Quiz: Computer geeks! What is Moore’s Law?

Answer to yesterdays Quiz- Who were Castor & Pollux?
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History for 4/28/2012
Birthdays: English King Edward IV (1442), President James Monroe, Lionel Barrymore, Carolyn Jones-aka Morticia Addams of the TV Addams Family, Ann Margaret is 71, Jay Leno is 62, Sadam Hussein, Jean Redpath, James Baker III, Penelope Cruz is 38, Jessica Alba is 33, Godzilla is 57- see below.

In ancient Egypt today was Wake up and Smell the Breeze Day, The first known Spring Festival in history. As part of the holiday, Egyptians ate a small dried fermented fish called Fessig, which they thought prevented diseases blown in by the desert.

357AD- Roman Emperor Constantius II visited Rome for the first time. Like his father Constantine he was now ruling the Empire from Constantinople. Later Western emperors preferred to rule from Milan for faster access to the Rhine or Danube frontiers.

1192- CONRAD OF MONFERRAT SLAIN BY THE ASSASSINS OF ALAMUT-
The word "assassin" comes from "hash-a-shin" or "eaters of Hashish". Their leader Sheik Ibn-Abdel Sinan, was called :"The Old Man of the Mountain" established his cult on a mountain fortress in Lebanon. He got his followers stoned in a pleasure garden filled with pretty girls, telling them they had just spent time in Paradise. And if they were good he’d let them in for more visits.

Sheik Abdel Sinan ran his sect like an extortion racket throughout the Middle East. In exchange for gold he wouldn't have one of his stoned followers knife you. When the Crusaders arrived in the Holyland, no one had clued them in to this system. So when Conrad laughed off the Assassin's emissary, he was stabbed by hitmen disguised as Christian monks.

Conrad was the other leader of the Third Crusade with Richard Lionheart and Phillip Augustus of France. Many believed Richard had bribed Abdel Sinan to murder Conrad. That's the reason Richard was imprisoned on his way home by Leopold of Austria, Conrad's uncle. The Assassins were finally exterminated a century later by the Mongols, whose horde happened to be riding by when they thought their fortress would be fun to destroy.

1376-The Good Parliament- English parliaments in the Middles Ages were held so rarely that they were remembered by nicknames "The Rump, The Mad, The Thoroughly Bollucks'd-Up, etc. This parliament achieved new rights by electing the first speaker and demanding the impeachment of a bad minister who was an appointee of the King.

1686- Sir Issac Newton published the first volume of his Principia Mathematica, outlining the Theory of Gravity. The earliest account of the apple story was in 1738. Voltaire writing about Newton claimed his niece told him the scientist had left Cambridge for the country during the Great Plague of 1666. "He observed an apple falling from a tree and fell into a deep meditation on what was this force that drew all objects in a straight line that until interrupted would continue to the center of the Earth."

1789-THE MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY. The HMS Bounty had been sent around the world to bring back breadfruit samples to see if the plant could be a nutritional supplement for slave laborers in Jamaica and Bermuda. During the return voyage from Tahiti the crew led by first mate Fletcher Christian, set upon the Captain, William Bligh, and set him adrift in a rowboat to die. They then sail with their Tahitian families to settle permanently on an island.

They choose Pitcairn Island because of it's remoteness. Squabbles arose among the British and natives and their leader Fletcher Christian was killed while tending his sweet potato patch. Today a majority of the islands inhabitants claim ancestry from the Bounty mutineers.

Captain Bligh got to safety after navigating his little rowboat 1,500 miles to East Timor with almost no food, an unparalleled feat of seamanship. He was cleared by an Admiralty board and served with distinction in the Napoleonic Wars, although another ship mutinied on him. On top of everything else, when Bligh got home he discovered his wife had been made pregnant by the nephew of the Duke of Wellington -'Wicked Willie' Wellesley.

Like many 'famous' incidents, this passed by it's time with little or no notice. What made the Mutiny on the Bounty world famous was a best selling novel written in the 1920's by two Americans, Charles Nordoff and James Norton Hall, who met when pilots in World War One's Lafayette Escadrille.

1813- Marshal Kutusov, the one-eyed Russian general who chased Napoleon out of Russia, died of exhaustion.

1881- Notorious gunfighter Billy the Kid had given himself up to New Mexico authorities on condition he would get a fair trial. That fair trial sentenced him to hang. He was being kept shackled in the town of Maisella New Mexico by two deputies. One guard named Pecos Bob Ollinger enjoyed tormenting the Kid with descriptions of how gruesome his death was going to be- dancing in the air, slowly choking, eyes bulging, etc. At one point Ollinger left his shotgun by the door and crossed the street to have dinner.

The Kid asked the other deputy to unshackle him so he could use the outhouse. A friend had secretly planted a gun in the outhouse. When Ollinger returned he found his deputy dead and Billy the Kid pointing his shotgun right at his face. "Hello Bob !" the smiling kid said, then blew his head off.

1897- The first distress signal sent by wireless at sea. The S.O.S. (Save Our Ship) code wasn't invented until 1912.

1925- Tory minister Mr. Winston Churchill announced in Parliament that Britain was going back on to the Gold Standard. The result was an economic panic, nationwide strikes and a widening of the postwar depression already affecting Germany and France. Churchill's party led by Stanley Baldwin would be kicked out of office in the elections of 1926, and Churchill would remain in political oblivion until 1940.

1925- T.S. Elliot landed a job at Faber & Fabers Publishing. His enabled the poet to quit his job as a bank teller at Lloyds and continue his literary career.

1937- Italy’s famed movie studio Cinecitta’ opened.

1944- EXERCISE TIGER-The greatest coup of Axis espionage. German spies discovered that the allies were going to rehearse their D-Day invasion landings off Slapton Sands, England. They sent a surprise attack of torpedo boats across the Channel to catch the defenseless transports packed with troops, bobbing in the water unawares. They sank several drowning hundreds of men in the 44 degree f water.

Another big mistake was many of the GIs were wearing their life belts incorrectly around the waist instead of under the arms so when they leapt into the water the belt was useless and their heavy packs dragged them down. More G.I.s died in this incident than at Utah Beach on D-Day. Yet until recently it was all kept top secret. After WWII the head of German espionage, Reinhard Gehlen, had a long happy career in the CIA.

1945-BENITO MUSSOLINI DIED- Il Duce was on the run with his mistress Clara Petracci when they were apprehended by a roving band of Italian Partisans and stood up against a wall. Mussolini's last words before the guns went off were: "-But, but Colonel...."

My father in the US Army Air Corps remembered driving into Milan to see his body hanging upside down with townspeople invited to spit, shoot at or otherwise deface the body.

1947- Thor Heyderthal set out on a balsa wood raft called Kon Tiki to prove ancient Peruvians could have used the ocean current to reach Polynesia.

1952- The American military occupation of Japan ended, and Japan was restored to full self government.

1954- Happy Birthday Godzilla!.The movie by Ichjiro Honda was inspired when a Japanese fishing boat was fatally exposed by radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test. Godzilla is an Anglicized version of the Japanese Kohjira, which is a combination of Gorilla and Whale. The parallels to the Hiroshima experience reached eerie levels when the film has a long sequence of a funeral dirge sung to the dead of Tokyo as we survey the devastation.

The famous roar was done by rubbing a resin-covered glove down some bass fiddle strings. The film was later released in the U.S. with American actor Raymond Burr (actually, Canadian actor..) acting in inserted scenes. The complete Japanese version of the film was not seen in North America until 2004.

1961-When tenor Guiseppi Di Stefano took ill, a young schoolteacher from Modena took the lead role in the opera La Boheme. Lucciano Pavarotti debuted.

1965- At the same time he was sending the first combat troops to Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson also sent 22,000 Marines to overrun the Dominican Republic. He said it was to save it from "Communist Dictatorship", but no Communist ties to the rebels was ever proven.

1967- Citing his Black Muslim religion, world champion prizefighter Cassius Clay, now renamed Muhammad Ali, refused to be drafted into the army to fight in the Vietnam War. "I’m not mad at any Vietnamese person over there." The World Boxing Federation stripped Ali of his championship title but he won it back during the 'Rumble in the Jungle" prizefight against George Foreman in 1974.

2004- ABU GHARIB-American network news confirmed a story first aired on Arab TV that U.S. and British soldiers were torturing Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention. The government asked the compliant American media to sit on the story, until after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified to the 9-11 Commission.

Graphic photos went around the internet from a prison called Abu Gharib. It was once a prison used by dictator Saddam Hussein. President Bush and Rumsfeld claimed they had no knowledge the abuses, while in reality documents released later said they knew and approved it all in detail. The Pentagon investigations in 2004 cleared all the top officials of any wrongdoing. Just a few low level National Guard soldiers were blamed, and their commander General Jane Kaminski was reprimanded.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who were Castor & Pollux?

Answer: The Gemini twins. Their mother was Leda of the famous "Leda and the
Swan" seduction by Zeus, which produced Pollux. Castor was the mortal
twin, by Leda (when she wasn't fooling around with swans) and her
husband, the King of Sparta. The story goes that, after their various
adventures, when Castor died, Pollux petitioned Zeus to make his twin
immortal so they could remain together. Zeus, as he was so fond of
doing, put them in the heavens as the Gemini constellation. (Thanks FG)

Quiz: Who were Castor & Pollux?

Yesterday’s Quiz: We all heard of scud missiles that Saddam used. But what is the meteorological definition of a scud?
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History for 4/27/2012
Birthdays: Ulysses S. Grant, King Edward IV, Samuel Morse, Mary Wollenstonecraft, Edward Gibbon, Anouk Aimee 80, Sheena Easton, Sandy Dennis, Coretta Scott King, Kasey Kasem , Jack Klugman is 90!

1278- Today is the Feast day of Saint Zita of the Magic Beans, the patron saint of domestic servants. No, I’m not making this up.

1521- MAGELLAN EATEN- Fernan' De Magellan was the captain who found a way around the Americas to Asia. Although he was ordered to conquer the Portuguese Moluccas he paused after his discovery of the Philippines to convert the population to Catholicism. Magellan tried to demonstrate the power of the Spanish King to the Lord of Cebu, by attacking a village called Mactan, who was the enemy of Cebu.

Almost at once everything started to go wrong. First the village was too far inland for his ships cannon. So his men had to wade ashore. In doing so their powder got wet, so their guns were useless. Then while fighting hand-to-hand, a lucky fishbone tipped spear hurled through Magellan's helmet visor and killed him. The Lord of Cebu was unimpressed. The Spanish captains tried to barter for his body, but the tribesmen said such a powerful enemy must stay for dinner.

1567- THE DUKE OF ALBA was given by King Phillip II of Spain the job of Governor General of the Netherlands and ordered him to "stamp out all Heresy, Rebellion and Freedom". Alba recruited an army of 10,000 soldiers and two thousand registered prostitutes and set up shop in Antwerp. His "Council of Troubles" prosecuted thousands of Dutch Calvinists, sometimes arresting 1500 a day. The Dutch called it the "Council of Blood". The largest mass execution in the US history was 60 Sioux warriors in 1864. Throughout 1568 alone, The Duke of Alba executed 60 Dutch per day. This reign of terror gave Breughel such grim inspiration for his paintings.

1642- The English city of Hull refused to open it's gates for King Charles Ist when he directly commanded them to. The King’s forces were still too weak to do anything but slink away. This was the first open act of defiance to Royal authority in what would become the English Civil War.

1667- Blind poet John Milton sold his masterpiece "Paradise Lost" to publisher Samuel Simmons for ten pounds. Ten years earlier under Oliver Cromwell’s patronage Milton was getting over a thousand pounds each for his poems

1763- PONTIAC’S REBELLION. After France surrendered Canada to England, the Great Lakes Indian tribes were offended by their treatment from their new British masters. The redcoats ended many of the subsidies and gift giving the French provided.

This day an Ottawa chief named Pontiac called a secret council on the Ecorse River about ten miles below Detroit. More than 400 chiefs and warriors from the Huron ,Sauk, Fox, Pottawatomis , Miamis and Ottawas attended. Chief Pontiac spoke of the words he heard from the mysterious Delaware Prophet. Delaware Prophet said he had traveled up to the Spirit World to meet the Master of Life himself, who said he was sad that the Indian had fallen victim to the White Man. The whites should be driven back across the waters to the lands the Great Spirit had set aside for them and stay there. Pontiac said only by all tribes uniting as one could they drive away the white man.

The assembled Indians pledged to join him on an attack on Fort Detroit and were soon joined by other Great Lakes Tribes. Chief Pontiac organized a simultaneous attack on all thirteen forts in the Great Lakes states, a powerful offensive now known as Pontiac’s War.

1784- Over the protests of King Louis XVI, Pierre d’Beaumarchais play The Marriage of Figaro premiered at the Opera Comique in Paris. It was the first play to openly criticize the nobility for being no better than anyone lese except for being born with money. This concept alone was radical and it caused a sensation. Napoleon described it as "The Revolution already in action".

1805-THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI- William Eaton led a small group of U.S. Marines and some Greek mercenaries capture Derna, stronghold of the Barbary Pirates and end the War with Tripoli.

1813- In the War of 1812 U.S. troops capture and burn Toronto, then called York.. They couldn't hold the territory and quickly withdrew back into New York State. The American commander Zebulon Pike, for whom Pike's Peak is named, was killed when a slow burning match left by the retreating redcoats ignited the fort's powder magazine.

1861- President Lincoln suspended the Right of Habeas Corpus for the length of the Civil War. The old municipal jail where the modern Supreme Court Building is now began to fill up with critics of the government, pro-southern journalists and suspected spies.

1865- SULTANA DISASTER- Union P.O.W.'s liberated from the horrible prisons of Andersonville and Libby crowd onto a Mississippi steamboat called the Sultana for the ride home. After embarking from Vicksburg the boat's boiler accidentally exploded, killing 1,700.

1884- The British government declared that Christopher Wrens 1675 observatory at Greenwich would be the central meridian point for calculating time zones. This would aid in calculation of longitudes which is crucial in navigating the worlds oceans. Starting at Greenwich they divided the world into 24 time zones each 15 longitudinal degrees apart.

1919- In the chaos of postwar Germany leftist and right wing paramilitary groups battled in the streets for political power. This day in Munich Communist gangs broke into a military barracks to arrest a corporal they heard was an anti-Communist orator. They took 16 men as hostages but the corporal fended them off with a pistol. Later the hostages were found in a ditch all murdered. The lucky corporal who escaped was Adolf Hitler.

1940- SS leader Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction of a new concentration camp in Poland near Krakow called Auschwitz.

1950- South Africa passes the Group Areas Act, one of the first official acts separating the races and creating the system known as Apartheid.

1964- The John Muir National Wilderness created.

1970- THE FIRST ATM- Automatic bank teller machine, opened at the Surety National Bank in downtown Los Angeles.

1975- The South Vietnamese capitol Saigon was surrounded by North Vietnamese forces.

1979 -Navajo Indians protest Gulf Oil drilling for uranium on a sacred mountain.

1981- Ringo Starr married Barbera Bach, his costar on the film 'Caveman'. UngaBunga!

1986- Reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted a primetime TV special in an old Chicago Hotel that was once a headquarters for gangster Al Capone. After wasting an hour speculating on discovering buried treasure or mobster skeletons, they broke into a room sealed since 1932. All they found were some old dusty bottles.

2005- Maiden flight of the world's largest passenger plane- the Airbus A-380.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: We all heard of scud missiles that Saddam used. But what is the meteorological definition of a scud?

Answer: Scuds are a little rogue clouds that gets sucked up into a larger cloud, signaling watchers on the ground that a tornado is forming and about to drop.

Quiz: We all heard of scud missiles that Saddam used. But what is the meteorological definition of a scud?

Yesterday’s question answered below: We’ve heard of ships famous in American History like the Nina and Pinta, the Mayflower and Bonhomme Richard. What was significant about the Susan Constant..?
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History for 4/26/2012
Birthdays: Roman Emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius, Queen Marie De Medicis, Pasquale Paoli, John James Audubon, Frederick Law Olmstead, Eugene Delacroix, Syngman Rhee, Dr. Lee DeForrest, John Grierson founder of the National Film Board of Canada, Rudolf Hess, Bobby Rydell, Anita Loos, I.M.Pei, Carol Burnett is 79, Eyvind Earle, Giancarlo Esposito is 54, Kevin James, Amos Otis, Joan Chen is 51, Koo Stark, Jimmy Giuffre, Rocker Duane Eddy- 71, Prof Wilfrid Mellers, Jet Li- born Li Lian jie is 49

1478-THE PAZZI CONSPIRACY- Pope Sixtus planed to take over Florence by arranging a hit on Duke Lorenzo de Medici "The Magnificent". Francesco Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini attacked the Duke in church just as the consecrated Host was being raised. Lorenzo escaped harm but his brother Giuliano was cut down.

Furious Florentines fell on the felons (repeat three times fast) and nailed their smoking hearts to the door of the cathedral. People blamed Archbishop Salviati for being part of the plot. The mob chased the archbishop up the bell tower, wrapped the bell chords around his neck and tossed him out to ring the bells for awhile. The people shouted "Long Live the Balls!" for the six gold balls that were the heraldic emblem of the Medici Family Bank. This emblem of three gold balls has come down to us as the universal sign for pawnbrokers.

Michelangelo created a beautiful tomb for murdered Giuliano de Medici. Duke Lorenzo ordered artists to paint the portraits of the murderers corpses. Giuliano’s illegitimate son became Pope Clement VII.

1607-THE ENGLISH LAND AT JAMESTOWN....The good ship Susan Constant and two small pinnaces land 150 men . These men were mostly professional adventurers and gentlemen. Capt. Martin and Capt. Archer served with Sir Francis Drake . Of the 150 only 12 men actually could do a trade other than fighting. Their actual purpose was to find Aztec Empires like the Spaniards found in Mexico and send gold back home. In a years time most of them would be dead from fever and cholera.
Oh yeah, there was that John Smith guy too. He wouldn’t meet Pocahontas until around Christmas.

1846- Since annexing Texas the U.S. and Mexico quarreled over where the border was. Mexico said it was the Nueces River while the U.S. said it was the Rio Grande. President Polk had ordered an army into a disputed border area in the hope Mexico would attack them and then Washington could declare war with a clear conscience. This day outside Matamoros, Mexican General Arrista ordered his men fire on some Yankee woodcutters. General Zachary Taylor wrote to Washington " Hostilities have commenced" The War with Mexico was on.

1865-Near Bowling Green Virginia, President Abe Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth was cornered in the barn of Garretts tobacco farm. The troopers set fire to the barn and as Booth emerged he was shot by Sgt. Boston Corbett. Booth died looking at his hands muttering "Useless, useless..."Corbett was a religious fanatic who had castrated himself with a bayonet to be free of sin. Years after killing Booth he committed suicide.

1877- The people of Minnesota held a state-wide day of prayer to ask the Almighty to deliver them from a plague of grasshoppers infesting their farmland. It must have worked because they were gone by the end of the summer.

1878- The Oxford dons who oversaw the Oxford University Press charged Scottish scholar James Murray with completing the first complete Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. This would be the first comprehensive dictionary of the King’s English since Dr Johnson’s in 1755. The project had been started by the son of the poet Samuel Coleridge but he died of consumption. James Murray was a self taught scholar who as a boy tried to teach his cows to respond to commands in Latin.

1926- The British General Strikes- Unions across Great Britain joins in sympathy with miners to paralyze the nation. Troops and tanks are stationed in WhiteHall for fear of a Bolshevik-style rising. The horrible poverty resulting from defeating the strikers accelerate the Depression already gripping postwar Europe.

When the Prince of Wales (future Edward VIII) was shown the medieval squalor the Midlands miners lived in he was deeply shocked, but eyewitnesses said after returning to Kensington Palace for a bath and whiskey, he had quite forgotten about it.

1928- Los Angeles City Hall dedicated.

1933 The Nazi government forms an internal police force called the Gehime Staatspolitzei- the Gestapo. Ve haff ways of making you talk!

1937- GUERNICA- In Spain the Stuka bombers of the German Condor Legion, Nazi freelancers for Franco, bomb an innocent basque village killing 5,000 and provoking an international outcry and a painting by Picasso. Attacking at the height of the market time for three hours the planes bombed and strafed the helpless civilians with no military target in sight. Combatants in WWI tried to avoid harming civilians, but this act and the simultaneous Japanese attacks in China signaled a new tactic, sowing terror by treating civilians as targets.

1941-An organ is played for the first time at a baseball game in Chicago.

1945- The War Department in their new headquarters in the Pentagon issued orders to General Eisenhower in Europe to begin Operation Paperclip- "to preserve from destruction and take under your control records, plans, documents files and other information and data belonging to German organizations engaged in military research." Included in the haul were dozens of German rocket scientists who regardless of their political sympathies were spirited away for the burgeoning US missile program.

1965-Fred Smith, a student at Yale, got his economics paper back with a "c'" and a note stating the idea he espoused was impractical. The idea was an overnight air-freight service which he founded six years later as Federal Express.

1969- PAUL IS DEAD. The height of a strange rumor that excited the rock & roll world that Paul McCartney of the Beatles had died and the news was being kept a secret. Evidence was presented in the cryptic lyrics of "I am the Walrus", songs played backwards and the record album photo where Paul is the only figure with his back to the camera.

A TV special hosted by attorney F. Lee Bailey, the Nancy Grace of his day, explored the controversy. Finally, this day Paul and Linda McCartney held a news conference and declared he was very much alive and what on Earth was everyone on about?

1977- In New York City, the mecca of 70’s Disco culture, Studio 54, opened.

1982- Argentina gave in to Britain's demands ending the Falklands War. The military junta ruling in Buenos Aires fell a year later.

1986- CHERNOBYL- The Chernobyl nuclear reactor explodes. While the Soviet Government acknowledged 400 deaths, accounts put it as high as 9,000. 100,000 square miles of the Ukraine contaminated and tainted food shipped to 65 million people. Historian Igor Medvedev (who died from radiation induced cancer) reported on the bizarre fumblings at the beginning of the crisis.

When one engineer entered the reactor core, he saw the devastation of the explosion while absorbing the radiation equivalent of 23 Hirsoshima atomic bombs. He went out and told his supervisor: "Reactor Number Three has exploded." His supervisor told him: "That’s impossible! Go back and look again." So he dutifully re-entered the reactor core, absorbing another 23 atomic bomb’s worth of radiation and came out and said:" Yes, it’s true, it’s really blown up." Yes, he did die shortly afterwards.

1986- Arnold Schwarzenegger aka Conan the Republican, married Maria Shriver, the niece of John F. Kennedy. They separated in 2011.

1993- NBC announced former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live comedy writer Conan O’Brien would take David Letterman’s old Late Show spot.
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Yesterday’s question: We’ve heard of ships famous in American History like the Nina and Pinta, the Mayflower and Bonhomme Richard. What was significant about the Susan Constant..?

Answer: It brought the first colonists to Jamestown. See above, 1607.

Quiz: We’ve heard of ships famous in American History like the Nina and Pinta, the Mayflower and Bonhomme Richard. What was significant about the Susan Constant..?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What would you expect if you walked out in the street in a diaphanous gown?
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History for 4/25/2012
Birthdays: Roman emperor Otho -32ad, English King Edward II-1284, Oliver Cromwell-1599, Guiseppi Marconi, Edward R. Murrow, Ella Fitzgerald, Al Pacino is 69, Meadowlark Lemon, Talia Shire, Paul Mazursky, Hank Azaria, Rene Zellwellger is 41

TODAY is the feast of the Roman god ROBIGUS, god of Rust and Mildew.

It is also the part of the Festival of Venus for the male prostitutes of Rome to celebrate.

404BC- ATHENS SURRENDERED TO SPARTA- After the victory of Aegespotamoi, Spartan General Lysander had the Long Walls of Athens torn down to the sound of flutes. It ended the Peloponnesian War and the Athenian dominance of Greece. Lysander had delayed the surrender at one point to allow for the funeral procession of old Sophocles the playwright to move between the lines.

Spartan domination of Greece was short lived. They were defeated by a coalition led by Epaminondas of Thebes and in 323 Macedonian armies led by Alexander the Great’s father Phillip crushed all resistance to his uniting Greece under Macedonian rule.

799AD- Pope Leo III was attacked by a Roman mob. He was beaten up and he had to hide in a monastery until Frankish King Charlemagne came to rescue him.

It is also the FEAST OF ST. MARK- the evangelist whose mummy was smuggled by Venetian traders out of Moslem held Egypt in a case of pig fat in 981 A.D. Venetian clerics later made up a great story to justify the act. St. Mark was rowing a boat in the marshes where Venice would one day stand. Suddenly God appeared to him and said: "Pax Tibi Marce, Evangelista Meus- Tues Corpus Reposituam." "Peace be with you Mark, my Evangelist, here your bones will lay".(after the pig fat) You see this inscription on most Venetian stuff along with the saint’s symbol, a winged lion..

Italians returned his bones to Egypt in the 1970’s. So the gold sarcophagus people file past in the Basilica of San Marco today is empty.

1185- Battle of Dan-no--mura. Epic Japanese sea battle when legendary warlord Minamoto Yuritomo defeated the Taira Clan.

1684- The Thimble invented!

1719- The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe first published.

1792-THE NATIONAL RAZOR- Highwayman and murderer Nicholas Pelletier becomes the first man guillotined. Dr. Guillotine’s invention was considered a more humane way to kill a person than breaking on the wheel, which was the way of execution in France of lowborn malefactors. Ironically in the memoirs of the court executioner Charles Samson it is alleged that no less than King Louis XVI himself suggested the distinctive angled blade in place of a semicircular one. The King would discover for himself it’s killing power the following January.

Contrary to myth Dr. Guillotine didn't die by his own device, he died in bed of old age. During World War Two the Nazis added their own personal touch, turning the victim on his back so he could watch the blade come down. The last man guillotined was in 1977.

1792- A captain from Arras named Roget du Lilse writes a patriotic song for his Marseille regiment . LA MARSEILLAISE is sung for the first time in Strasbourg. It became the French National Anthem and one of the most stirring revolutionary hymns ever sung. In 1986 French first lady Mrs. Francois Mitterand tried to get the more bloodthirsty parts of the song re-written but failed. Aux Armes Citoyens!

1850- Paul Julius de Reuter used 40 carrier pigeons to carry stock market prices between Paris and London. He went on to form Reuters, the first international news agency.

1859- First sand dug for the Suez Canal. It took ten years to finish. It’s been estimated that maybe as many as 100,000 Egyptian peasants died while digging. Egyptian sources said every family in the country wound up mourning a father, husband or a son. Ever since that time black became the traditional costume of women in Egypt.

1862- Union superior General William Henry Halleck rewarded Ulysses Grant for his victory at Shiloh by having him removed from command. Halleck was an administrator and intellectual who translated books on Napoleon’s tactics. He was nicknamed Old Brains. But in command of armies he was a loser. After the rebels made him look stupid at the siege of Corinth Lincoln put Grant back in command.

1865- Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Grant left Joe Johnston commanding the second largest army of Southern troops, still facing Sherman in North Carolina. After several meetings and confused negotiations this day Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered General Johnston to resume fighting and fall back towards Texas. Johnston like Lee felt any further bloodshed was now pointless. He chose to ignore his President and accept Sherman’s surrender terms. Joe Johnston’s modern descendent Joe Johnston III is a Hollywood film director who made "Honey I Shrank the Kids" and Jumanji.

1886- The New York Times attacks the outcry among American union workers for an 8-hour workday (the norm then was 12) as: A Seditious, riotous notion that would collapse the American economy and lead to sloth, drunkenness and debauchery. It was probably the work of foreign extremists." The eight-hour day doesn’t become a norm in America until 1913 (in animation until 1941) and is still under attack today.

1898- THE US DECLARED WAR ON SPAIN America’s first war to announce itself a world power. Secretary of War John Hays (who was once Abe Lincoln's secretary) called it: "A splendid little War'. It was the first time men from all the states would come together since the Civil War. Eyewitnesses were amazed that all the old regional anger was gone

1901- New York State became the first to require automobiles to show license plates.

1915- ANZAC DAY- The Australian and New Zealand regiments fighting at Gallipoli rise from their trenches and charged headlong into the massed Turkish guns to achieve death and glory and not much else. The Peter Weir movie Gallipoli staring a young Mel Gibson dramatized the event.

1926- Giacomo Puccini's last opera Turnadot premiered in Milan. Puccini died before it's completion so students had to finish the work based on the masters notes. Conductor Arturo Toscanini put down his baton at the beginning of the Third Act, turned to the audience and said:" Here is where the Maestro died." He then left the podium and let another finish the performance.

1928- The German shepherd named Buddy became the first seeing-eye dog for the blind.

1945-U.S. Army advancing from Normandy and the Soviet Army advancing since Stalingrad finally meet each other at the Elbe River in Germany.

1945- An increasingly paranoid Hitler sent out orders from his bunker for the arrest of Herman Goering and Heinrich Himmler. Adolf thought his old buddies wanted to overthrow him. Both were under house arrest when the war ended.

1953- Watson & Crick announced the DNA Molecular Construction Theory and the world sees for the first time the twisted ladder model. Another researcher named Rosalind Franklin may have done all the real research and Watson & Crick just took the credit. The facts are still in dispute. This day, Watson went down to his local pub and told the barkeep:" Set up a round of lager, for I just discovered the Secret of Life!"

1956- Elvis Presley’s song Heartbreak Hotel goes to #1 in the pop charts.

1970- Policeman Frank Serpico’s story of rampant corruption in the NYPD explodes on the pages of the New York Times. The practices of decades of graft are exposed by the Knapp Commission and the police commissioner and several captains resign in disgrace.
Serpico’s story was made into a famous film starring Al Pacino.

1972- Witty, urbane actor George Sanders ( All About Eve, Samson & Delilah, Sher Khan in Jungle Book) had turned age 65. He complained he had been famous and rich and was not looking forward to old age and having a nurse wipe his bottom. So he committed suicide and left a witty, urbane note. "Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored. Adieu, I leave you with your worries in this sweet cesspool."

1981- Dixie, the oldest living mouse died at age 6 1/2.

1982- In accordance with the Camp David Peace Accord, Israel completed its withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, turning over to Egypt the resort port of Sharm El Sheik.

1996-"Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk" opened on Broadway.
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Yesterdays Question: What would you expect if you walked out in the street in a diaphanous gown?.

Answer: You’d catch cold and probably be arrested. Diaphanous means thin to be almost transparent. In Renaissance paintings, all those nudes frolicked in strategically placed bits of diaphanous cloth.

Quiz: What would you expect if you walked out in the street in a diaphanous gown?

Yesterday’s Answer below: Which was of these people was not real? Jacuzzi, zamboni, Col. Sanders, Betty Crocker, Orville Redenbacher?
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History for 4/24/2012
Birthdays: Daniel Defoe, William de Kooning, St. Vincent de Paul, Morgan Earp, Jack E. Leonard, Dame Ethel Smyth, Jill Ireland, Eric Bogosian, Sue Grafton, Robert Penn Warren, Barbera Streisand is 70, Cedric the Entertainer is 49, Shirley McLaine is 79

1184 B.C.(est.)- TROY FALLS TO THE GREEKS- Despite the warnings of Cassandra and Laocoon the Trojans pull Ulysses' great horse into the city and at night the Greeks climb out and open the city gates to destruction. The reason we have any estimated date for this is this was the day the Romans celebrated a festival commemorating this event.
Conventional wisdom was always that Troy was a myth until Heinrich Schleimann discovered it in the 1800’s.

1584- Japanese Shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi ordered the Heii Shrine in Edo (Tokyo) to dedicate a new heraldic design - the red disc Asahi - Rising Sun flag is created.

1800- The U.S. Congress set up the Library of Congress. By 1814 it had three thousand volumes, but they were destroyed when a British Army burned Washington. Thomas Jefferson then donated his own private library to restart the collection. Today it numbers in the millions of volumes.

1833- The Soda Fountain is patented.

1861- The minister of the independent German citystate of Bremen, Johann Schlieben, offered his services to Abraham Lincoln to open shuttle diplomacy with the rebellious Confederate States. He carried a message or two between Washington and Richmond. Eventually Lincoln told him thanks but no thanks. Blood had been shed and the flag insulted; it was too late for negotiations...Similar offers of mediation by a delegation of Virginia moderates led by former President John Tyler were also refused.

1874- Jesse James married Miss Zerelda Mimms who he called Z.

1901-The First American League baseball game. The Cleveland Blues vs. the Chicago White Stockings.

1913- The Woolworth Building was dedicated in lower New York. It’s cornices decorated like the campanile of Saint Marks in Venice. At the time it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. President Woodrow Wilson illuminated its electric lights by flipping a switch long distance in the White House.

1933-Ub Iwerk's "Fiddlesticks" the first Flip the Frog cartoon, done in a simple two-color process. Iwerks was the first designer and animator of Mickey Mouse, who had left Walt Disney to open his own studio.

1945- As the Russian Army approached the center of Berlin, Adolf Hitler gathered his remaining staff in his bunker deep under the ReichsChancellery. He told his people that all was lost and that they should escape the city as best they could. Most decided to stay and began discussions on how to commit suicide. The Fuehrer himself lapsed into apathy. His secretary recalled seeing Hitler sitting quietly in a hallway, cradling a puppy in his lap, rocking back and forth, staring off hollow-eyed.

1949- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed.

1948- The Chinese Communists under their leader Mao tzse Tung and their generals Chu Teh and Lin Piao began their final push to conquer all of China.

1954- Handsome English actor Peter Lawford married John F. Kennedy’s sister Patricia Kennedy. This union would give JFK his link to Hollywood, Frank Sinatra and the RatPack.

1961- First day of shooting on the film King of Kings, the Christ story starring Jeffrey Hunter. Called by one critic” I was a Teenage Jesus” . In 1966 Jeffrey Hunter turned down a TV series after doing the pilot episode. His wife worried that he’d be typecast. The role of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, it went instead went to William Shatner.

1967- Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov became the first acknowledged fatality in the conquest of Space, when the parachute of his re-entering capsule got snarled and he fell four miles to Earth.

1980- After months of fruitless negotiations to get the U.S. hostages held in the American Embassy in Teheran freed, President Jimmy Carter tried force. A Delta Force of eight helicopters met at their staging area in the Iranian desert. Once there it was discovered three of the helicopters had mechanical problems and they had fallen badly behind schedule so the mission was scrapped. As they were leaving one of the helicopters crashed into a transport plane killing 8 soldiers. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned in protest. No more military adventures were planned and the Iran Hostage Crisis dragged on throughout 1980. The hostages were released in January 1981.

1981- Small companies like Apple and Commodore had dominated the personal computer market while giants like IBM stuck with large business systems. Now IBM weighed in with The IBM PC –personal computer, with basic software language DOS provided by Microsoft. It soon came to dominate the market.

1983- THE HITLER DIARIES HOAX- Gerd Heideman, a top correspondent for Germany’s top magazine Die Stern was contacted by a mysterious Professor Fischer that he had in his possession the long lost personal diary of Adolph Hitler. Heidemann was an eccentric who collected fascist memorabilia like Herman Goerings yacht and a pair of Idi Amin’s underwear! Fischer sold him the Hitler diary manuscripts for $4 million.
After Heidemann got British Historian Sir Hugh Trevor Roper and several handwriting analysts to declare them genuine, the Hitler Diaries went public in Die Stern and Rupert Murdoch’s London Times. When Sir Hugh began to express doubts over the authenticity of the diary, Times mogul Rupert Murdoch reacted in typical fashion: ”F**k him. I’m in the entertainment business!”

This day a Bonn laboratory declared the diaries high quality but completely phony. Professor Fischer was actually an art forger named Konrad Kujau who knew suckers when he saw them. He had an expensive girlfriend and wife to keep so he was writing the diaries in his garage on 1940’s vintage paper and ink. Careers were ruined and everyone looked pretty stupid. Even when they were all in jail, Gerd Heidemann refused to believe the truth. Konrad Kujau sent him a letter in Hitler’s handwriting admitting he did the forgery.

1984- David Kennedy, the eldest son of Robert Kennedy, was found dead in his hotel room of a drug overdose. As a child he had watched his father assassinated on live television and had never gotten over it. He was a drug addict by 15 and dead at 28.

1990-The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by the Space Shuttle Challenger.
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Yesterday’s Question: Which was of these people was not real? Jacuzzi, zamboni, Col. Sanders, Betty Crocker, Orville Redenbacher?

Answer: Betty Crocker was an imaginary character created in 1921 by the General Mills company. Named for their retiring CEO William Crocker, and Betty because, well, it just sounds like a friendly name.