Moving Innovation got a wonderful review from the great Nancy Denney-Phelps

http://sprockets.animationblogspot.com/

Quiz: Where is the place the Romans used to call Mare Nostrum? Hint: nostrum means “our”

Yesterday’s Question: Who’s foot became the measurement for The Foot? Likewise his knuckle became “the inch”.

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History for 5/9/2013
Birthdays: John Brown, James M. Barrie the creator of Peter Pan, Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Glenda Jackson is 77, Billy Joel, Candice Bergen is 67, Mike Wallace, Pancho Gonzales, James L. Brooks, Rosairo Dawson, John Corbett, Albert Finney is 77
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To the ancient Romans this was the Lemuria, the Festival of Death . Like the ancient Greek Anthesterion in February the Lemuria was a deal made with the Underworld that the dearly departed were allowed to visit the surface world and you should leave your door open and leave out food for them. This way they won't haunt you and you'll have good luck all year.

At sunset tomorrow the head of the house (Pater Familias) walks through the house hitting a little bronze gong, he throws a handful of black beans over his shoulder and chants 'With These Beans I Redeem Myself and My Family. O Shades of My Ancestors Depart! Lemuria has Ended!'

310 a.d. This is the Feast of Saint Pachonius, the first monk to bring other monks and nuns together to live communally, instead of living in caves as solitary hermits.

1421- A fire destroyed part of the just completed Forbidden City in Beijing.

1503- Columbus sails home to Spain from his fourth and final voyage. He traveled down the Central American coast as far as Venezuela. Despite revisionist history extolling his genius Columbus never stopped thinking he had discovered Asia. Because the Nicaraguan Indians told him there is another ocean just beyond the jungle in his diary he confuses it with the Indian ocean, so he thinks he is in VietNam.(Cochin China)

1754- THE FIRST NEWSPAPER CARTOON- Ben Franklin in his Pennsylvania Gazette prints a drawing of a segmented snake with each piece named for a colony with the inscription: Join or Die. ( Okay, it's not Calvin and Hobbs but it's a start).

1775-LUMBERJACKS ATTACK THE ROYAL NAVY- One of the stranger engagements of the American Revolution. Captain Henry Mowat, RN, anchored his warship off Falmouth Maine (present day Portland) to reassert Royal authority on the Maine seacoast. Suddenly several little boats rowed out to his ship. At first he thought they were royalists come out to greet him. But when they scampered up on board he saw they were Maine lumberjacks wielding their huge double bladed axes. Mowat and his startled crew surrendered and were roughly taken into custody. It was the first time a warship was ever captured by axe.

The Maine men, not having any central authority or instructions about what exactly to do with prisoners eventually let them go. Once back on his ship Capt. Mowat ‘s revenge was to haul off and bombard the town with red-hot cannonballs, burning the town of Falmouth to the ground. The incident created a violent resentment in the colonies, many of whom still hoped for eventual reconciliation with the motherland.

1785 - British inventor Joseph Bramah patents the beer-pump handle. So pull us a dram for a pint of pure.-i.e. I’d like a glass of Guinness Stout, please.

1812- Napoleon left his palace in Paris to begin the March to Moscow.

1844-THE PHILAPELPHIA SECTARIAN RIOTS- in Philadelphia arguments between Irish and Protestant gangs over public funding over religious schools erupted into four days of rioting. 20 were killed, Catholic Churches were burned and the city placed under martial law. As news of the riots spread the Irish Catholic Bishop of New York warned the mayor that if one church were harmed in New York Irishmen would burn down the city. “We’ll make New York another Moscow!”- recalling that cities famous burning in 1812.

These are the first anti-immigrant nativist fighting in U.S. history. Also it was the first time Americans would have to understand that some immigrants could be loyal Americans without assimilating into an Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. Anti-Irish anger would seethe until respect was won on the bloody battlefields of the Civil War.
Another fact about the Philadelphia Riot was newspapermen Will & Frederick Langeheim point their daguerrotype box camera out of the window and photographed the troops around City Hall. It was the first News Photo.

1865- In Gainseville Alabama hard fighting rebel cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest received news of the fall of Richmond and the surrender of the armies of Lee and Joe Johnston. He and a friend went on an all night ride to meditate what to do. “If one road led to Hell and the other to Mexico, I would be indifferent as to which to take.”

Finally Forrest announced to his men his decision: they would not go to Mexico, and they would not continue on as guerrillas, they would surrender and go home. When the governor of Mississippi protested, Bedford Forrest growled: “ Any man who is in favor of further prosecution of this war is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum! The attempt to establish and independent confederacy has failed, we should now meet our responsibilities like men.”
And despite Sherman offering a price for Forrest ‘s head, saying “There can be no peace in the land until he is dead!” Nathan Bedford Forrest was allowed to go home in peace.

1887- Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show did it’s first performance in Europe. In London the English public, Several European kings and writer Oscar Wilde thrilled to displays of trick riding, wild red Indians, cowboys and little Annie Oakley the trickshooter.

1896 - 1st horseless carriage show in London. It featured 10 models.

1919- Mustapha Kemal, called Ataturk, is ordered to disband his Turkish Army at Samsun in accordance with the armistice agreement ending the Great War. Instead he declares a revolt and resists the Greek invasion. It is the beginning of modern Turkey.
One of the interesting conflicts in Turkey today is the Islamic fundamentalist movements coming up against the legacy of strict church-state separation and state espoused by Ataturk. Today in Turkey it is a state crime to even criticize Ataturk.

1927- Commander Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett fly over the North Pole in a Fokker monoplane called the Josephine Ford. He beats by two days famed Norwegian explorer Roald Ammundsen who flew over the Pole in a dirigible built by Mussolini. Remember Lindbergh hadn’t flown across the Atlantic yet and it was ten years before the Hindenberg disaster, so a dirigible was considered much safer than an aeroplane.

Commander Byrd won the Medal of Honor and became a household name. A modern biography based on his diary now contends he really didn’t go over the Pole as he claimed but turned back 150 miles short. He was too drunk to tell anyway. Although a former World War One pilot by now he had grown terrified of flying.

1932 – London’s Piccadilly Circus first lit by electricity.

1935- The First Belch heard on nationwide radio. Melvin Purvis (the FBI man who killed John Dillinger) was doing an ad for Fleischmann’s Yeast when he committed the offense, which was dubbed “The Burp Heard Round the World”.

1937- ACTOR’S SHOWDOWN WITH L.B.MAYER- In a dramatic confrontation the heads of the Screen Actor’s Guild Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone go to MGM boss Louis B. Mayer’s beach house during a Sunday garden party. While IATSE-Capone mob gangster Willie Bioff stood by to give Mayer moral support, Montgomery told Mayer he had a 96% strike vote from the actors, so if Mayer didn’t recognize SAG as the sole bargaining agent for actors they would paralyze Hollywood monday morning!

Mayer considered, then gave in. Bioff got from the actors a deal that the IA would back off if the actors would withdraw their support from a rival union to IATSE’s organizing the behind the scene’s technical artists. That night 5600 actors and friends celebrated at Hollywood Legion Stadium. Next morning 200 waited in line to get their SAG cards including Garbo and Jean Harlow.

1937- Burne Hogarth began drawing the Tarzan comic strip. Hal Foster had been in contract negotiations with the syndicate over money and the right to his originals. He had created Prince Valiant as a bargaining chip when the syndicate called his bluff by giving the Tarzan job to Hogarth. Foster went on to greater glory with Valiant but never forgave Burne.

1950- The French Premier Schumann warned that more deadly world wars would occur in Europe unless Europeans started to unite as one country.

1950- Former Naval reserve officer and pulp science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, his book defining his new religion Scientology.

1955- HAPPY BIRTHDAY KERMIT THE FROG! Washington D.C. station puts on a young Univ of Maryland grad named Jim Henson as filler before the TODAY Show. He antics with his green frog called Kermit, fashioned from fabric from one of his mothers old green coats. The Muppets are born.

1960- Dr. Gregory Pincus introduced the Birth Control Pill Enovid-10, aka The Pill.

1961- John F. Kennedy's newly appointed head of the FCC, Newton Minow, did his first major address to a luncheon of top television executives. In his speech he blasted them for TV’s mindless content and violence. He called television: " A Vast Wasteland."

What makes it historic is it's the first time anybody had noticed just how lousy TV is and how badly we are all addicted to it. In the show Gilligan’s Island, the boat they were on was named the Minnow for Newton Minnow.

1970- THE MORATORIUM DAY- Largest of the nationwide youth protests against the U.S. War in Vietnam and Cambodia. President Nixon was obsessed by the protests. He had a bunker command post built under the White House where video monitors observed the “long haired peaceniks” outside. When Nixon told his staff he was going to go watch some football, he meant he was going to brood over the monitors. Retired CIA director Bill Gates confessed in his memoirs that as a young operative he took the day off to go protest as well as did a lot of other CIA agents. In Chicago young student and future comic John Belushi was dragged off by friends after being struck in the chest with a fired tear gas shell.

In 2000 it was revealed that President Nixon was so depressed at this time, he was taking a mood altering prescription barbiturate named Dilantin. It was given him by Jack Dreyfus of the Dreyfus Fund without a doctors permission. He was so out of it that Secretary of Defense John Schlesinger ordered military and nuclear installations to ignore the orders of our stoned President, unless first cleared by the Defense Department.

1978- Italian authorities found the bullet-riddled body of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in a car trunk. He had been kidnapped and murdered by a left wing extremist group called the Red Brigade. The cruelty of the act backfired on the brigade. They lost any public support they may have had and were soon gone.

1995- The Center of Disease Control published findings on a new deadly strain of virus appearing near Kinshasha Zaire. They called it the Ebola Virus.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who’s foot became the measurement for The Foot? Likewise his knuckle became “the inch”.

Answer. I heard it was Charlemagne, but in England it was King Henry I. (1135)

Quiz: Who’s foot became the measurement for The Foot? Likewise his knuckle became “the inch”.

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Who coined the term “ A last ditch effort”..?
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History for 5/8/2013
Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakhunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius, Enrique Inglesias, Don Rickles is 87, Bob Clampett would be 100!

1429-St. Joan of Arc saved the City of Orleans. The English had never captured the capitol of the Loire Valley but were besieging it from a string of powerful fortresses built around it. Joan with her French knights John the Bastard, Etienne the Furious One and their retainers had to storm these strategic castles one by one to break the siege.

At one point in the battle for a point in a castle wall called La Tourelles and huge English knight stood in the breach hewing down Frenchman with his two-handed broadsword. He seemed invincible until a knight named Jean De Montesclere brought up one of those newfangled hand held cannons that sat on your shoulder. From a safe distance Jean put a stone bullet through the Englishman. The unknown knight was the first man ever shot by a gun.

1587- The Roanoke Colony settlers left England for Virginia. When a supply ship reached their colony in 1590, the houses were intact, but the colonists had all disappeared, leaving no remains or signs of violence. Only a mysterious message CROTOAN carved on a tree. Their fate has never been determined, but a recent theory claims they moved to an Indian village near Hatteras.

1776- While the American Congress was debating whether to declare independence or not the British Navy reminded them what was at stake. This day two warships, HMS Roebuck and Liverpool tried to shoot their way up the Delaware River to Philadelphia They were turned back by the Yankee shore batteries.

1778- Sir George Clinton arrived in occupied Philadelphia to relieve British commander Sir William Howe. Clinton’s instructions from London were that since the French had entered the American Revolution on the American side, he was to abandon the rebel capitol of Philadelphia and consolidate British forces in New York. Instead of being reinforced with more troops he was to detach a few regiments for an attack on Saint Lucia in the Caribbean.

1824- Ludwig Von Beethoven performed his Ninth (Choral) Symphony and Missa Solemnis in concert for the first time. Even though he was stone deaf he was still in demand as a conductor. The orchestra trained themselves to ignore the Maestro's baton waving and follow the lead of the concert-master ( first violinist ). It was said when they finished and the audience was cheering, poor Beethoven was still flapping his arms about and moaning the melody, unaware of the sound of his own voice.

1874- Massachusetts adopted a ten-hour workday for women, down from 12-14 hours.

1878- David Hughes invents the Microphone while trying to get over bronchitis.

1910-Russian-Jewish immigrant glove salesman Schmuel Gelpfisch married Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville performer Jesse Lasky. Gelpfisch later changed his name to Goldfish, then Goldwyn. He and his father in law Jesse Lasky went into the new flicker business and started the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They moved to Hollywood and in 1915 they merged with Paramount Pictures and Goldwyn merged into Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. Both became top Hollywood producers.

1912- movie studio Famous Players Lasky born. In 1914 they changed their name to Paramount Pictures.

1933- When the Rockefellers were building their huge office complex Rockefeller Center in New York City they decided to get one of the greatest living Mexican painter Diego Rivera to design the murals for the interior of the atrium ’Man at the Crossroads". This despite the fact that Rivera was well known as a radical communist.

Soon Nelson Rockefeller noticed Rivera was painting in the center of the mural a huge heroic portrait of Lenin stepping on John D. Rockefeller’s face! Over Rivera’s protests Rockefeller ordered the mural painted over and no record of it’s existence ever kept. But on the night before the painting was to be destroyed Swiss art student Lucienne Bloch slipped a camera into her shirt. While Frida Kahlo distracted the guards she took the only photos of the mural for posterity.

1943-Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"- Ooohh Wolfy !

1945-Nazi's repeat the surrender signing done for Eisenhower now for the Russians in Berlin. The announcements are made, V-E day celebrations break out around the world.

1954-DIEN BIEN PHU- The Communist Viet Minh guerrillas decisively defeat the French in Indochina. The French strategy was to place a forward base in the heart of the guerrilla infested jungle to lure the Vietnamese into the open and defeat them. Instead they got a modern version of the Little Big Horn with the French Legionairies going down under endless waves of attacking Vietnamese. The guerrilla forces had carried large howitzers in small pieces up mountaintops and assembled them to rain shells down on the French.

In the famed tradition of the anonymous Foreign Legionaire, one of the most decorated sergeants was a former Nazi U-boat captain. Another was a Romanian Jewish holocaust survivor who had been tracking down the camp guard who had killed his family in Dachau. Once an Israeli paratrooper now a foreign legionaire the Romanian jumped from foxhole to foxhole ignoring the enemy shooting at him until he found his prey and exacted revenge for his family. He survived the battle and was cleared by a French courts martial, who ruled (tongue in cheek, I suspect ) it could not be proved that the specific bullet that killed the Nazi didn’t come from an enemy gun. Is this a screenplay, or what ?

1962-"A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" opened on Broadway.

1962- Director Joe Mankiewicz shot the climactic spectacle scene of Cleopatra –Elizabeth Taylor, entering Rome through the Arch of Titus on a mobile sphinx surrounded by thousands of extras. The shot had been delayed six months after a stunt woman fell off an elephant and then the light in the Forum had not been right. When she appeared in the scene the thousands of Italian extras were supposed to shout "Hail Cleopatra!" but instead they shouted "Liz! Liz!"

1973-A.I.M. Indian movement surrendered Wounded Knee to the F.B.I..

1978-In court postman David Berkowitz confessed to being "Son-of-Sam" or the "44 caliber killer", the serial killer who terrorized New York City by shooting to death teenage couples at random and toying with letters to journalist Pete Hamill . Berkowitz said he received his orders to shoot people from his neighbor's dog "Sam". .

1991- President Bill Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, propositioned waitress Paula Jones at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. With her legal bills financed by the Clinton-hating Neo-Cons, her case went as far as a Supreme Court. They decided to allow her to sue a President while in office. Clinton’s attorney didn’t help things with statements like :" Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and who knows who you’ll turn up. "She got a lot of publicity, an $850,000 settlement and a nude spread in Penthouse Magazine.

1996- South Africa adopted it's first post-apartheid constitution.

1998- The impotence drug Viagra gains national prominence when retired Senator Bob Dole confessed on the Larry King talk show that he participated in the drugs test trials and the had "thoroughly enjoyed himself."
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who coined the term “ A last ditch effort”..?

Answer: Dutch leader William of Orange. When his country was invaded by Louis XIV France in 1685, When the English Duke of Buckingham suggested he admit defeat. Prince William said “ One can only admit defeat when you die in the last ditch.” William drove out the invaders and eventually became King of England as well.

Quiz: Who coined the term “ A last ditch effort”..?

Yesterdays Quiz: According to German Emperor Charles V, when speaking to God, what language should you use?
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History for 5/7/2013
Birthday: Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilyich Tschaikowsky, Gary Cooper, Gabby Hayes, Robert Browning, Marcus Loew of Loews Theater chain, Darin McGavin, Edward Land (inventor of the Polaroid lens and camera), Amy Heckerling, Traci Lords

Greek Festival of the Birth of Apollo.

401 B.C. SOCRATES DIED. Contrary to modern perception not everyone in ancient Greece loved philosophy. The Greeks had the same conflicts we have now between faith, tradition and rational thought and science. The scientist Anaxagoras was run out of town for saying that the Sun wasn’t Phoebus in a chariot but a burning rock floating in space. Euripides the playwright was also in trouble for doubting the Gods existence.

But Socrates pushed the argument to its most extreme conclusion. The Athenian conservatives convicted Socrates of blasphemy and subverting the public morals. All hoped Socrates would just pay a fine and shut up, but Socrates unrepentant stance forced the law to go all the way to the death penalty. He was ordered to commit suicide by being given a cup of Hemlock. Actually it wasn’t a cup., the poison was held in a leaf of Romaine Lettuce, then called Lettuce of the Isle of Cos. His friend Crito said “You don’t deserve to die!” To which he replied: “You weep because you would rather I did deserve death? ”

Socrates students like Plato and Xenophon continued on and became great writers on their own. My favorite story was that Socrates wife Xantippe was always yelling at him for wasting his time philosophizing when he should be working at his real job as a stone-cutter. After one loud tirade, she dumped a pisspot's contents on his head. Socrates looked at his friends and replied:" After thunder one should expect some rain."

558AD- The dome of the great Byzantine basilica the Haghia Sophia collapsed under its own weight. The Emperor Justinian ordered it immediately rebuilt stronger.

1661- When it became obvious that King Charles II was going to be restored to the English throne, radical Puritans like poet John Milton thought it best to go into hiding. Many urged the king to hang the old blind poet with the other men who caused his father Charles Ist to be beheaded. But Charles chose to forgive and ignore the old man. The positive result was now that Milton was barred from politics, he could focus on his great epic poems like “Paradise Lost”.

1718- The FIRST BOATLOAD OF FRENCH COLONISTS LAND IN LOUISIANA- Sieur de la Moyne- Bienville established a fort and trading post on some low ground between the Mississippi and Lake Ponchartrain. He named the place for Phillip of Orleans, then ruler of France in the name of the child King Louis XV. The French and Dutch always had a problem with their American colonies, in that nobody wanted to leave home to move there. One solution the French thought up was sweeping the streets of all the hookers, cutthroats and riffraff and shipping them all to America. Though it wasn't exactly "Pilgrim's Progress", this influx of cardsharks and sportin' ladies helped New Orleans quickly establish it's rep as one of the wildest towns of the New World.

1760- A British merchant ship named the Friendship arrived in Virginia from Barbados. On board for his first sea voyage and his first sight of America was a young Scottish apprentice named John Paul, who we would know later as US Navy captain John Paul Jones.

1763- Chief Pontiac attacked Fort Detroit. Angry over British treatment after the French and Indian War , Pontiac had united all the Great Lakes tribes with their French trapper friends to attack all the forts simultaneously from Illinois to Maine. He later took the fort’s fat commander Captain Cambell hostage and gave him to the allied Chippewas who tomahawked him and ate his heart. Yum!

1789- To complete the break with Mother England the Church of England in America renamed itself the Episcopalian Church.

1795- Throughout the French Revolution one region of France, La Vendee’, stubbornly stayed loyal to the monarchy and waged a long guerrilla war. Several French generals were sent to pacify the province but were unsuccessful. This day young whiz kid Napoleon Bonaparte learned he had been posted to the Vendee’. He immediately protested the posting and requested duty elsewhere. He recognized this move would be bad for his career but beyond that Nappy never wanted to be part of a civil war. Even after Waterloo, when he could have stayed in power by enforcing military control he refused because it would have meant fighting other Frenchmen. “There is no honor in spilling the blood of Frenchmen.”

1800- The US Congress divided up the Northwest Territories, separating Indiana from Ohio.

1847-American Medical Assoc. founded.

1863- Hard-fighting Confederate major general Earl 'Buck' Van Dorn was killed, but not in battle. A Tennessee doctor named J.G. Peters made an appointment with the general, went up behind him while he was at his desk and shot him in the back of the head. Peters then calmly got back into his carriage and rode to Union lines. Peters wasn't a Yankee assassin. He was expressing his disapproval of the fact that the handsome Van Dorn was having an affair with his wife.

1864-The WILDERNESS- LEE MET GRANT FOR THE FIRST TIME- Southern General Robert E. Lee lured Ulysses Grant's army into a dense tangled forest called the Wilderness and defeated him. The superior numbers of the Yankee troops became meaningless crawling about in the thick woods. At one point when the rebel line was in danger of breaking Lee rode to the front himself but was stopped by a Texas brigade. “Texan’s Always Move Them! “ Lee cried, and the inspired Texans threw back the enemy.

That night hundreds of wounded left on the ground burned to death because the cannons had started a brush fire. Grant suffered as many casualties as at previous Union defeats like Chancellorsville yet instead of retreating to Washington to make excuses to Lincoln he circled around and attacked again. The men cheered wildly when they saw Grant quietly sitting atop his horse directing the columns back around for another try. Grant exhibited an iron-like reserve in public but that night alone in his tent he broke down and sobbed like a child. The two armies will maneuver and duel for 60 days straight until Grant boxed Lee into his Richmond defenses.

1904 - Flexible Flyer trademark registered

1915- THE LUSITANIA- The Civilian oceanliner Luisitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. 1,198 drowned, including many Americans. The Kaiser later gave a medal to the U-boat Captain Walter Schweige. These acts outraged American opinion and led us into World War I, despite many pro-German immigrants. It was revealed later that the reason Lusitania sank so quickly, just 18 minutes - even Captain Schweige was surprised- was that it's cargo hold was full of explosives.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill fought the German U-boat blockade by covertly transporting purchased American weapons on hospital ships, civilian ocean liners and let some British freighters illegally fly the flags of neutral countries. The German government knew that the Lusitania had been classified by the British admiralty a military cruiser. The German government apologized to the American government and stopped the unrestricted U-boat campaign for two years, but the Lusitania shifted neutral U.S. public sympathy irrevocably to the Franco-English side.

1919- Defeated Germany learned just how bad the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were going to hit them. They expected bad times but were shocked at just how severe and steep the reparation payments were going to be. Millions were to be paid in indemnities and large areas of their industrial heartland would be under foreign occupation. The anger over this treaty did a lot to stoke the fires for revenge that would bring Hitler to power.

1926- Gangster Al Capone killed 3 men with a baseball bat over dinner.

1937-Nobel Prize winning writer William Faulkner hired by MGM Studios, earning $500 a week. He celebrated by going on a two week long drinking binge. When MGM's Head of Writing Sam Marx had him tracked down to an Oakie migrant camp in the Imperial Valley, he was dragged off boozily whining: " Ah wanna write for Mickey Mouse !!"

1939- Los Angeles Union Station opened. It was built on top of L.A's original China Town.

1941-Glen Miller records the "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" for RCA. the first gold record million seller.

1942- Battle of the Coral Sea-The U.S. Navy, suffering only defeats up till then, stops a Japanese task force. This is the first engagement in which the two fleets never saw each other, but fought long distance with carrier launched airplanes. Veterans commented that one of the sadder losses was when the aircraft carrier USS Lexington went down, she took the fleet's supply of 6 Bugs Bunny cartoons with her. War is Hell.

1945- V.E. Day. Grand Admiral Doenitz, the successor to Adolph Hitler, officially surrendered the Third Reich to the allies. They repeat the ceremony to the Russians next day. Admiral Doenitz said after the signing:" I feel we shall not see our flag fly over a prosperous Germany in our lifetime." Well, not in your lifetime, Karl....

1945- German fighter ace Eric Hartmann celebrated the end of the war by going up in his Messerschmitt ME109f and shooting down one final allied plane. He caught the Ilushyin Russian fighter doing a victory roll. Hartman was called the Black Devil of the Ukraine, because he shot down 352 enemy planes. After ten years in a Siberian prison camp, he went home to his farm in Holstein and lived peacefully.

1945- In a top secret test at Los Alamos the Manhattan Project scientists detonated in the desert a single blast 100,000 pounds of TNT. This was to measure the effect of a blast that big and provide a control to gauge the effectiveness of the Atomic Bomb. 100,000 pounds of TNT became known as one Kiloton. The Hiroshima A-Bomb was 20 kilotons,
the largest thermonuclear device was 50 kilotons.

1966- “Monday Monday” by the Mammas and the Poppas becomes #1 in the pop charts.

1996- Comedian Martin Lawrence went berserk and ran down a main intersection in Van Nuys Cal. raving and waving a pistol. When asked to explain himself, Lawrence blamed it on “Dehydration.”

1998- Apple Computers introduced the iMac.

2009- Decorated professional soldier Lt. Dan Choi directly challenged the US military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ban on gay soldiers by outing himself on Rachel Maddow’s national news show. He was discharged by July, but his plea helped make the case for gay servicepeople. In Dec 2010, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed by Congress with overwhelming popular support.

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Quiz: According to German Emperor Charles V, when speaking to God, what language should you use?

Answer: Emperor Charles V (1515-1556), was called the man who married Europe. He was King of Spain ( which then included all the Americas), and was the Emperor Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. He once said “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.”

http://blogs.indiewire.com/animationscoop/interview-tom-sito-on-the-history-of-computer-animation