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November 14th, 2009 sat
November 14th, 2009

Question: When Albert Brooks ( Marlin the clownfish in Finding Nemo) began his acting career, the first thing he had to do was change his name. What was his name at birth?

Yesterday’s Question answered below:In the Middle Ages, where would you go to meet The Venerable Bede?
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History for 11/14/2009
Birthdays: Robert Fulton, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Claude Monet, Aaron Copeland, McClean Stevenson, Jarahwahal Nehru, Mamie Eisenhower, Brian Keith,
Louise Brooks, Ellis Marsalis, Harrison Salisbury, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, Yanni,
P.J. O'Rourke, George Petrovic' called KaraGeorge "Black George" Serbian nationalist -1762, Astrid Lungren the creator of Pippi Longstockings, Prince Charles is 61

1805- Napoleon’s French Army entered Vienna. Composer Ludwig Van Beethoven had dedicated his Symphony #3 Eroica to him when he considered Bonaparte a force for human rights, but after Napoleon became an emperor he angrily crossed it out. “So, he is just a man after all!” Now ironically with all the Austrian society run out of town Beethoven was forced to premiere his symphony to an audience of French army officers.

1851- Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick, or the Whale” was first published in the U.S. by Harper & Row. Melville in part was inspired by a report of a whale named Mocha-Dick who had sunk seven ships off the coast of Java and a New Bedford whaling ship Nantucket that was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale in 1839. For the famous author of Typoo and Billy Budd, Moby Dick was a critical and financial disaster. What's now considered one of the greatest works of American literature was ridiculed in its time.

Melville, broken in spirit, sank into obscurity and finished his life as a customs agent for the Port of New York. When he died, he was so forgotten the New York Times misspelled his name in it's obituary. Today his great-great grandson Moby is a rock star.

1875- British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and banker Sir Lionel Rothschild had lunch. Their brandy and Stilton was interrupted by an agent with the secret message that the Khedive of Egypt needed money and was willing to sell the unfinished Suez Canal zone to England. But Disraeli had to get the money on the spot. Disraeli knew Parliament was out of session and probably wouldn't agree to the sum anyway. "Well, how much do you need?" Rothschild asked. Disraeli replied "Four million Pounds Sterling" ( $44 million in modern money ). "No Problem"quote Sir Lionel. So Rothschild lent the Crown the money on the spot and the Suez canal was built and maintained by Britain until 1956.

1883- London’s World newspaper printed an exchange of telegrams between writer Oscar Wilde and painter James MacNeil Whistler. “ When you and I are together we never talk about anything but ourselves.”-Wilde. Whistler:” No, no, Oscar. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me.”

1889- Inspired by Jules Verne's book Around the World in Eighty Days, New York World reporter Nellie Bly real name Elizabeth Cochrane, set out to travel the world in the declared time. She did it in 72 days.

1921- Winston Churchill told his political constituents that so far the "Twentieth Century has been a terrible disappointment." Just wait, Winnie, you ain't see nothing yet.

1922- Happy Birthday B.B.C.! the British Broadcasting Companies first regular radio service 2LO goes on the air with general election results.

1937- SPAM introduced! Shoulder-Pork And something else.

1942- THE SULLIVAN BROTHERS- Five brothers of one Iowa family all enlisted in the Navy and were all posted on the same ship –the USS Juneau. All five were killed when the Juneau went down in action off Guadalcanal wiping out the family. After the Sullivan Brothers incident laws were passed that US Selective Service could not draft in its initial callup all sons of a family without leaving one and that close relatives were not allowed to serve on board the same ship.

1943- Bruno Walter was too ill to conduct the New York Philharmonic this night so 24 year old Leonard Bernstein was asked to assume the baton. Bernstein becomes an overnight sensation.

1943- During naval maneuvers in the South Atlantic the destroyer William S. Porter accidentally fired a live torpedo at the battleship Iowa carrying President Franklin Roosevelt! The Porter reported the mistake in time so the Iowa could take evasive actions and the torpedo exploded harmlessly in her wake. But the captain of the William S. Porter was arrested and courts-martialed back at port and the incident kept top secret until the 1970’s. For years afterwards whenever the William S. Porter came into harbor she was greeted with the cry “DON’T SHOOT, WE’RE REPUBLICANS!”

1957-THE APALLACHIN CONFERENCE- The top Dons of the Mafia decided to meet at a small upstate New York town near Binghampton. The estate of Joseph Barbara, the President of the Canada Dry soda pop company was clogged with black Cadillacs and Lincolns driven by guys in silk suits named Vinny. All the heads of the Families were there, Joe “Bananas” Bonano, Joey Profacci, Carlo Gambino, Vito Genovese, Paul Castellano, Joey Catena and Louis Tafficante. To this day no one’s quite sure what this meeting was about. Theories are it was an attempt to broker a peace after the hits on Al Anastasia and Frank Costello, and to decide whether the Old Sicilian capos would agree to the younger men’s request that the mob organize narcotics. As luck would have it two New York State troopers investigating a bad-check case noticed the gangland gathering and called for the estate to be surrounded. Once the cops raid commenced it was a free for all of mobsters jumping out of windows and running like rabbits through the corn stalks.
The raid produced few convictions but the headlines focused national attention on the Mafia. It proved without a doubt what had always been feared, that the Mafia was not a loose term for some local immigrant gangs but an highly centralized national organization. Congressional hearings like the McClellan Committee began to bust up the rackets. Mobsters who write of this time say the Appalachin mistake was the beginning of the end of the Mafia’s nationwide solidarity and power.

1957-The Supreme Court refused to review the challenge to government obscenity laws brought by Irving Klaw and his wife, producers of the Betty Page kinky pinup photos.

1959- In Holcomb Kansas two men break into a farm home and murder four people. The subsequent trial and execution was attended by writer Truman Capote, who wrote the book “In Cold Blood”.

1960- Anthony Mann began shooting the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren with her no-collagen-necessary Lips.


1961- President John F. Kennedy ordered the number of U.S. military advisors in Vietnam increased from 1,000 to 16,000. There has always been conflicting evidence about just what JFK thought about the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Some scholars point to writings that said Kennedy by 1963 was having second thoughts about involvement and wanted to begin pulling out after the 64 election, but Lyndon Johnson had deeper ties to the South Vietnamese regime and big military contractors like Bell-Huey. Others say if JFK wasn’t assassinated, he still would have done the same Vietnam policy that Lyndon Johnson later did.

1963- Volcanoes push up out of the sea the island of Circe, now part of Iceland.

1965- BATTLE OF IA DRANG- The First major engagement between U.S. combat troops and Vietnamese regulars. Ho Chi Minh wanted to see how his troops could withstand a major engagement with this new adversary. General William Westmoreland couldn’t think of any other way to say the battle was a success than by counting the number of enemy dead. Based on this defeat the Vietnamese would not challenge the Americans again in open battle like they had defeated the French but went underground and fought a guerrilla war for the next three years. Ia Drang was also the first battle where troops where brought in, out, and supplied totally by helicopters. Among the units involved were the reconstituted 7th Cavalry. The battle was dramatized in the Mel Gibson 2002 movie “We Were Soldiers.” Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, one of the toughest vets of Ia Drang battle was also a veteran of the Korean War. He calmly walked upright through the whizzing bullets telling his cowering troopers:” Stand up son, you can’t hit anything down there.” Basil Plumley was killed in the World Trade Center collapse of 2001.

1973- Britain's Princess Anne wed Captain Mark Phillips. They divorced in 1992.

1967- Jack Warner, the last surviving Warner Brother, sells out his stake of Warner Bros and it’s huge film library to a Canadian company called Seven Arts. He becomes the last of the original Hollywood Moguls to step down.

1998- Colorful and eccentric NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman married beautiful supermodel Carmen Electra. There was some doubt at first as to the validity of the story as Rodman admitted he was blind drunk throughout and didn’t remember the ceremony. They divorced shortly after.
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Yesterday’s Question:In the Middle Ages, where would you go to meet The Venerable Bede?

Answer: The Venerable Bede 673AD-735 was a famous English monk and theologian. Working at the abbeys of Jarrow and Lindisfarne, he did some of the earliest historical writings on the Anglo-Saxon people.


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