Quiz: Sword & Fantasy stories since Robert Howard created Conan spoke of lands called Thule or Ultima Thule. Did such a place ever exist?

Answer to yesterday’s question below: What is a Christmas cracker?
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History for 12/25/2022 Christmas Day

Birthdays: (observed) Emanuel Ben Joseph or Yesuah. Called in Greek Jesus the Christ, 6-4 BC (est)

Other Birthdays: Sir Isaac Newton, Clara Barton, Humphrey Bogart, Cab Calloway, Helena Rubinstein, Rod Serling, Charles Pathe’, Jimmie Buffet, Quentin Crisp, Mike Mazurki, Conrad Hilton- Paris’ granddad, Anwar El Sadat. Larry Csonka, Burne Hogarth, Ishmail Merchant, Maurice Utrillo, Kid Ory, Barbara Mandrell, Dame Rebecca West, Clark Clifford, Annie Lennox is 68, Sissie Spacek is 73, CCH Pounder is 70, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, animator Howard Beckerman is 92.

Today is Constitution Day in Republic of China/Taiwan, and
Taisho Tenno-Sai (Anniversary of Death of Emperor Taisho) in Japan

272 A.D. To the Ancient Romans this date was the feast day of SOL INVICTUS, the "Invincible Sun", a hybrid religion popular just before Christianity that attempted an early form of monotheism, worship of the sun. The Roman Emperor Constantine, whose conversion lifted the ban on Christianity, was a devotee.

495 A.D.- Clovis, first King of the Franks (French), was baptized. St. Remi said while pouring the Holy water on the old barbarian's head:" Kneel Sicambrian, and Adore what thou once had Burned: and Burn what thou once hath Adored."

800AD- In old Saint Peters Basilica in Rome, Charlemagne knelt in prayer with Pope Leo III celebrating the Christmas feast. The King of the Franks had just come over the Alps to defeat the threat to the Vatican from the Lombards. During the service, Pope Leo whipped out a big jeweled crown and plopped it on Charlemagne’s head. The audience cried out three times in unison the ancient formula: "HAIL CHARLES THE AUGUSTUS, CROWNED BY GOD, THE GREAT EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS!" Charles had said he did not want the Imperial crown and was surprised, but nobody believed such an important step was taken without his prior knowledge. Charlemagne ruled a European Empire almost as large as the Old Roman Empire, from Spain to Hungary, and Denmark to Sicily.
They called it the Holy Roman Empire, although as Voltaire once observed, it wasn’t Roman, wasn’t much of an empire, and wasn’t very holy either…

885- Pope Gregory I formalized what Christians had already been doing for 500 years, namely celebrating the birth festival of Jesus or "Christ’s Mass", on December 25th.

1066- After the great victory of Hastings William the Conqueror had himself crowned King of England in London. Outside, when his nervous Norman knights heard the loud shouts of celebration, they mistook them for an uprising, drew their swords and attacked the crowd. They slaughtered many and burned down most of the neighborhood around Westminster Abbey.

1428- During the Hundred Years War, at the siege of the city of Orleans, a six hour truce was declared for Christmas. English warlords Sir William Gladsdale and Sir John Talbot expressed a wish to hear French music, so a band of French trumpeters serenaded them from the city walls.

1497-Natal South Africa discovered by Vasco da Gama. It was called Natal because it was discovered on Christmas.

1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgment was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel beneath his famous ceiling.

1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian.

1745- The Treaty of Dresden between Prussia and Austria.

1758- HALLEY’S COMET- Sixteen years after his death, the comet Sir Edmund Halley had predicted showed up right on schedule. This event was seen as significant because for centuries the random unexplained appearance of a fiery torch in the sky seemed to be a direct Tweet from God. Halley proved once and for all that comets were not supernatural omens of Fate. That they had an erratic orbit but were otherwise natural phenomena. Halley's Comet appeared last in 1986, and is scheduled to return in 2061.

1776- WASHINGTON CROSSES THE DELAWARE- The British army kicked George Washington's rebel ass out of New York and chased them across New Jersey. The British Navy controlled the coastline. Washington had lost every battle, lost Americas’ largest city and was about to lose his capitol. From 23,000 men in July, he now had just 4,000 cold, sulky scarecrows left. And now the soldier’s 6-month enlistments were up! Who would re-up with a defeated shambles of an army? Washington wrote his family advising them to flee to the Blue Ridge Mountains. The American Revolution was in danger of complete disintegration.
Washington knew he had to do something fast or else it was all over. He drew a line in the snow, and begged the men for one more battle, appealing to their patriotism and the great cause of independence. The response was only a few men crossed the line to volunteer. Frustrated, Washington gave a second speech, the contents of which are hidden from history but eyewitnesses said was more to the point: Swearing, You just can’t wage war against the king and then go home! Followed by descriptions of how they would all hang, kept alive long enough to see their wives and daughters gang-raped by soldiers, etc. This time more troops crossed the line.

Washington spent this night ferrying his men across the Delaware at McKonkey’s Ferry to attack a Hessian regiment in their Christmas beds. The boatmen were all from one town, Marblehead Mass, under their Quaker leader John Glover.

The famous painting, Emmanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware" was painted in Dusseldorf Germany in 1894. The painter omitted details like Washington sat all the way across, and there were two black men in the boat, Oliver Cromwell, the ships pilot, and Washington's personal bodyguard William Wallace.

1815- At a Christmas concert in Vienna, Beethoven premiered his NameDay Overture.

1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Natucket.

1855- Ice hockey first played in North America at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

1868- President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean who filled in for the murdered Abraham Lincoln and now a lame duck after losing reelection to war hero General Grant, declared a general amnesty from prosecution for all Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. He was planning to issue this pardon in February, remember then the Inauguration wasn’t until March, but the treason trial of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis was being urged in the courts. Johnson moved up the pardon because many were worried a smart lawyer like Davis would use the platform of a trial to prove there was indeed a constitutional basis for the Southern states seceding the union.

1869- In Towash Texas, John Wesley Hardin went into town for a friendly game of cards. He quarreled over the game with a man named Bradley. The two went out into the street to shoot it out in classic gunfighter style. Bradley’s shot missed. Hardin drilled him dead. John Wesley Hardin isn’t as well known as Jesses James or Wyatt Earp, but he was one of the deadliest gunfighters of the west. His business card read J. Wesley Hardin, Shootist.

1870- Siegfried Idyll, written by Richard Wagner as a birthday gift to his wife Cosima, was first performed by a small ensemble outside her door as she awoke this morning at their home in Lucerne Switzerland.

1914- During World War I, German and Scottish soldiers facing each other across the Western Front held a spontaneous Christmas truce. After midnight the German guns ceased and the sounds of Christmas Carols drifted over the barbed wire. The British and French responded with serenades from their regimental bands. At dawn without any official sanction or orders the soldiers of both sides came out of their trenches. In the middle of No-Man's Land they exchanged laughter, schnapps, scotch, tobacco and even played a good-natured soccer game. Next morning the killing resumed, and the officers who allowed the fraternization were reprimanded.

1917-"Why Marry?" by Jesse Lynch Williams opened. The first play to win a Pulitzer Prize.

1927- Japanese Emperor Hirohito crowned.

1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. An Arabian Nights-type fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use it for their meetings.

1931-The first BBC World Service broadcast. An address by King George V called "Around the Empire". Written by Rudyard Kipling.

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast. In 1975, their studio space, Studio 8H, became the stage of Saturday Night Live.

1940- Rogers & Hart’s musical Pal Joey opened on Broadway. It made a star out of a young dancer named Gene Kelly.

1946- Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at 67. While in his hospital bed someone saw him reading a Bible. They said:" W.C., what are you doing with that? " Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"

1957- Disney film Old Yeller premiered.

1962- The film of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird premiered with Gregory Peck, Brock Peters, and Robert Duval.

1963- Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone released. First animated feature solely directed by Wolfgang,” Woolie” Reitherman.

1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey, Switzerland. He was 86.

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He told his father he was inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.

1989- Romanian Communist dictator Nicholai Cercescu and his wife were executed on live television. Cercescu ran the last mad-Stalinist tyranny in Eastern Europe. Madame Cercescu, unrepentant, bellowed defiance at the cameras as they were stood up against the wall. They were so hated, that the presiding officer barely had time to get out of the way of the firing squad and say "Ready…Aim…" before the troops started firing. Instead of being given one round each with the Unknown Blank Cartridge, the men had asked for extra clips. The death penalty was abolished in Romania immediately afterwards.

1989- Hot tempered NY Yankees baseball manager Billy Martin died in a car accident (DUI).

1991- Premier Mikhail Gorbachov resigned, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka the USSR or Soviet Union, ceased to exist. In its place is the Confederation of Independent States led by the Federation of Russia under Boris Yeltsin.

1993-The release of the animated "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm," not only arguably the best Batman animated film, but some say one of the best Batman feature films of any kind.

1998- Fidel Castro allowed the resumption of Christmas celebrations in Cuba, outlawed since 1960.

1999- Galaxy Quest opened. Spoof of Star Trek with Tim Allen, Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver.

2020- Pixar’s film Soul premiered.

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Yesterday’s Question: What is a Christmas Cracker?

Answer: At a traditional British Christmas Day feast, besides the roast turkey or duck, stuffing roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts (the leftovers will become “bubble and squeak" on Boxing Day) and Yorkshire pudding, each setting will include a cracker. This is a cardboard tube with a fancy wrapping, tied at both ends, with a heavy strip of paper protruding. At the appointed time, guests hold the paper strip of their cracker in one hand and the other strip is held by the guest next to them. On cue, the paper strips are sharply pulled. The strips carry a tiny charge, reminiscent of a toy cap pistol, and, when pulled, rub together. A sharp bang is heard and the tubes pop open. Inside is a colorful paper crown, a little note with a wonderfully terrible riddle or joke printed on it, and some kind of small toy or party favor. Everyone puts on their crown, which makes all look ridiculous, the jokes are told around the table and then everyone marvels at their wonderful Christmas treasure, as if it was diamonds or a precious rare antique. After which, the plum pudding is served and a little toy bartering may go on. ( Thanks FG)

Quiz: What is a Christmas cracker?

Yesterday’s Answer below: The ancient Jewish people of Israel were divided into tribes. How many tribes were there?
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History for 12/24/2022
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Servius Galba, English King John Lackland, Revolutionary Patriot Dr. Benjamin Rush, Kit Carson, Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Michael Curtiz, I.F. Stone, Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet, Mean Joe Green, John Matusak, Susan Lucci, Nicholas Meyer, Ricky Martin, Pixar animator Glen McQueen, Ryan Seacrest, Dr. Anthony Fauci is 83.

The religion that was a close runner up to Christianity in the ancient world was the Persian Sun God Mithras. Today was celebrated as the birth of Mithras, who was conceived of a virgin, born in the wilderness to be adored by shepherds. Hmmm…?

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast of Saints Adam and Eve. The western theatrical tradition survived in the form of Mystery Plays, acting out stories from the Bible. So this day they would do a play about the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A tree was brought into the church and decorated to represent the Tree of Life, glass balls representing the forbidden fruit. This is one of the origins of the Christmas Tree. The Feast of Adam and Eve was discontinued during the Reformation.

1247- Sir Robin of Loxley, called Robin Hood, died. Legend has it that he fired an arrow out his window with instructions to bury him where it fell.

1294- Benedict Gaetani elected Pope Boniface VIII. Boniface felt the Roman pontiff was above any other earthly crown so much that he made the triple tiara the Popes are crowned with. The hat that looks like a big gold hairdryer. Dante hatred Boniface so much in his poem Inferno he has two devils stirring a cauldron of boiling lead and calling up:"Hey Boniface? When are you coming down? It’s just about ready!"

1652- In England the Puritan Parliament of Oliver Cromwell forbade any celebration of Christmas. Their brethren the Puritans of Massachusetts would arrest anyone found making merry and fine them three shillings. But after the restoration of King Charles II ten years later, the partying came back.

1740- In Pope’s Creek Va, a fire burned out the home of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington, with their little 8 year old son, George Washington.

1783 - the American Revolution concluded; General George Washington arrived home at Mt. Vernon. It was the first time he had seen his home in eight years. In those years he had won battles, lost battles, seen his army dwindle to a handful, disarmed a mutiny, and constantly faced the possibility of being hanged as a rebel chieftain. Now it was all over and done." The scene is at last closed. I feel myself eased of the load of public care."

1799- After seizing power in France in a military coup, 31 year old General Napoleon Bonaparte invented an executive system for the French republic based on an interpretation of the ancient Roman Republic. Nostalgia for classical art and themes were all the rage then. Napoleon made himself First Consul. He promised to share power with two other consuls in a rotation, Sieyes and Carnot. He never did. He became Emperor of France in 1804.

1800 – THE CARBONIS PLOT- Going to the theater Napoleon was almost blown up by a bomb planted in a wagon near his carriage. The terrorist was a royalist named Jean Carbonis. In a sick twist Carbonis gave the reins of the booby-trapped horse & wagon to a little peasant girl to allay suspicions of the police. Napoleon was safe but 22 others including the little girl were killed. Carbonis was quickly arrested and shot.

1801- Richard Trevithick created a three wheeled vehicle powered by a big steam boiler and drove 7 people down a road in Cornwall England. He couldn’t steer it very well and it hit a wall at barely two miles an hour.

1814- U.S. and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. John Quincy Adams headed the American negotiation team. The British had demanded a independent Indian buffer state in the Great Lakes between the US and Canada, and the US demanded the Pacific Northwest, but all they got was the status quo before the war started. The news wouldn't get across the Atlantic for two months and in the meantime Americans and Englishmen would fight each other one last time at The Battle of New Orleans (Jan 8th).

1818- the song Silent Night first sung at the Church of Saint Nicholas in Obernsdorf, Austria. Its lyrics were written by the minister named Josef Mohr set to music by a teacher named Franz Gruber. Their little church could not afford an organ, so this first singing of Silent Night was accompanied on a guitar.

1862- Near Mufreesboro Tennessee Confederate guerrilla Col. John Hunt Morgan took advantage of the Christmas truce to get married. The ceremony was conducted by Confederate General Leonidas Polk, who was an ordained Methodist Bishop. Both men would not survive the Civil War.

1865- THE KU KLUX KLAN. Before the Civil War, white plantation owners rode together at night to chase down runaway slaves. They were called Night Riders. After the South’s defeat and Emancipation, in Pulaski Tennessee in the law offices of Thomas M. Jones, some disaffected Confederate veterans formed a secret society of night riders.
They named it based on the Greek letter fraternities just gaining popularity in universities- Kappa-Alpha or Kuklos Adelphon.- Kuklos meaning Circle. There was also a version that it came from a lost Indian tribe called the Kawklats. It corrupted into the Ku Klux Klan.
They donned white sheets and hoods to portray themselves as the avenging ghosts of dead rebel soldiers. They played up the mystical images to terrify the superstitious-Grand Wizards, Cyclops. Ghouls. The first Grand Wizard was General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but he resigned after he felt their violence had become counterproductive. There is a hotly disputed story that the Klan first offered their leadership to Robert E. Lee. He declined in a letter, but suggested they should be an "Invisible Empire". After Congress outlawed them in 1871 the Invisible Empire went underground to thwart reconstruction and Black Civil Rights.

1888- Vincent Van Gogh cut off most of his left ear after a drunken argument with fellow artist Paul Gaugin over the affection of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent his ear to the prostitute. She fainted. In 2009 historians theorized his ear was sliced off by Gaugin drunkenly waving an antique sword. The two men agreed to keep the secret to not get Gaugin in trouble.

1889- Daniel Stover & W. Hance of Freeport Ill. invented the bicycle backpedal brake.

1922- The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

1925- The London Evening News published a story “In which we are introduced to Winnie the Pooh, and some Bees.” By A.A. Milne. The first book of stories came out the following year.

1934- GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR DUMPED HIS GIRLFRIEND- For two years the divorced general had kept a beautiful young Philippine mistress he met in Manila named Isabella Rosario “Elizabeth” Cooper. But when he accepted the posting back in Washington she insisted on coming with him. Today he sent an aide to intercept her in the lobby of the Willard Hotel and buy her off with a newly minted sheet of 100 dollar bills. His chief reason for giving her the boot was the 54 year old four star general was afraid his mother would find out.

1937- Disney short Lonesome Ghosts premiered.

1941- General Homma and the advancing Japanese Army captured the Philippine capitol Manila. General MacArthur withdrew to the island fortress of Corregidor, while his exhausted Philippine-American troops set up a last line of defense on the Bataan Peninsula.

1941- Operation Drumroll. German Admiral Doenitz dispatched advanced 5 long range U-Boats to the US Eastern coast.

1942- Admiral Darlan assassinated. Darlan was a Vichy-Nazi collaborator who the Allies had to cut a deal with so the Vichy French wouldn't resist the Allied landings in North Africa at Casablanca. Having to be nice to this turncoat disgusted Free-French like Charles DeGaulle, and apparently disgusted somebody even more...

1944- In some of the last big V-1 attacks on London the Nazis added a sick twist- they filled the buzz bombs with letters home from British POWs. As the bombs exploded in Oldham and Gravesend killing women and children, the letters blew out like confetti.

1944- The MOSQUITO BOWL- The Marine 6th Division was stationed at Guadalcanal preparing for the attack on Okinawa, the last big battle of the Pacific War. During the long stretches of dull, endless training, the 6th Marine Division discovered they had a number of college football stars in their ranks. This day in the jungle, the men of the 6th Regiment, took on the 29th Regiment in an epic football game. Many of these men would be dead in battle a few months later.

1949- The Bugs Bunny cartoon “Rabbit Hood” opened. directed by Chuck Jones.

1950- This night young Scottish nationalists broke into Westminster Abbey and stole the Stone of Scone from under the English throne. It was the traditional seat upon which kings of Scotland were crowned, it was brought to London by King Edward I Longshanks. After three months it was given back, left wrapped in a Scottish flag.

1951- Gina Carlo Menotti’s opera "Amal and the Night Visitors" premiered on NBC TV..

1952- The conservative Republican 80th congress overturned Pres. Harry Truman’s veto of the McCarren /Walters Immigration Act. It called for more strenuous screening of immigrants for Communist sympathies, but it also redistributed the quota system along more racist lines. Two thirds of the slots allowed for new immigrants to America went to England, Ireland and Germany, with the rest of the world getting one third.
The objectionable parts of the act were changed in 1965,…. they said.

1952- First draft script completed on the MGM film Terror Planet, changed to “ Forbidden Planet.”

1964- First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek. Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

1966- Local New York City TV station WPIX premiered The Yule Log. They ran a loop of 6 minutes of a closeup of a log burning in a fireplace in Gracie Mansion, the NY Mayors official residence. The loop ran from 11:00PM to 1:00AM with Christmas carols playing. It made the TV the symbolic family hearth. New Yorkers loved their kitschy Yule Log tradition, and when WPIX tried to replace it in 1989 hundreds of complaints forced them to put it back. The log was videotaped once more in 1970, and that’s been the film ever since. Other places have picked playing a Yule Log like You Tube.

1968- Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders become the first men to reach the moon and win the Space Race. They orbited but did not land, that was for Apollo 11 next year. This Christmas night Frank Borman sent a message to Earth, by reading from Genesis, as they sent back the very first images of the Earthrise, our planet seen from another world. A little blue gem in a black cosmos. Borman read: " Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep… And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.…”
To a world exhausted by the riots, wars, political polarization and assassinations, Apollo 8’s message ended the year on a positive note. That humans could still dream to be better than they were.

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of the Pearl Harbor attack told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in. Japanese sections were directed by Kinji Fukusaku and Toshio Masuda, whose previous credit was The Green Slime.

1985- Fidel Castro gives up smoking cigars, on doctors’ orders.

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman. They divorced a few years later.

1992- Outgoing President George H. W. Bush announced presidential pardons for all the former Reagan Whitehouse staff implicated in the Iran Contra Scandal. Caspar Weinberger, Bud McFarlane and probably himself.

1993- Tombstone premiered. Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton do the OK Corral, finally with accurate facial hair of the period.

1997- The first Hanukkah menorah lit in Vatican City.

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it Wants.." His 3rd or 4th partner, they have lived happily together ever since.

2005- Movie star Burt Reynolds grew so tired of the National Enquirer publishing scandalous stories about him that he gathered 300lbs of horseshit from his ranch, then hired a helicopter. At 3:00AM he flew over the Enquirers’ headquarters in Boca Raton Florida, and dumped it all on the building. Much of it hit their large Xmas tree.
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Yesterday’s Question: The ancient Jewish people of Israel were divided into tribes. How many tribes were there?

Answer: 12 Tribes. 10 and two were the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Merry Christmas!—t.s.

Quiz: In science fiction and other sources refer to a place called Tartarus. What or where was the original Tartarus?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Christmas is called the Yuletide season. What is a Yule?
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History for 12/22/2022
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Diocletian 245AD, Josef Stalin-born Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 59.

1737- Preacher John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, was chased out of Savannah Georgia. The townspeople thought Pastor Wesley applied the Law of God a bit too arbitrary. He finally refused to grant an old girlfriend the rights of marriage because she had not been to confession enough in the past three months. This day he took ship back to England before he was arrested.

1807- President Thomas Jefferson was desperately trying to steer a neutral course in the struggle between Britain and Napoleon’s France, each wanted the US to choose their side. This day Congress passed his Embargo Act, cutting off trade with both European powers.

1808- DA-DA-DA- DUMMMM- Beethoven premiered his 5th Symphony.

1849- Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky had been a political radical. On this day the Czar's secret police the Ohkrana broke his spirit by a cruel ruse. They arrested him for treason. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was given a last meal, received Last Rites from a priest, blindfolded and stood before a firing squad. But before the guns would go off the squad stopped and his sentence was commuted. He was sent instead to Siberia for four years. This naturally had an adverse effect on his sensitive nature and he spent his final years a raving conservative.

1861- Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was ordained a deacon in the Church of England.

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

1864- General Sherman marching through Georgia, today telegraphed Pres. Lincoln: ” I present you as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah”. Uncle Billy spared Savannah the depredations his men committed in the rest of the state, many say because he had friends there before the war, but also because he needed a deep water port for a winter base that the US Navy could supply him from.

1888- Horn & Hardart opened their first Automat Restaurant. This in Philadelphia.

1898-THE DREYFUS CASE- Early in 1898 the French Army High Command discovered they had a spy on their staff leaking secrets to Germany. The man was a Colonel Count Esterhazy, an aristocrat pretty high up in the chain of command. The Generals worried that news of the scandal would humiliate and weaken the army's prestige. So they looked for a lower ranked scapegoat to pin Esterhazy's crimes on. They chose a Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was working class and Jewish. They had Dreyfus courts-martialed for espionage and treason and exiled to Devil's Island. As his sword and medals were being publicly stripped from him he shouted out loud "Citizens of France ! I am innocent !!"
Dreyfus's family refused to give up hope and brought in the famous author-activist Emile Zola, who uncovered the plot in the news article "J'Accuse !"I accuse. The scandal tore the French military and public opinion apart. Esterhazy fled to Germany and one top general shot himself. In 1906 Dreyfus was cleared of all charges and when the Great War came General Dreyfus was entrusted with the defense of Paris.

The Dreyfus case to French scholars is as contentious as the “Did Thomas Jefferson sleep with his Slaves?” controversy is to Americans. In 1998 on the hundredth anniversary of the Dreyfus Case everyone was still arguing over their interpretation of events.

1921- LENIN'S TESTAMENT- Soviet Russian leader Vladimir Lenin was in failing
health after an assassination attempt and a stroke. ,k;’[He knew of the internal
struggle within the Communist Party between Trotsky and Stalin to succeed
him.
This day he dictated a series of notes spelling out his analysis of the
situation and where he thought the future of the revolution should go. He
felt Stalin was too dangerous to be in charge" Comrade Stalin is devoid of
the most elementary human honesty". So Trotsky should come after him as
leader of the Soviet Union. Lenin called it "Letter to the Party Congress"
because he intended it to be published.
Upon Lenin's death Stalin seized power and made sure this document was never made public. It didn't come out for thirty-three years, until after Stalin’s death in 1953.

1932 – The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan and Arthur Byron was released.

1937- The day after the triumphant premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, animator Woolie Reitherman ran into Walt Disney at the studio. Instead of complimenting Woolie and telling him to kick back and relax a bit, Walt launched into a detailed analysis of the problems facing the next picture, and how they need to get started right away!

1938- Memo from Dave Fleischer’s casting director to Paramount rep A.M. Botsford, asking if they might offer the role of Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels to Gary Cooper!

1939- Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels” opened in theatres.

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car crash in L.A.

1941-Now that America was officially at war with the Axis, Prime Minister Winston Churchill slipped across U-Boat infested waters to spend a month at the White House planning strategy with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A White House butler described;" Mr. Churchill awoke to a tumbler of sherry. At noon scotch and sodas, champagne at dinner finished off with 90 year old brandy then light a cigar and begin the day's work- from 9:00 PM- 2:00 AM. Churchill liked to dictate memos from his bath. When Roosevelt was told he could enter the room, he was embarrassed and excused himself to leave. Churchill stood up from the tub wearing nothing but soapsuds and the cigar in his teeth and declared: "THE PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN HAS NOTHING TO HIDE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES !" When a friend later asked Roosevelt what was Churchill like, the President mused: "He's pink...all over."

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge, a German officer was sent under a white flag to Gen. McAulliffe's American troops in Bastogne. His message was “You are surrounded with no hope of relief. Surrender or be annihilated!” General McAuliffe sent him a simple reply:" NUTS!' McAulliffe's force was eventually rescued by Patton. In later years McAullife grew tired of the fame of being the general who said "nuts". At a party a Manhattan socialite once said to him: "It is an honor to meet you, General Nuts".

1951- Yves Montand married Simone Signoret.

1964- In Chicago, Comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes, the jury laughed out loud. Lenny complained about the policeman’s delivery. After Lenny Bruce no one has ever again been convicted in the U.S. for telling jokes.

1973- The 55 miles per hour speed limit was set for all US interstate highways.

1975- English actor Sir Alec Guinness wrote a friend about a recent job offer, "I have been offered a movie (20th Cent. Fox) which I may accept if they come up with proper money. London and N. Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction – which gives me pause – but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did "American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps."
The part was Obie Wan Kenobi, and the movie was Star Wars. By the time the first trilogy was done, he had made $50 million from it.

1984- Nerdy shopkeeper Bernard Goetz shot four African-American men on a NYC subway train. They had asked him for money and one man had a sharpened screwdriver. Goetz had once been robbed before of a liquor store payroll and pushed through a plate glass store window. So he pulled his gun and fired. Two of the men died and one was left paralyzed. Like OJ Simpson ten years later, the Subway Vigilante divided people along racial lines. Was Bernard Goetz a homicidal racist, or a mild man pushed over the brink?

1988- In Brazil ecologist and rubber workers union activist Chico Mendes was shot and killed by plantation owners.

1993- The Hubble Space telescope cost $1.5 billion but it had a flaw. Its lens was ground incorrectly, so it was nearsighted. This day Space Shuttle Endeavour flew into space to fit the Hubble with an optical corrective system called CoStar, in effect, giving it a set of glasses.

2000- The Cohen Bros. Depression Era comedy Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Opened.
“ Ah, am a man of constant sorrow….”

2001- THE SHOE BOMBER. Would-be terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Rome to Orlando by trying to ignite a substance concealed in his sneakers. He was stopped and beaten to a pulp by his fellow travelers, including a 6’8 pro basketball player returning home from the Italian leagues. Richard Reid is why we all have to take our shoes off in airports now.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Christmas is called the Yuletide season. What is a Yule?

Answer: The ancient Norse/Viking solstice festival was called the Jul, or Yule. It lasted 12 days. You decorated you home indoors with evergreens and at night left out cookies and milk for Odin the Wanderer and his 8 legged horse Sleipnir.

Quiz: Christmas is called the Yuletide season. What is a Yule?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: All together, how many ghosts visited Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas?
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History for 12/21/2022
Birthdays: Benjamin Disraeli, Josh Gibson- the Home Run King of the Negro Baseball Leagues, Pat Weaver-TV exec who created the Today Show and father of Sigourney Weaver, Frank Zappa, Dr. Kurt Waldheim, Florence Griffith Joyner, Chris Evert, Phil Roman, Jane Fonda is 85, Keifer Sutherland is 56, Samuel L. Jackson is 74, Jane Kaszmarek, Judy Delphy is 53, Jeffrey Katzenberg is 72, Paul Winchell born Pinkus Wilchinski would be 100!

Happy Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year.

1375- The writer Boccaccio died, not of the plague, and not during a wild party like in his book the Decameron.

1376- After a lot of lobbying from St. Catherine of Siena and Saint Brigid of Sweden, Pope Gregory XI moved the Vatican back to Rome from Avignon. Gregory mysteriously died shortly after he arrived. Roman mobs, angry at the poverty caused by the absence of the Holy See, attacked the mostly French cardinals selecting the next pope. They crowded around their building shouting: "Death or an Italian Pope!' and threw javelins at the ceiling knowing the points would pop out of the floor and prick their feet.
The terrified cardinals dragged any old bishop out of the Vatican library, made him an Archbishop, then Cardinal, then Pope, then ran for the hills. The librarian became Pope Urban VIII, the "Beast of Naples".

1776- American diplomats Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane arrive in Paris to negotiate a French alliance and money for the rebellious colonies. It took them a year. Their secretary, William Bancroft, was a British spy.

1788- Emperor Quang Tung of Vietnam was crowned.

1863- Congress created the Medal of Honor, at first only for Navy personnel for gallantry, but later extended to all branches of the military.

1866- THE FETTERMAN MASSACRE- Foreshadowing by ten years what Custer would get, the Sioux led by Crazy Horse surrounded an army detachment and wiped them out. The commander of Fort Phil Kearny Wyoming, a Colonel Carrington sent out the troop to drive away some hostiles molesting a woodcutting detail. It turned out to be an elaborate trap planned by Crazy Horse and Red Cloud. It was said Carrington was such a high-class snob, "the way he would prefer to deal with the Sioux would be to socially ostracize them".

Now as his men went down under a hail of arrows Carrington could hear the firing in the distance but didn't think they needed any help. Captain Fetterman and his second in command Brown were among the last survivors. Fetterman had said the threat of the hostiles was overrated and "With 80 men I could ride through the entire Sioux Nation!" Brown had gone against orders on the mission because he promised his family back east a real Indian scalp for Christmas. Now surrounded and not wishing to be tortured, they held their revolvers to each other's temples and on the count of three...

1909- The first Junior High School or Middle School in the US began in Berkeley Cal.

1913- THE BIRTHDAY OF THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE- Journalist Arthur Wynne created the word game, which included 32 clues and ran in the New York World.

1914- The premiere of the first feature length film comedy- Tilly’s Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and a young Charlie Chaplin.

1919-THE PALMER RAIDS- THE RED SCARE- Class-conscious American businessmen watched the growing Communist regime in Russia with fear. Soviet cells were also moving to take over Germany, Hungary and Austria. People feared foreign anarchists at home with bombs." Bolshevism is worse than war.”-Herbert Hoover. This day Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer received permission to go after what he deemed “seditious elements”. Palmer himself was a liberal progressive, but when anarchists set off a bomb on his home’s porch, he turned into an avenging inquisitor.
Under emergency wartime sedition legislation (even though World War I had been over for a year) At the stroke of midnight on New Years, U.S. marshals raided newspaper and union offices and deported 249 immigrants, including women's rights advocate Emma Goldman. The raids were organized by a young executive in the treasury dept, named J. Edgar Hoover.

1925- Sergei Eisenstein’s cinematic masterpiece Battleship Potemkin premiered in Moscow. The films pioneering use of montage and allegorical imagery intercut inspired a generation of filmmakers.

1933- Twentieth Century Fox signed 5 year old Shirley Temple to a seven year contract.

1937- Walt Disney's " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" had its grand premiere at the Carthay Circle Theater. The first feature length American cartoon, it became the box office champ of 1938, earning 4 times more than any other film that year. Russian director Sergei Eisenstein called it “The greatest movie ever made.”

1937- Ted Healy, former vaudeville partner of the Three Stooges, was killed in a fight at the Trocadero while celebrating the birth of his son. No one is sure what happened. One legend has it that actor Wallace Beery and some gangsters did the fatal pounding. Another rumor is one of the gangsters was young Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who forty years later would produce the James Bond movies and win an Irving Thalberg Award at the 1982 Oscars. Healy originated the violent comedy schtick of the Stooges. But by this time The Three Stooges had parted ways with Ted Healy and were doing much better.

1939- In the year of their nonaggression pact, Adolf Hitler sent Holiday Greetings to his new best-buddy Josef Stalin. "Merry Christmas, you Jewish-Bolshevik untermensch schweinehund! "Thank you and the same to you, you corrupt Fascist tool of International Capitalism, ифыефкв! "

1940- Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (44) died of a heart attack at Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham's house. She had just left the house to buy him some candy. She left him thumbing through his Princeton alumni newsletter. His last words to her were 'Hershey bars will be fine..."

1944- Walt Disney’s The Three Caballeros premiered in Mexico City. It opened in the US in February.

1945- General George “Blood & Guts” Patton died from injuries suffered in an auto accident in Manheim Germany on Dec. 9th.

1953- Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the Atomic Bomb, was accused of being a Communist. When he was asked in 1940 to head the Manhattan Project the government knew he was a Berkeley eccentric who had joined every leftist group in town, but he was brilliant. This act is now viewed more as the government revenge for his flat refusal to help Edmund Teller develop the Hydrogen Bomb.

1958- Charles DeGaulle elected President of the 5th French Republic.

1959- Joe Oriolo’s TV remake of Felix the Cat debuted on TV.

1964-The British Parliament voted to ban the death penalty.

1968- The Apollo 8 spacecraft was launched to the Moon. Besides winning the Space Race, and doing the famous Christmas Night reading of Genesis from lunar orbit, Apollo 8 had one board one of the very first personal-computers. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was one cubic foot in size, had stored memory of 5 bytes, a language (DSKY) and a digital display.

1969- Famed football coach Vince Lombardi coached his last game- Dallas beat Washington 20-10.

1971- Richard William's animated TV special "A Christmas Carol" with Alastair Sim reprising his Scrooge.

1972- 14 members of a Uruguayan rugby team were found alive on an Andes mountain peak after their plane crashed. They survived the harsh conditions by turning cannibal and eating their dead.

1973- Ray Harryhausen’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad premiered.

1975- International terrorist Carlos the Jackal attacked an OPEC oil meeting in Vienna and took 11 ministers hostage. He escaped to Algeria and wasn’t finally caught until 1994 while trying to get an operation on his testicle.

1978- Chicago police investigating the disappearance of a 15 year old boy searched the home of contractor John Wayne Gacy. They found the remains of 33 children in the crawl space. Gacy in his spare time did volunteer work as a clown entertaining sick children.

1979- Disney’s Sci-Fi film The Black Hole opened in theaters.

1982- Thom Riley, one of the stars of the TV cop show ChiPS was busted for driving stoned on Quaaludes.

1988- PanAm 747 jumbo jet Flight 103 from London to New York exploded over Lockerbie Scotland killing all the passengers. The bomb was planted in Munich by Libyan agents. It was in retaliation for either Reagan's bombing of Tripoli in 1986, or the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July of 1988 by the US Navy Cruiser Vincennes.
The Libyan man who built the bomb wasn’t arrested until Dec. 2022.

1989- The Romanian army joined the people protesting in the streets and overthrew the hated Communist dictator Nicholai Cercescu. While most of the nation starved in a stagnant economy, Cercescu lived in luxury. His son drove sports cars and lost fortunes at roulette tables in Monte Carlo. Young Cercescu kept a “raping room” for women who caught his fancy. As the Communist regimes of Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany collapsed, Romanians realized their time had finally come, and they poured out into the streets.

1989- Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 official Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled- beakon. In 2007 President George W. Bush sent out Hanukkah cards featuring the White House Christmas tree.

2003- Just in time to spoil Christmas, Pres. Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced the color-coded threat level was raised to the highest state of alert since the 9-11 Attack. That Al Qaeda terrorists were about to attack the United States and kill us all at any minute! After terrifying everybody, absolutely nothing happened. In 2009 it was revealed the data came from a conman named Dennis Montgomery, who fooled the CIA into believing he had special software that he could use to intercept Al Qaeda secret messages broadcast on the Arab news network Al Jazeera. It was a complete fraud.

2012- The World will come to an End, according to the ancient Mayan Calendar. The Maya believed that the world as they knew it occasionally was turned upside down. The word for earthquake also meant revolution. Translating Mayan can be open to interpretation, so end of an era may also mean beginning of a new age of enlightenment.

2012- The Walt Disney Company spent $4.06 billion to buy Lucasfilm, ILM and the Star Wars rights. George Lucas retired to do philanthropic pursuits.

2089- According to Ridley Scott, today the good ship Prometheus landed on the Original Planet.
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Yesterday’s Question: All together, how many ghosts visited Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas?

Answer: Four.

Quiz: Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen.” Who the heck is King Wenceslas, and what has he have to do with Christmas?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Why is alcohol for drinking also known as “booze”?
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History for 12/17/2022
Birthdays: Paracelsus (otherwise known as Nicholas Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim) the father of modern medical diagnosis, Antonio Cimmarosa, William Lyon Mackensie-King, Arthur Fiedler, Bob Guccione, William Safire, Cal Ripken Sr., Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Pope Francis I, Bill Pullman is 69, Eugene Levy is 76, Giovanni Ribisi is 48, Armin Mueller-Stahl is 92, Wes Studi is 75, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mila Jovovich is 47, Bart Simpson is 33.

ROMAN FESTIVAL OF SATURNALIA- Today was the first day of the festival of Saturn, the biggest holiday to the ancient Romans, one of the roots of Christmas. On this holiday no business was conducted, Roman families ate together, masters served their slaves, and gave them a day off. People gave each other gifts in pretty colored wrappings. Romans also decorated the outsides of their houses with wreaths and lights (oil lamps). Christians began using the Saturnalia as the birth festival of Jesus as early as 335AD. It was made official by the Pope in 885 AD.
So, at sunset, face towards the setting sun and shout "Io, Io, Saturnalia!", for Hail Saturn!

1596- In a warning of what his son Charles I would face in England, this day Scottish King James VI was chased out of Edinburgh by his pushy Presbyterian Parliament. James responded with an economic blockade of his capitol by withholding royal grants and contracts until by New Years the populace was clamoring for his return.

1777- VALLEY FORGE- When Lord Howe’s British Army called the Christmas Truce and beds down in Philadelphia, George Washington’s army made camp not too far away at Valley Forge. The severe winter and poor conditions made Washington’s Army lose as many men as if there had been a battle. 2,500 out of 10,000 minutemen did not survive to see Spring. Meanwhile the local farmers sold their harvest to the British, who paid better.

1793 -Battle of Toulon begins. The French Revolutionary army tried to retake the Mediterranean seaport whose royalist population had invited in an occupation fleet of English, Spanish and Piedmontese. The commanding French generals were nervous about failure, because to first magistrate Robespierre failure meant the guillotine. So they yielded the initiative to a pushy 23-year-old artillery major with a funny Italian name- Napoleon Bonaparte.

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more resembling Mardi Gras.
The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate observance centered on the family. Charles Dickens said he wrote the book to make money. He had two flops and wanted to capitalize on the new fashion for family Christmas celebrations set by the example of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

1862- GRANT'S GENERAL ORDER #11- When Union army troops occupied large parts of Confederate Tennessee, southerners wondered what kind of retribution the angry U.S. government would wreak upon their heads. They were amazed when the new commander of the Union troops, Ulysses Grant, issued an order expelling all Jews from East Tennessee! His reasoning was that drygoods salesmen and were cheating his men. Abe Lincoln was shocked. "Isn't our country divided enough?!" The order was countermanded by the White House and Grant was ordered to apologize. Grant later admitted the criticism of his hasty order was justified, and he “should not have legislated against any one particular sect.” During the eight years of Grant’s presidency, memories of General Orders No. 11 surfaced repeatedly. Eager to prove that he was above prejudice, Grant appointed more Jews to public office than any of his predecessors. Jewish leader Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise noted at the time, that Grant had “often repented” of his order, and “that even the wise also fail.” ‘

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received it's world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo), then forgot about it when he died in 1828. A friend kept the manuscript in a closet for 43 years.

1892- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze- later American choreographer George Balanchine.

1902- THE VENEZUELA CRISIS- Kaiser Wilhelm threatened Venezuela with naval blockade and invasion if she did not pay her international debts. US President Teddy Roosevelt sent Admiral Dewey with 23 battleships to the Caribbean and threatened war. Der Kaiser backed down and war was avoided. This incident was kept secret for seventy years. It’s when Teddy first said:” Speak softly and carry a big stick!”

1903- THE AIRPLANE- Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For one minute a powered heavier than aircraft flew. Orville finished the day with a telegram to their father minding the bicycle shop back in Dayton Ohio: “ Success. Four Flights Thursday Morning against twenty-one mile an hour wind. Inform press home for Christmas.” The news failed to get into most national newspapers.
The Wrights themselves maintained a strict secrecy because they knew rivals like Glen Curtis, the French, and Smithsonian professor William Langley were all close to inventing an airplane as well. The sensation of the airplane didn’t really become widespread until the Wrights demonstrated their plane in France in 1908 and around New York Harbor in 1909. In 1913 Curtis took Langley’s flying machine the Aerodrome out of storage and flew it to prove to the Smithsonian that the Wright Brothers were not the first. The bitter disputes lasted the length of their lives.

1917- Lenin created the first Communist Secret Police, the Cheka, led by Iron Felix Derszhinsky:” My thoughts induce me to be without pity.” In a few months the Cheka executed more people than the Czars’ police the Okrana did in all of the XIX Century. The Cheka in Stalin’s time was called the OGPU, then NKVD, his executioners in the Great Purges. After Stalin, their name was changed to the KGB, the great spy and Secret Police operation set to bedevil their counterparts in the west- the CIA and MI5. The KGB was disbanded in 1991, and today is called the FSB. Russian Premier Vladimir Putin began his career as a KGB agent.

1928- Under orders from Josef Stalin, the Central Committee of the Soviet Union first declared that all rural land belonged to the community. All landowners were enemies of the state. This began The War on the Kulaks- the name for middle class peasants who owned some farmland. The purges of Kulaks, and famine from forced collectivization killed millions.

1934- First test flight of the Donald Douglas' DC-3, the most widely used airplane in aviation history. Unchanged for almost 60 years, the two engine DC-3 was the backbone of most of the world's first passenger airlines and with the military name C-47 (the Gooney Bird) it became the workhorse cargo plane of from World War II until Vietnam. There are still some DC-3's in service in some small countries.

1939- THE GRAF SPEE- The world media in the opening weeks of World War II were dominated by news of an epic sea duel between the British Navy and a German battleship. The British pursued the Graf Spee across the Atlantic into Montevideo Harbor in neutral Uruguay. This day while the sun was setting, radio broadcasters stayed on the air live and 250,000 spectators lined the shoreline to see if the Graf Spee would come out and fight. Instead, the tropical quiet was rent by a huge explosion. Kapitan Zur See Langersdorf had scuttled his own ship.
British intelligence had done a masterful job of fooling Kapitan Langersdorf into believing heavy naval reinforcements including the aircraft carrier Ark Royal were closing in on him, while in actual fact they were nowhere in the vicinity. All there was to try and stop the German battleship were three badly damaged light cruisers. After sinking the Graf Spee, Langersdorf wrapped himself in a German flag and shot himself. Interestingly he didn't use a Nazis swastika flag but wrapped himself in the old German Imperial Navy ensign. He also refused to give the stiff arm Nazis party salute.

1941- As if he hadn’t put his foot in his mouth badly enough already, Charles Lindbergh does it again today. After earlier in the year railing on about the “International Jewish Conspiracy pushing America into war” today in a speech Lucky Lindy denounced the war with Germany:” The only real threat to America is the threat of the Yellow Race. Japan and China are united against the white race. And our only natural ally is Germany”. This even after the public was enraged over Pearl Harbor. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Morgenthau told President Roosevelt: “I am convinced this guy is a Nazi”. Charles Lindbergh lived a long life, but never apologized or recanted his views.

1944- The MALMEDY MASSACRE- The largest documented atrocity committed on U.S. troops in Europe in World War II. During the Battle of the Bulge Nazi Waffen S.S. troops rounded up a large group of U.S. prisoners and machined gunned them all. 87 men of Battery B, 285th Field Artillery died. The atrocity stiffened U.S. resistance to the Nazis advance. The furor over President Reagan's laying a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery in 1985 was that some of the guilty SS of Malmedy were buried there.
One of the leaders of the massacre, Major Otto Wolf, did some prison time after the war and lived quietly until 1967, when he was found shot to death in his burning house, a smoking rifle in his hands like he was defending himself. Obviously, someone had not forgotten.

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge, near Krinkelt Belgium, Sgt. José Mendoza López picked up a heavy machine gun and held off a massed German assault all by himself. An immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico who moved to Texas, he stood up in a snowy foxhole offering no cover and mowed down waves of attacking soldiers, covering the retreat of his buddies. Sgt. Lopez was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and lived to be 94, dying in 2005. He credited his success to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

1944- As the extent of the German offensive in the Ardennes became clear, General Eisenhower declared the Belgian town of Bastogne would be the key. He ordered the 82nd and 101st Airborne to go there and hold the town at all costs.

1944- The U.S. War Department issued Public Proclamation 21, stating that all Americans of Japanese ancestry could leave their internment camps and finally go home.

1955- Carl Perkins awoke in the middle of a bad nights sleep and wrote Blue Suede Shoes, the first song to be a hit in Country, R&B and Rock n’ Roll charts simultaneously, especially when sung by Elvis Presley” Well you can knock me down, step on ma face, etc.”

1963- Americans began to hear on their transistor radios a new sound from a band in England named the Beatles. “I wanna hold your hand” becomes a big hit and heralds the British rock invasion in 1964.

1969- Tiny Tim, the campy, ukulele strumming crooner, married his Miss Vicky, or Victoria Budinger live on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

1969- The US Air Force terminated Operation Blue Book, the investigation of UFO phenomena.

1969- The Walt Disney Studio re-released Fantasia, and it was embraced by hippy stoners who liked to get high during screenings, Disney did a black-lite poster for it. It was the first time the 1940 film had ever made a profit.

1971- After the last Pakistani forces surrendered East Pakistan to invading Indian armies, East Pakistan was declared the independent nation of Bangladesh.

1989- Communist dictator Nicholas Cercescu ordered the Romanian Army to open fire on democratic protesters in Timisoara. Two thousand were killed. This incident pushed elements of the Army to turn their guns on the government. The Romanian Revolution was the most violent of the Communist regime changes of Eastern Europe.

1989- After appearing in some interstitial shorts on the variety Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons first premiered as a regular TV series. Season 1, Episode 1, Simpsons roasting on an open fire. “

1999- The film Stuart Little premiered.

2001- Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Haliburton Corporation, was awarded a ten-year no-bid contract to provide the U.S. Army with everything from firefighting to building bases to serving meals. Soldiers won’t dig latrines, because KBR port-o-pottys will be there. A soldier couldn’t wipe his face with a towel that didn’t have a KBR logo on it. Haliburton made $39 billion in the Iraq War. Vice President Cheney was a senior stockholder of Haliburton.

2010- The Arab Spring- Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26 year old peddler in Tunisia, had his pushcart confiscated for being unable to pay a fine. It was his only source of income to feed his family. He protested by standing in front of a police station and setting himself on fire. As Bouazizi died, Tunisians rose in massive protests and overthrew their longtime President Ben Ali. The pro-democracy protests quickly spread to Egypt, then Bahrain, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and all over the strongman one party states of the Middle East.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is alcohol for drinking also known as “booze”?

Answer: During the first political convention for William Henry-Harrison for President, a local distillery owned by Lemuel Booze handed out free whisky to delegates in little bottles shaped like a log cabin. Harrison promoted that he was born in a cabin. Each bottle was marked BOOZE. And thus was history made.