Quiz: What was the original name of The Internet?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below; According to German Emperor Charles Vth, when speaking to God, what language should you use?
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History for 05/05/2011
Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Michael Palin, Pat Carroll, Patrick Ewing, John Rhys Davies is 67, Lance Henriksen is 71,

In Mexico and parts of the US, this is Cinco de Mayo (see 1862 below )

In Japan this is a holiday known as Children's Day.

National Teacher's Day.

National Cartoonist's Day.

2349BC- According to Bishop Ussher, a XVI Century Flemish cleric who tried to calculate a real date for every important event in the Bible, today is the day Noah’s Ark struck dry ground on Mount Ararat.

840- Louis the German, a son of Charlemagne, died of fright during a total eclipse of the sun.

1504 -Sir Anton of Burgundy, known as The Great Bastard, dies at 82. We don’t know much about this knight but you gotta love that nickname!

1534- King Henry VIII executed an English nun named Elizabeth Barton, who claimed to have been instructed by God to condemn the King’s divorce. She claimed supernatural forces had shown her the place in Hell being prepared for King Henry.

1640- King Charles I dissolved Parliament after only three weeks for being uppity. It was called the Short Parliament. When they refused to grant him tax money to fight his wars the King levied a 1% property tax on everyone in England. If you didn’t pay it right away you could lose your ears and be branded on the cheeks with a hot iron. Bright ideas like this cost Charles his head after losing the English Civil War in 1649.

1789- King Louis XVI reluctantly convened an Estates General, the French national parliament, to get the country out of a fiscal crisis. He had fired the Swiss financier Necker, the only man who seemed capable of stopping the financial slide. Up to now Louis' understanding of fiscal policy was to cut the budget spent on the royal lapdogs. An assembly like this had not been called since 1611.

The Parliamentarians demanded permanent power and by refusing to adjourn when the Royal command came set in motion the French Revolution. They already had begun to refer to themselves as a National Assembly. The great orator Mirabeau answered the royal call to adjourn: "Go tell your master that Here the People Rule!"

1800- Shortly after winning his Federalist parties nod to run for re-election President John Adams was told by his wife Abigail Adams” Tis a pity that politicians would sacrifice all that Good men hold dear and Sacred just to win an election.” Of course, that doesn’t happen today, now does it?

1808- THE SPANISH ULCER- The Spanish Royal Family was having problems. King Charles IV, his chief minister Godoy who was also a lover of the Queen, the Infante Ferdinand VII and the Prince of Asturias were all trying to overthrow one another while Goya made funny looking portraits of them.

French Emperor Napoleon lured them all to Bayonne in French territory with an offer to mediate. He said: “I’ve got a better idea. I’ll lock you all up in this fortress so my brother Joseph can be King of Spain.” Napoleon sent an army into Spain to enforce his idea but the Spanish people wouldn’t stand for it and fought first in the open and then as “guerrillas”- little wars.

While Napoleon was trying to conquer the rest of Europe he had to keep troops in Spain fighting the guerrillas and the Duke of Wellington’s English. Spain was liberated in 1814 and the Royal Family promptly went back to arguing.

1821"...le Armee'......Josephine....." Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St.Helena at age 52. Recent radioactive analysis of his hair samples reveal that in his last 18 months the arsenic level in his body went up 150%. Did he die of stomach cancer like his father or was he poisoned as he stated in his memoirs ? Was there too many bits of mercury and arsenic in his prescribed medicines or the wallpaper ? The debate continues..

1827- In Tennessee a 17 year old tailor's apprentice named Andrew Johnson married 16 year old Eliza McArdle. Johnson was illiterate so one of his bride's first chores was to teach him to read and write. Johnson became the 17th President of the United States.

1862-HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO- Battle of Puebla-Mexican Juaristas under a daring young general named Porfirio Diaz defeated a French invasion force. After Benito Juarez’s presidency Porfirio Diaz made himself dictator and reigned until being ousted in the Mexican Revolution in 1910.

1864-Sherman began his Atlanta campaign. Sherman told Grant:" You hold Lee down and give me enough troops and I can make Georgia howl !"

1889- THE PARIS WORLD EXHIBITION opened. This exposition was what the Eiffel Tower was built for: it was the centerpiece of this World's Fair. At the time, it was the world's tallest free-standing metal structure, and hailed as a marvel - and now as an enduring symbol - of the Industrial Revolution.

Americans remembered it as the event where American painting first stood out on the world stage, despite being given a small gallery space between Bosnia and Denmark. The judging of the artwork was controversial. Here they are trying to show the world the uniqueness of American painting yet with not a single Copley, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer or Mary Cassatt was accepted.

James McNeill Whistler considered himself American although he lived most of the time in London. When the show was announced, he patriotically entered a dozen paintings but the American judges rejected them all. He angrily re-submitted them as a British artist and won a gold medal.

1891-Carnegie Hall in New York opens. One old musician told me the acoustics are so perfect that you can fart in the trumpet section and you'll be heard in the second balcony.

1920- Britain and France get the League of Nations to sanction their colonial takeover of the Middle East. France occupies Syria and Lebanon and Britain Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The League officially considered them 'mandates' to administer territory of the defeated Turkish Empire, but Britain and France held them in effect as colonial possessions.

1932-Charles Revson founded the Revlon Cosmetics Company.

1942-The last U.S. forces on the besieged Island of Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese. General MacArthur was ordered to escape to Australia, leaving his friend Johnathan Wainwright to lead his men into captivity. But when he was asked to recommend General Wainwright for the Congressional Medal of Honor, MacArthur refused. "The Medal of Honor cannot be awarded to a general who pulls down Old Glory and surrenders!". MacArthur had Wainwright at his side to sign the surrender documents on the U.S.S. Missouri in 1945.

1945- In a desperate plan to get at America, Japanese generals tried tying bombs to high flying atmospheric weather balloons that could catch the jet stream across the Pacific. This day the only World War Two casualties on the U.S. mainland occurred when an Oregon woman Elsie Mitchell and her two children were killed by one of these strange bombs while picnicking.

1953- Broadway Director Jerome Robbins was riding high after directing hits like On the Town and King & I, when he was labeled a Communist by Ed Sullivan. To save his career, this day he testified before Joseph MacCarthy’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee HUAC and named names. One actress he finked on -Margaret Lee said” I’ve just been stabbed by a wicked fairy”. Ironically Robbins went on to direct two of his biggest 1960s hits “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Fiddler on the Roof using blacklisted actors like Zero Mostel, Beatrice Arthur and Jack Gilford, who all hated him.

1960- Soviet Premier Khruschev announces to the world press the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia. President Eisenhower vigorously denied anything of the sort until Khruschev in a world media news conference produced the planes wreckage and pilot Lt. Francis Gary Powers. The incident not only deepened the Cold War, but for the first time in modern history a U.S. President was caught lying his head off. But sadly, not the last time.

1961- Alan Shepard became the first American in space on board Friendship VII. The rocket took him 115 miles into space but not high enough to achieve an orbit. That was done one year later by John Glenn. Shepard was kept on the ground in his capsule for so long he had to pee in his suit. In the upside down position the fluid ran up his back and puddles in his helmet behind his head. Ick.

1968- Albert Dekker, star of monster movies like Dr. Cyclops, was found hanged in his bathroom, handcuffed, and wearing ladies lingerie. A narcotics needle was sticking in his arm. The police declared it an “ auto-erotic episode that had gone wrong."

1975- Anne Rice’s novel The Interview With The Vampire first published.

1981- Young IRA supporter Bobby Sands made himself a martyr in the Northern Ireland crisis by dying of a hunger strike while in jail. He went 66 days without food.

1985- President Ronald Reagan started a firestorm of controversy among WWII veterans when he laid a wreath in Germany at a cemetery in Bitburg that contained graves of 49 Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. Some of them may have participated in the infamous Malmedy Massacre of US prisoners.
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Quiz: According to German Emperor Charles Vth, when speaking to God, what language should you use?

Answer: Emperor Charles V (1515-1556), was called the man who married Europe. He was King of Spain ( which then included all the Americas), and was the Emperor Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. He once said “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.”

Quiz: According to German Emperor Charles Vth, when speaking to God, what language should you use?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: Bartolomeo Christafori (1566-1731) was not a composer nor conductor, but he is considered very important to the history of music. Why?
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History for 5/4/2011
Birthdays: Bartolomeo Christofori'-inventor of the piano, Alice Liddel 1852- the inspiration of Alice in Wonderland, Audrey Hepburn –real name Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten, Roberta Peters, Maynard Ferguson, Pia Zadora is 57, Howard Da Silva , Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Richard Jenkins is 64

1471-"Now are the Winter of our discontentment made glorious Summer by this Son of York"... TEWKESBURY, the deciding battle of the War of the Roses. Edward IV with his brothers Clarence and Richard the Hunchback defeat Lancastrian King Henry VI. The white rose vanquished the red.

1493- the Papal Bull Inter-Contrera and the Treaty of Tordesillas was announced. Pope Alexander VI Borgia divided up the non-European world between Portugal and Spain- saying Spain could conquer everything west of the Cape Verde Islands like America, and Portugal could have everything east like Africa and India. Damned sporting of him! Columbus knew of this impending treaty when he sailed so may have deliberately falsified coordinates in his ship's logs to hide the fact he was violating Portuguese territorial waters to catch the transatlantic current he counted on.

1626- Peter Minuit arrived at the settlement of New Amsterdam to be it’s first governor.

1715- A French inventor demonstrated the first folding umbrella.

1776- Jumping ahead of the independence debate in the Continental Congress, the colonial assembly of Rhode Island voted to renounce their allegiance to the Crown of Great Britain.

1776-While marching up the California coast Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola came upon a Chumash Indian village on a big placid bay. It being Saint Monica's feast day he named the bay Santa Monica.

1788 - Catherine the Great's chancellor Prince Potemkin appointed as a Rear Admiral of the Russian Navy Pavel Ivanovich Jones, or we know him better as John Paul Jones. Jones had gone to Russia to help organize the Black Sea Fleet,

1799- The Assault on Seringhapatamb- In India the British army storms the fortress of Sultan Tipoo Sahib the 'Tiger of Mysore' and defeats him. Commanding General John Baird leapt up on the parapet and shouted over the scream of rockets, cannon and elephants :" Up my brave lads and show the world you are worthy of the title- British Soldiers!" Present at the battle was a young colonel Arthur Wellesley who would later gain fame as the Duke of Wellington.

Tipoo Sahib was England's chief enemy in India and had been defeated a decade earlier by Lord Cornwallis, who made up for his loss to George Washington at Yorktown. After the battle among the plunder they found the Sultan's favorite toy- a life-size mechanical tiger clawing a man. The tiger had a set of organ keys that played a medley of roars and screams for Tipoo's amusement. It's in the Victoria and Albert Museum today.

1876- THE ARREST OF GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER- General Custer almost didn't make his fateful ride to the Little Big Horn. He had gotten in big trouble with the Grant administration when he testified to Congress about waste and corruption in the War Department. He even implicated President Grant's own brother-in-law Orville as leading a graft ring and his testimony helped impeach Secretary of War William Belknap.

On May 4th when Custer stepped off a train in Chicago he was intercepted by two officers who told him he was under arrest and should remain there to await orders. He defied this order and continued on to Fort Lincoln where he tearfully begged Generals Terry and Sheridan to intercede for him to get his Seventh Cavalry back. Terry's written pleas to Grant and Sherman worked and Custer was allowed to resume his command.Terry had drawn up a contingency plan for a Colonel Hazen to lead the Seventh to the Little Big Horn. So we almost had Hazen's Last Stand.

1886-The HAYMARKET RIOT. A defining incident in U.S. labor history. Striking workers demonstrating in Chicago for an eight hour workday confront mass police and militia. Suddenly a bomb explodes among the police who open fire on the crowd. The culprits are never identified but authorities blame the union leaders- The Haymarket Eight - who are all arrested. Despite an international outcry from celebrities like George Bernard Shaw and William Morris they are all convicted and hanged.

The Haymarket incident was considered damaging to the prestige of the union movement at the time but the union organizers hanged on circumstantial evidence became martyrs to the average working person. As the defiant Albert Parsons dropped from the gallows door he shouted: "Oh America, Let the voice of the People be heard!" A decade later a Chicago mayor reexamined the evidence and concluded they had executed innocent men. He lost his bid for reelection. In 1968 a monument erected to the policemen was blown up by hippy radicals.

1891 –THE DEATH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES According to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, this was the day Sherlock Holmes perished at the Reichenback Falls grappling with sinister Prof. Moriarity- The Napoleon of Crime. Conan Doyle had tired of his eccentric detective and wanted to get on to other types of novels. But readers were horrified he had killed off the great sleuth. Conan-Doyle couldn’t take a walk down the street without someone stopping him:” Sir, How could you?!” When touring the US he wanted to lecture about historical subjects, but people only wanted know more about Holmes & Watson. After a while Arthur Conan-Doyle gave in and began a new series of the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

1897- GREATER NEW YORK- Governor Frank Black signed the act unifying the City of Brooklyn and the counties of Queens and Richmond (Staten Island) to New York creating the city of Greater New York, the five boroughs. The mayors of New York and Brooklyn immediately tried to veto the incorporation act but the State legislature overrode them.

1897- In Paris during a charity cinematograph show the nitrate film catches fire and 200 die. Movie film before the 1940’s was made from a very unstable mixture and could explode from the slightest contact with flame.

1927-The Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences formed. Studio heads Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer originally conceived the Academy as an an arbiter and ombudsman where studio artists could air grievances without fear of retaliation, thereby sidetracking the call for unions. It didn't work, because of the nature of it's founders. Writer Dorothy Parker commented: "Going to the Academy with your problems is like trying to get laid in your mother's house, someone's always peeking through the curtains"

After the stock market crash the Academy supported the studio heads enforced employee salary cuts. Soon all pretense as a human resources ombudsman was abandoned and AMPAS focused on being the arbiter of artistic achievement.

1940- Last British troops withdrawn from Norway, leaving it to Nazis occupation.

1947- Paul Rafaelson, the only Jew ever convicted of Nazi war crimes was tried and hanged in Prague. As a concentration camp trustee he aided the Nazis zealously in committing atrocities on the inmates of his own faith.

1948- Norman Mailor's first novel published: "the Naked and the Dead".

1953 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Ernest Hemingway for The Old Man & The Sea.

1957 - Alan Freed hosts "Rock n' Roll Show" 1st prime-time network rock music show.

1963- Nelson Rockefeller married Margaret Fitzler-Murphy, called Happy Rockefeller.

1967- The Big Mac hamburger is invented in a MacDonald's restaurant in Pittsburgh.

1970 KENT STATE- Two days after Vice President Spiro Agnew tells law enforcement associations that “ You should treat the student anti-war protesters as you would have treated the brown shirted stormtroopers." Ohio National Guard units opened fire on college demonstrators at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine, two of whom weren't even protesting but had just paused to watch.

Troops also fired on students at Jackson State a week later. These incidents and the fatal bombing of a science lab by militants at Wisconsin caused the public to recoil from increasingly militant rhetoric over Vietnam. Shortly afterward one friend recalled seeing President Nixon at an appearance in Akron mutter something to the effect that he wished more students had been gunned down at Kent State. President Nixon had called the anti-war protesters "bumbs". The father of one of the slain students wrote him: "Mr President, my daughter was not a bumb!"

1975- Moe Howard died, last of the original Three Stooges.

1999- Goldman-Sachs, a 130 year old Wall Street investment bank that had once sparred with J.P.Morgan, becomes the last great bank on Wall St. to go public. In 2008 it’s shady deals helped bring about the Great Recession, but today most of it’s former execs have jobs in the federal gov’t..

2000- The Love Bug Computer virus ravaged the worlds commerce through Microsoft Outlook causing $10 billion dollars in damage and shutting down temporarily the e-commerce of large firms like Reebok. It was launched by a Philippino AMA Computer College graduate student as part of his thesis.

2001- Bonnie Lee Blakely, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was found in her car dead of a gunshot wound to the head outside of Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City, Ca. They had just had dinner, and Mr. Blake had returned into the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had left at his table. In 2005 the actor was acquitted of his wife’s murder, but lost a wrongful death suit to Blakely’s family. Why did Robert Blake bring a gun to his dinner table? I guess it’s if the waiters get snippy or something.

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Yesterday’s Question: Bartolomeo Christafori (1566-1731) was not a composer nor conductor, but he is considered very important to the history of music. Why?

Answer: He invented the modern piano.

Question: Bartolomeo Christafori (1566-1731) was not a composer nor conductor, but he is considered very important to the history of music. Why?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What are an abatis, a redoubt and a ravelin?
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History for 5/3/2011
Birthdays: Niccolo Macchiavelli, Golda Meir, Sir Richard D'Oly-Carte, Peter Gabriel, James Brown, Pete Seeger, Betty Comden, Doug Henning, Beaulah Bondi, Mary Astor, Sugar Ray Robinson, Alex Cord, 70’s singer Englebert Humperdinck, Dule Hill

Happy World Press Freedom Day.

328 A.D.- Discovery of the True Cross-According to medieval legend St. Helena the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine, unearthed three old crosses on the Mount of Calvary. She tested it out by crucifying someone on it who gets up after three days. After all, it might have been someone else's cross! Ick!

Byzantine Emperors carried the True Cross around and into battle like a flag until it was thought to be too precious to lose, so it was broken up and the wood distributed to the kings of Christendom. By Luther's time it was said so much of the Good Wood or Holy-Rood was around that if you got it all together you could build a nice house. The custom of saying "Knock on Wood" comes from touching the True Cross for luck.

1494- Columbus discovered the island of Jamaica. He called it St. Iago.

1536- Huron Indian chief Donnaconna noticed that the French explorer Jacques Cartier and the other white men got excited whenever he mentioned gold or riches. So Donnaconna made up fantastic stories about a powerful kingdom upriver called Sanguenay, about where present day Ottawa is. He said the people were fabulously wealthy and had no anus's so they could only drink fluids. Cartier not only swallowed the gag this but he was so impressed he had poor Donnaconna kidnapped and brought to France to tell his stories to the king. The old Indian never saw home again.

1559- At Perth Scotland, Presbyterian preacher John Knox delivered his first sermon openly calling for the Scottish Church to throw off the authority of the Vatican.

1675- Massachusetts Puritans passed a law that church doors be locked during Sunday services. Too many people were leaving during long, boring sermons.

1702-William Hyde- Lord Cornbury arrived from England to be Royal Governor of colonial New York. This English aristocrat surprised the solid Dutch Calvinists of former Nieu Amsterdaam by his eccentric behavior. His favorite pastime was dressing up in ladies clothing and jumping out at people at night and pulling their ears. When in drag he bore an uncomfortable resemblance to England’s Queen Anne. He later explained he dressed this way so the colonists could see what their queen in England looked like, but nobody believed him.

There is today a painting of the Lord Governor in drag at the New York Historical Society . It was alleged that he was a fence for pirates and once asked the New York City council for money to repel a fictitious French attack which he pocketed and bought the land today called Hyde Park.

1791- Polish Constitution of 3rd of May. This radical document was inspired by the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, but being situated in the midst of autocratic monarchies like Russia and Prussia they went nuts and crushed the Poles.

1812- A new poem called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage became a huge hit in London and sold out in just three days. The author Lord Byron became the toast of London overnight. He said: "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."

1848- Working people of Saxony revolt against their king. Leo Bakunin the father of anarchism and the composer Richard Wagner were two of the leaders. The Prussian army was sent to help put down the workers and Wagner fled into Switzerland, but not before he had the pleasure of burning down the Leipzig Opera House.

1851- San Francisco burned down.

1863-2nd Day Battle of Chancellorsville-Lee sent Stonewall Jackson 12 miles swinging around the Yankee Army flank to attack them from behind. O.O. Howard, the Union General in charge of that area wouldn’t believe the scouts reports of an imminent attack and when a German immigrant officer demanded he prepare Howard accused him of being drunk. Then Jackson’s men burst out of the woods and sent the Yankees running.

The fighting lasted well into the evening and confusion reigned in the darkness. General Daniel Sickles division got into a vicious three way firefight with a Confederate division shooting at him from one side and his own reinforcements shooting at him from the other.

Stonewall Jackson and his staff had ridden out beyond his lines to observe the Yankee preparations for tomorrow. He was riding back towards his own lines when a shot or two rang out. General A.P. Hill called out " Don't shoot! Were Southerners! ". But the Mississippi colonel in charge had been surprised once already that night by enemy cavalry :" It's a Yankee trick! Pour it into them, boys !" A mass volley hit Jackson and several other officers." My boys, my own boys!" Jackson groaned. He died two weeks later.

1864- The day before his armies were set to move Union General Ulysses Grant laid out final plans for his campaign against the Confederacy. In a drawing room in Culpepper Virginia he told his staff that up till now union armies had acted independently like a bad team of horses that won’t pull together. He would now coordinate five armies attacking simultaneously from Washington to Atlanta to Shreveport Louisiana. Their goal would not be the taking of Richmond but the destruction of the main Confederate field armies like Robert E Lee’s. Grants plan was to hold Lee down near Richmond while the armies of Sherman, Banks and Butler achieved the destruction of the Confederacy.

1888- Poem "Casey at the Bat" published.

1906- British controlled Egypt seized the Sinai Peninsula from the faltering Turkish Empire.

1917- The Great French Military Mutinies. During World War One after three years of being massacred by the millions in suicidal standing charges style against German machine guns and appalling conditions in the trenches, the average French "poilus" soldier nickname like G.I. or Tommies, had had enough. Whole regiments refused to go to the front. The mutiney was so bad that to this day official records are vague as to just how many men were involved. A safe estimate is at least 100,000 men.

1936- Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio first game for the New York Yankees. He got three hits.

1938- The Vatican recognized Generalissimo Franco’s fascist regime in Spain.

1941- Battle of Amba Alagi. Britain vs Italy for Ethiopia..

1948-THE PARAMOUNT DECISION- In 1938 the independent theater chains had brought suit in Federal court against the major Hollywood Studios over their monopolistic practices. Ten years later the Supreme Court ruled the Motion Picture Studios did constitute a monopoly and under the Sherman AntiTrust Act ordered them to sell their theater chains. One casualty of this rule was the short cartoon. Because theater managers no longer were forced to run a cartoon, newsreel and short with a feature (block-booking), they opted for the time to run more showings of the main feature.

1952, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the exact North Pole, the first known person to do so. Commander Robert Peary claimed to have reached the Pole in 1909 as did others, but modern scholars think they were all off by several degrees.

1963- Birmingham police attack Civil Rights marchers with attack dogs and high powered hoses. The brutality was captured on nationwide TV. The images shocked the nation and President Kennedy, who had been assured by Governor George Wallace by phone that everything was under control. JFK resolved to fast track the Civil Rights Act through Congress..

1968- THE PARIS '68 REVOLT- Police are sent into the Sorbonne University in Paris to break up student demonstrations. The grounds of the university had never been violated by police, even during the Nazi occupation. This act enraged the student leaders who are joined by labor unions and there is fighting in the streets of Paris for the next three weeks that eventually brought down the DeGaulle gov't.

All night political meetings center in the Odeon theatre as the likes of Jean Paul Sartre and John Luc Goddard make intellectual manifestations of aesthetic freedom."The More I make Love, the More I make Revolution!" One of the student leaders was Daniel Cohn-Bedit "Danny the Red". Conservative media tried to draw attention to Cohn-Bendit’s Jewish foreign background . This caused an even larger, angrier, march of Parisians shouting: "We are all Jews!"

1969- Groundbreaking in Valencia for the California Institute of the Arts.

1971- National Public Radio’s news program "All Things Considered" goes on the air, the first national news program with women news anchors like Susan Stanberg.

1971- President Nixon’s administration arrested 13,000 anti-war protestors in one week.

1973- Chicago’s Sear Tower was topped off at 443 meters, to be the worlds’ tallest office building in the U.S.A.

1978- THE FIRST SPAM E-MAIL- Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp wanted to invite all the scientists and professors on the ARPANET system to an event. It was too much work to do one e-mail at a time, so he devised a way to mail 600 people at once. So thank Gary that you get endless messages like "Nigerian Bank Trustee offers you $10 million."

1979- Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. The green grocers daughter called the Iron Lady dominated British politics for the next twenty years.

1985- The White House confirmed rumors that President Reagan would occasionally adjust his schedule on the advice of a San Francisco astrologer.

1997- The Chairman of Phillip Morris Tobacco Company tells a congressional committee cigarettes are no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy. -Uh-huh.

1999- Oklahoma City was hit by a force 5 tornado with wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, the strongest ever recorded.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: What are an abatis, a redoubt and a ravelin?

Answer: The names of types of military fortifications created in the XVII Century by French engineers like Marshal Vauban.

Quiz: What are an abatis, a redoubt and a ravelin?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below Where is the region known as The Levant?
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History for 5/2/2011
Birthdays: Czarina Catherine the Great, Domenico Scarlatti, Manfred Von Richtofen the Red Baron, Bing Crosby, Dr. Benjamin Spock the Baby Doctor, Vernon Castle, Theodore Bikel, Lesley Gore, Roscoe Lee Browne, Satyajit Ray, Pinky Lee, Link Wray of the Wraymen, Dwayne Johnson called The Rock is 39

1349- The Kings of England and France are forced to declare a ten year truce in their Hundred Years War because of the ravages of the Black Plague. After all, how can one be expected to have a good war, when everyone was already dead?

1519- Leonardo Da Vinci died at the chateau of Amboise in the arms of King Francis Ist. He had accepted the offer of the French King of a stable retirement (even then artists worried about that kinda stuff). Two hundred and eighty years later during the French Revolution peasants broke into his tomb to get the lead lining for cannonballs and threw his bones in a pile. So no one is sure where he's buried.

1670- The Hudson's Bay Company is chartered by King Charles II. At one point the Honorable Company was responsible for the administration of most of western Canada, called Prince Rupert's land, the largest land mass in history ever under the control of a board of directors. It's CEO , Sir George Simpson was nicknamed "the Emperor" . Today The Bay Co. is known for expensive blankets .

1808- Spanish Independence Day- Napoleon had invaded Spain and put his older brother Joseph Bonaparte on the throne. The Spanish called him "Pepe Bottaglia" (Joey Bottles-due to his fondness for drink) and bitterly hated the French occupation. Reacting to the occupation of Madrid, the Spanish people riot in the Playa Del Sol and cut up all the French soldiers they can find. The French arrest and shoot them. Francisco Goya does lots of neat drawings and paintings. The Spanish invention of organized small scale partisan actions they will give the name "guerilla" warfare.

1863- Battle of Chancellorsville - Robert E. Lee is surrounded by the superior Union army of "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Hooker bragged: "God have mercy on General Lee, for I shall have none!". Lincoln was more realistic: "The hen is the wisest of all animal creation. She does not cackle until AFTER her egg is laid." Lee gets out of the trap and defeats Hooker.

1865- A $100,000 reward was offered for the arrest of former president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, now a fugitive on the run from Union armies.

1885- First Good Housekeeping Magazine.

1921- Chicago’s Field Museum opened to the public. It was housed in the building originally called the Hall of Fine Arts in the Great Chicago Exhibition of 1893.

1932- Jack Benny's Radio Show on radio debuts. Oh Rochester! Mel Blanc the voice of Bugs Bunny did many characters and voices on the show, including the engine of Jacks’ old Maxwell automobile.

1933-Hitler's stormtroopers raid all union offices in Germany. They seize their accounts and cart the labor leaders off to concentration camps. Hitler had said" Democracy and Free Enterprise cannot co-exist in the same state, and one of the evilest forms Democracy can take is Trade Unionism".

1933- The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. The Inverness Courier published an account of a couple who sighted Nessie and offered a reward for proof.

1936- Ethiopian Emperor Rastafari Halie Selassie the Lion of Judah fled Addis Ababa in advance of Mussolini's invading armies.

1945-As General Weidling surrendered what was left of Berlin to the Russians, Admiral Doenitz, then head of government ordered his Foreign Minister, Schwerin von Krosik to broadcast to the German people advising them to flee west," The Iron Curtain in the east moves closer and closer; all those people caught in the mighty hands of the Bolsheviks are being destroyed." Beating Churchill to the term Iron Curtain by a couple years.

1945- All the remaining Axis forces in Italy surrendered.. Meanwhile on this day in Bavaria, the top German rocket scientists led by Dr. Werner Von Braun gave themselves up to the Americans. On Brauns work table was plans for a missile that could travel 4200 miles, far enough to reach the U.S. East Coast.

1952- The British Airline B.O.A.C. began the first trans-Atlantic jet plane service. This began the class of globe-trotting rich partygoers named Jet-Setters. BOAC later became British Air.

1957- Mafia don Frank Costello had taken over the Lucciano New York crime family after Lucky Lucciano had been deported permanently to Sicily. Another Lucciano triggerman named Vito Genovese felt he had been passed over. This day Frank Costello was crossing the lobby of his apartment on Central Park West, when Vinny " the Chin" Gigante came up behind him: "Hey Frank, this is for you!" and started shooting. Costello was left for dead but Vinny bungled his job- Costello was only grazed in the skull. He recovered but wisely decided to retire from racketeering. Costello’s job went to Carlo Gambino.

1957- Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy the Commie Hunter died in an asylum from hepatitis and alcohol delirium and cirrosis.

1967-" Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud!" The Black Panther Party announced it’s armed militancy to the US and the world by trying to break in with shotguns on the California State assembly during a vote. The US media would ring with the words and images of Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton.

1972- J. EDGAR HOOVER DIED. He had been F.B.I. director since 1934. Despite his numerous achievements like neutralizing Nazi espionage and the Ku Klux Klan, he never seemed willing to attack the Mafia. While the FBI chased lone criminals like Dillinger or Bonnie & Clyde, the big national syndicates of Al Capone and Lucciano functioned unmolested. Some speculate it was because he knew they would expose the FBI chiefs secret lifestyle. Hoover lived in a long term relationship with his second in command Clyde Tollson. That didn’t stop him from outing high profile gays in the Truman and Johnson administrations and ruining their careers.

J. Edgar needed his secrecy to pursue his high profile war on "American Immorality". When Lyndon Johnson was asked why he still kept the ancient F.B.I. director around, he replied:" I’d rather keep the old bastard on the inside pissing out, than on the outside pissing in.".

1972- First day shooting on Steven Speilbergs film JAWS. The giant mechanical shark used as a prop was nicknamed "Bruce" after Speilberg’s lawyer.

1982- During the Falkland's War a British helicopter equipped with Exocet missiles sank Argentina's largest battleship, the Belgrano. London tabloids ran as the headline over the burning ship- "Gotcha !" Interestingly, the Belgrano was a refitted 45 year old American battleship, the U.S.S. Phoenix, that had survived the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.

1982- The 24 hour Weather Channel started.

2011- Osama Ben Laden, the Al Qaeda leader behind the 9-11 attacks, was killed in a firefight with American commandos outside Islamabad, Pakistan at 1:30AM Pakistan time.
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Yesterday’s Question: Where is the region known as The Levant?

Answer: The Levant was an old term for the region of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Sinai coastline during the years of Turkish Ottoman rule.

Question: Where is the region known as The Levant?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Why are toilets in the US also called a John?
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History for 5/1/2011
Birthdays: Mary Harris a.k.a. Mother Jones, Marshal Vauban 1633, Benjamin Latrobe, Calamity Jane, Joseph Addison, Kate Smith, Jack Paar, Joseph Heller, Rita Coolidge, Steve Cauthen, Judy Collins, Glen Ford, Ray Parker Jr., Maurice Noble, Fyodor Khytruk, Louis Nye, John Woo, Wes Anderson is 42, Joanna Lumley is 65, Eric Goldberg is 56

May or Maius is named for Maia, Roman god of flowers, daughter of Fauna and Vulcan.

This day Romans celebrated the LARALIA- the feast of the Lares, your personal domestic gods who watch over you and your family. Many times they included the founder of your house, a famous family member or a particular allegiance to one deity, for example Julius Caesar claimed to be descended from Venus. It’s also the Roman festival for the Bona Dea or the Good Goddess, a deity of fertility.

Feast of Saint Phillip and Saint James the Lesser

62BC- Publius Clodius Pulcher- The Handsome, seduced the wife of Julius Caesar by dressing like a woman and sneaking into Caesars home while the women were celebrating the secret sacred mysteries of the goddess Bona Dea. Caesar wasn’t too upset because he was sleeping around as well. Part of Greco-Roman religious mysteries was the drinking of a wine mixed with herbs like Ergot, approximating the effect of modern LSD. Sex, Drugs and Latin Conjugations!

305AD- The Abdication of Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian- Diocletian attempted to solve the problem of Roman emperors being chosen by means other
than murder or civil war. He split the Empire into two pieces and took a colleague, Maximian, as Emperor of the West. They would each select a vice-emperor or Caesar and after a set number of years retire and the succession moves up. This system worked while Diocletian was around but it began to unravel almost as soon as he retired to his estates in Yugoslavia to grow cabbages. When the emperors started to fight and kill each other the Senate tried to recall Diocletian. He responded: "If you could but see my cabbages, you would not ask me to do so ! "

1152- Henry II Plantagenet, king of England and Duke of Normandy (grandson of
William the Conquerer) married Eleanor of Aquitaine, divorced wife of King
Louis VI of France and heiress of half of France. This union created the
powerful state called the Angevin Empire, so named because one of Henry's
family titles was Duke of Anjou. They would bear those rather interesting offspring
Richard the Lionhearted and John Lackland.

1373- Dante Alighieri met the love of his life Beatrice at a MayDay party in Florence. Although she married another he was inspired to write his Divine Comedy to her.

1786- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts opera THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO premiered in Vienna. So many encores and bows were demanded that the evening went on twice as long.

1798- The Birth of American Industry- Cotton Gin maker Eli Whitney proposes
to the U.S. government that he could make the army 10,000 muskets by a new automated
machine process. He gets the contract but delivers only 500, many of them
handmade the old fashioned way. The first Defense department cost overrun.

1851- Queen Victoria and Prince Albert open the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the new Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. This first World's Fair would last until October and have exhibits and inventions from all around the world. Many European crowned heads stayed away for fear of all their revolutionary exiles England had given asylum to. A touching moment was when the Chinese ambassador did a public kowtow or prostrated himself before the Queen, symbolizing China's submission to England. The fact that the diplomat wasn't a diplomat but a local London resident named Hai Sing who gave tours of his Junk on the Thames for a shilling a head didn't seem to bother anybody. The Queen at one point was frantic that the Crystal Palace was attracting hordes of sparrows whose droppings were covering the glass roof with an unwanted glazing. The elderly Duke of Wellington came upon a solution :"Try sparrow hawks, M'am.".

1886- MAYDAY- In most of the world except the U.S. this is Labor Day. Ironically the tanks and red banners that used to parade down Tianamehn or in Havanna celebrate events that began in the United States. In 1886- The Knights of Labor- an underground movement of unions came out in the open and announced itself America's first national labor organization. On this day they called for strikes against all employers who wouldn't institute an 8 hour workday. The norm in America was 12 hours, 7am to 7pm six days a week. 500,000 people go out on 1,700 strikes and paralyze the nation's economy. The authorities crushed the strikes with violence, shootings, arrests and firings with a brutality that shocked the rest of the world. Karl Marx said: " Isn't it amazing what's happening in America ?".

The 8 hour day doesn't become normal in America until 1913. In 1889- in Europe the International Socialist Congress declaring itself in sympathy with the embattled American worker designated May 1st as International Worker's Day. In 1894 American Federation of Labor, a less militant successor to the Knights, ask President Cleveland to move Labor Day from May 1st to the end of August. This was so people can have a holiday between Independence Day and Thanksgiving, but also a Labor Day free of "radical politics".

1893- The WORLD COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION opened in Chicago. A great White City topped by the first Ferris Wheel, a giant that carried passengers higher than the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Worlds Fairs then still had a certain amount of cheap sensationalist burlesque to attract customers uninterested in dynamos and new farming exhibits. Candy maker Milton Hershey inspected some new German milk chocolate machines and was inspired to build his business around chocolate.

This exhibition was made famous by the erotic gyrations of belly dancer Little Egypt. the famous tune "In the Land of Oz Where the Ladies Smoke Cigars" was not written in Egypt but by a local songwriter named Joe Blume. It also displayed the World’s Largest Red Cedar Bucket, then filled with lager beer. In 2001, I had the pleasure of seeing the Bucket at Mufreesboro Tennessee, minus the beer.

1894- COXEY'S ARMY- Retired colonel Jacob Coxey was a progressive spokeman for the rights of the underprivileged and a socialist. He organized led several marches of hundreds of hungry and unemployed on Washington, proclaiming them the Army of the Commonwealth of Christ . He loudly demanded on the steps of Capitol Hill workers compensation, unemployment insurance and national works projects to put the unemployed back to work. All these goals were achieved by the New Deal in 1933 but for now all Coxey got was 20 days in jail for disturbing the peace.

1898- BATTLE OF MANILA BAY- Admiral Dewey's fleet sinks the Spanish fleet when
he gives the order to the captain of the USS Olympia :"You may fire when ready, Gridley:" I'm sorry, Bugs Bunny didn't say it first. The Spanish admiral Marquis de Montijo is remembered in Spain as a hero for even trying to engage the Americans with his outdated and outgunned fleet. Forgoing the support of shore batteries he deliberately drew his ships up away from the city of Manila so civilians wouldn't get hurt in the battle and his ships could sink in shallow water. Hundreds of Spanish sailors were killed but the only Yankee swab who died was an engineer who had a heart attack from all the excitement.

1902- Richard Outcault's comic strip Buster Brown and Tige first appeared. Outcault, the creator of the first hit cartoon the Yellow Kid was so famous that as part of his deal to do this strip he negotiated the first back-end deal for a percentage of the merchandise sales.

1914-THE BIRTH OF THE BIG BLUE- Thomas Watson got a job at a little business machine company called CTR, the Calculating, Typewriter and Regulating Company. He quickly rose to the top and renamed the company International Business Machine or IBM. When he retired in 1956 it employed 60,000 and made profits more than their next ten competitors combines.

1926- Satchel Page pitched his first baseball game. His nickname came from Satchel-mouth.

1930- Marry Harris- AKA Mother Jones, union activist and child labor crusader made her last speech on her 100th birthday: " I was born of the struggle, of torment and pain. A child of the wheel, a brat of the cogs, a woman of the dust. Whenever a worker weeps tears of blood, I am his remedy !"

1931- The Empire State Building in New York dedicated. For fifty years it was the worlds tallest office building and King Kong’s hangout. It’s topmost deck was designed to be a dirigible mooring post but despite several tries no zeppelin has ever been able to park there. A Goodyear Blimp attempted mooring there in 1976 but the highwinds bobbed it around like a bucking bronco. The building was dedicated during the depths of the Great Depression when business was so bad it was nicknamed the 'Empty State Building'.

1935- Lou Gehrig, the Yankee "Iron Man" who had never missed a baseball game, takes himself out of a game because of illness. It is the first sign of the degenerative muscular disease that would be called Lou Gehrig's Disease.

1939- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia exports it's first barrel of crude oil.

1939- The first Batman comics created by Bob Kane appear on newsstands.

1939- The New York World’s Fair, themed the World of Tomorrow, opened in Flushing Meadows Queens.

1941-ROSEBUD- Orson Welles film "Citizen Kane" debuted at the Paramount theater (the El Capitan) in Hollywood. At the last minute William Randolph Hearst's friend Louis B. Mayer tried to buy and destroy every print of the film and the Hearst press went crazy attacking it. Hearst spokesperson Louella Parsons threatened "A Beautiful Lawsuit" if the film was not pulled. Despite winning some Oscars the film didn't do well in it's initial release, but it remains one of the greatest films of all time. Welles said later:" The problem I've always had is my movies become classics ten years later."

1942- The last execution by hanging at San Quentin Federal Prison.

1945- THE SECOND FUEHRER- Grand Admiral Doenitz, leader of the Nazis u-boat campaigns is informed of Hitler's death and that he was the Fuehrer's handpicked successor. Hitler was mad at Himmler and Goring and everybody else had shot themselves. Doenitz was leader of what was left of the Third Reich for 23 days. Even with Berlin fallen his country overrun he deliberately dragged out negotiations so he could smuggle as many people as he could away from to the Anglo-American zones.

1960- THE U-2 INCIDENT Soviet authorities shoot down a high observation U-2 spy plane violating Soviet airspace and capture the pilot Francis Gary Powers. Ironically President Eisenhower had ordered a halt to the U-2 spy program but the Pentagon tried to get one more flight in. After 1989 the US Government admitted the overflights of Russian airspace had been going on since 1950. In those ten years the Soviets had shot down around 20 planes with a loss of 100-200 U.S. servicemen killed or sent to die in Siberian Gulags, ignored by their government to whom they did not officially exist. Powers’s plane was hit and disintegrated. He fell 70,000 feet but miraculously he survived. Before he was captured he at first hitchhiked a ride from a Russian couple going to a wedding. They saw nothing strange in the uniformed man and when they noticed he couldn’t speak Russian in the middle of Russia they decided he must be Bulgarian.

1967- Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu at the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas.

1989- Walt Disney Feature Animation in Orlando Florida opens. It closed in 2006.

1993- The Florida Animation Union Local 843 chartered.

1997- Frank Gifford, ABC television sportscaster and husband of morning show celebrity Kathy Lee Gifford, was caught on videotape doing the nasty with stewardess Suzie Johnson. She got paid by a tabloid and posed nude for Playboy.

1997- Bebe, the dolphin who played Flipper on the television show, died at age 40.

1997- Tony Blair defeated Tory John Major to become Prime Minister of Britain.

2003-MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? President George W. Bush lands a military jet onto the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver a speech declaring the war in Iraq to be officially over. In the next 8 years thousands more Americans would be killed and wounded. A large banner on the carrier read Mission Accomplished. The White House said it was set up spontaneously by crewmen, but later admitted it was conceived, printed and hung by the presidents men.

2004- The European Union expanded from thirteen to twenty five countries, including Estonia and Malta.

2005- The Sunday Times of London first printed the Downing Street Memo. It was minutes of a meeting between US and British strategists, that proved that the Bush White House was irrevocably settled on attacking Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein in 2002. This while the official spin in the media was that America was only going to war as a last resort. In an earlier generation, the Downing St. Memo would have been as important as the Watergate Smoking Gun, but the corporate mainstream media buried it’s importance.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why are toilets in the US also called a John?

Answer: Some claim it comes from an Elizabethan Englishman named John Harrington , but I believe the modern use came from President John Quincy Adams 1825, Adams was criticized by his political enemies for installing expensive luxuries in the White House like a flush toilet. People began to call the newfangled toilets John Quincys, and later simply Johns.