Quiz: Who first coined the term to leave a place as “ to kick the dust from with off thy feet.”…?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: If you rode a time machine back to 1900, and bought something with a five dollar bill, the merchant wouldn’t accept it. Why? They had Lincoln on the five then.
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History for 3/21/2010
Birthdays: Plato, Johann Sebastian Bach, Benito Juarez, Modest Mussorgsky, Fats Waller, Josef Pulitzer, Florenz Zeigfield, Bronco Billy Anderson, Rev Ralph Abernathy, Armand Hammer, Harold Robbins, Matthew Broderick is 48, Gary Oldman is 52, James Coco, Timothy Dalton is 66, Rosie O’Donnell is 48

717 A.D. Battle of Vinciacus- Charles Martel, aka Charles the Hammer", defeated Ragenfridus and the Merovingian pretenders and assured the Carolingian line on the throne of the Franks, aka the French. Hammer don’t hurt’em! Charles Martel’s grandson was Charlemagne. His great-grandson Pippin was made into a musical by Bob Fosse and Stephen Schwartz in the 1970's. A musical called "Ragenfridus!" just doesn't have the same panache.

1617-Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, died at Gravesend, England after being taken off the homeward bound ship, too ill with smallpox to continue. She was 21. Her children with John Rolfe became the beginnings of one of the largest families in Virginia, with many scions of the Old Dominion tracing their ancestry to Pocahontas.


1740- Composer Antonio Vivaldi - Il Pietro Rosso- the Red Priest, conducted his last concert at the Ospedale Della Pietra in Venice. It was a home for orphaned girls so it was an all-girl orchestra. The 64 year old Vivaldi later went to Vienna to see if he could get any commissions from the Austrian Emperor, but caught an illness on the way and died.

1829- The British Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington had to work so hard to get a Bill of Catholic Emancipation through Parliament that on this day he had to fight a duel with an opposition mp, a Lord Winchelsea. They popped away at each other without doing any harm and that seemed to satisfy everyone’s honor.

1918- The Ludendorf Offensive (second battle of the Somme) begins. When Lenin took over Russia he immediately made peace with the Germans to end the Great War in the East. This freed up one million German troops for the Western Front. German strategist Erich Von Ludendorf hurled them into one last attack to win the war before the American armies could arrive in greater numbers. Ludendorf (who was such a stiff Prussian it was said he made love with his monocle on.) called the action "Kaiserschlacht" ( Kaiser's Battle") and he promised the Kaiser that he would be in Paris by April 1st. When this attack was stopped by the fresh American forces, the German High Command admitted their chances of winning the Great War were kaput.

1921- Chicago mobster Big Jim Colosimo was murdered by a new face in gangsterdom, a hitman for Johnny Torrio named Alfonso “Scarface” Capone. When Al Capone became famous, he showed his appreciation to Torrio by having him rubbed out too.

1935- Persia renamed Iran and Mesopotamia renamed Iraq.

1951- HOLLYWOOD COMMIES- House UnAmerican Acitivities Commitee (HUAC) under Judge J. Parnell Thomas moves from Washington and sets up in Hollywood to continue rooting out Communist subversion in the movies. They began in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and later move to the federal building downtown. Their concerns weren’t total fantasy, actor Sterling Hayden confessed he was ordered by his communist operatives to try and influence the Screen Actor’s Guild. Still the point remains whether the authorities overreaction was justified and whether Congress could get more publicity looking for spies in Tinseltown than the Department of Games and Fisheries. Out of 15,000 people who made a living in the movies and television, only 295 were ever proven or confessed communists. It was an open secret that for $5,000 delivered to the right committee member your dossier would be moved to the bottom of the pile. The hearings stopped in 1956, the blacklist was broken in 1960 and Judge J. Parnell Thomas went to jail himself for embezzlement. Screenwriter Ring Lardner , already convicted of contempt of Congress in the Hollywood Ten trials was sitting in jail with his gangster cellmate listening to all the famous moviestars denounce each other on the radio. The hoodlum turned to Lardner and said:" Hey, if you are one of dem Reds lemme give ya some advice: Any organization wid dat many finks in it can't be any good !"

1952- DJ Alan Freed put on an event of new pop music in Cleveland Ohio. Called the MoonDog Coronation Ball, it was the very first Rock Concert.

1961- The Beatles first perform at the Cavern Club in Hamburg Germany.

1976- ASPEN MURDER- Jet setter Claudine Longet, a model who was formerly married to singer Andy Williams, shot and killed her lover Spider Sabich, a Olympic skiing champion. Even though their relationship was foundering she said it was an accident, that the Luger went off in his abdomen when he was showing her how to use it. In the bathroom. Uh Huh. Imagine being in the bathroom shaving and your girlfriend pops in “Honey, I’m having problems with the safety on my Luger.. Here darling I’ll just –oops!”
She spent 30 days in jail for negligent manslaughter, then married her defense attorney.

1980- Mafia capo Angelo Bruno received a shotgun blast to the head while he sat in his car after dinner. The Genovese family had his former capo Phil "Chicken Man" Testa take over rackets in Atlantic City.

1988- the Screen Actor's Guild hits the bricks for the fourth time in twenty years, this time striking Hollywood for residuals for cable and videocassette income.

2014-Asteroid# 2003QQ47 will pass close by the Earth. If the half mile wide rock hits us it will have the effect of 23 Hiroshima bombs and cause drastic climactic convulsions. Right now the odds are 900,000 – 1 if we get hit. Get your catchers mitts out!
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Yesterday’s Question: If you rode a time machine back to 1900, and bought something with a five dollar bill, the merchant wouldn’t accept it. Why? They had Lincoln on the five then.

Answer: American dollar bills before 1929 were twice as large as they are now. People called them shinplasters, because they were the size of leg wrappings you put on a horses sore leg. In God We Trust was not added to the bills until 1957.