Question: What does it mean when you call someone a mensch?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: “I’d rather have that old man on the inside of my tent pissing out, than on the outside pissing in. “….?
---------------------------------------------------------------
History for 11/2/2010
Birthdays: Daniel Boone, Pres. James Knox Polk, Jean Chardin, Luchino Visconti, Giusseppi Sinopoli, Burt Lancaster, Ray Walston, Pat Buchanan, Steve Ditko, Ray Walston, Stephanie Powers, k.d.lang, David Schwimmer

Today is Dio de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It derives from the Aztecs, who believed the life you are living now is a dream, when you die, you awake to your real life.


1483- OFF WITH HIS HEAD! Whether you believe Shakespeares’ portrayal of King Richard III as a hunchback usurper or modern revisionist scholars who call him a maligned monarch, this day Richard III shows his friend the Duke of Buckingham how much he appreciated his help in becoming king, by cutting his head off.

1541- Archbishop Thomas Cranmer handed King Henry VIII a spy’s report that his hot young wife Queen Catherine Howard was getting-it-on with at least three other men.

1783- The American Revolution now over, General George Washington published his final orders disbanding his army, congratulating them for their courage and allowing them all to go home now to their farms.

1789- The French Revolution seized all Church property in France.


1789- President George Washington had borrowed two books from the New York City Public Library that were due this day. The Chief Librarian noted that they were still overdue, in April 2010.

1830- American Methodist reformers opposed to bishops met in Baltimore to form the Protestant Methodist Church.

1889- North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted into the Union. They argued for twenty years the position of a joint state capitol until finally deciding to go separately.

1904- London newspaper The Daily Mirror first published.

1915- Battle of Colunna. In World War One German Admiral Spee’s battle cruiser fleet defeated and sank a British fleet of the coast of Chile. This was very upsetting back home since it marked the first British naval defeat in 100 years.

1917- Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, calling for a national home for Jews in Palestine. Sit Arthur Balfour was the British Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George. Britain once considered Uganda and Argentina for a Jewish homeland before settling on Palestine, then a sleepy border province of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Balfour had the powerful former prime minister Robert Lord Salisbury as his uncle. No matter how his fortunes rose or waned his uncle ensured his career path was steady. This originated the English slang term for having good connections:” So Bobs’ yer uncle.”

1920- The first US Radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began the nation’s first broadcasting with news of election results.

1921- On the fourth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration a huge mob of Palestinian Arabs attacked the Jewish quarter of Old Jerusalem. After the Great War sporadic violence had been happening since Arab nationalism had arisen as well as increased Jewish immigration from Europe. But for the first time the rioters were fought off in a pitched battle by an organized Jewish militia called the Hagannah. This force was formed by Av Avram and made up of Jewish World War One veterans. The leader of the militant Palestinians, Al Husseini, would be later elected the Grand Mufti of Palestine. This was the first large clash of Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, and sadly, it would not be the last.

1930- Ras Tafari crowned Halie Selassie Ist, Ethiopian Emperor. The Jamaican movement Rastafarians are named for him.

1932- Young star Katherine Hepburn first shines in the film A Bill of Divorcement, co- starring with John Barrymore.

1937- LaGuardia Airport opened. New York City’s first municipal airport.

1944- RAOUL WALLENBURG- The Jewish population of Budapest was driven off to Nazi concentration camps, but not after Swedish envoy Raoul Wallenberg saved over a thousand by granting Swedish (neutral) passports to them. Wallenberg once walked alongside an SS officer ordered to execute 25 people and pleaded for each person as they were shot. The SS officer finally tired of Wallenburgs pleas and spared the last two. When Wallenburg’s aide asked him “What good did all that begging do?” He replied: “What Good? We just saved two human lives!” When Hungary was conquered by the Red Army Raul Wallenburg was arrested and died in one of Stalin's gulag prison camps. Russia didn’t officially admit this until 1991.

1947- Howard Hughes pilots his monster wooden airplane, the "Spruce Goose" for it's only test flight, one minute over Long Beach Harbor. Two hundred tons, Eight engines, a wingspan longer than a football field, it was conceived as an aid to win World War Two but was completed long after it ended.

1950- Writer George Bernard Shaw died at 94. His last words were:" Oh well, it will be a new experience anyway."

1964- CBS television purchased the NY Yankees Baseball club. This is one of the dumber business deals in entertainment history. CBS thought they were buying the world champion Murderers Row team, if they had done their research they would have known most the Yankee top stars including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were scheduled to retire. Within a year of the deal the Yankees went from first to last place, and played bad until George Steinbrenner bought them in 1977.

1983- Yielding to nationwide lobbying, President Ronald Reagan created the Martin Luther King holiday in January. Arizona was the last state to officially celebrate the holiday.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Question: “I’d rather have that old man on the inside of my tent pissing out, than on the outside pissing in. “….?

Answer: President Lyndon B. Johnson said that about F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover. After re-election in 1964, many advised LBJ to retire the old man. But that was the presidents response.