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June 2, 2013
June 2nd, 2013

Quiz- In WWII slang, what was a tin can, flattop and battlewagon?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is a Pyrrhic Victory?
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History for 6/2/2013
Birthdays: John Randolph, The Marquis DeSade, Martha Custis Washington, Thomas Hardy, Hedda Hopper, Sir Edward Elgar, Johnny Weismuller, Charlie Watts, Disney animation story artist Dick Heumer, Lotte Reinniger Marvin Hamlisch, Barry Levinson, Jon Peters, Dana Carvey, Garo Yepremian, Jerry Mathers the Beaver of the old TV show Leave it to Beaver, Dayvid Haysbert is 59, Lasse Halstrom is 67

303AD- Martyrdom of St. Elmo. This guy has to win the endurance record. The Emperor Diocletian had him starved, beaten with clubs, flogged with lead balled whips, rolled in tar and set on fire, roasted again in an iron chair, and he finally died after having his intestines wound out around a windlass. He is the patron saint of seafarers. When the blue electrical phenomenon appeared on ship's masts during a storm, it is called "St. Elmo's Fire".

1453-At Breslau, Papal Legate John of Capistrano presided over the torture of six Jews. After they confessed to Jewish practices, he had them burned at the stake. After John died the Protestants dug up his bones and threw them to their dogs. John was canonized San Juan Capistrano in 1690. A century later Franciscan monk Fra Junipero Serra named the picturesque little mission in California after him. And the swallows do migrate there.

1502- 30 year old Caesar Borgia had conquered most of central Italy in the name of his father Pope Alexander VI. He attacked the town of Faenza that was stoutly defended by Astorre Manfredi and his brother. Caesar Borgia offered them generous terms and after the surrender treated the Manfredi Brothers quite courteously, until they got back to Rome where he clapped them in a dungeon. This day the bodies of the Manfredi Brothers were found floating in the Tibur.

1533- Pope Paul III banned the enslavement of Indians in the New World. Whether anybody listened to him is another matter.

1763- At the British Fort Michilimackinac near Lake Superior some Sauk and Chippewa Indians were playing lacrosse. While the British sentries were engrossed in the ball game Indian women gathered near the forts’ open gates. When one player hurled the ball up over the wall as a signal the women tossed concealed knives and tomahawks to the players who rushed the fort and massacred its garrison.

1780- THE GORDON RIOTS- Lord Gordon organized a public demonstration against a pending bill granting toleration of Roman Catholic worship in England. The mob marched on Parliament where went goes berserk and looted London for a week. Lord Gordon became the last nobleman executed in the Tower of London and Parliament passed the Riot Act. But his tactics scared Parliament from passing the bill. The Catholic Emancipation Bill would not be passed until 1834. From then on whenever an unruly crowd won't disperse shortly before the Authorities start shooting and clubbing people, they first read them aloud the Riot Act.

1781- Thomas Jefferson was a great American statesman and thinker, but he was not much at military matters. This day, he sighted the rampaging British Army approaching his mountaintop home of Monticello. He galloped away for his life, abandoning his household. The redcoats respected his home, but burned his barns and liberated 200 of his slaves. As Governor of Virginia Jefferson had compromised his states defenses when he refused to enlist Black soldiers in the Virginia militia, to make up the manpower lost to Washington’s army up north. In the mean time Royalist governor Lord Dunmore was offering freedom for slaves who fought under the King’s colors. Jefferson resigned as governor and nine days later, fellow Virginian Patrick Henry convened a committee to investigate Jefferson’s incompetence while in office.
Years later in 1820 when elderly Thomas Jefferson presided over a commemoration of Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans, Jackson cruelly joked: “Well I’m glad to see the old gentleman got up enough courage to even remember a Battle !”

1886- President Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony. She was the daughter of his former law partner and Cleveland became her legal guardian after his death. Despite her being half his age and his earlier reputation for fathering children out of wedlock they were much in love and she especially charmed the American public. At age 21 she became the youngest woman to be First Lady. Songs were written for her and their first baby was honored with a candy bar- the Baby Ruth.

1896- Gugielmo Marconi took out a patent on wireless broadcasting - radio.
At the time his device could be heard from almost 12 miles away !

1920- Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer Prize for his first play Beyond the Horizon.

1920- THE WAR ON TERRORISM- Anarchists set off several bombs in the US, including at the home of the U.S. Attorney General. This year they also set off a bomb in a wagonload of scrap metal on Wall Street and tried to assassinate banker J.P. Morgan. This sparked a large government crackdown called The Palmer Raids. Many innocent immigrants, suffragettes and union organizers were jailed or deported as criminals. The progressive reaction to the crackdown was the birth of the American Civil Liberties Union. One junior member of Palmers investigator staff was J Edgar Hoover.

1924- Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all American Indians, whether they wanted it or not.

1928 - Velveeta Cheese invented.

1928- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek took the city of Peking (Beijing) from warlord Chiang Zhou Lin, called the Old Marshal.

1932- The Screen Publicists Guild formed

1940-Will Eisner's "The Spirit" comic first appears.

1941- Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease at age 38.

1946- Italians vote in a postwar referendum to become a republic. The monarchy of the House of Savoy was in place all during the regime of Mussolini. So because of King Vitorio Emmanuele IV’s support of Fascism, he and the Royal House of Savoy were declared deposed.

1952 - Maurice Olley of General Motors began designing the Corvette.

1952- Queen Elisabeth II of England crowned. The date was set by meteorologists who predicted it would be one of the few days that year that would have bright sunshine. And-you guessed it... it rained all day. It was also the first Royal Coronation to be seen on television.

1956- Elvis Presley introduced his song “ You Ain’t Nothin But a Hound Dog” on the Milton Berle TV show.

1958- An L.A. referendum allowed the county to buy Chavez Ravine from its inhabitants to build Dodger Baseball Stadium.

1961- Humorist writer George F. Kaufman died. He wanted on his headstone:
"Over My Dead Body!"

1973- London animator Richard Williams closed down his Soho studio for a month so his staff could be lectured by Hollywood animation legends Art Babbitt, Chuck Jones and Ken Harris.

1996- Roy Coombs, who took over the job as host of the TV game show Family Feud after Richard Dawson, hanged himself with his bed sheets at Glendale Adventist Hospital.

1999- Pope John Paul II blessed the new Vatican Parking garage!

2003- One secret to the American victory in Iraq was Saddam’s army heeded an appeal from the invaders not to resist and they would be taken care of. After the victory the occupation authority announced the Iraqi Army would be disbanded and all career soldiers lost their pensions and benefits. Today thousands of unemployed Iraqi soldiers demonstrated in front of American Occupation Headquarters in Baghdad demanding to be paid. It is the first time a defeated army demanded wages from their opponent.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is a Pyrrhic Victory?

Answer: A victory where your side is so damaged it’s hardly worth it. Named for the Greek King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who attacked the young Roman republic in Italy. After one battle, Pyrrhus exclaimed One more such victory and I am undone!” .


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