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Nov. 16, 2022 November 16th, 2022 |
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Question: What’s a “5 & 10”?
Yesterday’s Question Answered below: In what country are the Hebrides?
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History for 11/16/2022
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Tiberius 42BC, Paul Hindemith, George S. Kaufmann, W.C. Handy, Burgess Meredith, Daws Butler, Bob Watson, Zina Garrison, Dwight Gooden, Maggie Gylenhall is 45
HAPPY SADIE HAWKINS DAY! The day for the fictional hillbilly footrace race made famous by Al Kapp in his comic strip Lil’ Abner.
1532- THE MASSACRE OF CAJAMARCA- with promises of peace talks, Francisco Pizarro tricked the Inca Emperor Atahualpa and his court into a narrow corral separated from his massive army. The monk Fra Francisco Valverde gave a bible to the Great Inca, declaring 'this is the voice of the Living God!" Atahualpa, who had never heard of Christianity or seen a book of European writing before, examined it a minute. "It says nothing to me" he said, and dropped it in the dust. Fra Valverde signaled, and the Spaniards rushed out from all sides, slaughtering 9,000. Atahualpa was captured and later executed by garrot. Fra Valverde became Archbishop of Lima, supervised the destruction of much of Inca culture, until he was captured by indigenous people at Puna Island Equador and executed..
1632- BATTLE OF LUTZEN- Largest battle of the Thirty Years War, the great conflict where Protestant and Catholic countries chose up sides and battled for the dominance of Europe. The Catholic German-Spanish army of Archduke Wallenstein and the Protestant German-Swedes and of King Gustavus Adolphus pound each other all day. Gustavus had been shot out of his saddle while leading an attack and surrounded by Croat cavalry. Recognizing a leader, they said:" Who are you?” Gustavus answered:" I am the King of Sweden, who do seal the religion and freedom of all Germany with my blood!"
Thereupon the Croats stabbed him to death. Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar assumed command and the revengeful Swedes swept all from their path. After the battle, Wallenstein continued to lead the German Emperor's armies until his boss the Emperor assassinated him. The Thirty Years War continued until Catholic France joined the Protestant side, the Protestant Germans fought the Protestant Swedes, and everyone who started it died. Finally nobody could remember what it was all about to begin with.
1776- THE FIRST SALUTE -The U.S.N. Andrea Doria - not the famous Italian ocean liner but a US brig of war- entered the harbor of St. Eustatius in the Dutch West Indies. It was a trading center that today we would call an international arms market. When the Andea Doria fired the customary salvo saluting her host's flag the Governor Johannes DeGraff returned the salute to the Stars and Stripes. So in effect Holland became the first nation to recognize the United States of America as an independent country.
1776- FORT WASHINGTON- In August, when George Washington’s minuteman army was driven out of New York City, a rearguard force volunteered to stay behind and try to stall the British advance. They fortified themselves in Fort Washington, a little stronghold in the wild country of North Manhattan approximately where the George Washington Bridge now is. When called upon to surrender, Colonel Magaw refused, saying that Americans had "joined to fight in the most glorious cause mankind has ever known!"
After three months of holding off superior British forces, this day Fort Washington fell. 3,000 Yankees surrendered to Hessian General Knyphausen. General Washington was criticized for indecisiveness over whether to evacuate the forts defenders until it was too late.
Today for some strange reason the park where the fort stood is named Fort Tryon Park, after the Tory governor of New York who was so hated by the populace he had to administer his colony from a British warship anchored in New York Harbor.
1788- KING GEORGE III COLLAPSES IN CONVULSIONS, the first signs of mental illness that would make him a blind shut-in for the last years of his reign. Theories are a rare blood disorder called Porpheria, which then it had no known cure. Bleeding, restraints and ice water dowsing was the standard 18th century medical treatments. He recovered for a time, but the last ten years of his reign are called Regency Period, because even though he still was king his son the Prince of Wales ruled for him. George III's aides sensed something was not right with the King when while riding in his carriage in Hyde Park, George leapt out and greeted a large oak tree as the King of Prussia. He embraced the tree and shouted in French: "Aah, Le Roi du Prusse!"
1801- The first issue of the New York Post. Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists wanted a paper to print their views. Editor James Coleman once had to kill a man in a duel that morning and get back to the office to get the afternoon edition out.
1821-William Becknell reached Santa Fe New Mexico from Independence Missouri, proving it was a faster and easier land route than traveling from Mexico City. His route became a primary path for wagon trains and stagecoaches- the Santa Fe Trail.
1863- THE MARCH TO THE SEA- After burning the City of Atlanta to the ground, General William Tecumseh Sherman turned his 50,000 Yankee army eastward for his epic March to the Sea. His men cut a wide swath through the rich farm country of Georgia, burning homes, crops, looting, killing livestock and freeing thousands of slaves. He was mostly unopposed, Confederate forces off in Virginia and Tennessee could only watch helplessly.
It was the first time since the Thirty Years War, two hundred years earlier, that an army made war solely on civilians. Sherman spared civilian lives but destroyed everything else. The discovery of starving Yankee prisoners escaped from Andersonville Prison only increased the rage of the men to commit acts of destruction. The psychological effects of the march left deep scars on Southerners for decades to come.
1906- Opera star Enrico Caruso was charged for pinching a ladies bottom while visiting the Bronx Zoo. Caruso claimed a monkey did it.
1907- Oklahoma and Indian territories became a state.
1915- BIRTH OF THE COKE BOTTLE- The owners of Coca Cola were concerned that the success of their soft drink was being subverted by all the various cheap imitations. They decided if they had a distinctive bottle people would recognize genuine Coca Cola. This day the first Coca-Cola appeared in their distinctive curved little green bottles, created by the Ross Glass Co. of Indiana.
1922- In the Crimea after Trotsky’s Red Army breached his defenses on the Turkish Wall, Baron Wrangel evacuated 150,000 anti-communist Russian soldiers and their dependents by sea to exile in Turkey. The end of the four-year Russian Civil War.
1924- THE MURDER OF THOMAS INCE- Thomas Ince was a film director and early Hollywood studio owner whose property later became the site of MGM studios. This day he boarded William Randolph Hearst’s yacht Oneida for a birthday party in his honor. On the boat among the guests was Charlie Chaplin and Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies. When the boat docked Thomas Ince was dead and everyone very upset. The official cause of death was a heart attack but there was no autopsy or investigation and the Hearst press quickly hushed things up. The legend goes Hearst discovered Chaplin and Davies in flagrante-delicto, and in a jealous rage shot Ince when he came between them. We’ll never know for sure.
1932- VAUDEVILLE DIED- Vaudeville was the generic name for one admission to a showcase of short theatrical acts- singers, comics, jugglers, trained animals, etc. Vaudeville gave their first opportunities to many great twentieth century performers like Chaplin, Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Gypsy Rose Lee and W.C. Fields. But it was slowly supplanted by more modern forms of entertainment like Movies and Radio. If you asked experts to pinpoint a date for the official end of the popular venue, many would say it was this date, when the New York Palace Theater on Broadway, a premiere palace for Vaudeville, switched from live acts to purely Movies.
1943- Six British agents were dropped into Nazi occupied France near Angers. Three were arrested by the Gestapo before they reached Paris. The remaining three established contact with the French resistance and organized the "Vic" pipeline to smuggle shot down airmen and other allied POWs out to England. One of the resistance contacts was Francois Mitterand, who in 1981 became President of France.
1946- The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences founded. Fred Allen once said: "We call television a Medium, because nothing on it is Rare, or Well Done."
1952- The first time in a Peanuts comic strip where Lucy pulls away the football as Charlie Brown was attempting to kick it. It became one of Schulz’s best recurring jokes.
1960- CLARK GABLE DIED- The 59 year old star had just completed the film the Misfits, a film in which director John Huston demanded a great deal of physical exertion. He had told his agent that the unprofessional antics of his moody co-star Marilyn Monroe had driven him so nuts they were going to give him a heart attack. Gable had one after shooting. Ten days later, while convalescing in Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, Clark was sitting up in bed, joking with the nurse and reading a magazine. Suddenly he closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the pillow, and died. Clark Gable was 59.
He composed his own epitaph, but it was never used- " Oh Well, Back to Silents."
1977- Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened in theaters.
1981- Actor William Holden died. The handsome star of such classics as Sunset Blvd, Stalag 17 and Network, was told as a young actor to take a few drinks to calm the pre-camera jitters. But by now he was a hopeless alcoholic. This night, at home alone and drunk, he fell and cracked his head on a table edge. Too inebriated to call for help, he dabbed his forehead with bunches of Kleenex tissues until he bled to death. He was 63.
1990- Disney’s feature film the Rescuers Down Under premiered. The first traditionally animated film to be painted digitally on computer. With it was the short Mickey’s Prince and the Pauper, the last Disney theatrical done with acetate cels and paint at the Burbank ink & paint dept.
1996- Warner Bros Space Jam, where Bugs Bunny met NBA star Michael Jordan.
2001- The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered to great fanfare and massive box office. Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling had been so poor she at one time had been on the dole, now she was one of the richest women in the world. In England second only to Madonna and the Queen.
2002-The mysterious flu-like disease SAARS first reported in Kwantung China. The epidemic spread around the world killing hundreds but was contained by the following summer. One reason a covid 19 vaccine was developed so quickly in 2020, was because covid is similar enough to saars that scientists were able to work off the existing research.
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Yesterday’s Question: In what country are the Hebrides?
Answer: Scotland.
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Nov 15, 2022 November 15th, 2022 |
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Question: In what country are the Hebrides?
Yesterday’s Question answered below: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name? a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Narragansett
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History for 11/15/2022
B-Days: Georgia O'Keefe, Bill Melendez, Irvin Rommel the "Desert Fox", Avrial Harriman, Daniel Barenboim, George Bolet, William Pitt the Elder, Veronica Lake would be 100, Beverly D'Angelo is 71, Mantovanni, Ed Asner, Sam Waterson is 82, Otis Armstrong, Petula Clark is 90
64 AD- THE ROMAN EMPIRE OUTLAWED CHRISTIANITY- It is hard to believe today, but the Roman Empire was proud of its religious toleration. There was a harmony to the pagan world, A Goth knew his god Odin or Wotan was called Jove in Rome and Zeus in Athens and Mithra in Persia. So, the Judeo-Christian concept of One God just didn't quite fit in. Christians were also refused to participate in any of the usual state rituals to Mars or Jupiter.
The only other religion persecuted as vigorously as Christianity was the Druids, but that was because the Druids preached rebellion to Roman rule. The Romans dispersed the Jews as a nation, but Julius Caesar left strict laws about never violating Jewish dietary or Sabbath Laws.
Anti-Semites claim Messalina, the wife of Nero, was a Jewish convert and convinced her husband to ban the Christian cult, but the answer goes deeper than that. Secrecy and fear of its alien practices bred suspicion that would last 300 years.
1532- After marching his Spanish conquistadors for six months through steaming jungles and over tall mountains Francisco Pizarro reached the border of the mysterious Inca Empire. At the little border town of Cajamarca his 200 men suddenly found themselves face to face with 40,000 Inca warriors. The Imperial Inca Army was outfitted in gold armor, and “they shined like the sun!” What happened? Tune in tomorrow…
1754- First use of the modern trombone. It was played at a child's funeral.
1777- The ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION passed by Congress. A first pass at a U.S. Constitution that gave all real power to the individual states. It required a majority vote of 9 out of 13 states to get anything done and had no president. With rules like that, indeed nothing did get done. There were no laws regulating national commerce so goods travelling state to state paid tariffs like they were going through a foreign countries.
By 1787 the Articles were junked for the more centralized U.S. Constitution, but States Rights supporters would resurrect it later for their Southern Cause, hence the Confederacy.
1828- Author Victor Hugo signed a contract with Gosselin's Publishing House to write a story about the cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris. He was paid 4,000 francs in advance; The HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was the result.
1849- In Rome, Vatican lay government minister Count Pellegrino Rossi was stabbed and as he walked through a crowd of Italian nationalists. Italians desiring the unification of Rome to the newly forming State of Italy rioted and looted the Popes Palace. Pope Pius IX,” Pio Nono” had to flee disguised as a plain priest. He returned a year later with a French army to reinstate the Papal States. Rome was annexed into Italy in 1870.
Pius IX came to power professing liberal reforms but soon went back on his word and threatened excommunication against “Treasonous Democracy”. In Italy another name for liar was a Pio Nono, or Pius the Ninth.
1860- Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s election as president a large meteor was seen in the skies over the Eastern U.S. Most took this as a bad omen of troubles to come.
1864- SHERMAN BURNED ATLANTA- Atlanta was the economic center of the South, an enormous industrial depot far from the front with railroad tracks linking all the coastal ports. William Tecumseh Sherman drove out the civilian population of the city at bayonet point and torched it. He claimed his men were only destroying military stores, but he didn’t stop them burning everything.
When his Confederate opponent Gen. Hood complained that what he was doing was barbaric, Sherman replied" You might as well protest to a thunderstorm, and against these terrible hardships of war. War is all cruelty. and the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
Sherman had an army band serenade him beneath his window, playing the "Miserere'" from Verdi's "Il Trovatore", while he watched the city burning, impatiently chewing on the stump of an unlit cigar.
1881- The American Federation of Labor AF of L formed under the leadership of former cigar-maker Samuel Gompers. In 1951 they merged with the CIO.
1889- Emperor Pedro II abdicated, the Republic of Brazil is declared.
1907- The comic strip A. Mutt by Harry “Bud” Fisher debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle. The name was later changed to Mutt & Jeff. It was the first 6 day consecutive daily newspaper strip. The strip was so popular that its creator Harry “Bud “ Fisher became a celebrity, and negotiated the first large backend deal.
1920- The League of Nations held its first meeting in Geneva.
1926- FIRST NETWORK BROADCAST- NBC hooked up 20 cities across America and Canada for a radio program "The Steinway Hour" with Arthur Rubinstein. It came from the Steinway building penthouse on 57th St. in Manhattan.
1934- Animator Bill Tytla started work at Walt Disney's on a trial basis for $150 a week. He would create Grumpy the Dwarf, The Devil in Fantasia and Dumbo.
1937- The U.S. Congress gets air-conditioning.
1941- Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordering the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals and Romanies.
1957- Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III established the Archdiocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the U.S. and Canada.
1958- Movie star Tyrone Power was filming a sword duel with George Sanders on the film Solomon and Sheba. He paused and told the director “ I have to stop, I don’t feel well”. He then dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 44. His father Tyrone Power Sr. had also died on a Hollywood movie set in 1931 of a heart attack,
1965- Walt Disney announced he planned to build a second Disneyland, this one in Orlando Florida.
1977- The Bee Gees soundtrack for the film Saturday Night Fever came out.
1979- ABC news announced they would broadcast a daily update of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The late night show became Nightline.
1989- Walt Disney's The Little Mermaid opened.
1990- It was revealed that the Grammy winning pop group Milli Vanilli didn’t sing on their own album, but lip-synced to the music.
1995- According to the Starr report, President Clinton had his first sexual tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky. At one point he was on the phone to a member of Congress while getting serviced by the chubby chick from Beverly Hills High.
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Yesterday’s Question: What town name was NOT originally an Indian name?
a. Chicago, b. Cincinnati, c. Miami, d. Narragansett
Answer: Cincinnati is named for a hero in classical Roman literature. The others are native American names.
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Nov 13, 2022 November 13th, 2022 |
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Question: What is a Fauvist?
Question: Who was the youngest person to be U.S. President?
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History for 11/13/2022
Birthdays: Saint Augustine 354 AD, King Edward III of England, Robert Louis Stephenson, actor Edwin Booth, Oskar Werner, Jean Seberg, Jack Elam, Judge Louis Brandeis (the first Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Alexander Scourby, Hermoine Badderly, Eugene Ionesco, Garry Marshall, Mel Stottlemyre, Joe Mantegna is 75, Jimmy Kimmel is 55, Gerald Butler is 54, Whoopi Goldberg- born name Caryn Johnson is 67
In Ancient Rome, today was Epulium Jovis, or the Feast of Jupiter Reclining.
In London it is Lord Mayor’s Day
1749- The University of Pennsylvania, originally called the Franklin Institute is established as the first non-sectarian American college. See below 1874.
1789- Ben Franklin wrote " Nothing is certain except Death and Taxes."
1842- Today Lewis Carroll noted in his diary:" Began writing the fairy tale of Alice. Hope to be done by Christmas..."
1851- The Denny Party from Illinois, aboard the schooner Exact landed at Aliki Point in the American Northwest territory. At the invitation of local Chief named Chief Seattle, they set up a trading post across Elliot Bay at a Sucquamish village named Duwumps.
Happy Birthday Seattle.
1861- THE TRENT AFFAIR- All through the American Civil War, Abe Lincoln's biggest fear, and Jefferson Davis’ greatest hope, was direct intervention of the great European powers. With England in Canada and France in Mexico and the British Navy ruling the seas, this was a real possibility. The British and French thought nothing of intervening in conflicts all over the world like the Greek Revolution or the war between Argentina and Uruguay. Almost as soon as the guns of Fort Sumter boomed, Emperor Napoleon III of France and the German Elector of Baden were offering their services as mediators.
On this day a U.S. Navy warship fired on the British ship HMS Trent and removed from her two Confederate diplomats. Mason and Slidell were being sent as ambassadors to the Court of Saint James. They claimed diplomatic immunity, the U.S. said they were citizens in rebellion. London reacted to the insult to her flag with an explosion of war talk. General Garnet Woolsey volunteered to raise new regiments for an invasion of New York State through Canada. Abe Lincoln's reaction was "One War at a time." He apologized and offered reparations. On the other side of the Atlantic, British Prince Albert helped broker the peace.
1868- Giacomo Rossini died at 68. He retired at 37 from performing and lived on royalties. It was said he became so lazy he laid about in bed all day. One day when writing a concerto his score dropped to the floor as he leaned over to fill his glass. Rather than bend down to pick it up, he took a fresh sheet and wrote a sonata. He still could do a nice piece on occasion, like The Fantastic Toy Shop. Born on leap day Feb 29, at 68, he listed his age as 16.
1874 -At the sesquicentennial celebrations of the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Green invented the Ice Cream Soda.
1914- Clothing designer Caresse Crosby took two handkerchiefs and some ribbon off some baby bonnets and invented the Brassiere. She became very rich and lived the life of a 1920’s free spirit. She named her dog Clytoris.
1917- THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR- After Lenin’s Communist Party seized power in Saint Petersburg, disaffected officers and businessmen fled to the edges of the Russian Empire to organize resistance to the new regime. This day some "White" soldiers under General Krasnoe skirmished with some of Trotsky’s Red Guards. These were the first shots of a bloody Civil War that would rage for 4 years and kill millions. After just completing a World War and two Revolutions, when she heard this news one Russian poet exclaimed : "Oh God, You Mean its Not Over?!"
1940- Walt Disney's 'Fantasia' premiered at the Broadway Theater in NYC. As Walt put it, "this'll make Beethoven!" Frank Lloyd Wright's opinion was, 'I love the visuals, but why did you use all that old music?"
1953- An Indiana judge ordered his local school district to remove any school books with references to the character Robin Hood. All the "take from the rich and give to the poor" it was obvious to the judge that the medieval rogue of Sherwood Forest was a Communist.
1956- The Supreme Court declares Montgomery Alabama’s segregation laws involving interstate buses are unconstitutional.
1969- President Richard Nixon’s’ Vice President Spiro Agnew accused the national news media of bias and partisanship. He excoriated them as "Nattering nabobs of Negativism" and gained a reputation for pithy use of the language. In reality, Nixon speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan wrote all of Nixon and Spiro’s best lines.
Up to then White House reporters were a compromising bunch when asked, winking at John Kennedy’s bimbos and Franklin Roosevelt’s wheelchair. But relations soured as Lyndon Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War, then Richard Nixon’s paranoia led him to openly declare the press his enemy, and the press responded in kind. And so modern media was born.
1970- A giant typhoon carrying 100 foot tidal waves smashed into Bangladesh, then called East Pakistan. 150,000 died.
1971- ABC TV. movie "the Duel" premiered. It starred Dennis Weaver as a hapless motorist on a lonely freeway menaced by an anonymous, unseen truck driver. The movie was directed by a young protégé of Lew Wasserman, named Steven Spielberg.
1971- Walt Disney’s The Aristocats opened.
1974- Atomic plant worker Karen Silkwood was the first person to expose lax safety practices at the US nuclear power plants. For this she was rewarded with demotion, harassment, lawsuits. A radioactive isotope was put under her car seat. On this night she was finally killed in a car accident. She was 28. Silkwood was on her way to talk to a New York Times reporter. It’s been alleged her car was deliberately run off the road. The files she was going to hand over to the press were taken from the car. The crash was ruled an accident.
1978- Mickey Mouse got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1986- President Ronald Reagan attempting to explain the festering Iran Contra Scandal said on nationwide TV:" We did not and I repeat did not…trade weapons or ransom for hostages, or would we ever." But it turns out that was exactly what he was doing.
1986- Directors John Huston, Martin Scorcese and Woody Allen denounced the fad promoted by Ted Turner of computer colorizing classic Black & White films like the Maltese Falcon. Supposedly one of the last things Orson Welles said on his deathbed was "Keep Ted Turner and his crayons away from my movies!" Ted got the message and shifted his money to digital restoration and building channels like TCM.
1991- Disney's animated film Beauty and the Beast opened, the first animated film ever nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
1997- Julie Taymor’s staging of The Lion King musical had its official Broadway debut. It had opened earlier in Minneapolis for a trial run. She became the first woman director to win a Tony award for it.
2001- President Bush issued an order that all people apprehended as terrorists would be tried by secret military commissions that dispense with our traditional American civil rights that we fought for in the Revolution. But he didn’t go as far as to call them prisoners of war, because then he could also ignore the Geneva Conventions.
2015- ISIS inspired terrorists attacked several parts of Paris, including a rock concert and a soccer match, killing 153.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was the youngest person to be U.S. President?
Answer: Teddy Roosevelt, at age 41, President after William McKinley was assassinated. Next up are JFK and Obama at 43.
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Nov 11, 2022 November 11th, 2022 |
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Question: What is meant by “fin de siècle?”
Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the meaning of the phrase “ Have You Seen Goldstein?” (hint: from a XX Century novel)
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History for 11/11/2022
Birthdays: Abigail Adams, Alexander Borodin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gen. George Patton, Pat O’Brien, Kurt Vonnegut, Rene Clair, Carlos Fuentes, Jonathan Winters, Stubby Kay, Stanley Tucci is 72, Demi Moore is 60, Leonardo di Caprio is 48
Today in the Middles Ages this was "Martinmass" the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of France.
Happy Veterans Day in the U.S., Memorial Day in many European and Commonwealth countries.
1534- The Parliament voted the Act of Supremacy, confirming that the King of England would be henceforth the Supreme Head of the Church in England, and no longer beholding to the Catholic Church in Rome. They called it The Church of England.
1572- Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe noted that he observed a bright new star in the region of Cassiopea. It was brighter in the sky than Venus, but after 16 months it disappeared. Not until 2008 did scientists determine that what Tycho saw was a White Dwarf exploding into a Supernova. Today it is called Tycho G.
1647- King Charles I had been defeated in the English Civil War and was held a prisoner at Hampton Court. On this day, he gave his jailers the slip and escaped to the Isle of Wight to raise troops for what some historians call the Second English Civil War. His actions, not only of lying to escape but also of persuading a Scottish army to invade England on the promise to the Scots that he would forcibly convert England to Presbyterianism, as well as trying to raise a Catholic Army in Ireland, offended his few remaining friends. Oliver Cromwell concluded there was no use negotiating with a king who saw peace talks only as a delaying tactic. They must have the head of this 'Man of Blood". While in Scotland the king learned to play a new game called ” Golfe on balls.”
1673- Battle of Cochim - Polish Hetman Sobieski and his "Winged Hussars" defeat a Turkish invasion in the Ukraine. The heavily armored Hussar cavalry wore wooden wings decorated with feathers like something out of a Christmas pageant, but the effect on enemies was terrifying. The flutter and hiss they made during their attack made them seem like warrior Christian angels.
1807- The British Admiralty announced that all neutral commercial ships passing through European waters must put into an English port and pay tax, or be subject to attack and seizure by the British Navy. Britain further reserved the right to stop ships to search for deserters from the British Navy. By 1812 and estimated four thousand American sailors had been taken off ships on the high seas and imprisoned or impressed into English service. Because America desired to remain neutral in the Napoleonic Wars this was one of the roots of her declaring war on England in 1812.
1831- Nat Turner, who led the last large slave uprising before the Civil War, was hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia. He confessed but expressed no regrets.
1858- John Landis Mason invents the Mason Jar.
1865- Dr. Mary Edward Walker, Union army surgeon, abolitionist and prisoner of war, became the first woman awarded the Medal of Honor. It was taken away from her in 1885. When asked to return the medal, she wrote back, “Come and get it. I am armed.” They deferred, and she never actually gave it back. Her full status as a Medal of Honor recipient was not completely restored until 1977.
1887- THE HAYMARKET EXECUTIONS- Four leaders of an early American labor movement The Knights of Labor are hanged after being charged with responsibility for a bomb tossed at police during a demonstration in Chicago. Samuel Fielden, Adolphe Fischer, August Spies and Albert Parsons. Albert Parsons shouted as he dropped through the trapdoor:" Oh men of America, Let the Voice of the People be Heard!" It was never proven they actually had thrown the bomb, aww but they were a bunch of reds anyway...A later Chicago mayor ruined his political career when he proved publicly that the Haymarket defendants were innocent.
They were demanding unheard of concessions like a six-day work week and an eight-hour day down from twelve to fourteen. A monument was erected in Haymarket not to Parsons but to the police. Hippies blew it up in 1968.
1889- Washington State admitted into the union.
1914- Sultan Mehmed V of Turkey who was also the last Caliph, honoring his alliance with Germany in World War I, declared a Grand Jihad on the allies. He said it was the duty of all good Muslims to fight the Christians, unless of course they were Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians or Austrians. And uh, neutral Spaniards, Swedes and Portuguese were okay too. Historians say the effect of his declaration of Holy War was met in the Muslim world with resounding indifference. About the only one who listened was the Khedive of Egypt, who was promptly replaced by the British.
1918- ARMISTICE DAY-MEMORIAL DAY- World War I ended. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns of the Great War fall silent. It sounds poetic but it was just a coincidence, the opposing sides had been negotiating since the 8th.
In a strange salute when the word went down the battlelines that the ceasefire would take effect at 11:00AM, at one minute before, thousands of cannons on both sides fired one last round simultaneously.
One German machine gunner fired off his last belt of bullets, then he climbed up on his parapet. In full view of both armies, he executed a deep, theatrical bow. Then he turned around and walked away.
World War I's final tally was 22 million dead, almost 20% of the young male population in the opposing countries. In only 7 months of actual fighting 116,000 American died. This also marks the turning point of the Old World into the Twentieth Century: ethnic republics arose out of dying monarchies. The British, German, Belgian and French colonial empires were fatally wounded. Independence desires stirred in 3rd world colonies and the United States became a major global power and world financier.
People came home using wristwatches, trenchcoats, and referring to large weather systems as "fronts". A cold front, etc.
1918- The same day as the Armistice, French leader Clemenceau received a note from his friend, the old Impressionist Claude Monet. He said to celebrate the victory, he wanted to gift to the nation his huge painting cycle, the Water Lillies.
1918- TOMMY GUNS- While the Armistice was being celebrated, sitting on a New York wharf, forgotten, was the first shipment of Thompson submachine guns, built for a war just ended. Gen. John Thompson was an inventor who tried to solve the problem of close hand-to-hand fighting in trenches by inventing a light mobile machine gun that could be a “trench-broom” –spewing 800 bullets a minute. Because it fired small pistol bullets, it was called a “sub-machine gun”.
But the Great War was over and the U.S. Army wasn’t interested anymore, neither were most police departments. So in 1921 the Thompson Submachine Gun went on sale to the public as a “swell home defense system”.
The people who did buy them were Gangsters and the IRA. They called them Choppers, Chicago Typewriters and Tommy Guns. Al Capone invented the novelty of hiding one in a violin case. John Dillinger was very proud of his.
Old John Thompson was horrified that his creation was being used by violent hoodlums to make incidents like the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre possible. He died in 1940, only weeks before the US Army would order tens of thousands of his Tommy Guns to fight World War II.
1919- On the first anniversary of the Armistice, Congress declared today a national holiday honoring our veterans. Most of Europe and Canada celebrate today was Memorial Day, but our memorial day is in May to commemorate the end of our Civil War. Today was also known Remembrance Day, and in 1954, the name was permanently made Veterans Day.
1920- On the second anniversary of the Armistice, the British entomb an Unknown Soldier to represent all war dead “A Soldier Whose Name is Known Only to God”. The French do it and the Americans think this a neat idea so do their own at Arlington in 1932. Bavarian corporal Adolf Hitler called himself the Unknown soldier of Germany, Now because of DNA identification identities of war dead will no longer be unknown. In 1998 the identity of the Unknown of the Vietnam War was discovered and the remains moved upon request of his family.
1925- Louis “Sachmo” Armstrong did the first recordings of his band the Hot Five. These records lift him from a local talent in Chicago and New Orleans to international stardom.
1925- The Nazis formed a second para-military force to augment their stormtroopers called the Schutz-Staffel or SS. Its leader was a one time chicken farmer named Heinrich Himmler. Himmler was heavily into the occult. He built officer training centers in a castle made up to look like King Arthur's round table. He also encouraged Germans to conceive children in graveyards, so the unborn could absorb the spirits of dead German heroes. The SS published a list of suitable graveyards for romantic assignations.
1926- Work began building Route 66, the first interstate highway built for automobiles in the U.S. It will get finished in 1932. The world's first road exclusively for automobiles was opened in 1921, the Avus in suburban Berlin, followed by the Via Fiore Imperiali in Rome (1927).
1932- The Girls Scouts first offered freshly baked cookies for sale. The proceeds went to purchase camping gear. In 1936, the Girls Scouts signed a contract with Keebler to bake and package their cookies.
1937- Animation production wrapped on Disney’s first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
1938- GOD BLESS AMERICA- Irving Berlin's song God Bless America sung for the first time by chanteuse Kate Smith. Irving Berlin had written the song in 1918 for a Broadway show Yip,Yap, Yaphank, but it didn’t fit in. So, he threw it in a file cabinet and forgot about it. Twenty years later, he revived the song as a peace hymn faced with the growing threat of WW2. This day at an Armistice Day radio concert it was sung by Kate Smith. It became a huge hit. Every few years there is a call to make it the national anthem.
1938- TYPHOID MARY- On this day 68 year old Mary Mallon died in an asylum. She was a carrier of the disease typhoid fever and, in 1910, while being a cook in a hotel resort she infected 1,000 people. Released from jail a few years later, she had promised not to resume her former profession. But soon she was in the kitchen again. She started the typhoid epidemic of 1915 and was arrested again. She herself never contracted the disease.
1938- The first day of shooting on the film 'The Wizard of Oz". Judy Garland met 125 little people hired to be the Munchkins. Judy's energy was fading under the heavy work schedule so L.B. Mayer ordered her put on Benzadrine (speed) every morning and Valium pills to sleep. June Alysson, another young MGM actress at the time said: "The studio nurse would give it to you and tell you it was vitamins." Judy Garland became a heavy drug addict and died of an overdose in 1969 at 47 years old.
1940- The Birth of the Jeep. The army introduces its first General Purpose vehicle-G.P. or Jeep, a name coinciding with a popular character in E.C. Segar's Popeye cartoons.
1940- Battle of Taranto (Italy) The RAF attacked the Mussolini’s fleet in port using torpedo planes. Convention wisdom of the time was plane-launched torpedoes wouldn't work in the shallow waters of a harbor. The British solved this by equipping their torpedoes with little fins that gave them greater buoyancy. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto said he wouldn't have attempted Pearl Harbor if the British hadn't proved at Taranto that such torpedo runs were possible.
1951- In Los Angeles, the Bing Crosby Enterprises gave the world’s first demonstration of a videotape recorder. Developed by John T. Mullins and Wayne Johnston.
1953- Disney short Ben and Me, directed by Ham Luske.
1954- Tolkein’s second book of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, first published.
1966- Gemini XII spacecraft went up into orbit. It was the last flight of the Gemini program and the first spaceflight of Buzz Aldrin who would later be the second man to walk on the moon.
1978- The renovated Hollywood Sign is unveiled. The second O was paid for by rock star Alice Cooper in memory of his idol, Groucho Marx.
1980- 'Heaven's Gate" Michael Cimino's $44 million dollar flop opened. Cimino originally said he could do the film for $8 million. Critic Pauline Kael said: "It's the kind of movie you want to deface. You want to draw mustaches all over it."
1992- The premiere of Walt Disney’s Aladdin, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. Starring Robin Williams doing the voice of the Genie.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is the meaning of the phrase “ Have You Seen Goldstein?” (hint: from a XX Century novel)
Answer: Have you seen Goldstein was a slogan circulated widely by the tyrannical government of Big Brother in Orwells novel 1984. It gave the average people a single mythological nemesis to focus their hatred and fear.
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Nov 10, 2022 November 10th, 2022 |
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Question: What is the meaning of the phrase “ Have You Seen Goldstein?” (hint: from a XX Century novel)
Question: Who was the only U.S. President to ever lead a labor union?
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History for 11/10/2022
Birthdays: Martin Luther, William Hogarth, Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Francois Couperin, King George II of England, Frederick Schiller, Claude Rains, Carl Stalling, Tim Rice, Richard Burton, Roy Scheider, Ann Reinking, MacKenzie Phillips, Russell Means, Sinbad, Brittany Murphy, George Fenneman-Groucho Marx’s TV announcer, Enrico Morricone,Tracey Morgan is 53, Neil Gaiman, Animator Sue Kroyer
Today is the feast of Saint Leo the Great, the Pope who scared Attila the Hun away from Rome by playing on his superstitions about the invisible power of the Christian’s god.
1610- THE NIGHT OF DUPES- Cardinal Richelieu ruled France with a centralized authority that made him admired by King Louis XIII, but hated by just about everyone else. When the king was gravely ill, the Queen Mother nursed him back to health. In return she asked as her payment, the Cardinals head! She wanted him replaced by keeper of the seals Jean de Mariac. This day in the Luxembourg Palace, Mom told Louis "It’s either Richelieu or me!" On cue, the gaunt cardinal emerged from a secret door. The King made his choice- Bye Bye Mommy. Oh and uh.,. Jean de Mariac was beheaded.
1766- In New Brunswick New Jersey, The Queens College was founded. It later changed its name to Rutgers University.
1770- Voltaire said:" If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."
1775- The U.S. Marine Corps founded by Congress. Marines were originally the sharpshooters who climb up ships rigging during a sea battle and shoot down on the enemy decks. They got the nickname Leathernecks because part of their early uniform was a stiff leather collar worn under their cravat to ward off cutlass blows and "keep in the head up in a good military bearing."
1778- John Paul Jones had been beached in France for nine months. At the height of the American Revolution he had been told to send away his ship USS Ranger to await a bigger, better one from the French. But delay and red tape was making him crazy. Today his agents found him a new command- an old, run down tub named L’Duc du Durras. John Paul Jones fixed it up, and renamed her the USS Bonhomme Richard after Ben Franklin’s bestselling book. The USS Bonhomme Richard became the most famous ship in the young American Navy.
1782- English King George III wrote his Prime Minister Lord Shelburne about the recently lost American Revolution: " I should be miserable indeed if no blame for the dismemberment of America from this Empire not be laid at my door. However, knowing that Knavery is a striking feature of it’s Inhabitants, it may Not in the end be such an Evil that they are now aliens to this kingdom."
1793- FESTIVAL OF THE GODDESS OF REASON- The radical French Revolutionaries had done away with the Catholic religion as a collaborator in tyranny, but they knew the common people wanted the consolation of religion. So they tried the worship of Reason in its place. Today was the first festival of the Goddess of Reason held at Notre Dame, with an actress personifying the new deity and chants and hymns and such silliness. It didn't last, it's inventor Pierre Chaumette was guillotined for not being radical enough. When Napoleon came to power he restored normal Catholic worship, although the French army permitted no chaplains.
1865- During the Civil War, Swiss immigrant Henry Wirz was the Confederate commander of the infamous prison Andersonville where thousands of Yankee prisoners starved and perished. On this day he became the first military officer ever hanged for war crimes. He was also the first person to use the excuse "I was only following orders."
1871- STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTON- No one in England had heard from the famous African explorer-missionary Dr. David Livingston for three years and he was feared dead. Henry Morton Stanley undertook the expedition partly as a publicity stunt funded by the Josef Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper. After one year of wandering through the jungle, Stanley came upon the old missionary on the shores of Lake Tanganyika near Ujiji. Stanley introduced himself by saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley also proved Speeckes theory of the source of the Nile River as Lake Victoria Nyanzaa.
1880- Old Civil War general and New Mexico territorial governor Lew Wallace got his first novel published, and it came out pretty good- Ben Hur.
1885- Gottfried Daimler invented the first motorcycle.
1917- The Voting Rights for Women Movement or Suffragettes began a dramatic all day protest in front of the White House. Every time a protester was arrested and dragged off another would take her place. By the days end 41 women were arrested.
1918- After abdicating the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm decided he didn't want to stick around and end up executed like his cousin Nicky the Russian Czar. So, in the middle of night the German Imperial family slipped away by secret train and crossed the border into neutral Holland. The Hohenzollern Dynasty, which had ruled Germany since 1685, was now gone. Wilhelm’s first words when reaching the Castle of Daun were: "I should now like a strong hot cup of English tea."
1918- Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary and Empress Zita abdicate. Elderly Emperor Franz-Joseph II helped start World War I and then he conveniently for him, he died. His young grandnephew Karl tried to handle a bad situation he had no control over. He even attempted a peace overture behind the Kaiser's back as early as 1916. Ironically the Austro-German High Command helped to fund Russian revolutionaries like Lenin. German money paid the printing costs for Pravda.
After taking power in Petersburg Lenin immediately had soviet-style revolutionary cells set up in Vienna and Berlin. Like in Germany riots convulsed Austrian cities and whole regiments were throwing away their weapons and walking home. The Imperial Hapsburg family, which had reigned in Europe uninterrupted since 1265, piled into limousines and sped off for Switzerland before the Viennese Workers Soviet Committee could arrest them. Like the Kaiser, they too had heard how the Russian Czar and his whole family had been put up against the wall and shot. So they preferred not to suffer a similar fate. The Republics of Austria and Hungary were declared. In 2004 Pope John Paul II made Kaiser Karl I a Saint. Their son Crown Prince Otto lived to age 98, and died in 2011.
1950- Paramount's "Mice Meeting You" The first Herman and Katnip cartoon.
1951- The first long distance telephone call without needing an operator to make the connection.
1953- Disney’s short “ Toot Whistle, Plunk and Boom” released.
1969- The children’s education show SESAME STREET premiered on PBS TV. The world is introduced to Bert & Ernie, Cookie Monster, Grover, Big Bird and Mr Hooper.
1971- The US table tennis team arrived in Red China for a tour. Ping-Pong became an unlikely diplomatic tactic to begin the warming of relations between China and the US.
1975- S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sinks at Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior, drowning all 29 crew members and causing a famous 1970's folk song to happen.
1977- Pope Paul VI announced that Catholics who remarried or married Protestants were no longer automatically excommunicate.
1981- Pioneering French film director Abel Gance died at age 92. Shortly before his death he saw his great widescreen 1925 epic movie Napoleon restored by British historian Kevin Brownlow and produced by Francis Ford Coppola with a live audience. At Radio City Music Hall, Brownlow stretched a telephone cord out on stage so the old man could hear the wild cheers of the NY audience.
1982- The Vietnam Veterans Wall designed by Maia Lin opened to the public in Washington D.C,
1995- Carolco, the Hollywood studio that produced many hits like Terminator 2 Judgement Day, Rambo, Basic Instinct, and Total Recall declared bankruptcy after producing $115 million dollar megaflop "Cutthroat Island".
2008- Two days after Barack Obama was elected president, Georgia Republican congressmen Paul Broun was already calling him a “Marxist-Nazi.” This set the tone for the partisan hatred of the first black president that bordered on hysteria, and continued long after he left office.
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was the only U.S. President to ever lead a labor union?
Answer: Ronald Reagan was once president of the Screen Actors Guild.
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