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June 29, 2013
June 29th, 2013

Quiz: Did Ben Hur really live?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: In ancient Greece, what was a hetaira?
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History for 6/29/2013
Birthdays: Bernard Hermann, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Slim Pickens, Nelson Eddy, Gary Busey, John Hench, Little Eva, Harmon Killabrew, Antoine de Saint Exupery, Anna Sophie-Mutter, Leroy Anderson, Maria Conchita Alonso, Robert Evans is 83, Matthew Weiner, Roger Allers, Ray Harryhausen

65 AD- Feasts of Saints Peter and Paul. Supposing to be the date they were executed by order of Nero. Paul was beheaded in the Mamertine prison. He had the right to die quickly because he had honorary Roman citizenship- Civitas Romanum Sum! Peter was taken to Vatican Hill and when he expressed joy that he would die as Jesus had, the Roman guard conceived of a variation and crucified him upside down. When later Roman Emperor Commodus learned the Christians venerated Vatican hill because of that event, he had his favorite racing horse buried there. When told “ the Christians venerate that ground.” Commodus replied “ Well, I really liked that horse….”

1540- When Henry VIII needed some dirty work done, his unscrupulous chancellor Sir Thomas Cromwell was there to do it for him. Behead a wife, behead a Saint, no problem sire. This day Cromwell’s turn came and he went to the block. The official charge was for Heresy and Cromwell could probably appreciate the silliness of the charge. The king was merely tired of him, embarrassed by the botched marriage to Anne of Cleves and wanted him out of the way. His great nephew Oliver Cromwell disliked being reminded he was distantly related to that royal kissass Sir Thomas Cromwell.

1762- Catherine the Great overthrew her husband Czar Peter III in a palace coup. When Catherine received word that Peter intended to depose her to marry his mistress she decided to strike first. Peter was mentally ill, so few believe he managed to make a child Her husband the Czar –Autocrat preferred playing with his toy soldiers in bed. But in those days if a marriage didn’t produced children it was assumed the woman was at fault. Catherine had a son the Czarevich Paul.

So the remainder of the Romanoff dynasty may well be the spawn of Count Orloff in the Guards, Polish Prince Poniatowski or any one of a number of other lovers. The Russian troops worshipped their “little mother” because her first order after the coup was to cancel Peter’s planned war with Denmark, which the men thought foolish. Czar Peter was beaten and strangled, and Czarina Catharine became one of Russia’s great rulers.

1776- SO YOU WANT INDEPENDENCE EH?- This day outside New York Harbor near Sandy Hook New Jersey an immense British fleet was sighted. 500 ships bringing 32,000 redcoat troops and supplies 3,000 miles. It was led by the Howe brothers- General Lord Willam Howe and Admiral Richard Howe, “Black Dick”. One American soldier wrote:” There must be no one left in London, they are all here.”

Simultaneous forces were headed for the Carolinas and at the mouth of the Chesapeake to menace Philadelphia. The British regulars were augmented by regiments of Hessian German mercenaries, trained in the schools of Frederick the Great, reputedly the finest in the world. General George Washington with his little army of amateur farmers were going to face the largest amphibious invasion of that century.

1776- THE BATTLE OF SULLIVAN’S ISLE. At the same time, Colonial Minutemen repulsed another English seaborne attack, this one at Charleston, South Carolina. A rebel song of the time poked fun at the British commander, Sir Peter Parker's Lament :

" With Much Labor and Toil
Unto Sullivan's Isle
Came I like Falstaff or Pistol.
But the Yankees ('Od rot'em)
I could not get at 'em
And they terribly mauled my poor Bristol! (-HMS Bristol)

But My Lords do not fear
For before the next year,
('Though a small island could fret us)
The continent whole
We shall take by my soul,
If the cowardly Yankees will let us!"

1799- The little Kingdom of Naples had trouble deciding who's side it was on during the Napoleonic Wars. It was very pro-British until a French army showed up, when they drove out the king and became pro-French. The British came back with a fleet and put the king back on his throne. The Neopolitan King Ferdinand “Big Nose" VII had told his British friends:"treat my Naples like it was a rebellious Irish village ".

On this day the commander of the Neopolitan Navy, Admiral Carracciolo, who had changed sides several times, was captured and brought before Admiral Horatio Nelson. Nelson convened a drumhead courts-martial, sentenced and hanged the old Italian from his flagship's yardarm all on the same day. His lack of mercy, even of enough time to allow the condemned time to say his prayers remains one of the only black marks on Nelson's otherwise brilliant naval career. After a yardarm hanging the body is cut loose and allowed to drop into the sea.

In a grim postscript several days later King Ferdinand was looking out across the harbor when he dropped his spyglass in horror. Carracciolo's body, bloated, fish knawed and pop-eyed from the hanging, had resurfaced and was looking right at him.

1801- Composer Ludwig van Beethoven confessed to a friend that he was going deaf.

1815- After Waterloo Napoleon Bonaparte spent a week sitting at Malmaison Palace trying to decide what to do, and reminiscing about Josephine to her daughter Hortense. as Allied armies closed in on Paris. Prussian Marshal Blucher declared his goal was to arrest Napoleon and hopefully shoot him as a criminal. At 5:00PM today Napoleon finally left Paris for the Atlantic coast with a promise that a ship was waiting to take him to exile in America. Shortly afterwards a troop of Prussian cavalry arrived too late.

1863- Robert E. Lee with his army now invading Pennsylvania, learned from an actor turned spy named Harris that the Yankee army he thought he left back in Virginia was now following him close by. There was a danger his army could be attacked while in it was strung out in several columns foraging for supplies. Angry that Jeb Stuart’s cavalry was off lost somewhere instead of scouting, Lee orders his grey columns to turn away from Harrisburg and Philadelphia and concentrate where five main roads intersected.
A town named Gettysburg.

1927- The first commercial plane reached Hawaii from the US mainland. It was a seaplane and at one point it ran out of fuel, landed in the water and the crew rowed the final few miles.

1936- Pope Pius X published an encyclical warning of the evils of Motion Pictures. “They glorify Lust and Lascivious behavior.”

1940 – ROBIN THE BOY WONDER- According to Batman Comics, this day mobsters rubbed out a circus highwire team known as the Flying Graysons, leaving their son Dick an orphan. He was taken in by millionaire Bruce Wayne so Batman could have his Robin.

1940- First day shooting on the film Citizen Kane.

1941- One week after the German invasion began at a secret meeting in Moscow leader Josef Stalin was finally made to understand by his defense committee just how badly the Red Army was being beaten by the Nazis Blitzkrieg. He left the room saying “ Lenin had left us a powerful state and we have screwed it up!”

1950- The Hollywood Ten are given jail sentences for contempt of Congress.

1956- President Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highways Act, allocating millions of dollars to build a system of interstate freeways connecting all the major U.S. cities. Ike was an engineer in the 1920s and saw the deplorable condition of American roads. During World War Two he saw the Germans use autobahns to move heavy mechanized forces quickly.
The Interstate System had at first a definite Cold War logic to it. The Interstates would be commandeered in time of war and every few miles there had to be a five mile straitaway so planes could use them for an emergency landing.

1956- Marilyn Monroe married author Arthur Miller.

1966- Operation Rolling Thunder. US B-52s bomb Hanoi for the first time.

1967-Actress Jane Mansfield and her dog are decapitated in a car crash when their car slammed into a parked tractor-trailer. Her children including Marisa Hargitay were in the back seat.

1968 - "Tip-Toe Thru' The Tulips With Me" by Tiny Tim peaks at #17.

1974- Isabella Peron, the second wife of Juan Peron after Evita, became President of Argentina.

1978- Actor Bob Crane, best known as the star in the television series Hogan’s Heroes, was found beaten to death with an electric cord around his neck in a Scottsdale Arizona hotel room. Around his body were pornographic literature and a large library of home made porn tapes.

1992- President of Algeria Mohammed Boudief was assassinated during a speech.

2002- President George W. Bush formally turned over presidential power for two hours to Vice President Dick Cheney while he underwent a colonoscopy- i.e. a fiber optic camera is shoved up his butt.

2007- Pixar’s Ratatouille premiered.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: In ancient Greece, what was a hetaira?

Answer: A prostitute or concubine who was versed in music and high culture, the western equivalent to a Japanese Geisha.


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