Question: What is salmagundi?

Question Answered below: What do these men have in common? Che Guevara, St. Luke, Anton Chekov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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History for 3/15/2012
Birthdays: Andrew Jackson*, Lee Schubert-one of Broadways Shubert Brothers, Ry Cooder, Sly Stone, Harry James, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, Judd Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Sabu, Fabio, Reni Harlin, David Cronenburg David Silverman

* For many years in America, Andy Jackson’s birthday was a public holiday.

508BC-525AD- In the Roman Republic this was the traditional day the newly elected Consuls and Senate assumed their offices and began governing.

44 B.C. -BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH- While attending the first day of the new Senate, Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by radical senators beneath the statue of his old enemy Pompey Magnus. Two of the murderers, Brutus and Cassius were former officers of Pompey to whom Caesar granted amnesty. Marcus Brutus was a descendant of Junius Brutus the founder of the Roman democracy. He was even rumored to have been Caesar's illegitimate son.

Even though Caesar was stabbed 23 times, it still took him several hours to die, lying alone on the floor. Unlike Shakespeare, Julius Caesar never said "Et Tu Brute'" Even you, Brutus? in Latin. His last words were the equivalent in Greek-"Touto kai teknon mou" which translates, "Even this my child?". Greek was to the Romans, like French is to us.

1079-The Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan assassinated by followers of his old Vizier, Nizam Al Mulk. The vizer had been killed by the Assassins, the original terrorists of the Islamic world, hired by Alp Arslan. Witness to all this was Omar Al Khayyam, poet, mathematician and astronomer. Legend said Alp Arslan had mustachios so long he had to pin them up on his turban so he could shoot his bow. Arslans successor was Gelalladin or the Malik Shah. His reign was considered the high point of Seljuk civilization.

1493- Columbus returned to Palo, Spain from his first voyage to America. The Santa Maria had broke up on reefs in America and Captain Pinzon had taken the Pinta on ahead to take credit for himself, or Columbus so worried. He himself got home in the little bark the Nina and at one point had to put in at a Portuguese port where he and his men were impounded for a few days. Captain Pinzon did reach home first, but fortunately King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella refused to listen to him. When Pinzon got his own voyage to the New World, all the attention was on his navigator- Amerigo Vespucci.

1517-Pope Leo X was left a full treasury by his predecessor Pope Julius II. But being a major party animal he quickly blew it all. This day he decided to pay his bills by ordering a new campaign to sell indulgences. Indulgences were sort of "after-life insurance" By paying a donation the bearer could be forgiven some sins and time in Purgatory. Leo extended it to forgive sins you may intend to commit. You could also buy a reprieve to someone already dead. When this refinance scheme reached Germany it was the provocation that sent Martin Luther to pin up his 95 Theses challenging the authority of Rome and start the Reformation.

1582-WILLIAM OF ORANGE ASSASSINATED. The Spanish Viceroy of the Netherlands the Duke of Parma didn’t know how to cope with the Dutch Independence movement led by William of Orange, also called William the Silent. They defeated him in battle but they could never capture him or destroy his forces. Finally Parma came up with a solution. He published a decree declaring William "A criminal and outcast from God and Society" That anyone who killed William would receive 25,000 gold pieces and be made a noble. Such a deal!

Within three days a man shot William in the head, but he recovered. Then a year later this day Belgian Bartholemew Girard shot William three times and killed him. Girard was executed but his family received the reward, and his severed head was displayed in Cologne Cathedral like a holy relic. For year afterwards and German Catholics tried to get Girard made a saint. William of Orange was dead but his 12 children carried on the fight for Dutch Independence and his family still rules Holland today.

1780- BATTLE OF GUILFORD COURTHOUSE, Virginia. Colonial General Nathaniel Greene battled British Lord Cornwallis to a draw but Cornwallis had to withdraw to Delaware for supplies. At one point Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire into his own redcoats to get through to the rebels.- not exactly a great morale booster. Back in London, Sir Horace Walpole remarked: " Lord Cornwallis has conquered. He has conquered his troops out of shoes and provisions and conquered himself out of troops."

Today not much credit goes to Nathaniel Greene. While George Washington was stalled outside occupied New York, in Virginia Nathaniel Greene outmaneuvered Lord Cornwallis's superior army and backed it into Yorktown where it could be trapped to win the war. Before the final victory, Greene’s health broke down and he had to leave the service.

1781-THE NEWBURGH CONFERENCE- The closest the United States ever came to a military dictatorship. George Washington's officers were fed up with the indecision of their bankrupt Congress. The Revolutionary War was over, but the army hadn’t been paid in months. Like Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army a century before, there were loud calls to march on the government. They even talked of establishing a junta of generals to run the United States! But what of their commander? The ringleaders assured: "we can handle the old man."

General Washington called a meeting at his HQ at Newburgh, New Jersey and faced down his angry troops. He appealed for understanding and patriotism. Tears were shed when he put on his spectacles, implying he'd broken his health and had aged prematurely in the service of his country. He was only 49, yet he looked much older. That won them over. George Washington not only wasn’t "handled", but convinced the army to go their homes peacefully, paid with nothing but a paper IOU.

1782- The English House of Commons, fed up with the bungled American Revolution and the heavy-handed style of Lord North’s government, voted the first ever vote of no-confidence. The Lord North government resigned five days later.

1820- Maine became a state.

1865- Cross-dressing rebel Sue Mundy was hanged in Kentucky. Long haired soldier Jerome Clark once got drunk, and for a gag his buddies put him in a dress and declared him Queen of the May. Instead of being insulted, Clark liked being in drag and ravaged the countryside as the guerrilla leader Sue Mundy. Until the Yankees caught him no one was quite sure whether he was a man or woman.

1869-The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team. Players had been taking payments under the table for years to concentrate on their skills, now it was out in the open. Still some newspapers accused them of being "Shiftless young men debasing the game with their greed."

1890- Kaiser Wilhelm II forced Chancellor Otto von Bismarck into retirement and decided to run Germany himself. Bismarck "the Old Pilot" who had unified Germany had set up a highly centralized autocracy that he ran from behind the throne. His relations with the other statesmen like Disraeli assured Europe had thirty years of complete peace. He never imagined he would be sacked by the young, emotionally unstable grandson of his boss Wilhelm Ist.

1892- The first voting machines in the US went into service. After 1972 metal voting machines were phased out in favor of the cheaper punch card system but the controversy over presidential elections fraud continues to cause new change.

1913- President Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential news conference.

1915- Universal Studios formed. Carl Laemmele bought a huge track of Burbank farmland and set up his studio. Laemmele had wooden bleachers built next to the movie sets where he charged people a nickel to come watch the filming. He used so many of his relatives in production that Ogden Nash quipped: "Carl Laemmele has a very large Fammele." Universal actually had been operating as a film company since 1912 but the company counts today as it’s birthday.

1919- American veterans of World War One founded a veterans society on the model of the Civil War’s vets Grand Army of the Republic. This they called the American Legion.

1929- Scarface Al Capone was called before a Chicago grand jury to explain his involvement in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Big Al’s alibi was he was in Key Biscayne Florida at the time having lunch with the Dade County prosecutor. They couldn’t pin nothing on him and no one was ever charged with the massacre.

1933- Young animator Chuck Jones first hired at Leon Schlesingers Looney Tunes cartoon studio.

1941- The daughter of Cecil B.DeMille, Katherine DeMille, had married actor Anthony Quinn. This day tragedy struck the family. On a visit to Cecil B.’s estate the couple’s three year old son Christopher walked off into neighbor W.C. Fields yard where he fell into Fields unsupervised swimming pool and drowned. The parents were so shattered they divorced afterward. Anthony Quinn refused to talk about the rest of his long life. Fields was so depressed he had the pool filled in and landscaped so no reminder of the tragedy would remain.

1944- The DeHAVILAND CASE- A judge rules actress Olivia DeHaviland free of her exclusive seven year personal contract to Warner Bros.. For years movie stars like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and James Cagney had been fighting in court the system of exclusive contracts the studios used to keep them under control. They had no choice in the type of films they did, no residuals and studios could rent them out to other studios for higher fees and keep the money.

If the actor complained they were put on disciplinary leave by the studio without pay and the penalty time added onto the end of their contract. Garbo called it the closest thing to White Slavery. Some contracts even ordered some stars not to get married for fear it would erode their sex appeal. The DeHaviland Case broke that system and allowed actors to make their own deals.

1950- Walt Disney’s "Cinderella" opens. Their first animated fairy tale hit since 1942.

1956- Lerner & Lowe’s musical "My Fair Lady" premiered.

1962- The discovery of anti-matter.

1964- Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton, for the first time.

1969- Worst clashes between Soviet Russia and Red China across their long mutual border. While the free world feared a monolithic global Communist conspiracy, the fact was the animosity between Russia and China got so bad it threatened to go nuclear.

During a lighter incident the Chinese People’s Liberation Army showed what they thought of their Russian comrades by lining up along a river bank, dropping their trousers, bending over and giving them a mass-mooning. The next time the Chinese did it the Russians were ready. As their butts went up the Russians held up portraits of Mao Tse Tung, the Chinese leader. The mooning stopped.

1969- Two young heirs to the Polident false Teeth Company and two hippy promoters announced a rock festival would be held that summer in the farm community of Woodstock New York.

1977- Television sitcom Threes Company debuted.

1979- Strange lights danced in the night skies over Phoenix Arizona from 8:30 pm until 11:00 pm. The military dismissed them as experimental flares but the duration and patterns seemed unusually long for mere flares. Was it a UFO light show?

1985- THE SAVINGS & LOAN SCANDALS- The Reagan White House’s policy of removing all business regulation played havoc with the savings & loan system. The problem became a public issue when this day Gov. Richard Celeste of Ohio suspended business in thrift banks in his state to stop the collapse of the system. One of the most underreported and little understood stories of the 1980’s the cost to clean up the Savings & Loan mess came out to be near $28 billion dollars, double the total cost to win World War II. Scores of crooked Savings & Loan execs like Charles Keating and Neil Bush accumulated vast fortunes, leaving you and I to pay the bills.

1985- Symbolic.com is assigned the first registered domain site on the Internet.

2002- Blue Sky’s hit animated film Ice Age premiered.

2004- Cal Tech Scientists announce the discovery of Planet Xenia, the tenth planet orbiting our Sun, beyond Pluto. Some want to call it Sedna, an Inuit goddess who lived under the ice.
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Yesterday’s question: What do these men have in common? Che Guevara, St. Luke, Anton Chekov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Answer: They are all doctors who became writers. In Che Guevara’s case, a few other things besides.

Question: What do these men have in common? Che Guevara, St. Luke, Anton Chekov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What does it mean to go stir-crazy?
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History for 3/14/2012
Birthdays: Georg Phillip Telemann, Johann Strauss Sr., Albert Einstein, Casey Jones, Quincy Jones is 79, astronaut Frank Borman, Les Brown, Hank Ketcham, Wolfgang Petersen, Diane Arbus, Chris Klein, Michael Cain born Maurice Mickelwhite is 79, Billy Crystal is 64

On the Roman religious calendar this was the Second Equirra, the Blessing of the Horses . The Romans had no regular Sabbath day, but they had 154 feast days out of 366. Sorry about the deadline boss, but I have to go bless the Horses...

44BC –The night before their planned assassination of Julius Caesar, Brutus and Cassius met with the other conspirators. They had heard that tomorrow at the opening of the senate, outgoing consul Lucius Cotta planned to declare Caesar a king.

The senators resolved to kill him, then debated whether they should then kill more of Caesars followers like Marc Anthony and Octavian. Marcus Brutus successfully argued that if they killed all their political enemies, then this gesture would just look like another partisan brawl. They would strike down one man, the dictator Caesar, in the name of Liberty and all would respect the purity of their motives.

It turned out this was a big mistake, because the men whose lives they spared, were the ones who hunted them down.

44BC- This same night Julius Caesar held a dinner party. Guests remembered at one point the conversation went to the topic-What is the best kind of Death? Caesar answered: " That which is quick and unexpected."

Today is also the Feast of Saint Matilda, wife of German Emperor Henry the Fowler and mother of Otto the Quarrelsome.

1590- Battle of Ivry- Henry IV defeated his political enemies and establishes the Bourbon Dynasty in France. The Bourbon family is still the Royal House of Spain and are rested and ready if France ever wants a monarchy again. Henry's motto was: "I make Love, I make War and I Build." During the battle he was climbing a ladder up a windmill to get a better look, when a cannonball flew between his legs. It almost left him with two out of three...

1757- THE ADMIRAL WAS SHOT AT NOON- English Admiral of the Blue John Byng was shot by firing squad on the poopdeck of his own flagship, the HMS Monarch. He had lost a battle off Minorca to the French fleet so was court-martialed. The admiral was seen as a scapegoat for London's slow response to the enemy threat to Minorca. Byng had already been absolved by court martial of cowardice and treason, he himself wondered just why he was being shot. Pleas for mercy even came from his French enemy the Marquis De Gallissoniere. Years later whenever the Duke of Wellington or Lord Nelson was going through a bad time they would wonder: " If I fail, I'll probably be shot like Byng..."

The writer Voltaire has his comic hero Candide entering Portsmouth Harbor, witnessing an admiral being shot. When he asks why, his English guide replies "It is good idea to shoot an admiral from time to time..."

1794- Eli Whitney patented the Cotton "Gin" short for engine. Some folks call this simple machine the beginning of American Industry. However it also revitalized the institution of Slavery, which had been dying out economically the way it had in Europe and the northern states. Suddenly huge fields needed hundreds of laborers to pick cotton.

1872- Stanley says goodbye to Dr. Livingston. After finding the English missionary at his desolate African post, Henry Stanley spent 4 months with him, then left for England.

1883- Karl Marx died in London. Marx's last words were:" Get out of Here!
Last words are for fools who haven't said enough already!"

1885- Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Mikado premiered in London.

1903- President Teddy Roosevelt, the first and last Republican environmentalist, established Pelican Island as the first Federal Wildlife Preserve.

1923- President Warren Harding became the first President to file an Income Tax Return..

1932-Inventor GEORGE EASTMAN shot himself- The inventor of the Roll-film camera, who named his celluloid strips 'film' and founded Eastman/Kodak. He had been suffering from a long illness and left the note: " To my friends: The End is near, why wait? "

1941- Xavier Cugat and his orchestra recorded "Babalu".

1943- THE BATTLE OF IMPHAL- The Japanese 15th Army began an invasion of Northern India from occupied Burma. Japan called it the "Drive on Dehli". For the next several months the Japanese, British , Indians, Nepalese, Gurkhas and Draguts fought on the plains of Imphal with tanks, planes, samurai swords and kukhris- the famous Gurkha boomerang shaped blade.

1943- Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" premieres. George Szell conducting. Young Leonard Bernstein once asked Copland how he could write more "American" sounding music. The maestro answered:" Lenny, just shuttup and write. You're American. It's all going to sound that way anyway!"

1962- Ted Kennedy first announced he was a candidate for the United States Senate. He remained a senator until 2009.

1967- Nine executives of the German pharmaceutical firm Grunethal were indicted over the Thalidomide scandal. Thalidomide was prescribed as a sedative for pregnant women , but the drug caused thousands of children to be born with deformed limbs.

1986- The IPO or initial public offering of stock of a new company called Microsoft. Twenty-seven dollars a share.

1991- Lyricist Howard Ashman ( Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) died of HIV/AIDS.

1992- The official Soviet newspaper Pravda- Truth, ceased publication.

1998- The epic disaster movie Titanic surpassed Star Wars and Jurassic Park as the greatest money earning film (until Avatar). It cost over $200 million to make but it earned at least $1 billion in box office alone. Quote director James Cameron: I’m King of the World!!
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Quiz: What does it mean to go stir-crazy?

Answer: During the 1920s-30s, one of the nicknames for being in prison, was to be “ in stir”. So going stir crazy meant you went mad from the close confinement, similar to cabin fever.

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Quiz: What does it mean to go stir-crazy?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Jeremy Lin is a player for the New York Knickerbockers basketball team. What is a Knickerbocker?
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History 3/13/2012
Birthdays: Hugh Walpole, Earl Charles Grey 1764-English Prime Minister whom the tea blend 'Earl Grey Tea " is named for, Pope Innocent XII (1615), Abigail Powers Filmore- First Lady of Milard Filmore, Hugo Wolf, Sammy Kaye, Danny Kaye, Neil Sedaka, L. Ron Hubbard, Dana Delaney, William Macy is 62, Dick Katz, Annabeth Gish

27BC- AUGUSTUS BECOMES FIRST ROMAN EMPEROR- For about a hundred years the Roman Republic had been a football contested for by powerful politicians- Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Mark Anthony and Lucullus. Julius Caesar had said that Rome was a Republic in name only. Since vanquishing Anthony & Cleopata, Caesar Octavian had been the first man in Rome, yet he needed to solidify his hold on power. But Romans hated the title of King.

So this day in a carefully staged bit of political theater, Octavian told the Senate he was tired of responsibility. He would resign all his offices and retire. Senators shouted for him to reconsider. They voted him the title GAIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS, IMPERATOR- PRINCEPS. Imperator used to be the name for a generals military authority and we get the word Emperor, Kaiser and Czar came from it. Princeps meant First Citizen, Augustus meant Father of His Country- with all the absolute power a father had in his family. Rome had emperors until 476AD and continued on at Constantinople until 1453.

4 B.C.- King Herod the Great died. The vibrant king who guided Israel to independence through Rome’s Civil Wars and rebuilt the temple of Solomon aged badly. He became increasingly paranoid. When a bastard son convinced him his legitimate offspring was trying to kill him, he had them executed. This may be the explanation why he could order the infamous scene in the New Testament known as the Massacre of the Innocents. On his deathbed Herod ordered village elders across Israel rounded up and killed when he died. " I know I am hated, so I want all Israel to mourn". After his death his guards ignored the order and released the elders.

1639- Richard Burbage died. Burbage was the famed Elizabethan actor and friend of William Shakespeare. On his tombstone was a simple epitaph- EXIT BURBAGE.

1758- BATTLE ON THE SNOWSHOES-Col. Robert Rogers with "Roger's Rangers" American colonial frontiersmen in British service, got ambushed by a large French Huron Indian warparty. The leathershirts scatter and Rogers eludes his pursuers by walking with his snowshoes turned backwards from the edge of a cliff. When the Indians see his tracks ending into thin air and then spot his figure running in the valley below they decided the Hipi-Manitou Spirit was with him, so they let him go.

1778- The French ambassador informed the British Government that France had recognized the independence of the United States and had made an alliance with them.

1781-the discovery of the planet Uranus by British astronomer William Herschel. The first planet discovered since prehistoric times. Galileo and Kepler used their early telescopes to spot the rings and Saturn and moons of Jupiter, but no planets. Herchel wanted to call his discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III, but other astronomers convinced him to keep to the pattern of naming planets after Roman gods. Hershel emigrated from Germany and played violin in several symphony orchestras before becoming interested in astronomy. He brought his sister over, and she became an opera singer, as well as observing and naming 5 comets.

1852-UNCLE SAM born.-The familiar image first appeared as a cartoon in the New York Lantern. The named derived from the nickname of an old customs agent, Sam Wilson, who stamped U.S. on goods moving down river from Canada. Civil War hero Ulysses Simpson Grant or U.S. Grant was also called Sam by his friends. The famous image on the 1918 recruiting poster of Uncle Sam pointing and saying 'I want You!" was done by James Montgomery Flagg reworking a popular British poster of Earl Kitchener. The face Flagg used for Sam was himself in a mirror.

1865- At the request of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Congress authorized the enlistment of Black soldiers to fight for Dixie. Incredibly, they got 360 volunteers. On the Yankee side, 80,000 enlisted, almost 80% of the eligible population of free black men.

1881-Czar Alexander II assassinated. -He was the Czar-Liberator that freed the Russian serfs but he was still seen by patriotic movements as a symbol of oppression.

On this day young revolutionaries of the People’s Will movement had already hurled one bomb at the Czar's carriage but harmed no one. The Czar was getting out when another revolutionary (this one was Polish) stepped forward shouting "It's too early to thank God!" And threw a bomb which blew Alexander to bits. Later in the spring thaw St. Petersburg housewives were finding little bits of Czar on their rooftops when they cleaned.

1884- Chester Greenwood of Maine invented ear muffs.

1920-THE KAPP PUTSCH - In postwar Berlin anarchy reigned as Bolshevik and right wing paramilitary groups fought in the streets for control. On this day the Kaiser's former army officers march on Berlin and try and overthrow the Weimar Republic and restore the monarchy. They fail but the weak government can do no more than let them march away scot free. They even pause to fire into a heckling crowd of civilians. After this rebuff the old Prussian aristocratically -led German Army would remain aloof from politics until getting behind Hitler's Reich in the late 1930’s.

One of the central conspirators of the Putsch was a bizarre figure named Trebitsch Lincoln, a Hungarian Jew who moved to England, ran for Parliament and won, was a German spy during the World War One, and finished his life as a Lama in Tibet named Chao-Kung. After that, who needs fiction?

1921- Mongolia declared its independence from China.

1929- The White House never had much security. When you rang the bell, President Thomas Jefferson himself answered the door in his robe and slippers. Abe Lincoln had one bodyguard, and after the Civil War the one soldier guarding the front door was removed. Presidents like Grant & McKinley would take a stroll at night down by the Potomac with no guards. Children played baseball and sheep grazed on the White House lawn.

This night President Herbert Hoover was having a dinner party with Hollywood producer David O’ Selznick when a homeless man wandered into the room. He just walked through the front door while the butler was preoccupied. The next day by Executive Order, the Secret Service took over direct control of the White House security and could command the D.C. police.

1938- At the height of Stalin’s purges top Bolshevik Nicholai Bukharin was shot.

1939-Hollywood recognizes the Screen Director’s Guild later called he DGA. After a nasty battle lasting several years Guild President Frank Capra signs the contracts representing 80% of movie directors. They also contractually ensure the custom of the directors credit being the last one seen at the opening title sequence of a film. Directors had tried to unionize as early as 1926 but were intimidated by the studio threat of 'perpetual blacklisting'.

1943- Radio station WNYC goes on the air.

1944- Abbot & Costello copyrighted their baseball routine ‘Who’s on First?"

1945- After systematically destroying the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Nagoya, this day the hundreds of massed B-29 bombers reduced the city of Osaka to burning rubble.

1946- The UAW struck General Motors. In 1936 businessmen had asked the Rand Corporation to come up with a solution to workers labor unions. The Rand Group came up with a pamphlet called the Mohawk Valley Rules. It said the way to defeat unions was not in the streets with vigilantes and tear gas but in the press. Make their arguments seem unAmerican and subversive. All sides took a hiatus to win World War Two so this was the first major strike where the Mohawk Rules were put into practice. So even though the union won concessions in the settlement they lost popular support. People blamed unions for the higher car prices and Communistic activity while the heads of GM and other defense corporations made 400%+ profits from the war.

1957- The F.B.I. arrested Teamster’s Union President Jimmy Hoffa on bribery charges.

1964- The Kitty Genovese murder. A sad moment in urban history when a New York cocktail waitress was jumped and murdered in front of her Queens apartment complex. 38 of her neighbors heard her screams "He's stabbing me! He's killing me!" They watched from their windows but no one bothered to come down to her aid.

1969- Disney’s comedy about a Volkswagen beetle "The Love Bug" premiered.

1970- Under pressure from the U.S. foreign affairs guru Henry Kissinger , Cambodian leader Prince Siahnnouk asked the Vietcong and Khmer Rouge armies to get out. The civil war in Cambodia immediately grew from a lukewarm insurgency to a full-scale holocaust resulting in the government’s defeat, and the Killing Fields of 1975.

1983- The Larry King Show debuted on HBO, later moving to CNN. King retired in 2010.

1988-Overly endowed porn star John Holmes, also called Johnny Wad, died of HIV/AIDS. He claimed to have had sex with 14,000 women and a few men in his career, but that he contracted the disease through intravenous drug use. He also got involved with some drug dealers and was implicated in a murder. The film Boogie Nights was based on him.

1997- In Malaysia, a man named Hassan Abdallah had his penis cut off by his wife in his sleep. Her excuse was she claimed she was sleep walking and dreamed she was only strangling him. Uh- huh….?

2002-In a national press conference President George W. Bush declared he did not know where top 9-11 terrorist Osama Ben Laden was, and that he no longer cared much about him.
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Yesterday’s Question: Jeremy Lin is a player for the New York Knickerbockers basketball team. What is a Knickerbocker?

Answer: In 1809 writer Washington Irving wanted to write a book of stories of Old colonial New York,. His book- A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809) was so popular, that residents of New York of Dutch ancestry began to call themselves Knickerbockers.

Quiz: Who said “ Apres moi, Le Deluge”. After me, the Deluge….?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In politics, what is a Favorite Son?
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HISTORY FOR 3/11/2012
Birthdays: Torquato Tasso, Marius Pretipa, Raoul Walsh. Rupert Murdoch is 80, Charlie Ruggles, Lawrence Welk, former British PM Harold Wilson, Rev. Ralph Abernathy , Bobby McFerrin, Sam Donaldson, Justice Antonin Scalia, Douglas Adams, Jerry Zucker, Vannevar Bush- MIT scientist who in 1945 predicted personal computer workstations. Joey Buttafuco, Jules Engel, Rob Paulsen is 55, Terence Howard is 42

In ancient Rome, today was the Festival of Hercules

1513- Giovanni de Medici, a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was elected Pope Leo X.
He was ordained a priest two days later- hey, details, details! Leo was the quintessential Renaissance Party-Pope. He blew the Vatican treasury on lavish entertainment, artists, poets and buffoons. He was quoted as saying:” God has given us the Papacy, so let us enjoy it.”

1669- Sicily’s Mt Etna erupted and killed 20,000 people.

1801- Czar Paul I was strangled. It had been said the Czar was showing signs of mental instability. Others historians say that story was circulated by the nobility who were against the Czars land reform for peasants. The murder had the tacit approval of his son Alexander who became Czar. In 1812 after Napoleon's invasion was driven out, one of the top French generals, Dominique Vandamme, was captured. When Vandamme was reproached by Czar Alexander for attacking Russia, the Frenchman shot back:" Well at least Sire, I didn't murder my own father!"

1810- Prussian Chancellor Hardenburg granted civil rights to the Jews of Germany.

1818- Mary Shelly's great novel "FRANKENSTEIN, or the Modern Prometheus" first published. It’s considered the first true science fiction novel. The heroes are not knights or kings but modern scientists. Whether you believe 21 year old Ms. Shelly invented the story one dark and stormy night in 1816 while smoking opium with her homeboys Percy Shelly and Lord Byron is a matter of conjecture. Still, it's a good story.

1829- BachMania!-The Rediscovery of Johann Sebastian Bach-. Bach was little known in his time and after his death in 1750 was soon forgotten. Even his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach though his dad’s music old-fashioned. But a century later the stirrings of German nationalism led to the re-examination of this obscure organist. This night at the Singadakademie in Berlin, musical superstar Felix Mendelsson performed The “St. Matthew Passion” and other Bach works. The musicians performed for free. The concert caused a sensation and Bach is soon being played all over Europe and influencing everyone from Berlioz to Wagner. Goethe and Hegel declared him a genius

1851-Guisseppi Verdi's grand opera" Rigoletto "debuts. Considered Verdi's first mature work, it makes him an international star. Based on Victor Hugo's "L'roi's amuse", originally about the lustful abominations of King Francois Ist of France, Verdi changed it to the Duke of Mantua and steered away from the class politics to a family melodrama. Victor Hugo didn't like it.

1861- the seceded southern states adopted a constitution based on the old Articles of Confederation passed in 1778, hence the name the Confederate States of America. It provided for a President with a six-year term with no eligibility for a second term.

1888- THE YEAR OF BLUE ICE- The Great Blizzard of '88. In New York and Boston 40 inches of snow fell in 36 hours. Record low temperatures, 80 mile an hour winds and ice storms so severe that all the telephone and telegraph wires between New York and Boston snapped. To contact anyone you had to be routed through London England. 400 people died in New York City alone. Police set up frostbite checkpoints to rub the ears of pedestrians as they walked by.

Out West so many head of cattle died that a serious beef shortage the following year created a labor problem with unemployed cowboys that led to the Johnson County Wars of 1890. Teddy Roosevelt was a Dakota rancher at the time and he saw cattle freeze to death where they stood. Later in the spring thaw, these "cowsickles" would be bobbing up and down in the Dakota River with the ice flows.

1890- Orange County carved out of L.A. County.

1918- THE GREAT SPANISH FLU PANDEMIC- Today influenza is controlled by antivirals and you feel miserable for a few days, but back before such drugs, it was a killer. This day the first noticeable rise in a strange new flu occurred at Camp Funston Kansas.

In only one year this new flu virus killed 21 million people around the Earth, 640,000 in the U.S. alone- everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm to Blackjack Pershing got sick. In places as far away as China to Calcutta to Russia thousands died. The epidemic killed as many people as the just concluding First World War. It was called the Spanish flu because even though it broke out all around the world, Spain was one of the few countries that didn’t have wartime press censorship, so they reported it first. HIV/AIDS killed 22 million in 25 years, Spanish Flu killed 21 million people in only 8 months. Then it disappeared as rapidly as it appeared.

1926- Eamon De Valera gave up opposition to Irish politics and resigned from Sinn Fein. In 1933 he became first president of the republic of Ireland, a job he held off and on until 1973.

1927- The first Roxy Theater opens at 50th st. & Seventh Ave. in New York. Roxy was a nickname of theater owner Samuel L. Rothaphel who pioneered the movie palace and is called the father of De-Luxe presentation.

1938- ANSCHLUSS- The Nazi takeover of Austria. Hitler had been organizing a covert takeover of the Vienna government by Austrian Nazis until the Austrian Prime Minister Schussning declared they would put the issue of uniting with the Reich to a public plebiscite. Rather than risk asking the public Hitler ordered his tanks to roll. Gen. "Panzer Heinz" Guderian the inventor of the blitzkreig, had his men adorn their tanks with flowers act like it was more of a German family reunion than an invasion.

Viennese intellectuals like Albert Einstein had to flee. Sigmund Freud was not allowed to leave until he signed a note saying he was treated well-" I'd personally recommend the Gestapo to anyone". Painter Alphonze Mucha wrote a letter to his friends in America saying he was in the care of the Nazis and that he was fine. He died shortly afterwards…?

Eric Wolfgang Korngold was in Hollywood debating whether to score the latest Errol Flynn picture for Warner Bros.- "The Adventures of Robin Hood" or return to Vienna to produce his opera- "Die Kathrin". When he heard his Vienna apartment was one of the first the Gestapo raided he decided to stay and do the Flynn picture. He later inscribed the music score to Jack Warner; "to Jack. Thanks for saving my life."

1939- The Nazis take over the rest of Czechoslovakia that they didn't absorb through the Munich Pact. This leads Britains Prime Minister Chamberlain and France’s Premier Daladier to declare any attempt on Hitler’s next target-Poland, would be met with force.

1941- The U.S. enacted the Lend-Lease program to send valuable military equipment to Britain without getting directly involved yet in World War Two.

1943- The Broadway musical team of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened their first collaboration “Away We Go!”

1958- The U.S. Air Force accidentally dropped an H-Bomb on South Carolina near Mars Bluff. The safety catches insured it wouldn’t go off. The incident was kept top secret.

1971- Philo Farnsworth died of pneumonia at 64. As a young man in 1922 he had invented the television set, but by the 1960’s he was forgotten, broke and addicted to painkillers. The only recognition he got was as a contestant on the quiz show I Got a Secret. He won an $80 check and a carton of Winston Cigarettes. Today Farnsworth is considered one of the true inventors of Television, along with John Logie-Baird, Lee DeForrest and Vladimir Zworkin.

1977- Film director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) was arrested for having sex with a 13 year old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home after he got her stoned on quaaludes. Polanski was charged with statutory rape. He jumped bail and fled Hollywood for exile in Paris. LA tried unsuccessfully to get him extradited in 2009.

1985- Since the death of Lenoid Brehznev the Soviet Union’s Central Committee was having a problem: every elderly Bolshevik they named as Soviet Premier -Yuri Andropov, Constantin Chernenko, had quickly died themselves of old age. On this day they selected the youngest member of their ranks to the leadership. He would be the last Premier of the Soviet Union- Mikhail Gorbachov.

1990- Lithuania becomes the first Soviet republic to declare its independence. By years end the unwieldy Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had flew to pieces and the Russian Federation was formed in its place.

2004- Al Qaeda terrorists set off ten bombs in Madrid commuter trains at the height of the morning rush hour. 200 dead, 1500 hurt.

2011- FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI- The northern coast of Japan was struck by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. The quake sent a tsunami wave that erased whole towns and killed 20,000. The wave went across the Pacific and sank boats in harbor at Santa Cruz California and Oregon. The tsunami also damaged 5 reactors the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, sending clouds of radioactive steam into the atmosphere and water.
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Yesterday’s Question: In politics, what is a Favorite Son?

Answer: A Favorite Son is a politician nominated by their own state....
at a national political convention. ( Thanks DB)

Question: In politics, what is a Favorite Son?

Yesterdays’ question answered below: Who is Valentina Tereshkova?
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History for 3/10/2012
Birthdays: Lorenzo da Ponte -libretist of Mozart's operas, Barry Fitzgerald, Claire Booth Luce, Heywoud Hale Broun, James Herriot, Pablo de Sarrasate, Osama Ben Laden, Chuck Norris is 72, Shannon Tweed, Sharon Stone is 54, John Hamm is 41

241 B.C.- NAVAL BATTLE OF AEGATES INSULAE- Romans under Gaius Lutatius Catullus defeat the Carthaginians under Hamilcar Barca (The Thunderer) and win the First Punic War. The Carthaginians were much better sailors than the Romans, so Catullus lashed his ships side by side and laid planks over the decks. This way his legions could fight infantry style. The Romans had another nasty trick of taking clay beehives filled with angry hornets and shooting them by catapult onto enemy ships. The Romans won Sicily and Hamilcar taught his son Hannibal that the Romans were not nice people.

1661-King Louis XIV of France "the Sun King" tells his guardians to take a hike because he was now old enough to rule alone. He kept his old regent Cardinal Mazarin around a few more years but this is the beginning of his Divine Right Rule.

1697- PETERS TRAVELS- Young Czar Peter the Great was so hungry for the knowledge of the West this day he shocked Russian society by leaving the country to travel through Europe. He was the first Russian Czar to go outside his country.

The 6 foot 8 inch monarch spent 18 months personally studying economics, architecture and chemistry. Peter lived in a small wooden cottage in Zaandam Holland and studied boat building. He drank in local pubs with workers and even made love to a local waitress. He learned to make his own shoes, mend clothes and even learned to pull teeth, which he loved to practice on unwilling members of this court. After arriving in England Peter surprised English nobility by shouldering an axe every morning and pipe in teeth walking down to the docks to work with the ship builders.

He returned to Russia filled with the desire to rebuild Russian society in the modern western European model.

1791- Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who fancied himself an amateur scientist, presented a paper to the American Philosophical Society about the discovery of the fossils of a cow sized sloth called Megalonyx. The future sciences like Geology and Paelontology were referred to in those times as “Natural Philosophy”.

1842-Vigilantes of Virginia City, Montana hang a tough desperado named Jack Slade. Accounts say Slade was "More feared than God, but all in all a good citizen." (?)

1862- FIRST U.S. GREENBACK PAPER DOLLARS ISSUED- "Dollar" is a corruption of Jacobsthaler- named for silver coins minted in St. James valley in Czech lands, which became 'Thalers' then 'Dollars'. Lincoln was originally annoyed that Secretary of the Treasury Samuel Chase put himself on the one-dollar bill while he was on the five. Lincoln thought Chase wanted some cheap advertising for a presidential bid in '64. Lincoln made him Supreme Court Justice to get him out of the way. The money was printed with green ink because it was cheap and plentiful.

When issued the new money instead of silver or gold, Union troops promptly rioted. People nicknamed the fat bills“ Chases Shinplasters ”. After the Civil War, when the U.S. Treasury tried to recall the paper currency and go back to coins, people complained again that they were now used to the stuff.

1864- Lincoln gives Ulysses Grant overall U.S. command to finish the Civil War. The shy little general arrived late and unannounced at the White House party given in his honor. Because the crowd was so thick he stood quietly in the hallway until Lincoln spotted him. "There he is !" He made Grant stand on a stool, so everyone could get a good look.

Lincoln was a constant nag on his generals, but after choosing Grant he backed off giving Grant independent command, a custom maintained by presidents to this day. Grant's successful though unorthodox approach disgusted more traditional strategists. Gen. Henry "Old Brains" Halleck, after running out of insults to hurl at Grant said :"And on top of everything else, The man's a drunkard!" To which Lincoln replied:"He is? Find out what brand he drinks and send a barrel of it to the other generals!"

1864- King Maximillian I died, his son Ludwig II 'the Mad' becomes king of Bavaria.

1876- THE FIRST TRUE TELEPHONE CALL. Alexander Graham Bell had applied for the phone patent several weeks before but he still couldn’t get the signal clear enough to be understood. He even had a surgeon send him a human ear from a corpse to study. This day when trying a new variation Bell spilled acid on his lap and called out over the wires " Watson ! Come Here! I Need You!" Watson heard it clearly and rushed to his aid. Some say Watson made up the story of the acid later to explain why Bell couldn’t think of anything loftier or profound to say as the first message sent by wire.

1926- The First Book of the Month Club – The Lovely Willows by Sylvia Townshend Warner.

1933- The LONG BEACH EARTHQUAKE. There had not been a serious quake in LA since 1857, so everyone thought it a thing of the past. Today the buildings swayed and brick walls collapsed. It was the last big shift in the San Andreas Fault. 200 people were killed, and if the schools had not been empty, the casualties could have been much worse.
Actors convening union meetings in the El Capitan Theater moved out into a parking lot because of the aftershocks. The quake sparked the first serious earthquake building codes.

1935- The First Smokey Stover comic strip ( notary sojac).

1938- Bowing to Arab anger and increased rioting, the British Mandate authority in Palestine imposed the first restrictions on Jewish immigration. A quota of only 3.000 were permitted. The previous year 40.000 immigrated fleeing the Nazi persecution in Europe. Zionist Jews developed novel ways of smuggling more people ashore. They once held a Jewish Olympics to rival Hitler’s Berlin Games, then all the participants who came melted into the crowd and stayed.

1940- US UnderSecretary of State Sumner Welles tried some shuttle diplomacy between Berlin, London and Paris to try and halt the World War that had just broke out. He was met with no cooperation. Hitler told him “Peace will come when we have the inevitable German Victory.” In January 1941 FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover- J. Edgar Hoover mind you, “outed” Welles accusing him of homosexual activity and attempting to proposition several Pullman porters on trains. Welles resigned in disgrace.

1947- Ronald Reagan becomes President of the Screen Actor's Guild after President George Montgomery and V.P. Franchot Tone resign to become independent producers. In the violent gangster-ridden atmosphere of Hollywood unions in those days Reagan took to wearing a .32 Smith & Wesson in a shoulder holster under his coat.

1948- Zelda Fitzgerald, the socialite wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, died in a fire at the mental hospital where she had been committed for more than a decade.

1948- Stalin’s agents take Czech Nationalist leader Jan Masaryk and defenestrate him -throw him out of a window- as a way of influencing the upcoming Czech elections. They gave as an excuse that he accidentally fell out of the window while doing yoga to combat his insomnia.

1952- General Fulgensio Batista seized power in Cuba. He was a favorite with US Corporations and the Mafia because he sold everything in his country not nailed down. Part of his coup was the dissolving and arrest of the Cuban Congress, among whom was a young novice politician and part time baseball pitcher named Fidel Castro.

1953- PANCHO AND THE GENERAL- Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes was the granddaughter of Thaddeus Lowe, inventor of the U.S. Army balloon corps in the Civil War. She became an aviatrix and in 1930 broke an air speed record set by Amelia Earheart.

In the late 1940s she moved to Maroc California in the desert and opened up a saloon "The Happy Bottom Riding Club' where the test pilots flying dangerous experimental craft trying to break the sound barrier came to blow off steam. Chuck Yeager and the future astronauts were frequent guests. She once told famed General Jimmy Doolittle "Jimmy, you know I can out fly and out f**k you any day of the Week!!" The bar was famous for wild parties with lots of booze and rough housing.

In 1952 a General Holtoner took over command of Maroc, now renamed Edwards Air Force Base. He tried to have Pancho evicted so the Air Force could expand it's supersonic runway. When she objected to the General's lack of respect, he implied that she ran a house of prostitution. On this day Pancho sued the US Air Force for 1 1/2 million dollars. General Holtoner was replaced, the Happy Bottom Riding Club was destroyed in a fire and Pancho Barnes moved away. The bar was immortalized in the film 'The Right Stuff'.

1954- In a letter to studio heads director Elias Kazan worried that young actor James Dean was “too odd” and unpredictable to star in his movie “Rebel Without a Cause”.

1954- First day of shooting on Stage 3 of the Giant Squid battle on Walt Disney’s production of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The director was Richard Fleischer, the son of Disney’s onetime competitor Max Fleischer.

1963- Pete Rose first took the field in a Cincinnati Reds uniform. During an exhibition baseball game with the Yankees Mickey Mantle hit one of his monster 400-ft home runs and young Rose was the only outfielder scrambling and jumping hopelessly to catch it. Mantle laughed and said:” Hey, look at Charlie Hustle over there.” The nickname stuck. Charlie Hustle would go on to break Ty Cobb’s all time hitting record and manage winning teams. But after his retirement he was banned from baseball for betting on sports.

1975- North Vietnamese open their final offensive that will capture Saigon and end the Vietnam War on April 30th. For the first time they fight out in the open with Russian T-52 tanks.

1980- This year one of the most popular diets in the country was the Scarsdale Diet by Dr. Herman Tarnower. This day a woman named Jean Harris entered his Purchase NY home and shot Dr. Tarnower to death.

1988- Andy Gibb of the BeeGees overdosed on drugs and died at age 30.

1997- The Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who was in jail at Broadmoor England for killing thirteen women, was stabbed in both eyes by another inmate.

2008: BANG THE GOV SLOWLY- Elliot Spitzer was a hard-driving NY State Attorney General who rocketed to the governorship and was touted as a potential future presidential candidate. His specialty was catching hi-tech Wall Street white collar crooks. Today his Icarus-like ascent came crashing down. He admitted to soliciting high price hookers. $4300. An hour. He was known to them as Client #9. When the news came over the ticker on the Stock Exchange trading floor, day-traders stopped to cheer.

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Yesterdays’ question: Who is Valentina Tereshkova?

Answer: The first woman to go into outer space (1963).