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I heard that our old comrade Raul Garcia has won the Goya Award, Spain's Oscar, for his feature film the Missing Lynx, co-produced by Antonio Banderas.

Raul Garcia is an animator who has worked on films around the world such as Lucky Luke, Bluth's Land Before Time, Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and more. He directed an Award winning short of the TellTale Heart, and this is his first major feature film direction. We hope it is first of many.
You'd be hard put to find anyone important in animation who does not know Raul and even more rare to find someone who does not like him.

Here is the movie trailor in English.
http://www.themissinglynxmovie.com/

Congratulations and Felicitaciones from all your old friends across the globe, especially in El Pueblo Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles de Porcincula (aka LA)
I'm sure Melon is very proud. Glory to you!

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Quiz: What are French Fries called in France, English Muffins in England, Buffalo Wings in Buffalo, and American Cheese in America?

Yesterdays question answered below: If you recently saw the Sergio Leone classic spaghetti western- The Good the Bad and the Ugly, did you know the action takes place around one real historical event? What was it?
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History for 2/2/2009
Birthdays: Tallyrand, Charlie Halas a co-founder of the NFL, James Joyce, Ayn Rand, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifitz, Abba Eban, Garth Brooks, Christie Brinkley, Tommy Smothers, Stan Getz, James Dickey, Liz Smith, Elaine Stritch, Brent Spinner is 60, Shakira, Farrah Fawcett is 62

Happy Groundhog Day. This morning if Paxatawney Phil sees his shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter.

In ancient Rome it was the day for the lesser Eleusinian Mysteries. Part of the ceremony was you were given a bowl of wine with certain herbs in it. After drinking it you saw the gods. In 1946 experimenting to find the nature of these ancient herbs led Dr. Albert Hoffman to discover LSD.

12-1300's-In the middle Ages this was the day of the Winter Reysa- when Crusader Knights of the Teutonic Order would venture into the Lithuanian forest, find a village of pagans, and chop them up for the Christian Faith. There were two expeditions a year, this one and in the summer. The Prussian Knights ran a sort of Club-Med for northern knights who wanted to crusade but not risk the dangerous journey to Palestine.

1536- The City of Buenos Aires founded.

1565- CZAR IVAN THE TERRIBLE exhibited the first signs of mental unbalance. Without warning, he abandoned his capitol Moscow in December. It took several weeks for the Russian court to find him at a little village named Alexandrov, 350 miles away. A procession waving incense and icons came out to beg him to return. He said he would return only if he were allowed to deal with his enemies ruthlessly. This day he returned to the Kremlin with a private army called the Oprichina, 6000 criminals and peasants dressed as monks to help Ivan torture people.


When once asked if a group of Jews from Lithuania could settle in Muscovite lands, Ivan explained his opposition: “ Jews would bring strange herbs into our realm and lead astray Russians from Christianity.”

1709- William Dampier was a reformed buccaneer who wrote books about his travels. This day while cruising the South Seas he rescued a man named Sir William Selkirk, who had been marooned on an otherwise uninhabited island for two years. It seems Selkirk had gotten into an argument with the captain of a Chilean schooner who left him there. Upon returning to London Capt. Dampier mentioned the incident to his friend writer Daniel DeFoe, who used it to create his most memorable novel- Robinson Crusoe.

1848- TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO signed, which ended the U.S.-Mexican War. Ambassador Nicholas Trist was given the dangerous assignment of finding the Mexican Government fleeing the American assault on Mexico City, then convincing them to sign away California and the Southwest, approximately 40% of their national territory. Just when negotiations in the little village of Guadalupe Hidalgo were about to conclude successfully, he got a message from Washington to break off talks and return. President Polk had changed his mind and now wanted the complete annexation of Mexico down to the Yucatan! Trist knew if he did this, the war party in Mexico would keep up a guerrilla war for decades afterwards. So he ignored the message, signed for the U.S. and fixed our southern border.

When Trist got home, instead of thanks, he was arrested for treason. But President Polk couldn't convince his war-weary people to continue the war. So the treaty was upheld. The French tried conquering Mexico twenty years later and got the Mexican national uprising Trist avoided. Nicolas Trist was released from prison, but he never got his back pay until President Lincoln awarded it to him on his deathbed 16 years later.

1852- London’s first public toilet was dedicated- near 95 Fleet St.

1870- Samuel Clemens also known as Mark Twain, married Olivia Langdon or Livy.

1870-The first international news agency. Reuters, Havas and Wolf News Agencies agree to pool their resources to cover the world. United Press International.

1910- D.W. Griffith's' In Old California', sometimes called the first Hollywood film.

1912- New York’s Grand Central Station opened.

1920- Admiral Kolchak, leader of the anti-communist (White) Russian armies in the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, was shot by firing squad and chucked into a dry canal. For a year Kolchak was defacto dictator of all Russia from the Ural mountains to the Pacific.

1922- the novel "Ulysses" is published. James Joyce had finished the book months earlier but delayed publishing until his birthday, when it would be 2/2/22, which he considered lucky.

1922-Twenty one year old Walt Disney founds Newman's Laff-O-Grams in Kansas City.

1925- IDITEROD- THE SERUM RUN COMPLETED- Nome Alaska at this time was a town totally depended upon supplies from the outside world traveling in by sled dog teams. When a serious epidemic of diptheria threatened the population the call went to the ‘Outside” as Alaskans called the rest of the world, for help. It normally took a musher 18-20 days to cover the 650 miles from the coast to Nome, now a relay of 20 teams in short sprints would attempt to do it in 5 days in the depth of winter. One musher reported blizzard conditions so bad he couldn’t see the end of his team. While the press kept the world waiting breathlessly on this day Charlie Evans and his malamute team led by his lead dog Balto got into Nome with the serum in a metal cylinder wrapped in fur. At one point two of his dogs froze to death in harness and Evans took up their place himself and ran alongside the dogs the balance of the trip. It took 5 days and 7 hours. The epidemic was limited to five deaths. The 20 men and their teams were hailed as heroes. Although the dog Balto got most of the credit and has a statue and a movie about him, experts say a 48 pound Siberian husky named Togo did the greatest exertion, going 200 miles in the first leg. The Iditerod sled race is today run in commemoration of this event. The last surviving musher of the original race, Edgar Nollner, died in 1999 at 94 years old

1940- Soviet dictator Stalin had famed futurist theater director Vselevod Meyerhold shot.
At the time of his arrest Meyerhold’s wife Zinaida was stabbed to death. Neighbors who heard her screams assumed they were rehearsing a new play.

1957- Elizabeth Taylor married producer Mike Todd. Todd was killed in a plane crash a year later. Despite her famous association with Richard Burton, Taylor later said Mike Todd was the only one she ever truly loved.

1961- In a little Greenwich Village nightclub called the Blue Angel, a young television writer turned stand up comic made his first debut. His name was Woody Allen.

1963- In England, singer Helen Schapiro was on tour. On the lower end of her program card was a new band called the Beatles.

1966- Woody Allen married Louise Lasser.

1971- After a coup toppled legal President Milton Obote former British colonial sergeant Idi Amin was inaugurated as president in Uganda. Before being driven out in 1979 by the Tanzanian army Dr.Idi Amin Dada was one of the more outrageous dictators of post colonial Africa. He declared himself Conquerer of the British Empire, led his pitiful little army in mock invasions of Israel even though it was thousands of miles away and he was surrounded by hostile nations. He played drums in his own rock band, wrestled crocodiles, and once reputedly killed and ate one of his sons.

1979- Lead singer for the punk band Sid Vicious found dead of a drug overdose. The 21 year old was awaiting trial for the stabbing death of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.

1985- O.J. Simpson married Nicole Brown Simpson.

2006-The Cartoon Riots. A Danish newspaper printed a political cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with his turban shaped like a bomb. This so offended the Moslem world that rioting broke out in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jakharta and European capitols. Grenades were thrown at Danish embassies and Danish nationals made to flee.
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Yesterdays question: If you recently saw the 1967 Sergio Leone classic spaghetti western- The Good the Bad and the Ugly, did you know the action takes place around one real historical event? What was it?

Answer: Sibley’s Raid was the one attempt to extend the Civil War into the Southwest. In the film you heard the characters refer to Rebel General Sibley. Henry Sibley led a regiment of Confederate cavalry out of Texas to try and conquer the California goldfields. They were stopped outside of Santa Fe New Mexico territory by militia from Colorado, California and Utah at the battle of La Glorieta, also called the battle of Apache Pass. Confederates scouts reached as far west as Phoenix, Arizona.


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