Quiz: How many English Kings were beheaded?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who was Francis Cardinal Spellman?
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History for 1/29/2014
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Didius Julianus, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Paine, William Claude Dunkenfeld known as W.C. Fields, Victor Mature, Paddy Chayefsky, Tom Selleck is 68, Ed Burns, Bill Peet, Greg Louganis, John D Rockefeller Jr., Claudine Longet, John Horsely (1817) the inventor of the Christmas Card-1842*, Oprah Winfrey is 60, Heather Graham is 44.

*Horsley was a Victorian artist at the Royal Academy in London who refused to draw nudes because it offended his morality. This earned him the nickname- Clothes Horsely.

282BC- Death of Pharoah Ptolomey II Philadelphus.

1728-At this time all the rage in London was Italian Opera based on adaptations of Greek Mythology sung by castrated male sopranos. This day John Gay and Johann Pepuschs THE BEGGARS OPERA was first produced in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The play was a sensation because it was an opera in English using popular tunes of the time and told the story not of gods or noble heroes, but highwaymen, bawdy girls and innkeepers.

1775-the COCKPIT TAVERN, or BEN GETS his ASS CHEWED- Benjamin Franklin was postmaster general of the American Colonies and was feeling pretty good about his ability to represent American interests in London. He successfully argued the American's opposition to the Stamp Tax in the House of Commons. He offered to pay back exporters who lost money from the Boston Tea Party.

On this day he was invited to the Cockpit Tavern for what he thought was a private meeting. He was ushered into a room where he faced a delegation from the Royal Privy Council. The ministers spent the next 4 hours dressing him down. The Lord Chief Justice finished by shouting in 70 year old Ben’s face:" Spy, Traitor, Rebel, Thief! " He was fired as postmaster and ordered home to America before they clapped him in prison. Ben Franklin entered the tavern a loyal subject, and left a committed revolutionary.

1813- Jane Austin’s novel Pride and Prejudice first published.

1820- After spending the last ten years of his long reign as a blind insane shut-in, King George III died at age 82. His son the Prince Regent finally became King George IV. Americans remember George III as the tyrant of the Revolution, but Britons truly loved their old monarch and his simple family-man tastes. While his German grandfather George II was barely mourned at all, all the Empire lamented the passing of Old Shopkeeper George.

1834- President Andrew Jackson sent U.S. troops to shoot at striking workers at the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal project. It was the first but sadly not the last time Federal troops were used to "settle" a labor strike with guns.

1842- The Republic of Texas authorized the raising of a company of rangers to keep the peace- the Texas Rangers. Stephen Austin had commissioned rangers as early as 1833, but from this date on their regular service began.

1845- Edgar Allen Poe's poem the Raven first published. Nevermore.

1861- Since Kansas Territory was going to be organized as a state slaveholders and union men fought over whether she would be a free or slave state. Ten years later as the Civil War was breaking out Kansas announced statehood- as a free state.

1886-In Karlsruhe Germany, Dr. Karl Benz patented the internal combustion engine. To prevent gasoline explosions it utilized a fuel distribution system based on a ladies perfume atomizer spray ( the carburetor ). He called his horseless carriage at first a Motorvagen, but later names it after his partner Godfried Daimler’s daughter, Mercedes.

1891 After the death of King David IV Kalakoua, Lilioukalani was proclaimed Queen of Hawaii. Besides being the last monarch of Hawaii, Lilioukalani composed the song "Aloha-Oi, Aloha-Oi, Until we meet Again."

1918- The new Bolshevik revolutionary government ordered the immediate demobilization of the Russian Army, preparatory for pulling out of World War I. After Civil War broke out Leon Trotsky began to form a new army of Communist volunteers, the Red Army.

1920- Walt gets a job. Nineteen year old Walt Disney and his buddy Ub Iwerks were hired by a local Kansas City Slide Company to draw ads for newspapers and slides for theaters.

1935- The first inductees to the new Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown announced- Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson. Hall of Fame dedication ceremony was on June 12th 1939.

1936- Dictator Benito Mussolini lays the first stone of Cinecitta’ Movie Studios.

1943- Fredrich Von Paulus was the commander of the German Sixth Army, now totally surrounded at Stalingrad. The few survivors were huddled in basements in the destroyed city, freezing, starving and being wiped out by superior Russian forces. Paulus and his men prayed for a miracle to save them. This day he heard via radio that Adolf Hitler had promoted him to Field Marshal, with a suggestion that no German Field Marshal should ever be taken alive…..

1943- The Nazi Gestapo arrested serial killer Bruno Ludke. Ludke admitted to killing 85 people and committing unnatural acts with their remains. Ludke was sent to a Vienna hospital for medical experiments, then executed in a concentration camp in 1944.

1944- DARBY’S RANGERS were an elite American commando unit trained for the toughest assignments, the forerunners of the Green Berets and Delta Forces. On this day the bungling generals of the Anzio beachhead sent them into a suicidal battle at the Italian town of Cisterna. Germans were had anticipated the attack and set a trap. 761 rangers went in, 6 came out. Colonel Darby himself survived the battle, but was killed two days before the World War II ended.

1957- Patsy Cline recorded "Walkin' After Midnight."

1959- Disney's " SLEEPING BEAUTY " opened. Despite earning the fifth highest box office for that year, it finished $5 million behind what it cost to make. The animation staff had swollen to it's largest to finish the production. It’s disappointing box office soured Walt Disney on feature animation. After the film was finished the studio had a massive layoff, dropping from 551 to just 75. Staff level will not return to these same levels until 1990.

1964- Stanley Kubrick's nuclear comedy "DR STRANGLOVE –OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB." premiered. It's use of hand held camera for action sequences and cutting inspired by the European New Wave ushered in a new style in Hollywood cinema. So, who was Tracey Reed? She played Miss Scott, George C. Scott’s bikini clad secretary, and the only woman in the entire movie.

1975- The Weather Underground set off a bomb in the US State Department. They were a violent offshoot of the Student Anti-Vietnam War protest movement,

1977- Comic TV. star of "Chico and the Man " Freddy Prinze (23) blew his brains out. Some said he suffered from a survivor's depression about why he had succeeded in life while all his friends from the Barrio were dead from gang killings or drugs. Family members said that he was just stoned on Quaaludes and was clowning around with a gun.

1979- President Jimmy Carter commuted the jail sentence of Patty Hearst.

1986- The National Geographic Society announced the discovery of the largest fossil find in North America. Estimated 10,000 fossilized remains in Nova Scotia They include penny sized dinosaur footprints, the smallest ever found. Best guess are they are from the Triassic-Jurassic boundary – a time of mass extinction.

2002-THE AXIS OF EVIL- In his State of the Union speech President George W. Bush coined the term " The Axis of Evil". He labeled as members Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iran is a Shiite religious theocracy, Iraq a Sunnite secular fascist dictatorship and North Korea an atheistic Communist state- all with nothing in common and little mutual contact. The speechwriter originally wrote "Axis of Hate" but the Bush people like the Good vs. Evil thing. They also substituted North Korea for Libya because they wanted one non-Moslem power included, so they didn’t want to seem biased.
We recently learned from a retired CIA operative that up till now Iran had actually been cooperating with the USA in rounding up Al Qaeda agents. But after the speech, they broke off all contact. An Iranian diplomat complained’ We feel like we’ve been slapped in the face.”
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was Francis Cardinal Spellman?

Answer: Cardinal Spellman was the powerful primate of New York, and he acted like a chaplain to the Catholic Kennedy White House, the way Billy Graham did to the protestant Presidents. Even though he supported Nixon for president. He was a big supporter of LBJ and the Vietnam War. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI files reported the Cardinal was “ an active homosexual..”

Quiz: Who was Francis Cardinal Spellman?

Yesterday’s quiz answered below: Who wrote the famous classical piece La Mer ( the Sea)?
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History for 1/28/2014
Birthdays: King Henry VII Tudor, Jose Marti, Colette, Jackson Pollack, Claus Oldenburg, Arthur Rubenstein, Ernst Lubitsch, Connie Rasinski, Susan Sontag, Barbie Benton, General George Pickett, William Burroughs (1855) the inventor of the calculator, Mo Rocca, Alan Alda is 78, Elijah Wood is 34

1393- DANSE MACABRE- At a masquerade ball given at the French court King Charles VI 'the mad' and several of his closest friends dressed up as 'wild men' to amuse the court. They had fur and hair attached to their bodies with tar.
While everyone was enjoying the capering of these strange anonymous creatures, a torch touched their tar covered bodies and the group exploded into flame. While the court watched these beings writhe in agony, one duchess screamed" Oh My God! That's the King!" King Charles was saved when that same duchess smothered his flames in her skirts. Another duke saved himself by diving headlong into a vat of Beaujolais, but the others roasted to death.
The common people weren't sympathetic. One duke liked to step on your neck while sneering 'Down Peasant!". As his barbecued remains were carried through Paris, people laughed and chanted 'Down M'Lord!" Edgar Allen Poe wrote a poem called “Hop Frog” about the incident, and Roger Corman put it into his 1964 film- Masque of the Red Death.

1547- English Henry VIII died, leaving his ten year-old sickly-son Edward VI "Gods Imp" king. He was 55 years old but his hard living had aged him early. Increasingly suspicious of all around him as he aged, one of his last acts was to have the Earl of Surrey beheaded for changing the coat of arms of his father the Duke of York into something more like a Royal Heir-Apparent. The Duke was also scheduled to be executed but was saved when the king died first.

1596- Sir Francis Drake died at sea off the coast of Nicaragua while trying to mount one more big raid on the Spanish Main. The Devonshire preacher's son had raided there as a young man. But by now, the Spaniards had learned his tricks so they were prepared. The trip was a failure and he died on deck of yellow fever in late middle age.

1782- The Congress called for the use of the Great Seal of the United States, even though no one had designed one yet. But the British had one and so..uh,we had to have one too !

1829- BURKE & HARE- In the early nineteenth century scientific experiments on cadavers were still outlawed as desecration of the dead so doctors secretly hired grave robbers to get them specimens to experiment on. Burke & Hare were the most infamous of Edinburgh's "ressurrectionists" because they didn't always wait for the subject to die, but murdered them in their boardinghouse. To Burke someone became slang for suffocating them. Doctors and later police became suspicious of the freshness of their specimens and Hare finked on Burke to save himself.
On this day Burke was hanged before a crowd of thousands and his body later medically dissected. The notoriety of this case helped pass laws allowing doctors more legal use of mortal remains. Their story was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's story "The Body Snatcher."

1863- Ulysses Grant arrived at Vicksburg to begin the epic campaign that would end on July 4th with the capture of the 'Gibraltar of the Confederacy'.

1878- First commercial telephone switchboard.

1884- A British relief force reached the city of Khartoum just two days too late. After a one year siege the Sudanese Dervishes had sacked the city and massacred all the foreigners including General Chinese Gordon, dancing with their heads on spears. The desert relief force was held up until all their supplies were complete, including 20,000 black umbrellas.

1902- Andrew Carnegie was a rough crude tycoon with a ruthless streak that saw him ruin his competitors and pay vigilantes to murder his striking employees and their families. But after all the rough and tumble of the Gilded Age business world, he showed a new side of his character in retirement. He set up the Carnegie Institute in Washington and resolved to give away the bulk of his $350 million dollar fortune in philanthropic causes. The reason why so many colleges, hospitals and concert halls today are named Carnegie. “A man who dies rich dies disgraced!”

1915- The U.S. Coast Guard born, combining the Lifesaving Service and the Revenue Cutter patrol. In 2002 the Coast Guard was folded into the Cabinet office Department of Homeland Security.

1916- President Woodrow Wilson nominated Judge Lewis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Brandeis was the first Jewish American to be so honored.

1917- After 11 months fruitlessly chasing Pancho Villa through Mexico and skirmishing with the Mexican army, Pres. Wilson ordered General John Pershing’s army home.

1918- In Germany a million industrial workers fed up with the endless carnage of World War One went on strike, paralyzing factories nationwide.

1926- Composer Kurt Weill married his Pirate Jenny- Lotte Lenya.

1930- Warner Brothers Cartoons Born. Leon Schlesinger, the head of Pacific Art and Title, signed a deal with several unemployed Disney animators who had left Walt to form their own studio to draw Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but had been stiffed by their contacts. Schlesinger had connections with the Warner Bros. since he helped them get funding for the 'Jazz Singer'. They create Leon Schlesinger's Studio Looney Tunes, in imitation of Disney's Silly Symphonies. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and more result.


1949- The Admiral Broadway Review premiered on television. The one and a half hour comedy review starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. The show was so popular Admiral was swamped for orders for new televisions and ironically was forced to cancel the show to focus on their production needs. The show was revived as Your Show of Shows, one of the great shows of early television.

1956- Young singer Elvis Presley first appeared to television audiences on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show.

1958- Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella paralyzed in an auto wreck. He spent the rest of his life as a spokesman for the rights of the handicapped.

1978- Premiere of Hanna Barbera's the Three Robonic Stooges.

1982- Danny DeVito married Rhea Perlman.

1986- THE CHALLENGER DISASTER- As the world watched the Space shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds after takeoff killing twelve crew members. They included New Hampshire schoolteacher Christie McAuliffe who had won the ride in a contest.. It was blamed on defective O-rings in the rocket booster.

2003- President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address says that he had proof that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had sent agents to the African nation of Niger to buy uranium yellowcake, a component to make atomic bombs. It is one of the major reasons for the war with Iraq. It was later proved to be a complete lie. Bush blamed the intelligence service, after giving the head of the CIA the Medal of Freedom.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who wrote the famous classical piece La Mer ( the Sea)?

Answered: Claude Debussy.

QUIZ: Who wrote the famous classical piece La Mer ( the Sea)?

Yesterdays question answered below: Where is the area called The Navel of the Earth?
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History for Jan. 27, 2014
Birthdays-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is 259, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Charles Dodgson-better known as Lewis Carroll, Eduard Lalo, William Randolph Hearst, Samuel Gompers, Jerome Kern, Skitch Henderson, Donna Reed, Bridgette Fonda, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kate Wolf, Ross Bagdasarian a.k.a. David Seville- creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, James Cromwell, Mimi Rogers, Keith Olbermann, Frank Miller is 57, Patton Oswalt is 45

Today is celebrated as Thomas Crapper Day, the inventor of the indoor toilet. Besides making life more comfortable, his systems of valves and vents preventing waste odors and germs from re-entering the home. This did a lot to combat disease in the 19th century.

98AD- Roman General Trajan was serving on the German frontier. This day his aide Hadrian came with the news that the Emperor Nerva had died and had designated him as the next Emperor of Rome. Trajan was such a tough, no–nonsense soldier that he still delayed several months in Germany to settle the affairs of the province, before leaving to rule in Rome.

1307- The poet Dante Alighieri got kicked out of Florence. At least being exiled from politics left his mind free to concentrate on his poetry, like the Divine Comedy.

1431- German King Louis of Bavaria entered Rome in triumph to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. It had been custom since Charlemagne for the German Emperor to be called King of the Romans until the Pope crowned him. But Louis was arguing with the Pope in Avignon over several issues so rather than wait Louis expected the people of Rome to declare him Emperor. The German electors later reserved that right for themselves in Frankfurt. By successfully challenging the right of the Pope over him Louis of Bavaria was unwittingly aiding the coming of the Reformation seventy years in the future.

1535- Today is the Feast of Saint Angela Merci, founder of the Ursuline Nuns.

1649- King Charles Ist of England was condemned by trial in Parliament to be beheaded.

1671- Buccaneer Henry Morgan and his pirates cross the Isthmus of Darien and attack Panama City by land. Morgan the Pirate looted the city, despite the Spaniards stampeding a herd of bulls at him. However the attack wasn't much of a surprise and most of the population had already fled with their valuables. I guess a coupla' hundred Englishmen with peg legs and patch eyes growling "Arrr!" isn't a common sight in the Equatorial rainforest.

1775- In London Secretary of State for the Americas Lord Dartmouth sends the Lord Governor of the colony of Massachusetts General Thomas Gage explicit orders to stop shilly-shallying with these Yankee rebels. He should clap them in prison and confiscate any illegal weapons.

General Gage will get his instructions two months later -that how long it took news to cross the Atlantic by sailing ship. It will cause his redcoats in April to march to Lexington and Concord, which will ignite the American Revolution. Ironically Old Tom Gage liked America and had a good friend in Virginia named George Washington.

1863- BEAR RIVER MASSACRE- The Shoshone Indians along with the Bannocks and Utes had been raiding wagon trains through Utah and Nevada. Col Patrick Connor led 300 US cavalry in subzero cold to attack Chief Bear Hunter’s winter camp in a hot-springs ravine near present day Preston, Idaho. After a daylong battle, 224 warriors were killed. The soldiers went berserk destroying tepees and raping the Indian women. Chief Bear Hunter was shot, beaten, whipped, and when he still would not die, a red-hot bayonet was rammed through his head via his ear. A soldier called it “A frolic”. The Shoshone, Utes and Bannocks, who a generation earlier had helped Lewis & Clark, now asked for peace.

1888- The first magazine published of the National Geographic Society.

1900- Italian opera composer Guiseppi Verdi died. On his instructions no music was to be played at his funeral.

1918- Warner Bros. Pictures incorporated. The Brothers Warner- Sam Albert, Harry and Jack were the sons of Jewish immigrants who had moved from Poland in 1882 and set up a bicycle repair shop in Ohio. Their first movie was Five Years in Germany. Throughout the 1920’s their little studio survived making pictures with dog star Rin Tin Tin. They called him the Mortgage Lifter, because the profits from his pictures paid their bills. Later they bought Vitagraph and gambled with the new Sound technology. When they made the Jazz Singer with Jolson, Warner Bros became a major studio.

1925- IDITEROD- THE SERUM RUN BEGAN- At this time Nome Alaska was totally depended on supplies brought by sled dog teams. When a serious outbreak of diphtheria threatened to become a major epidemic Alaska had only two airplanes, and they were boxed up for the winter. Governor Scot C. Bone decided to get the vaccination serum to Nome by a relay of twenty mushers in the depth of winter, temperatures averaging around -40f degrees. It normally took a dog sled twenty days to cover the 650 miles, but these men did it in 5 days 7 hours, limiting the epidemic to only 5 deaths.

This day the serum arrived by train at Nenana sealed in a metal cylinder wrapped in furs and was loaded onto the first dog sled. Wild Bill Shannon called out to his malamutes and mushed down the frozen Tanana river into history. The Iditarod dog race runs in memory of this.

1926- Englishman John Logie Baird demonstrated his televisor system- the first true television image.

1927- Charlie Chaplin’s short comedy The Circus premiered.

1932- The Mukden Incident- Japanese troops rig up a provocation at a railway junction so they can invade Manchuria. If you are counting this little railway junction is the real beginning of World War Two, which will rage until 1945. Apologists for Japanese Emperor Hirohito say he was not even informed of this attack and tried to order its recall, but was overruled by the military planners.

1943- US 8th Air Force conducted its’ first daylight bombing raid on Germany, attacking Wilhelmshaven. The air-Battle of Germany would continue to until May 1945.

1944- The Red Army breaks through to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and lifts the 800 day Nazi siege.

1944- WAS WALT A RED? Walt Disney donated money and may have attended a tribute to leftist cartoonist Art Young in New York who had died three weeks before. Art Young was a close friend of John Reed and Louise Bryant, founders of the American Communist Party. The F.B.I. noted the event was sponsored by the radical socialist newspaper The New Masses and other attendees included progressives like Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway and Carl Sandburg.

Walt was already a founding member of the Hollywood Society for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group of conservative Hollywood celebrities meant to counteract the rampant Hollywood Liberals. Disney later became an F.B.I. informant, but like Reagan, it may have been after the F.B.I. reminded him of his attendance at this little soiree'....

1948- The Wireway Company announced the first tape recorder for sale using the new magnetic tape. It cost $150.

1951- Test Ranger Abel. Because atomic tests in the Pacific were getting expensive, the US Air Force starts using the Nevada Test Site to drop their nuclear bombs.

1967- Three Apollo I astronauts Gus Grissom (veteran of the third Gemini flight), Ed Young and Roger Chafee died in a flash fire in their capsule. In those days the hatchways were literally screwed on from the outside and there was no way to open it from the inside. The fire occurred during a routine rehearsal probably from static electricity igniting an atmosphere of pure oxygen and feeding on velcro. The three men burned to death while engineers frantically struggled with the hatch. After this episode the future Apollo capsules were fitted with a hatch with exploding bolts. Grissom had once said: “If we die people must accept it. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

1973- Henry Kissinger and Li Duc To sign the Paris Peace Accords ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. President Nixon hailed the agreement as Peace with Honor but the defeat traumatized a generation of Americans and confused the public as to just what the American role in the world really was. Kissinger and Li Duc To won the Nobel Peace Prize for that year. Li Duc refused to accept it because his country was still at war. “if there's no peace, it would be hypocritical to receive a prize for it!" Henry the K didn’t have a problem accepting it and went to Oslo.
North Vietnam overran South Vietnam two years later.

1992- Presidential candidate Bill Clinton was denounced by a woman named Jennifer Flowers of having a 12 year extramarital affair with her when governor of Arkansas. He goes on 60 Minutes with Hilary and called her a liar. Of course we now know they did have an affair, but hey, that’s politics.

1997- First day shooting on the Cohen Bros. film The Big Lebowski- The Dude Abides.
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Yesterdays question: Where is the area called The Naval of the Earth?

Answer: The Bosporus at Istanbul. It was called that because it is at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Quiz: Where is the area called The Naval of the Earth?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Ukrainians are in the news lately. Has a Ukrainian ever been the leader of Russia?
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History for 1/26/2014
Birthdays: First Lady Julia Dent Grant, General Douglas MacArthur, Stephan Grappelli, Angela Davis, Maria Von Trapp, Wayne Gretsky "The Great One" is 52, Eartha Kitt, Paul Newman, Roger Vadim, Jules Feiffer is 85, Henry Jaglom, Anita Baker, Edward Abbey, Gene Siskel, Scott Glenn, David Straitharn, Randy Rhodes, Ellen DeGeneres is 56

404 A.D.-Today is the Feast of Saint Paula, who built the first abbey and monastery where all the monks and nuns wore identical uniform sackcloth, demonstrating that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

1500- Captain Vincente Pinzon, who had once commanded the Nina for Columbus, discovered the coast of Brazil while serving the Portuguese navy.

1758 - French troops burn at the stake the Haitian rebel slave leader Mackandal. A practitioner of Voodoo, his followers believed that at the moment of death he transformed himself into a mosquito and brought the Yellow Fever sickness to kill the Europeans. Haitian Independence was achieved a generation later under Toussaint l'Overture and Dessalines. Mackandal's dance, done at all his rallies and voodoo religious ceremonies was the 'marenga".

1787- SHAY’S REBELLION- Just four years after the Revolution, New England farmers rebelled against unfairly heavy taxes and a confused local government. Daniel Shays led 1,200 Massachusetts farmers in an attack on an armory that quickly fell apart, but the shock of the incident scared the Founding Fathers to convene a special Constitutional Convention to create a stronger central government.

1788-AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL DAY.- A small fleet of ships carrying 700 convicts and 200 soldiers and families lands in Australia at Sydney Cove. The aboriginal people met them on the beach with calls of "Warra-warra!" which means "Go Away!" Eventually 50,000 convicts were sent there. After a century Australians began to form their unique character. The Aussie nickname name for British people is Poms or Pommies. This was for the initials printed on British prison shirts POM- or Prisoner Of his Majesty. Another version has it that British sailors regularly picked the pomegranate trees clean of fruit to ward off scurvy.

1799- Thomas Jefferson wrote to Eldrige Gerry “I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.”

1815- Congress votes to purchase Thomas Jefferson's book collection to replace the fledgling Library of Congress that was burnt by the British in the War of 1812.

1837- Michigan became a state.

1875- Late at night, Pinkerton detectives on the trail of Jesse James threw a bomb into the window of the James family home. The explosion killed Jesses’ 18 year old retarded stepbrother who had nothing to do with the outlaws, and blew the right arm off his mother. The James Gang were nowhere near the farm that night.

1884- Khartoum falls to the forces of Sudanese messianic leader El Mahdi. The Liberal Government of William Gladstone had sent the famous Victorian general Charles 'Chinese' Gordon to oversee the British evacuation of the Sudan. Gordon was a courageous eccentric who instead of evacuating the Sudan barricaded himself into it's capitol Khartoum and resolved to fight to the end. "We are all pianos" he once said:" And events play upon us".

1911- Richard Strauss’ opera Die Rosenkavalier opens in Vienna. Kaiser Wilhelm was offended by the E.T. Hoffman story about aristocrats sleeping around with servants. He called it "A dirty little play".

1924- The Russian city of Saint Petersburg was also called Petrograd. This day the Bolshevik Government changed its name in honor of Vladimir Lenin to Leningrad. In 1991 they changed the name back to Saint Petersburg.

1934- Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn bought the rights to L. Frank Baum’s book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz to develop into a movie.

1939-Generalissimo Franco’s Fascist troops capture Barcelona, winning the Spanish Civil War.

1939- The first day of shooting on the film Gone With the Wind.

1945- The Soviet Army finally liberated the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. The first soldier to reach the camp was a Mongolian scout on a horse which led one Jewish survivor to wonder if the Nazis now had intended to hand them over to the Japanese! The Russians hanged Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoess in front of the villa in camp he and his family lived in. He was not the Rudolph Hess who flew to London in 1941 and died in Spandau Prison. Rescued survivors include the future Nobel Laureate Primo Levi, and the founder of Commodore Computers Jack Trammel.

1950- In India today is Constitution Day, when the Indian Constitution went into effect.

1962- Mob boss Charles Lucky Lucciano dropped dead of a heart attack at Naples airport as he was about to shake hands with an author who had arrived from the U.S. to write his biography. Lucky Lucciano was the criminal genius that converted gangsters from storefront street gangs to corporate syndicates with ties to legitimate business and government. He also helped the Italian-Sicilian system of La Mafia- family clan allegiance and code of honor, to supplant the other Irish-Jewish gangsters. Lucky was deported to Italy in the 1950’s and retired when his appeals to return were denied.

1967- THE BIG SNOW- The people of Chicago pride themselves on their ability to handle the toughest winters. But this day was one of the worst- 23 inches of snow in 27 hours, driven by 50 mile an hour cyclonic winds brought the city to a total standstill.

1979- Former Vice President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller, was found dead in his office" en flagrante delicto" with Meghan Marshak, his young director of the Rockefeller Foundation. His second wife Happy Rockefeller had also been one of his office staff once. The method of the 70-year-old billionaire’s death was an open secret in New York City. The legend was fueled by the fact that Ms. Marshak's first call was not to 911 or the cops, but to her friend, local TV newswoman, Ponchitta Pierce. Pierce made the call to summon help nearly an hour after Rocky was cold.
I had a friend at art school at the time who was a receptionist for a Park Ave. doctor who was Rocky's physician. She said the paramedics found him with his pants down but his tie still in place. His will left $50,000 and a Manhattan townhouse to Ms Marshak.

1979- The Dukes of Hazard TV show premiered.

1983- The software LOTUS 1-2-3 premiered that helped make IBM’s PC into the most popular business computers in the US.

1984-HELP ME TITO! During the filming of a Pepsi commercial at LA’s Shrine Auditorium, a magnesium flash ignited singer Michael Jackson’s Jeri curl hair gel causing him 3rd degree burns,

1988- Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical Phantom of the Opera premiered.

1996- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies to a grand jury, the first "first lady" to do so. The only earlier incident that comes to mind for me was in 1862 when a senate committee convened to investigate whether Mary Todd Lincoln was a Confederate spy.

1998- The Japanese town of Ito was attacked by berserk monkeys, injuring 26.
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Yesterday’s question: Ukrainians are in the news lately. Has a Ukrainian ever been the leader of Russia?

Answer: Nikita Khrushchev.

Quiz- Ukrainians are in the news lately. Has a Ukrainian ever been the leader of Russia?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Who was Secretary General U Thant?
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History for 1/25/2014
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Birthdays: Genghis Khan, Byzantine Emperor Leo IV the Khazar, Robert Burns, Somerset Maugham, Virginia Woolf, Vice Pres Charles “Goodtime Charlie” Curtis, Edwin Newman, Jean Image, Dean Jones, Ava Gardner, Etta James, Corazon Aquino, Anita Pallenberg, Tobe Hooper is 71

36 A.D. (-?) THE CONVERSION of ST.PAUL. There was a Jewish Pharasee named Saul who persecuted Christians, until on the road to Damascus he had a blinding vision. He changed his name to Paul and became the most zealous of Christians. Scholars speculate that Paul may had studied philosophical disciplines like Greek Stoicism and the Jewish Essene movement because elements of these faiths seem to influence Paul's structuring of his new religion.
Paul is responsible for things like ladies keep their heads covered, men's heads uncovered in Church, etc. He made a point of going to Athens to preach the new religion in Plato's Philosophical Academy. He was also instrumental in bringing Gentiles into the religion, causing an early split in the faithful, when James the brother of Jesus felt that they should stay a reform movement within Judaism. That group eventually died out.

1077-HENRY AT CANOSSA- One of the hottest arguments of the Middle Ages was whether Kings could boss around Popes or visa-versa. Ever since Pope Leo had crowned Charlemagne in 800 Popes held that no man could rule without the Church’s official blessing.
In 1077 German Emperor Henry IV told Pope Gregory VII the Fiery Hildebrandt, that he could appoint or fire German bishops with or without Romes permission. The feud grew as Gregory excommunicated Henry and released all his subjects from allegiance to him; Henry declared Gregory “a licentious false monk” and elected another Pope.
But the superstitious fear of the common people and the ambition of rebellious German nobles brought Henry’s kingdom to a standstill. This day witnessed one of the most dramatic scenes in Medieval History: At the Italian town of Canossa Emperor Henry in hairshirt and barefoot stood in the snow waiting at the locked door of the Pope to beg forgiveness. Gregory forgave him but a year later they were at it again and Henry chased Gregory out of Rome with an army and Gregory excommunicated him again. Luigi Pirandello wrote a play about Henry IV in the 1920s.

1327- Edward III, the Great Plantagenet, became King of England.

1483- Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition Peter de Arbules was beaten to death while at prayers at the Cathedral of Saragossa. Tradition states that years later the blood on the spot of his death stayed liquid. He was made a saint in 1867. 1533- Henry VIII secretly married Lady Anne Boleyn, already pregnant with the future Queen Elizabeth. Anne Boleyn was later called a sorceress because she had six fingers on one hand. Lusty King Henry had also slept with her mother and her older sister Mary Boleyn. And yer little dog, too!

1669- THE SECRET TREATY OF DOVER- King Charles II had at last gotten the British throne back from Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans, but he ruled over a kingdom bankrupt and exhausted by civil war. So on this day Charles signed a secret treaty with the richest country in Europe- Louis XIV's France. In it King Charles pledged to work to return England to the Roman Catholic Faith and himself convert to Catholicism in return for heavy subsidies of French gold. Charles lived in a grand baroque style and may have converted in secret on his deathbed, but said nothing in public, so England stayed Anglican. His brother James II who was openly Catholic was later overthrown and a law passed that a Catholic can never again be King.

1755- The King of France appointed the Marquis de Montcalm to command all French forces facing the British in North America.

1814- France invaded by five separate armies and all Europe in arms against him, Napoleon Bonaparte said goodbye to his wife Marie Louise and his three year old son. He would never see either of them ever again. After Waterloo his father-in-law the Austrian Emperor Francis II kept Marie Louise from joining Napoleon in exile and gave her a handsome Austrian duke as a lover. Napoleons son was renamed the Duke du Reichstadt and raised as an Austrian nobleman until he died of tuberculosis at 21
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1824- Artist Theodore Gericault was famous for his paintings of horses. This day he died, from a fall off a horse.

1858- Queen Victoria and Albert's eldest child, Victoria the Princess Royal (Vicky), marries Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia ( Fritzy ) in a lavish ceremony. They will sire the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, Victoria’s first grandchild and England’s great enemy. At this wedding for the first time the "Wedding March" of Felix Mendelsson from his "Midsummer's Night Dream" was used as the processional. Like everything Victoria and Albert did, it soon became a custom.

1863- Lincoln fired his army commander Ambrose Burnside and replaced him with General Fighting Joe Hooker. Burnside, whose mutton chop whiskers named the style "sideburns" was a military hard luck case. He lost the battle of Fredericksburg so badly that even the enemy was embarrassed. His replacement "Fighting Joe" Hooker was so fond of "ladies of the evening" that he brought them on campaign in their own tent and cavalry escort. They were called "Hooker's Girls" hence the term-"hookers".

1890- Newspaper reporter Nelly Bly ( Elizabeth Cochrane ) of the New York World is welcomed home after traveling around the World in 72 days. The stunt was inspired by the Jules Verne story Around the World in 80 days, which had become a hit stage play.

1900- In the Boer War the Boers had surrounded a British garrison in the town of Ladysmith. After many attacks the siege of Ladysmith was broken by a relief force that had in its’ ranks a young officer named Winston Churchill.

1924- The first Winter Olympics held in Charmonix France. Winter sports were celebrated as early as 1901 as the Nordic Games in Scandinavia. Trying to hedge their bets the International Olympic Committee originally styled the Charmonix games the Winter Sports Week. It was so successful that in 1928 the IOC designed the games at St. Moritz the Second Winter Olympiad. These games did a lot to raise the public interest in the sport of ski running, now called simply skiing.

1938- Walt Disney attempted to head off the rising tide of unionizing workers in Hollywood by forming a dummy company union called the Federation of Screen Cartoonists. No other artists but Disney employees joined, and Disney's chief attorney Gunther Lessing could veto any vote they had.

1939-President Franklin Roosevelt designated the fossil rich Badlands area of South Dakota a National Monument. 1945- The Rock Creek Report recommends mass additives of fluoride into American drinking water supplies. Tooth decay drops by 50%, however many right wing fringe groups like the John Birch Society saw Floridation as a insidious Commie-Jewish plot.

1947- Mobster Al Capone died in seclusion at his home in Biscayne Bay Florida at age 48. He was released from Alcatraz Prison early because of ill health, his mind was slowly destroyed by untreated syphilis. When another gangster was asked if Al would resume leadership of the Chicago rackets, he replied:” Big Al is nuttier than a fruitcake.”

1949- The first Emmy Awards ceremony was held at the LA Athletic Club. Five awards were given out for shows like Mabel’s Fables and Treasures of Literature. Rudy Vallee hosted. Mayor Fletcher Bowman declared it “ TV Day” in LA.

1959- American Airlines sets up the first jetliner passenger service across the U.S.

1959- VATICAN II- Pope John XXIII called for the creation of a Second Vatican Council to initiate reforms in the Roman Catholic Church. This was called Vatican II and it’s sweeping ideas changed the Church forever. Latin Masses replaced with native language, the priest does the Eucharist ceremony facing you instead of with his back to you, Folk Masses with guitars, etc.

1960- Actress Diana Barrymore, the daughter of John Barrymore, overdosed on sleeping pills. The Barrymore family that had dominated the American theater since the 1850’s had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Ancestor after ancestor drank themselves to death. Current leader of the family Drew Barrymore recovered after seeking rehab at age 12.

1961- John F. Kennedy has the first televised Presidential press conference.

1961- Walt Disney’s 101 Dalmatians premiered. “ Cruella, Cruella da Ville,.. “

1970- Robert Altman’s groovy movie M*A*S*H premiered.

1971- Charles Manson and his followers convicted of 27 counts of murder. They were all sentenced to the Gas Chamber, but the death penalty had been abolished in California.

1971- Idi Amin seized power in Uganda.

1984- The widow of Mao tse Tung, Chiang Ching, was sentenced to death for conspiring against the Chinese state. Madam Chiang was one of the leaders of Mao’s Cultural Revolution crackdowns and her accomplices were called the Gang of Four.

1995- Moscow radar detected a nuclear missile launch from Norwegian waters headed right for them. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his cabinet had five minutes to decide if this was an accident or the dreaded First Strike, warranting a full retaliatory launching of all Russian nukes against the US.. They decided it was a mistake, and it turned out the missile was only a Norwegian weather satellite being fired into orbit. Similar nail biting incidents happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 and off the US coast in 1986.

2011- The Arab Spring pro-democracy protests that began in Tunisia spread to Egypt, the worlds largest Arab country. Huge protests began in Cairo against long time president Hosni Mubarak. Eventually they forced his ouster.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was Secretary General U Thant?

Answer: U Thant was UN Secretary General in the 1961-1971 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War.