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January 24th, 2010 sun.
January 24th, 2010

Question: What does it mean to be On the Road to Damascus?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: The opera The Marriage of Figaro is about Figaro the Barbera of Seville Spain. It is written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What language did he write it in?
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History for 1/24/2010
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Hadrian AD117, Farinelli the Castrato-1707, Pierre De Beaumarchais, Swedish King Gustavus III, Frederick the Great, Edith Wharton, German Field Marshal Model, Sharon Tate, Mary Lou Rhetton, John Belushi, Disney director Wilfred Jackson, Warren Zevon, Yakov Smirnoff, Daniel Auteuil, Orel Roberts, Natassia Kinski is 51

HAPPY ERNEST BORGNINE DAY! HE’S 92!

41 A.D.- CALIGULA ASSASSINATED- The psychotic Roman Emperor left a gladiator bout to have lunch when in an isolated hallway of the amphitheater his own bodyguards turned on him. His chief assailant was the captain of the watch Chaerea who Caligula liked to embarrass -he once gave Chaerea the watchword “Gimme a kiss”. After two sword thrusts the bleeding emperor shouted: " I still live ! Strike again !" Which they did until he was finally dead. They threw Caligulas’ corpse in a hole in the Lamian gardens. It was said his ghost continued to scare people there for years afterwards.

1848- James W. Marshall discovers Gold at Sutter's Mill, California. This event will spark the first big gold rush the following year, the '49 ers. John Sutter had bought the land from the last Russian settlers and set up his town while under Mexican rule. Ironically the gold rush ruined him. Thousands of prospectors ignored his jurisdiction claims, trampled his crops and slaughtered his herds for food. Within a year or two he was broke and spent the rest of his life trying to get the US Government to reimburse him.

1874- Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Gudunov premiered in Saint Petersburg.

1875- Camille Saint-Saens orchestral work Danse Macabre premiered in Paris.

1901- Activist Emily Hobhouse toured one of Lord Kitchener’s “concentration camps” that the British were using to corral in the Boer guerrillas in South Africa. This one was near Bloemfontain. Her reporting of the poor sanitation conditions and hardships of the Boer civilians there caused a scandal back home. Four out of five South Africans killed in the Boer War were civilians.

1902- Denmark sold the Virgin Islands to the USA.

1927- The Pleasure Garden premiered, the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

1942- Producer David O. Selznick signed young star Jennifer Jones. He became infatuated with her and left his wife Irene, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer to marry Jones.

1961- Warner Bros. cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc had a terrible auto crash at the Dead Man's Curve on Sunset Blvd near UCLA. He lingered in a coma for several weeks. The way the doctor brought him around was to say: “Hey Bugs Bunny! How are we today?” Blanc replied in character:” Ehhh…fine,doc!”

1965- Winston Churchill died at 90. His last words were "Oh, I'm so bored of it all..." At 75 Churchill said :"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter." David Lloyd George once quipped of how Churchill would behave in Heaven: "Winston would go up to his Creator and say he would very much like to meet His Son, about whom he has heard a great deal."

1972- Japanese soldier Soichi Yokoi was found in the jungles of Guam unaware that World War Two had ended 27 years earlier. He had stolen a radio and listened to the news. But he thought the stories of Americans in Korea and Vietnam were just propaganda. He was returned to Japan a healthy, if somewhat confused hero.

1983- Hulk Hogan pinned the Iron Sheik to win his first World Wrestling Federation title.

1984- Apple announced the first Macintosh Computer. It went for $2500.

1986 -Voyager 2 spacecraft flies by Uranus. A friend of mine was in the visitor's gallery at The Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the data began to roll in from the space probe. He saw one man break up the entire room of Nobel-prize winning professors into hysterical laughter with the childish pun :”Here is the latest data on Gas Emissions from Uranus..."

1989- Psycho serial killer Ted Bundy was electrocuted. He had conducted his own defense at his trial, which proves next time, get a lawyer.

2000- Your taxes at work. The entire computer system of the super-secret National Security Agency crashed and was down for several days. No explanation given.

2006- The Walt Disney Company acquired CG animation studio PIXAR. Apple and PIXAR head Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull get a seat on Disney Board and director John Lassiter becomes creative head.
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Yesterday’s Question: The opera The Marriage of Figaro is about Figaro the Barbera of Seville Spain. It is written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What language did he write it in?

ANSWER: Italian


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