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June 17th, 2010
June 17th, 2010

Question: What is the Fourth Estate?

Yesterday’s question answered below: True or False: The Battle of Bunker Hill was not fought on Bunker Hill.
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History for 6/17/2010
Birthdays: King Edward Ist "Longshanks", John Wesley the founder of the Methodists, Igor Stravinsky, Wally Wood, Ralph Bellamy, Pete Seeger, Mignon Dunn, Dean Martin, Barry Manilow, Joe Piscopo is 58, Newt Gingrich, Martin Bormann, Jason Patric, Ken Loach, Greg Kinnear is 46, Venus Williams, Thomas Haden Church is 49


1775-THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL. British troops surrounded in Boston, crossed the harbor to attack an entrenched rebel position on Breeds Hill (the names got confused.). It took the Redcoats three human wave assaults until they took the hill, but the rebel farmers, instead of fleeing like rabbits, shot them to pieces. Captain Israel Putnam advised his men,” Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes, then aim low.” The minutemen only retreated when their ammunition ran low. The battle exacted such a huge cost in soldiers’ lives that the British public was shocked (1,000 casualties out of 2,040 men).
Lexington and Concord could be dismissed as a civilian disturbance, but Bunker Hill convinced London that it now had a full-scale war to fight 3,000 ocean miles away.

1789- French King Louis XVI had convened an Estates General to solve the bankrupt economy. The body consisted of three branches- the First Estate-Nobility, 2nd – Clergy and Third Estate the common people- about 99% of the country. This day after much debate the Third Estate voted to declare itself the real representative will of the French people and as such they should legislate for them, King or no. They renamed themselves the National Assembly. Two days later most of the poor clergy and some nobles like Lafayette voted to join them and when the King ordered them to disband on June 20th they moved to the tennis court. This was the political beginning of the French Revolution.

1815- Heavy Spring rains cancel any actions as the British and French armies converge on a little village outside Brussels called Waterloo. Thunder and lightning drowned out the sound of cannon. The English were optimistic because by coincidence every major victory of the Duke of Wellington was preceded by a strong thunderstorm.

1823- Charles MacKintosh patents the waterproof rubberized raincoat. In England, a raincoat is still called a MacKintosh.

1873- Women’s Rights leader Susan B. Anthony went on trial for attempting to vote.
She was found guilty by an all-male jury and fined $100, which she refused to pay.

1885- The pieces of the Statue of Liberty arrive from France. Some assembly required...

1893- Cracker Jacks invented by RW Reuckheim. Their name came from Teddy Roosevelt sampling the caramel corn, and exclaimed “These are Crackerjack!”- popular slang back then for something very good.

1919 - "Barney Google" cartoon strip, by Billy De Beck, premiered.

1930- Using 6 solid gold pens President Herbert Hoover signed the Harley-Smoot Act slapping huge trade tariffs on imports from overseas. Britain and France and their overseas colonies retaliated with tariffs on American exports. The American stock market had collapsed 6 months before; now this shortsighted act sparked a trade war with the ruined economies of postwar Europe. It all but ensured that the Great Depression would spiral out of control, hitting rock bottom in 1932.

1940- The Nazis had taken Paris and the French were asking for surrender terms. An invasion of Great Britain seemed imminent. Today on the BBC radio, Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspired his demoralized people with his famous speech:”We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the hills and in the towns… we shall defend our island home. We shall Never Surrender!”

1952- Jack Parsons died in a massive explosion in his Pasadena kitchen. Parsons was a founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab and the Aerojet Corporation. One of the nations top rocket scientists, his research into fuels powered everything from world war two bazooka shells to the Space Shuttle booster engines. But Parsons also had a strange second life in the occult. He was a follower of Alastair Crowley, sometimes signed his name as AntiChrist and once tried to raise a demon in a white-magic ceremony. His close friends included writer Robert Heinlein and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. His mother committed suicide within hours of the explosion. No one is sure what caused the explosion that killed him, but he was cavalier in his use of dangerous materials “uh, could you hand me the Mayonnaise? It’s in the fridge between the C-4 and the Fulminate of Mercury.”

1964- The first Universal Studios tram car tour. Carl Laemmle had been inviting tourists in for a nickel to watch movies be filmed as early as 1915.

1968- Ohio Express’ single “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my Tummy” went gold.

1972- THE WATERGATE BREAK IN- President Richard Nixon's staff, trying to gain an edge on an upcoming election, hire men to break into Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate Hotel to steal election strategy documents. They had already broken in once before but the batteries on the wiretap they planted were defective so they wanted to replace them and copy some more documents. Hotel security guards caught three Cubans and a man named Frank Sturgis. One Cuban had, in his pocket, a check made out by a White House employee named E. Howard Hunt.
This "Third-Rate Burglary" and subsequent cover-up ulcerated into a major scandal that eventually forced the first ever resignation of a US president. President Lyndon Johnson had bugged the Republicans in 1967 and President Kennedy used the IRS to audit politicians he didn’t like, but the general public didn’t know that yet. President Nixon said: "nobody's gonna make a big deal that a Republican President broke into Democratic headquarters."

1994- THE WHITE BRONCO CHASE- Movie actor and Hall of Fame football player O.J. Simpson was wanted for questioning about the grisly murder of his second wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her boyfriend Ron Goldman. This day OJ tried to escape. He and his football friend Al Cowlings led police on a strange slow-speed pursuit for two hours around the freeways of Los Angeles as the world watched amazed on live television.


I was at a cartoonists banquet between Sergio Aragones and June Foray, while people kept talking about this incident. Sergios' friend kept running out to his car to listen to the news radio, then report the latest. OJ eventually was convinced to surrender. OJ Simpson was acquitted of murder in a controversial trial, but found guilty in a civil wrongful death suit.
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Yesterday’s question: True or False: The Battle of Bunker Hill was not fought on Bunker Hill.

Answer: True, it was fought on nearby Breed’s Hill. See above 1775.


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