Quiz: In theater, what is known as The Scottish Play?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is an umlaut?
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History for 7/17/2010
Birthdays: James Cagney, John Jacob Astor Ist, Hyacinth Rigaud, Bernice Abbott, Chill Wills, Brian Trottier, Phoebe Snow, Donald Sutherland is 75, Phyllis Diller, Daryl Lamonica, Prof. Peter Schickele a.k.a. PDQ Bach, Earl Stanley Gardner the creator of Perry Mason, David Hasslehoff is 58, Art Linkletter

In ancient Rome, today was the feast of the god of Honor, Honorous.

924 – The death of Edward "the Elder", King of the West Saxons. During his reign, he annexed Wessex and the Danelaw up to the Humber River. Danelaw was the name for English territory governed by Danish Vikings.

1429- Charles the Dauphin of France is crowned King Charles VII at Rheims thanks to the astounding military success of Joan of Arc.

1453 Battle of Chatillon. The last battle of the Hundred Years War. English knight Sir John Talbot was blown away by the French with their newfangled cannons.

1647- A Neopolitan fishmonger named Maisaniello led 100,000 Italians in a revolt against high taxes and tariffs. Maisaniello held power in Naples for ten days until his was assassinated this day by agents of the Spanish Viceroy the Count de Orsuna. One of Maisaniellos more colorful ideas was he reduced the price of bread by half, and if a baker didn’t comply, he was roasted in his own oven.

1789- Three days after the Bastille was stormed, King Louis XVI appeared on a balcony at Paris city hall the Hotel Du Ville and wore a red, white and blue cockade in a red Phyrgian liberty cap to the cheers of the multitude.

1793- Charlotte Corday, the assassin of French Revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat, went to the guillotine. When her decapitated head was lifted out of the basket the executioner gave it a smack on her cheek for being a naughty little girl, to the laughter of the crowd.

1803- James T. Calendar, editor of the Aurora newspaper, was among the worst scandal mongering journalists in early America. He broke the story of Alexander Hamilton’s extramarital affairs and Thomas Jefferson’s sleeping with his slaves. He called John Adams a "pernicious Hermaphrodite" and George Washington the "American Dali Lama". Everyone hated him. This night his body was found floating the James River. A court decided he fell in while drunk, but many wonder if he was not pushed.

1841 - British humor magazine "Punch" 1st published.

1867 - 1st US dental school, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, established

1873- The U.S. Secretary of War William Belknap approved the revised set of cavalry regulations called "Upton's Rules". It became the standard for the U.S. Cavalry throughout the Indian Wars. Belknap was forced to resign for pocketing defense funds in 1874.

1876- Battle of Warbonnet Gorge. Skirmish between the US 5th Cavalry pursuing hostile Indians soon after Custers Last Stand. The battle is remembered chiefly because Gen Phil Sheridan asked his old friend Buffalo Bill Cody to return from his play acting back east and scout for the army one more time. He looked rather incredible riding the prairie in his theatrical black velvet silver studded Mexican Vaquero britches and coat. Bill Cody was challenged to single combat by a Cheyenne Chief named Yellow Tail. Bill killed the chief and scalped him, waving the hair in the air to the cheering troopers and announcing "The first scalp for Custer!" Buffalo Bill then returned to the East where his new stage production "The First Scalp for Custer" ran for weeks to sold-out audiences.

1879 - 1st railroad opens in Hawaii.

1893- Representatives of fourteen stage unions meet to form IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical & Screen Engineers of the U.S. & Canada.

1917-President Woodrow Wilson approved U.S. troops to join an Anglo-French mission to Russia. Originally intended to help the Russians from the German Army, the mission became an attempt to help anti-Bolshevik forces overthrow Lenin and reopen the second front against the Kaiser. They were never given any real instructions about what to do except support Anti-Bolshevik forces, who were few in number. They were withdrawn from Russia in 1922.

1928- President of Mexico Alvaro Obregon was at a large banquet gathering of all former veterans of the Mexican Revolution. Part of the party was having an artist stroll about making caricatures of the guests of honor. Obregon said to cartoonist Leon Toral: "Make sure you make me look good." Toral responded "Oh, I will.." and pulled a gun and shot the President to death.

1935 - Variety's famous headline "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" meaning audiences in rural areas were not attending movies with a rustic theme.

1936-. The Spanish Civil War begins. A Spanish Fascist army led by Francisco Franco invaded Spain from North Africa. The first moves were to occupy the Canary Islands. The Fascists figured the takeover would only take a few days, but all over Spain the common workers, farmers, artists, even women and children took up guns to fight.

1937- the Nazis open an art exhibit of banned artworks and artists called Entartete Kunst- Degenerate Art.- Works of Dali and Duchamp, Grosz, Lippschitz, Kandinsky and Miro, with appropriate insults underneath. The next day Hitler dedicated the Great German Art Collection, having cleansed the German art world for National Socialist art, mostly bad deco-greco nudes and dumb Nordic medieval fantasy scenes.

1938- WRONG WAY CORRIGAN was the last of the pioneering aviators. A former mechanic for Lindbergh, Doug Corrigan bought a plane out of a junk heap and modified it for long distance travel. He asked permission from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly from New York City to Ireland. They denied his request, on the grounds that his plane was in poor condition. He seemed to accept the ruling, but when he took off for California, he banked sharply to the east and headed over the ocean. He landed in Ireland, and complained of a faulty compass. No one believed his excuse, and he lost his pilot's license, but he was greeted as a hero back in New York. Over a million people came out for a ticker-tape parade. Supposedly his first words to the locals upon landing were. "I’m Corrigan, Where am I?"

1944- Top German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was strafed by an Allied fighter plane as his open car sped down a French country road. By now Rommel was in the Generals Plot to overthrow Hitler. When the General's Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler went off in three days Rommel, who the conspirators planned to make President of the new Reich, was in a coma in the hospital. Even though the bomb failed to kill Hitler, if a healthy Rommel, who's fame was second only to Hitler, went on nationwide radio and announced an army coup against the Nazis and an immediate unilateral peace, it's intriguing to think what might have happened.

1944- The Port Chicago explosion. In Oakland Harbor African American sailors were given the dreary but dangerous duty of loading ammunition onto ships. This day an accident with high explosives blew up 321 men. The blast broke windows in San Francisco across the bay and was heard as far away as Boulder City Nevada. When the base commander ordered the men to immediately resume loading with no change in pattern or promise of investigation- the black sailors refused. They were court-martialed for mutiny and treason.

1945-THE FIRST POTSDAM MEETING-New President Harry Truman met Stalin and Churchill in a suburb of war ravaged Berlin. Halfway through the talks Churchill learned that he was defeated in parliamentary elections and would be replaced by Clement Atlee. Truman told Stalin about the atomic bomb and was surprised that Stalin wasn’t surprised. Stalin already knew because of spies he had at Los Alamos. Stalin told Truman the Japanese government was requesting peace talks asking that Russia act as intermediary, which they had no intention of doing. Stalin called the Anglo-Americans his "soyuznicki" Little Allies. Truman called him "Uncle Joe". Paranoid Stalin disliked the name because he thought it was meant to be an insult.

1955 DISNEYLAND OPENED- Walt Disney's dream of a perfect family amusement park, called 'The Happiest Place on Earth" was declared open with movie celebrities like Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter and the Mouseketeers in attendance. Walt Disney expected to get 10,000 visitors that first day. They got 100,000. Facilities broke down from the huge crowds and the haste with which the park was built. Concrete pavement which was poured the night before was still soft under people's feet, there were no working water fountains and the car parking was a nightmare. To the Disneyland workers opening day was nicknamed 'Black Sunday". Despite all, Disneyland became a huge success.

1955 - Arco, Idaho becomes 1st US city lit by nuclear power.

1967 – The Monkees performed at Forest Hills NY, Jimi Hendrix was their opening act.

1968- In Iraq, the Bath party seized power under President Ahmad Hussain Al-Bakr. The following year his chief of police Saddam Hussein would overthrow him.

1968- The Beatles musical cartoon feature The Yellow Submarine premiered in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Look Out ! It’s the Blue Meanies!!

1975-The Apollo-Soyuz space linkup. A second linkup would not happen until 1995.

1979- Nicaraguan rebels called Sandinistas overthrow dictator Anastasio Somosa. He escaped to Miami with CIA help. The Reagan White House spent most of the 1980’s obsessed with these Communist rebels as a new escalation of the Cold War.

1988- A home video tape was released of actor Rob Lowe making whoopee with two underage girls in his hotel room.

1996- TWA Flt.#800- a jumbo jet flying from New York to Paris exploded over Long Island Sound shortly after take-off. Disturbing rumors of a missile bringing down the plane had been squashed by authorities, despite other pilots and eyewitnesses describing a streak of light in the sky before the explosion. The official reason stated was "fumes ignited in a wing tank", but that explanation failed to satisfy the grieving relatives. Why a plane with a 30 year safety record should just blow up, and none have blown up since, remains a mystery.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is an umlaut?

Answer: In German pronunciation, it's the two little dots above a vowel that signal the former presence of an "e" following the vowel.

Question: What is an umlaut?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: During WWII, the French Resistance smuggled down American fliers out disguised in civilian clothes. In one famous incident a Gestapo agent caught a Yank because of the way he was eating his lunch in a café. What was he doing that gave him away as an American?
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History for 7/16/2010
Birthdays: Andrea Del Sarto, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Ginger Rogers, Pinchas Zukerman,
Orville Redenbacher, Roald Amundsen, Sunny Tufts, Barbera Stanwyck, Reuben Blades, Mary Baker-Eddy the founder of Christian Science, Phoebe Cates, Will Farrell is 43

1099- JERUSALEM FALLS TO THE CRUSADERS-The Christian’s first attack was repulsed from the walls. Crusader chiefs like Geoffrey De Boullion, Tancred and Bohemond decided it was because God thought they were too sunk in sin to be worthy, so the entire army marched barefoot around the walls chanting.

On the next attack the Crusaders broke into the city and committed horrible massacres of the population. The rampaging knights even cut down Armenian & Syrian Christians, because they looked dark. In an ironic twist of history the Jewish population fought shoulder to shoulder with their Arab cousins. When the massacre started they withdrew to a central synagogue where the Christians barred he doors and burned them to death. The Crusaders then declared the Holy City free, and Geoffrey de Boullion declared himself "Protector of the Holy Sepulchre" instead of king since in his opinion :"There is no King here but Christ". After he died his younger brother Baldwin said:” My brother was a knucklehead, I am King of Jerusalem!” I’m uh..paraphrasing slightly here…

1439 - Kissing is banned in England to stop diseases from spreading.

1721- Guilliame DuBois, archbishop of Cambrai was ordained a Cardinal. The Bishop was one of the most sexually promiscuous men in France, out done only by his master Phillipe D’Orleans. Regent for the boy King Louis XV. The memoirist Sainte Simon said His Eminence the Cardinal “had a face like a ferret and was a Cloaca Maxima of depravity” named for Romes largest Sewer. Yet despite his sexual appetite he ran Frances’ foreign policy almost as well as Cardinal Richelieu did a century earlier. France was at peace for 27 years. His only fear as Cardinal was that his wife would renege on the blackmail he paid her, and go public.

1769- Fra Junipero Serra founded his first Mission settlement in California- San Diego de Alcala, now present day San Diego. The master plan was to create a string of missions from San Diego to San Francisco one days ride apart- San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, San Gabriel , Los Angeles, etc.

1777- I WILL FIND YOU! -In frontier Kentucky outside of Boonesborugh Jemima Boone and her girlfriend are set upon by a Shawnee Indian warparty and kidnapped. Her daddy Daniel Boone with seven men tracked the warparty and this day after a sharp fight freed the women. Despite killing the son of the Shawnee chief Boone was later adopted into the tribe in his place. This incident was widely reported in the colonies and was the basis for James Fennimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans.

1779- American colonial General "Mad" Anthony Wayne attacks the British garrison at Stony Point, New York.

1862- In Paris the French Emperor Napoleon III received John Slidell, the ambassador of the Confederate States. But France declined to intervene in the American Civil War.

1877- THE GREAT UPHEAVAL- The B&O Railroad cuts their workers wages 10% for the second time that year. (there had been a recession raging in the U.S. economy since 1873 ). Workers and engineers at Martinsburg Virginia went out on strike and started sabotaging trains. The strike soon spread coast to coast and became America's first Nationwide Strike. The laws protecting workers union rights were still far in the future so strikes were put down by troops randomly shooting into crowds, mass firings and vigilante murder of union leaders. The violence shocked the rest of the world. Karl Marx wrote Engels "did you hear what is happening in America ? He always thought industrialized countries like America and England would go communist long before Russia and China.

1918-CZAR NICHOLAS ROMANOV AND FAMILY MURDERED. After abdicating the Czar's family was imprisoned in a house in Siberia. The anti-Communist While armies were about to capture the area. So from Moscow Vladimir Lenin sent orders that they all be killed. In the middle of the night commissar Yakov Sverdlov told the Czar they were to be moved and were ordered to wait in a basement room of their house. Outside Red guards revved a truck motor to mask the sound of the guns.


Then a group of soldiers came in the room pulled out their pistols. Nicholas’ last word before the guns went off was "Schto? " What the-? They even shot the family doctor, the boys sailor bodyguard and the family dog. The anti-Communist forces captured the area two weeks later and told the world of the crime. Seeing what happened to the Russian Czar may be part of the reason the Kaiser and Austrian Emperor slipped away quietly into exile after losing the Great War. Remains weren't discovered until 1988 and in 1993 DNA testing proved them to be the true remains of the Czar and his family. DNA Testing on the remains of a woman who died in 1984 named Anna Andersen, who claimed to be the child Duchess Anastasia was negative. The reason the children's remains weren't in with the others was because the Bolsheviks first tried destroying their remains with sulfuric acid but found it took too long, so they cremated the rest. Czar Nicholas II and his family were made saints of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1994.

1932- Cecil B. DeMille shot the scene in his film Sign of the Cross where Claudette Colbert took a bath in asses milk. Legend has it that DeMille insisted on real milk in the bath and that by the second day the hot studio lights had curdled it to a smelly cheese. But production notes show the scene was all shot in one day. DeMille always got away with sexy semi-nude scenes by putting them in biblical settings. After all, who would criticize a moral tale from the Good Book? This story of Jesus opens with an orgy at Mary Magdalene’s house.

1935- The first parking meter set up in Oklahoma City.

1936 - 1st x-ray photo of arterial circulation, Rochester, NY

1945-THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB EXPLODED at Alamagordo New Mexico (site code name was "Trinity'). Called at first the Super Cosmic Bomb, nicknamed "The Gadget". The Manhattan Project scientists weren't sure that once you started the chain reaction detonating particles of light when it would stop, if ever. Physicists Richard Fenyman and Enrico Fermi wagered a case of beer that they would incinerate the state of New Mexico.(funny guys). They were led by General Leslie Groves, a by-the-book army engineer who supervised the construction of the Pentagon, and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist and Berkeley radical who read Sanskrit to relax. When he saw the force of the blast Oppenheimer recalled the Hindu verse: "Now have I become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds..."

1951-J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" published.

1954- Groundbreaking for the construction of Disneyland.

1956 –The Last time Ringling Bros, Barnum & Bailey Circus performed under a canvas circus tent.

1963- Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6.

1964 Warner Brothers "A False Hare", the last Bugs Bunny theatrical short until 1985.

1964- Conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater was nominated to run against Lyndon Johnson for president. Goldwater set the tone by his speech:" Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." LBJ’s campaign portrayed him as a dangerous warmonger and he lost in a landslide. In later years Goldwater’s conservative views were eclipsed by the even more conservative Reagan and Bush, and his being ignored by them, annoyed him.

1966- Mao Tse Tung takes a swim in the Yangtzse River and gives permission for his young Red Guards to start the Cultural Revolution.

1969- Passed this day Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their spacecraft.

1973- WHO HAS THE TAPES ! Presidential attorney Alexander Butterfield admitted to the Senate Watergate Committee that President Richard Nixon had bugged the Oval Office and had recorded tapes of all of his conversations. The tape system was actually installed by Lyndon Johnson. When Nixon took office he was going to have it all removed. But his aides convinced him to keep the system to document his place in history. Why Nixon never destroyed these tapes that brought him down remains one of the mysteries of history.

1994- Comet Schoendacher-Levy 6 impacted with the Planet Jupiter, giving scientists a spectacular ringside seat to the processes of the creation of the Universe.

1999- JOHN-JOHN -Thirty years after the death of his father and uncle 38 year old John Kennedy Jr. fell victim to the Kennedy curse when his small plane crashed on the way to a wedding in Martha’s Vineyard. His wife had delayed to have a pedicure, so he had to take off at dusk. He was too inexperienced to fly on instruments at dusk in fog and he lost his bearings, hitting the water at 150 miles per hour. The Kennedy’s have a history of bad luck with planes- Kathleen Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy’s parents and JFK’s older brother Joe Kennedy all died in small plane crashes. Senator Ted Kennedy barely survived a crash in the 1960s. Teddy refused to ever fly with John Jr. and so died of old age.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: During WWII, the French Resistance smuggled down American fliers out disguised in civilian clothes. In one famous incident a Gestapo agent caught a Yank because of the way he was eating his lunch in a café. What was he doing that gave him away as an American?

Answer: Only Americans switch hands after cutting their meat. Europeans hold the fork in their left hand and the knife in their left hand. And Americans hold their fork tynes up, while the English and many other Europeans hold it tynes down.

Quiz: During WWII, the French Resistance smuggled down American fliers out disguised in civilian clothes. In one famous incident a Gestapo agent caught a Yank because of the way he was eating his lunch in a café. What was he doing that gave him away as an American?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below- Citizen! Complete the sentence:” Liberte’, Egalite”--?
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History for 7/15/2010
Birthdays: Rembrandt van Rijn, Inigo Jones, Sir Thomas Bullfinch, Mother Cabrini, Clemont Moore, Julian Bream, Linda Rondstadt, Alex Karras, Jan Michael Vincent, The Sultan of Brunei, Lola Davidovich, Forrest Whitaker is 48, Brigette Neilsen, Jesse Ventura, Terry O’ Quinn is 58

Feast of St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain

765 A.D.- Mayan Scientists hold a conference at Copan to discuss astronomy and adjust their calendar. By 1492 the Mayan civilization was already 2,000 years old. Their calendar was so perfect, the difference between it and our modern atomic clocks calculation of a lunar month is just 24 seconds! They used hieroglyphic writing but also a system of numbers including zero, which the Greeks and Romans never figured out. Among their surviving documents are calculations on the orbit of Venus. Tikal, one of their cities, covered 23 square miles ( Rome of the Caesars covered 8 ) and had a temple that was the tallest structure in America until the completion of the U.S. Capitol dome in 1863.

1205- Pope Innocent III declared that because they have rejected Christ, the Jewish people must be subjected to perpetual servitude and subjugation, It took several more centuries of oppression and holocaust for the Vatican to officially "forgive" Judaism in 1947. Pope John Paul II apologized in 2000.

1410- 600 YEARS AGO- Battle of Grunwald, King Jagiello of Poland, Witold Wytautas of Lithuania and their Tartar allies defeated the Prussian Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Sword Brothers under Grand Master Ulrich Von Junnigen.

1780- American Colonial General Benedict Arnold sneaked a coded message to British General Sir Henry Clinton. In it, he offered to betray the fortress of West Point to the British for 20,000 English pounds. Arnold wasn’t even West Point’s commander yet, but he expected Gen. George Washington to confirm him in the job any day. The only person who warned that Gen. Arnold might be up to something, was a female spy planted in British Headquarters in occupied New York. Her cover was kept so complete, that her name is lost to history. We only know her as agent “355”.

1789- Astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly is proclaimed first mayor of Paris. Since Medieval days when the Hero Mayor Etienne Marcel had defied the King, Paris had no mayor but was under direct royal control through an appointed prefect. When the Revolution broke out the royal prefect of Paris and his son were beheaded by the mobs and their heads put on spears. As the crowd danced with the heads they'd occasionally bop them together when someone would shout: "Give your papa a kiss!" Today the mayor of Paris is such an important position it is considered the stepping stone to the Presidency of the Republic.

1795 - "Le Marseillaise" became officially the French national anthem.

1806- American captain Zebulon Pike set off on his trek of discovery through the new Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado territory. Near Santa Fe New Mexico he was eventually apprehended by Spanish Authorities for trespassing and put on a boat back home. In Colorado Pike discovered the mountain named for him- Pike’s Peak.

1815- Napoleon boards HMS Bellerophon for the trip to St.Helena. On the trip he teaches himself English and makes friends with the British sailors to such an extent that they are reprimanded by their officers for being too friendly with him. He says to his Irish doctor O'Meara:" So you are a doctor and I am a general. How many men have you killed? I'll wager more than me!"

1861- During the Civil War a beautiful Washington D.C. socialite named Rose Greenhow moved in the highest circles of government and was personal friends with top Congressmen and Generals. But Rose was also a Southern spy. This day she got out a message to Confederate General Beauregard that the main Union army would commence their march on Richmond that week. This bit of espionage would contribute to the great Union disaster at Bull Run. At a time when the union general Irwin MacDowell couldn’t get a decent map of Virginia Beauregard had complete intelligence of his enemies movements and even read the Washington daily newspapers. Rose Greenhow was eventually arrested and her home turned into a women’s prison.

1862- THE WILD RIDE OF THE C.S.S. ARKANSAS- Union Admiral David Farragut (the 'Damn the Torpedoes!' guy) had moved his big battle fleet up the Mississippi above the Confederate fortress town of Vicksburg and was preparing to bombard the town. Southern Captain Issac Brown was told he would take command of an ironclad called the Arkansas, and sailed it right into the middle of the Union navy, firing on all sides. One ship attacked 34 warships! Farragut was taking a nap and was so surprised he fought the battle in his nightshirt. Although pounded by dozens of heavy cannonballs Brown's homemade ironclad not only held up but she inflicted so much damage on Farragut's wooden ships he was forced to leave Vicksburg and retreat to the Gulf. At one point Capt. Brown was knocked senseless by some shrapnel and when he woke up he had been laid out on a pile of dead corpses. But he had done his job. No further attempts to attack Vicksburg occurred until the end of that year. One ship had defeated a navy.

1870 -The Hudson's Bay Company sells Prince Rupertland to Canada, which was the entire Canadian west from the Ontario border to the Pacific and from the Montana border up to the Arctic Circle. Up to then it had been a corporate businessman's dream, the largest land mass ever managed by a board of directors, almost as large as the United States. The Hudson's Bay CEO, Sir Roger Simpson had been called the 'Emperor Simpson' by his detractors. Canada suddenly became bi-coastal. But the French-Indian fur trappers called the Metiz understood the threat Anglo town settlers would bring to their way of life and rose in revolt under their leader Louis Riel.

1882- In Springfield Illinois “The Crazy Old Lady” who lived along in the big house with the curtains always drawn finally died. Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln had always been high strung and a little paranoid. Now, her spirit was broken by her husbands murder and all of her children dying of various illnesses except her eldest son Robert. And he kept trying to get her committed to a lunatic asylum before she spent all of their family fortune. Mary wore nothing but black, constantly wept, packed and unpacked trunks all day and lived on chloral hydrate, opium and other narcotics. This day she finally got her fondest wish, to join her husband and family in death.

1938- Popeye cartoon "With the Jeep" introduced Eugene the Jeep. The funny little character later gave it’s name to the army’s new General Purpose Vehicle, the G.P. or Jeep.

1941- President Franklin Roosevelt sent federal mediator Stanley White to try and solve the labor strike between Walt Disney and his cartoonists.

1953- English serial killer Jack Christie was executed. In his home at Number 10 Rillington Place police found the bodies of several women buried in the garden. Two bodies weren’t even Christies, they were credited to an abortionist who was a previous tenant who had botched two and they died of internal bleeding.

1953- The film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes premiered starring Marylyn Monroe and Jane Russell.

1971- Producer Steve Krantz announced the production of the first X-rated cartoon, Fritz the Cat, to be directed by newcomer Ralph Bakshi.

1979- THE OIL CRISIS. In a nationwide address, President Jimmy Carter laid out the oil/gas crisis. He stated flatly that the U.S. and the world would be trapped in a dependence on diminishing stocks of foreign oil unless we moved fast to develop solar and other alternative fuels immediately. The next President, Ronald Reagan, ignored Carter’s initiatives and tore off the solar panels from the White House.
And no problems since then, eh, boys & girls?

1982-Coca-Cola introduced Diet Coke. Coke officials are proud of the fact that within a year it's sales top that of Tab, but Tab was owned by Coke as well.( duh..?)

1997- Famed clothing designer Gianni Versace was murdered outside his Miami mansion by a deranged serial killer on a spree since leaving Minnesota. The killer, Andrew Cunanan, was later found in a houseboat with a self inflicted bullet in his head.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Citizen! Complete the sentence:” Liberte’, Egalite”-----?

Answer: Fraternite’- Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood.

Quiz: Citizen! Complete the sentence:” Liberte’, Egalite”-----?

Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was Marie of Romania?
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History for 7/14/2010
Birthdays: Issac Bashevis Singer, Mr. Maytag, inventor of the electronic washing machine-1857, Emiline Pankhurst, Woody Guthrie, Gerald Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Jerry Rubin, Scott Rudin, Rosie Grier, Harry Dean Stanton is 84, Polly Bergen, Gustav Klimt, Terry Thomas, Jimmy Hoffa, Dave Fleischer, Bill Hanna, Walt Stanchfield, Joel Silver producer of the Matrix movies. Vincent ( Big Pussy) Pastore

1415-Joanna II, Queen of Naples called Joanna la Loca (Crazy Joanie), allows the prostitutes of Avignon to form their own guild. Solidarity Forever.

1789-BASTILLE DAY-THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. In France the anger of the common people over economic hardship and arrogant indifference of the King and nobility finally exploded in mass violence. The focus of the people’s hate was the Bastille, a huge fortress- prison that towered over Paris rooftops, her cannon aimed at the people in the streets. The Parisians got guns and stormed the prison. Ironically, the royal prefect was intending to phase out the prison anyway. When the gates were opened only a handful of petty thieves came out, including a lunatic who shouted:" I am God! " But the symbolism was what counted.

Miles away at Versailles, King Louis XVI had just written in his diary- July 14th 1789-" Nothing" when he heard the commotion. He said:" What is that? A revolt?" The Duke de la Rochfoucauld said:" No Sire, a revolution!"

1790- On the first anniversary of the French Revolution, the U.S. Congress voted a celebration in solidarity with a fellow republic.

1791- The Irish rebel Wolftone stands on the heights above Dublin and swears eternal opposition to the English. This is considered the legendary birth of the IRA.

1793- Charlotte Corday stabs French Revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat in his bathtub. Marat had to receive callers in his tub because of a skin affliction. He was known for sayings like "If we cut off a thousand heads today, it saves us cutting off ten thousand tomorrow!" and:"We'll strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest!" Corday was the daughter of one of his victims, a moderate politician called a Girondist. Young artist Madame Tussaud was allowed to make a death mask of Marat while still in the tub and David's painting shows him expiring with a Christ-like calm.

1798- President John Adams signed the ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS, which stated you could be jailed, and if an immigrant deported, for saying anything critical of the U.S. government. Outraged Thomas Jefferson said he was afraid to write down his views anymore in the face of such a law. Despite the obvious conflict with basic Constitutional rights, the Alien and Sedition Acts were never successfully challenged in court. In 1801 the time limit on the Acts were allowed to elapse without renewal and incoming President Jefferson pardoned all those jailed under them. The Acts come up every now and again when politicians need a legal precedent for jailing someone, like during the McCarthy period of the 1950’s. In 1998 they were alluded to when Judge Kenneth Starr wanted to jail people who wouldn’t cooperate in his Monica Lewinsky scandal probe, and in 2003 in the debate over the Patriot Acts.

1849-BLACK SHIP DAY-Commodore Perry sailed into Yedo Bay and convinced the Japanese to open trade by threatening to bombard Yokohama. This ended Japan's 300 year old isolation from the outside world. The Shogun's envoys receive the Americans by laying straw mattes under their feet and talking to them in a special pavilion. The Yankees thought this was special treatment but actually after they left the mattes and building were burned so they could say the foreigner's feet never polluted Japanese soil.

1850 - 1st public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration

1853 – In emulation of the London World Exposition at the Crystal Palace the 1st US World's fair opens at the Crystal Palace NY.

1862- Every old sailors worst nightmare came true. This day the US Navy did away with the sailors daily rum ration, in effect outlawing all alcohol on a ship except for medicinal purposes. Spirits were the preferred drink on ships since ancient times because drinking water could give you a myriad of diseases: cholera, dysentery, etc. but no bugs can live in alcohol.

1863- After their defeat at Gettysburg Robert E. Lee's Confederate army finally crossed the Potomac back to the safety of Virginia. Abe Lincoln was furious that his victorious General George Meade wouldn't pursue the defeated rebels and finish them off before they could escape, maybe shortening the Civil War by a year. But the cautious General Meade thought his own army too exhausted and didn’t want to press his luck. Meade then angered Lincoln further by issuing a public thanks to his army for" Driving the Enemy off our soil." Lincoln responded:" Pennsylvania is our soil, but so is Virginia! They are not a foreign army !" Lincoln superceded Meade in authority with Grant who kept him in a secondary role.

1868-Seward's Folly- Congress authorized the purchase of Alaska from Russia.

1881-BILLY THE KID SHOT- Fort Sumner New Mexico sheriff Pat Garrett hid in a closet in the Kid's hotel room and shot him in the back as he was taking his boots off. Billy's last words were:" Who's there?" Backshooting was how Billy killed most of his victims. He was 21. After firing off his guns Pat Garret panicked and rushed out into the street without waiting to see their effect. Billy had such a lethal reputation that a small crowd stood in fear outside his room for nearly an hour until they were sure the Kid wasn't just playing possum but was really dead. Even though Garret was practically illiterate he wrote several best selling books on the incident, heavily exaggerated by pulp ghostwriter Ned Buntine. Eventually Pat Garret too was backshot, this time in an argument over some goats on his ranch.

1882- Gunfighter Johnny Ringo found dead in Turkey Canyon Arizona. Ringo was not part of the Gunfight at the OK Corral but he later called out Doc Holliday. Wyatt Earp claimed he had hunted down Ringo and killed him, but the court ruled it a suicide.

1892- Civil War veterans who were wounded in service were awarded a $50 pension by the government. Female nurses of that conflict were awarded a $12 pension. Satirical writer and social critic Ambrose Bierce returned his money with the note" Thank you but this was not part of the original contract when I signed on to become an assassin for my Country."

1908- The Adventures of Dollie premiered, the first movie of D.W. Griffith.

1914 - 1st patent for liquid-fueled rocket design granted to Dr Robert Goddard. Goddard did some schooling at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA... until he blew up the chemistry building and they kicked him out. (He then went down the road to a field in the town of Auburn to fire that first successful liquid-fueled rocket.) After he became famous, WPI named the new building after him. The air pressure inside that building is kept lower than the outside pressure via a large pump in the basement... so that if the building were ever exploded again, it would implode and reduce collateral damage. It makes the outside doors really tough to open! In l939 when the US government decided to take over the Guggenheim financed rocket experiments at Cal Tech and form the Jet Propulsion Labs they invited Goddard to join them. But Goddard didn’t want to lose his special status in his own labs by becoming a government scientist so he declined the offer.

1918- Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest son of Teddy Roosevelt became a fighter pilot in World War One. On this day he was shot down and killed. Teddy Roosevelt loved to brag about the manly virtues of war and as President continually rattled his saber at the world. But his own baby boy's death brought him down to earth and broke his spirit.
Teddy was never the same again and died within a year.

1921-Sacco & Vancetti convicted. These men were Italian immigrants and socialists who were accused of the murder of a Massachusetts storeowner. The evidence was slight but hey, they were foreigners and espoused lefty politics. Despite protests around the world from folks like Picasso, George Bernard Shaw and Helen Keller they were electrocuted. Folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a dozen ballads in tribute to Sacco & Vancetti." Let me sing you a ballad of Sacco-Vancetti, pour me some wine and eat some spaghetti..."

1933- "Well Blow Me Down"- Max Fleischer's first "Popeye the Sailor" cartoon debuted. Vaudvillian Red Pepper Sam provided his salty mumbles throughout the post-sync track. When Sam asked for more money than Max Fleischer thought he was worth, he replaced him with assistant animator Jack Mercer, who was the voice ever after.

1946 - Dr Ben Spock's "Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care" published

1948- The Israeli Army overran Nazareth.

1951 - 1st color telecast of a sporting event (CBS-horse race)

1951 –Triple Crown Winner Citation becomes 1st horse to win $1,000,000 in races.

1955-The Kaarman Ghia debuted. Volkswagen wanted an "image car" to compete with the sleek American designs like the Corvette and Thunderbird. So they subcontracted the Kaarman motorbus company who engaged an Italian design firm named Ghia and the distinctive little coupe was born.

1958- The last King of Iraq, Feisal II was overthrown and killed by a coup of army officers led by General Kassim. Feisals family was Jordanian, they were placed in Iraq by the British in the 1920’s to make up for losing the Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) to the house of Saud.

1967 - The new band called the Who began a US tour as the opening act for Herman’s Hermits.

1969- El Salvador and Nicaragua go to war over a soccer match.

1978- Lee Iacocca, exec in charge of the invention of the Ford Mustang, was fired by Ford Motor Co. Henry Ford III said :"I just don’t like the man." Today after resurrecting the Chrysler Corporation and KookARoo Chicken restaurants, the retired Iacocca is a spokesman for Chysler.

1980- The Republican Convention nominated former California Governor, actor and SAG president Ronald Reagan. The GOP under Robert Strauss & Lee Atwater completed restructuring itself after the disaster of Watergate by creating a new-conservative alliance of Sunbelt Evangelicals and Southern Dixiecrats. Regular Republican stalwarts who disagreed with the ultra conservative agenda- Rockefeller, Goldwater, Nixon were out. At 69 Reagan was the oldest man to ever run for the presidency until McCain in 2008. Reagan said of the convention:" It’s the first time in a long while I saw myself on television in prime time." Someone asked old Hollywood mogul Jack Warner "what do you think of Ronald Reagan for President?" Warner replied:" Nah, Jimmy Stewart for President. Ronald Reagan for his best friend!"
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was Marie of Romania?

Answer: Marie of Romania was one of Queen Victorias’ granddaughters who married into the Romanian royal family. She was a bit of a Paris Hilton of pre-World War I social circles, always in the London Society news, and an early advocate of the Ba'Hai faith.




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Quiz: Who was Marie of Romania?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: : Who was the last British monarch not born in the British Isles?
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History for 7/13/2010
Birthdays: French Admiral Bailly de Suffren, Cheech Marin, Father Flannagan, Cameron Crowe, Woye Solenka, Dave Garroway, Jack Kemp, Chef Paul Prudhomme, Michael Spinks, Film special effects artist Jim Danforth, Dr. Erno Rubik inventor of the Rubik’s Cube, Patrick Stewart is 69, Harrison Ford is 67, Tom Kenny the voice of Spongebob Squarepants is 48


1704- BLENHEIM-the great battle in Bavaria where the Duke of Marlborough destroyed the French army of Louis XIV. In the three centuries since Agincourt the reputation of English arms had faded in Continental Europe, preoccupied as they were by their internal Wars of the Roses and English Civil Wars. While the British Navy's reputation was growing, on land King William III trusted his Dutch generals more than his British. Blenheim changed all that. In one day Britain became the dominant powerbroker in Europe. John Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough was the great ancestor of Winston Churchill.

1787-THE NORTHWEST ORDINANCE PASSED- This unprecedented plan masterminded by Tom Jefferson stipulated that as new territory passed into the United States, their populations could organize their own government and enter the union as a state, an equal partner of the original older states. So Utah would have as much political power as Pennsylvania. Nothing like this had ever been imagined much less implemented. Before The Northwest Ordinance the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania were claiming all the land west of them to the Mississippi as their territory. Virginia even claimed the jurisdiction of Bermuda and Nassau in the Caribbean!

1798- Poet William Wordsworth visited Tinturn Abbey and was inspired to write his famous elegy on the ruins.

1832- Geologist Henry Schoolcraft discovered the source of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca, Minnesota.

1865- P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City burned down in a spectacular fire. Barnum rebuilt but after that one burned as well, he got the idea of getting into the circus business. In his American Museum , more a sitting menagerie and sideshow than a museum as we know it, Barnum invented the idea of advanced hype and created kiddie matinees.

1898-Giusseppi Marconi patents wireless transmissions, the Radio.

1923- Paleontologist George Olsen while digging in the Gobi Desert discovered the first fossilized dinosaur eggs.

1925- Walt Disney and Lillian Bounds marry. Lillian was one of the first female animation ink & paint artists.

1930- Six thousand people in formal evening wear crowded into London’s Albert Hall to hear a special message from Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. It was extra special, because everyone knew Conan-Doyle had died just five days ago. Arthur Conan-Doyle was an advocate of spiritualism. He declared if anyone could get a message through from beyond the grave, he would.

An empty chair was placed on stage in hopes of his apparition would take a seat. Hymns were sung and after long embarrassing silences, a clairvoyant medium claimed she could see Sir Arthur. Others saw nothing and thought it was all a big humbug.

1930 – David Sarnoff the head of the NBC radio network said in the NY Times that " The new invention of Television would be a theater in every home". Sounded crazy back then. Critics said it would require one room of the house be darkened, and they doubted people would just sit still that long.

1939- Frank Sinatra recorded his first album, this one with the Harry James Orchestra.

1949- Hollywood Studio exec David O. Selznick left his first wife Esther, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, to marry actress Jennifer Jones.

1960- Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts nominated for President by the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. The day continued with rounds of fierce backroom deals to decide the running mate. Although the Kennedys wanted Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri it finally was decided to go with Lyndon Johnson. He was the powerful Senate leader from Texas. Johnson had asked his Texas mentor Cactus Jack Garner if he should accept the job. Cactus Jack was Franklin Roosevelt’s Veep for his first two terms. The 90 year old Garner said:” Lyndon, the Vice Presidency ain’t worth a bucket a warm spit!” Bobby Kennedy considered offering Lyndon the Vice Presidency a token gesture to mollify his anger at losing the nomination. But he was surprised when Johnson accepted. Before going to Ciro’s with Frank Sinatra to celebrate the nomination, Presidential aide Kenny O’Donnell recalled JFK making the best of it:” The Vice Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m forty three and I don’t plan to die in office….”

1977- The Great New York City Blackout of '77. For the second time in 20 years the whole darn East Coast power grid breaks down. Unlike the 1964 Blackout it was much longer, much hotter, and there was no full moon to illuminate the city. My wife Pat remembers being in the Bronx on the phone to her boyfriend in Hoboken, when her lights went out. She told him and he raced to the Jersey shore just in time to see the Skyline of Manhattan blacking out a section at a time like a huge set of dominoes. The next day posh Eastside clubs had guys drive to Jersey for ice so they could offer a cold cocktail on the sidewalk for $25 each. There was some looting and other civil disturbances and at the same time the lunatic killer the Son of Sam was on the prowl. No wonder they called it Fun City!

1985- Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldorf organized a massive live concert called LIVE AID. Televised and seen by 1.5 billion people, it raised money for African famine relief. Madonna, Santanna, Paul MacCartney, The Beach Boys and reunions of Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who and Led Zeppelin.

1985- A cancerous growth was removed from President Ronald Reagan’s colon. Comic Paul Rodriguez said:” Reagan is amazing: He got cancer in his nose, he got cancer in his butt, he got shot full of bullets- he’s like the Terminator President.”
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Yesterday’s Question: Who was the last British monarch not born in the British Isles?

Answer: King George II was born in Hanover Germany, he spoke German before he learned English. His father George Ist had said : The English have asked me to rule them, not to speak to them.