Question: What opera ends with the two lovers being buried alive, then they sing a beautiful love duet as they suffocate?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Copernicus was the Latinized form for Nicholas Kopernik, Tamurlane was Timur Khan, who was K’ung fu tzu ?
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History for 3/20/2009
Birthday: Roman poet Ovid -43b.c., Napoleon’s son Napoleon II "l'Aiglon" The eaglet, Henryk Ibsen, Lauritz Melchior, Ray Goulding of Bob & Ray, Mr. Rogers, Carl Reiner is 87, Bobby Orr, Sheldon "Spike" Lee, B.F. Skinner, Pat Riley, Sir Michael Redgrave, Edgar Buchanan, Holly Hunter

Happy Vernal Equinox, or Spring, if you will….



44BC- The Great Funeral of Gaius Julius Caesar. The spot in the Forum where the common people tearfully cremated Caesar’s body is still there today. Caesars lieutenant Marc Anthony won the Roman populace over by appealing to their love of Caesar.” Friends Romans Countrymen Lend me your Ears!” as Shakespeare wrote. At a key moment Anthony revealed Caesar’s bloody toga. The assassins Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus thought the people would proclaim them heroes for saving the democracy. But they committed a fatal error by staying hidden during this ceremony. They lost public sympathy, and a grief stricken mob murdered a man on the street whom they mistakenly thought was one of the conspirators. Brutus & Cassius soon fled Rome.

courtesy of karenswhimsy.com

1413- Prince Hal ascended the throne of England as King Henry V. He spent most of his short reign trying to conquer France and won the stunning victory at Agincourt. If he hadn’t died of dysentery at age 35 he might have united the kingdoms of France and England. Once more into the breach my friends!

1777- Benjamin Franklin was officially presented at the court of Versailles to meet King Louis XVI. Spain, Russia and Sweden withheld their ambassadors, both not wishing to cause a rift with England. His eyes teared up when he was introduced, not as representing rebellious English colonies, but as “ DR FRANKLIN, COUNSUL OF THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA!” This is the birth of U.S. foreign policy.

1800- Alessandro Volta announced he had invented the electric battery.

1815- Napoleon Bonaparte was borne on the shoulders of a cheering Parisian mob back into the Tuileries palace as fat King Louis XVIII hightailed it to England. From this day to Nappy's abdication after Waterloo is referred to as the Hundred Days.

1841- Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder's in the Rue Morgue first published in Graham’s Magazine. Called the first true detective novel, Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin was inspired by a real French sleuth named Jules Vinquoc who used disguises and science to solve crimes the Paris police could not handle. The character was the inspirations for Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Inspector Poirot.

1852-Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" first published. It sold one million copies within six months. The book was the first to treat the horrors of slavery directly and portray slave families not as dumb brutes or happy minstrels but victimized human beings. Because of this book, during the Civil War Yankee soldiers referred to Confederates as women-whippers, and baby stealers. Stowe said modestly: “I didn’t write it, God did. I just took dictation.”When she visited the White House President Lincoln met her with:”So here’s the little lady who started the big war.”

1903- Henri Matisse exhibits at the Salon des Independents in Paris.

1931- Cantors Kosher deli opened in the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles.

1932- The German airship Graff Zeppelin began a regular passenger service between Europe and South America -Cologne to Buenos Aires.

1942- After a harrowing escape from the Philippines through Japanese lines by PT boat, submarine and plane General MacArthur arrived at the Australian town of Darwin. His first radio message was to tell the occupied Philippine people “ I Shall Return!” The U.S. State Department later asked MacArthur to amend his message to the more democratic We Shall Return but the imperious general refused.

1943-MGM's "Dumb Hounded" the first Droopy Cartoon.

1965- After the confrontation on the Edmund Pettis Bridge President Lyndon Johnson ordered 4,000 US troops to protect the Civil Rights protestors led by Martin Luther King marching from Selma to Montgomery. Alabama Governor George Wallace had sicked attack dogs and police on the marchers after promising the President not to. Johnson referred to Gov. Wallace as “a treacherous, lying son of a B*tch!”

1969-John Lennon married Yoko Ono on the Rock of Gibraltar.

1976- Heiress Patty Hearst, aka Tanya, convicted of bank robbery. How she could be tried for bank robbery and her Symbionese Liberation Army captors simultaneously tried for kidnapping her is one of the riddles of American jurisprudence. She was finally pardoned by Bill Clinton in one of those last day in office pardons.

1985- Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Alaskan Iditarod dog-sled race. She would win it a total of four times.

1995-A Japanese doomsday cult called Aum Shinrikio released a deadly nerve gas called Sarin into the Tokyo subway system. It killed 13 and sickened 5,500. The cult had tried on several occasions to release anthrax and other germs into the air to kill millions but their attempts always failed. Their philosophy Poa stated the souls salvation could be achieved through mass-murder. Two days later Tokyo police raided Aum Shinrikio’s headquarters and arrested their leader Matsumoto Chuizo

1999- After years of attempts and failures involving millionaires like Richard Branson, Rocky Aoki and Malcom Forbes, Dr Bertrand Picard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of the UK became the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a balloon. It was named the Breitling Orbiter 3. Dr Picard said: “I am with the Angels and completely happy.” Mr Jones said: First thing I’ll do is phone my wife, then like a good Englishman I’ll have a cup of tea.”

1999- Legoland opened in Carlsbad Cal.
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Yesterday’s Question: Question answered below: Copernicus was the Latinized form for Nicholas Kopernik, Tamurlane was Timur Khan, who was K’ung fu tzu ?

Answer: Jesuit missionaries called him Confucius.