Question: What does it mean to egg someone on?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: When people talk on and on at length, people say you drone on. Why?
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History for 12/4/2022
Birthdays: Chief Crazy Horse, Samuel Butler*, Thomas Carlyle, Lillian Russell, Vasilly Kandinsky, Buck Jones, Wink Martindale, Max Baer Jr., Robert Vesco, Charles Keating, Wally George, Deanna Durbin, Pappy Boyington, Horst Bucholtz, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jeff Bridges is 73, Marisa Tomei is 58, Tyrah Banks is 49, Johnny Lyon of the band Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Jay-Z is 53, Fred Armisen is 56

*"Life is one long process of getting tired."- Samuel Butler.

963AD- Pope John XII died. According to chronicler Luidprand of Cremona, his Holiness was beaten to death by the husband of a woman named Steffanetta he was caught in bed with.

1154- Nicholas Breakspeare elected Pope Adrian IV, so far the only Englishman ever made pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

1534- Ottoman Turkish Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent occupied Baghdad.

1655- Jews had been expelled from England since 1291. This year Oliver Cromwell convened a conference at Whitehall to consider re-admittance of Jewish people. Cromwell’s Puritans hated Catholic Papists, but had great sympathy for “God’s Chosen People”. One legislator even proposed moving the Sabbath Day back to Saturday. But there was still too much anti-Semitic resistance to make the re-admittance official. Despite the failure of the government to make a decision, from this time on Jewish families began resettling in England. They were allowed their own Jewish Burial Ground in 1657. In 1715 Solomon Medina became the first Jewish person to receive a knighthood. In the 1800s, Lionel Rothschild joined the House of Lords.

1657- Old artist Rembrandt van Rijn was evicted from his home. He was kept out of debtor’s prison when his daughter and son-in-law auctioned off most of his possessions to pay his debts.

1777- In France, Ben Franklin and the American commissioners were in despair. Nothing but bad news about British victories, and the French government was complaining about American privateers attacking British ships in French waters. Even sympathetic French newspapers were saying the Americans revolution was probably lost.
This day, with playwright Pierre de Beaumarchais in attendance, a courier from across the sea arrived. Jonathan Austin delivered the news that at Saratoga, British General Burgoyne and his entire army were defeated and taken. Immediately the French, Dutch and Spanish governments were calling the Americans “our friends”, and began discussing an alliance.

1783- WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL- The American Revolution now ended, George Washington bid farewell to his officers he shared 8 years of war with at a dinner at Fraunces Tavern in New York. Creole cook Samuel Fraunces "Black Sam' was later invited by Washington to become the first presidential chef. The tavern is still there today on the corner of Water & Pearl Streets, and still serves food and ale. It has a little Washington museum on the second floor.

1791- The London Observer, called the oldest continually published newspaper in the world, first published. True, the Times was begun in 1788 but it had a spotty release it’s first few years while its publisher would be thrown in prison for libel.

1829- The British in India abolished the custom of suttee- that a widow should throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre and die also.

1875- William Marcy “Boss Tweed” escaped Ludlow Street jail and fled to Cuba. He had been the corrupt boss of New York City politics throughout the 1860s and 70s. He was rearrested in Spain by a Spanish policeman who spoke no English. When asked by American diplomats why, the Spaniard said he saw a newspaper cartoon by Thomas Nast of Tweed in prison garb with his hands on two young boys. So, he thought he was a kidnapper! Tweed was brought to justice by the one crime he probably never did.

1881- First issue of the Los Angeles Times.

1909- The first Canadian Football League championship the Grey Cup, U of Toronto defeated Toronto Parkdale 26-6

1915- HENRY FORD'S PEACE SHIP-The great industrialist was a livelong pacifist and was horrified by the carnage of the World War I. On this day he equipped a large yacht with neutral diplomats and other famous personages like Thomas Edison and sailed to Europe. Pundits had fun mocking his homespun naiveté, and local lunatics like Urban Ledoux, aka Mr. Zero, jumped into New York Harbor and swarm alongside the ship "to ward off hostile torpedoes." Ford docked in a neutral harbor hoping to use his influence to get the Kaiser, Czar and the other crowned heads to a bargaining table like some kind of board of directors negotiation. Nobody would meet with him. Young N.Y. politician Fiorello LaGuardia noted: "The only boy he managed to save from the trenches was his own son!"

1918- President Woodrow Wilson left the US by battleship for Europe to help chair the Versailles Peace Conference ending the Great War. Once there he surprised people by refusing to visit the battlefields and tour the horror and devastation. He said:” They want me to see red as they do. But I feel at least one of us should remain impartial.”

1927- The Cotton Club opened as a speakeasy nightclub in Harlem. Owners were New York gangsters Owney “The Killer” Madden and George “Big Frenchy” DeMange. Duke Ellington’s orchestra highlighted the opening night. When other gangsters tried to open a rival The Plantation Club, Owney had his hoods firebomb the place. The Cotton Club was one of the great centers of the Harlem Renaissance, but African Americans were banned from eating or drinking at the tables. Even W.C. Handy was turned away.

1931- “ Its alive! Its alive!” James Whale’s macabre masterpiece “Frankenstein” opened at the Mayfair theater in NY. Universal Studios originally wanted Bela Lugosi to play the Monster, to follow up on his success as Dracula. But Lugosi loudly protested it wasn’t a good fit for him. Whale’s writing partner David Lewis just saw this British actor William Henry Pratt renamed Boris Karloff in a play called the Criminal Code, where he played a murderous convict. So they signed him to play the monster.

1932- “Good Evening Mr & Mrs. North and South America and All the Ships at Sea! Let’s Go To Press!” Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell began his famous radio broadcasts on the NBC Blue Network. Winchell became one of the most powerful voices in American society and politics for 23 years.

1941- As Admiral Nagumo's carriers approached Pearl Harbor, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox assured the press: "No matter what happens, the US Navy will not be caught napping !"

1941- The animated film “Hoppity Goes to Town"or Mr. Bug Goes to Town”-opened. Max Fleischer's last gamble to keep up with Walt Disney and keep his studio alive. Songs written by top pop song writer Hoagy Carmichael. However the events of Pearl Harbor three days later not only sink the American Navy, but also Hoppity's box office and put Max out of a job.

1948- “Hey...Stella!! A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway with Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy.

1950- President Truman gives General MacArthur in Korea direct orders not to open his big mouth and make any more public statements about the conduct of the war, without checking with Washington first! MacArthur was used to being on his own during World War II and as proconsul of occupied Japan. He didn't fret about being his own diplomatic corps as well as general. But now everything Dugout Doug said got him into trouble. He had been making statements in press that the U.S. should expand the Korean War into Communist China and Russia, and he warned the Chinese that if they didn’t quit he planned to rain Atomic Fire upon their cities. No tweets then.

1954- Jim McLamore and Dave Edgerton attended a demonstration of fast-food serving techniques by two California brothers named MacDonald. This day in Miami, McLamore and Edgerton opened the first Insta-Burger, later renamed Burger King.

1955- French mime Marcel Marceau appeared on American TV for the first time.

1958- Cocoa Puffs cereal invented.

1961- Someone at the Museum of Modern Art in NY noticed that they had hung Henri Matisse’s painting Le Bateau upside down. It had been that way for two months, and up until now nobody had noticed.

1963- The first Instant Replay camera used at a football game. It was an Army-Navy game.

1965 - Jerry Garcia, Bob, Phil, Bill, and Pigpen first convened as the Grateful Dead to play as the house band for Ken Kesey and the Prankster's Acid Test in San Jose, California. The Dead went on to break records, bend minds, and build a community that continued on for many years.

1985- The first Cray X-MP Supercomputer booted up.

1985- Steven Spielberg’s production Young Sherlock Holmes, directed by Barry Levinson premiered. It featured the CG breakthrough Stain Glass Knight animated by John Lasseter. Despite this, the film failed, and its failure made Disney change its movie title Basil of Baker Street to The Great Mouse Detective.

1988- Actor Gary Busey almost died in a motorcycle accident on Olympic Blvd. In Los Angeles. He was not wearing a helmet and suffered massive head trauma. He later claimed to have an out-of-the-body experience at the scene.

1993- Rocker Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer at age 52.

2012-Walt Disney announced it made a deal to show its Disney, Pixar and Marvel movies on Netflix instead of Starz Channel. First major studio to switch from cable to streaming.
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Yesterday’s question: When people talk on and on at length, people say you drone on. Why?

Answer: When you play a Scottish bagpipe, the pipe that you blow in and finger is called the Drone. So, droning on means to go on endlessly in an annoying manner.

Question: When people talk on and on at length, people say you drone on. Why?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is obsidian?
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HISTORY FOR 12/3/2022
Birthdays: French King Charles VI the Well-Served 1380, Gilbert Stuart, Sven Nykvist, Joseph Conrad- real name Josef Korzeniowski, Jean Luc Godard, Nino Rota, Jim Backus, Maria Callas, Larry Parks, Charles Pillsbury, Mitsuo Fuchida the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, Darryl Hannah is 62, Katerina Witt, Brendan Fraser is 54, Marisa Tomei, Julianne Moore is 62, Andrew Stanton, Amanda Seyfried is 37

749AD- This is the Feast of Saint John Damascene. He’s the saint who’s called the Father of Christian Art, because he theologically argued a way for artists to avoid the “No Graven Images “ hitch in the Ten Commandments, so we could make paintings of Jesus and the Saints.

1557- The Scottish Covenant- In Edinburgh Scotland a group of anticlerical noblemen Argyll, Glencairn, Morton, Lorne and Erskine signed the First Scottish Covenant- pledging to reform the religion of the land.

1591- The first fire insurance contract was written in Hamburg.

1775- The first official U.S. flag hoisted aboard the USS Alfred. It was thirteen stripes with a cross of Saint George and Saint Andrew in the corner.

1800-Battle of Hohenlinden- French whip the Austrians, but it wasn’t done by Napoleon but by a different general, so Nappy asks us to overlook his competition.

1818- Illinois became a state with its first capitol at Kaskaskia.

1838- The Battle of Windsor. Another attempt by the U.S. to conquer Canada. On this day a force of 500 disaffected Canadians, Yankee opportunists and Polish revolutionists crossed over from Detroit and captured Windsor Ontario. (why do we always invade Canada in the winter? )
They were led by the uncle of writer Ambrose Bierce, Lucius Verus Bierce. They called themselves the Secret Guild of the Sacred Hunters of the East, and their intention was no less than liberating Canada from the hated British yoke!
Well, nobody else rose up with them. And while they were standing around trying to think of what to do next, the British army quickly rounded them up. Those that weren’t hanged, were shipped to New Zealand.
Lucius Bierce escaped back across the Detroit River in a canoe where he was promptly arrested for violating U.S. neutrality laws. He later devoted his time and money to abolitionist causes, and financed John Browns’ anti-slavery campaign in Kansas.
1845- Britain wages the First Sikh War.

1868- Preliminary hearings open into the treason trial of Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederate States. Radical republicans wanted someone punished for the Civil War, but many were worried that a master lawyer like Davis would use the opportunity to prove there was indeed a Constitutional basis for states legally seceding from the union. Davis himself hoped for a trial to prove just that point. But presiding judge Chief Justice Salmon B. Chase had by prior arrangement with President Andrew Johnson a plan to stall the trial until Johnson's amnesty for all confederates went into effect on Feb 15th.

1881- In Africa, explorer Henry M. Stanley founded the town of Kinshasa, which they called then Leopoldville after the King of the Belgians.

1890- A small British army marches into Uganda, and camping on a hilltop called Kampala informs the local chief Mwanga that he is now part of the British Empire, whether he liked it or not. The British officer even made Mwanga sign the treaty twice, because he felt his first ink splotch was done insincerely. Uganda remained a British colony until 1956.

1894- In Samoa, writer Robert Louis Stevenson was opening a bottle of wine, when he paused and cried “ What’s that?”, then he looked at his wife and said “ Does my face look strange?” Then he collapsed and died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 44.

1919- Impressionist painter Pierre August Renoir died at age 79. Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, when he could no longer paint with his hands, Renoir used a bit that held the brush in his teeth.

1925- GEORGE GERSHWIN PLAYED CARNEGIE HALL. Gershwin always wanted to be taken seriously as a composer, and not just a Tin Pan Alley songwriter. While in Paris he met Maurice Ravel, but instead of giving him advice, Ravel said: "You make HOW much from your songs? Maybe I should learn from you!" When he asked to be Arnold Schoenberg's pupil, Schoenburg told him :" Why do you want to be a bad Schoenburg, when you're already such a good Gershwin?"

1931- Happy Birthday Alka Seltzer! The fizzy tablet was invented by chemist Maurice Treener for the Dr. Miles Medicine Company of Indiana.

1934- Lee Blair, Disney artist and brother of Preston Blair, Disney artist, married Mary Browne Robinson, Disney artist. She became the most famous of them as Mary Blair.

1941- After clandestine diplomatic initiatives to raise the U.S. oil and steel embargoes failed, The Japanese High Command radioed it's carrier fleet out in the Pacific: "Climb Mount Niitaka". This code meant go forward with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Admiral Nagumo orders resumption of radio silence and turned his fleet South-SouthWest towards Hawaii.

1944- A Nazi newspaper published on this day features a photo of a young Austrian S.S. officer with his commander in Greece. After the war his commander was hanged as a war criminal. The young man became Secretary General of the United Nations, President of Austria, and winner of a Nobel Peace Prize- Kurt Waldheim.

1948- Happy Ozzy Day! Ozzie Ozbourne is 74. ”I never set out to be a businessman. I just wanted to have fun, f—k chicks, and do drugs.”

1948- Walt Disney’s Mickey and the Seal, debuted. Directed by Charles Nichols.

1956- British and French forces evacuate Egypt, where they had been since 1799.

1965- The Beatles release the album Rubber Soul.

1967- Dr. Christiaan Barnard of Capetown performed the first heart transplant.

1968- Elvis Presley opened in Las Vegas to rave reviews and packed houses. It marks the beginning of his comeback and his transition from thin, black leather-jacketed youth to fat, rhinestone jumpsuit, half tinted sunglasses middle age.

1976- During a photo shoot for a Pink Floyd album cover at London’s Battersea Power Station, a 40 foot long inflated pig broke away from its’ tether and floated away to become a hazard to civil aviation. The AeroPork was lost to radar at 8,000 feet.

1984- An accident at a Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India filled the air with poison methyl-isocynate gasses that killed 10,000 people and blinds or otherwise injured a further 200,000. No one from Union Carbide was ever tried or convicted for the tragedy. Saint Mother Theresa showed her controversial side when she publicly encouraged people to accept the disaster as God’s Will. Even today, the ground around the closed facility is considered too deadly for inhabitation.

1991- Hulk Hogan defeated Undertaker to become WWF champ for the 4th time.

1997 – 56 year old Darlene Gillespie, an original member of the Mickey Mouse Club, was busted in LA for a securities fraud scheme.

1997- Young basketball star Latrell Sprewell lost his $32 million contract with the Golden State Warriors for trying to strangle his coach, P.J. Carlesino. Chill out, dude.

2004-The Ukranian Supreme Court ruled the recent presidential election invalid. Moscow and hardline Kiev Gov’t supported Victor Januscowicz followers committed widespread acts of voter fraud, then suppressed any news reports.
The story was revealed to the world by a heroic sign language translator for the deaf. While the state approved news anchor reported the elections on the evening news the translator, Nataliya Dmytruk, deaf signed “EYERYTHING YOU HAVE JUST HEARD IS A LIE! YUSCHENKO IS OUR TRUE PRESIDENT! THIS IS PROBABLY THE LAST TIME YOU WILL EVER SEE ME..” The word spread, and spawned weeklong mass demonstrations and international pressure that compelled the government to redo the election. Ms. Dmytruk survived and is today considered a national hero.

2008- Conservative Episcopalian churches in the U.S. and Canada announced they were leaving the main Episcopal communion to found a new church- the New Anglican Church of North America. These theologians objected to the Church nominating gay priests and bishops.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is obsidian?

Answer: A volcanic igneous rock fired to the texture of glass. Its dark dramatic color makes it valuable in jewelry.

Question: Who said, “ When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a Bible.”?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is a catamite?
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History for 12/1/2022
Welcome to December, from Decembrius Mensis, month number 10 to the Romans who only had ten months in their original calendar. It’s the same Latin root as Decimate, Dime, Decimal.

Birthdays: Richard Pryor, Mary Martin, Cyril Ritchard, Dick Shawn, Richard Crenna, Lee Trevino, Charlene Tilton, Lou Rawls, Marshal Gyorgi Zhukov, Admiral Stansfield Turner, Rex Stout the author of Nero Wolfe, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Treat Williams, Andrew Cuomo, Joanne Siegel the model for Lois Lane, Woody Allen is 87, Bette Midler is 77, Sarah Silverman is 52

Happy Roman Festival of Neptune.

WORLD AIDS DAY- established by the UN in 1987.

659 AD-Today is the feast day of Saint Eligius of Limoge, a goldsmith and mint master to Merovingian King Dagobert, who started the art of Limoge enamels.

1521- Pope Leo X died after getting overheated attending celebrations of the defeat of French forces in Milan. He was 45. Some thought he was poisoned, but he probably caught the malarial fever prevalent in Rome at the time. Leo was one of the great art patrons of the Renaissance. He spent lavishly. “ God has given us the Papacy, so let us enjoy it” As soon as the Pontiff was cold, Cardinals and bankers looted the Vatican treasury for all the money he borrowed from them, sending the Church into one of the worst financial crises in its’ history.

1641- THE GREAT REMONSTRANCE- The English Parliament sent King Charles I a long list of everything that annoyed them about being his subjects. They demanded Parliament to be the supreme authority in the realm, to sit in permanent session, the right to select and dismiss royal ministers, and to reform the Protestant Church of England to a more Calvinist purity. “God's Blood! You ask of me things one would never ask of a king!"-sayeth King Charles. This little spat would become the English Civil War by June.

1805-THE MIDNIGHT CAMP AT AUSTERLITZ- The night before the big battle between French, Austrian and Russian armies on a cold little field in what would be the Czech Republic. Napoleon went on a midnight inspection of his troops. His tour turned into something akin to a homecoming football rally. The French soldiers cheered, lit torches, made bonfires, sang and partied all night. Across the hills, the enemy generals mistakenly thought all this activity meant Napoleon was preparing to run away.

1835- Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.

1861- The first installment of Charles Dicken’s novel Great Expectations began to appear in magazines.

1869- A Sir William McDougall was sent by Ottawa to take over the administration of Prince Rupertland, now called the new Canadian province of Manitoba. His problem was the whole population of French trappers, Indigenous peoples and half-breeds had already declared themselves the independent Metiz Republic, under their leader Louis Riel. MacDougal had to sneak across the border from the U.S. at midnight. Avoiding Metiz patrols, his party stopped at an abandoned Hudson's Bay trading post where they raised the Union Jack in the darkness. Gov. McDougall read his Royal Proclamation to an audience of seven aides and two hunting dogs. Then they crept back over the border to the U.S. to a healthy dose of razzing from Yankee cowboys. The British Army arrived next spring and established order, but by then “Wandering Willie” McDougall had been recalled.

1879- Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera HMS Pinafore opened. Sullivan conducted the orchestra while Gilbert was a chorister.
“When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an Attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!

1887- The very first Sherlock Holmes mystery by Arthur Conan-Doyle "A Study in Scarlet" first published in Beeton’s Christmas Gazette.

1909- The Pennsylvania Trust Company invented the Christmas Club account.

1917- Father Flanaghan opened Boys Town west of Omaha Nebraska. A retreat for homeless boys and in 1979 girls as well.

1934- Josef Stalin's close confidant Sergei Kirov is assassinated in a Kremlin hallway by Lenoid Nikolayev. Stalin ordered the GREAT PURGES of the thirties to begin. Later it came out that Stalin had ordered Kirov assassinated as an excuse. Exact figures are debatable but it is estimated millions were arrested and died. Stalin even had the wandering blind storytellers of the Ukraine rounded up and shot for fomenting anti-revolutionary ethnicity. Declassified private papers of Stalin revealed he admired Czar Ivan the Terrible and tried to learn from his example. Legend is he once said, “One person killed is a crime. Millions killed is a statistic.”

1938- In Moscow, Sergei Eisenstein released his film of Russian patriotism ALEXANDER NEVSKY, with soundtrack provided by Sergei Prokoviev.

1938- “The Terror of Tiny Town” The only Western musical with an all little-person cast.

1941-Anticipating imminent hostilities with Japan, The U.S. Navy withdrew it’s fleet of Yangtze River gunboats. As the gunboats steamed out into the South China Sea, they were surrounded by large Japanese warships, that held their fire to let them pass.

1943- FDR, Churchill and Stalin conclude their first meeting in Teheran, Iran. The western allies passed supplies to Russia via the Persian Gulf through Iran. Roosevelt discussed the occupation zones of a defeated Germany by drawing lines in pencil on a map torn out of an old National Geographic magazine he found on a table.

1944- Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra premiered by the Boston Symphony and Serge Kousevitsky.

1947- Alastair Crowley died. Called the “wickest man in the world” he fused several occult theologies like Bavarian Illumanism, Gnosticism and Numerology into his Abbey of Theleme. His own mother nicknamed him “the Great Beast.” In 1968 Alastair Crowley was portrayed on the cover of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album.

1949- The last Nationalist capitol, Chunking (Chonqing), fell to Mao ZeDong's PLA, the People’s Liberation Army.

1951- MIT scientists booted up Project Whirlwind, the TX-0 Computer. Called the Tixo, it was as large as a bus and was the first computer that could do more than one program at a time. In 1952 it had the first computer screen and first light pen. It calculated everything from synchronizing the gunfire of battleships to how much icing to put in an Oreo cookie. The TX-2 was used to write the first animation program Sketchpad, and the first interactive game SpaceWar!, both in 1962.

1953- Ex- Esquire magazine art director and frustrated cartoonist Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy Magazine. It featured a nude centerfold of actress Marilyn Monroe. She joked to the press “ I had nothing on but the radio!” Hefner assembled the layout of the magazine on his kitchen table and borrowed money from his mother-in-law to pay for the printing. The first Playboy had no number or date, because Hef was certain he could not afford to make an issue number two.

1955- ROSA PARKS, a black seamstress in Montgomery Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus and was arrested for violating the segregation laws. She was fined $10. At the time she said she was unaware that she was breaking the law, she was actually seated in the first row reserved for Colored passengers, but since the bus was crowded the driver insisted she give up her seat for a white man anyway. This incident and the subsequent boycott is the spark of the great Black Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's.

1963- The NASA space facility at Cape Canaveral Florida was changed to Cape Kennedy in honor of slain president John F. Kennedy. The same day the Kennedy Family moved out of the White House so Lyndon Johnson could move in. Jackie Kennedy only returned to the White House once more in her life in 1971 and on the condition that it be in secret and no press be present. She even would tell D.C. taxicabs to avoid streets where she might accidentally get a glimpse of it.

1963- According to recently unclassified documents, today was supposed to be the day a staged coup would overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. The CIA had hired Mafia hitmen to shoot Fidel as he drove in an open jeep to his beach home. Then the head of the Cuban army, Juan Almeida would then seize the government.
But John Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas suspended all such plans.

1964- DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING MET J. EDGAR HOOVER- Dr. King and Rev Ralph Abernathy were on their way to Oslo for Dr. King to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Washington they were invited to meet with the legendary head of the FBI. Hoover sat them down and proceeded to lecture them for over two hours, calling them "boys" and hinting that they better not cause him trouble, because he had tapes of Dr. King's extra-marital affairs. Dr. King and Abernathy left enraged. Hoover always believed that Martin Luther King and the entire NAACP were Communist agents of Moscow. Later when Dr. King came out publicly against the Vietnam War, one of these audio sextapes was mailed to his wife Coretta- anonymously.

1982- Dr. Barney Clark received the first Artificial Heart. Part of the research development was credited to Paul Winchell, puppeteer and cartoon voice who created Jerry Mahoney, Knucklehead Smith, Dick Dastardly and a plastic heart valve. At first it was hoped these plastic valves could take the place of real hearts, but today they are mostly used for temporary relief until a human donor heart can be found.

1982- Ziggy’s Gift TV special premiered on ABC.

1990- Tunnelers digging below the English Channel from France and England break through to meet in the middle and shake hands. A tunnel under the Channel had been a dream since Napoleon in 1802.
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Question: What is a catamite?

Answer: In ancient Greece and Rome, it was a boy kept for homosexual relations with an adult. In the ancient world a boy could provide such services until they attained manhood, with no residual social stigma.

Question: What is a catamite?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is a dilettante?
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History for 11/30/2022
Birthdays: Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, William Enos Berkeley aka Busby Berkeley, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Shirley Chisholm, Gordon Parks, G. Gordon Liddy, Alan Sherman, Abbie Hoffman, Virginia Mayo, Ephram Zimbalist Jr, Richard Crenna, Robert Guilliame, Rex Reason, Mandy Patinkin, David Mamet, Shuggie Otis, Billy Idol, Joan Ganz Cooney the creator of Sesame Street, Dick Clark, Ridley Scott is 86, Ben Stiller is 57, Kaley Cuoco is 37, Henry Selick is 70

1731-An huge earthquake killed 100,000 in Peking (Beijing).

1750- Marshal Saxe died. Maurice de Saxe was born an illegitimate son of Polish King Augustus the Strong, but grew to become one of the top generals of French King Louis XV. Louis gave him the magnificent palace of Chambord for his retirement. The old soldier spent the summer nights camping out Cossack style and letting wild steppe ponies gallop the grounds. Like his dad a notorious ladie’s man, this night he was found dead after an all-night tryst with eight actresses at once. The king's physician wrote as the cause of death: "Une surfeit des femmes - an overdose of women.”

1776- As George Washington’s minuteman army retreated across New Jersey to escape the pursuing British Army, a third of his troop’s enlistment’s were up. In a cold rain 2,000 New Jersey and Maryland militiamen, one third the army, left and went home. Writer Thomas Paine was serving Gen. Nathaniel Greene as a secretary. He was moved by this pitiful sight to write the pamphlet: “The Crisis”: ”These are times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will shrink in this crisis from the service of his country. But he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of both man and woman. “Washington called his downcast soldiers together and had the pamphlet read aloud to them.

1782- On a dark, snowy day in an upstairs room on the Rue Bonaparte on Paris’ Left Bank, The United States and Britain signed the first of several protocols leading up to the treaty ending the American Revolution. John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Richard Lawrence signed for America, a parliamentary delegation led by Lord Oswald signed for the Crown. One British diplomat there said:” The Americans are the greatest quibblers I have ever dealt with, and I pray never to again in the future!”

1809- Napoleon told Josephine he wanted a divorce. She was the love of his life, but at 46 she could no longer bear children and he desperately wanted to establish a dynasty. Even though she long suspected something like this might happen, eyewitnesses said when she heard the news she swooned. The French Army called Josephine Our Lady of Victories and marked the end of their good fortune from this moment. Although his second wife Marie Louise gave him a son, Napoleon never forgot her. In exile he once admitted,” I loved her, but I did not respect her.” On his deathbed in 1821, one of his last words was “Josephine.”

1864- THE BATTLE OF FRANKLIN. Confederate General John Bell Hood had lost Atlanta to Sherman, then failed to lure him out of Georgia. Now his subordinate officers missed an opportunity to entrap a different Yankee army outside of Nashville. That army now was facing them in an impregnable defensive position across open ground. Cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest urged a maneuver around the enemy, but Hood had had enough of his insubordinate officers. He ordered a full-frontal attack. The attack was a disaster.
General Patrick Cleburne, the blue-eyed Irish immigrant, called the Stonewall of the West, thought the order stupid, but couldn't send his men out without leading them.” Oh well lads, if we are to die today, let us do it like men.” After the battle he was found on the Yankee breastworks with 49 bullets in his body. Writer Ambrose Bierce was serving on the Union army staff. He was amazed at such a ‘ghastly carnival of death’ was being enacted on such a beautiful Autumn day.

1869- Paris’ famed naughty nightclub the Follies Bergere opened. The home of the Can-Can, Toulouse Lautrec, Josephine Baker, Bricktop, and Maurice Chevalier.

1900- Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a hotel in Paris. He was 46. His last words; "This wallpaper is appalling! Either it goes or I do.”

1918- Three weeks after the Kaiser was toppled, the new government granted German women the right to vote.

1922- The great actress Sarah Bernhardt made her last performance in Turin Italy. She was still considered sexy despite advanced age and a wooden leg.

1923- Max Fleischer moved his animation studio to big new offices in 1600 Broadway.

1924- The first fax message sent. A photo of the Prince of Wales was wired across the Atlantic by radio transmission.

1935- Hitler’s government passed a law that non-belief in Nazi doctrine could be grounds for legal divorce in Germany.

1939- Soviet Russia invaded Finland. The gallant Finns fought back fiercely with skiing hit and run attacks, and gasoline bottle bombs nicknamed for Stalin's Foreign Minister, Vachyeschav Molotov, the "Molotov Cocktail".

1940- Actress Lucille Ball married Cuban band leader Desi Arnaz. Together they pioneered the new art of Television Situation Comedy. They divorced in 1960 but remained lifelong friends.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt left Warm Springs Georgia and traveled by special train to meet with Japanese ambassadors Hamada and Kurusu at the White House in a last effort to prevent war.
Meanwhile the main Japanese carrier fleet weighed anchor and left Yokohama for the North Pacific. It’s code name was Kido Butai. It was officially scheduled for military exercises, but once out at sea Admiral Nagumo ordered radio silence, and following his instructions from Admiral Yamamoto, turned his ships south-southeast towards Hawaii.

1944- The Red Army invaded Nazi held Austria.

1954- Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges of Sylacauga Alabama was hit by a meteorite. It shot through her roof, bounced off her radio and hit her on the hip. It gave her a nasty bruise and one heck of a story to tell. Broke the radio too. Today it is called Hodges Meteorite.

1961- President-elect John F. Kennedy signed a secret memorandum creating Operation Mongoose. It ordered the CIA under the direction of Attorney General Robert Kennedy to eliminate Cuban leader Fidel Castro by any means necessary. The CIA tried everything from Mafia assassins, to poison cigars, to chemicals to make his beard fall out. Nothing worked and Mongoose was discontinued after Kennedy’s assassination.

1966- Barbados got its independence from Britain.

1968- “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes hit #1 in the pop charts.

1970- First day shooting on William Freidkin’s film The French Connection.

1974- The Missing Link. In a dry gully in Ethiopia Dr Donald Johannsen discovered the perfect skeletal remains of one of the earliest human ancestors, an ape that walked upright. Australiopithicus Afrancenis. He called it Lucy. Johannsen liked the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

1976- After doing such a fine job lowering the journalistic standards of the London press, Australian tabloid king Rupert Murdoch turned his attention to America. Today he bought the New York Post. The Post, a newspaper originally started in 1794 by Alexander Hamilton, quickly gains notoriety as the trashiest newspaper in the U.S. In an interview, Murdoch admitted the only reason he didn’t put in the Post his “Page Three Girls” -nude photos of young women so successful in the London Daily Sun, was because his wife objected. He later replaced his wife. Rupert then bought New York Magazine and the Village Voice, whereupon half their staff immediately quit.

1979- ESPN, the 24 hour sports channel began broadcasting.

1982- Nova Pictures is founded, but due to conflict with a PBS TV show of the same name they change theirs to TriStar Pictures. In 1994 TriStar was merged into Sony Pictures.

1985- Punk band The Dead Kennedys released their album Frankenchrist.

1987- John Lasseter’s Pixar short Red’s Dream released.

1991- Battered wife Mrs. Omeima Nelson killed her abusive husband, dismembered his body and ate him. “I did his ribs just like in a restaurant.” she said.

1993- President Clinton signed the Brady Handgun bill into law. The bill was named for Ronald Reagan press secretary James Brady, who received a debilitating head wound in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. In 2001, President George W. Bush let it expire without renewing it.

1999- THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE- protesters trying to disrupt the World Trade Organization battled riot police and turned the downtown area into a battle zone. For the next several years wherever the WTO met they were surrounded by thousands of protestors, although the mainstream media tends to pooh-pooh their message.

2003- Roy Disney Jr, the last serving member of the Disney family, was made to resign from the Walt Disney Company. It was claimed to be the standard retirement policy, but more likely he was forced out by the exec he himself hired to run the company in 1984- Michael Eisner. Roy built a successful grass root stockholders’ campaign SaveDisney.com. In 2005 it was Eisner who was compelled to retire. Roy Disney kept an emeritus board position until his death in 2009.

2010- Don Hahn’s doc Waking Sleeping Beauty was released on DVD.
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Question: What does it mean to be dilettante?

Answer: A dilettante is someone who assumes a position while having only a passing interest in learning what the position entails. A willful ignorance.

QUESTION: What is a dilettante?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Who is Beelzebub?
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History for 11/29/2022
Birthdays: Gaetano Donizetti, Busby Berkeley, C.S. Lewis (Clive Staples Lewis), Louisa May Alcott, Chuck Mangione, Yakima Canutt, Gary Shandling, Cathy Moriarity, Don Cheadle, Joel Coen is 66, Jacques Chirac, Howie Mandell, Susee “Chapstick” Chafee, Chadwick Boseman, Anna Faris is 46, Vin Scully

1830- The November Uprising. Polish nationalists rise up against the Russian occupiers in one of their many valiant but ultimately hopeless efforts. In America, literary figures like Hawthorne, Poe, and Longfellow were romantically moved to write lots of epic poems, but not much else could be done to help.
Edgar Allen Poe in his opium induced delirium, would run out of his Bronx cottage and march up and down the street with a musket in his hand shouting: "To Warsaw! To Warsaw!" Luckily, the local constable was well aware of Mr. Poe's eccentricities and sent him home to bed.

1864- Colorado militia killed over 150 Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre. Local garrison commander Col. John Chivington was depressed that he was not back east winning glory in the Civil War. So he attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village. He later held a victory parade in Denver displaying the scalps of the Indians, mostly women, old men and children. His actions sparked a needless war with the Cheyenne that raged for years afterwards.

1887- The US Navy received permission from the Hawaiian King David IV Kalakaou to lease land for a base at Pearl Harbor.

1890- The first Army-Navy football game held at West Point. Midshipmen beat the cadets 24-0.

1914- In the first years of animated films, one artist like Winsor McCay drew everything alone, and may have hired a cameraman or assistant. This day, John Randolph Bray's cartoon "Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa" debuted. Bray adapted Henry Ford's assembly line system to making animation, today known as the Production Pipeline. He created the job classifications of layout, animator, inbetweener, background painter, inker, blackeners (cel painters), and camera. In the 1920s the job of gag man (storyboarder), cleanup and checkers. After 1919, Bray shifted his studio focus from entertainment to technical and training films. J.R. Bray started the careers of Paul Terry, Walter Lantz, Max & Dave Fleischer, Dick Heumer, and Shamus Culhane.

1929- Commander Richard Byrd radioed he'd made the first airplane flight over the South Pole. Today its estimated he was probably wrong. Commander Byrd had flown over the North Pole in 1926 with his friend Floyd Bennett, but Bennett had since died. When Byrd made it over the South Pole he dropped a small American flag weighted with a stone from Bennett’s grave.

1932- Cole Porter’s musical The Gay Divorcee’ opened on Broadway.

1935- Physicist Edwin Schrodinger published his thought experiment “ Schrodinger’s Cat”.

1941- In occupied Russia, Nazi troops first raped and then hanged Zoia Kosmodemianskaya. She led a team of partisans guerrillas behind German lines. Zoia was 18 years old. Before she died, she cried defiance at the Nazis:” You cannot hang all 200 million of us!”

1942- During WWII, the U.S. declared coffee would be rationed along with sugar, gasoline and rubber. And lots more. People put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". Gas Ration cards were listed as C, B & A. The C card meant essential defense worker so they had unlimited access to gasoline. B cards police & fire. An A card was the least important, i.e. us.

1944- A Detroit man named Malcolm Little was busted for larceny. He later reformed his life around the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Malcolm X.

1947- THE UN DECIDES. Since 1897 European Jewry had focused on buying land and relocating to Palestine. In 1936 the Egyptian Parliament issued an open letter to all Jews to come live amongst them, but rising Arab nationalism since 1919 tended to resist Jewish immigration. Since World War I, the British held Palestine as a mandate but after World War II they dumped the whole problem in the United Nations hands. The Peel Report, a Foreign Office paper published in 1937 said maybe creating two new states was the solution.
This day The United Nations voted 33-13 to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab independent states with Jerusalem under international supervision. On May 14th 1948 British forces completed their withdrawal and Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel.

1959- The Second Grammy Awards, broadcast for the first time on television. Bobby Darin’s rendition of Mack the Knife won top honors.

1961- NASA sent Enos the Chimp into orbit.

1963- THE WARREN COMMISSION announced- President Lyndon Johnson set up the Warren Commission to investigate the murder of John F. Kennedy. He had originally thought the Dallas Homicide Squad was sufficient, but public outrage demanded more.
The Commission was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and participants included future president Gerald Ford, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State Alan Foster Dulles and future Senator Arlen Spector, then a young attorney who argued the validity of the "magic bullet" theory”. That one bullet went through Kennedy, bounced, went through Connolly, zinged, and wound up sitting in Gov. Connolly's bedsheets in the hospital with no surface dents or marks on it -or something like that. How the first bullet went through Kennedy intact while the second bullet exploded inside his skull was never explained.
After ten months the Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was killed by a lone nut, so there was no conspiracy. In 1975, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded the contrary view, that Kennedy probably was the victim of a conspiracy but what it was is unknown. To this date there are still two million documents pertaining to the case kept classified. In the end the Warren Commission’s unsatisfying conclusions spawned a generation of conspiracy buffs.

1963- A week after the Kennedy assassination, comedian Vaughn Meader announced he was giving up his act impersonating the slain president. Meader’s comedy album The First Family sold 7.5 million copies and won a Grammy in 1962, but now it just wasn’t funny anymore. Meader’s career faded, and he ended up managing a bar in Maine. He died of emphysema in 2004. When Lenny Bruce first took the stage after the Kennedy assassination, he opened his set with a long drag on his cigarette and sighed:” ….Man…. Vaughn Meader is really screwed!”

1967- Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, stepped down to become president of the World Bank.

50th Anniv.1972- Atari announced Pong, the first popular mass-marketed interactive game.

1981- Actress Natalie Wood drunkenly toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and
drowned. She was 43. Her husband Robert Wagner, and friend Christopher Walken were onboard having an argument and unaware of her predicament. Wood had once confessed to a friend that she had a horror of drowning.

1995- Pixar’s IPO stock offering after the success of Toy Story made Steve Jobs a billionaire.

2001- Beatle guitarist and composer George Harrison died of cancer. He was 58.

2017- Matt Lauer, the celebrity host of NBC’s Today Show, was fired after allegations of sexual misconduct with staffers.

2018- Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns opened.
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Question: Who is Beelzebub?

Answer: Another name for the Devil. Lucifer, Satan, Mephistopheles, etc.