May 6th, 2010 thurs
May 6th, 2010

Quiz: Composers Johannes Brahms and Peter Tchaikovsky had the same birthday. Did they ever collaborate on any projects together?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What do Senator Joe Leiberman, Benedict Arnold and Faisal Shahzad all have in common?
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History for 5/6/2010
Birthdays: Maximillien Robespierre, Sigmund Freud, Rudolph Valentino, Orson Welles, Robert Peary, Willie Mays, Stewart Granger*, Bob Seger, Toots Schoor, Weeb Ewbank, Andriana Caselotti- the voice of Snow White, Ruben Hurricane Carter, Christian Clavier, Tony Blair, George Clooney is 50,

1527- THE SACK OF ROME- Pope Clement VII "the Medici Fox" played the diplomatic tango with the world powers a bit too clumsily and Emperor Charles V of Spain, Holland and Germany launched an army at Rome. Charles gave his general Charles De Bourbon a hangman's noose dipped in gold, a "Golden Rope to Hang the Pope" The Vatican armies were led by the late Pope Julius's bastard son Maria Della Rovere who didn't like Clement so he kept his army out of the whole war. The city of Rome’s defense was organized by the artist Benevenuto Cellini. He managed to get off one shot before escaping out the back door and that shot killed Charles de Bourbon, so now a loot crazed mercenary army with no commander was let loose in the richest city in Europe. The troops pillaged for months, only the plague drove them out. Many of the troops were newly converted Protestants, so they looked forward to despoiling the Great Whore of Rome. They entered the orphanage of Santo Spirito and slaughtered all the patients, then ran into St. Peters and massacred all the harmless people who sought sanctuary there. They dressed a donkey in cardinals robes, proclaimed Martin Luther pope and made campfires in the Sistine chapel-which is why the fresco was darkened by smoke. Pope Clement escaped the golden rope, but the Vatican never regained the power it once had and popes actually started to concentrate on spiritual stuff!

1682-THE GLOUCESTER DISASTER- The good ship Gloucester was carrying the Duke of York and his court back from Scotland when it struck a reef off Norfolk and sank. It was said the good Duke, who would soon be King James II, courageously stayed until it was almost too late then escaped in a longboat. Later the Duke of Marlborough revealed in letters to his wife that if James had left sooner instead of worrying about his image they might have been able to save more people. As it was James took the only longboat and filled it with his luggage, hunting dogs and priest. He then posted guards with drawn swords to keep anyone else coming on board. James and only 40 people survived while 300 perished with the ship. Later as King James II he was overthrown and driven into exile with the help of Marlborough.

1793- American artist Gilbert Stuart arrived back home after a stay in Europe dead broke. In the Age of Gainsborough, Romney and West, Stuart didn’t do so well. He left America because he was tired of being pestered to do copies of his famous portrait of George Washington, the one that is currently on our dollar bill.

1862- Henry David Thoreau dies at age 44. When his sister asked him :"Have you made your peace with God?" Thoreau replied:" I was unaware that we had ever quarreled."
His last words as he faded away were “Moose…Indian…”

1882 -Congress passed the First Chinese Exclusion Act.

1903-A bronze plaque was attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. On it was a poem The New Colossus by a young Jewish immigrant woman named Emma Lazarus. She was disturbed by the Anti-Semitic violence in Russia and wrote this inspired by the symbol of the Statue. “Give Me your Tired, Your Poor..” The French creators had intended the Statue of Liberty to symbolize political liberty but Lazarus’s poem had confirmed the Statue as“ The Mother of Exiles ”.

1915-Babe Ruth hits his first home run. He was a Boston Red Sox pitcher at the time. He will finish his career with 714 home runs, a record that held for decades until Hank Aaron.

1919- Seattle dockworkers go on strike refusing to load weapons destined to fight fellow workers in the Russian Revolution.

1919- Wizard of Oz creator L.Frank Baum died of heart disease at 62. He was trying at the time to buy real estate in Los Angeles for an Oz- theme amusement park.

1937-The Giant Zeppelin Graf HINDENBURG EXPLODED while landing in Lakehurst New Jersey. Despite the horrible film images 63 of the 90 passengers and crew escaped.
People to this day aren’t sure what happened, from an igniting from static electricity to an anti-nazi saboteur firing a flare gun into the hydrogen gas bags. The explosion originated behind the large swastika on the tail. The previous year a visit from a German luxury liner the S.S. Bremen caused a riot on the New York City docks as demonstrators fought police to tear the hated Nazi flag down. It was possible at that time to fly a dirigible with non flammable helium, but it was much more expensive than hydrogen and the worlds chief supplier of helium, the United States, was reluctant to sell Hitler that much of the strategic chemical. The American ground crew wanted to give a gift to the German captain who was dying of 3rd degree burns, so they presented him with an engraved cigarette lighter! (tacky) My grandparents told me they drove out to see the wreckage with a huge crowd. Even though it was still smoldering people were prying chunks off it for souvenirs.
Zeppelins were once supposed to be moored to the top of the Empire State Building but that never came about. By 1939 Goring ordered all remaining zeppelins and hangers scrapped for their valuable materials.

1937- THE FLEISCHER STRIKE-Cartoonists vote to strike Max Fleischers Studio after Max fires 13 animators for union activity and complaining about the 6 day work week.
The strike was settled several weeks later when parent company Paramount forced Max to concede. Strikers sang "We're Popeye the Union Man! We're Popeye the Union Man! We'll Fight to the Finish, Cause We Can't Live on Spinach ! We're Popeye...etc."

1937- The Society of Motion Picture Art Directors formed.

1941- A friend of Bob Hope who was now in the military suggested the comedian come and entertain troops on their army post. Hope takes the suggestion and it becomes his signature event. Into his eighties he entertained servicemen around the world in five wars.

1945- Just as exhausted GI’s in Germany were beginning to celebrate the end of the war in Europe, an announcement in Stars & Stripes newspaper gave them the bad news that they won’t be demobilized and go home until Japan was defeated as well! European armies were scheduled for the invasion of the Japanese home islands if the atomic bombs didn’t work.

1946- Curly Howard, was the most outrageous of the comedy troupe The Three Stooges.
While people laughed at his antics, he lived a wild Hollywood life, lots of clubs, drinking, smoking and girls. This day while filming the short Halfwits Holiday, he suffered a massive stroke. He was 42. He survived 6 more years in deteriorating health, moved from hospital to hospital by his brothers. He died in 1952 at age 48.

1949-EDSAC invented in England. The first computer that could store data in it’s memory.

1954- Oxford student Roger Bannister ran the first Four Minute Mile. His time was 3:59.04.

1994- The Channel Tunnel or Chunnel opened between Folkestone England and Calais France.

2001- Variety reported that the Walt Disney Company in promoting their upcoming summer film Pearl Harbor, had canceled plans for Pearl Harbor Happy Meals at MacDonalds, as being in bad taste. …..Hmmm…do ya think..?

2003- A tornado destroyed the factory in Jackson, Tennessee that produced most of the world’s supply of Pringles Potato Chips.
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Yesterday’s Question: What do Senator Joe Leiberman, Benedict Arnold and Faisal Shahzad all have in common?

Answer: They were all residents of Connecticut.


May 5th, 2010 weds.
May 5th, 2010

Quiz: What do Senator Joe Leiberman, Benedict Arnold and Faisal Shahzad all have in common?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below; Why are newspaper reporters and photographers called Paparazzi??
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History for 05/05/2010
Birthdays: Tyrone Power, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Cochrane called Nellie Bly, Soren Kierkegard, Alice Faye, James Beard, Michael Palin, Pat Carroll the voice of Ursula is 83, Patrick Ewing, John Rhys Davies, Lance Henriksen,

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.

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.

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. 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. When the news reached England, King George IV was in the middle of trying to get divorced from his estranged wife Queen Caroline so he could marry his mistress. When an aide announced to him :"Sire! Your Majesty's greatest enemy has died !" George replied: " She is-? Oh, Thank the Lord !"

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 begins 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.! 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.

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 testified before Joseph McCarthy’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee HUAC and named names. 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.

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: Why are newspaper reporters and photographers called Paparazzi?

Answer: In his 1960 film La Dolce Vita, Frederico Fellini created a rapacious news photographer who’ll stop at nothing to get a shot of a celebrity. He named him Paparazzo after Italian slang for an annoying mosquito. Since then, the name has been given to the mass of predatory journalists who go beyond all taste and dignity to get a cheap sensationalist scoop. In other words, most of the modern media.


May 4th, 2010 tues.
May 4th, 2010

Quiz: Why are newspaper reporters and photographers called Paparazzi?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is a Rube Goldberg device?
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History for 5/4/2010
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 56, Howard Da Silva , Tammy Wynette, Randy Travis, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, George Will, Richard Jenkins is 63

Happy Birthday Howard da Silva, my favorite blacklisted, lefty Ben Franklin!

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 taking him to Asia.

1521- Martin Luther had been invited under a safe passport by Emperor Charles V to come to the Imperial Court at Wurms and explain himself. This was still very dangerous because all recalled a generation ago Czech reformer Jan Hus was similarly invited, then burned at the stake. Shortly after Luther openly defied both Pope and Emperor he was kidnapped and disappeared. Liberals like Erasmus and Albrecht Durer were shocked, but it was all turned out to be a charade. Luther’s protector Frederick the Wise of Saxony was concerned Luther would be arrested, so he arranged to spirit him away into hiding at the Wartburg Castle in Eisenbach until things cooled down. Martin Luther changed out of his monks clothes, grew a beard and called himself Junker Karl.

1715- A French inventor demonstrated the first folding umbrella.

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,
but also to get the promotion to flag rank always denied him by the US Navy. He
even sent word of this admiralty post back to ambassador Thomas Jefferson in
Paris hoping it would impress the U.S. Government to grant him the coveted
title.

It didn't work . Congress had scrapped what there was of the US Navy after
the Revolution and Jones had too many enemies among the old New England salts. Considering he was the most famous Yankee afloat they wouldn’t even make him an admiral as an honorary title. The first man to be made an admiral in the US Navy was David Dixon Farragut in 1862.

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 writing like novels. But English 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 and 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.

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- Forty Years Ago- 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 afterwards 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!"

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.

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 Philipino AMA Computer College graduate student as part of his thesis.

2001- Bonnie Lee Bakely, 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. It is still on appeal. Why did Robert Blake bring a gun to his dinnertable? I guess it’s if the waiters get snippy or something.

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Yesterday’s Question: What is a Rube Goldberg device?

Answer: Reader David Brain said it elegantly: Rube Goldberg drew a comic panel that illustrated very complicated assembly line machinery that accomplished some silly objective. There were ropes, pulleys, shoes on hinged sticks and poles, balls on threads, donkeys that kick when there nose is tickled with a feather, that sort of thing.

Today when some machinery seems overly complicated, flimsy and untrustworthy it is called a Rube Goldberg devise.


May 3rd, 2010 mon.
May 3rd, 2010

Question: What is a Rube Goldberg device?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Who said “Non Angli, sed angeli” and what was he on about?
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History for 5/3/2010
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 is 35, Christina Hendricks is 35

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 the Great 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!


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 .
His Lordship, the Governor
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.

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.

1888- Poem "Casey at the Bat" published.

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

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 and a World War 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.

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 "Biancas Bliss" and "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: Who said “Non Angli, sed angeli” and what was he on about?

Answer: St. Pope Gregory the Great around 604AD, saw two young English boys being sold as slaves. When he asked who they were, he was told they were Angles. He said:” Those are not Angles, those are Angels. He soon dispatched St Augustine of Canterbury to accelerate the conversion of the British Isles.


May 2nd, 2010 sun.
May 2nd, 2010

Quiz: Who said “Non Angli, sed angeli” and what was he on about?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: Okay Animation people- Who were Wayne Alwine, Clarence Nash and Pinto Colvig?
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History for 5/2/2010
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 38

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 and a 1930's movie about the founders with Paul Muni with an outrageous French-Canadian accent: " Come Jacques! Let us go where ze beaver she eez thick!"

1797- One of the marvels of Europe today is the preservation of the City of Venice. Beyond an occasional flood Venice never had a great fire or destruction by war. Many of the buildings are as old as Notre Dame. Venice was a naval power so all of her wars were fought out at sea. Venice was besieged once by Pepin the son of Charlemagne in 967AD, this day in 1797 Napoleon pursuing his conquest of Italy declared war on the Venetian Republic. They immediately surrendered.

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.

1813- Battle of Lutzen- Napoleon whups the Prussians.

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.

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- After the suicide of Adolf Hitler, the German ambassador to Dublin was summoned to President Eamon De Valera's office. He was given an official note of condolence on the loss of their head of state. The neutral Irish Republic became the only nation on Earth to send The Third Reich a sympathy card.

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 Capone and Lucciano functioned unmolested. Some say 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 Pearl Harbor attack.

1982- The 24 hour Weather Channel started.
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Yesterday’s Question: Okay Animation people- Who were Wayne Alwine, Clarence Nash and Pinto Colvig?

Answer: The voices of Mickey, Donald and Goofy.


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