BACK to Blog Posts

Oct 2, 2013 Weds
October 2nd, 2013

Quiz: In front of New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, there is one statue, and it is to a fictional character. Who is it?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: What does it mean to make an argument ad hominem?
-------------------------------------------------------
October 2, 2013
Birthdays: King Richard III, Nat Turner, Mahatma Ghandi, Claus Von Hindenburg, Ferdinand Foch, Spanky MacFarland, Julius Marx known as Groucho Marx, Bud Abbott, Moses Gunn, Graham Greene, LeRoy Shield (composer of the music in the Hal Roach comedies), Donna Karan, Gordon Sumner known as Sting is 62, Lorraine Bracco is 49, Tiffany, Kelly Ripa

Happy Farm Animals Day

1370- King Charles V makes Bertrand De Guesclin (De-Goo-Clan) Constable of France
and so in charge of the French side of the Hundred Years War. De Guesclin was a
very noble and able knight; not many artifacts remain of his time, but if you go
to the monastery of Mont. St. Michel in Brittany where he kept his wife, they have
the complete selection of her chastity belts.

1608- Dutch lens grinder Hans Lipperschei sent to the States General in the Hague
a plan for an invention to see enemies at great distances. It used a tube with concave
lenses on one end and convex lenses on the other. The Telescope. Another Dutch lens
maker asked for a similar patent. But it was Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who
read their doctoral papers. Within a year he had ground his own lenses and created
his own telescope. He was the first to train it on the Universe.

1780- The Americans hang British Major John Andre' as a spy at a tavern near
present day Nyack New York. Andre' was Benedict Arnold's contact and had
put aside his redcoat to slip through American lines. He was arrested before
he could get back. Washington really wanted to trade Andre for Arnold if he could,
and the British were disgusted that Arnold refused to nobly offer himself in exchange.
The hangman chosen was a loyalist prisoner who was promised his freedom. It was
felt if the executioner was a Yankee, the man's family might be harmed in revenge.

Up until now the British and their Yankee cousins had been quite civil to each other
and it was not uncommon to see paroled American and British officers dining together
at the height of the Revolution. But the British considered this hanging a barbaric
abuse of a prisoner of war. Everyone knew Andre was not a professional spy or turncoat,
but a gentleman British officer of high standing. John Andre had always been dismissed
as a dandy fop, but it was admitted by all he met his end well. Benedict Arnold
became a redcoat, but he was never accepted by British .

1807- Napoleon met Goethe at the philosopher's home at Weimar. People expected
sparks to fly as the Great Enslaver of Nations would meet the Champion of the Human
Spirit. Actually they had a pleasant afternoon conversation.

1836-Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle returned to Falmouth England, ending a five
year voyage to Brazil, the Galapagos and New Zealand. The knowledge he gained on
exotic flora and fauna would lead him to write the Origin of the Species.

1914- Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicted this day
would be the beginning of the Apocalypse and the End of the World. When nothing
happened he responded that it was the beginning of a process of events that would
lead to the eventual end of the world. - oh.

1918- As the German lines on the Western Front continued to crumble Prince Max of
Baden agreed to become Chancellor of a new government in Berlin. He demanded that
that Kaiser relinquish the power to make war and peace to the Reichstag. He also
brought two leading Social Democrat deputies into the cabinet. They and General
Ludendorf urged an immediate peace with the Allies before red revolution broke out
in Germany.

1920 - The only triple-header in baseball history was played on this day, as the
Cincinnati Reds took two out of three games from the Pittsburgh Pirates.

1925-The first bright red Leyland doubledecker omnibuses appear on London streets.

1928 - This was a busy day at Victor Records Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. DeFord
Bailey cut eight masters. Three songs were issued, marking the first studio recording
sessions in the place now known as Music City, USA.

1933- Library of Congress musicologist John Lomax met with an Arkansas chaingang
convict named Hudlan Ledbetter, who everyone called Leadbelly. He recorded a cotton picking work song of his called "the Rock Island Line'. Leadbelly became famous
and recorded his own version 3 years later. Lomax died in 2002.

1936- Mussolini attacked Ethiopia.

1937 - Ronald Reagan, just 26 years old, made his acting debut this day
with Warner Brothers release of "Love is in the Air".

1950- Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip debuts. Good ol'
Charlie Brown was the name of a fellow post office worker all the guy's liked
to play jokes on. Schulz's idea 'little folks' was initially rejected
by all the major comic syndicates. Three months before the strip was accepted his
girlfriend broke off their engagement. He had left his job at the post office and
she was convinced he would never amount to anything. At the time of his death Charles
Schulz had mountains on the moon named for his characters, and he was arguably the richest visual artist on earth.

1954- Elvis Presley is fired from Nashville's Grand Ol' Opry Show after
one performance. He was told :"Son, you ain't a' going no where. Go
back to driving a truck!"

1955 - "Good Eeeeeeevening." The master of mystery movies, Alfred
Hitchcock, presented his brand of suspense to millions of viewers on CBS
on this night.

1957- Raintree County, the first film in Panavision.

1958- The Huckleberry Hound show.

1959- The television show the Twilight Zone debuts. Producer/writer Rod Serling
had fought network execs for months that a mystery-suspense show could compete with
all the Doctor and Cowboy shows on TV. He originally wanted Orson Welles to be
the host of the show but when Welles asked for too much money, Serling decided to
do it himself. He wrote 90 episodes. He said he got the name Twilight Zone from a
term airline pilots used for the area when both the clouds and ground are invisible
from view and you lose your bearings.

1967- Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African American to be a Supreme
Court Justice.

1967- San Francisco Police raid the Haight-Ashbury home of the rock band the Grateful
Dead, busting just about everyone for possession of narcotics.

1968- Just a week before the Olympics were set to begin in Mexico City the Mexican
government shot hundreds of rioting student demonstrators and arrested hundreds
more who were never seen again. Thirty years later the incident is still not acknowledged
by them as ever even happening. In 2001 President Vincente Fox did a South-African style peace commission.

1977 - Following an foiled attempt to steal the body of Elvis Presley from
Forest Hill Cemetery, both Presley's and his grandmother's bodies were moved
to Graceland.

1978- Future TV star Tim Allen was busted in Kalamazoo Michigan for selling cocaine.

1982- Godfrey Reggio’s haunting documentary Koyaanisqatsi premiered at Radio City Music Hall. Music by Phillip Glass.

1985- Actor Rock Hudson died of AIDS. The first major celebrity to die of the disease.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean to make an argument ad hominem?

Answer: Argumentem Ad Hominem is Latin for “to the man”, meaning a debate tactic where you try to score points by bringing up unrelated personal attacks on your opponent. In 2012 Mass Senator Scott Brown attacked challenger Elizabeth Warren based on what box she checked on her Harvard application 30 years ago was called an Ad Hominem Attack.


RSS