BACK to Blog Posts

March 9, 2012 Fri.
March 9th, 2012

Question: Who is Valentina Tereshkova?

Yesterdays Question answered below: What is Yellow Journalism?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 3/9/2012
Birthdays: Amerigo Vespucci, Eddie Foy Sr., Yuri Gargarin, Samuel Barber, chess master Bobby Fischer, Mickey Spillane, Vita Sackville-West, Raul Julia, Vacheslav Molotov, Juliet Binoche is 48, Linda Fiorentino is 54, Lil’ Bow-Wow is 25

1522- Protestant reformer Martin Luther had inspired the people of Germany to throw off the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. But he soon became alarmed by the excesses he heard of. People were burning churches and stoning priests who refused to change their ways. One bishop fed Holy Communion wafers to his pet parrot.

This day Martin Luther came out of protective hiding and donned his monks robes to give a series of 8 sermons from the pulpit in Wittenberg. He called people back to order and to show mercy to those who still preferred the old religion. Stop the violence he said" had I not freed millions of men from ecclesiastical oppression without lifting more than one pen?"

1566- The Scottish Presbyterian nobles around Mary Queen of Scots disliked her Italian secretary Antonio Riccio. So today despite the Queens protests, they dragged him off and stabbed him to death.

1796-NAPOLEON & JOSEPHINE'S WEDDING ANNIVERSARY- Legend has it Napoleon was working late at the office planning to attack Italy so arrived two hours late. The minister had dozed off and Napoleon shouted:" Wake up Citizen and Marry Us!" Josephine (34) was about 8 years older than Nappy (26) so to smooth over the difference on the marriage certificate he made himself 18 months older and she took four years off.

1805- YORK -Several times the little Lewis and Clark expedition was saved from attack because Indians were amazed to see York, Captain Clark’s slave. It was the first black man they had ever seen. This day York was introduced to Mandan Chief One-Eyed Le Bourgne. Le Bourgne first tried to rub the color off with water but when he saw York’s dark hair he whooped for joy! The whites were hairy, pale and ugly but this man was beautiful like a buffalo! LeBourgne immediately invited York make love to two Mandan maidens so a physical record of this great event would remain with the tribe. York found himself on several more occasions a sexual diplomat on behalf of the United States.

1822- First patent in the U.S. issued for ceramic false teeth. Before that they were made of a strong oak; George Washington once tried a set made of deer's teeth set in lead that was too heavy for him to close his mouth. He settled for a set carved from a hippopotamus jaw. In Gilbert Stuarts’ painting the bulge seen in his tightly compressed upper lip is his dentures.

1841- After hearing the arguments of former president John Quincy Adams the US Supreme Court ruled that the African men who overpowered the crew of the Spanish slave ship La Amistad could go home.

1842- Francisco Lopez discovered gold in Placerita Canyon in Southern California.

1846- With the lavish ceremony before the gates of Lahore, Britain concluded the First Sikh War. One of the tributes handed over was the Koh-in-Noor Diamond, The Mountain of Light, at 800 karats the largest diamond in the world. It is now part of the crown jewels of Britain.

1847- General Winfield Scott began landing the U.S. troops off ships in the harbor of Vera Cruz in landing boats he designed. He hoped to emulate Cortez's march of conquest to Mexico City. It was the first large scale amphibious landings in U.S. Army history.

1858- THE MAILBOX is patented. One legend has it first invented by English writer Anthony Trollope.

1862- THE MONITOR VS. THE MERRIMAC. The first battle between iron warships. The Confederate Merrimac also called the Virginia spent yesterday shooting up the wooden Yankee fleet, it's armor plating laughing off their cannonballs.

She was preparing to finish the job today when the weirdly designed little U.S.S. Monitor chugged into view. The two ironclads fought to a draw, but it saved the remainder of the Union fleet. When you see paintings of the event, they neglect the fact that both ships were covered with pork fat to keep them slippery, and it must have caught fire during the cannon fire. So imagine two flaming pork chops bobbing in the water shooting at each other. They kept bouncing cannonballs off their iron sides all day. At one point the confederate captain asked his gunnery officer why he had stopped firing. He replied:" Because I'm doing her as much damage as if I snapped my fingers at her every two and a half minutes!" The Merrimac's crew even tried to board the Monitor with pistols and cutlasses, but she was too un-maneuverable to catch her. Finally exhausted, they both drew off for the night.

The CSS Merrimac was later blown up when it's home base at Norfolk was captured by land forces and the USS Monitor sank in a storm. But both sides began to build more iron warships. The London Times correspondent John Russell had watched the battle and wired home:" As of today every wooden fleet in the world is now obsolete."

1888- While strolling through his garden, writer Jules Verne was shot twice by a demented nephew. He recovered, but walked with a limp from then on.

1907-Former Edison animator J. Stuart Blackton starts "Moving Picture World" an early movie fanzine.

1913- Virginia Woolf completed her first novel The Voyage Out.

1916- Pancho Villa and his Mexican Revolutionaries- Los Dorados, crossed into Texas and New Mexico and at the town of Columbus killed 17 Americans and burned the town. Villa was angry that the Yankees had intervened in the Mexican revolution several times and allowed American railroads to transport the troops of his rival General Carranza. Pancho Villa was later pursued by U.S. troops under Blackjack Pershing leading men who would one day lead American armies like Lieutenant George Patton and Captain Douglas MacArthur.

1917- During the air battles over the Western Front this day a red German Fokker Albatross biplane was forced down over his own lines. Friendly troops carried the pilot to safety, stunned but okay. When they asked him how many planes had he shot down, he murmered "24". The men thought he was a liar until they undid the scarf around his neck and saw his Blue Max medal. The pilot was Von Richtofen, the Red Baron. Baron von Richtofen would recover and go back to the battle, scoring 80 kills until he was finally killed in April 1918.

1932-New York born Eamon DeValera elected first President of the Republic of Ireland.

1932- China’s last emperor Henry Pu Yi was declared by the Japanese Army emperor of their conquered territory in Manchuria called Manchukuo.

1935- The Looney Tune Cartoon "I haven’t Got a Hat" premiered. This cartoon gave birth to the first permanent Warner Bros. Cartoon star- Porky Pig.

1945- U.S. B-29s drop massive amounts of incendiary bombs on Tokyo, killing 120,000 people, more than Hiroshima (90,000). USAF General Curtis LeMay told his assistant Robert MacNamara that "If the Japanese had won the war, we would’ve been prosecuted as war criminals."

1954- Edgar R. Murrow does a "See It Now" television broadcast detailing the life of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the commie-chaser. The obvious contradictions and gross opportunism in McCarthy's record when laid out before a nationwide audience, destroyed his career and took the steam out of the "Red Scare" of the 50's. It is probably television journalism's finest moment. For the lowest? Well, what's on tonight ?

1955- Actor James Dean’s film East of Eden premiered today,.

1959-The first "Clutch Cargo" show.

1974- Lieutenant Hiru Onada came out of the Philippine jungle and surrendered, at last made to understand that World War Two had been over for thirty years. Even after he captured a radio he thought the news of American troops in Vietnam and Korea was just propaganda. He was finally convinced after Japanese researchers produced his elderly retired Major who read over a bullhorn the surrender orders he first gave in 1945.

1984- Roy E. Disney Jr. resigned from the central board of the Walt Disney Company, setting in motion a series of takeover bids and maneuvering, that by August would leave him in control of the company.

1989- Artist-photographer Robert Maplethorpe died of AIDS.

1997- Gangsta-rap singer Christopher Wallace , who was known as the Notorious B.I.G. and also called Biggie Smalls, was shot and killed by a gangsta-style drive by. His last album was entitled Life After Death. Notorious BIG could never shake the accusation that he was involved in the similar murder of singer Tupac Shakur.
------------------------------------------
Yesterdays Question: What is Yellow Journalism?

Answer: Yellow journalism refers to reporting that relies on sensationalized
provocative stories and formats, slanted in one way or another to
boost circulation. The National Enquirer or any of Rupert Murdoch's
scandal sheets are good examples.

The term came from the kind of news reporting designed to boost the readership of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, during the late 1800's circulation wars. Both of those papers published versions of the comic strip, "Hogans Alley", featuring a character called the Yellow Kid, a mute,
bald-headed child in a nightshirt which, in the technology of the time, could be easily printed in yellow. The newspapers, became known as "the Yellow Kid papers" and their reporting style was soon dubbed "yellow journalism". ( Thanks F).


RSS