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June 12, 2014 thurs
June 12th, 2014

Quiz: The famous lemon car the Edsel, who or what is it named for?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: When was the period of English history called Jacobean?
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History for 6/12/2014
Birthdays: Egon Scheile, John Roebling the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge, Uta Hagen, Chick Corea, Sir Anthony Eden, Jim Nabors, Vic Damone, David Rockefeller, Irwin Allen, Marv Albert, Arthur Fellig-better known as Weegee, Sherry Stringfield, Former President George Herbert Walker Bush or Poppy Bush is 90, if Anne Frank had survived she would be 85 today, Clyde Geronimi, Richard Sherman of the Sherman Bros is 85

1192- After battling across Palestine for over a year, King Richard Lionheart stood on a hilltop overlooking the Holy City of Jerusalem. The other Crusader leaders had gone home, leaving him with too weak a force to capture the city. He covered his eyes with his shield and refused to look, saying he could not bear to see the Holy City in chains. Saladin was having problems of his own with unruly vassals and lukewarm support for his Jihad. But when he got the news that the Christians were withdrawing to the coast, he knew The Third Crusade had spent itself, and Saladin had won.

1616- Pocahontas, now called Lady Rebecca Rolfe, landed in England with her husband and son Thomas.

1733- King Frederick William I had his son Crown Prince Frederick married to Princess Elizabeth Christine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Despite his being gay, Frederick the Great did his royal duty, but he and his wife kept separate households. Later as King, when asked if he ever spoke with the Queen, King Frederick replied:" You see, the problem is, my wife has the intelligence of a duck."

1815- Napoleon left Paris for Waterloo.

1862- Dashing Confederate cavalry leader Jeb Stuart makes headlines by riding his horsemen completely around the back end of the 105,000 man Union army. Among the pursuing Yankees he made look stupid was his own father-in-law, Gen. Phillip Saint-George Cooke.

1876- Newsman George Kellogg is invited by General Custer to accompany him on his next campaign against the hostile Indians. Kellogg would be the only correspondent "embedded" with the 7th Cavalry as they rode to the Little Big Horn.

1898- Nationalist leader Emilio Aquinaldo declared the Independence of the Philippines after 300 years of Spanish rule. Too bad the United States didn’t see it that way. During the war with Spain the U.S. gave lip service to Philippine nationalism but after the war annexed the Philippines and fought these same nationalists.

1936- Cooperstown's Baseball Hall of Fame dedicated on the supposed 100th anniversary of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball. We now know that date to be fiction but it was a good party anyway. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson were the first inductees. Doubleday was a Civil War general and the composer of the bugle call "Taps", first called General Doubleday’s Lullaby.

1937- Soviet leader Josef Stalin had eight of his top generals shot. Even Marshal Tuchashevsky, who’s strategy won the Bolshevik Civil War. At his state funeral Stalin publicly praised Tuchashevsky’s talents as a leader even as he was having his mother sent to a Siberian prison camp. When General Rossokovsky, was interrogated, a secret policeman broke out his front teeth with a hammer. He wore steel dentures thereafter and would help win the Battle of Stalingrad. By 1941 Stalin’s paranoid purges would kill 25,000 officers, 90% of the Red Army's general staff, just when they were about to be attacked by Hitler’s army.

1940- As German panzer tanks rolled towards Paris, French commander General Weygand ordered the military governor of Paris declare it an open city- meaning the French army would voluntarily evacuate it if no fighting or destruction would happen in it’s precincts. French General Weygand later said everything was Britain’s fault.

1942- On her birthday, Anne Frank was given a diary.

1949- The first LA parking ticket.

1952- Chief auto designer for Chevrolet Maurice Olley completed work on a sports car originally code-named the Opel but later released as the Corvette.

1962-Edward M. Gilbert, the "Boy Wizard of Wall Street," loses $23 million for his firm E.L. Bruce Flooring, then embezzles $2 million more and escaped to Brazil.

1962- In Modesto California, a teenage film student named George Lucas was almost killed in a car accident.

Fifty Years Ago 1963- Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a high powered sniper rifle in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. His killer, Klansman Bryan del la Beckwith was not convicted until 1994.

1963- Twentieth Century Fox released the Elizabeth Taylor -Richard Burton epic CLEOPATRA. Costing $44 million,- $400 million in modern money, four times more than the average film – the next most expensive Ben Hur cost $15 million , it remains in comparable dollars the costliest flop in film history. The cast was put up at the swankiest hotels in Rome for months of shooting, and La Taylor had to have her chili from Chasens restaurant in Beverly Hills flown in. Director Joe Mankewicz said "Cleopatra was the toughest three pictures I ever made!" When Liz Taylor saw the finished film, she threw up.
Fox had to cut 2,000 jobs and almost went bankrupt. The area of LA known as Century City with its huge shopping mall used to be Fox ‘s backlot before Cleopatra. On the plus side Andy Warhol said Cleopatra was the most influential movie of the 1960s because suddenly every woman had to have heavy black eyeliner, light lipstick and Egyptian style straight bobbed hair.

1964- South African anti-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy and sabotage. He served 27 years and was released in 1990 to lead his country out of white minority rule.

1967- The U.S. Supreme court strikes down all remaining state laws barring interracial marriages.

1987- President Ronald Reagan did his famous Cold War speech in Berlin “ Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall!”

1991- In the Philippines the volcano Mount Pinatubo erupted for the first time in 600 years.

1994- Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, pizza delivery guy Ron Brown, were savagely murdered in her home with a knife. Brown was returning Mrs. Simpson’s glasses from her dinner at Brentwood restaurant Mezzaluna. The only suspect seems to remain her estranged husband O.J. Simpson, actor, and Heisman Trophy winner. O.J. was acquitted in his murder trial, but convicted in a wrongful death suit brought by Nicole’s family. Another suspect has never been found.

1999- Disney’s Tarzan premiered.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: When was the period of English history called Jacobean?

Answer: The time after Elizabethan, that of the King James Ist 1610-1632, is known as Jacobean England.


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