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September 02, 2010 thurs
September 2nd, 2010

Quiz: After his defeat, Napoleon worried what would happen to his son:” The fate of Astyanax always seemed the cruelest to me.” Who is he talking about?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Was Alexander the Great gay?
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History for 9/2/2010
Birthdays: The last monarch of Hawaii Queen Lydia Kemehcka Liliuokalani, Yang Tsu Ching leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Cleveland Amory, Alfred Spaulding 1850, founder of Spaulding sports equipment, Martha Mitchell, Mark Harmon, Marge Champion, Peter Ubberroth, Terry Bradshaw, Chrysta McAuliffe, Jimmy Connors, Eric Dickerson, Selma Hayek is 42, Keanu Reeves is 46

31 BC- The Battle of Actium- Large naval battle near Corfu that decided that Augustus and not Anthony & Cleopatra would be the master of Rome. Legend has it that before a battle the priests spread out sacred chicken feed and could predict victory or defeat based on how the sacred chickens would peck. This time the chicken wouldn't peck. Anthony said:"If the chickens won't peck, then let them drink!" And had them all thrown overboard. He lost the battle. Don't mess with the sacred chickens.!

1609- HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEW YORK CITY. Henry Hudson and his Dutch ship "Half Moon" entered New York Harbor. Twenty canoes of Indians rowed out to welcome the strange looking craft. The French under Cartier and English under Cabot had cruised by decades earlier but had not bothered to settle there. Hudson sailed 100 miles up the Hudson looking for China, but found just more river and forest.

He reported home about this "Great River not unlike the Rhine and this Great Natural Bay Wherein a Thousand Ships may Ride tranquilly in Harbor." New Yorkers like to point out that while other cities like Boston and Philadelphia were founded as great experiments in religious living the Dutch founded New York to make a buck and its been that way ever since.

1666- THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON- started in the bakery shop of Thomas Farynor on Pudding Lane. The Lord Mayor was woken up at 3:00AM. At first he was not impressed.:"Tosh, an old woman might piss it out!" Actually it burned down the city, including Old St.Paul's Cathedral. 200,000 Londoners were left homeless. King Charles and his brother James (James II) pitched in personally as firefighters. After several days struggle it was finally put out. Samuel Pepys climbed up the steeple of Old St.Brides and recorded his eyewitness account in his diary. It was a tough time to be a Londoner because shortly before the Great Fire was the Great Plague. But the great architect Christopher Wren rebuilt St. Pauls and other London monuments into the beautiful images we know today.

1752 - Last Julian or Old Style calendar day in Britain and her colonies, including the US and Canada. That year you went to sleep the evening of Sept. 2nd and awoke the morning of Sept. 14th. The Gregorian Calendar had been promulgated in Rome in 1582, but it took this long for the Protestant countries to get on board with the new system.

1772- The FIRST PARTITION OF the POLAND. Russia, Austria and Prussia start to digest Poland, the Ukraine, Bylorus ( then called the Voivode of Ruthenia), Moldova and the Baltic States. These nations disappear in 1794 not to reappear until 1919 (and later until 1991). English statesman William Pitt called it "One of the great political crimes of our Century." This gives folks like Frederic Chopin, Josef Conrad, Madame Curie and Pulaski an opportunity to chalk up a lot of bonus miles.

1792- The September Massacres- When the French Revolution seized power the mob locked up pro French royalists, noblemen and priests. They were confused about just how far to go with trying them. But this day after radical publisher Jean Paul Marat called for death to all traitors because they were plotting with the German invaders to destroy the Revolution, mobs broke into the various prisons around Paris. They murdered the inmates by the thousands with swords, clubs and lynching from streetlights. "A’la Lantern!" meant hang him from a lamppost. The massacres continued until Sept. 6th but the real Reign of Terror was just starting.

1795- Happy Birthday Cleveland. A group of Connecticut businessmen buy a tract of land on Lake Erie and lay out a new settlement. Their agent and project supervisor Moses Cleveland, names the place for himself.

1814- A landing party from the British warship HMS Hermes visited the Louisiana pirate Jean Lafitte in his lair at Barataria Island in the swamps near the Bayou St. Jean. They offered him a captaincy in the Royal Navy and $30,000 dollars in gold if he would aide the British in capturing New Orleans. Lafitte dismissed them with a promise to think about it, then passed on all he knew to Louisiana Governor Claiborne and the American authorities. It was the first warning the Americans had that the British planned to invade in force at the mouth of the Mississippi.

1864- "Luki Lock the Door! The Yankees are coming!" Sherman’s army entered Atlanta.

1897 - "McCall-magazine 1st published

1898-BATTLE OF OMDURMAN Lord Herbert Kitchener the Sirdar turned heavy cannon and machine guns on attacking Sudannese tribesmen. Kitchener later revealed his cruel side by refusing any medical aid for the enemy wounded and letting hundreds of them die slowly where they fell. 20,000 Sudanese fell to 48 British casualties. Standing in the field of corpses Kitchener said he had given the enemy a "Thoroughly Good Dusting." Kipling writes some neat poems, young Winston Churchill gets decorated and Kitchener breaks open the tomb of the Dervish religious messiah El Mahdi and has his skull made into a drinking cup. Prime Minister Gladestone told him this is not a terribly civilized thing to do, so he got rid of it.

1901- In a speech Teddy Roosevelt said the U.S. should " Speak softly and carry a big stick!"

1909- On the three hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery New York City held a grand birthday party. Hundreds of ships and public spectacles capped off with Wilbur Wright flying his new aeroplane around the Statue of Liberty. Thomas Edison illuminating the entire skyline with the new electric bulbs- the first time a city was illuminated at night by electricity.

1917- Baron on Richtofen the Red Baron on his first mission with his new all red Fokker triplane brought down an English Sopwith fighter plane intact. The rotary engine plane had a design flaw that made it buck sharply to the right whenever you let up on the rudder bar. Richtofen would let an enemy get behind him, then he would lift his foot from the bar. The plane would jerk quickly to the right and he would zip behind his opponent. Then with a cheerful wave he'd shoot them down.

1922 -Weimar President Ebert declares "Deutschland uber Alles" as German national anthem . The song was written in the 1770’s by Franz Josef Haydn, who had heard God Save the King while touring in London and decided his Kaiser needed an anthem.

1924- Harold Lloyd’s comedy short "Why Worry?" released.

1931-Young new singer Bing Crosby sang for the first time on CBS radio.

1935- A huge hurricane submerged the Florida Keys, killing 443.

1945- WORLD WAR TWO OFFICIALLY ENDS. The Grand Surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on board the U.S.S. Missouri. The Imperial Japanese forces sign the surrender documents before the representatives of the great powers. General Douglas MacArthur presided and his normally corny Victorian speaking style seemed appropriate for this historic moment:"These proceedings are now concluded. The most tragic era in human history has drawn to a close. We hope that future generations will not resort to war to resolve their problems."

The only glitch in the ceremony was the Canadian representative signed the surrender in the space reserved for the Japanese ambassador, and MacArthur brought his own pens which he collected back for himself for souvenirs. General Claire Chennault, the leader of the Flying Tigers had an ego almost as big as MacArthur's. He was the American general most under enemy fire, but he was not invited to the ceremony because the top brass considered him a pain in the ass.

1946- "The Iceman Cometh" by Eugene O’Neill premiered at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway.

1963 - CBS & NBC expand network news from 15 to 30 minutes. CBS names a new reporter to star in their broadcast with the title "news anchor" Walter Cronkite.

1964- Ten months after his brother’s assassination, Robert Kennedy resigned his post as attorney general of the United States to run for Senator of New York. Bobbie Kennedy and new president Lyndon Johnson hated one another. Johnson said he felt snubbed by that "Pipsqueak and his Massachusetts Mafia." Bobbie Kennedy referred to the President and First Lady as "Colonel Cornpone and the Little Piggy". Johnson’s decision not to run for re-election in 1968 in part was because he felt he would have to put his popularity up against Bobby Kennedy’s, the first politician to flash a two fingered peace sign credibly.

1973- J.R.R. Tolkein died at age 81. He once said of his trilogy The Lord of the Rings- I should have written more.

1985- A team of French and American oceanographers led by Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the final resting place of the HMS Titanic, which sank in 1912. Ballard would go on to discover the German battleship Bismarck, the WWII carrier USN Yorktown and JFK’s torpedo boat, the P.T. 109.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Was Alexander the Great gay?

Answer: We cannot really apply the modern labels of Gay or Straight to the ancient world. A young man could serve as a female to an older man, until he grew his first beard, and no one thought twice about it. Alexander had two wives Roxana and Statiera, and a male lover Hephaestion.


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