Question: In honor of the Sixth anniversary of this daily trivia quiz, I’ll ask one of the first questions: When Phidippides ran the first Marathon to give a message to Athens about the Battle of Marathon, what did he say? Give me the answer in Attic Greek.

Yesterdays Quiz: Who said “ A throne is just an overdone piece of furniture.”……….?
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History for 9/24/2012
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Vitellius, Duke Albrecht Wallenstein, Chief Justice John Marshall, Francis Scott Key, Jim Henson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Raft, Chief Joseph, Sheila MacCrae, Anthony Newley. Phil Hartman, Mean Joe Greene, Pedro Almodovar, Jim Henson, Brad Bird is 55.

768 A.D. The two sons of Pepin the Short , Carloman and Charles, inherited the kingdom of the Franks, or France. Carloman then conveniently died, so Charles goes on to become Charlemagne- Charles the Great. The Franks had the strange custom of inheritance. Instead of primogeniture- eldest son inheriting all, they divided all their lands among all their male siblings evenly, who would immediately start fighting one another. Carloman supposedly died of food poisoning, but getting rid of rivals with poison was common in those days.

1561- Mary Queen of Scots first met Presbyterian reformer John Knox. The beautiful young monarch, reared in Catholic France, attempted to win the sour old preacher to her side. Historian Unfortunately Knox was not impressed by Mary’s personal charm and howled against her entire reign. He thought women as rulers were “an abomination in the sight of God.” When she was deposed and imprisoned in England he wrote Queen Elizabeth Ist constantly urging Mary be beheaded. John Knox also called Queen Elizabeth a beast and whore.

1688- King Louis XIV of France declared war on Germany and moved his armies towards the Rhine. This had the unexpected consequence of deciding who became King of England. Dutch Prince William of Orange was waiting for the opportunity to invade and overthrow his father-in-law King James II Stuart, who many English despised for being a Catholic. But William would never have dared such a move if Louis and his large French Navy who were allies of James, were watching him. Once Louis turned his attention eastward, William crossed the Channel with no trouble. William overthrew James in short order and became King William III of England.

1789- Congress passes the First Judiciary Act, which calls for an Attorney General and a Supreme Court. John Jay was first Chief Justice. When Washington formed the first cabinet, Thomas Jefferson asked if he could be Attorney General as well as Secretary of State, because representing a little country with no foreign policy was boring and had nothing to do.

1805- LE GRANDE ARMEE- Napoleon’s army had been cooling it’s heels for weeks on the beach at Boulogne waiting to invade England. This was not likely since the British Navy kept sinking the French Navy. While waiting in camp, Napoleon took the time to drill his troops to an efficiency far superior to any other army of the period. England meanwhile had subsidized Russia and Austria into declaring war on France.

This day Napoleons Grand Army turned around and began an epic march in 5 separate columns across Europe from the English Channel to suddenly appear in Czechoslovakia. No one had ever moved troops so fast. Napoleon left Paris that evening with his Imperial Guard. There was a rainstorm and his famous felt hat got waterlogged and drooped around his ears like a black sombrero. Napoleon moved his Guard veterans like motorized infantry of the future by piling them into farm wagons.

1806- The North German Kingdom of Prussia gave Napoleon’s France an ultimatum to get out of Germany or else! Prussia at the time was considered the most superior military power in the world, but the army of Frederick the Great was now a ghost of it’s former self ruled by a timid king. Napoleon destroyed it and overran Prussia in 6 weeks. Prussia later became the kingdom German unified around in 1870.

1869- BLACK FRIDAY- A scheme by robber barons Big Jim Fisk and Jay Gould to corner the US gold market backfired into a major financial panic. The two tycoons had thought they had convinced the gullible President Ulysses Grant into halting sale of government bullion. The night before Gould tried to bribe Grants brother-in-law James Corbin with $100,00 to ensure the President wouldn’t change his mind.

But Grant smelled a rat and ordered millions in Federal gold put on the market to bring the prices down. Gold hoarders saw their investment shrink overnight. This day the value of gold dropped in three hours from $160 and ounce to $34. Up in the special part of the N.Y. Stock Exchange nicknamed the Gold Room, dozens speculators were ruined. One investor ran up and down shouting “Shoot Me! Someone Shoot Me!” “Let each man drag out his own corpse.”-Gould later testified.

Jay Gould recovered and died in 1892 worth $70 million In 1872 Big Jim Fisk was shot dead in the lobby of the Grand Central Hotel by a jilted suitor of Fisk’s mistress actress Josie Mansfield. And Grant the Civil War hero was labeled a financial dunce by Washington insiders.

1890- Under pressure from the US Government before getting statehood for Utah, the Mormon Church officially renounced polygamy.

1906- Teddy Roosevelt designated Devils Tower Wyoming as our first national monument. Teddy’s desire to preserve natural resources was blocked by Congressmen lobbied by rich developers. So he circumvented Congress and by Presidential Executive order declared them national monuments.

1934- Frank Thomas’s first day as a Walt Disney Animator.

1936- Babe Ruth's last appearance in a baseball game. Yankees lost to Boston 5-0.

1936- Noel Coward's play 'Private Lives' opened.

1938- Bob Clampett's cartoon "Porky in Wackyland" ( Foo!)

1938- Tennis champion Dan Budge won the US Open in Forrest Hills. Budge became the first person to win all four major tennis meets in one year- Wimbledon, French Open now called Roland Garros, Australian Open and US Open

1941- This day the Japanese Consul in Honolulu was instructed by the Imperial War Ministry to quietly begin gathering information about the US Fleet in Pearl Harbor.

1944- President Franklin Roosevelt had been criticized by Republicans for wasting money in needless wartime excesses. This day he defeated his critics with humor when they accused him of sending a Navy destroyer to the Aleutian Islands just to retrieve his Scottie dog Fallah. He said in a speech” Now I am used to personal attacks, My family is used to personal attacks, but Fallah- isn’t.(laughter) He’s Scottish, you know….and, well, he hasn’t been the same dog since.”

1953- US Army scientist Frank Olsen jumped out of a NY hotel window to his death after getting high on LSD given him as part of a CIA monitored program. Olsen’s widow sued twenty years later when she finally found out the circumstances of her husbands death.

1953-UPA's "Unicorn in the Garden" directed by Bill Hurtz, based on the cartoon style and story by James Thurber.

1953- The movie "The Robe" premiered, the first movie in CinemaScope. It's success was part of a wave of 'Sword & Sandal" epics and fostered many imitation wide screen processes- Superama,VistaVision, Dynarama, WarnerVision, TotalScope-etc. There had been earlier experiments with wide screen - Abel Gance's 1925 Napoleon, which used three 35mm images shown simultaneously, and Cimmarron 1930, which was a true wide screen 70mm film starring a very young John Wayne. It was superceded by 1967 by the more advanced Panavision lens. Today in Hollywood we still call a wide screen picture a "Scope" picture.

1955- President Eisenhower suffered a major heart attack while playing golf. Secretary of State Allen Foster Dulles and other White House staffers run things without even telling Vice President Nixon.

1960- The first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise is launched.

1960- The "Howdy Doody Time" children's show canceled after thirteen years. The show remains a pivotal memory in the minds of thousands of American baby-boomers who grew up in the fifties. As the last song and the last credits rolled by, just before the cameras switched off, Clarabell the mute clown goes up to the lens and in a haunting voice said; "Goodbye, Kids."

1968- T.V. show "60 Minutes" debuts. Mike Wallace was pared with Harry Reasoner. The show was originally aired Tuesday nights at 10PM and fared poorly in the ratings. When it was moved to Sundays at 7:00PM it became a weekly institution.

1977- The TV series “The Love Boat “debuted.

1988- The Godfather of Soul Music James Brown got a little crazy sometimes. This day he burst into his office complex in Georgia waving a pistol and shotgun and demanded everyone stop using his washroom! After locking the bathrooms he led police on high speed chase through Georgia and South Carolina, only stopping when the cops shot out his tires. He rode the rims till they collapsed. James Brown did 2 years for being under the influence of drugs. Hay!
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who said “ A throne is just an overdone piece of furniture.”……….?

Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte, in response to a general who declared they must defend the throne.

Currently there is still on Amazon an erroneous page saying The CG Story by me will be out on Sept 23rd, today. This is incorrect. My upcoming history of computer graphics will be out in the new year 2013.
The book is now called MOVING INNOVATION, A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION (MIT Press) and will be available for Pre- order in December.

Quiz: Who said “ A throne is just an overdone piece of furniture.”……….?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: In Bram Stokers original Dracula novel, how did Van Helsing finally off the Count?
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History for 9/23/2012
Birthdays: Euripides-484BC, Victoria Woodhull, Walter Lippmann, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Mickey Rooney is 92, Julio Inglesias, Walter Pidgeon, Louise Nevelson, Jason Alexander is 53, Mary Kay Place, Harry Connick Jr,, Bruce Springsteen is 63, William McGuffey*

*McGuffey was the educator and author of "the McGuffey Readers", a standard school textbook so successful, that by 1860 the U.S. had an 80% literacy rate.

480 BC THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS- Themistocles and the Athenian fleet defeated the giant armada of Xerxes the Great King of Persia and threw back his invasion. Xerxes was so angry he had his top Phoenician captains beheaded. This battle assured the Golden Age of Greek culture would flourish uninterrupted with democratic Athens at its’ center. The playwright Aeschylus fought in the ranks and Sophocles led the chorus of nude boys dancing and singing in the victory celebrations. Themistocles laid the foundation for Athenian power by insisting she built a large navy rather than an army and concentrate on trade rather than territorial conquest. But Themistocles liked to make money too, and used his offices to pad his fortune, which eventually got him exiled. But not before in another moment of originality he set himself up histories first known foreign bank account as a private slush fund. Aeschylus in his old age was supposedly killed by an eagle who dropped a turtle upon his head, mistaking his bald skull for a rock. Ouch.

Greek Chronicles tell us that also on this same day in 480 BC- Glycon of Syracuse defeated the huge Cathaginian host of Hamilcar and saved Sicily for Greece. Hamilcar spent the battle burning up animal sacrifices to the Gods for good omens. When he saw he was losing Hamilcar threw himself on the fire. Not a bad solution because Carthage’s tradition was to crucify generals who lost battles.

1326- Queen Isabella the "She-Wolf of France" and her lover Edmund Mortimer invade England to overthrow her openly gay husband, King Edward II. Sounds like a soap opera, doesn't it ?

1568- English merchantman John Hawkins and his 3 slave trading ship were blown by a hurricane into the harbor of San Juan de Ulua, the staging area for the fabulous treasure fleets that carry the gold of Peru to Spain. The Spanish and English worked out a temporary peace but on this day the Spanish Viceroy ordered his men to attack and kill most of the English heretics. Only two ships got away and one carried a young clergyman's son from Devon who then on nursed a grudge against Spain - Francis Drake.

1642- The first commencement ceremony at Harvard College.

1779- "I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT !" Captain John Paul Jones on the U.S.S. BonHomme Richard defeated the larger British H.M.S. Serapis in an epic sea duel off Cape Falmouth, England. The two ships grappled each other side by side, pounded away with heavy cannon and fought hand-to-hand. The ships were so close that men could jump through the gun portals from one ship to another. At one point Bonhomme Richard was burning from stem to stern, sinking and all her guns out of action. But John Paul Jones refused to give up. The American crew thought their pint-sized Scots captain had lost his reason. When gunnery Ensign Grubb tried to haul down the Stars & Stripes Jones knocked him down with a pistol butt. English Captain Pearson overheard Jones arguing with his officers about surrender and called aloud "Sir, do you strike your colors, sir?" That’s when John Paul Jones shouted his famous retort: "I have not yet begun to fight!"

To make matters worse the other American ship in the area the USS Alliance was manned by a jealous captain named Launnay. He ordered a broadside fired into the Bonhomme Richard! Launnay hoped that by helping the Englishman kill Jones he could then finish off the Briton and take all the credit for the victory. Jones personally ran over to a ten pounder cannon whose crew had been killed, loaded it and fired it himself, bringing down the Serapis’ mainmast.

Finally it was English Captain Pearson who gave up. The Bon Homme was so shot to pieces it sank so the victors had to ride home on the Serapis. The point of the battle for Jones was trying to raid a British merchant convoy, and the convoy got away, but the symbolic victory to Americans and French was significant. John Paul Jones became a legend on the English Channel. In 2002 the wreck of the Bonhomme Richard was discovered 7 miles off the English coast and is being explored.

1780-"TREASON MOST FOUL !" General Benedict Arnold, fed up with being ignored for promotion by the American high command, planned to change sides by betraying West Point to the British. This was the huge American fortress that would give Britain control of the Hudson River and so split the rebellious colonies in half.

Major John Andre' of British intelligence had a meeting with Arnold and was passing back through the lines when he was apprehended by some Yankee militia. These rascals skulked between the armies robbing anyone who chanced their way but when they discovered incriminating documents in his boot they turned Andre over to the authorities. Because Andre was out of uniform he was hanged as a spy. This morning Benedict Arnold found out Andre had been arrested and the jig was up just as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Lafayette were riding over for breakfast !

Arnold escaped to the warship HMS Vulture waiting down river while his wife Peggy stalled Gen. Washington and party in the parlor. When Washington learned of Arnold's treason and freaked Peggy feigned a fit of hysterics. Disheveled, with her baby at her breast she shrieked to the horrified Washington :"They're putting hot irons in my Head! Hot irons in my Head!!". She was put to bed and later slipped away to safety. It wasn't known until 1930 when British Army Intelligence documents were made public that loyalist Peggy Arnold was not only deep in the scheme but had been the chief inspiration of Arnold's changing sides. When Peggy died in London of old age, a locket containing the picture of Major Andre was found around her neck..

1803- Battle of Assaye- The Maharatta Rajahs of the Deccan are defeated by a young British general named Arthur Wellesley who Napoleon would meet twelve years later as the Duke of Wellington at a place called Waterloo. Wellington in retirement said Assaye was still his toughest fight.

1806- LEWIS and CLARK RETURN to St. Louis, their starting off point, after two years exploring the West to the Pacific. In all that time they only lost one man to disease and almost never fired their guns in anger.

1845- After only six weeks of U.S. rule, angry Los Angeleanos attack Commodore Stockton's home. The War with Mexico hadn't broken out yet but American and Mexican paramilitary expeditions (called Filibusters) angled for power in California due to the loose and confused control from Mexico City. Mexican-Californian rancheros themselves frequently defied the government authorities, giving rise to the Zorro stories.

1846- The planet Neptune discovered by Johann Gottleib Gala.

1862- writer Leo Tolstoy married Sophie Behrs.

1862- Battle of Wood Lake- Minnesota militia put down the Great Santee Sioux Uprising led by Chief Little Crow. The Sioux had set up an ambush in the tall grass on either side of a road but the hungry Army troops steered their wagons right into the fields to look for left over potatoes. The Indians had to reveal their position and fire before they were run over.

1908- Giants batter Fred Merkle hit the winning run in a pennant game with the Chicago Cubs. But in running the bases he neglected to touch second base so his run was disallowed and the game was declared a tie. They replayed the game the following day and the Cubs won the pennant. Thereafter Merkle's nickname became Bonehead Merkle.

1912- "Cohen Collects a Debt" Max Sennet's first film comedy featuring the Keystone Kops.

1915- The German submarine U-9 shows the world the power of submarines by sinking three big British battle cruisers all in one day. The HMS Hogue, Aboukir and Monmouth were torpedoed and sent to the bottom.

1921- The Band-Aid self adhesive bandage introduced. A scientist at Johnson &Johnson invented it for his wife who kept cutting herself in the kitchen. Supposedly the skin tone color, which doesn't seem to match anybodies skin, was her skin coloring.

1933- At a dedication ceremony Adolf Hitler broke ground for the construction of Germany’s Autobahn system- 1400 miles of modern freeway. One story says Hitler himself conceived the idea since he was a lifelong auto enthusiast. But that is untrue. German designers as early as 1913 were inventing the road features common to today’s motorists- the Blending Lane and Clover Leaf, Fast Lanes and meridian divided roads.

1939- At the World’s Fair in New York a time capsule was buried not to be opened until the year 6939. It contains a Bible, a mail order catalog and newsreels of President Franklin Roosevelt.

1939- Sigmund Freud died at age 83. Suffering from inoperable cancer of the jaw, he had his doctor euthanize him with a lethal shot of cocaine.

1942- Erwin Rommel the Desert Fox left his his Afrika Korps at El Alamein and flew home to Germany to be treated for acute diphtheria. He missed most of the battle, but returned when things were going badly.

1942-Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Grove start the "Manhattan Project", the building of a "cosmic-super bomb" (the A-Bomb). Hungarian Professor Leo Szilard had been pestering the U.S. government since 1938 to do something before the Hitler made one first. Finally the War Dept. gave the go ahead to collect the finest physicists in the free world to create a super bomb. Scientists like Richard Fenyman and Enrico Ferme would arrive for work at an office in downtown Santa Fe and be immediately whisked out the back in a sealed truck to the top secret lab complex at Los Alamos.

The project was so secret that they were warned if they breathed a word about it the government would make sure they "disappeared' for at least ten years ! Vice President Truman had no idea of the project until he was told the night Roosevelt died. Leo Szilard was never asked to join the team because the F.B.I. considered him 'politically suspect', yet we now know at least two scientists were Soviet spies, Dr. Karl Fuchs and Ted Hall.

1952- The "CHECKERS" SPEECH- Young Senator Richard Nixon saved his career as Eisenhower's running mate by going on nationwide T.V. and explaining away allegations of accepting improper gifts while a congressman. Included is a dog "checkers" for his kids. "He’s a good dog, and we’re gonna keep him." "My wife doesn't own a mink coat, she has a good Republican cloth-coat." Eisenhower was close to dumping the embattled senator from the ticket but the popular outcry of support after this speech but Nixon back on top. In effect he four-walled Ike into keeping him on the ticket.

1962- H& B's show The Jetsons' premiered. It was the first ABC show to be presented in color. Jane! Stop this Crazy Thing! Jane!

1964- Marc Chagalls’ paintings on the ceiling of the Paris Opera House unveiled.

1969- the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" premiered. Written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill. It made fortunes for stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who later started and independent film festival called Sundance.

1984-Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells met the Disney Animation Dept. and are pitched storyboards for the film Basil of Baker Street, later called the Great Mouse Detective. Eisner dictates memos to start the television animation division. Up to now their thinking had been to dismantle the animation department and earn income from the licensees of the existing library. Roy Disney was instrumental in insisting the animation division remain.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Bram Stokers original Dracula novel, how did Van Helsing finally off the Count?

Answer: Van Helsing stakes the Count in the 1931 movie. But in the original book, Jonathan Parker slashes Dracula’s throat with a Gurkha “Kukri” knife, while Mr Morris buries his Bowie knife in his chest.

Question: In Bram Stokers original Dracula novel, how did Van Helsing finally off the Count?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What was Bram Stokers’ real name?
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history for 9/22/2012
Birthdays: Anne of Cleves 1515- Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins, Mafioso Joe Valachi, Michael Farraday, Meryl Streep, John Houseman, Joanie Jett, Erich Von Stronheim, Tom Lasorda, Paul Muni, Debbie Boone, Scott Baio

480 BC. Themistocles and the Athenian fleet of 300 faced the 1,200 warships of Xerxes the Great King of Persia in the Bay of Salamis. This night at a war council the Greek admirals voted not to try to fight such mighty host but withdraw. Themistocles finding himself outvoted was so confident in their ability to win that he took a risk that could have cost his life. He sent a spy to Xerxes to tell him the Greeks were planning to flee so he should maneuver his fleet around them and cut off any hope of retreat. Xerxes fell for it and forced the engagement. The victory of Salamis assured the Golden Age of Athens.

287 AD.-THE THEBAN LEGION-One of the celebrated myths of the Middle Ages. A Roman general Maximian Herculius recruited an entire army unit from Christians in upper Egypt. In Gaul with the imperial army the Emperor Maximian orders sacrifices to the gods for victory. The Theban Legion refused to a man to participate in the pagan rituals. The emperor had every tenth man executed (to "decimate") and still they refused. Soon all 1,500 were executed. So much time and money was invested by the state in the training of veteran soldiers that it is unlikely that the practical Romans would massacre an entire legion, still, it's a good story.

1692- Seven witches hanged in Salem, Mass. When the daughter of the Royal Governor of the Massachusetts Colony was accused the Governor finally stepped in and stopped the madness. He overturned the decisions of the Salem court and ordered it's disbandment. These were the last witch executions in America.

1761- King George III’s coronation in London. Unlike his two George forebears who clung to their German Hanoverian roots, George III spoke English without an accent. All the great men of the day were there like Pitt the Elder, Edmund Burke and Dr. Samuel Johnson. In the crowd in front of Westminster Abbey, dazzled by all the pomp and circumstance, was a young colonist from America named John Hancock. Presented at court, he received from his sovereign’s hands a silver snuffbox. Ironically this was the very same Hancock whose bold signature would one day adorn the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

1776- Nathan Hale is hanged as a spy by the British in occupied New York City. The Connecticut schoolteacher had only been a spy for nine days until he was sniffed out and exposed by Colonel Robert Rogers, the French and Indian War hero who was now a Tory Loyalist. One account later by a English officer named Montrose was that Hale’s last words were a quote from Addison’s play Cato :”I regret that I have but one life to give for my country….”

1777- General John Burgoyne was considering falling back with his British army to Canada after being stopped at Saratoga New York. But this day he changed his mind after getting a message from General Henry Clinton who said he was marching north from New York City to rescue. Clinton didn’t get much further than White Plains, and the delay proved fatal to “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne and his army.

1792- The French Revolutionaries declare the Kingdom of France a Republic. 1828- SHAKA ZULU, The "Black Napoleon" assassinated. Shaka took the Zulu tribe from obscurity and created the largest centralized empire in sub-Saharan Africa. He created military units, tactics and societal structures that enabled the Zulu to take on the Boers and later the British Empire. In his old age Shaka's rule became increasingly harsh and arbitrary, so his brother Mbulazi killed him. Shaka's descendants run the Inkatha Freedom Party in South Africa today.

1910- 15 year old button sewer Bessie Abramowitz led the Great Chicago Garment Workers Strike.

1925- Lon Chaney’s horror classic film the Phantom of the Opera premiered.

1927- The Dempsey-Tunney championship fight. Tunney wins in the famous 'long count', meaning the referee delayed the count because Dempsey wouldn’t return to his neutral corner. The extra time allowed Tunney to recover his wits and continue the fight to victory. Jack Dempsey was world heavyweight champion for ten years but retired a year later.

1947- A C-54 Skymaster flies over the Atlantic using the first automatic pilot control.

1963- Davy Crockett at the Alamo with Fess Parker, premiered on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color TV show.

1964- The T.V. series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. premiered. “ Open Channel D Please..”

1964-Jerome Robbins’ “The Fiddler on the Roof “ opened on Broadway. In 1953 Robbins had named names to the MacCarthy HUAC committee to save his career. Now in Fiddler he had to use blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel and Beatrice Arthur who despised him. One of Tevye’s daughters was played by Puerto Rican singer Dominica Jimenes-Johnson. She would later go on to a successful career singing opera at the Metropolitan and made no secret of her poor childhood. Raised in Spanish Harlem by a drug addict mother. She recalled having to keep her mom awake by burning her armpits with a cigarette so she wouldn’t die from overdose.

1967- Farewell voyage of the Queen Mary, in service since 1936.

1975- A emotionally unstable FBI worker named Sarah Jane Moore tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in front of the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Her gun arm was deflected at the last second by a man named Bill Sipple. In the subsequent media attention Sipple was outed as a gay man and his career was damaged. “I can’t see what my sexual orientation had to do with saving the President’s life!”

1976- TV show Charlie’s Angels premiered. It made a star out of Farrah Fawcett.
1979-Hanna Barbera's Super Globetrotter's Show, featuring Multi-Man, Sphere Man, Gizmo-Man,Spaghetti-Man and Fluid-Man.

1980- Proctor & Gamble announced a recall of millions of tampons following several deaths from a rare infection called Toxic Shock Syndrome. 1984- Michael Eisner named CEO of the Walt Disney Corporation.

1996- Seymour Cray, genius engineer who designed the most powerful supercomputers for the Control Data Corporation and Cray Computers, was killed in a car accident. He was 71.

2011- Scientists at the CERN accelerator make a particle go faster than the speed of light, something Einstein said could not be done.
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Yesterday’s question: What was Bram Stokers’ real name?

Answer: Abraham Stoker. Friends called him ‘Bram and he liked it.

Chuck with Bob Kurtz, Rob Minkoff and me in 2003.