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Dec 18, 2014 thurs
December 18th, 2014

Quiz: Which TV Christmas Special was first? A) A Charlie Brown Christmas, B) Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, C) The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, D) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered Below: When some speak of an earthly paradise, the say Xanadu. Where is Xanadu?
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History for 12/18/2014
Birthdays: Antonio Stradivari, Karl Maria Von Weber,Ty Cobb, George Stevens, Ozzie Davis, Diane Disney-Miller, Anita O’Day, Paul Klee, Betty Grable, Willy Brandt, Keith Richards is 72, Leonard Maltin is 64, Alyssia Sanchez-Vaccario, Ray Liotta is 60, Katie Holmes is 36, Brad Pitt is 51, Steven Spielberg is 68

1679- THE ROSE ALLEY AMBUSCADE- Writer and critic John Dryden was walking in the Rose Alley in Covent Garden when a group of thugs jumped him and beat him up. They had been hired by The Earl of Rochester, because of a Dryden published a satirical essay making fun of him. Other writers like Voltaire suffered similar attacks from powerful aristocrats who couldn’t take a joke.

1757- Frederick the Great’s army besieged the Fortress city of Breslau in Silesia. The Austrian garrison’s commander General Sprecher posted placards throughout the town threatening with death anyone who breathed a word of surrender- then he surrendered.

1783- The American Revolution now over, George Washington appeared before Congress in Philadelphia to resign his army commission, and go home to Mount Vernon. This moment was when George Washington parts company with most conquerors like Cromwell, Napoleon and Castro. He had power, and then walked away.

Kings George III and Louis XVI were amazed when they heard the news: That Washington, the great generalissimo, the most powerful man in the Americas, would give up his office so lightly, to return to his farm like the legendary Roman -Cincinnatus. George Washington came out of retirement five years later to be the first U.S. president.

1787- New Jersey named the third state.

1812-NAPOLEON'S RETREAT FROM MOSCOW ENDS -Napoleon reached Paris by sled after racing ahead of his shattered army to prop up the tottering government.

Of Napoleon's 600,000 troops that invaded Russia less than 60,000 frozen wretches came out. Insanely brave Marshal Ney was the last invader to recross the border. Alone with bullets whistling past his ears, he calmly crossed the burning Neiman River bridge stopping to pick up abandoned muskets to fire them at the Russians. After he fired a last shot he threw the empty rifle at them.

When Napoleon got to his palace at Saint Cloud he was so dirty from the trip the guards didn't recognize him, and wouldn't let him in. His first official acts after the public announcement of the disaster was ordering the Paris ballet dancers to dance barelegged instead of in the customary tights. While that topic dominated gossip, his second act was to give the French people a big tax cut. Watching Louis XVI lose his head in the Revolution gave Nappy a healthy, if cynical, respect for the anger of the average citizen.

1812- The first volume of stories Children’s and Household Tales by the Brother Grimm came out, The world learns of Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.

1890-The first electric powered subway train opened in London. This allowed the subways to be built in closed tunnels (or tubes) under buildings. The older steam engine tube trains operating since 1863 needed an open trench for the coal smoke to be let out.

1912- THE PILTDOWN MAN- An announcement was made, of a find, in a peat pit, in England, of the remains of a human ancestor between ape and man, the so-called "Missing Link". The skull had canine teeth like an animal but it had an enlarged cranium like a man and was buried with primitive tools. This find was made at the time Darwin’s Evolutionary theories were being hotly debated. The authenticity of the Piltdown Man was thrown into question in 1949. When modern dating techniques were perfected, by 1953, the Piltdown Man was officially declared a hoax. The remains were too modern to be ancient and the canine teeth had filed down by tiny files. It is generally believed that a practical joker named Martin Hinton at the British Museum of Natural History may have been the perpetrator.

1916- The terrible Battle of Verdun ended. It had been raging since February. German General Von Falkenhayn wanted to draw France into a meatgrinder battle and 'bleed her white'. After hundreds of thousands of casualties, he had done the same damage to his own side. He lost his job. The Verdun cemetery contains 100,000 bones of Unknown soldiers. Even today in Verdun there are areas you cannot walk for fear of unexploded shells.

1919- in France Composer Cole Porter married divorcee Linda Thomas. They stayed together all their long lives even though she knew from the outset that he was gay .

1931- Gangster Jacky "Legs" Diamond had a penchant for recovering after being shot repeatedly by pistols and shotguns. It was said he had so much lead in him he could attract a magnet. Today someone finally shot him down and he didn't get up.

1937- Mae West does a comedy routine on national broadcast radio with Don Ameche about Adam and Eve that was considered so racy CBS banned her from their network.
At the same time she got fined by the networks for joking about ventriloquist puppet Charlie McCarthy:" Hmmm…he’s all wood and a yard long!"

1939-Max Fleischer's animated classic “Gulliver's Travels”.

1940- Adolf Hitler and his generals promulgate the plans for Directive 21, the invasion of Soviet Russia. They name it Barbarossa after a legendary German Emperor, a contemporary of Richard Lionhart, who fought back the Eastern Slavs.

1941- The Japanese overwhelm the island post of Guam. 641 marines against 5,000 Japanese.

1944- MOE BERG AND THE NAZI EINSTEIN. Head of the German atomic program, Prof. Werner Heisenberg gives a lecture on S-matrix physics in Zurich, Switzerland. In the audience was Moe Berg, allied spy, amateur physicist and catcher for the Washington Senators (sounds ridiculous but true). Before the war Berg and Heisenberg were both friends with Danish physicist Neils Bohr, hence his invitation. The U.S. intelligence officers gave Berg a pistol and instructed him to stand up and shoot Heisenberg dead on the spot, if he felt from the talk that the Nazis were close to finishing their Atomic Bomb. Moe Berg coolly schmoozed Heisenberg at the reception afterwards, and even walked him home, but did nothing. In the 1950's Berg was a frequent contestant on quiz shows.

1956- Japan is admitted into the UN

1956- TV Game show To Tell the Truth made its debut. Bud Collier hosting, and panelists like Kitty Carlisle, Bennett Cerf, Orson Bean and Dorothy Killgallen as panelists.

1960- A young eccentric man named Jerry Garcia was dishonorably discharged from the army. He had done things like drive a tank into a field then walk away and had been AWOL 8 times in one year. After leaving the army Jerry Garcia became a hippie musician in San Francisco and in 1966 formed the rock band the Grateful Dead.

1961-" In the Jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps to-night…a winoweh, etc. " this song by the Tokens goes to #1 in pop charts.

1964- DePatie-Freleng’s The Pink Phink, the first Pink Panther cartoon short.

1966- Chuck Jone's 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' premiered.

1970- An atomic leak at a Nevada weapons stockpile caused hundreds to flee.

1972- President Nixon announced that despite all the war protests he would continue to carpet-bomb North Vietnam and Laos until he got a negotiated settlement.

1975- Rod Stewart announced he was leaving the band Faces for a solo singing career.

1978- SAG strikes Hollywood again for residuals. (again...)

1984- Christopher Guest married Jamie Lee Curtis at Rob Reiner’s house .

1984- Pixars first short The Adventures of Andre and Wally-B premiered at Siggraph Minneapolis. Directed by Alvy Ray Smith and animated by John Lasseter.

1997- Saturday Night Live Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment in the John Hancock Tower, surrounded by empty food containers and porn magazines. The chubby 31-year-old had been partying for 17 straight hours doing cocaine, heroin, vodka and crystal-meth. His last words were to an exhausted prostitute:" Please don’t leave me.". Farley idolized the late John Belushi, who had also died of drugs and hard living at age 31. One writer recalled Farley drunk turned to him and asked innocently:" Do you think Belushi is in heaven?"

1998- Dreamworks feature cartoon the “Prince of Egypt”, or, as it was known in Hollywood," The Zion King".

2003-Gary Ridgeway, "The Green River Murderer" was sentenced to life in prison. In the 1980’s Ridgeway murdered 48 women in the Seattle area. "I murdered mostly prostitutes because I figured nobody would miss them."

2009- A massive blizzard buried the U.S. east coast. Washington D.C. got 24 inches, the most December snow since the 1920s.
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Yesterday’s Question: When some speak of an earthly paradise, the say Xanadu. Where is Xanadu?

Answer: The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the poem The Rubyait of Omar Khayam, that began “ In Xanadu did Kubilai Khan a pleasure dome decree….”
It’s theorized Xanadu was his word for Shangdu, the summer palace of Kubilai Khan.


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