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HAPPY HANNAKAH ! - The Hebrew Festival of Lights commemorating the victories in 164 b.c.e. of the priest-general Judas Maccabeus (Maccabeus means the Hammer) against the Syrian Greeks when the re-lit lamp in the purified Temple of Solomon burned for nine days on one day’s oil . Hannakah of Chaunnakah means ReDedication. The ancient state of Israel had been conquered by Babylon then Persia and finally by Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death his Greek generals divided up his empire and Israel found itself on the border between the Kingdom of Seleucus and Ptolomey's Egypt. This power struggle enabled the Jewish state to reassert it's independence by playing one side against the other until the Romans kicked everyone's butt. The Greek descendant of Seleucus, Antiochus IV Theos Epiphanes- “God Made Manifest” thought this one-God stuff weird and Jews should be praying to Hercules and Apollo like every other self respecting ancient citizen. He plundered the Temple of Solomon for gold and even tried to command Jews to eat Pork on pain of death. The Jews reasserted their faith with such vigor that even when they fell under Roman rule Julius Caesar left specific instructions that Jewish customs and Sabbath be protected.

Birthdays: TA-TA-TA-TUMMMMMM!!! Ludwig Van Beethoven,Jane Austen, Margaret Mead, Noel Coward, George Santayanna, Liv Ullmann is 65, Steve Bochco, Leslie Stahl. Quentin Blake- dean of British illustrators favored by Roald Dahl, William 'Refrigerator' Perry, Arthur C. Clarke is 88

1900- EARLY ANIMATED FILM "ENCHANTED DRAWINGS', James Stuart Blackton was a New York World cartoonist who used to do a vaudeville act in drag. He came to do an article on Thomas Edison, then Edison put him on the payroll. He created this and several other trickfilms. This film doesn’t move much more than his vaudeville lightning drawing act, His 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is called the first animated cartoon.


1905- Variety magazine born.

1913- Young English music hall actor named Charlie Chaplin got a job at Keystone Studios in Hollywood. His first film he would play a villain.

1935-HOT TODDY. Hollywood movie star Thelma Todd found dead in her car in her garage in Malibu She was 30. She was a sexy comedienne who starred with Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers and loved to party. Was she done in by her jealous director boyfriend, was it the mob? she had dated Lucky Lucciano,or was it a suicide, or did she just pass out drunk in her car garage with the motor running? The mystery’s never been answered.

1944- Big Band Leader Glen Miller's plane disappeared over the English Channel. In 1988 ,a retired RAF engineer admitted he may have jettisoned some leftover bombs on top of the entertainer's plane while returning home from a bombing run.

1944- THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE- In his last gamble Hitler scraped together his remaining army reserves and launched them in a surprise attack through the center of the allied armies. The Nazis panzers were spearheaded by a group of commandos in G.I. uniforms trained in American slang and baseball scores to confuse communications. They calculated to launch their offensive during a heavy snowstorm when the superior Allied air forces would have to be grounded.
After chasing the Germans across France to the Rhine the American armies had come to consider the Krauts a defeated enemy. So they were taken completely by surprise. Gen. Eisenhower had just gotten his fifth general's star and was attending the wedding of his orderly Rickie in Versailles when he got the news. At one point the German offensive was so successful that Pres. Franklin Roosevelt wanted to drop the first Atomic Bomb on them. The offensive eventually stalled and was beaten back at the cost of 70,000 U.S. casualties; the most Americans killed and wounded in any single battle in history.

1966- The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the song ‘Hey Joe’, in the UK.

1971- Don McClean released the long version of the song ‘American Pie’.

1973- The first NFL player to rush for 2000 yards in a season?- O.J. Simpson.

1980- Colonel Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, died.

1988- Shockjock Howard Stern is fined $100,000 by the FCC for having on his radio show a man who could play the piano with his penis.

1993- Aaron Spelling fired Shannon Dougherty off the TV soap Beverly Hills 90210.

1999- Julie Andrews, star of Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music, sued New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital for destroying her singing voice during a routine throat operation.
A gag song appeared at the time for her sing (To my favorite things...)

Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cadillacs and cataracts and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,

These are a few of my favorite things.

When the pipes leak,
When the bones creak,
When the knees go bad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.