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October 30th 2009 friday.
October 29th, 2009

Question: What is phrenology?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What was Abe Lincoln’s nickname among his White House staff?
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History for 10/30/2009
Birthdays: John Adams, Christopher Columbus, English playwright Richard Sheridan,
Ezra Pound, Emily Post, Louis Malle, Henry Winkler, Charles Atlas, Ruth Gordon,
Claude LeLouch, Dick Gautier, Louis Malle, Ted Williams, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona

1501-THE BALLET OF THE CHESTNUTS, or His Holiness throws an Orgy.
One of the most notorious examples of depravity in PreReformation Rome. Pope
Alexander VI Borgia, with his children Cesare and Lucretia Borgia throw a party
of parties at the Vatican. The wild revelry was highlighted by a race of nude prostitutes
on hands and knees through an obstacle course of silver candlesticks gobbling up
chestnuts. The pope later gave gifts to the courtiers and ladies who demonstrated
the greatest sexual stamina.
On another occasion His Holiness closed off St. Peter's Square to worshipers
to stage a bullfight. This was the kind of holy hedonism that drove the Protestant
reformers nuts and caused the eventual rift in the Christian world. One participant
in these revelries was the chef of the French ambassador, who was intrigued to see
the guests getting their own plates of food from large tubs set in a row. He though
this was a neat way to serve food. His name was Pierre Buffet.

1811- Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility published.

1918- Kaiser Wilhelm moved his staff from riot-ravaged Berlin to Spa on the Belgian
frontier to prepare for the armistice to end the Great War. Socialist leader Franz
Ebert told Chancellor Prince Max of Baden the Kaiser had to abdicate to avoid civil
war. But Wilhelm still imagined that after making peace with the Allies he could
turn the German army around and put down his own rebellious subjects. But after
four years and two and a half million dead, all his exhausted army wanted to do was
go home.

1938-"THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA- 27 year old Orson Wells broadcast a radio update of H.G. Well’s story "The War of the Worlds". Despite periodic
station announcements that it was only a fictional re-enactment, people across the
U.S. go bonkers that an actual Martian invasion had landed in Grover’s Mill New
Jersey. In Hollywood famed actor John Barrymore, drunk as usual, went over to his
kennel of prize winning racing greyhounds and open their cage doors, saying: "Fend
for yourselves!"

1941-The REUBEN JAMES INCIDENT-Five weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack the neutral U.S. destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German U-boat, drowning dozens of American sailors. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill thought this would be the incident to anger Americans enough into getting into World War Two like the Lusitania did a generation earlier. Woody Guthrie sang: "Oh tell me what were
their names, tell me what were their names? Did you have a friend on the good old
Reuben James?" However Adolf Hitler apologized and offered immediate monetary
reparations. Popular anger cooled Roosevelt told his cabinet:" I think I can keep us out of this war for one more year unless Germany or Japan does something stupid."

1947- Bertholt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and the Threepenny Opera,
testified to the McCarthy HUAC committee. He smoked a large cigar through the whole
session. Next day, as he had once fled Hitler’s Germany, he fled the U.S. and settled
in East Germany.

1961- Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev has his old boss Stalin’s body removed from
it’s glass case pickled next to Lenin, and has it buried in the back.

1963- The first Lamborghini 350GTV went on sale.

1966- An inventory done at the National Archives revealed that medical evidence
of John F. Kennedy's assassination autopsy were missing. This included JFK’s brain.
They have never been found. Kennedy’s brother Robert was still attorney general
at the time. Some historians think he hid evidence of conspiracy to hide his
brothers mob connections and preserve the purity of the Camelot myth. We may never
know.

1973- The Carlin Case- Radical radio station WBAI in New York broadcast hippy comedian George Carlin’s routine about the “Seven Deadly Words” the naughty words you can’t say on the air. I can’t write them because children read this column but you all
know what they are anyway. The FCC slapped a heavy fine and WBAI sued for free speech and the case made it to the Supreme Court. Today the High Court found for the FCC and those 7 deadly words remain banned from airwaves today. Aw, Sh*t!

1975- King Juan Carlos assumed the throne in the restored monarchy of Spain.

1991- Middle East Peace Conference began in Madrid Spain. These first days about
the only thing the Arabs and Israeli’s could agree upon was to politely refuse the
lunch the Spaniards had set out for them- smoked ham sandwiches.

1992- QUANTRRILL’S FUNERAL- The remains of William Clark Quantrill were buried in a cemetery in his birthplace of Dover Ohio. Quantrill’s Border Raiders were infamous during the Civil War for their guerrilla depredations in Kansas and Missouri. After being shot dead in 1865 an admirer dug up his bones and kept them. After passing
through several hands the bones were put up for sale, displayed in a glass case
and even used by Ohio State fraternities for their initiation rituals. Billy Quantrill’s head was discovered in a refrigerator behind the tuna sandwiches and Coca Cola in the Dover Historical Society.

2002- Rap star of Run-DMC Jam Master Jay was shot dead in the lounge of his recording
studio in Queens NY. The killer was never found.
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Yesterday’s Question: What was Abe Lincoln’s nickname among his White House staff?

Answer: The Old Tycoon. They didn’t mean tycoon as a rich industrialist, but in the original Chinese definition as an autocratic warlord.


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