Quiz: Which person really lived: Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Elliot Ness, Bulldog Drummond.

Answer to yesterday’s question below: Why is the U.S. President’s office called the Oval Office?
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History for 2/ 26/ 2009
Birthday:King Wenceslas of Bohemia-1361, Victor Hugo, Buffalo Bill Cody, Emma Destin, Levi Strauss, Jackie Gleason, Fats Domino, Betty Hutton, Johnny Cash, William Frawley (Fred Murtz), Robert Alda (Alan's dad), Tony Randall, Erhyke Bahdu, Tex Avery

747 B.C. In Sumer it is the beginning of the Age of Nabronassar.

500¹s BC to 391 AD, Ancient Greek festival of ANTHESTERION- the festival of death and exorcism. The ancient Greeks believed ghosts weren’t as scary as they were annoying. If you didn’t bury the dead properly with spices and a coin in the mouth for the Chaeron the Boatman of the River Styx, they became ghosts. They would haunt you by moping around, turning up at inappropriate moments, predicting your death, bleeding on your lunch, etc. So this festival was a sort of ³visiting hours² for the other world. You left your door open and cooked a meal for the spirits so they could spend a day visiting their old haunts (forgive the pun). This way they would not bug you the rest of the year. This festival was also considered a festival of flowers to usher in Spring. Most Greeks spent all three days of the festival drunk.

1773- Construction began in Philadelphia on the Walnut Street Jail, a Quaker alternative to physical punishment, where ³Penitents² could reflect on their crimes- hence the first Penitentiary. The other innovation was individual cells instead of the large room common in colonial jails. It was the first Solitary Confinement.

1815- Napoleon and his followers escaped his exile island of Elba and sailed to France for another try for power. He had less than a thousand followers to try to reconquer a nation of 14 million.

1854- Composer Robert Schumann went mad and jumped off a bridge into the Rhine River. He was fished out and institutionalized. His schizophrenia grew out of advanced syphilis. He said he was not committing suicide but had thrown his wedding ring into the river to free his wife Clara of him, then he relented and leaped into the raging ice filled water to get it back. Ironically this drama was played out during his towns winter carnival celebrations. The tragedy of seeing his friend and teacher collapse moved young Johannes Brahms to write his First Piano Concerto.

1907- British Oil and Royal Shell merge to form the British Petroleum- B.P. company.

1919- Congress established Grand Canyon National Park.

1929- Congress declared the Grand Tetons a national park.

1936- The NINI ROKU-JIKEN COUP. Young Japanese officers lead four regiments to try take over the government in Tokyo. They kill several government ministers and try to assassinate Prime Minister Inokai but fail. The coup collapses when Emperor Hirohito himself declared he would personally lead his Imperial Guard against them if they would not stand down. The anti-war Prime Minister was later assassinated by another officer.
Despite the coups failure peace-party politicians were intimidated to try and stop the Japanese army's plans for total Asian conquest. Emperor Hirohito also shrank from any more direct action on his part as a break with tradition

1951- The 22nd Amendment ratified limiting the President to two four year terms. This was passed by a Republican Conservative dominated Congress. They were determined to never have something like Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt four terms again.

1965- First day of shooting on the Beatle's second film 'Help!"

1983- Michael Jackson’s album Thriller went to #1 in the pop charts and stayed for weeks.

1985- New York Police under District Attorney Rudy Giuliani arrested most of the leaders of the New York Mafia families called ³The Commission². Giuliani went on to have two terms as New Yorks mayor and run for President in 2008.

1990- Cornell Gunther, lead singer for the DooWop group the Coasters, was shot dead at a Las Vegas traffic intersection."Yakkety-Yak, Don't Talk Back!"

1991- At a meeting in Switzerland Tim Berners-Lee introduced the first Web Browser.

1991-The Highway of Death- During Gulf War One, The U.S. Air Force caught a long column of Iraqi army vehicles fleeing on an open desert road with no cover. No one is sure how many Iraqis were killed.

1993- THE FIRST WORLD TRADE CENTER ATTACK. Followers of Moslem extremist cleric Omar Abdel Rahman set off a large truck bomb in New York's World Trade Center. The bomb created a five story crater in level B-2 of the underground parking structure. It killed 7 and injured over one thousand. 50,000 had to be evacuated from the twin towers for smoke inhalation. It has been speculated that one reason there were not even more deaths in the collapse of 9-11-2001 was because much of the office workers experienced this 1993 attack, so knew exactly how to evacuate the towers quickly. President Clinton’s Justice Dept had all the perpetrators in jail within a year. When planner Ramsay Youssef was being flown out of New York to his 240 year imprisonment the plane flew over Manhattan by the World Trade Center. He was reported to have sighed:²Should have used more dynamite.²
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Yesterday’s Question: Why is the U.S. President’s office called the Oval Office?

Answer: Because it is oval. The West Wing complex attached to the White House was built by Teddy Roosevelt in 1902. President Taft completed his office in an Oval in 1908.