Question: What time period is known as the Jacobean Era?

Quiz: When Franklin Roosevelt said in his 1933 inaugural “ The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself!” What was he talking about? Fear of Nazis? The boogeyman?
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history for 3/5/2010
Birthdays: Henry III of England, Gionanni Batista Tiepolo, Explorer Le Sieur de Cadillac the founder of Detroit, Hector Villa-Lobos, Howard Pyle, William Oughtred 1574- inventor of the Slide Rule," Red Rosa" Luxemburg, Rex Harrison, Dean Stockwell, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 55, Eva Mendes is 36

493 A.D. -BARBARIAN PEACE SUMMIT- Theodoric the Visigoth invited Odoacer, King of the Germans in Italy to a peace conference. On a pre-arranged signal two Goths held Odoacer's hands pretending to shake them, then Theodoric whipped out his sword and sliced Odoacer in half. He said of his sword stroke: "Surely the mother of this knave hath made him with gristle, for I find no bones in his body." Peace was achieved.

1496- English King Henry VII hired Italian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) to go explore this New World that the Spanish were going on about.

1534- Renaissance painter Correggio died when after an argument in the cathedral of Parma with his patrons paid him with sacks of pennies. He grew overheated carrying them all home and died of a fever at age 45.

1616- The Holy Office of the Inquisition published its verdict on the new scientific ideas of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. It read:"The idea that the Earth goes around the Sun is Foolish, Philosophically Erroneous and Heretical since it contradicts Holy Scripture. The idea that the Earth revolves on its axis is also Ridiculous and Heretical." Galileo’s writings were not removed from the Index of Banned Books until 1835.

1717- Giovanni Tiepolo joined the Guild of Saint Lawrence, the artists union in Rome.

1759- Francois Voltaire’s most famous satire on religion and hypocrisy- Candide- was published. It was immediately ordered publicly burned by the regional parliaments of Geneva and Paris. This only increased its popularity. To stay out of trouble Voltaire first refused to admit he was the author:" People must have lost their senses to attribute to me that pack of nonsense! I have, Thanks God, better occupations."

1770- THE BOSTON MASSACRE- A snowball fight near some British sentries turned into an ugly anti-British riot that made the redcoats open fire on the crowd. African American Crispus Attucks among several others were killed. Radical publisher Sam Adams inflated the incident into the Boston Massacre. The British authorities were accommodating enough to allow the soldiers put on trial in a colonial civilian court. The soldiers were defended by a young Boston lawyer named John Adams. They were all acquitted.

1836- At the Alamo, as the Mexican army of Santa Anna prepared for their final attack, legend has it Colonel Travis gathered the remaining defenders. He drew a line in the sand with his sword and asked all who wished to stay and fight to the bitter end to cross it. All crossed but one. He was an elderly Frenchman named Louis Rose, who slipped out through the lines to safety. Rose was a veteran of Napoleon's army and had fought at Moscow and Waterloo. I guess he felt he had made enough history for one lifetime. At dusk, 16 year old rider James Allen slipped out of the Alamo to bring the doomed men’s last message to the outside world.

1853- Harry Steinway & Sons began their piano making company.

1863- The U.S. Army finally admits having the men do their own cooking was bad for morale, as well as their digestion. The first field kitchens with real cooks set up.

1868- Englishman C.H. Gould patented the first stapler.

1891- The town council of Phoenix Arizona offered a bounty of $200 for every dead Indian brought in, and they didn’t care how they came to be dead.

1913- The day after his inauguration, President Woodrow Wilson began filling his cabinet. Secretary of the Navy Dearing proposed as Assistant Secretary of the Navy a young New York assemblyman named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wilson said:" Most Roosevelts I know try to run everything, but this fellow is a capitol idea!"

1918- Lenin moved the capitol of Russia from Petrograd- Saint Petersburg back to Moscow.

1922- F.W. Murnau’s eerie film Nosferatu premiered in Berlin.

1933- The day after his inauguration President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders a nationwide "Bank Holiday", a nice way of saying shut the whole darn system down to stop the panic and slide. One third of all U.S. banks had already collapsed. Roosevelt moved so fast, throwing program after program to combat the Great Depression, that his first 100 days in office became legendary, and now the media use it as a litmus to measure other presidents against.

1937- SPITFIRE. The first flight of Britain’s most famous fighter plane, the Supermarine Spitfire Mark II. Designer B. J. Mitchell fought red tape and outdated thinking on the army’s requisition board. He died of exhaustion and heart failure at 42, never knowing that his Spitfire would become the decisive tool in winning the air war over Britain, and saving his country from Nazi invasion.

1963- Country singer Patsy Cline died in plane crash near Camden Tenn. Also killed were Country stars Cowboy Copas and Hacksaw Hawkins.

1973, New York Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson make a stunning declaration. The left-handers announce that they have traded each others wives, children, houses, even their family dogs.

1982-31 year old Comedian John Belushi died of drug overdose at Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip. He had done twenty heroin-cocaine speedballs in just 24 hours. A woman named Cathy Smith was charged with administering to him the fatal dose. Robin Williams was with him that night partying also but left early. Someone scrawled on Belushi’s tombstone:"You could have given us more laughs.....But NNNOOOO!

1995- Vivian Stanstall, lead singer for the Bonzo Dog Band, died in a fire in his London flat. He had been smoking in bed.

2004- Communist China changes it’s constitution to say that private property is now OK.
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Yesterday’s Question: When Franklin Roosevelt said in his 1933 inaugural “ The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself!” What was he talking about? Fear of Nazis? The boogeyman?

Answer: FDR was talking about the fear through the country of the collapsing economy during the Great Depression. Bank failures made people run to their safe banks and withdraw all their money for fear of losing it. This caused those banks to fail as well. Roosevelt needed to reassure the public that the economic system was sick, but not broken.

Quiz: When Franklin Roosevelt said in his 1933 inaugural “ The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself!” What was he talking about? Fear of Nazis? The boogeyman?

Yesterday’s Question: Hollywood trivia buffs: Who was Victor Fleming?
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History for 3/4/2010
Birthdays: King Henry II Plantagenet, Antonio Vivaldi, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, Count Pulaski, Miriam Makeba, Nancy Wilson, Bernard Haittink, John Garfield, Knute Rockne, Chastity Bono, prizefighter Ray Boom-Boom Mancini, Patsy Kensit. Katherine O’Hara is 56, James Ellroy

1152- Frederick Barbarossa made Emperor of Germany. Barbarossa means 'redbeard'. Barbarossa was the Richard Lionheart of Germany.

1517- HERNANDO CORTEZ LANDS IN MEXICO. With a hostile Viceroy of Cuba between him and Spain, and only 508 soldiers he resolves to attack the Aztec Empire of many millions. He even burns his ships to force his men to conquer or die.

1554- Queen Mary Tudor published a Royal edict repudiating her father Henry VIII’s religious reforms and restoring the Roman Catholic Faith to dominance in England. Protestantism and other “heresies” were forbidden. To those who didn’t agree she became Bloody Mary.

1647- As he realized he was losing the English Civil War, King Charles Ist sent his son Charles II and the rest of his immediate family abroad to Holland for safety. Today he saw them off. They would never see him alive again.

1681- King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn and his Quakers to found a colony in the New World-Penn wanted to name the new country "New Wales" because of its hills, but Charles disagreed. As a Quaker, Penn was too modest to have a whole colony named after him. Since the Merry Monarch was essentially paying off an old debt owed to Penn's father, Admiral Penn, who stayed loyal to him during Cromwell’s time, the king suggested the new colony be named after the FATHER. What else was there besides hills? Lots of forest-- mmm-- the King knew that woods in Latin is sylvania. Hey, how about Penn's Woods (honoring the FATHER, not son)-- thus was born Pennsylvania.. When His Majesty noticed the Quakers not removing their hats in his presence, King Charles removed his. William Penn asked: ”Sire, why dost thou remove thy hat?” The Merry Monarch replied:” Well, ONE of us is supposed to!”

1759- Madame la Pompadour secured the appointment of Etienne de Silhouette as Finance Minister. Silhouette tried to fix the chaotic economy of France by steep taxes of aristocrats and cutting back their privileges. Noblemen said they had been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. By November he was gone, people joking called him a shadow. Now the word silhouette means outline figure.

1791- Green Mountains, or in French Vermont territory became the 14th state. The first new state added to the original 13 colonies. Before then Vermonters had tried to be an independent country and once during the Revolution, Ethan Allen floated secret negotiations to sell Vermont back to the British.

TRADITIONAL PRESIDENTIAL INNAUGURATION DAY-1792-1933 "March Forth with a New President" (get it ?) Transportation being what it was in early America and the time it took to count votes and the Electoral College to ratify the election results, this seemed a convenient time. Inauguration ceremonies have been as simple as Tom Jefferson addressing a few guests indoors, then returning to have dinner by himself at Conrad's Tavern to George W. Bush's $40 million dollar 8 inaugural balls.
At Jefferson' inaugural John Adams was so mad he lost that he refused to attend the ceremony. Truman wouldn't speak to Eisenhower, Eisenhower wouldn't speak to Kennedy. In 1841 President William Henry Harrison insisted despite his great age on attending the ceremony without his hat and overcoat in the March chill and caught pneumonia and died a month later,the shortest term in office. His inaugural address was 2,000 words while George Washington's was 137. The wildest Inauguration was Andrew Jackson's in 1829. Common folks were invited into the White House and went wild breaking crystal, muddying the carpets and spitting tobacco juice on the floor, and the men were worse! Jackson jumped out of a back window to avoid being crushed and the butlers got the crowd out only by moving tubs of liquor onto the south lawn. At Abe Lincoln's second inaugural in 1865 he switched vice presidents. Outgoing v.p. Hannibal Hamlin encouraged new v.p. Andrew Johnson to calm his nerves with whiskey, knowing the man had a low tolerance for alcohol. So before Lincoln's beautiful speech 'With Malice Towards None, With Charity for All..." Johnson went up drunk- burbled incoherently and was seen dribbling on the Bible until Lincoln angrily ordered him pulled off the stage. In 1877 Rutherford Hayes wife "Lemonade-Lucy" banned all alcohol from the White House and it was said of the party:” Water flowed like Champagne!" In 1937 Franklin Roosevelt moved the inauguration date to the third week in January.

1836- Today General Santa Anna held a council of war to decide what to do about the Alamo. Many of his officers were against an attack. The Texans were cut off with little food and there was no help coming. The fort had no strategic importance. So why waste men? But Santa Anna wanted to make an example of these “Yankee Land Pirates”. He ordered a grand assault on the Alamo as soon as the preparations were completed.

1861- THE STARS & BARS. During the Civil War the Confederate army was having a problem with their flag. Their first design so closely resembled the United States flag that soldiers had trouble distinguishing one from the other in heavy battle smoke. Creole General Pierre Beaureguard put the ladies sewing circles of New Orleans on the problem and they came up with the familiar Confederate Stars & Bars design that still flies over some errant Statehouses today. When Old Dixie was defeated the original prototype flag was smuggled out to Cuba, but was eventually returned and today is in the Museum of the Confederacy in New Orleans.

1887- William Randolph Hearst buys the little San Francisco Examiner and builds the Hearst newspaper empire. Hearst’s father was owner of the famed Comstock mine and thought his son crazy for wasting his time with the penny-paper business. Hearst died in 1951 at age 88, leaving an estate of $160 million. Today Hearst publications is still 15 magazines and broadcast networks..

1887- The first Daimler motorcar introduced in Essenlingen Germany- the Daimler Benzin Motorcarriage. Daimler’s chief competition was the motor company of Dr Carl Benz. In 1899 Austrian Emile Jellinek invested heavily in Daimler’s motorcars provided he name them for his daughter Mercedes. Mercedes and Benz merged in 1926 but the two founders- Gottfried Daimler and Carl Benz never met face to face.

1902- AAA the Auto Club founded.

1917- Jeanette Rankin became the first female member of Congress.

1924- The song “Happy Birthday to You” copyrighted by Claydon Sunny.

1933- Franklin Roosevelt gave his famous speech“ The Only thing we have to fear is, Fear itself.” at his first inauguration.

1936- Screenwriter Dudley Nichols publicly refuses the Best Screenplay Oscar for John Ford’s “The Informer” as protest in support of the struggling Writer’s Guild.

1936- First flight of the German dirigible Graf Hindenburg.

1944- Louis Lepke Buchalter went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. Buchalter with Albert Anastasia headed the heavy enforcement arm of Lucky Lucciano’s New York Mafia Syndicate. Nicknamed “Murder Incorporated ”the Brooklyn gang committed at least 100 murders, including Dutch Schultz and Lucciano’s mentor Joe the Boss Masseria.

1946- Alex Raymond's comic strip 'Rip Kirby" premiered.

1952- Ronald Reagan married Nancy Davis at the Little Red Church on Coldwater Canyon blvd. in L.A. William Holden was best man.

1952- Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher:" I've completed a new novel. I think it's my best one to date." The Old Man and the Sea.

1956- Burger King introduced their signature hamburger the Whopper.

1958- U.S.S. Nautilus, first nuclear sub, reaches the North Pole under the ice cap.

1960-Famed American opera baritone Leonard Warren collapses and dies on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in the 2nd act of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino.

1961- In the early stages of filming Cleopatra in London actress Elizabeth Taylor developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. She would have died had not doctors at a convention at London’s Dorchester Hotel performed and emergency tracheotomy. When you seen the film today you can still see the tracheotomy scar at the base of her throat.

1976- Due to the intervention of San Francisco mayor George Moscone, the Giants will stay in city by the bay. In a last minute deal, the Stoneham family sells the team to Bob Lurie and Bud Herseth instead of the Labbatt's Brewery, which had planned to move the Giants to Canada.

1994- Basketball legend Michael Jordan comes to bat for the first time in a Chicago White Sox Baseball uniform. Jordan will give up baseball after one season and return to the NBA.

1994- comedian John Candy died of heart failure.

1997- The senate of Brazil allowed women to wear slacks to work.

2004- A New York court convicted interior decorating guru Martha Stewart of four counts of stock fraud. This was for dumping her stock in a pharmaceutical firm called InClone after getting an inside tip that their cancer cure didn’t work.
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Yesterday’s Question: Hollywood trivia buffs: Who was Victor Fleming?

Answer: He was the director of Gone With the Wind and the Wizard of Oz. Plus Captains Courageous, The Virginian and Treasure Island.

Quiz: Okay, Hollywood trivia buffs: Who was Victor Fleming?

Answer to yesterdays question below: Where is the Bay of Fundy?
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History for 3/3/2010
B-Dayz: George Pullman of Pullman Railroad cars, General Matthew Ridgeway, Jean Harlow, Diana Barrymore, Akira Ifukube the composer of the music scores to movies like Godzilla, Tone Loc, Jacky Joyner-Kersee, James Doohan, Bruno Bozzetto, Will Eisner, Herschel Walker, George Miller, Miranda Richardson is 52, Ronald Searle is 90

1517- Protestant reformer Martin Luther wrote the Pope in Rome a letter of submission and tried to make nice. But privately he told a friend” I am not sure whether the Pope is the AntiChrist or merely his Apostle.”

1764- Elderly King Louis XV appeared before the regional Parliament of Paris and re-affirmed in France he was absolute master:” In My Person alone resides the Sovereign Power…to me alone belongs the legislative power, unconditional and undivided. My people and I are one, all public order emanates from me.” No representative government stuff like England was going to happen while he was around. King Louis all but ensured that France would change only from violent revolution.

1820- The Missouri Compromise. Most of US politics of the early nineteenth century was seeing how long they could keep the Civil War from breaking out. Congress was evenly divided between slave states and free states, so every new state created caused a crisis. This day it was decided Missouri would be a slave state while Maine would be a free state and there would be no slave states north of Missouri in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territories.

1842- Massachusetts created a law trying to limit the workday for children under twelve to twelve hours a day only, but it is considered too liberal to be enforced.

1849- The US Department of the Interior established

1863- President Lincoln signed into law the National Conscription Act (the Draft).
The Confederate States had already started drafting the previous year. Rich men could get out of the army by paying $300 for a substitute. J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller and Theodore Roosevelt's father took this way out. Harvard-Yale games and varsity boat races went on throughout the Civil War with no loss of players. This angered the poor that the war was a rich man's game. Riots broke out in several cities. A popular song of the day "We are coming Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand Strong" was changed to "We are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Dollars More

1873- Under the Comstock Act, information on birth control is considered pornography and not permitted to be sent through the U.S. mail.

1875-Claude Bizet's opera CARMEN debuts. Parisians usually go to see comedies at the Opera Comique and most thought this would be about the adventures of a coquettish Spanish gypsy. Instead they saw one of the great dark dramas of opera, a story of sexual power and obsession. The shocking sight of a slutty gypsy smuggler getting knifed by a burnout soldier driven insane by sex was so upsetting it was booed and howled off the stage. Bizet never got over the fiasco, he died six months later. Carmen is now one of the world's most famous operas.

1875- HOCKEY- The first modern Hockey Game was played at the Victoria skating rink in Montreal Canada. No one is sure just how old hockey. In the 1700’s Micmac Indians played a game on bone skates using sticks and passed it on to the British garrison of Halifax Nova Scotia. The people of Windsor Nova Scotia claim hockey was invented there at Long Pond in 1844 from the Irish game of Stick & Ball. The first pucks were frozen horse droppings. No one is sure where the word Hockey came from, the nickname of some British officer or local schoolteacher perhaps.

1902-The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it's all right for the U.S. Government to ignore Indian treaties, if they do it in a nice way.

1934- Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger escaped from a Witchita jail by carving a gun out of soap (it was actually wood) and painting it with shoe polish. He said :"The jail hasn't been made that can hold me!"

1950-Paramount's "Quack-a-Doodle-Doo" The first Baby Huey cartoon.

1950-Don Herbert teaches millions of kids about science as televisions Mr.Wizard.

1973- THE BAR CODE. An ad-hoc committee of scientists from Proctor & Gamble and Nabisco and such announced the invention of the Universal Product’s Code- The Bar Code, that annoying little set of bars and numbers on everything you own or buy. No longer would stores have to close their doors periodically for inventory counting. But if you are a conspiracy fan its the way the Hidden Government and the guys in the black helicopters keep a record on everything you buy.

1980- Aetna Insurance reported in a newsletter having to pay damages for a man at a delicatessen who had a carp he was ordering jump off the counter and bite him in the leg.

1991- L.A.P.D officers beat up drunk and disorderly driver Rodney King. King had previous convictions and was tazed several times with a an electric shock but still fought back at police, who seemed to go berserk on him with their clubs just as a witness caught the incident on videotape. The incident and trials caused a scandal in Los Angeles and later the largest civilian riots in U.S. history. The LAPD is one third the size of the NYPD yet receives three times the civilian complaints.

2001- Despite worldwide outrage, the fundamentalist Taliban of Afghanistan began destroying their nations ancient giant stone Buddhas with dynamite, as graven images.
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Yesterdays question: Where is the Bay of Fundy?

Answer: between Nova Scotia and mainland Canada

Quiz: Where is the Bay of Fundy?

Yesterdays Question answered below: What does it mean when your nickname was The Posthumous? Does it mean you are born dead?
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history for 3/2/2010
Birthdays: Sam Houston, Alexander Graham Bell, Kurt Weill, Desi Arnaz ( Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III ), Ted Geisel aka Dr.Suess, Mikhail Gorbachov, Willis O'Brian, Moe Berg, Jon Bon Jovi, Karen Carpenter, Lou Reed, Jennifer Jones, John Cullum, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Senator Russell Feingold, Javier Bardem is 41

1820- It had been thought in modern times that the Pyramids in Egypt were solid monuments with no chambers. This day Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni discovered the long lost entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza and explored it’s corridors and burial chambers.

1836- TEXAS DECLARES INDEPENDANCE FROM MEXICO. In 1821 the Mexican Congress had given Yankee settlers permission to live in the under-populated northern province of Teijas. Soon there were 3,000 Tejanos to 100,000 Yanquis living there. After a military coup in 1833 brought General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to power conditions in the outer provinces got harsh. Taxes were bad and the army sent to police them were drawn from the dregs, usually convicts. Mexico also wanted the American settlers to liberate their black slaves. When settlers leader Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to complain he was immediately jailed for fomenting insurrection. The Republic of Texas independence declaration was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos. One of the signers there was John Wheeler Bunton, the Great Grand-Uncle of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson.
Washington had had their eyes on Texas for years; some say Sam Houston had planned this move long ago with his mentor President Andy Jackson. But the Texas revolt was as much a revolt of the ethnic Mexican Teijanos as the gringos. Similar revolts broke out at the same time in California and Jalixsco, but we remember Texas mostly because it succeeded.

1863- The Union Pacific Railroad adopted a standard track width of 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches. This width became the standard for the United States and later for most of the railroads of the world. Although train travel was invented in Britain, Europe was slow to adapt to it, while America, Russia and India rapidly embraced a technology that could quickly cover it’s vast distances quickly.

1917-CZAR NICHOLAS II ABDICATED THE THRONE OF RUSSIA with a note scribbled in pencil. He had tried to abdicate in favor of his younger brother Archduke Michael as regent for his son Alexis, and save the dynasty. But Michael wanted none of it and the revolutionary forces tearing at Russian society. He ignored his pleas. After 303 years the Romanov Dynasty was at an end.

1922- A 21 year old veteran named Walt Disney after getting out of the army began studying in the public library Edwin Lutz's book "Motion Picture Animation and How it is Made". In Kansas City he and his brother Roy persuaded the owner of a small chain of vaudeville theaters to fund some cartoons. Today the Newman's Laff-O-Grams Company was formed. A year later the Disney brothers would move to Hollywood and start a new enterprise called the Walt Disney Company.

1923- THE FIRST TIME MAGAZINE. Founders Henry Luce and Claire Booth Luce were among the more powerful of the nations cultural elite. Conservative to the core -to the end of their days they thought Franklin Roosevelt and Civil Rights were big mistakes, they still experimented with LSD when it was thought by Harvard professors to be mind expanding. In the late 1980's the Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time-Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate.

1925- The US Government started assigning numbers to motorways and planned interstate highways Before that roads had names like the Boston Post Road or the Baltimore to Washington Highway.

1933- Movie "KING KONG" premiered at the new Radio City Music Hall in New York and the Roxy. Twas Beauty killed the Beast. No CGI around.

1940- SEABISCUIT-. The small ungainly racehorse Seabiscuit had lost the Santa Anita Handicap Stakes twice and at 7 years old had ligament tears and was considered washed up. But he was entered one more time to try to win this race. The jockey Red Pollard was an alcoholic who had broken his leg and collarbone and was told he couldn’t walk, much less ride ever again. Today this unlikely duo raced one more time against odds more like a Hollywood movie than a stakes race. The Biscuit not only won his last race, but set a track record,, the second fastest time ever and the richest win for that time. It’s called one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history. When discussing the Sports Legends of the Twentieth Century- Ali, Ruth, Michael Jordan, Seabiscuit is the only non-human.

1943- Battle of the Bismark Sea. U.S. Navy planes shoot up a Japanese task force .

1947- Crusading Hollywood labor union organizer Herb Sorrell is plucked off the street in Glendale by gangsters posing as police. They may not have been just posing, many studios at the time hired off-duty LAPD at doubletime rates to rough up problem employees. Anywho, they drive Herb up to Mullholland and work him over, leaving him by the side of the road. Shortly after leaving the hospital Sorrell was jailed for disturbing public peace.

1960- Wilt Chamberlain ("Wilt the Stilt") scores 100 points in one game for the Philadelphia Warriors . Wilt averaged a phenomenal 55 points per game that year and the NBA instituted a number of anti-Wilt regulations to ensure guys under 6'2 could get back in the game, like offensive goal tending, etc. Wilt also claimed to have put his off the court time to good use. He claims to have made love to 3000 women during his pro career.

1961- Pablo Picasso married his second wife Jacqueline. He was 80, she was 35. Jacqueline cared for the increasingly reclusive artist and kept even his family at a distance. When Picasso died in 1973 she turned away many family members from the funeral. Jacqueline committed suicide in 1986.

1965- US military bombers do the first bombing raid inside of North Vietnam in a campaign that got the designation Rolling Thunder. Today Rolling Thunder denotes motorcycle clubs who rally once a year in Washington to demand veterans rights and an accounting for all remaining servicemen Missing in Action.

1971- Charles Engelhard died, a venture capitalist who’s wild investments and grand lifestyle made him the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger.

1972- Pioneer 10 space probe launched. The first satellite to the outer planets, it sent back the first closeup photos of Jupiter in 1973 and left our solar system in 1983. It carries a plaque with a representation of men and women, a map of the Earth and Richard Nixon’s signature on it. It is in deep space now and will reach the star Ross 246 in the constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 A.D. Boy, I can hardly wait!

1973- The Women in Film organization founded.

1976- Francis Ford Coppola began shooting his epic film“ Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines. The film was plagued by cost overruns, a typhoon and his Philippine Army helicopters frequently flying off to fight real guerrillas in the middle of shooting, but somehow it all got done.

1979- The Anglo-French Concord supersonic airliner service introduced. It was discontinued because of bad economics in 2003.

1982- Science Fiction writer Phiilip K. Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana California. The author of stories the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall were based. Dick said he was a times possessed by a superalien who appeared in his mind in a beam of pink light.

1989- At a photo session, NY Mets outfielder and recreational cokehead Darryl Strawberry threw a punch at the team's first baseman, Keith Hernandez. The scuffle started over comments about salaries and ended with the Straw walking out of camp. A sportswriter for Sports Illustrated describing the fight said" Darryl Strawberry finally hit his cut off man."
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean when your nickname was The Posthumous? Does it mean you are born dead?

Answer: If your father died between the time you were conceived and the time you were born, you can be called The Posthumous..

Question: What does it mean when your nickname was The Posthumous? Does it mean you are born dead?

Answer to yesterdays question below: What does it mean when you “put a little English on the ball”?
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History for 3/1/2010
Birthdays: Frederic Chopin, Glen Miller, Harry Belafonte is 83, David Niven, Robert Clary, Oskar Kokoschka, Roger Daltry, Robert Conrad, Deke Slayton, Yitschak Rabin. Catherine Bach, Timothy Daly, Chuck Zito, Ron Howard is 55

Welcome to MARCH from MARTIUS, THE MONTH OF MARS-so named because in ancient times it was the first month that was warm enough for armies to take the field and kill each other. Various warrior societies held religious ceremonies to inaugurate campaigning season. In Rome, the Salian Priests would do a ceremonial dance with the magic shields of Mars the Avenger, dropped from heaven for Romulus. The Macedonians would split a dog in half lengthwise and parade the troops between the two halves, sort of going through the gates of Pluto. I hope the dog appreciated the symbolism...

86 BC. Roman legions of Lucius Cornelius Sulla recapture Athens from Mithradates the king of Pontus (a part of eastern Turkey). Mithridates was offering Rome it's most serious competition in the conquest game since Hannibal. Sulla was so angry that the Athenians had welcomed the enemy in, that he destroyed half of the city. He then saved the rest :"more in memory of her glorious past than her modern inhabitants." Mithradates was defeated and committed suicide. According to Plutarch, at one point Sulla's men captured a satyr (half man-half goat) in the precincts of the temple of Artemis. Sulla asked the supernatural creature about the future, but all it would do is whinny like a goat. So his men got rid of it.


589 AD- HAPPY SAINT DAVIDS’ DAY- This is the traditional date of the death of St. David, the patron saint of Wales. Called the Waterman, he was a Celtic monk, abbot and bishop who became the first archbishop of Wales. He was one of many early saints who helped to spread Christianity among the pagan Celtic tribes of western Britain. Welshmen celebrate today like the Irish celebrate St. Patrick, although with out the green beer.

1562-THE MASSACRE OF VASSEY- In France the Catholics and Huguenots- Protestants had been headed towards open conflict despite all attempts at mediation. In the little town of Vassey south of Dijon the Catholic Duke Du Guise became annoyed when Huguenots hymn singing in a barn disturbed his ability to hear Mass. Scuffling broke out and when the Duke got hit in the face with a stone, his retainers drew their swords and chopped up 125 people. The Religious Wars of France had begun.

1579- Sir Francis Drake on board the Golden Hind made the catch of his career. In the waters off Cartegena Columbia he attacked and captured one of the great Spanish treasure ships carrying Inca gold and silver from Peru. This one ship carried more wealth than the entire treasury then in Elizabeth’s England. And a fleet of these crossed the ocean twice a year. Drake instantly became a rich man. The galleon was called La Nuestra Senora De La Concepcion, but her crew nicknamed her “KaKaFuego” which some translate as “Spitfire”, but more closely means “Hot sh*t.”

1711- The first issue of England’s’ great periodical the Spectator first published. It was unique for a broadsheet in that it didn’t cover politics or doings at court but printed essays on social gossip, literary criticism, studies of manners and morals. It was said the Spectator helped begin the transformation of English gentry from ale-swilling philanderers to the well-bred, well-read snobs of the Victorian Era.

1777- Young artillery officer Alexander Hamilton was appointed to General George Washington’s personal staff. This marked the beginning of Hamilton’s personal relationship with Washington that would last throughout the war and his presidency. Hamilton was his constant consultant, adviser and may have written many of Washington’s speeches. There is a rumor that GW may even have been Hamilton’s father since his only trip outside the US was to visit Bermuda. Hamilton was born illegitimately on the Virgin island of Nevis, but beyond that no evidence has ever been substantiated.

1815- Napoleon Bonaparte came ashore in France near Frejus on the Riviera and marched on Paris in a desperate gamble to regain his throne. He was attacking a nation of 14 million with just 1,200 followers. At the sight of the little man in the plain black hat everyone went nuts. The whole Royal Army changed sides without a shot fired. His desperate gamble became a triumphal party and he was carried on the crowd’s shoulders back into the palace.

1872- Congress and Pres Grant created Yellowstone as the nation’s first National Park.
The park was larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

1912- Albert Berry completed the first parachute jump from an aeroplane in St. Louis Missouri

1919- The March Movement- Korea declares it’s independence from Japan, Russia and China.

1930-Disney animator Ub Iwerks, the animator/designer of Mickey Mouse, quits the studio to set up his own place. Walt was stunned by the defection of one of his first employees and closest friends. Iwerks studio producing Flip the Frog Cartoons, will eventually fail and he'll return to Disneys to invent the xerox process. Iwerks partner was Pat Powers, who’s PowersCinephone was the process used to put sound on “Steamboat Willie”.Powers engineered the break when Disney refused to let him buy in to a co-partnership in Disney Studio.

1932- Museum of Modern Art in New York has first major retrospective of the style of architecture called "THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE" Steel girder frames with large windows for walls and no ornamentation. This style pioneered by Mies Van Der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Phillip Johnson.

Called by critics "vertical ice cube trays" they now dominate the skylines around the world, making Moscow and Shanghai equally unrecognizable from Pretoria, or Newark, New Jersey.

1932-THE LINDBERGH BABY KIDNAPPING. The infant son of the famous couple was taken from his crib in their Princeton New Jersey home. Forensic science determined he was bludgeoned and buried shortly afterwards. But the kidnap plot went ahead for nine days. The kidnapper left behind a crudely written note asking for $50,000 dollars in small bills. Bruno Richard Hauptman, the man who was convicted and executed for the crime protested his innocence to the end, The New Jersey country sheriff in charge of the investigation was the father of future Gulf War general Norman Schwarzkopf.

1936- Max Fleischer's short cartoon"Snow White" (starring Betty Boop). Cab Calloway singing the "St. James Infirmary Blues" is a highlight.

1941- Congress approved a committee to investigate waste in defense appropriations. It was chaired by junior Missouri Senator Harry Truman. The Truman Commission routed out corruption ad sweetheart deals among businessmen doing war work. The exposed waste, fraud, padding bills and corporations still doing business with the enemy. The Truman Commission saved America millions, and made Harry Truman a national hero. No such committee was allowed for the Iraq War, and the result was billions in secret no-bid contracts, palettes of cash lost and $9 billion still unaccounted for.

1946-The National Cartoonists Society formed.

1951- Frank Sinatra was subpoenaed by the Senate Kefhauver Committee looking into the activities of the Mafia. In deference to Old Blue Eyes public persona, strings were pulled so he was allow to testify in his attorney’s private office high in 30 Rockefeller Plaza at 4:00 a.m.

1961- John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps.

1961-The Ken Doll introduced.

1966- The Russian probe Venera 3 landed on Venus. Although the Venera crash landed it was the first unmanned probe to land on the surface of another world.

1975- The first Honda Civics arrive in the US.

1978- Unemployed auto mechanics Gatchko Ganas and Roman Wardas broke into the tomb of Charlie Chaplin in Vevey Switzerland and stole his body. They tried to hold it for ransom. The remains were recovered, and the two losers were soon arrested. They were trying to make enough money to open a car repair garage in France.

1988- Apple introduced the first commercially available CD-ROM drive for your personal computer.
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Yesterday’s Question: What does it mean when you “put a little English on the ball”?

Answer: It originated with the English sport of snooker. It's striking, with the pool cue, the cue ball on it's side so that it spins forward around a ball you wish to avoid and hits your object ball. Today, putting English on, even in baseball or other sports, means putting some spin on your ball.