BACK to Blog Posts

April 18, 2009 Saturday.
April 18th, 2009

Congratulations to the Screen Actors Guild for finally making a deal on their contract. My advice is, even if you don't like the deal, to vote to ratify. The contract will be up in three years, and it will be a different economic situation then. Meanwhile, the suits will start greenlighting projects and we can all get back to work.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Quiz: What political party called themselves the National Socialists?

Yesterday’s question answered below: When you listen to hysterical protesters shouting “ Socialism!”, is there a difference between Socialism and Communism?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 4/18/2009
Birthdays: Lucretzia Borgia, Franz Von Suppe’, Haley Mills, Leopold Stokowski, Miklos Rosza, Herb Sorell, Wahoo Sam Crawford, Conan O’Brien, James Woods is 64, Eric Roberts, Rick Moranis is 57

1506- Pope Julius II lays the cornerstone for St. Peter's Basilica. He had pulled down the old St. Peters, which had stood for 1200 years. The new structure designed by Bramante with the Dome by Michelangelo and the interiors by Sangallo and later Bernini.

1775- PAUL REVERE'S RIDE- "One if by land and two if by sea, etc." Informers in Gen. Gage's office learn the British planned to send troops to seize an illegal arms cache in Lexington and arrest two radical leaders named John Hancock and Sam Adams. So silversmith Paul Revere, Thomas Dawes and a country doctor out on a date named Dr.Prescott were sent to warn them and raise the minutemen on the way, after getting the two lantern signal in the old North Church. Dr. Prescott actually completed the mission. Revere was arrested by a British patrol soon after warning Adams & Hancock and sent home without his horse. Longfellow's poem never mentioned Prescott or Dawes. Paul Revere never said "The British are Coming!" because he considered himself British like everyone else in America at the time. He would have said: "The Regulars are Coming! "meaning the regular army.

1778- THE WHITEHAVEN RAID- Former Scotsman John Paul Jones wanted to show the British public that the American Revolution wasn't just a distant war across the sea.
So he decided to raid the British Isles. An ulterior motive Jones had in attacking a town called Whitehaven was that Jones always suspected he was the illegitimate son of a Lord Selkirk, who resided there. It was his boyhood home and he knew it’s lanes and alleyways well. So through the dead of night, while the sailors of the U.S.S. Ranger were burning and plundering the harbor, John Paul Jones was out looking to kidnap his own father. By dawn they were gone. The British Navy regarded Jones as an irritant at best but the raid was a great morale booster in the States. Jones couldn't locate his deadbeat dad, so he had to content himself with stealing the silverware.

1906- THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE . 3,500 deaths and the city destroyed in the most frightening earthquake in U.S. History. Enrico Caruso was in town with the Metropolitan Opera on tour. When he went up to a policeman on the street corner asking for help the cop didn't believe who he was until he sang some Pagiacci. He later sat on his suitcase in front of the ruined Palace Hotel and said- "Helluva Place! Ah’ma ’never coming back!"
Drew Barrymores grandfather the great actor John Barrymore was in a San Francisco hotel room when the quake struck. He ran into the bathroom and sat shivering in the bath until it was over. Afterward the National Guard put him to work clearing rubble looking for bodies. When they read his telegram, the other Barrymores refused to believe the story. Old John Drew, a patriarch of the acting family, felt otherwise. "It took an Act of God to get John out of bed and into a bathtub, and the National Guard to get him to go to work. I believe every word." Amadeo Gianinni, founder of the Bank of America, then called the Bank of Italy, gathered up his bank's papers and stocks and buried them in his garden under the begonias until his new office could be set up. He soon set up for business again on a pier. City government was set up in the undamaged St. Francis Hotel on Powell Street and a large mahogany bar was moved out to the street to serve free drinks to calm nerves. San Franciscans dusted themselves off and rebuilt. By 1913 they were doing well enough to host the World’s Fair. A little ditty of the time said:
"They say God spanked the town, for being rather frisky.
Then why'd He knocked the churches down, yet leave up
Hotaling's Whiskey?"


1923- Yankee Stadium dedicated. Yankees win the opener against Boston, 4-1 in front of over 72,000 fans, Babe Ruth hit the park's first home run. The new $2.5 million ballpark is the first to feature three decks. Yankee Stadium played it’s last game last year.

1934- The first automatic Laundromat opened in Ft. Worth Texas.

1938- Switzerland closed its’ borders to all Jews and asked the Nazi government to cooperate with them. The Swiss government never admitted this act until 1995.

1942- The DOOLITTLE RAID. Gen. Jimmie Doolittle led 16 B-25s to fly long distance and drop bombs on Tokyo. It was a desperate mission. They did it knowing they didn't have enough fuel to return to the carrier USS Hornet, so they continued on to China and took their chances where they landed. Some of the men shot down and captured were hanged or beheaded by irate Japanese. The raid was had no strategic value and did little damage, but after weeks of unbroken Japanese success the American public needed a morale booster. General Doolittle survived the war and lived to be 97, dying in 1993.

1945- The German army surrounded in the Ruhr Pocket surrendered. 350,000 went into prison camps. Conscious that it was probably their last battle in Europe, the Americans called it Operation Kaput.

1945- Famed journalist Ernie Pyle is killed by Japanese machine gun fire during the fighting at Okinawa.

1955- Scientist Albert Einstein died in New Jersey at 75. As he fell in and out of a coma his last words were in German. Since no one around his bed could understand German we don't know what his last words were.

1958- At the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of a crowd of 78,672, the Dodgers play their first game in the City of Angels defeating the new San Francisco Giants, 6-5.

1980- The white minority dominated African nation of Rhodesia transitioned into the black majority nation named Zimbabwe and elected rebel leader Robert Mugabe as it’s first and so far only president.

2000- Earlier that spring some of the worlds biggest internet companies –e-Bay, Amazon and CNN were paralyzed by a virus spreading hacker. Today the FBI made an arrest. The culprit was a Canadian High School student who went by the domain name of Mafia Boy. He received probation and a promise to only use his computer for school work for two years.

2008- Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S.. When he gave an address at the White House, President George W. Bush went up to him and said:” Your Holiness, that speech was AWESOME!”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: When you listen to hysterical protesters shouting “ Socialism!”, is there a difference between Socialism and Communism?

Answer: They are two separate theories open to much partisan debate. It is impossible to settle the argument to everyone’s satisfaction. Suffice it to say that around 1900 the difference was very sharp. America then had some socialist governors and Congressmen. Gov’ts routinely resort to central controls on business that can be considered socialist, like bailing out banks and large corporations and providing a social safety net for citizens. Ralph Nader’s father told him : ”Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it. “ While socialism is about economic solutions, communism is about political control of the private sector. In communism the state owns everything in the name of the people, but in reality in the hands of a small clique in power. Communist governments co-opted much of the public slogans and sentiments of Socialism to mask their intent. Karl Marx’s opinion was that socialism was but a stepping stone towards Communism. The closest Lenin ever came to being assassinated was by a Socialist.


RSS