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August 4th, 2009 tues
August 4th, 2009

Quiz: Enemies of President Obama hope the health care issue would be his Waterloo. What does that mean?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: Of all the Apollo Program spacecraft that went to the moon and back, only one is still traveling in space, 40 years later. Good Grief! Which is it?
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History for 8/4/2009
Birthdays: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Nicholas Conte' 1777-inventor of the modern pencil and the conte'-crayon, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, William Pater, Richard Belzer, Franco Corelli, Elizabeth-England's late Queen Mum, opera tenor, Roger Clemens, runner Mary Decker-Slaney, Billy-Bob Thornton is 54, President Barack Obama is 48

1181- A supernova was observed by Arab astronomers in the constellation Cassiopia.

1693 – “ Come quickly Martin, I am tasting stars!”monk Dom Perignon invented the Method Champagnoise to create champagne.

1735- N.Y. newspaper editor John Peter Zenger had been writing articles criticizing the Royal Governor for corruption. Past governors of New York, Maryland and North Carolina colonies were known fences for Caribbean pirates like Captain Kidd and Blackbeard and pocketing monetary bonds set up for colonial defense. This day German born Zenger's newspaper was shut down, and he was arrested for 'Seditious Libel". His later trial and acquittal was seen as the first great victory in America for Freedom of the Press. Today the Governor would just call his corporate employer, who would fire him.

1753- George Washington became a Master Mason in the Freemason Lodge #4 of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The first Masonic lodge in America was founded in 1730 by Benjamin Franklin. Some think Freemasons akin to Fred Flintstones Waterbuffalo Lodge, but in the 1700’s Freemasonry had strong political ramifications. Most European intellectuals –Voltaire, Mozart,Hegel, Lafayette and Goethe were masons.


1776-The nice printed up Declaration of Independence we all recognize was officially signed. The declaration approved on July 2nd and published on July 4th was the rough draft. Today John Hancock signed that big flowing signature "So old King George won't need his spectacles". Today a nickname for a signature is a John Hancock. It was a gutsy thing to do, the signatures would be their death warrants if the rebellion was crushed. Ironically if you asked Hancock for a pinch of snuff his snuffbox was an engraved gift from King George III he received during a visit to London ten years earlier.
During the War of 1812 when the British burned Washington D.C. the Declaration was hidden under a doorstep in Baltimore. It later hung in a sunlit window for 30 years which bleached it’s print almost to invisibility. Today millions are being spent on restoration efforts like encasing it in pure helium.

1782- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married Constanze Weber, the aunt of composer Karl Maria Von Weber. Mozart had first proposed to Constanze's sister but she chose another.

1792- The FRENCH REVOLUTION HEATS UP. Since the fall of the Bastille two years earlier France and King Louis XVI had tried to work as a constitutional monarchy guided by the Marquis de Lafayette. But Louis only played the system for time while negotiating with his royal relatives in Germany and Austria to send armies to help him put his peasants in their place. By now the French nation had enough. Mobs stirred to anger by radicals like Danton and Marat marched on the Tuilieries Palace demanding justice. The King Louis XVI's Swiss bodyguard opened fire on them . The enraged peasants tore the guards to pieces and looted the palace, sticking soldier's ears on the kings desk. The king and queen tried to escape out the back door but were grabbed by the mob. A flag was made from a Swiss red uniform coats- the very first Red Flag of Revolution. Lafayette later fled into exile and was imprisoned. Standing in the street watching all this was a young unemployed lieutenant named Napoleon Bonaparte. He later wrote that if King Louis had the nerve to appear on a horse at the head of his supporters he could have still triumphed. Napoleon's murmured: " Quel con!”- “What an Asshole!"

1821- 1st edition of Saturday Evening Post -published until 1969.

1855 - John Bartlett publishes his first book of "Familiar Quotations"

1892-" Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks, when he saw what she had done, gave her father forty-one.", etc. In Fall River Mass, Andrew and Abbie Borden were found brutally murdered and their daughter Elisabeth was accused. Ms. Borden pleaded innocence and cited a long history of abuse from her parents .She was acquitted but the murderer was never found. When Lizzie died peacefully in 1927 she left $30,000 to the ASPCA.

1918- Young corporal Adolf Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class for bravery. He was quite proud of it and wore it on his uniform for the rest of his life. The German officer who recommended Hitler, and pinned his medal on was Captain Hugo Gutmann, a Jew.

1922- In honor of the passing of Alexander Graham Bell, all 13 million telephones in the United States observed three minutes of silence.

1925- Conrad Hilton opened the first Hilton Hotel in Dallas Texas.

1942- The Bing Crosby-Fred Astaire-Marjorie Reynolds film the Holiday Inn released. The film featured Irving Berlin hit songs like White Christmas and Easter Parade but is hardly ever shown anymore. That is because the Lincoln’s Birthday skit featured the cast in embarrassing minstrel blackface, singing “bout Massa Lincoln”.

1944- British pilot T.D. Dean uses his plane to bump the wing of a German V-1 Flying Bomb, causing it to flip over off course.

1944-Acting on a tip from a neighbor, the Gestapo discovered and arrested 16 year old Anne Frank and her family in their hiding place in an Amsterdam warehouse. All were sent to Auschwitz. Only her father Otto survived.

1956- Elvis Presley released his version of the Big Mama Mabel Thornton song " You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Dog".

1964- The TONKIN GULF INCIDENT. North Vietnamese gunboats attacked the U.S.S. Maddox and the Turner Joy patrolling off their coast. The US claimed they were in international waters but the Pentagon Papers revealed that the Maddox was deliberately sent close to the shore to provoke the Vietnamese. The Maddox's captain testified he was 30 miles offshore when in reality he was 3 miles. For months the CIA had been conducting hit and run naval raids on the Vietnamese coast, but that was all still top secret. Although the U.S. already had advisors in the Vietnamese civil war for years this incident provided the legal pretext President Lyndon Johnson needed to escalate U.S. involvement up to 450,000 combat troops and trillions of dollars. Johnson had told his press attache' Bill Moyers:" Bill, if this Vietnam thing comes off I'll go down as one of the great presidents of this century, if not I'll be the goat.".....

1964- Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg’s first day working at the Pentagon. Ellsberg would be the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

1984- Actor Johnny Depp opened his own club on the Sunset Strip called the Viper Room. The original club on that site had once been owned by mobster Bugsy Sigel.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Of all the Apollo Program spacecraft that went to the moon and back, only one is still traveling in space, 40 years later. Good Grief! Which is it?



Answer: The LEM Lunar Module of Apollo X was called Snoopy and the command module Charlie Brown. After their orbit and docking mission were completed, Snoopy was launched towards the Sun into a heliocentric orbit. It’s been traveling ever since. Snoopy reported its’ position as recently as 2007.


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