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Aug 25, 2013
August 25th, 2013

Quiz: If someone offered you a plate of Offal, would you eat it?

Yesterday’s answer below: Who first said “ Ignorance is Bliss’..?
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History for 8/25/2013
Birthdays: King Ludwig II the Mad of Bavaria, Leonard Bernstein, Bret Hart, Lola Montez (flamenco dancing mistress of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria), Alan Pinkerton, Elvis Costello is 59, Clara Bow, Ruby Keeler, Monty Hall, Van Johnson, Willis Reed, Frederick Forsythe, Wayne Shorter, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dr. Bruno Bettleheim, Rolly Fingers, Gene Simmons, Anne Archer, Tim Burton is 55, Sean Connery is 83, Claudia Schiffer is 42

Opiconsiva- Ancient Roman festival of the first harvest.

1127- Princess Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror, married Geoffrey of Anjou, a powerful noble family in central France. After the Conqueror’s sons died England went through a confusing period of dynastic struggle that only ended when Matilda and Geoffrey's son Henry becomes King Henry II of England. Jeff D’Anjou was a zitty little nonentity, who, other than producing the great English royal line of Richard the LionHeart and Henry V was also known for putting a little flower in his hat. In Latin a planta-genesta. His family name was called Plantagenet.

1718- The FIRST BOATLOAD OF FRENCH COLONISTS LAND IN LOUISIANA- Sieur de la Moyne- Bienville established a fort and trading post on some low ground between the Mississippi and Lake Ponchartrain. He named the place for Phillip of Orleans, then ruler of France in the name of the child King Louis XV. The French and Dutch always had a problem with their American colonies, in that nobody wanted to leave home to live there. One solution the French thought up involved sweeping the streets of all the hookers, cutthroats and riffraff and shipping them all to America. Though it wasn't exactly "Pilgrim's Progress", this influx of cardsharks and sportin' ladies helped New Orleans quickly establish it's rep as one of the wildest towns of the New World.

1814- The British Army occupying Washington D.C. continued their work of burning the city- The State Department, War Office, Library of Congress, The Treasury Building and more were torched. British Admiral Cockburn made a point of destroying the offices of the National Intelligencer, a newspaper run by an English immigrant named Joseph Gales who loved writing insulting editorials about him. An early morning summer thunderstorm doused some fires but added to the misery of Washingtonians cowering in the forests of Arlington.
President James Madison spent most of the night in the saddle looking for his wife Dolly, and trying to rally his scattered government. He was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Dolly Madison with a carriage full of the furniture from the White House tried to enter an inn called Wileys Tavern. But the owners wife threw the First Lady out: “You can leave Mrs Madison! Thanks to your husband, mine is out fighting in the war! Damn You!”

1829- The Mexican Government refused US President Andrew Jackson’s offer to purchase Texas. Jackson then explored other means. Sam Houston, first President of Texas and it’s first governor under the US flag was a protégé of Jackson.

1830- Brabant Rebellion, Belgium separates from Holland.

1830- This is the day of the legendary race between the locomotive the Tom Thumb and a horse and buggy outside of Baltimore. The Tom Thumb weighing in at about a ton and developing a whopping one horse power. The boiler driven fan broke down near the end, The horse won. Still, the train’s performance was so impressive that the first U.S. railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, shifted from horse drawn to steam railroad.

1835- The New York Sun newspaper ran the story that British astronomer Sir William Herschel, the discoverer of Neptune, had observed little men living on the surface of the Moon! The story proved false, but it boosted the sales of the paper.

1875- Matthew Webb became the first person to successfully swim the English Channel.

1893- Colored People’s Day at the Columbia Exhibition in Chicago. How thoughtful!

1896- The Journal Examiner's Yellow-Fellow Transcontinental Bicycle Relay race.

1900- Is God dead? No, just Frederich Neitszche,this day

1912- In Shanghai, Dr. Sun Yat Sen forms the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party.

1916- President Woodrow Wilson created the National Parks Service out of 35 separate departments.

1928- Commander Byrd sets off to explore the Antarctic.

1944- PARIS LIBERATED. Adolf Hitler had ordered the Germans to dynamite all the major landmarks: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame etc, But when the time came, the German commander Gen. Deitrich von Choltitz refused to do it. There was street fighting but the heavier German tank units had voluntarily evacuated the city. Free French General LeClerc led the allied column into the City of Lights.
Ernest Hemingway and a few paratroops liberated the Ritz Hotel's wine cellar and Shakespeare and Company bookstore. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were discovered by CBS correspondent Eric Severaid living quietly unharmed outside of town.

1945- In an incident in postwar China, U.S. troops scuffle with Communist Chinese soldiers and a Capt. John Birch was killed. In the mounting coldwar hysteria Capt. Birch is lauded as the first martyr in the war against Communism and a society in his name is formed. The John Birch Society becomes a powerful force for Conservative politics in the 1950's and 60's.

1967 – In Mississippi George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of American Nazi Party, was blown off the speaker’s platform by a shotgun. Although not as significant as the Martin Luther King or the Kennedy’s assassinations, it was another incident in the violent 1960’s. George Lincoln Rockwell was also a distant cousin of Norman Rockwell, although the famed artist was embarrassed to admit it.

1970- A young British singer named Elton John did his first US tour, opening at the Troubadour in LA.

1980- The premiere of the Broadway musical version of the classic movie 42nd Street. In a moment of Broadway melodrama producer David Merrick came out on stage and startled the cast and audience by announcing that the director of the play Gower Champion had died that very day. 42nd Street went on to be a smash hit. The play itself is about a Broadway director who works himself to death creating a hit musical.

1989- Congressman Barney Frank confirmed that he had paid for the services of a gay male prostitute Stephan Gobie. The unrepentant and refreshingly frank-Frank continues to serve in Congress to this day.

1989- The Voyager 2 probe left Neptune and shoots off into deep space after completing it reconnaissance of the outer planets of our solar system. It discovered the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, the additional moons of these planets, and the volcanoes of the Jovian moon Io, and the ice of Europa. Today you have ten times more computing power in your laptop than in the Voyager spacecraft, yet all these years later it continues to transmit signals back to Earth.

1991- At the Emmy ceremony, comic Gilbert Gottfried (AFLACK duck) upset the audience by a flood of masturbation jokes about Pee Wee Herman. Fox Network apologized the next day.

2001-Beautiful 22 year old R&B singer Allieya was killed, when her overloaded charter plane crashed on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas.

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Yesterday’s Quiz: Who first said “ Ignorance is Bliss’..?

Answer: From the poem by Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742) "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise…”


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