah had seized the throne and led armies across Central Asia in a march of conquest not seen since the days of Tamerlane. He conquered Iraq, Uzbekizatan, Afghanistan, Northern India and Yerevan. He forced the Indian Moguls to give him the fabulous Peacock Throne. But as he grew older he got increasingly paranoid, blinding his eldest son and executing hundreds. Finally, this day, his own bodyguards stabbed him, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

1756- THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA- Bengal Rajah Siraj ud Daula stuffed 146 captured British officers in a tiny cell. Most died of asphyxiation by morning. 23 survived.

1782- Angry Revolutionary soldiers, who had not been paid for months, surrounded the US Congress at Independence Hall. They waved their bayonets and muskets and threatened violence if they weren’t paid. Congressmen fled to Trenton to reconvene.

1782- Shortly before they fled, Congress approved the final design of the Great Seal of the United States, choosing the Bald Eagle over the Wild Turkey as the symbol of America.

1789- THE TENNIS COURT OATH- French King Louis XVI got annoyed with his parliament or Estates General for constantly asking for permanent power and the right to rule by laws. So this day he tells them to disband. Of the Estates three divisions the First Estate- Nobility and the Second Estate – Clergy quietly obey and go home. But the Third Estate -the common folk- refused and when they were turned out of their meeting hall by the guards they reconvened in the Royal tennis court. There the members pledged not to disband until Liberty was established. "Go tell your master that here the People rule!"- Said Mirabeau to the royal herald.

1790- THE US CAPITOL CONCEIVED- In the then American capitol, New York City, Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, went over to have dinner with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Senator James Madison. There were no real American political parties yet, but Jefferson had been leading the opposition to Hamilton’s plan for the US Government to assume all the debt incurred by the individual states in the Revolution. This act would strengthen the central government at the expense of the states. Everyone knew Jefferson worked through Madison but he presented this dinner as his arbitrating a peace between Madison and Hamilton!

No one recorded what was said at the meal, but it is assumed Hamilton proposed a deal in exchange for the debt assumption- move the American capitol south. This night they agreed to move the planned US capitol to a new site on land suggested by President Washington near his Mount Vernon estate. Midway between North and South. It would become Washington, DC. It was also possibly the last time Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison ever agreed on anything ever again.

1815- NATHAN ROTHSCHILD'S BIG SCORE. -When The Battle of Waterloo happened in Belgium no one in England knew who had won for 72 anxious hours. The House of Rothschild Bank had a Dutch agent at the battlefield who galloped to Ostend then across the Channel to Nathan before the official news reached the London. This morning, Nathan Rothschild walked into the London Stock Exchange and took his usual stance by his favorite pillar.

Everyone was sure Rothschild knew something. He said nothing himself but his agents started to sell off Government bonds. Day traders took this as a sign that the French were victorious, so the price of Government securities plummeted in panic sales. When the prices had fallen low enough Rothschild gave the signal to start buying. By the time the real news that Wellington had beaten Napoleon arrived, Nathan Rothschild had made a fortune. He later became the first of the Jewish faith to enter the House of Lords.

1819- The first steam powered ship successfully crossed the Atlantic. The SS Savannah made it to Liverpool after a trip of 27 days.

1837-QUEEN VICTORIA-Upon the death of her uncle King William IV, little 19 year old Princess Victoria becomes Queen of the British Empire. She will rule 64 years, until 1901 and give her name to the era, Victorian.

She came to the throne when veterans of the American Revolution and Waterloo were still alive and she lived long enough to use electric lights, telephones and watch a movie. Before Victoria, the British Royals were never considered examples of morality. It was said her grandfather George III was insane, her Uncle George IV a bigamist, her other uncle, William IV, a glutton and her mother the Duchess of Kent was living openly with an Irish adventurer named James Conroy. If you wanted to meet the great men of the nation you had to look in the gambling houses or brothels. Victoria changed all that.

She and her husband Prince Albert made the pursuit of Morality and family the highest standard of polite society.

1862- The U.S. Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, allowing funds for the transcontinental railroad.

1863-Several Virginia counties whose people opposed the Confederacy and slavery re-enter the Union as the new state of West Virginia.

1900- THE BOXER REBELLION- In Beijing, the Boxer Rebellion trapped the foreign diplomatic corps in their compound in the Forbidden City. The Chinese mobs were led by martial arts societies like the I Ho Chu Huan- The Righteous and Harmonius Fists. They wanted to drive out the hated foreigners who were ruining China the way they had carved up Africa and India.

The German ambassador Baron Von Kettler, who liked to shoot at Chinese children from his balcony for fun, was murdered in the street, and the Japanese ambassador was pulled out of his sedan chair and beheaded. Women in western clothing were doused with gasoline and set ablaze. The Chinese Manchu Empress Xiao Zsi permitted the Chinese Army to support the Boxers.

At first the besieged delegations didn't get along well, the British and Japanese didn't trust the Russians, the Germans were cut off from their big new brewery in Tsing-Tao, yeah, the same. And nobody liked the Americans with their constant preaching that they weren't out to annex new colonies, while their gunboats and Marines prowled the Yangtze. But under the leader ship of British attache, Sir Archibald MacDonald, the diplomats soon learned to work together. They held out until an international force rescued them- the "55 days in Peking".

1910- Longtime President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, unsuccessfully tried to stop the Revolution breaking out by declaring martial law and arresting hundreds.

1927- THE RED TENT- Italian polar explorer, General Nobile, had reached the North Pole in his zeppelin, the Norge, the year before. He was the hero of Mussolini’s Italy and the world. But in his second expedition, his zeppelin, the Italia, crashed and the men were stranded on the arctic ice. They dyed their shelter tent red to be seen.

An international rescue effort was launched to try to save them and the great Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, died in the attempt. On this day, a Swedish plane reached the Red Tent. There was not room on the plane for everyone so Nobile went aboard to safety before the rest. He said he did so to better organize the saving of his men. But because he didn’t stay behind until all were saved Nobile was branded a coward. Remember this was just a few weeks after Lindbergh so ‘hero’ standards were pretty high. Mussolini and the rest of the world would have nothing more to do with him. General Nobile spent the rest of his long life regretting he ever left the Red Tent.

1936- Mickey short Moving Day premiered.

1940- Thirty thousand people gather at the Hollywood Bowl for an America First rally. There they listened to isolationist celebrities like Lilian Gish and Charles Lindbergh and leading Republican conservatives protest President Franklin Roosevelt’s plans to aid Britain.” It is obvious that Britain will lose the war…. It is not freedom when one fifth the country can drag four fifths into a war it does not want!” –quote Lucky Lindy. Students like future President Gerald Ford were in the crowd.

1940- Artist Alberto Vargas signs a contract with Esquire Magazine to paint the ‘Vargas Girls’ pin ups that made the magazine famous. He replaced artist George Petty who was demanding $1500 a week. Vargas was paid $75 a week. Today an original Vargas goes for $200,000.

1941- Two days before Hitler’s invasion of Russia, Richard Zorga, a Russian spy in the German Embassy in Tokyo, sent home to Moscow microfilm with complete information on the attack. He even revealed it’s codename- Operation Barbarossa. A Russian agent in Hungary, code-named “Lucy”, and the Chinese agents of Mao Tse Tung confirmed the information. Yet despite this warning Soviet leader Josef Stalin refused to believe it. On June 22 Stalin and the Red Army were taken completely by surprise.

1941-Walt Disney's "the Reluctant Dragon" premiered, with cartoonist's pickets around the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Police actually have to close part of Hollywood Blvd. out of concern for what the rampaging animators might do. Future UPA producer Steve Bosustow drove up in a limo and picketed in tuxedo and top hat. His chauffeur was Maurice Noble, the designer of the RoadRunner cartoons. Ironically the movie was part documentary about how wonderful life was working at the Disney studio.

1943- Martial law was declared in Detroit when race riots killed 28. New Sherman tanks just completed in the auto plants of Dearborn, were driven into town to help restore order.

1947- Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, the mobster creator of Las Vegas, was murdered while reading his evening paper in his Beverly Hills home. He had bought the mansion from opera singer George London for his girlfriend actress Virginia Hill. The order to whack Bugsy was probably given by his old friend Mayer Lansky. The Mob was fed up with Bugsy’s cost overruns to build Las Vegas. The second owner of his Flamingo casino, Gus Greenbaum, had his throat cut with a butcher knife. Despite all, the Flamingo and the Las Vegas Strip went on to become a great success.

1948- The Ed Sullivan Show "Toast of the Town" later to be “the Ed Sullivan Show” premiered. Sullivan's show was the showcase that brought new acts like Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Signor Winces and the Rolling Stones into the average American living room. Prior to this, Mr. Sullivan was a columnist and radio show personality who co-authored "Red Channels", a book accusing dozens of his compatriots as Communists..

1972- In the first reaction to the news of the Watergate Break in, Nixon Presidential spokesman Ron Zeigler dismissed it: “It is not for the White House to comment on the investigation of a third-rate burglary”. The Third-Rate Burglary drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

1972- THE SMOKING GUN- All through the Watergate scandal the big question was how involved was President Richard Nixon? A conversation in the Oval office was taped this day between Nixon and his aide H.R. Haldeman. Whatever was said on this tape it took two years of lawsuits and a Supreme Court ruling to get Nixon to surrender it. This tape for June 20th had 18 missing minutes.

Experts say five separate manual erasures caused the gap. After a feeble attempt to blame it on the fumble fingers of Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, it’s generally believed, although never admitted, that Nixon himself probably erased the incriminating parts of the tape. It was called the “smoking gun”. Three days after the tape was made public in 1974, President Nixon resigned. If Nixon had simply popped this tape into the White House incinerator, he may have completed his presidency.

1977- The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline began flowing.
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Yesterdays’ Question: Which one of these was NOT named for a British Prime Minister? 1-Melbourne Australia, 2-Pittsburgh, 3- Earl Grey tea, 4-Vancouver, British Columbia.

Answer: Captain Vancouver was an explorer, but not a politician. In 1792 he first named his Canadian Pacific settlement Granville, after the then Prime Minister, Lord Granville. It was renamed Vancouver in 1886

Question: Which one of these was NOT named for a British Prime Minister? 1-Melbourne Australia, 2-Pittsburgh, 3- Earl Grey tea, 4-Vancouver, British Columbia.

Yesterdays Quiz answered below: In a famous Shakespeare play one character says ” This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,….This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” Who says it?
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History for 6/19/2014
Birthdays: Euclid, Blaise Pascal, King James Ist Stuart, Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor, Moe Howard, Kathleen Turner, Lou Gehrig, Guy Lombardo, Gena Rowlands is 84, Mildred Natwick, Charles Coburn, Pat Butram, Louis Jourdan, Pauline Kael, Salman Rushdie, Dame Mae Whitty, Lucie Sloane, Ang Sung Soo Chi, Paula Abdul is 52, Zoe Saldana is 36

240 BC- Greek mathematician, Erastosthenes, measuring the cast shadows made by sticks placed in the ground, first calculated the total circumference of the Earth. He was off by only a few miles.

1312- Piers Gaveston- royal courtier and openly gay paramour of English king Edward II, was executed by angry lords of the realm. Thoroughly-Out Eddie then went on to another boy-toy named Hugh Despenser. The memory of Piers Gaveston is preserved as the name of a mens’ fraternity at Oxford University.

1389- At Kosovo, the huge Turkish army of Sultan Murad Ist, faced the Balkan warriors of Serb Prince Lazar Ist. A Serb knight named Milosh Kobilich got an interview in the Sultan’s tent by claiming to be a deserter with vital information. Once there, he sprang upon Sultan Murad and stabbed him. Milosh was hacked to pieces by the Sultans’ guards. This should have been decisive, but unfortunately for the Serbs, Murad’s son, Bajazet, turned out to be an even better military leader. The next day the Turkish army destroyed the Serb Army .

1588- The Spanish Armada sailed from Cadiz and Lisbon to invade England.

1619- THE OLD GLOBE THEATER FIRE. During a performance of William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, a prop cannon fired a salute that set afire the straw thatch on the roof. Soon the blaze consumed the old theater. Shakespeare, as a partner in the company that owned the Globe, paid to rebuild it. He soon retired home to Stratford. Fifty years later, during Cromwell’s Puritan rule, the Globe was pulled down because the Puritans frowned on theatrical entertainment as unGodly.

1754- Six American colonies and three Iroquois Indian tribes sent delegates to a meeting in Albany, New York to discuss how to work together more closely. Ben Franklin and Thomas Hutchinson submit plans to form a congress of all the Anglo colonies except Georgia and Nova Scotia (remember Canada was still New France at this time), with a President-General appointed by the King. But London rejected the plan.

1803- Captain Meriwether Lewis sent a letter inviting Captain William Clark to come join him and explore the route from the Mississippi to the Pacific Coast. Lewis had a backup in mind in case Clark said no, a Lt. Moses Hook. But Clark said yes so today we remember Lewis & Clark, not Lewis & Hook.

1815- The day after the Battle of Waterloo the Congress of Vienna published their final declarations. The Congress was a grand summit- England, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Naples, Portugal, Holland, Turkey and Royalist France spent the better part of a year redistributing the lands disturbed by Napoleon’s conquests. They mostly reaffirmed hereditary rights of the old monarchs but published a joint ban on the African slave trade and chose not to dispute America’s purchase of Louisiana. This conference set the stage for European politics for the rest of that century.

1846-THE EARLIEST RECORDED BASEBALL GAME- The famous legend is that Abner Doubleday invented the game but that's been mostly disproved. No one is sure of the exact date the game was invented, but, on this day, a New York newspaper ran a notice of a "base-ball" game played by the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club and the New York Nines Cricket Club at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. The cricketeers won 23-1. This was the first game played under Cartwright’s Rules.

Alexander Cartwright created a finite system of three outs and nine innings. Baseball spread nationwide because of the Civil War. When men of all the states would spend leisure time in army camps they learned to play the "Boston-New York Game”. After the conflict, they went to their homes in the various states and took the game with them.

1863- In one of the most famous ship-to-ship duels of the American Civil War the USS Kearsarge fought and sunk the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama in the harbor of Cherbourg, France. Young Impressionist painter Claude Monet was watching from the shore and later made a painting of the event. Confederate raiders hunted US shipping around the sea-lanes of the world, which is why today you can find Confederate grave markers in Capetown, South Africa and Alaska.

1865- Happy Juneteenth- Abe Lincoln’s emissaries finally reached Texas with news of the Emancipation of the slaves. Black Texans celebrate this day thereafter as Juneteenth-Independence Day, although white Texas refused to acknowledge the holiday until 1979.

1867-The Emperor of Mexico, Maximillian Hapsburg, shot by firing squad. Maximillian distributed bribes to the riflemen asking them not to aim for his head, but one hit him there anyway. Mexican President Benito Juarez felt this drastic gesture had to be taken to discourage any future European adventurers. And Maximillian routinely ordered the execution of any Juaristas who fell into his hands.

1867- The first Belmont Stakes horse race. The winner was Ruthless.

1889- Beginning of the Sherlock Holmes adventure, the Man with the Twisted Lip.

1893 - Lizzie Bordon acquitted of the axe murders of her abusive parents. The murderers were never found. She lived alone peaceably and when she died she left all her money to the ASPCA.

1910 - Father's Day celebrated for 1st time. It was organized by the Spokane, Washington by members of the local YMCA and Spokane Ministerial Assoc.

1917- Still in the depths of World War I, King George V ordered members of the British royal family to dispense with German titles & surnames. Before that the official name of Queen Victoria’s family was the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. It now became the House of Windsor. Prince Louis Von Battenberg became Lord Louis Mountbatten.

1921- Distributer AmadeeVan Beuren announced production of a new series of "Aesop’s Fables" cartoons to be done by former Bray director Paul Terry. Terrytoons studio is born.

1923 - "Moon Mullins," a Comic Strip, debuts.

1934-The Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, created.

1941 - Cheerios Cereal invented. The name Cheerios comes from a town in Italy called Cheerigalia, where grain and cereals had been grown since Roman times.

1944-" The Marianas Turkey Shoot"- the Japanese tried to defeat a landing on the strategic island of Saipan by sending a task force of 9 carriers and 400 aircraft, many new generation Zeroes nicknamed Judys. But most of Japan’s veteran combat pilots were gone and the planes were manned by inexperienced novices rushed through training. In the last big carrier to carrier battle US forces shot down 346 Japanese planes and sank three carriers to a loss of only 30 American aircraft.

1953- THE ROSENBERGS GO TO THE CHAIR- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, "The Atomic Spies", were electrocuted at Sing Sing for spying for the Soviet Union. When the Russians detonated their first nuclear weapon no one in America thought they could do it without spies giving them our secrets. .

Only hours before the execution, a young lawyer had found a clause in the law statutes that execution of spies could not take place except in time of war, but the judge who could have stopped it refused because he was Jewish and he feared an even greater anti-Semitic backlash if he saved them. The executions were moved up a day so they would not be killed on a Friday, the Jewish Sabbath. We now know, in 1945, Manhattan project physicists Klaus Fuchs and Ted Hall had given Stalin the plans to the Nagasaki bomb. According to KGB archives from 1989, Julius Rosenberg was on their payroll, but just what and how much he did is controversial. Dr. Fuchs gave away much more vital information yet he only got a moderate prison term. Ted Hall was never discovered until he wrote a book in 1997.

Housewife Ethel Rosenberg probably didn’t do anything and died horribly, screaming when the current was turned on. It took three tries for two full minutes. To conservatives the Rosenbergs were dangerous traitors; to progressives they were innocent martyrs of the red hysteria of the times and of anti-Semitism, even though their prosecutor Roy Cohn was also Jewish. Roy Cohn became one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS.

1952 - "I've Got A Secret" debuts on CBS-TV with Garry Moore as host.

1956- The comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis announce their breakup.

1960- Freedomland amusement park opened in New York City.

1963- The Ray Harryhausen fantasy film Jason and the Argonauts premiered.

1963- The Canadian Football Hall of Fame formed.

1964- THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT. African Americans finally get the basic rights promised them by Abe Lincoln 100 years earlier. In the South, blacks were routinely disqualified from voting and forced to take humiliating tests, like guessing how many bubbles were on a bar of wet soap. Several Civil Rights bills had been proposed since but they were all blocked by the Southern Caucus in Congress.

Those who remember Lyndon Johnson only as the warmonger of Vietnam should also recall that his arm twisting was the main reason this act made it through Congress. Chief Justice William Reinquist, Senator Strom Thurmond, Rev Billy Graham and Claire Booth Luce of Time Magazine urged LBJ not to sign it. The Civil Rights Act started the shift of Southern white conservatives from the Democratic Party to the Republicans.

1964- While flying home to Massachusetts, Senator Ted Kennedy was almost killed in a small plane crash. He broke several verterbrae but survived. Years later whenever his nephew John Kennedy Jr would offer to take Ted on his small plane, Ted always refused.

1964- The Condor Club of San Francisco becomes the first to offer topless dancers. Carol Doda became the first topless waitress, and a mainstay of San Francisco’s nightclub scene. She augmented her already ample bosom to 44 inches with silicon implants. She joked: "I dunno, I guess I just expanded in the heat!"

1973 The Rocky Horror Picture Show stage show opened in London. The film version became a midnight cult classic. Writer Richard O’Brien himself plays the bald doorman Riff-Raff. Let’s do the Time Warp Again.

1975- Mobster Sam "Momo" Giancana was murdered while frying sausages. He was scheduled to testify the next day about what he knew of Pres. John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the Frank Church Committee’s Senatorial Inquiry on Assassinations. The following year Jimmy Roselli, a Giancana hit man who always claimed he was the second gunman in Dallas, was found dismembered in an oil drum floating in Florida’s Biscayne Bay.

1978 – Garfield the Cat, created by Jim Davis, 1st appears as a comic strip

1987 - Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream & Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia announce new Ice Cream flavor, Cherry Garcia.

1987 –David Geffen Records signed their 1st artist -Donna Summer.

1998- Disney’s Muhlan premiered.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: In a famous Shakespeare play one character says ” This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,….This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” Who says it?

Answer: John of Gaunt, the father of Henry IV Bolingbroke, in Shakespeare’s Richard II.