BACK to Blog Posts

MAY 8, 2014
May 8th, 2014

Quiz: There was that HBO WWII miniseries Band of Brothers, and Admiral Nelson called his captains his Band of Brothers. But who originated the term?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: Who was Son of Sam? (hint: 1970s.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
History for 5/8/2014
Birthdays: Harry Truman, Roberto Rossellini, Leopold Bakhunin, Louis Gottschalk, Oscar Hammerstein, Ted Sorenson, Sonny Liston, Toni Tennille, Ricky Nelson, Peter Benchley, Thomas Pinchon, David Attenborough, Keith Jarrett, Alex Van Halen, Melissa Gilbert, French illustrator Jean Giraud aka Moebius, Enrique Inglesias, Don Rickles is 88, Bob Clampett

1429-St. Joan of Arc saved the City of Orleans. The English had never captured the capitol of the Loire Valley but were besieging it from a string of powerful fortresses built around it. Joan with her French knights John the Bastard, Etienne the Furious One and their retainers had to storm these strategic castles one by one to break the siege.

At one point in the battle for a point in a castle wall called La Tourelles and huge English knight stood in the breach hewing down Frenchmen with his two-handed broadsword. He seemed invincible until a knight named Jean De Montesclere brought up one of those newfangled hand held cannons that sat on your shoulder. From a safe distance Jean put a stone bullet through the Englishman. The unknown knight was the first man ever shot by a gun.

1587- The Roanoke Colony settlers left England for Virginia. When a supply ship reached their colony in 1590, the houses were intact, but the colonists had all disappeared, leaving no remains or signs of violence. Only a mysterious message CROTOAN carved on a tree. Their fate has never been determined, but a recent theory claims they moved to an Indian village near Hatteras.

1776- While the American Congress was debating whether to declare independence or not the British Navy reminded them what was at stake. This day two warships, HMS Roebuck and Liverpool tried to shoot their way up the Delaware River to Philadelphia They were turned back by the Yankee shore batteries.

1778- Sir George Clinton arrived in occupied Philadelphia to relieve British commander Sir William Howe. Clinton’s instructions from London were that since the French had entered the American Revolution on the American side, he was to abandon the rebel capitol of Philadelphia and consolidate British forces in New York. Instead of being reinforced with more troops he was to detach a few regiments for an attack on Saint Lucia in the Caribbean.

1824- Ludwig Von Beethoven performed his Ninth (Choral) Symphony and Missa Solemnis in concert for the first time. Even though he was stone deaf he was still in demand as a conductor. The orchestra trained themselves to ignore the Maestro's baton waving and follow the lead of the concert-master ( first violinist ). It was said when they finished and the audience was cheering, poor Beethoven was still flapping his arms about and moaning the melody, unaware of the sound of his own voice.

1874- Massachusetts adopted a ten-hour workday for women, down from 12-14 hours.

1878- David Hughes invents the Microphone while trying to get over bronchitis.

1910-Russian-Jewish immigrant glove salesman Schmuel Gelpfisch married Blanche Lasky, the daughter of vaudeville performer Jesse Lasky. Gelpfisch later changed his name to Sam Goldfish, then Goldwyn. He and his father in law Jesse Lasky went into the new flicker business and started the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. They moved to Hollywood and in 1915 they merged with Paramount Pictures and Goldwyn merged into Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. Both became top Hollywood producers.

1912- movie studio Famous Players Lasky born. In 1914 they changed their name to Paramount Pictures.

1933- When the Rockefellers were building their huge office complex Rockefeller Center in New York City they decided to get one of the greatest living Mexican painter Diego Rivera to design the murals for the interior of the atrium ’Man at the Crossroads". This despite the fact that Rivera was well known as a radical communist.

Soon Nelson Rockefeller noticed Rivera was painting in the center of the mural a huge portrait of Lenin stepping on John D. Rockefeller’s face! Over Rivera’s protests Rockefeller ordered the mural painted over and no record of it’s existence ever kept. But on the night before the painting was to be destroyed Swiss art student Lucienne Bloch slipped a camera into her shirt. While Frida Kahlo distracted the guards she took the only photos of the mural for posterity.

1943-Tex Avery's "Red Hot Riding Hood"- Ooohh Wolfy !

1945-Nazi's repeat the surrender signing done for Eisenhower now for the Russians in Berlin. The announcements are made, V-E day celebrations break out around the world.

1947- Dept store mogul Harry Gordon Selfridge died in poverty in Putney, a suburb of London. He was 89. Even though his store Selfridges made millions, in his old age he wasted so much money on gambling and women his board stripped him of his power.
In 1943 he was arrested for vagrancy for loitering in front of his own store.

1954-DIEN BIEN PHU- The Communist Viet Minh guerrillas decisively defeat the French in Indochina. The French strategy was to place a forward base in the heart of the guerrilla infested jungle to lure the Vietnamese into the open and defeat them. Instead they got a modern version of the Little Big Horn with the French Legionairies going down under endless waves of attacking Vietnamese. The guerrilla forces had carried large howitzers in small pieces up mountaintops and assembled them to rain shells down on the French.

In the famed tradition of the anonymous Foreign Legionaire, one of the most decorated sergeants was a former Nazi U-boat captain. Another was a Romanian Jewish holocaust survivor who had been tracking down the camp guard who had killed his family in Dachau. Once an Israeli paratrooper now a foreign legionnaire, the Romanian jumped from foxhole to foxhole ignoring the enemy shooting at him until he found his prey and exacted revenge for his family. He survived the battle and was cleared by a French courts martial, who ruled (tongue in cheek, I suspect ) it could not be proved that the specific bullet that killed the Nazi didn’t come from an enemy gun. Is this a screenplay, or what ?

1962-"A Funny thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum" opened on Broadway.

1962- Director Joe Mankiewicz shot the climactic spectacle scene of Cleopatra –Elizabeth Taylor, entering Rome through the Arch of Titus on a mobile sphinx surrounded by thousands of extras. The shot had been delayed six months after a stunt woman fell off an elephant and then the light in the Forum had not been right. When Elizabeth Taylor appeared in the scene, the Italian extras were supposed to shout "Hail Cleopatra!" but instead they shouted "Liz! Liz!"

1973-A.I.M. Indian movement surrendered Wounded Knee to the F.B.I..

1978-Postman David Berkowitz confessed to being "Son-of-Sam" or the "44 caliber killer", the serial killer who terrorized New York City by shooting to death teenage couples at random and toying with letters to journalist Pete Hamill . Berkowitz said he received his orders to shoot people from his neighbor's Labrador dog "Sam". .

1991- President Bill Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, propositioned waitress Paula Jones at the Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. With her legal bills financed by the Clinton-hating Neo-Cons, her case went as far as a Supreme Court. They decided to allow her to sue a President while in office. Clinton’s attorney didn’t help things with statements like :" Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and who knows who you’ll turn up. "She got a lot of publicity, an $850,000 settlement and a nude spread in Penthouse Magazine.

1996- South Africa adopted it's first post-apartheid constitution.

1998- The impotence drug Viagra gains national prominence when retired Senator Bob Dole confessed on the Larry King talk show that he participated in the drugs test trials and the had "thoroughly enjoyed himself."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yesterday’s Quiz: Who was Son of Sam? (hint: 1970s.)

Answer: See above: 1978


RSS