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October 23rd, 2010 sat.
October 23rd, 2010

Question: Was composer Richard Wagner a Nazi?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What is so special about the Dark Side of the Moon?
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History for 10/23/2010
Birthdays; Johnny Carson, Adlai Stevenson, Pele, Zioniev, Weird Al Yankovic, Dwight Yoakham, Doug Flutie, Michael Crichton, Chi-Chi Rodriquez, Sam Raimi, Phillip Kaufman, porn star Jasmine St. Claire, Gummo Marx, Ang Lee is 56, Ryan Reynolds is 34

this must have been take with some legionaries i-phone
42 BC- Battle of Phillipi- The forces of Marc Anthony and Octavian defeated the Republican legions of Brutus and Cassius in Greece. Both Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus, who had assassinated Julius Caesar two years earlier, died.

1642- EDGEHILL- First battle of the English Civil War. King Charle's Cavaliers-1, Roundheads-0. Even though the Parliamentary forces were defeated the King hesitated when his impulsive cavalry general Prince Rupert wanted to pursue the enemy to London. It was the best chance Charles ever had to crush the rebellion at one grand blow, Oliver Cromwell was as yet an obscure m.p. from Cambridge who led a small troop. Yet Charles hesitated and let the opportunity slip away. The Parliamentary Army was under the command of the Earl of Essex, who traveled around with a coffin and burial shroud among his personal baggage. I wonder if that inspired confidence in his leadership...

1661- King Charles II, the Merry Monarch, crowned at Westminster Abbey. The current English Crown Jewels date from this time, since Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Parliament had the ancient crown jewels of Anglo-Norman times destroyed.

1812- THE MALET PLOT-While Napoleon was retreating from Moscow thousands of miles away all France waited anxiously for news of his fate. This day a civil servant named Malet convinced Paris that Napoleon was dead and his army destroyed. In the ensuing panic Malet actually succeeded in taking over the French Government!
After a few days the confusion was eventually straightened out and Malet imprisoned. But it was terribly discouraging to Napoleon; he had hoped to build a dynasty to last generations. But it took only one nut with a rumor to show how shallow was the support for his regime was.

1917- In a secret meeting in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) all the various left wing Russian political parties: Mensheviks, Anarchists, Utopian Socialists and Narodniks agreed to unite under Lenin’s Bolshevik Party and adopt their plan to violently seize power. After taking control Lenin had them all suppressed. The assassin who shot and wounded him in 1921 was a Socialist.

1923- The German postwar economy collapses. Raging inflation makes it 6 billion DeutschMarks to one U.S. dollar. The few workers who had jobs are paid every other day and it takes a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread. The major industrial region of the Ruhr was under foreign occupation. These conditions made the rise of Adolf Hitler possible. The creeping depression afflicting the war-ruined European economies would help collapse the American banking system in 1929.

1928- A financial consortium led by banker-bootlegger Joseph Kennedy Sr. buys the Keith Albee theater circuit and merged it with the Radio Company and the Orpheum theaters to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum or RKO pictures. After Joe Kennedy met with the other Hollywood moguls he told a friend :”They’re all a bunch of Austrian Pants Pressers! I can take their businesses away from them!” Kennedy made a quick killing then got out of the picture business in 1930, just before the Depression dropped his studios stock value. RKO made films like King Kong, Fort Apache and Citizen Kane before merging into Desilu in 1957.

1930- The first Miniature Golf tournament held in Chattanooga Tenn.

1931- Chicago gangster Al Capone sentenced to 11 years in Alcatraz for federal income tax evasion.

1935- New York gangster Dutch Schultz was rubbed out. The erratic Schultz (real name Arthur Fleigenheimer ) had announced to the other mob bosses that Federal prosecutor Thomas Dewey was getting too close so he would kill him. To the syndicate killing such a high profile fed was going too far and would bring the wrath of Washington down on them, so Lucky Luciano decided it was easier to take care of the Dutchman. Schultz was having dinner at the Bob Treat Porkchop House in Newark with his crooked accountant "Abadaba" ( a corruption of Abracadabra ) when he excused himself to go to the mens room. Hitmen followed him and pumped 6 slugs into him while at the urinal. Gee, I hope he zipped up.....


1940- Shooting on the film Citizen Kane wrapped.

1942-EL ALAMEIN- Montgomery's British 8th Army threw 2500 new American made Sherman and Grant Tanks against Rommel's Afrika Korps threatening Egypt and the Suez Canal. Rommel the Desert Fox was on sick leave in Germany with diptheria and Rommels' replacement, General Stumme, dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of the battle. Rommel flew back to try and stop the British attack, but by Nov.4th he had to accept defeat and abandon his Egyptian positions. Hitler had made Rommel a field marshal “ I wish he had given me another Panzer division instead” was his reply.

1968-THE FIRST OCTOBER SURPRISE- Pres. Johnson was pushing secret peace talks to wrap up the Vietnam War before he left office. Secret messages from South Vietnamese ambassador Bo Dhiem to the Saigon government confirmed that the Republican leaders were assuring the South Vietnamese that if they didn’t make peace before the American elections, Nixon could win and would support them. On Nov 2nd, President Nyguyen Van Thieu withdrew from the peace table and talks collapsed. Nixon won election and the war went on 4 more years.

1971-Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida opened.

1973- President Nixon ordered a world wide red alert of our strategic nuclear forces to warn the Soviets not to take advantage of U.S. domestic turmoil over Watergate. Soviet ambassador Dobrynin wrote in his memoirs that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger later telephoned and apologized to him for the alert. He said that it was done to distract U.S. opinion from the Watergate scandal.

1983- Jessica Savitch was one of the first women journalists to break the barrier for women getting the top anchor jobs in network news broadcasting. This day she died in a car accident.

1983- President Ronald Reagan had sent U.S. Marines into civil war torn Beirut to achieve peace. This day a suicide bomber drives a truck full of dynamite into the Marines barracks, killing 241 men in their sleep. Reagan then withdrew the remaining Marines. When Congress tried to enforce the War Powers Act limiting the President's power as commander in chief to send troops in harm's way, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger testified to Congress that Act didn't apply because the Beirut situation was not a war. "What was it then?" The incredulous senators asked. Cap Weinberger replied-"it is a state of Organized Violence." (----uh huh-?--)

1987- Judge Robert Bork was defeated in his bid for a seat on the Supreme Court. Besides offending Liberals by being a longtime Conservative stalwart, he offended Conservatives by admitting under oath he smoked marijuana

2001- Apple Computers launched the i-pod.

2007- massive brush fires north of San Diego California. It displaced one million people, one of the largest numbers of U.S. refugees since the Civil War.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is so special about the Dark Side of the Moon?

Answer: Because of the Moons orbit around the Earth, there is always one side of it we never get to see. No one knew what was on the Dark Side of the Moon until the Apollo 8 astronauts went into orbit around it in 1968.


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