Quiz: What do Marlon Brando, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Charlton Heston, CBS newsman Roger Mudd and humorist Jean Shephard ( The Christmas Story) all have in common?

Yesterday’s Answer below: Where was the first fire department in the New World started?
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History for 10/4/2011
Birthdays: French King Louis X The Stubborn 1314, Richard Cromwell-“ Tumbledown Dick, “ President Rutherford B. Hayes, Frederick Remington, Jean Millet, Buster Keaton, Englebert Dolfuss, Charlton Heston, Susan Sarandon is 65, Armand Assante, Damon Runyon, Alvin Tofler, Anne Rice, Alicia Silverstone is 35, Liev Schreiber is 44

1648- Happy Birthday NYFD! Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam Peter Stuyversant established the first regular municipal fire department in the New World. Fire depts were volunteer brigades until the late 1800s.

1777-BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN-George Washington tried a dawn surprise attack on the British army around Philadelphia. The same tactic had worked at Trenton, but here things went wrong from the start. In the morning fog the Yankee right flank got turned around and started shooting at the Yankee center. The Center thought they were being attacked by Loyalists and returned fire. Two thirds of the American army shot itself to pieces and ran away before the British even knew what was happening. Washington realized he was going to need some drill instructors....

1798- Lyrical Ballads, a small book of poems published jointly by English poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book opened with the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and finished with Wordsworth’s Lines composed a few miles above Tinturn Abbey.” The book didn’t sell that well. Wordsworth blamed Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner poem for being too long. Some of the best sales of the book were by sea captains who thought a Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner was a collection of sea shantys.

1846- The First American mayor of Los Angeles, a Lieutenant Gillespie, was apparently so harsh and racist to the population of Spanish Californians that they rose in revolt and chased him out of town. The Californios under their old Mexican General Andres Pico waged a guerrilla war against the U.S. army for the next few months.

1869- Henry J. Heinz begins his condiment company, bottling horseradish in a little shop in Pittsburgh. He was later called the Catsup King, -or Ketchup, if you prefer. One of the Heinz Company's greatest stunts was in the 1920s they placed a 40 foot tall electrified pickle on the corner of 23rd and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.

1909- St. Louis Missouri was site of the first –and probably only- airship race in the US. Four dirigibles, the total number in America, ran a course for a purse of $1000 dollars.

1910-King Manuel II of Portugal abdicated. The Portuguese Republic is declared.

1918- The day after he took the job of German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden first telegraphed Washington DC to request peace talks to end World War One. But the note said Germany would not give up any of the territory it conquered in Belgium, France or Poland. President Wilson refused this, so the war went on.

1931- Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy" comic strip debuts.

1943- Actor Clark Gable was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for flying combat missions over Germany. It was said Gable took these deliberately dangerous missions instead of doing USO shows out of a death-wish in grief for his wife Carole Lombard, who was killed in a plane crash.

1950- The first Peanuts comic strip introducing Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy.

1955- The Brooklyn Dodgers a.k.a. "Da Bums" win the World Series for the first time, and the only time they ever won it while inhabiting the precincts of Flatbush. The name Dodgers came from the fact that several main trolley car lines intersected in front of Ebbets Field on Atlantic Avenue. To get into the ballpark you had to cross this area dodging the traffic. So they were known as the Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers, then Dodgers.

1957-SPUTNIK- Russia inaugurates the Space Age and first shoots an object into space orbit. A basketball sized satellite called" Sputnik-1" . Sputnik means Satellite and the word spawned pop words like Beatnik, Nudnik and Peacenik. Americans used to thinking of themselves as the leaders in all technology reacted with shock. Why weren’t we first? We were losing the space race! Senate leader Lyndon Johnson complained “I don’t want to sleep under a Commie Moon!” Wild rock & roll star Little Richard Penniman thought Sputnik was an omen of the end of the world and resolved to give up sex, drugs and rock & roll and become a Born Again Christian preacher. Good Golly Miss Molly!

1957-"Leave it to Beaver' debuts on CBS.

1965- Pope Paul VI arrived in the US to deliver a plea for world peace at the United Nations. Then his Holiness visited the World’s Fair and took in a Yankee baseball game.

1969- Diane Linkletter, the daughter of television personality Art Linkletter got high on LSD and leapt out of a window to her death. Her boyfriend snatched at the belt loops of her dress in an attempt to save her, but they tore away. Afterwards Art Linkletter became a livelong crusader against drug abuse.

1971- Janis Joplin was found dead of a drug overdose at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood. She was 27. Her song “Me and Bobby McGee” was as yet unreleased but soon topped the pop charts. Joplin left a considerable sum in her will for a party for her friends. The invitation read “ The Drinks are on Pearl” her nickname.

1986- On a New York street a man named William Tager walked up to CBS News anchor Dan Rather and mumbling “Kenneth, what’s the Frequency?” started furiously punching Rather. He thought CBS was beaming microwaves at his brain and it was Dan’s fault. Who Kenneth was, remains a mystery.

1993- After a two week power struggle between Russian Parliamentary hard line conservatives and President Boris Yeltsin, Russian troops fire on and attack the barricaded Russian White House (Parliament building). The conservatives, including Yeltsin's own vice-president Victor Chernomyrdin, are arrested and the fragile democracy saved. This Parliament building is where Yeltsin himself was barricaded two years earlier during the failed August Coup.

2001- James Hemingway, the youngest son of writer Ernest Hemingway, was found dead in the women’s wing of a Miami jail. A cross-dressing transsexual, he had gone by the name of Gloria, and was picked up by Miami cops for drug use and exposing himself in public. He was 69.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where was the first fire department in the New World started?

Answer: NYC, see above, 1648.

Question: When the HMS Beagle returned to England from a trip to Brazil, New Zealand and the Galapagos Islands, it was carrying a famous scientist on board. Who was it?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: what was the Philadelphia Experiment?

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History for 10/1/2011

Welcome to Month Number 8, Octubrius to the Romans. In 138 AD the Roman Senate wanted to rename month eight as Faustina, after the wife of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. But being a rare modest empress, she declined the honor.

Birthdays: Vladimir Horowitz, Julie Andrews is 76, Walter Matthau, Richard Harris, Phillipe Noiret, James Whitmore, Pres.Jimmy Carter is 85, Everet Sloane, Rod Carew, Stanley Holloway, Tom Bosley, Mark McGuire, Randy Quaid, Cindy Margolis, Zack Galifanakis is 42


331BC. BATTLE OF GAUGAMELA or Arbelum - Alexander the Great's victory over the Persian army of King Darius IV. Darius had sought to once and for all destroy this Greek troublemaker by assembling an enormous army from all over his kingdom. But this multinational, polyglot force had no cohesion and the disciplined Macedonian-Greek veterans knifed through their ranks. Alexander ordered his elite Companion Cavalry to make right for King Darius, since he was the only thing holding his army together. Darius had to run for his life and his army broke up soon after seeing their Great King fleeing. The Persian kingdom collapsed and Alexander soon captured his capitol and family.

326 A.D. Emperor Constantine the Great bans sentencing criminals to Gladitorial schools, effectively ending Gladitorial Combat. Games continued on a little while longer using prisoners of war, but the fun and professionalism had gone out of it. The last recorded bout in Rome was in 407AD.

Today is the Feast of Saint Bavo of Ghent, who begged one of his former servants to drag him by a chain around his neck because of what a cruel master he was before his conversion.


1202- To the sound of massed trumpets and singing the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, the knights of the Fourth Crusade left from Venice for the Holy Land.

1273- German Electors choose Duke Rudolph of Hapsburg as Holy Roman Emperor. The Hapsburg family was the most successful dynasty in Europe. They remained in power (with one or two interruptions) for 645 years, finally being deposed in 1918. When a Hapsburg chided Napoleon for having no royalty in his blood he snapped back" I prefer to be the Rudolph of my race!'


1791- The first day of the French Legislative Assembly, the second French parliamentary body after the Assembly National that had started the French Revolution adjourned itself. In this assembly for the first time the conservatives sat on the right side of the hall, the liberals on the left side and the moderates in the center. This gives us the designation today used around the world for political Leftists and Right Wingers.

1800- By the secret Treaty of San Idelfonso Spain returns Louisiana to France in exchange for the Italian Duchy of Parma. Spain had owned Louisiana for her part in the French and Indian War (Seven Years War) victory. Napoleon needed it back for his planned worldwide colonial challenge to Britain. But when Santo Domingo revolted against French rule and Nelson sank the French navy Napoleon soured on his colonial plans. He decided to sell Louisiana to the one country he knew would annoy the British most, the United States.

And Spain never did get Parma.

1810- The first Berkshire Cattle Show.

1857- Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary premiered in magazine installments. Flaubert was tried for pornography but acquitted.

1880- John Phillip Sousa was named leader of the Marine Corps Band and began his career as the March King.

1903- First World Series of Baseball. The Boston Pilgrims had lost the first game today to the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-3, even though Cy Young was the starting pitcher. But Boston went on to win the series in best of nine games. Yes, that’s not a typo, Boston did win a World Series. There was no 1904 World series because the owners couldn't agree on a format.

1908- Ford announces the Model "T" the "Tin Lizzie" the first mass produced affordable car. It was called the Model T because it took Twenty prototypes to perfect it. The Model T cost $825 dollars and paid on installments with as little as 10 dollars down. It’s top speed was 45 miles and hour and 15 million were sold. When they asked Henry Ford what color should it be, he replied: "Any color so long as it's black.' The auto goes from being a rich mans plaything to something every home could afford.

1911- A bomb blew up the L.A. Times building, killing 23 people. The Times had a hostility to unions and two union organizers the McNamara Brothers were arrested.Despite having Clarence Darrow as a lawyer they were convicted, possibly because halfway through the trial the brothers confessed and Darrow had to beat a charge of jury-tampering. As the MacNamaras were hanged they shouted 'Hurrah for Anarchy!'

1919- THE FIX IS IN- First game of the 'fixed' world series.The Chicago White Sox had the best team in baseball at the time but Charles Comisky paid them wages lower than most minor league teams. They were nicknamed the Black Sox because Comisky was too cheap to pay for laundering their uniforms. So this year five players accepted bribes from gangster Arnold Rothstein to throw the world series. Pitcher Eddie Cicotte ,who spent much of the previous night sewing $10,000 into the lining of his overcoat, at first threw a perfect fastball strike, then hit the batter in-between the shoulderblades on the next pitch- a signal to the gangsters that "The Fix was In" Cincinnatti won this game 9 -1 and eventually the series.

The scheme was uncovered a year later and Baseball Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned all the Sox players from ever playing again. The White Sox have never made it to a World Series since.


1923- The first football game in the L.A. Coliseum- USC defeated Pomona.

1931- Construction completed on the new Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The original Waldorf Astoria from the XIX Century was demolished to make way for the Empire State Building. The new Waldorf boasted the Waldorf Towers, where kings, presidents and other Hoi-Paloi could enter by a private lobby and stay for weeks at a time.

1932- Babe Ruth's "Called" Home Run. Ruth was hitting against a Chicago Cubs pitcher when he pointed with his bat towards right field. He then swung his bat and hit a home run over the right wing bleachers.

1937- After heavy lobbying by millionaire publisher William Randolph Hearst the first Federal law banning Marijuana goes into effect. The law was sought chiefly by southwestern states, that wanted to have an excuse to deport Mexican immigrants. Plus Hearst had many powerful paper manufacturers behind him who wanted wood pulp to be the chief source of paper products rather than hemp, which grows, well…. like a weed.


1942-The test flight of America’s first experimental jet aircraft- the XP59A Comet.

1943-THE DANISH MIRACLE- This day the Nazis were to begin deporting Denmark's Jewish population to death camps. The Danish people meanwhile had quietly smuggled the entire Jewish population to the coast and onto ferries to neutral Sweden. The Germans only found a few hundred stragglers. Earlier in a show of defiance when the Nazi authorities ordered all Jews to wear a large yellow Star of David, every Danish citizen including the King wore one.

1944- Nazis doctors in Buchenwald concentration camp began conducting experiments on homosexuals.

1945- Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin left the cartoon business to work full time at Paramount doing live action movies. He wrote for the Marx Brothers and later directed the Dean Martin Jerry Lewis comedies.

1946- NUREMBERG-The verdicts read in the International Military Tribunal Trials of top Nazi war criminals. Herman Goering, Hans Franck, Jodl and 8 others got death sentences, their bodies later to be burned in the very crematoriums they created. Others like Rudolf Hess life prison terms.

1947-THE BIRTH OF THE BURBS- William Levitt's postwar dream, a planned community of affordable pre-fab homes on the outskirts of New York, called Levittown, is born. Mr. and Mrs. Bladykas moved into the first 2 bedroom house, which cost $7,990 bucks. The first true suburb.

1948- After the Israeli War of Independence the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haij Amin Al Husseini gathered many Arab refugees displaced by the fighting and declared a Palestinian State in the North of Israel. The King of Jordan Abdallah rejected this and declared all Palestinian lands not claimed by Israel were part of Jordan. While Arab states lined up on either side to argue, the Palestinians were kept in refugee camps instead of being allowed to assimilate into the populations of the surrounding Arab countries.. This confusion in part explains why Israel and other Western nations had trouble taking Palestinian nationalism seriously. For years Israeli leaders like Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan felt Jordan was the homeland for resettled Palestinians. King Abdallah was later assassinated by a Palestinian.

1949- THE EAST IS RED - Mao declared the Peoples Republic of China. "Now Let the World Tremble! " he said. In China today is a holiday –National Day. Contrary to paranoid conservative American politicians who feared the growing global Communist Conspiracy, Soviet dictator Stalin continued to support Chiang Kai Chek’s nationalist government and always hated Mao. During World War Two, Mao sent his wife to Moscow for safety. Stalin locked her up in a lunatic asylum just to piss him off.

1952- This Is Your Life TV show hosted by Ralph Edwards premiered.

1957- Los Angeles outlaws garbage incineration to try and cut down smog levels. Even though Los Angeles has reduced it's pollution levels by 30% in ten years it still had the worst air in the United States until surpassed by Houston in 1999.

1958- NASA born. The National Aeronautics & Space Agency. The U.S. government takes the space program out of the hands of the military and sets up a civilian space agency to get us into orbit.

1960- The independence of Nigeria.

1962- Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show, after host Jack Paar in a rage walked of the set and resigned. Paar was annoyed at network censors for cutting a comedy sketch that featured the sound of a toilet flushing.


1963- People who argue that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy take note: It is a fact that this day weeks before the assassination top Mafioso Jimmy Roselli flew down to New Orleans to have two secret meetings with Jack Ruby, the man who later shot Oswald. Why would a national crime boss take time to talk with a two-bit strip joint manager?


1964- THE FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT- It’s hard to believe now, but once upon a time most US universities had strict laws against students holding political protests on campus. It changed when this day on the campus of Berkeley, Cal., Jack Weinberg was arrested by Oakland police for distributing Civil Rights pamphlets. A mob of students surrounded the police car he was handcuffed in and would not let it proceed. The crowd held the car for 32 hours as speakers stood on the roof and made speeches denouncing the ban and other issues. The University lifted the ban on public political rallies and set the stage for the Ant-War protest of the 60’s.

1966- Largest demonstrations in China of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

1968-George Romero's weird film "Night of the Living Dead' premieres.

1982- Disney's EPCOT opens.

1987- The Whittier Earthquake rocks L.A. 5.9 on the Richter Scale killed 8 and caused millions in damage.

1992 -The Cartoon Network started.

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Yesterday’s Question: what was the Philadelphia Experiment?

Answer: The Philadelphia project was a WWII experiment where physicists tried to create teleportation based on Einstein’s Unified theory. They supposedly made a destroyer, the USS Eldridge and it's crew disappear from Philadelphia Harbor and reappear a hundred miles away in Baltimore. But they couldn't control it, some of the crew re-materialized sticking out of walls and bulkheads. So the Navy shut it down. The rumors never been proven.

Question: Okay conspiracy buffs, what was the Philadelphia Experiment? ( besides a bad movie.)



Yesterday’s Question answered below: What Twentieth Century leader was called by his people El Caudillo- The Leopard?
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History for 9/30/2011

Birthdays: William Wrigley the Chewing Gum king 1868, Truman Capote, Eli Weisel, Lester Maddox, Buddy Rich, David Oistrach, Deborah Kerr, Angie Dickinson is 80, Marylin McCoo, Len Cariou, Johnny Mathis, Rula Lenska, Eric Stolz, Monica Bellucci is 47, Jenna Elfman is 40, Hani El Masri is 60!

331BC- On the night before the Battle of Gaugamela. Alexander the Great made preparations. The Persian Great King had assembled and enormous army of peoples from throughout his vast empire-150,000 Lydians, Scythians, Bactrians, Phoenicians, Ionians, Egyptians, Medes, all to face the Macedonian Greek army of 30,000. Alexander’s ordered soothsayer Aristander offer sacrifices to the God of Fear.

420AD- Today is the feast of Saint Jerome, who first translated all of the Old and New Testaments from Hebrew, Chaledean, Aramaic and Greek into commonly spoken Latin. This is referred to as the Vulgate Edition.

1187- SALLADIN CAPTURED JERUSALEM- After destroying the Crusader army at The Horns of Hattin in July, the Sultan of Egypt laid siege to the Holy City. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and knight Bailin of Ibelin threatened to destroy the Al Acqsa, Dome of the Rock and other Moslem Holy Places if Salladin didn't agree to mild treatment of the Christian citizens of the city. Salladin didn't want his name to go down in history with such an infamy, so he agreed. Still, he consoled himself with beheading 3,000 captured Knights Templar (you gotta have some fun). Remember Richard Lionheart had 5000 Arab people chopped up just to piss Salladin off. The Queen of Jerusalem, Yolanda DeCourtenay, wife of Baldwin IV 'the Leper King '(deceased), went into exile looking for Western support for more Crusades.


1399- King Richard II abdicated the throne of England for Henry IV Bollingbroke.
He was Henry IV part one ,if you're a Shakespeare fan) .Henry was the eldest surviving son of John of Gaunt and Richard the son of his brother Edward the Black Prince. The cousins would wage the War of the Roses a generation later. Richard was later murdered at Pontefract Castle. Richard II is remembered for is the invention of the pocket-handkerchief.

1630- Pilgrim John Billington became the first American hanged for murder. Known as the “Wickedest Pilgrim Father” criminologists call him the first American crook.

1681- Louis XIV of France seized the city of Strasbourg, a city half-German and half-French. The German Emperor considered Strasbourg one of his imperial cities and the stage was set for future Franco-German rivalry. The city would change hands again and again over the centuries until becoming finally French in 1945.

1789- After adopting the Constitution, setting up the Supreme Court and working with the first President, the First Congress of the United States adjourned. The current congress is called the 105th.

1791- Mozart's opera "Die Zauberflotte, The Magic Flute" premiered at Emanuel Schiknader's theater in Vienna. One of the theories about Mozart's death was that he put so much FreeMason's secret ritual into the story, that the Masons did him in for violating their secrecy. The Papageno-Papagena duet when they meet at the end was Schiknader's idea. Mozart gave pyrotechnical trills to the coloratura aria of the Queen of the Night, but privately he laughed at such singing as “Cut Up Noodles”.



1791- The French Assembly Nationale, which had been in session since King Louis XVI chased them into a tennis court and tried to disband them two years earlier, dissolved themselves to make way for a new Legislative Assembly to complete the work of converting France from a feudal kingdom to a democratic republic.

1846- Dr. William Morton first pulled a tooth using ether as an anesthetic.


1868- Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women first published in installments.

1896-Explorer Robert Peary returned to New York from the Polar ice bringing the Museum of Natural History a large iron meteorite, and two families of Eskimos (Inuit). Peary had tempted the Eskimos with promises of gifts and promised to return them in a year. The Museum housed them in the basement. All but one young boy named Minick died of disease. Minick had been told his father Keeshu was buried, but in reality the Museum made his skeleton into an exhibit. In 1909 the boy was finally allowed to go home:” I want to leave before you put my brains in a jar too!”


1919- The Fleischer Brother's first Out of the Inkwell cartoon featuring Koko the Clown. Koko was rotoscoped- meaning traced from live action like Motion Capture does today. Dave Fleischer put on the clown suit and was filmed by his brother Max.

1928- Walt Disney and his crew recorded the soundtrack and music for the first Mickey Mouse short, Steamboat Willie.


1930- Death Valley Days show premiered on radio, sponsored by Twenty mule Team Borax powder. When it moved to television in the 50’s the host was Ronald Reagan.

1935- George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess premiered at the Colonial Theater in Boston. It flopped originally but after some rewrites it became a major hit.

1942-THE STAR OF AFRICA- Just prior to the Battle of El Alamein the top German fighter ace Hans Joachim Marseilles The Star of Africa died when his ME 109F caught fire and his parachute didn’t open. Marseilles had shot down 158 aircraft in one and a half years. He was just 22. His marksmanship over the Sahara desert was so good that his wingman was nicknamed “The Adding Machine” for his only job seemed to be to watch and tally up the enemy planes, that Marseilles shot down. Because of the desert heat this air ace fought his battles in shorts and white tennis shoes.

1947- The first World Series Game on Television- New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-3. Gillette and Ford paid $65,000 to sponsor the entire series.

1952- This Is Cinerama, showcasing the widescreen film process, opened in theaters.


1955-James Dean (24) died when his Porsche 550 Spyder crashed head on into a pickup truck driven by college student Donald Turnipseed on Highway 41 outside of Paso Robles, California. Dean was driving 85 mph at dusk without his headlights on, and two hours earlier had been given a ticket for speeding. Until now the American public had only seen him in one movie- "Rebel Without a Cause" and some TV work. Giant and East of Eden had yet to be released, yet the legend endures to this day. In an errie coincidence, Dean filmed a public service announcement promoting automobile safety. His last lines were:” Remember, the life you save may be mine!”

1960-Hanna Barbera's "The Flintstones" debuts. For six seasons in prime time the inhabitants of 301 Cobblestone Lane, Bedrock, was one of the most successful tv series ever. Originally going to be named the Flagstones, then Gladestones, before Flintstones. Ed Benedicts' designs with Alan Reed as the voice of Fred, Jean Van Der Pyl the voice of Wilma, Mel Blanc doing Barney and Bea Benaderet doing Betty. Trivia: Wilma became the first character on television to appear visibly pregnant. Lucille Ball went through her pregnancy on TV in 1953, but she was not allowed to be seen as such, covered with a lot of big clothes and filmed from the neck up.

1966- British Bechuanaland becomes the Republic of Botswana.

1971- The Baseball Washington Senators played their last game in RFK Stadium. Their fans rioted and threw so much trash on to the field that the game was declared a forfeit. The Senators moved to Texas and became the Texas Rangers.

1982- The TV comedy Cheers premiered. The Beacon Street Bar in Boston where everybody knows your name. It made stars of Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Kirsty Alley and Kelsey Grammar.

1990- READ MY LIPS! President George Bush Sr made the cornerstone of his policy the fact that he’d never raise taxes- He declared “Read my lips, no new taxes!” Well today he went back on his word and announced a hefty tax increase of $134 billion. When a spokesman was called on this obvious flip-flop he responded:” The Presidents position has Evolved.” So did the American public’s view of Bush, they voted him out of office.
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Yesterday’s Question: What Twentieth Century leader was called by his people El Caudillo- The Leopard?

Answer: Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

Question: What Twentieth Century leader was called by his people El Caudillo- The Leopard?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What Twentieth Century leader was called by his people “ The Great Helmsman?”
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History for 9/29/2011
Birthdays: Roman general Pompey Magnus, Miguel de Cervantes, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Rudolph Diesel (inventor of the engine), Enrico Fermi, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Autrey, Lech Walesa, Stanley Kramer, Bryant Gumbel, Greer Garson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ian McShane, Anita Ekberg, Andrew Dice-Clay, cartoonist Russ Heath, Tom Sizemore, Emily Lloyd is 41, Silvio Berlusconi, Stephanie Miller is 50.

In the Medieval calendar this was The Feast of Mickelmuss or MichaelMass In Old London this was the beginning of the winter lighting season when every tenth store had to maintain a candle in a street lamp, and light it after dark, until Lady Day March 25th.

440 A.D. -Pope Leo the Great consecrated. He was the pope who turned away Attila the Hun from the gates of Rome.

1066-WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR LANDS IN ENGLAND. When King Edward the Confessor died childless, he left the throne up for grabs. Earl Harold son of Godwin promised Duke William of Normandy that he would step aside and let him be king. But later Harold took the crown for himself. So Duke William invaded with 30,000 Norman knights. Duke William was an illegitimate son of Robert the Devil. He was called William the Bastard until the conquest, then he became William the Conqueror.

When William's ship landed at Pevensey Beach near Dover, Duke William leapt out into the surf to be the first to set foot in Britain. However in front of the whole army he stumbled and fell to his knees. Quickly realizing that if he didn't act fast the men would regard this as a dangerously bad omen, he grabbed two fistfuls of muddy sand in his clenched fists, raised them up and declared : "Ah Britain! Now I have you!" His men cheered and he went on to victory at Hastings on Oct. 16th.

1529- Phillip the Landgrave of Hesse got together the great Protestant leaders to try and seek a common ground for the anti-Catholic Reformation. Martin Luther met Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli at this conference. They couldn’t agree on anything and the meeting quickly fell apart. Even at the departure, Luther refused to shake Zwingli’s hand. “Your Spirit is not our Spirit.”

1798- At the court of Naples Admiral Horatio Nelson was given a 40th birthday party by his friend and patron, the British ambassador Sir William Hamilton. At this party Nelson first shows the signs of getting seriously turned on by Hamilton's hot young wife Emma. Sir William was 69, Emma was 30 and was known to be sleeping around. The party was broken up when Nelson's stepson, who was serving as one of his lieutenants, got so drunk he made a scene.

The love affair between Nelson and Mrs. Hamilton in defiance of all social stigmas scandalized even that notorious age. Yet Sir William Hamilton seemed more interested in his ancient Roman pottery. Hamilton got more upset at the news of a shipload of antique vases sinking, than being told that his wife was shivering the admiral’s timbers.

1829- BOBBIES- Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington had been complaining for years that the city of London needed it's own regular police force instead of relying on irregular militia like the Bow Street Runners or the Horse Guards to do with urban maintenance. At this time sections of North London were so tough they were labeled on maps “No-Go”. On this day London's reorganized police force, The Greater Metropolitan Police Force based at Scotland Yard, went on duty. The constables, because they were formed by Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel, were nicknamed "Bobbie's Boys" or "Bobbies". They’re also nicknamed Old Bill. Some called them Peelers.

1862- THE GENERAL DISTURBANCE- The Yankeee army in Tennessee had a morale problem among it's senior officers. Major General Bull Nelson got into an argument with Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis -no relation to the President of the Confederacy. In a hotel lobby Davis confronted the 6' 5", 300 pound Nelson and flung a business card in his face. Nelson bellowed "Get outta my way you puppy !" and slapped him so hard he flew across the room. Whereupon General Davis drew a pistol and shot General Nelson in the chest." Tom, he's murdered me!" Bull Nelson cried as he died.

Amazingly Gen. Davis was never tried or court-martialed because he was needed on the battlefield. I guess arguments between nations take precedence. Davis was finally cashiered out of the army when during Sherman's March through Georgia he was accused of destroying a bridge before a crowd of runaway slave families could cross, knowing they would be left at the mercy of the pursuing Confederates.

1913-Rudolph Diesel, inventor of the Diesel engine, celebrated his 55th birthday by jumping into the English Channel from his yacht and drowning himself.

1918- German ally Bulgaria requested an armistice with Britain and France to get out of World War One.

1925- Colonel Billy Mitchell testified to Congress that the air force needed to be a new independent branch of the military services because the current army and navy heads were too incompetent to grasp it’s future significance. For these remarks he was court-martialed and suspended for 5 years. He quit the army. In Germany Ernst Udet studied Mitchell’s tactics to develop the dive-bombing Stuka. In 1942 when it was obvious that World War Two was being determined by air power, Billy Mitchell was reinstated a major general- posthumously.

1929- After a summer of fierce rioting between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem, Palestinian leader Oudah Mousah Pasah met with the British Mandate Governor. He warned that if something wasn’t done to curb Jewish desires for nationhood in Palestine, more violence would occur.

1930-Ninety year old writer George Bernard Shaw turned down the offer of a Peerage.

1930- First day of shooting on the Tod Browning horror classic Dracula. Hungarian actor and recreational morphine addict Bela Lugosi played the lead role he had already made famous on stage. Lugosi was identified with the character Dracula for the rest of his life and when he died he was buried in the Dracula cape.

1933- The movie A Bill of Divorcement introduced the star Katherine Hepburn.

1938- THE MUNICH AGREEMENT- Hitler duped war weary England & France that if he ate Czechoslovakia he would be satisfied. Prime Minister Chamberlain proclaims back home :"Peace in our Time." At the conference at Bertchesgarden the British and French prime ministers never conferred, never even had lunch with each other. And no one would give a hearing to Czech Premier Benes, who’s country after all was being dissolved.

In Germany a conspiracy of top generals lead by an Admiral Canaris were poised to topple Hitler in a coup the moment the news of Britain and France had declared war came from Munich. Instead the news of Hitler bluffing his way peacefully to victory caused the conspiracy to crumble. Around this time American CBS correspondent in Berlin William Shirer reported that those close to Hitler said he had a curious ritual to cope with stress. When the Fuhrer would fly into a rage he would calm himself by dropping to the floor and chewing on the corners of his carpet.

1941 Babi Yar. The Nazis drive the Jewish population of Kiev outside city and murder them in a ravine. Thirty thousand were killed in one day. The Ukrainian population had welcomed the Nazis as liberators from the tyranny of Stalin. For years afterwards the Soviet KGB denied Babi Yar's existence until poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko made the site famous with his poem of the same name.

1953- The television show “Make Room for Daddy” premiered, making a star out of big nosed nightclub entertainer Danny Thomas.

1957- A nuclear reactor explosion in Chyrbtsk Russia released more deadly radiation than Chernobyl, but it was kept secret until recently.

1959-Hanna Barbera's "Quick Draw McGraw" tv show. Ba ba Louie and El Kabong!

1961- Russian ballet star Rudolph Nureyev, acclaimed as the greatest dancer of his age, defects to the west in Paris and was granted asylum.

1962- Because of the Independence of Algeria the French Foreign Legion quits their home base at Siddi Abbes forever. They took with them relics like the glass casket containing the wooden hand of Capt. Jean Danjou, killed at Camarone Mexico fighting the Juaristas. Today the Legion's H.Q. is outside Marseilles and still operates in Chad, New Caledonia, the Gulf and the Balkans. You can still join up until age 40, they take your passport rename you Pierre or Jacques and ask no questions.

1969- The TV series Love American Style premiered.

1976- At his birthday party musician Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally shot his bass player Norman Owens in the chest with s 357 magnum. He said he was using the gun to try and open a soft drink bottle and it accidentally went off. Owens survived and sued Lewis.

1982- Tylenol recalled hundreds of thousands of bottles of capsules after a lunatic laced some with cyanide killing seven. The killer or killers were never found.

1996- The first Nintendo Game system, NES the first 64 bit game system, debuted in the US. It sold 500,000 the first day.

2008- When congress fails to pass a bail-out bill for the economy, Wall Street drops 700 points, the most ever at one time.
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Yesterday’s Question: What Twentieth Century leader was called by his people “ The Great Helmsman?”

Answer: Mao zse Dong, or Mao Tse Tung.

Question: What Twentieth Century leader was called by his people “ The Great Helmsman?”

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: What is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
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History for 9/28/2011
Birthdays: Michel Caravaggio, Georges Clemenceau, Al Kapp, William Paley, Max Schmelling, Bridgette Bardot is 75 Frederic Engels, Marcello Mastroianni, Moon Unit Zappa, Ed Sullivan, Sylvia Kristel, John Sayles, Arnold Stang, J.T. Walsh, Janeane Garofalo is 46, Mia Sorvino is 43, Hillary Duff, Naomi Watts is 42

48 B.C.- Pompey the Great, fleeing Julius Caesar after he was defeated by him in battle in Greece, was assassinated by the Egyptians when he lands on their shore. A hired Roman named Septimius did the murder. The Egyptians thought it would please Caesar to present him with his enemies head. When one of Pompey's supporters was approaching the coast by ship and saw a roman-style funeral pyre, he knew their cause was lost. He said:" Even thou, Pompeius Magnus?"

855AD- The Frankish Empire spanned all Europe from Hungary to the Pyrenees. This day Frankish Emperor Lothar died, and according to custom his kingdom is divided among his sons. Lothar had fought against his brothers Charles the Bald and Louis the German unsuccessfully to keep the empire together. By the Treaty of Verdun in 843 Louis and Charles acknowledged the fact that Charlemagne’s Empire was jut too big to handle. They broke it up, creating the kingdoms of France, Germany and Austrasia- later Austria and Italy.

1043- Battle of Lyrskog Heath. King Magnus the Good of the Vikings defeated a Baltic tribe called the Wends. Magnus psyched out the enemy by taking off his chain mail armor, and put on a loud red shirt. He then ran ahead of his charging warriors swinging a large double bladed axe over his head in wide circles, until he crashed into the foe.

1216- CORONATION OF KING HENRY III- English King John Ist, aka John the Bad, John Lackland, John SoftSword, John the Total Loser, etc. was killed when an evil monk poured poisonous toad venom in his ear. His son Henry was left a situation that didn't make for a good coronation. The country was racked by civil war and invasion because of the dispute over the Magna Charter, the great document that granted broad ranging civil rights. Henry couldn't have his coronation at Westminster because London was occupied by a French army. He couldn't have the Archbishop of Canterbury preside over the ceremony because he was under house arrest in the Vatican, the Pope disliked the Magna Charter too. And to top it all off his father had lost the Iron Crown of Alfred the Great at the beach. Boy, what a downer of a party! Henry III would reign for 56 years and demand extravagance at all subsequent royal functions.

1542- The European Discovery of California- Juan de Cabrillo sailing up from Mexico stepped ashore at Cabrillo Point in San Diego Harbor. He had hoped that San Diego Bay would be the Straights of Anian, a mythical sea route back to the Atlantic that would be safer than Magellan’s Straights. All through the 1500’s conventional thinking in Europe was that America was a big island with sea routes all around it. California was supposed to be the Kingdom of Califa, the Amazons who wield Golden Swords- hmm maybe Juan was toking on one too many of those tobacco pipes back in Mexico!

1774- Pennsylvanian Joseph Galloway proposed in the first Continental Congress that the solution to America’s problems with England was to petition the mother country for dominion status:” since the colonies hold in abhorrence the idea of being independent communities.” The Dominion idea was defeated by only one vote.

1781- Washington and Rochambeau’s troops entered the siege trenches around Yorktown. They were amazed at the British army’s lack of activity. Lord Cornwallis knew he was being surrounded by land and sea for two weeks, yet he did nothing to break out of the trap. He decided to wait until his superior General Clinton would arrive with a rescue force. But Clinton was busy in New York entertaining King George’s younger son the Duke of York who was visiting America to buck up morale. Clinton’s relief force showed up to Yorktown two weeks late for Cornwallis’ surrender.

1794- France’s Ecole Polytechnique first opened.

1850- Congress abolished flogging on US Naval vessels. Captains came up with other clever means of discipline like hanging a seaman from his thumbs.

1857- Wall Street collapsed and the ensuing panic created recession and unemployment.

1864- CENTRALIA RAID- Confederate Guerilla "Bloody-Bill" Anderson stops a train of 150 disarmed Union recruits and has them all killed and scalped. Because of the chaos of civil war nobody noticed that this guy was a little nuts. He hung human hair on his saddle and galloped into battle weeping out loud as he fired his pistols. He would put a knot in the sash around his waist for every time he killed a Yankee. By the time Bloody Bill was finally gunned down his sash was full of knots.

1864- THE FIRST INTERNATIONALE opens. European and American trade unions hold a mass meeting in London with the goal of attempting to centralize the world struggle for labor rights. The meeting was soon sidetracked by radical and anarchist politics and disbanded in 1876. One positive accomplishment was a Frenchman wrote a melody for the meeting that has become the most famous song of revolution, "The Internationale". The Second and Third Internationales were more about communist politics.

1904- A woman is arrested on New York’s Fifth Ave for openly smoking a cigarette. Look how far we’ve come. Almost anyone now can be arrested for smoking a cigarette!

1918- At Imperial German headquarters General Ludendorf monitored the reports of his armies being driven back from their final defensive lines. Ludendorf closed his office door and went into a fit of hysterics- screaming that the Kaiser, the Reichstag the Liberals had ruined everything. Then, after regaining his composure, he calmly walked downstairs to a meeting with General Von Hindenberg and Kaiser Wilhelm. There he told them that hopes for winning the World War One were now kaput. The German army was defeated, the people demand peace. Negotiations should begin immediately. Hindenburg wept.

1924 -the first airplane flight around the world landed back at it's point of departure. Commander Leslie Arnold took off from Seattle with 5 converted torpedo bomber seaplanes. One crashed, another sank but the remaining three circumnavigated the globe.

1928-William Paley, son of a cigar manufacturer, becomes president of CBS broadcasting. He turns it into a corporate broadcasting giant, and threw his support behind developing television and long playing records.

1950- In a media rich ceremony, General Douglas MacArthur restored South Korean President Sygmun Rhee to his palace in liberated Seoul. The Marines complained that though they had done much of the house-to-house fighting, they were left out of the ceremony by old Army man MacArthur. Colonel Chesty Puller looked at all the crisp Army MP’s standing guard. He growled to a correspondent “Today my First Marines took 25 combat casualties while these little cookies were still flying out from Tokyo!”

1960- Ted Williams hits a home run at his last at-bat. Number 521.

1961- Richard Chamberlain made a name for himself by playing the handsome Dr. Kildare on TV, Raymond Massey co-starred.

1961-The Hazel TV show with Shirley Booth premiered.

1970 - After spending three days making peace between King Hussein of Jordan and Yassir Arafat of the PLO, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt died of heart failure.: Five million people in the streets of Cairo attended the funeral and took over the coffin draped in the Egyptian flag and passed it above their heads across the city to the intended mausoleum. Nasser had been the first native leader of Egypt since the last Pharoah Nectanebo, was driven out by Persian King Cyrus in the fourth century BC.

1978- Pope John Paul Ist dies after only 34 days in office. The rumor was some sort of pills were found by his bedside. The Vatican refused any autopsy.

Yesterday’s Question: What is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?

Answer: That the limitations of the knowledge of the observer need to be taken into account when calculating an absolute. This is why the scientists of CERN who made something move faster than the speed of light, won’t say they definitely discovered something, until other scientists recreate their experiment and arrive at the same conclusion.