Quiz: What is meant by Rice Christians?

Yesterdays Question answered below: Why is Judas Iscariot one of the only apostles with a last name?
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History for 3/28/2012
Birthdays: Paul Whiteman, Pearl Bailey, Freddy Bartholemew, Dirk Bogarde,
Confederate Gen.Wade Hampton, pianist Rudolph Serkin, Swifty Lazar, Marlin Perkins, Diane Weist is 64, Reba McEntire, Vince Vaughn is 42, Julia Stiles is 31, Lady Gaga is 26

193 A.D. -THE DAY THE WORLD WAS AUCTIONED- The Roman Emperor Pertinax had just been slaughtered by his Guards and the Praetorian Prefect Marius Maximus wisely turned down the promotion- bad retirement benefits, you know. The men realized they can't be Imperial Guards without an Imperial type person to guard. They might even get sent back to the frontier! So they posted an announcement that "who ever wanted to be Emperor of the Known World" should come to the Praetorian camp that night and submit a bid.

Several senators competed. The winner was Didius Julianus, with a winning bid of 15,000 silver pieces per man in the 1,500 man Guards. Almost none of the Roman generals went along with this dippy solution to the succession to the throne of the Caesars. Julianus was soon bumped off in a violent civil war that eventually saw Septimius Severus the winner.

1456- Today is the feast of St. John Capistrano. The Saint of the Swallows of California was born in Italy and was a preacher, was married, fought the Turks in Hungary, and in later life after becoming a monk was put in charge of the Holy Inquisition in Central Europe. He burned Protestant reformers and ordered all Jews to wear yellow badges so as not to seduce good Christians. He was so hated, that a century after his death from plague the Calvinists desecrated his grave and threw his bones down a well.

The Mission St. John Capistrano in California was named so by monk Fra Junipero Serra even though the Saint never visited the Golden State.

1776- Happy Birthday San Francisco! Don Juan Bautista De Anza brought 247 colonists to the tip of a rocky promontory in a huge foggy natural harbor and built a Presidio, or fort. When a monk came six months later to built a mission he called it San Francisco de Asiacutes. The nearby village was called Yerba Buena for all the good herbs growing in the area. Juan de Anza explored and mapped most of the route from Old Mexico through Northern California but is not as well known to Americans as the Anglo explorers John Freemont, Kit Carson and Jim Bridger.

1778 -GEORGE WASHINGTON ANNOUNCED MAJOR GENERAL BARON VON STEUBEN, LATELY OF KING FREDERICK THE GREAT'S SERVICE, WOULD TRAIN THE AMERICAN ARMY.- It turned out later Von Steuben was not a real Baron, never met the Great Frederick and never rose higher than Major. One British source claimed his medals were fakes purchased at a London theatrical costume shop.

But America was the land where if you want to be called Baron, you could be a baron. Von Steuben did an excellent job training the farmers and shopkeeps in modern warfare. He wrote: “ In Germany I order a soldier to do something and they do it. In America when I order a soldier to do something I must then explain WHY I want him to do it and WHY it is important!” The minutemen enjoyed watching him scream in a language they didn't understand, and at night around the campfire his big pet greyhound Azor howled along to the music.

Proof of his methods success was at the Battle of Monmouth, Lord Cornwallis groused: ” Hmpf! Damned rebels formed up well.”

1800- Congress voted to extend Franking privileges to Martha Washington. Franking meant she could mail letters without having to pay for postage.

1862- SIBLEY'S RAID. THE BATTLE OF LA GLORIETA PASS-The Gettysburg of the Far West. Confederate Henry Hastings Sibley pitched the idea to the High Command in Richmond that since most of the US Army was now back East fighting the Civil War there was no one to stop them from expanding the Confederacy from Texas to the gold fields of California and the Pacific Coast! Richmond let him equip a brigade of Texas Volunteers and they quickly overran Santa Fe, Alberquerque and won a skirmish at Valverde. Plans were made for the Confederate conquest of Colorado, Utah and set up a new rebel state in Arizona. Fighting got as far west as some Pima villages that one day would be Phoenix.

But what Richmond didn’t appreciate was the regional rivalry – As soon as Colorado and New Mexico men heard they were being invaded by Texans, they rushed to fight them. And Sibley turned out to be a bad leader- because of his drinking habits his men called him a Walking Whiskey Barrel.

This day a pitched battle was fought outside of Tuscon in Glorieta or Apache Pass. The Confederates won the battle but during the confusion a Yankee captain named Chivington sneaked behind the Rebel lines and burned Sibley’s supply train. This proved decisive since you can’t march armies in the Western deserts without supplies and water. Sibley had to fall back to Texas, he riding in a remaining wagon drunk with officers wives while his men marched with no water. On the Yankee side there were several leaders including a Colonel Slough who the Colorado men hated so much they planned to shoot him during the battle, frontier scout Kit Carson and many Hispanics led by Andres Pico, who once led Mexican troops against Yankees in the Mexican War. I guess he felt one change of flag in a lifetime was enough.

1870- THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAGUA KILLED BY A NEWSPAPER.- Gen. George H. Thomas, retired Union war hero has a heart attack in a St. Louis Hotel after reading an editorial saying all in all he wasn't that great a general. Survivor of shot and shell, they found him in his room clutching a written rebuttal to his chest.

1881- P.T. Barnum formed a partnership with his chief competitor James Bailey to create Barnum & Bailey’s Circus. He proclaimed it the Greatest Show on Earth!

1920- Silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford married.

1928- Via radio broadcast, the public heard the voice of Charlie Chaplin for the first time.

1930- The name of the City of Constantinople was officially changed to Istanbul, Turkish for “The City”. Angora was renamed Ankara.

1935- Leni Reifenstahl’s hypnotic movie paean to Nazism- Triumph of the Will, premiered.

1941-Battle of Matapan-British Navy sank Mussolini's Navy off the coast of Ethiopia.

1941- English writer Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in he River Ouse in Sussex. Her body was never found.

1942- Albert Hurter, brilliant Swiss designer for Walt Disney's "Snow White' and 'Pinnochio" died of rheumatic fever.

1953- Senator Joseph McCarthy, the grandstanding Commie chaser, held a news conference where he decried that European countries that were receiving US aid from the Marshall Plan were also trading with Communist countries. He announced he had received a pledge from a Greek shipping concern not to trade with Communist states in the future.

This speech elicited a storm of protest, under Secretary of State Symington accused the Wisconsin senator of conducting his own foreign policy. Yet the new Eisenhower administration stayed silent and did nothing, which encouraged McCarthy to grow bolder.

1958- The Killer Slide- US 1, The Pacific Coast Highway has always been at the mercy of wind and weather erosion effecting the unstable cliffs it was carved from. This day while repairing a large landslide construction workers were caught in an even bigger hillside collapse- Bulldozers rode on top of the avalanche but several on foot were killed.

1979- THREE MILE ISLAND- Partial Meltdown of the Pennsylvania reactor panicked the nation. Despite the official attempts to belittle the danger Governor Richard Thornburg in Harrisburg moved his office underground to a bunker and Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia gave the entire county of Lancaster and Harrisburg a blanket unction (Last Rites). just in case.... The accident spawned the largest civilian protests since the Vietnam War and nuclear energy business has never quite recovered.

1999- Matt Groening’s cartoon series Futurama debuted.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is Judas Iscariot one of the only apostles with a last name?

Answer: Judas Iscariot means Judas the Sicarri. The Sicarri were a violent offshoot of the Jewish Zealot movement who wanted independence from the Roman Empire. Sicarri meant ‘The Knife Men”, because they committed assassinations and other acts of terrorism against Roman guards.

Quiz: Why is Judas Iscariot one of the only apostles with a last name?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Was William Blake an artist or a poet?
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History for 3/27/2012
Birthdays: French King Louis XVII –the boy during the Revolution who died in prison after his Royal parents were guillotined, Patty Smith Hill 1868- The composer of the song Happy Birthday to You, Edward Steichen, Gloria Swanson, Sarah Vaughn, Maria Schneider, Mies Van der Rohe would be 126, Snooky Lanson, Wilhelm Roentgen the discoverer of X-Rays, Nathaniel Currier of Currier & Ives, cellist Mtisislav Rostropovich, Michael York is 69, Quentin Tarantino is 48, Mariah Carey is 41

The ancient Romans called today Washing Day, the origin of our concept of Spring Cleaning.

33AD- Ecce Homo- Behold the man, Traditional date for when Roman Governor Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to death.

715 a.d.- Saint Rupert was a Frank who did missionary work around Austria and Bavaria. When he arrived at the abandoned Roman town of Juvenum he revived the areas salt works and named it The Salt-Fortress, or Salzburg.

922- Persian mystic Al Hallij Mansur was beheaded at age 64 by order of the Caliph.

1513- Juan Ponce De Leon sighted the coastline of Florida. He claimed it for His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain. For years Spanish maps called all of North America- Las Floridas. Alabama was known as Western Florida until 1819.

1536- Swiss Cantons sign the First Helvetic Confession, declaring their common support of the Protestant religion.

1599- Queen Elizabeth Ist appointed her toyboy the Earl of Essex to be Governor General of Ireland. In his 6 months there he was ordered to put down the rebels under Earl Tyrone of O’Neill, which he couldn’t; not to make any peace treaties without consulting London, which he did; and not to leave Ireland without permission, which he left. Eventually Essex thought he could handle the Queen. He lost his head instead.

1625- King Charles Ist ascended the throne of England. The king who lost his head in the English Civil War. Dutch painter Jan Van Dyck had a premonition about him. When doing his portrait he said the English monarch had” The saddest face he’d ever done.”

1790- The invention of modern shoelaces!

1802-The Peace of Amiens- A rare three years of peace breaks out in Europe. This interrupted the constant warfare that had been raging since 1792 and would resume 1805 -1815. Around this time Napoleon was being annoyed by a queer American inventor named Robert Fulton who had some strange plans for a ship with no sails powered only by steam paddles. He even proposed another ship that could travel underwater! Robert Fulton had tried the British Admiralty first, but got no where. Napoleon kept him cooling his heels in his waiting room until he gave up and returned to America.

1814- THE BATTLE OF HORSESHOE BEND-The last great Indian battle in the American South. The War of 1812 coincided with Shawnee chief Tecumseh's called for all Indians regardless of tribe to unite to drive back the white man. Chief Red Eagle and the Creek Nation tried to fight Gen. Andrew Jackson and his volunteer army of frontiersmen down in the Alabama territory. Jackson's army included Davey Crockett, Sam Houston and future Senator Thomas Hart Benton.

Jackson (Indians named him "Sharp Knife") destroyed the Creeks in one huge battle. In a switch on Hollywood image, in this battle the Indians fought from inside a wooden walled fort and the whites charged around it. After the carnage Jackson ordered his men to cut off the dead brave's noses so he could make an accurate count. Andy Jackson became a national hero and carried a lead bullet around in his shoulder for the rest of his life, Sam Houston got shot in the groin, and Chief Red Eagle put on a suit & tie, and changed his name to William Weatherford.

1836- The first Mormon temple is set up in Kirkland Ohio. Mormon ladies broke up their fine china to mix into the plaster so the walls had a sparkling effect.

1836-GOLIAD- After wiping out the Texas rebels at the Alamo, Mexican Gen. Santa Anna surrounded the next little fort at Goliad. Their commander, Colonel Daniel Fanin, seeing the result that resistance brought the men of the Alamo, tried the other tack and surrendered. Santa Anna, who was infuriated by the losses he suffered at the Alamo, wanted to make an example of the Yanqui Texans. He had Fanin and his whole command executed by firing squads. But instead of being intimidated, Texans just got madder.

1855- Abraham Gesner patented Kerosene.

1865-The City Point Conference. Lincoln, Grant and Sherman confer on the steamboat River Queen about how to finish off Robert E.Lee and end the Civil War. Lincoln stressed that after the war the South should be treated mildly, no mass treason trials, hangings or reparations.” Let’s let ‘em up easy..” It's the last time Grant and Sherman would ever see Lincoln alive.

1866- Andrew Rankin received the first patent for the upright porcelain urinal.

1884-The first long distance telephone call-New York to Boston.

1886- GERONIMO ! After a whirlwind campaign across Arizona being chased by three U.S. armies, Geronimo and his Chiracuha Apaches surrendered. With only 32 braves and their families, Geronimo evaded 5,000 troops. The Apaches nicknamed their pursuing enemy General George Crook "General Day-After-Tomorrow" for his inability to keep up with them. Finally they were cornered and forced to give up. Geronimo and the Chiracua were shipped off to a Florida swamp for ten years before being allowed to return to their homelands. Many White Mountain Apaches who hated Geronimo acted as scouts for the army. Afterwards they were rewarded by being shipped off as well.

1908- Bud Fisher's comic strip Mutt & Jeff born.

1912- Washington DC received it’s famous cherry trees, 3,020 in number, a gift from the Japanese government.

1914- In Belgium the first successful blood transfusion was performed.

1939- Madrid fell to Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

1940- “Rebecca,” the first American movie by Alfred Hitchcock opened.

1941- After democratic Yugoslavs overthrow the pro-Nazi regime of Prince Paul, Hitler ordered an invasion.

1943- Companies in Los Angeles doing war work are forbidden to discriminate by race.

1945- Nazis fire the last V-2 rockets at London before the Allied armies overrun their launchpads. The last rockets hit Stepney and Kent. Chief scientist Dr. Werner Von Braun and his scientists started taking English lessons.

1945- The Battle of Iwo Jima finally ended, after raging since Feb 19th..

1945- Argentina declared war on Nazi Germany. This is seen as a bit of political theater since President Juan Peron openly admired Hitler and Mussolini and Argentina gave safe haven to many top Nazis after the war.

1952-U.P.A.’s cartoon “Rooty-Toot-Toot” premiered. It’s music score was by jazzman Phil Monroe, the first African American to receive a screen credit for scoring a movie.

1952- “Singing in the Rain” starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor premiered.

1957- California Reverend Robert Schuller opened the first Drive-In Church.

1958- Nikita Khruschev became Soviet Premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.

1964-THE ANCHORAGE,ALASKA EARTHQUAKE- The largest in the western hemisphere in the Twentieth Century..9.2 on the Richter Scale. It created a tsunami tidal wave that hit the coastlines of Alaska, British Columbia and Hawaii with a 100 foot wall of water. 164 people died.

1973- In one of the more celebrated stunts in Hollywood history, when Marlon Brando won an Oscar for his role in The Godfather, he sent a buckskin clad model named Sashin Littlefeather to refuse the award, and deliver a protest about treatment of Native Americans.

1974- Mariner 10 visited the Planet Mercury.

1977- In the largest aviation disaster in history. A KLM 747 jumbo jet taking off crashed into another PanAm 747 jumbo landing at Tenerife Canary Islands. 582 people were killed.

1978- The first draft script of the film Norma Rae completed. The film dramatized the life of Christa Lee Jordan, a mill worker who was blackballed by the J.P. Stevens millworks for wanting a union.

1996- Fearful of mad cow disease, The European Community banned the export of beef from Britain for one year.
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Yesterday’s Question: Was William Blake an artist or a poet?

Answer: He was both, a poet who made paintings based on his themes.

Question: Was William Blake an artist or a poet?

Yesterday_s Question answered below: What does the name Geronimo mean?
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History for 3/26/2012
B-Days: Harald von Braunhut 1926- the inventor of Sea Monkeys, Robert Frost, Chico Marx, Conde Nast, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Houseman, Joseph Cambell, General William Westmorland, Erica Jong,, Duncan Hines, Bob Woodward, Leonard Nimoy is 80 Alan Arkin, James Caan is 72, Diana Ross is 68, Justice Sandra Day-O_Connor, Martin Short, Bob Elliot of Bob & Ray, Michael Imperioli is 46, Keira Knightley is 27

1199- English King Richard Lionheart died of blood poisoning from an arrow scratch. He was 42. After returning from the Crusade and getting ransomed from prison in Austria, King Richard embarked on a campaign of regaining lands in central France he lost while he was away. He received his fatal wound attacking a small castle named Chalus in Limousin. Since he shunned the company of women and never made a son, his brother evil Prince John became king anyway.

1660- Since the death of the dictator Oliver Cromwell, the military junta ruling Britain was breaking down. In Holland exiled young Prince Charles II Stuart received this day the first messages from Puritan General Monck inviting him to return to England and be their king.

1791- The French politician Mirabeau had guided the French Revolution from the Bastille towards creating a constitutional monarchy on the English model. But being now the most famous man in France he lived hard and played hard. This night he _entertained_ two female dancers from the Opera all night and woke up with violent intestinal cramps. He was dead by April 2nd. The Revolution spun out of control into the Reign of Terror then the dictatorship of Napoleon.

1796- Napoleon Bonaparte takes command of the French Army in Italy. His promotion came mainly because new bride Josephine urged her old boyfriend Barras who was head of the French government to grant the little general with the Italian accent the assignment.

1811- Poet Percy Shelley was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet that argued that God didn_t exist.

1827- Ludwig van Beethoven died at age 56. Six people visited him while he was sick, 20,000 attended his funeral in Vienna. Romantic legend says he died at the violent peak of a thunderstorm raising his fists skyward in a last act of defiance to God and the elements, but in actual fact he died peacefully in his sleep.

He lived in an abandoned monastery given him as public housing by the Austrian government along with a small pension. He constantly complained about his poverty so that the Philharmonic Society of London sent him 1,500 gold English pounds from a benefit concert. After his death they found around 20,000 gold pieces hidden in cupboards and pots.

1830- Vermonter Joseph Smith, 24, first published "The Book of Mormon." Smith said the archangel Moroni in a dream aided his discovery of a later testament of Jesus written on golden plates in _Reformed Egyptian_ which Smith was able to translate with the aid of the "Urim & Thummim" stones.

1832- Artist George Catlin began his first trip to the West. He departed up the Missouri River on the American Fur Trading steamer the Yellowstone. Catlin_s paintings of Plains Indians became famous.

1860- The tip of the Kowloon peninsula and Stonecutter_s Island ceded by China to Great Britain. This would become the site of Hong Kong. A British Empire diplomat called it "The notch by which the tree will be eventually felled.." meaning that like India eventually all China would be a British colony.

1865- At City Point Virginia the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens had a covert meeting with Abraham Lincoln to discuss possible peace terms to end the Civil War. But they couldn_t agree on anything- Even at this late date Lincoln was offered a cash compensation of $4 million for the loss of slaves but Stephens said the deal breaker was Southerners would not admit they were wrong and ask for pardons and amnesties. Alexander Stephens went back to Richmond empty handed and the war went on.

1883-To inaugurate her opulent new 5th Ave. mansion Mrs. Cornelia Vanderbilt held one of the greatest costume balls in New York City history. She and Mrs. Astor had formed the Social Register, also called the Golden 400, the ranking of the top families in polite society first invented by the Venetian Republic. If you weren_t on their list then darling, you simply weren_t anybody.

The mansion stood where Bergdorf Goodman_s faces the Plaza Hotel today. The party set new standards for the conspicuous wealth and excess of the Gilded Age. Many guests dressed as Venetian nobility and Mrs. J.P. Morgan dressed as _Electric Light: The Wonder of the Age._

1900- The Happy Hooligan comic strip.

1909- The U.S. Board of Censorship created.

1920- This Side of Paradise, the first novel published by a young Minnesota writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a descendant of Francis Scott Key, writer of the Star Spangled Banner.

1937- A statue of Popeye the Sailor unveiled at the Crystal City Texas Spinach Festival.

1942- The first trainloads of Jewish people were sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

1943- Just outside of Chicago gangster Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti took a walk down a railroad track, took a swig of bourbon, put a 32mm pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. He first waved to get the attention of some track workers so they could witness that he was taking his own life and was not the victim of another gangster. The successor to Al Capone was going to be indicted the next day on Federal charges of racketeering and he knew they had enough from stoolies to put him away for a long time.

1953-The Salk Vaccine for Polio announced.

1953- President Dwight Eisenhower increased US aid to the French fighting the Vietnamese in Indochina, but refused outright intervention.

1958- The Mau-Mau Rebellion in Kenya. It's debatable just how extensive or violent the Mau-Maus were, or even if there ever was such an organization, but the British colonial authorities used it as the excuse to jail the real nationalists like Njomo Kenyatta.

1959- Writer Dashell Hammett died.

1969- The western movie 100 Rifles premiered. It broke taboos, because it featured uber-sexy Raquel Welch making love to uber sexy black hero Jim Brown. And Burt Reynolds as the bandito Yaqui Joe Herrerra.

1969- On this day a frustrated young writer named John Kennedy Toole committed suicide. When his mother went through his things she found the manuscript of a novel in an old shoebox. Seven years after John Kennedy Toole killed himself, his mother forced the manuscript upon novelist Walker Percy to read. He was teaching at Loyola University in New Orleans. He was stunned with what he read and that lead to it being published by Louisiana State University Press. The book the " Confederacy of Dunces "went on to be a critically acclaimed bestseller and win the Pulitzer Prize.

1970- Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary admitted to having sex with a 14 year old girl. _ If I had a Hammer …_

1975 - The Who_s rock opera "Tommy" premiered in London

1976 - Wings release "Wings at the Speed of Sound" album

1977 - Elvis Costello releases his 1st record "Less Than Zero"

1978- The skull of Swedish scientist-philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg auctioned at Sotheby_s for $3200. Swedenborg's family had found it in a antique shop and kept it until the auction. They said they needed the money.

1979- Camp David Peace Accords signed between Israel and Egypt. Israel_s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt_s leader Anwar Sadat at one point were so uncooperative President Carter had to shuttle from cabin to cabin because they wouldn_t meet in the same room. Menachem Begin liked to mess with people_s minds. At one point to cut the tension Presidential advisor Zbignew Brezshinski invited Begin to play chess. As they sat Begin said softly “ I haven_t played chess in 40 years. Not since the day the Nazis kicked in my door and dragged me and my family off to Auschwitz.”

While Brezshinski was thinking about the enormity of that statement, Mrs. Begin came in and said: “Oh, I see you_re playing chess, it_s Menachem_s favorite. He never stops playing!”

1982 - Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder release "Ebony & Ivory" in the UK

1982- In Washington DC, groundbreaking for the Vietnam War Memorial.

1989- The first free elections in Russia make Boris Yeltsin President.

1992- Heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson is convicted of rape.

1997- Turner Animation's film 'Cat's Don't Dance" featuring the last film work of Gene Kelly. He was a consultant on the dance sequences.

2008- Arnold Schwarzenegger fired Clint Eastwood. No, its’ not a movie plot line. The former actor, turned Republican Governor, objected to a position of the actor/director and former Republican mayor took on the California State Parks Commission.

2228 - According to Star Fleet records- James T. Kirk, captain of Federation Star Ship Enterprise (Star Trek) was born.
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Quiz: What does the name Geronimo mean?

Answer: Geronimo’s Apache name was Go-yath-lay, Geronimo was what the Mexicans called him after baptizing him Jerome, or in Spanish Geronimo.

Quiz: Who were: Jebediah Cleisbotham, Captain Clutterbuck, Crystal Croftangry, Malchi Malagrowther, and Lawrence Templeton ??

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is the real name of the singer known as Sting?
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History for 3/24/2012
Birthdays: Steve McQueen, Lawrence Ferlingetti, Ub Iwerks (the first Disney animator), John Wesley Powell, Harry Houdini aka Eric Weiss, Edward Weston, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Clyde Barrow of Bonnie & Clyde, Bob Mackie, Robert Carradine, Jesus Alou, Laura Flynn-Boyle, Alyson Hannigan, Joe Barbera, Sir Elton John is 66

To the ancient Romans this was the Day of Blood- when the priests of the Goddess Cybele would end a nine day fast by walking through the streets practicing self-flagellation with whips, atoning for sins with blood. Some scholars theorized that the Christians used this idea as the basis for Good Friday, which ends the fast of Lent.

1241- The Mongol hordes sent into Europe by Genghis Khan’s general Subotai. While one pincer marched into Hungary, another force under Vuldai and the Tartar Paidar burn the Polish capitol of Krakow. A trumpeter trying to give a warning from a church tower was shot through the throat with an arrow. Since then in his memory, in the town square every hour on the hour a trumpeter plays the bugle call and stops short at the same note -The Heynal.

1603- Queen Elizabeth Ist of England dies of a gum inflammation, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I Stewart of the United Kingdom. Elizabeth was 69 and had ruled England since she was 25. She was famous for being frugal but she loved extravagant clothing. At her death she left 2,000 dresses. When an Anglican bishop in a sermon tried to criticize her for vanity, the Queen warned him to hold his tongue, ”ere ye may yet attain Heaven before your time”.

1663- King Charles II granted lands in the newly forming American settlements called Carolina to noblemen who supported him in the recently ended English Civil War.

1765- the British Parliament passed the American Quartering Act, which means you have to let a soldier sleep and eat in your house and leave cans of Holsten Pils and Marmite jars around whether you like it or not ! You even had to give them your extra food and candles at no charge! Up to now all the British army was on the frontier protecting against Indians, now it seemed the redcoats were moved into towns and settlements to keep an eye on the Americans! This and the Stamp Act was another of the sort of thing that bugged Americans about being a colony.

1794- Hero of the American Revolution Thaddeus Kosciuszko raised the banner of Revolt to liberate Poland from the Russians, Austrians and Germans. They were unimpressed. In spirit of American and French liberty he appeared in the great square of Krakow in a peasants jacket and cap and declares a fight to the death. He finished the war in a Russian prison. Eventually released, he visited America in 1797 and was paid $3,947 in back pay as an American army officer. He spent all the money buying slaves and freeing them.

1808- Napoleons’ French army entered Madrid.

1843- THE BATTLE OF HYDERABAD- Sir Charles Napier and the British Army of India defeated the Balouki tribesmen and conquered the region of the Indus Valley called the Sind. One problem generals always have after a big battle is coming up with a good name. The battle was fought near a village called Dabaa, but in Hindi that means Greasy Animal Skins. Napier didn’t want to be known as the Victor of Greasy Animal Skins so he sent an officer to ride around until he found a town with a more suitable name. Finally they chose the town of Hyderabad.
Back in London Napier was hailed as the Conquerer of Sind and Punch magazine punned that his report consisted of one word-PECCAVI- Latin for “ I have Sinned.- get it? “ Victorian chuckles!

1882 -In Berlin German scientist Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacillus that caused Tuberculosis, enabling a vaccine to at last be created. T.B. or consumption, was the AIDS of the 1800's- killing everyone from Frederic Chopin to Doc Holliday to Aubrey Beardsley.

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyles adventure novel The Lost World, first published in magazine installments. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs type stories.

1934-The Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour debuted on radio. It became a national craze to see who could be a future star. Frank Sinatra was among their finds. The show eventually moved to television and later spawned the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, Chuck Barris the Gong Show, Star Search and American Idol.

1939- The film the Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson . They became the most famous interpreters of the characters and went on to make a dozen more films.

1943 - The first Japanese anime’ feature "Momotaro's Sea Eagles" premiered.

1944- The Nazi Gestapo in Rome retaliated for a car bomb that killed 33 Germans by pulling innocent people at random off the street and executing them.

1944- THE GREAT ESCAPE- 60 Allied POWs dug a tunnel and escaped from an elite prison in Poland. All but 5 were recaptured, and Hitler had 40 shot.

1954- The Nash-Kelvinator Company and the Hudson Car Company merge to form American Motors Corporation or AMC automobiles.

1955- Tennessee William's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" debuts at Broadway's Marosco Theater. Barbera Bel-Geddes was the first Cat and Burl Ives was " Big Daddy".

1958- Elvis Presley inducted into the Army. G.I. Blues!

1962- No one had been a more loyal supporter of President John F. Kennedy than Frank Sinatra. The singer got his Ratpack friends to stump for the candidate, and even got Mafia money to support a man who’s brother Bobby was busy busting the rackets in Congress. But the President was warned that association with such a known libertine would cost him family values votes one day. So when Kennedy next visited Palm Springs he not only refused an invitation to stay with Sinatra, but he stayed with more wholesome singer Bing Crosby, a Republican! Sinatra in a rage took a sledgehammer to the extra guest cottage he was preparing for JFK, and broke off his friendship with JFK’s brother-in-law actor Peter Lawford.

1973- In Buffalo, a drunk fan bit rock singer Lou Reed on the ass.

1989- A drunk captain of the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilt 11 million gallons of crude oil in Prince William Sound Alaska. Insiders claim Exxon fabricated the drunk-captain story to excuse the inadequate detection and warning equipment. The route was well charted and easy to maneuver. Despite lots of promises to clean it up completely, Much of Prince William Sound is still contaminated with oil.

1999- The U.S. and Nato began to bomb Belgrade over Serbian attacks in Kossovo.

2005- A Colorado Rockies big league baseball game was called off on account a swarm of bees. The bees were attracted by the coconut oil in the starting pitchers hair gel.
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Yesterday’s Question: : What is the real name of the singer known as Sting?

Answer: Gordon Sumner. During his first concerts, he wore a black and yellow striped sweater, which earned him the nickname.

Question: What is the real name of the singer known as Sting?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: “Delenda Carthago Est!”

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History for 3/23/2012
Birthdays: US Vice President Schuyler Colfax, Akira Kurosawa, Joan Crawford, Dr Werner Von Braun would be 100, Juan Gris, Chaka Khan, Paul Grimault, Sidney Hillman Jack Ruby, Joan Collins, Eric Fromm, Fanny Farmer, Lora Petty, Catherine Keener is 53, Hope Davis is 48

In ancient Rome today was the Tubilustrum, the Festival of the Sacred Trumpets of Minerva. Yes, the word is the origin of the word Tuba, although the modern tuba wasn’t invented until 1835.

Today is the Feast day of the Irish Saint Gwinear. Gwinear loved animals so much that once when he was thirsty he struck the ground with his staff to make a clear pool appear, then again to make another one for his dog and horse.

1721- Johann Sebastian Bach sent the first copy of his Brandenburg Concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg. When the Margrave died and an inventory was made of his holdings in Berlin, the value placed on each concerto was six groschen, or about $5 each.

1775- During the debate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry
said the only way to deal with England was :"I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY FOLLOW, BUT FOR ME -GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH !" Henry became Gov. of Virginia, but later he was forgotten in the formation of the new nation, especially after he declared publicly that the Constitution was a big mistake and Tom Jefferson was an incompetent coward.

1806-After exploring the Pacific coast around the mouth of the Columbia River, Lewis and Clark start back for home.

1857- Stewart's department store in New York installs the first of Mr. Otis's new invention, the elevator. There were earlier steam elevators, but the danger of falling frightened off customers. Mr. Otis’ system of brakes and cut offs in the event of a cable failure made elevators popular and the age of skyscrapers possible.

1877- Mormon elder John D. Lee was convicted of the murder of 120 settlers when he ordered his men to attacked a pioneer wagon train as it passed through Utah in 1857, the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre. On this day John D. Lee was marched to the massacre site, stood beside his own coffin and shot.

1877- the first telephones installed in the White House.

1894- Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan-Doyle was in Davo Switzerland helping his wife recover from tuberculosis at a spa in the Alps. While there, the Swiss introduced him to a new sport that he wrote to London about enthusiastically- Ski-Running, or Skiing. Conan-Doyle predicted in the Strand Magazine “Within a generation thousands of English people will be coming to the Alps to ski.” Today there are no statues to Conan-Doyle in England, but there is one of him in Davo, Switzerland.

1903- Orville and Wilbur Wright kept looking for someone to build them a motor light enough to power their airplane design. Finding no takers they built the thing themselves, and the propeller and this day took out an U.S. patent on the Airplane. They didn’t actually fly in it until nine months later.

1918- In a last ditch attempt to break French morale during World War One, the Germans begin firing giant "Big Bertha" cannons at Paris. The monster shells fly 77 miles and took three minutes to reach their targets. The first shell hit Place De La Republique. A German gunner said the discharge of the cannon sounded like an "enormous vomiting dachshund'.

1919-Benito Mussolini founds the Parti Fasci di Combatimento or Fascist Party in Italy. He started his career as a socialist union leader but swung to the other side later (better benefits?) . He named his ultra-right group after the wrapped bundle of sticks with an axe sticking out that was carried before ancient Roman consuls, the fasces, it symbolized Roman power. In a previous generation Garabaldi's men were called Red-Shirts so Mussolini adopted the Black-Shirts. Later Hitler made his storm troopers Brown-Shirts.

1936- Ollie Johnston got a job as Fred Moore’s assistant at the Walt Disney Studio.

1945- THE FIRST JET FIGHTER ATTACK- In a last ditch attempt to stop the allied armies entering Germany, the Luftwaffe mounts an attack on two captured Rhine river bridges by fifty jet fighters. The Messerschmidt ME-262 Schwalbe (Swallows).

Half never get off the ground, others get lost and the rest don't accomplish anything. The Luftwaffe aces like Adolph Galland thought the jets were ideal for shooting down big B-17 bombers, but Hitler insisted they carried bomb loads, which slowed them down enough for propeller planes to hit them. The experimental jet fuel was so unstable that it had to be mixed by a chemist as it was being poured into the gas tank. If the mixing was done improperly the whole thing could explode on the runway.

1945- Later that day General George Patton led a group of journalists and photographers out to the center of the Rhine bridgehead. One journalist asked his thoughts now that he was breaching Hitler’s vaunted Seigfried Line and daring to go where no foreign soldier had stepped since Napoleon.

As cameras clicked the General undid his fly and took a long healthy whiz in the Rhine River. “I waited all morning to do that! Yessir, the pause that refreshes!” My father remembered signal corps photo lab assistants made a brisk business selling copies of the famous incident on left over scraps of enlargement paper. That photo was taken by Tech Sgt. Paul Dougherty of the 737 Tank Battallion.

1957- Art Clokey's "Gumby" Show.

1971- US Congress lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

1973-White House attorney John Dean tells President Nixon:" There's a cancer on the Presidency...."

1976- Panamanian middleweight Roberto Duran was being honored in Havana. Fidel Castro casually remarked to Duran “Hey, what do you think would happen if my fighter Teofilo Stevenson met Muhammad Ali?” Duran laughed ” Ali would kill him!” Duran was suddenly on a plane home that night.

1977- The first Nixon-Frost interview.

1983- STAR WARS- President Ronald Reagan announced in a nationwide speech the Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed the Star Wars Program. He said US scientists were going to create a protective umbrella of laser satellites in orbit that would shoot down hostile nuclear missiles.

This program would cost trillions and even if it worked it could never stop all the missiles launched in a Soviet first strike. Conservative apologists said that the re-escalation of the cold war arms race drove the Soviets crazy and their inability to keep up with arms spending sped their economic collapse. Star Wars wasted billions of U.S taxpayer dollars before it was stopped.

On the day of the 9-11 World Trade Center Attack Dr Condoleeza Rice was scheduled to make a major speech announcing the resuming of Star Wars spending.

1989-COLD FUSION Two physicists named Ponds & Fleischman make incredible claims that they had discovered a way to make electric power from Cold Fusion. This would mean limitless cheap power that left little waste. It could use nuclear waste as a fuel. After a lot of excitement upon closer scrutiny the formula didn’t work. Oh well.

1990- President George Bush Sr. banned broccoli from the White House.
He joked; "Read My Lips ! I hate Broccoli !"

2003- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, Beating out Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet.
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Yesterday’s Question: Quiz: “Delenda Carthago Est!”

Answer: “Carthage Must Be Destroyed!” For years after the defeat of Hannibal, the Roman senator Cato argued that if Carthage was allowed to recover, they remained a threat to Rome. He would end any speech he gave with “ Oh, and Carthage Must Be Destroyed!” in 146BC, Rome declared the Third Punic War and finished them off.