Question: Why American street is also nicknamed The Blvd of Broken Dreams.”…?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What did Abraham Lincoln once praise as the “Most American of Drinks”…?
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History for 11/8/2011
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Nerva, Bram Stoker, Sir Edmund Halley, June Havoc, Margaret Mitchell, Joe Flynn- the cranky Captain Binghampton in the 60’s TV McHales Navy, Ricky Lee Jones, Bonny Raitt, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, Ester Rolle, Katherine Hepburn, Parker Posey, Gretchen Mol, Tara Reid.

641 A.D.- Cyrus the Greek Patriarch of Alexandria surrendered Egypt to the Arab army of Caliph Omar. Egypt had been a Byzantine province and the emperors in Constantinople had been persecuting their national church, the Coptic Rite, as a heresy. So the Egyptians opened their gates to the Moslem conquerors. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius appeared at the port of Alexandria with a large fleet. But after removing some personal effects, he abandoned the Paris of the Ancient World without a fight.

1519- Spanish Conquistador Hernan' Cortez first met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II. Cortes was guided by Malinche', the "Pocahontas of the Aztecs". This noblewoman guided Cortez's little band into the heart of the empire. Conquistador Bernal Diaz described how after dinner the Spaniards were given tobacco pipes to smoke, but a special pipe with different tobacco was given to Montezuma, after smoking it "The Emperor became merry, as we do when drunk with wine.." Cortez was also offered a cup of chocolate, then a bitter brew called Tchocolatl.

1620 -Battle of White Mountain.- Austrian Catholic armies crush the Czech rebels and their leader Frederick of the Palatinate, who is nicknamed: "The Winter King" for his brief reign. Unfortunately the Thirty Years War was just beginning. Future French philosopher Renes Descartes was a young soldier in the ranks. Although Frederick was married to the daughter of the English King, James wisely refused to get England embroiled in the European war. Fredericks son Prince Rupert later traveled to England and got involved in the English Civil War. The Czech Protestant rebels mostly came from the province of Bohemia and their wandering exile in the cities of Europe caused the word "Bohemian" to become synonymous with a rootless lifestyle.

1789- Elijah Craig first distilled whiskey from Indian corn and strained it through a wool blanket. He lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky, so the stuff soon became popularly known as Bourbon.

1793- In one of the positive results of the Reign of Terror, the French Revolutionary Government opens the royal art collection of the Louvre to the public as a museum.

1805- Lewis and Clark stand on the sand at the Pacific Ocean near the mouth of the Columbia River.

1864- Abraham Lincoln was re-elected president over Democrat challenger George McClellan. It was the first U.S. election ever held during a war, and set the custom that Presidents in an war year never lose. Even most of the army voted for Old Abe. The inmates of the notorious Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp cast ballots, even if they had no way to send them to Washington.

1880- Famous actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in La Dame aux Camelias. She made a further ten tours of the US, all billed as Farewell Appearances.

1887- Dentist-gunfighter Doc Holliday dies of tuberculosis or consumption. He knew he had it for a long time, and in the 1800's it was as irreversible as AIDS is today. So some say this knowledge is what made him such a bold pistolero. But unfortunately for him, he won all his gunfights and died in bed anyway. His last words after taking a shot of whiskey were:" Well I'll be damned!" He was 35.

1889- Montana became a state.

1910- Patent for the first insect electrocutor. FHZZZZITT !

1910- Congressman Victor Berger of Wisconsin became the first Socialist to be elected to Congress. In the first decades of the 20th century a number of big city mayors and congressmen were socialists. In the 1912 presidential election when Woodrow Wilson won by a slim one million votes, third party socialist Eugene Debs polled over a millions votes.

1918- German and Anglo-French negotiators began meetings in a railroad car in the remote Compiegne forest to negotiate an end World War One. Meanwhile the Kaiser’s government continued to collapse from within. Today revolutionary German sailors seized the town hall of Cologne and declared a workers state.

1923- When it sounds like they would be found out early, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler put into motion his attempt to overthrow the Weimar government. Because they started in a beer hall in Munich the coup is called the Beer Hall Putsch.

1926- New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote the hit song: "Will You Love Me in December like You do in May? ", met chorus dancer Betty Compton at the Gershwin musical "Oh Kay!" and fell in love. His romancing his mistress openly in front of New York society, not to mention in front of his wife, was the scandal of the Roaring 20's.

Forced to resign as mayor after a probe unearthed massive corruption in his administration, Jimmy tried once more to run for mayor against Fiorello Laguardia in 1933. But he was blocked by the Roman Catholic Cardinal of New York and NY Governor Franklin Roosevelt, who had just become president and found Walker an embarrassment. Jimmy Walker and Betty Compton lived in Europe for the next ten years. In 2000 married NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost the chance to run for the US Senate in part because he made open appearances at shows and dinners with his girlfriend, even meeting her in Gracie Mansion while his family was in an adjoining wing.

1929- New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened.

1932-Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s second wife Nadehzda Alleyuieva shot herself, or so the official story said. It may have been the KGB, on orders of Stalin himself. Their daughter Svetlana later escaped to the U.S.

1933- King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan was assassinated by Abdul Khallig.

1942- Operation Torch- Anglo-American soldiers began mass landings on the beaches in French North Africa. The first action of American soldiers in World War Two in Europe. The Pro-Nazi Vichy French fired on the Allies, until a deal was made with their commander Admiral Darlan. Charles DeGaulle was furious that fighting began before he could try to convince the French not to resist. But Eisenhower, FDR and Churchill were not yet ready to admit that the big nosed Colonel had become the de facto leader of Free-France.

1943- The first one man show of American abstract painter named Jackson Pollock. Pollock later created his brushless dripping form of painting that earned him the nickname:” Jack the Dripper”.

1950- In Korea two Chinese MIG fighters tangled with US Sabre jets. The first jet-to-jet dogfight.

1952- The Supreme Court upholds a 1922 ruling that Baseball a sport, not a business. Therefore it is exempt from anti-trust laws.

1965- The Days of Our Lives soap opera first premiered on TV.

1966- Former actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan elected Governor of California trouncing two-term incumbent Pat Brown. Uber-Conservative Reagan declared a tough line with the Hippies of Haight Ashbury and Berkeley.

1994- Marion Barry was re-elected Mayor of Washington D.C. despite serving time for smoking crack cocaine. Comedian Chris Rock wondered:” Who did he run against that was so bad you’d rather vote for a crackhead?”

2004- The Second Battle of Faluja began. U.S. Marines had to fight their way back into an Iraqi city they were forced out of the previous April. Faluja erupted in violence after civilian outrages committed by non-military Blackwater mercenaries, called “contractors”. Citizens ambushed the mercs and danced with their charred bodies, so in went the Marines.
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Yesterday’s Question: What did Abraham Lincoln once praise as the “Most American of Drinks”…?

Answer: Bourbon Whiskey. See above, 1789.
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Question: What did Abraham Lincoln once praise as the “Most American of Drinks”…?

Yesterday’s Question: If you got behind the controls of an Autogyro, would you drive, fly, or sail it?
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HISTORY FOR 11/7/2011
Birthdays: Francesco Zubaran, Madame Curie, Rev. Billy Graham is 93, Leon Trotsky –real name Lev Bronstein, Albert Camus, Al Hurt, Joni Mitchell, Joan Sutherland, Judy Tenuda, Clive Barnes


1520- The BATH OF BLOOD. The 1397 Union of Kalmar had united Sweden and Finland under the Danish crown. This day Danes invited Swedish noblemen who opposed the Danish King to come to Stockholm under a pledge of safe passage and discuss their issues. But once there they were seized, accused of treason and beheaded. All Sweden rose in revolt, and by 1523 had broken away. One Swede who had escaped the massacre, Gustavus Vasa, was declared their king.

1659- Peace of the Pyrenees- Spain and France finally make peace after 23 years of war. This peace treaty completed Cardinal Richelieu’s master plan to break France out of surrounding power of the Hapsburgs, predominant in Germany and Spain. Catholic France joined the Thirty Years War late on the Protestant side and continued to battle long after the general peace was signed at Westphalia in 1648. The Peace of the Pyrenees marked Frances becoming the dominant power in Europe and set the stage for Louis XIV the Sun King.

1775- The Royal Governor of rebellious Virginia, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to all male slaves who joined His Majesties army. Within a few days he got 800 black recruits. One hidden fact of the American Revolution was the British policy of freeing slaves in territories they occupied to piss off their rich Yankee masters. Slavery had not yet been totally eradicated in the British Empire yet the public outcry for emancipation led by eminent men like William Wilberforce were making it an major issue in British politics. Dr. Samuel Johnson commented about Americans “Strange, all this complaining about liberty was coming from the drivers of slaves!”

1783- The last public hanging at London’s Tyburn Hill, where executions of commoners had been going on since 1196. Today the Tyburn area is called Marble Arch.

1793- The French Revolution declared Christianity abolished in France. It was restored by Napoleon but to this day it is considered very tacky for politicians to invoke the Diety in speeches. No problem of that happening over here!

1805- “Oh Joy of Joys!” explorers Lewis and Clark first see the Pacific.

1811- Battle of Tippicanoe- General William Henry Harrison defeats Tecumseh and his united Indian tribes in a battle that decided the ownership of the Old NorthWest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan ). When Harrison later ran for the Presidency with James Tyler, his slogan was "Old Tippicanoe and Tyler Too!"

1820- This day President James Monroe was re-elected after running unopposed for nomination and unopposed for the election. It was the most boring election in US History. One presidential elector refused to vote for him only because he wanted George Washington to go down in history as the only US President ever elected unanimously.

1837- Abolitionist Reverend Isaiah Lovejoy was shot and killed defending his printing offices from being vandalized by a mob of slave owners. The news of the first white man dying over the slavery issue galvanized both North and South. Lincoln and Douglas frequently cited the example of Rev Lovejoy in the debate over slavery.

1841- Black slaves being transported from Virginia to New Orleans aboard the S.S. Creole seize control of the ship and sail it to British Nassau where they are granted freedom and asylum.

1863- President Lincoln sent a special train to Centreville, Virgina to inform General Ambrose Burnside he was now in command of the Union armies facing Robert E. Lee and also informing General George McClellan he was fired. Despite the fact that McClellan had fought Lee to a draw at Antietam that the North claimed as a victory , McClellan sat idle for weeks doing nothing while the road to Richmond was wide open. At one point he told an angry Lincoln his army couldn’t move because his horses were tired. Lincoln responded: Aren’t Lees horses just as fatigued? When McClellan got his marching orders his first words were “Oh, My Poor Country.” He ran for president against Lincoln and lost in 1864 and later became Governor of New Jersey.

1865- The London Gazette is founded.

1872- The S.S. Mary Celeste sets sail from New York bound for Italy. The ship was later found mid ocean with the crew and passengers mysteriously gone....

1876- THE STOLEN ELECTION- The Presidential election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford Hayes was declared a dead heat. Tilden had actually won an overwhelming majority in the popular vote, but when did that ever matter in Washington politics? The electoral votes were even, so Republicans forced the issue to be decided by the House of Representatives. In the meantime they made a secret deal with former Confederate territories that were not allowed to vote that if they would vote for Hayes they could come back into the Union as States again. The Hayes government also promised to slow down civil rights for African Americans and withdraw occupying troops from the South. On March 3rd 1877 with the aid of the new electoral votes of Louisiana, Georgia and Florida Republican Rutherford Hayes was declared the winner. Republicans chanted: “Hooray for Hayes and Honest Ways!” while Democrats protested: “RutherFRAUD Hayes !”

1876- Three crooks try a scheme to break into President Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield Illinois while everyone was distracted by the presidential election. They planned to hold the remains hostage for money. But their scheme was foiled because nascent Secret Service had an informer among the gang and he tipped off the feds as the hoodlums were prying the lid off the sarcophagus. Lincoln’s bones stayed put.

1885- The Canadian Pacific Railway completed, linking Montreal with British Columbia.

1914- First issue of the magazine The New Republic.

1914- THE MASS MOONING OF TSING-TAO- Japan had joined the allied side in World War One to attack German colonial holdings in China. The British Navy helped the Japanese Army attack the biggest German fortress in Asia, Tsingtao, home of their famous brewery, built in 1896. The surrendering Germans were angry that the British, their fellow white Europeans, with whom they had stomped the Chinese nationalists together, would aid another Asian race against them. Hadn’t that Englishman- Kipling wrote that poem about the “White Man’s Burden”? As the British troops marched in with the Japanese, the German P.O.W.'s executed a smart about-face, dropped trousers and executed a smart "group-mooning".

1917- RED OCTOBER, THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION- As the guns of the battleship Aurora boomed out across Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Lenin's Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew the provisional government of A.P. Kerensky ( who died in Queens, New York in 1973.) Two Bolsheviks sent to take over the Petrograd telephone exchange had forgot to bring their weapons but succeeded nonetheless.
In the ten months between the Tsar’s fall and the Communist coup Russia had tried to govern itself with a fragile democracy. But no middle class support base, powerful extremists like elitist officer corps and landless peasants pulling on either side and the disastrous decision to stay in the Great War with Germany doomed the government. It was said Kerensky was a brilliant speaker but he had no serious plans or ideas beyond ebullient oratory. He was making it all up as he went along. Red Army leader Leon Trotsky ( real name Lev Bronstein ) had at one point lived in exile in New York. This day a Bronx newspaper proudly put as it's headline:" Bronx Boy Seizes Power in Russia !"

1918- As the Kaiser’s collapsing monarchy tried to save itself while seeking peace talks with the allies, Fritz Ebert, the leader of the socialists in the German Reichstag was told the Allies would not sign a peace treaty until the Kaiser stepped down. Ebert warned Chancellor Prince Max of Baden:” The Kaiser must abdicate and a democracy declared or revolution and civil war will break out.” Prince Max told this to the Kaiser but he refused to listen.

1918- American labor leader and socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs sends Lenin a congratulatory note on the first anniversary of the Revolution. The image of the people of Russia throwing off medieval tyranny and establishing a "socialist utopia" was over romanticized by progressive radicals in the west. Remember before Hitler, the Russian Czar was the Anti-Semite responsible for the pogroms. Now many leading Bolsheviks were Jews like Trotsky and Derzhinsky. Western liberals like John Reed, Ramsay McDonald, Emma Goldman, Eugene O' Neill, Jack London, caricaturist Al Hirschfield and even Groucho Marx admired what was happening in Russia until they made the effort to travel there. Then they were disillusioned by the growing Soviet centralized police state.

1937- Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels sent an emissary to Paris to talk Marlena Dietrich into coming home. But Germany’s greatest movie star hated the Nazis and all they stood for.

1944- President Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented Fourth Term as president, even though Democratic party insiders knew he was dying. After FDR the conservative Congress created a constitutional amendment barring anyone else from having more than two terms. Roosevelt joked this night with friends:” You know, the first twelve years are always the hardest. “

1945- The Weisbaden Mainfesto- at the end of World War Two thousands of priceless works of art plundered from museums across Europe were hidden by the Nazis in salt mines in Bavaria. The victorious Americans sent a squad of art curators to catalog the treasures, then were ordered to secretly ship them back to the U.S.. This order morally troubled the team, and a Colonel Obermeyer and a Captain William Farmer wrote a protest petition to the War Department and published it, saying we would be no better than the Nazis themselves if we took the artwork. Washington gave in to the embarrassment and the 200 works of Durer, Raphael, Titian and more were returned to their proper museums.

1956- Eugene O’Neill’s biographical masterpiece play “Long Days Journey into Night” first premiered.

1957- Communist East Germany debuted the Trabant automobile. Trabants or “Trebbies” quickly entered legend alongside Yugos and Edsels as one of the worst cars ever made. Eastern Europeans spent many happy hours on the side of the road trying to get them running and making dozens of Trebbie jokes. “Did you hear the Ministry of going to make Trebbies with dual extra long exhaust pipes? Why? Because then after it breaks down, at least you can use it as a wheelbarrow.”

1962- After losing the California Governor's race to Pat Brown, Richard Nixon bitterly says to assembled newsmen and women:" You boys have been having a lot of fun....well, You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore..". Nixon felt his career in politics was in shambles and a final jab from the Kennedys was the news he was being audited by the IRS. Tricky Dick spent the next few years reinventing himself before making his successful Presidential run in 1968.

1963- The movie “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” premiered at Hollywood’s new Cinerama Dome theater.

1965- the first Pillsbury Doughboy commercial debuted. ‘Tee-hee-hee!”

1965- Dorothy Kilgallen was a New York socialite who’s witty sparring with Bennett Cerf and other panelists enlivened a CBS quiz show called What’s My Line.
But beyond that role she was an accomplished reporter and columnist who uncovered facts on the famous Dr. Sam Shepard murder case. In mid 1965 she announced publically that she knew the real facts on the John F Kennedy assassination and she had interviewed Jack Ruby. She would shortly announce her proof of conspiracy in a new book .
This night she had dinner with friends then asked them to drop her off at the Regency Hotel Lobby where she was meeting a new mysterious boyfriend. Next morning police found her dead body in her bed at her Greenwich Village apartment. Pills and liquor were strewn about her night table and a book was in her lap so police assumed she took too many sleeping pills and liquor. But conspiracy buffs point out she never read without her reading glasses which were across the room. Her files were confiscated by the Justice Department and never released.

1977- Harvey Milk won election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The first openly gay man to be elected to office in the U.S A.

1980- Movie star Steve McQueen died of an aggressive cancer at age 50.

1991- “Even Me”-Los Angeles Laker Basketball star Irvin “Magic” Johnson admitted to the world that he was HIV –positive. He said he got it from casual sex and was retiring from the NBA. Coming soon after the death of movie star Rock Hudson , Magic Johnson’s example brought home to the world that HIV/AIDS wasn’t merely a “gay plague” but that straight people could get it too. His life is also an example that an HIV positive person can still lead a full productive life.

1997- Someone published a stolen home video of Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and rock star Tommy Lee having graphic sex on their honeymoon, not to mention how Tommy steered his boat. The Pamela-Tommy video became the most downloaded file on the Internet and rented video in history. In 1998 Pamela Anderson Lee was the subject of 1% of the Total Traffic on the entire World Wide Web!

2000-THE DEADLOCKED ELECTION- Al Gore and George W. Bush electoral votes came to a statistical dead heat. With nothing in the Constitution about a European style second round of voting. the decision was made in courts and precincts of Palm Beach Florida. Americans learned to study chads on punchcard butterfly ballots. Katherine Harris the Attorney General of Florida who validated the election for Bush was also the Republican campaign chair in that area. In 2004 an outraged Florida voter drove his Cadillac up onto the sidewalk and tried to run her over.

Finally after 36 days the Supreme Court ended all recounts and declared Bush the winner. Other highlights of the election included Hilary Rodham Clinton became the first former First Lady to win an election to the US Senate, Alabama became the last state to rescind it’s laws barring interracial marriage and Missouri elected a dead man senator over an incumbent. The incumbent, John Ashroft, was made attorney general by President GW Bush.

Yesterday’s Question: If you got behind the controls of an Autogyro, would you drive, fly, or sail it?

Answer: You would fly it. The Autogryo was invented in the 1920s as an early form of helicopter, with the body of a small plane, little wings, and a front engine as well.

Question: If you got behind the controls of an Autogyro, would you drive, fly, or sail it?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What modern institution that we occasionally visit was originally called by the Greeks an aesclepium?
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History for 11/6/2011
Birthdays: Sophocles 495BC., Joanna La Loca (the Mad- 1479), John Phillip Sousa, Joseph Smith the founder of Mormonism, Ignacz Paderewski, Charles Dow of Dow Jones, Adolphus Sax inventor of the Saxophone, James Naismith the inventor of Basketball, Mike Nichols, Edsel Ford, Ed Rehberg, Sally Field is 64, Ray Coniff, John Olsen of the comedy duo Olsen & Johnson, Harold Ross the founder of the New Yorker magazine, Maria Shriver is 55, Rebecca Romjin

Today is the Feast of Saint Leonard of Noblac, the Patron of Women in Labor and Prisoners of War. -is there a connection there..?

1528-Conquistador Alva Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked on the coast of Texas. The first European to set foot in Texas. Cabeza de Vaca means Head of a Cow.

1566-Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe got his nose cut off in a duel. Thereafter he wore a gold cup over the scar held in place by a string .

1730- King Frederick William Ist of Prussia has Lieutenant von Katte, the gay lover of his son Crown Prince Frederick, beheaded by saber. He even forced his horrified son watch the execution.When the old sadist died, and Freddy became King Frederick the Great. he slept with whomever he liked. Frederick William Ist was the originator of mechanically strict Prussian discipline that made the German Army famous. He was so feared by his subjects that they used to run away when he arrived. The king caught one wretch in a doorway and drubbed in the face with his cane shouting: "WHY ARE YOU AFRAID? YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME-YOU SCUM!"

1793- The youngest brother of King Louis XVI of France, the Duc d'Orleans, tried to survive the Revolution by repudiating his birthright, changing his name to Phillipe Egalitie', he even voted to execute his own brother. Well, it didn't work. Today he too went to the guillotine.
His son would rule France in 1830-1848 as King Louis Phillipe. His palace, the Palais Orleans also known as the Palais Royale district of Paris goes from private ownership to property of the Nation.

1806- The news reached London of the great naval victory of Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson. Englishmen great and small fell into extreme grief over the death of their naval hero. Samuel Coleridge wrote: 'When Nelson died, it seemed as if no man was a stranger to another, for all were made acquaintances in the rites of a common anguish."

1812- On this day during Napoleons Retreat from Moscow, it began to snow.

1844- Spain granted independence to the Dominican Republic.

1850- The first fire brigade formed in Hawaii.

1860- Abraham Lincoln of Illinois won the presidency of the United States. The first Republican to win an election.

1869- Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first college football game.

1916- The elderly cowboy showman Buffalo Bill made his next to last public appearance in El Paso Texas. El Paso had been as wild and bloody a frontier town as Deadwood or Tombstone, but now it was a quiet modern city. Telephone and electricity wires crisscrossed overhead and streetcars clattered down the streets where gunfighters once shot it out. Buffalo Bills parade seemed to make plain to all the final passing of the Old West to the New. The wild cheers brought tears running down the old scout's long white mustache. It was a fitting final bow. He died of prostate cancer within a few weeks.

1924- Stanley Baldwin became Prime Minister of England. Winston Churchill who had deserted the Conservative Party for the Liberals, now decided to switch back to the Tories and became Home Secretary.

1936-The Screen Children's Guild chartered.

1941- In an evening nationwide radio broadcast, Josef Stalin told the Soviet people that although their losses were heavy, the Germans had already lost 4.5 million men, and were on the run. It was all pure fiction. In reality Leningrad was surrounded, Moscow was threatened and almost 40% of Russia’s population was under Nazis occupation.

1942- German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel began withdrawing his shattered army from the defeat at El Alamein. He then got a direct order from Adolf Hitler to stop the retreat and fight to “Victory or Death!” Rommel ignored him, and withdrew anyway.

1944- Lord Moyne the British Resident in Cairo was assassinated by two young Israelis who were members of the Stern Gang, a terrorist organization. Ironically at this same time in London Prime Minister Winston Churchill was assuring Jewish leader Azer Weissman that Lord Moyne had grown sympathetic to the Zionist cause.

1947- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization- NATO created.

1962- Ted Kennedy first elected to the Senate from Mass. He remained until his death in 2009.

1966- A great flood hits the City of Venice. An international effort is mounted to save her priceless artifacts. Venice never suffered floods until the end of the nineteenth century when a deep channel was dug in the Venetian lagoon to accommodate modern heavy shipping to the new harbor of La Spezia. This imbalance messed up the natural flood cycle from the Adriatic. Added to that the whole darn city is resting on thousands of wooden pilings pounded into a sand bar when Attila the Hun was still running around. Venice is still sinking a few inches each century.

1973- Abe Beame became the first Jewish man to be elected Mayor of New York City.

1975- First appearance of the band the Sex Pistols.
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Yesterday’s Question: What modern institution that we occasionally visit was originally called by the Greeks an aesclepium?

Answer: It’s a health clinic. Aesclepius was the God of Healing.

Question: What modern institution that we occasionally visit was originally called by the Greeks an aesclepium?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: : Is pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?
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History for 11/5/2011
Birthdays: Gen Benjamin "Spoons" Butler, Eugene V. Debs, Art Garfunkel, Roy Rogers, Tatum O'Neill, Elke Sommer, Ike Turner, Vivien Leigh. Will Durant, Joel McCrea, Sam Shepard, Bill Walton, John Berger, Robert Patrick is 53, Tilda Swinton is 51

1414- THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE- Since 1378 the Catholic Church had rent itself in pieces over politics, with no less than three Popes claiming the loyalty of Christians. This day the German Emperor Sigismund made Pope John convene at Constance the largest church conclave since the Roman Empire. Five thousand priests, bishops, cardinals, patriarchs, princes with an army of servants, secretaries and retainers. Even fifteen hundred prostitutes.

The published the declaration Sanctissima " This Holy Synod of Constance represents the true Church Militant, and has it’s authority directly from Christ, and everybody of whatever rank including the Pope is bound to obey." They healed the schism by deposing all three Popes and electing one acceptable to all sides. They also pledged to reform the Church. Then after accepting a promise from new Pope Martin V that he would do so, they dissolved. Martin did no such thing and future Popes worked to ensure a council would ever get that powerful again. Too bad, if the Council of Constance had reformed the Church maybe the Reformation and all the terrible religious wars could have been avoided.

In Jolly Old England it is
HAPPY GUY FAWKES DAY! in -1605 Sir Guy Fawkes, a Catholic nobleman, was caught digging a tunnel under the English Parliament and filling it with gunpowder. His goal was no less than blowing up the King and the entire blinkin' government! Sir Roger Catesby was actually the mastermind of the plot, but Sir Guy gets the fame.
Modern day Brits commemorate this as a kind of April Fools Day with bonfires and merrymaking. Children go from door to door asking : "A penny for Sir Guy, please." But in olden times it was also a let's have a good laugh on the Roman Catholics day.
This is why George Washington was against transplanting the holiday in America. Pope Day was celebrated in some American colonies but it died out after the Revolution. In 1775 Washington called it: A ridiculous and childish festival, burning effigies of the Pope." Many English folks I know told me they celebrate the day they tried to blow up the government because wouldn't things have been lovely if he had succeeded!

1688- William and Mary of Orange land in England from Holland to start the 'Glorious Revolution' against daddy James II.

1757- Battle of Rossbach- Frederick the Great defeats a French Army led by two generals Marquis de Soubuise and Hildeberghausen, whose only qualifications were that they were lovers of Madame De Pompadour. Frederick referred to La Pompadour as Madamoiselle Poisson- Miss Fish.

1805- The Royal Spanish Governor of New Mexico, Joaquin del Real Alencaster, dispatches a cavalry troop under Don Pedro Vial on a secret mission. On this day Vial's force is attacked by hostile Indians on the Arkansas River. Vial drives off the Indians but his command is too battered by the fight to continue and has to return, their mission aborted. What was their mission? To kill or capture the American explorers Lewis and Clark. The Spanish government in Madrid knew full well the object in the American President Jefferson’s mind in sending this "scientific" expedition to find a land route to the Pacific, over territory Spain still claimed, despite the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark, at this point in the Columbia River Gorge, were unaware of the drama around them.

1820- Old British sea dog Lord Thomas Cochrane had joined the Latin Americans trying to gain independence from Spain. This night he decided the best way to do that was to capture the flagship of the Spanish Pacific fleet, the 44 gun Esmerelda. Cochrane with 80 Chilean sailors rowed up to the frigate and captured her after a brief but violent hand to hand struggle. As they rowed silently past the neutral USS Mendocino they were almost given away by the American sailors cheering them.

1830- The day after leading a protest march in Rochester Woman’s Rights advocate Susan B. Anthony defied the law by casting a vote in a New York election.

1857- Oxford professors at a dinner hear Sir William Trench call for a new Dictionary of the English Language, this time not just a sampler of difficult words but an attempt to inventory all the words used in English at the time. The OED, the Oxford English Dictionary took 70 years to write and was the biggest effort since Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary of 1755.

1872- Susan B. Anthony was arrested and fined again for trying to vote in the presidential election.

1895- Invention of the Car Clutch.

1917- After the collapse of the Czar’s government, the council of the Russian Orthodox Church reinstated the office of Patriarch, suppressed by Peter the Great in 1700.

1940- President Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented 3rd term. His defeated Republican opponent- Wendell Wilkie, became the butt of jokes in many Looney Tunes.

1946- Two punk kids fresh out of the Navy were elected to the US House of Representatives- John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

1954- THE WRONG DOOR RAID- Baseball great Joe DiMaggio was stewing over the collapse of his marriage to sexy movie star Marilyn Monroe. He was especially sensitive to the rumors that she was seeing other men. This night Joltin Joe was having dinner with Frank Sinatra and a few friends when a detective brought him a report that Monroe’s car was spotted parked in front of an apartment complex on Kilkea Dr.. Enraged, he drove out to the building and kicked in the back door hoping to catch her en-flagrante. But Marilyn was staying in a girlfriend’s apartment upstairs. This was the home of a terrified old lady named Mrs Florence Klotz. We don’t know what she thought about her door suddenly kicked in by Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack but the tabloids had a field day.

1956- SUEZ CRISIS ENDS. The United States and Soviet Union bring heavy pressure on Israel, France and Britain to stop their war with Egypt. Egypt kept the Suez Canal, Israel no longer looked like a pathetic little country about to get stomped, and the world now saw that the only countries who’s opinion now mattered were Russia and the U.S.. British historian Jan Morris called it the official end of the British Empire. Israeli diplomat Chaim Herzog was visiting Mount Sinai when he got the cablegram to come to New York for the peace talks. He joked:" I am only the second Jew in history to receive a message on Mount Sinai."

1975- Mormon lumberjack Travis Walton was abducted by aliens and experimented on for five days, then returned to his Snowflake Arizona home. The encounter was seen by seven adult men, who were his co-workers. Walton published a bestseller Fire in the Sky, that was made into a movie.

1977- George W. Bush married Laura Welsh. Laura was once a Democrat who campaigned for lefty George McGovern in 1972.

1979- National Public Radio’s news show Morning Edition started.

1990- In New York City the founder of the Jewish Defense League, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was assassinated. The JDL was an extremist organization that advocated tough responses to Arab extremism. Even though he was elected to the Israeli Knesset Meir Kahane was refused a seat because of his racist views. So no one was too surprised that he was a target. But what was surprising was that the assassin, El Sayyid Nossair, was a member of a terrorist cell operating in the US. His apartment was a "treasure-trove of information" according to NYPD detectives. They found terrorist manuals written in Afghanistan, bomb making instructions and plans to NY city landmarks. The NYPD turned over all this intelligence to the FBI, who filed it and promptly forgot about it.

1994- Retired President Ronald Reagan gave his last public speech. He confirmed he had Alzheimers Disease.

1999- A man was arrested in Minneapolis for stealing and keeping 150 shopping carts in his apartment.
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Yesterday’s Question: Is pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?

Answer: Because it contains seeds, it is considered a fruit.

Quiz: Is pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?

Yesterday’s Answer Below: Various kings have been called The Just, or The Wise. Who was the only English King ever to be called The Great?
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History for 11/4/2011
Birthdays: Will Rogers, Art Carney, Loretta Swit, Martin Balsam, Gig Young, Darla Hood, Joe Neikro, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ralph Maccio, Andrea McArdle, Matthew McConnaughy, Walter Cronkite, Laura Bush is 65

1530- Cardinal Wolsey had been the chief minister of King Henry VIII and dominated English politics for a decade. He was a European power broker and fancied himself a future Pope. But he lost favor with the King over his inability to get him a divorce from his first wife and his alliances on the continent lost them Calais, the last English stronghold on the continent. This day the King's men arrested Cardinal Wolsey for treason. But being old and infirm he died on the way to the Tower.

1640- THE LONG PARLIAMENT- British King Charles Ist didn't like parliaments. He found them pushy, always demanding rights for the common man and such. It had been 11 years since is last parliament and he had dismissed that one after three weeks. It was called "the Short Parliament". But he needed money to put down rebels in Scotland. So Charles I reluctantly convened the Long Parliament. This one stayed in session for the rest of Charles' life and defeated and beheaded him in the English Civil War. The Long Parliament was finally disbanded by Cromwell and his army in 1652 and after Charles II 's restoration, the English parliament stayed more or less in regular sessions.

1646- The Massachusetts Bay Colony started to feel threatened by all the Quakers, Shakers, Anabaptists and other weirdoes coming in by the boatload from Europe. So they announced that the crime of Heresy was punishable by death. And of course heresy was anything the Massachusetts Bay Colony didn't care to believe in. After hanging two Quaker preachers and driving other like Anne Hutchinson outside the walls to death at the hand of hostile Indians, the heresy statutes were revoked by King Charles II.

1677- William III and Mary of Orange are married at St. James Palace.

1791- ST. CLAIRS DEFEAT- When President Washington sent General Arthur St. Clair to put down the Indian raids on the Ohio Frontier he advised him" Trust not the Indians, beware of surprise". St. Clair, who had a rather lackluster military career in the Revolution, must have forgotten Washington's advice because this day near what would be Celina Ohio St. Clair's camp was surprise-attacked at dawn by thousands of Shawnee, Creek and Miami warriors. 900 American casualties including General Richard Butler.

The spectacular defeat and massacre was led by Chief Little Turtle, who although he defeated more US soldiers than Sitting Bull, is barely remembered today. After the peace treaty in 1795 St. Clair finished life running a tavern. Little Turtle was a guest of George Washington at Mt. Vernon. His grandson graduated from West Point.

1804- LEWIS & CLARK MET SACAJEWEA- The American explorers were spending the winter in a friendly Mandan village when a French Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau offered his services as a guide. He had two wives who were Shoshone (Snake) women. Sacajewea was then 15 and pregnant. Charbonneau won his wives in a bet with some Hidatsa warriors.

Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau not because he would be useful as much as Sacajewea, because she spoke the languages of the western tribes beyond the Rocky Mountians. Sacajewea would speak to Shoshone and Nez Perce in their language, then translate into Hidatsa to Charbonneau. He would translate it into French to another trapper named Driar who would speak English to Lewis and Clark.

Despite the clumsiness, this system worked. Sacajewea braved every hardship the expedition faced to the Pacific and back, and with her baby on her back. One scholar said the European conquest of the America's could not have been done without the help of three women: Pocahontas, Malinche' the Aztec Princess and Sacajewea.

1842- Abe Lincoln, 33, and Mary Todd, 23, marry. Mary Lincoln came from a pro Southern Kentucky family and was always at odds with Washington society. At one point Congress even held a hearing on whether the First Lady was a Confederate spy.

Mary was as volatile as Abe was laid back and they would have marital fights right in front of officers and dignitaries causing everyone to hang their heads in embarrassment. Most of her children had died by the time Lincoln was shot and the grief broke her sanity causing her surviving son Robert Lincoln to lock her up for her remaining years.

1854- THE LADY WITH THE LAMP- English nurse Florence Nightingale arrived at Scutari Turkey to care for English wounded from the Crimean War. The English Army medical system then was a disaster of outmoded bureaucracy. Hundreds of sick and dying men were piled up bed to bed in a hospital 4 miles square without basic sanitary conditions- no blankets, fresh clothes or fresh food. Rich English aristocrat Florence Nightingale brought her own finances to clothe, feed and care for the sick. Even just doing laundry saved lives because men had clean linens to sleep on. She told her volunteers "The strongest women must stand with me at the washtub!" She had no official status or commission from the government, but she revolutionized the military hospital system and the nursing profession, often fighting stodgy old generals who saw her as a troublemaker. Chief surgeon Sir John Hall growled:" The woman insists on grotesque excess and luxury- after all, what does a soldier want with a toothbrush?"

1861- University of Washington founded in Seattle.

1862- Richard J. Gatling patented the machine gun. "It is to the pistol as the sewing machine is to the simple sewing needle." Gatling's idea was to invent machines to make war too terrible to be waged any longer. What he succeeded in doing was to indeed make war more terrible.

1879- James Ritty of Dayton Ohio patented the cash register, invented as a way to keep employees from pocketing receipts.

1913- William Mulholland's great aqueduct starts bringing water 200 miles from Northern California to L.A. by the force of gravity alone. Without the extra water L.A. would never have grown any larger than 140,000 people. ( L.A. Times estimate.)

1918- Wilfred Owen, one of the greatest English poets of the age, was killed in combat in World War One, only six days before the final cease fire.

1927- HOWARD CARTER OPENED THE TOMB OF KING TUT. Other royal tombs had been opened before but they had always been cleaned out centuries ago by grave robbers. King Tut Ankh Amon’s was the first unspoiled Pharoah's tomb to be discovered in modern times. The site was discovered under a house built for workers excavating the tomb of King Ramses IV.

There was King Tut's Curse guarding the door, and a few folks like Lord Carnaervon did go to an early grave: allegedly from scratching a zit and getting blood poisoning. Legend has it the same zit was found on King Tut's mummy! But Howard Carter, the man who broke the seal, rifled the tomb and did everything but stick his fingers in Tut's ears, lived to a merry old age and even pocketed a few artifacts he didn't feel like sharing with the British Museum. They were later returned by an embarrassed family descendant.

1928- Arnold Rothstein, top New York gangster who got vaudeville dancer Jimmy Walker elected mayor and rigged the 1919 World Series, is shot in the groin during a poker game. It took him hours to die. When asked by the police who shot him, Rothstein’s last words: "If I live, I'll take care of it..."

1931-One of the pioneering trumpet innovators of the new music called Jazz was Buddy Bolden. He was one of the first soloists to improvise within the body of a song, and so doing paved the way for the greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But by 1931 Bolden was forgotten. This day he died broke in the Louisiana Home for the Insane. His family couldn't even afford a Dixieland Band to play at his funeral.

1939- President Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act, declaring the U.S. would not get involved in the growing war between Hitler and Britain and France.

1939- Packard introduced the first air-conditioned automobile.

1952- UNIVAC, the first all electronic business computer, accurately predicted Dwight Eisenhower would win in a landslide. The first computer projected results for an election.

1955- In Arizona Willie Bioff, former IATSE union official, who tried to hijack the Hollywood unions (Including the Disney cartoonists) for Frank Nitti's gang, turns the key in his Ford pickup and explodes. He had turned informer and was in the Witness Protection plan. He had changed his name to Bill Nelson and was a friend of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. When police arrived they found Bioff's wife up in a tree. At first they feared it was from the explosion but she explained Willie wore a ring with a fat diamond on it. She thought his dismembered hand had gotten stuck up into that tree and she wanted that ring back.

1956- The Soviets crush the Hungarian Revolt led by Inver Nagy.

1958- Angelo Roncalli was elected Pope John XXIII. John 23rd was one of the best loved popes of the twentieth century. He liberalized the Church through his council Vatican II, changed the Latin Mass into common language, encouraged folk masses and other reforms. Pope John Paul II has made more saints than any other Pope but withheld final sainthood for John XXIII because he was too liberal for his tastes.

1963- The Beatles are part of the Queens Royal Command performance in London. John Lennon tells the audience: " Will the people in the cheap seats clap their hands?, and if the rest of you would just rattle your jewelry.."

1968- the first issue of Screw Magazine. Former reporter Jim Buckley and former industrial spy for the Bendix Corporation, Al Goldstein named their magazine Screw after trying Hump, Love and being told they couldn't name it F**k.

1979- THE IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS- Iranian militants with the approval of the Iranian revolutionary government and the Ayatollah Khomeni attack the U.S. embassy in Teheran and take most of the 90 staff hostage for 444 days. The event infuriated US opinion and there were loud calls to nuke the Mad Mullahs. Truth be told, without condoning such an outrage the US public remained blissfully ignorant of how our CIA helped the overthrow of the democratic regime of Mossadegh in 1953 that established the Shah's autocratic regime and that the coup was directed from within the US embassy, but hey, that's just details.

The crisis seemed to paralyze the Jimmy Carter administration and probably helped elect Ronald Reagan. The incident also proved that the Cold War East-West way of judging world politics was now outdated, since the Ayatollah declared both America and Russia "Great Satans"!

1980- Yomiuri Giants baseball great Saduharu Oh retired after hitting 868 homeruns in his 22 year career.

1993- The Topanga-Malibu fires., Huge brush fries burn expensive homes in Malibu. The fires reached from the Santa Monica Mountains down to the ocean. Eyewitnesses said the 200 foot flames were reflected in the sky and water turning everything orange and the landscape looked more like Mars.

1995- YITSHAK RABIN ASSASSINATED- At a peace rally after making a speech where he declared "Violence will undermine Israeli Democracy" Israeli Prime Minister Yitshak Rabin was shot and killed by a young Yeshiva student Ygail Amir. Amir was mad at Rabin for daring to make peace with the Palestinians. The night before Amir attended a Likud political rally where people waved pictures of Yitshak Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Ironically Rabin as chief of staff of the Israeli army was one of the strategists of the conquest of the West Bank. President Clinton was shocked by the act and said goodbye in Hebrew "Shalom, Haver" –Peace Brother. Despite this slogan becoming a popular bumper sticker in Israel, in the election Likud won anyway.

1999- Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law, drafted by conservative Republican Phil Gramm, it repealed many of the government safeguards enacted during the Great Depression against banks speculating in stocks and insurance. It created the free-wheeling Wall Street economy that collapsed in 2008.

2008- Barack Obama was elected first African-American to be President of the United States.
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Yesterday's Question: Various kings have been called The Just, or The Wise. Who was the only English King ever to be called The Great?

Answer: Alfred King of Wessex circa 839AD, drove back the Vikings, united most of the Britain under his rule and started the British Navy. For that he is called Alfred the Great.