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December 2nd, 2010 thurs. December 2nd, 2010 |
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Question: King Edward Longshanks ordered the Jews out of England. Which British ruler invited them all back?
Yesterday’s Question answered below: Franklin D. Roosevelt was the longest serving US President at 12 years. What President had the shortest term?
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History for 12/2/2010
Birthdays: George Seurat, Charles Ringling, Julie Harris is 85, Gianni Verasce, Ray Walston, Monica Seles, Cathy Lee Crosby, Lucy Liu is 42, Britney Spears is 29
1494- Now that the Medici Dukes were driven out, mystical monk Savonarola proposed to the people of Florence that they create a Republic ruled by God’s Law. Savonarola ruled Florence like a Christian Ayatollah. He led big public spectacles where in large bonfires Florentines burned “vanities” like makeup, wigs, art and books and tried to live a religious life. Eventually, it all got so boring they burned Savonarola instead, and recalled the funloving Medicis.
1804- NAPOLEON CROWNED EMPEROR OF FRANCE .The 35 year old little corporal from Corsica who spoke French with an Italian accent, had piercing gray eyes and if he liked you showed his affection by giving your ear a tug, crowned himself Emperor of the French. He had the Pope brought up from Rome to Notre Dame for legitimacy, but in a moment of planned theater Napoleon took the crown from his hands and crowned himself. European liberals like Goethe and Beethoven who had thought Napoleon would be a strong force of reform in Europe were now disillusioned that he turned out to be just another usurper.
1805- THE SUNRISE OF AUSTERLITZ- At a small village in what is now the Czech republic, Napoleon defeated the Tsar of Russia and Emperor of Austria in one spectacular battle. Tolstoy called it the Battle of the Three Emperors. As much as he was a strategist and tactician Napoleon was a great analyst of human character. Based on his opinion of his opponent’s personalities, he predicted exactly how the battle would go two weeks before he drew them into it. The defeat of the Allies was total, French artillery blew holes in a frozen lake the Russians were trying to escape over, drowning hundreds. Within days they sued for peace and the war was ended. Napoleon's take on events: "Ah, que Belle Journee'."What a nice day it's been."
1823- U.S. President James Monroe published the Monroe Doctrine, saying all the European empires then coveting lands in the Western Hemisphere should butt out or the Good Ole U.S. of A would have something to say about it! Shortly afterwards Britain extended its claim on Western Canada and seized the Falkland Islands, France entered Mexico, and Russia pressed it's claim on Alaska.
1845- President James K.Polk re-affirmed the Monroe Doctrine and announced it would be the policy of his administration to get Texas and California from Mexico and Oregon from the British. He called such continental expansion America’s “Manifest Destiny.”
1854-Napoleon III was Napoleon's nephew and since 1848 legally elected President of the Second French Republic. But he decided that he wanted to be an Emperor like his uncle so he seized dictatorial power on the anniversary of Austerlitz and locked up all dissenters like Victor Hugo, Alex DeTocqueville and cartoonist Honore' Daumier (gotta watch them cartoonists...)
1859- John Brown was hanged. He said nothing on the scaffold but left a prediction on a slip of paper :".. I now believe that the sins of this nation have become so great that the cannot be excised but by a great spilling of blood.." Witnessing the event were Col. Robert E. Lee, Captain Jeb Stuart, and part time reservist John Wilkes Booth.
1877- Camille Saint Saens opera “Samson & Dalila” premiered in Weimar.
1896- We remember Wyatt Earp as the marshal of Dodge City and gunfighter of the 1881 OK Corral gunfight. He was better known to his people of his own generation as the referee of the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey Heavyweight Championship prizefight. After leaving Tombstone Arizona, Wyatt Earp drifted to San Francisco where his skills as a fight referee were called upon for this last of the big bare-knuckle bouts. He enraged the public when he declared the fight for Sharkey in the 3rd round after Big-Bob Fitzsimmons couldn't stop bleeding. More people were out to kill him over this decision than were ever out to get him when marshal of Dodge City.
1901- Mr. King Gillette invented the safety razor.
1935- Animator Marc Davis first day at Walt Disney Studios. He retired in 1978.
1938-The first executions in California by gas chamber.
1942- THE FIRST CONTROLLED NUCLEAR CHAIN REACTION.-The concept of a fission reaction had been theorized by Einstein and Bohr in 1939. Under a squash court at the University of Chicago a team of physicists led by Enrico Ferme began a chain reaction in a uranium pile and stopped it again, producing a few watts of energy. To celebrate they produced a bottle of Chianti and some paper cups. No toasts were made to man's entrance into the Atomic Age. Tennis courts are still there and the Regenstein Library was built on the site. To this day the lowest basement registers off the scale on Geiger counters.
1954- Senator Joseph McCarthy’s fall from power became complete. The Senate voted to censure him for Misconduct Unbecoming a Senator. He died of alcoholism in 1957.
1993- NASA astronauts do a series of space walks from their shuttle to adjust the Hubble space telescope. The Hubble cost billions of dollars but was sent into orbit with a flaw in it’s lenses. It was nearsighted. The spacewalk in effect gave the Hubble a set of glasses to see better the furthest details of deep space.
1994- LA jury found Heidi Fleiss ‘The Hollywood Madam” guilty of running a prostitution ring.
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Yesterday’s Question: Franklin D. Roosevelt was the longest serving US President at 12 years. What President had the shortest term?
Answer: in 1841 President William Henry Harrison caught a cold at his own inauguration, which devolved into pneumonia and killed him. He was president for six weeks.
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