April 1, 2015 weds April 1st, 2015 |
Question: What does it mean to have an albatross around your neck?
Yesterday’s Question answered below: In Steven Spielberg’s classic 1979 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, during the finale he cuts to a closeup of a very specific scientist with a pipe observing the aliens, and never explains why. Who is this cameo appearance?
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History for 4/1/2015
Welcome to April, named for Aprilis, an Etruscan Goddess of Agriculture and planting or it may even be a corruption of the name of the Greek Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The month was considered by Romans sacred to Venus- Venuralia.
To Ancient Egyptians it was the birthday of the God Het-Heth or Hathor.
Happy April Fool’s Day – The Ancient Romans considered today ALL FOOLS DAY-a day of comedy- For the end of the time sacred to Hilaria, goddess of laughter. They did things backwards, men and women swapped clothes and carried on.
Before the Gregorian reforms some Old Style Calendars had the year begin in late March instead of January. As the new modern calendar became more widely accepted, the people who stubbornly clung to the old practice were made fun of, and called April-Fools.
"This is the day upon which we are reminded what we really are on the other three hundred and sixty four.." -Mark Twain
Birthdays: Big Jim Fisk , Edmund Rostand, Lon Chaney, Sir William Harvey*, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ali McGraw, Toshiro Mifune, Debbie Reynolds is 82, Phil Neikro, Wallace Beery, Jane Powell, Bo Schembechler, Annette O’Toole, Barry Sonnenfeld, Rachel Maddow is 40 Andreas Deja is 58.
*- Sir William Harvey was the discoverer of the nutrient carrying purpose of the blood system. Before that people thought blood regulated body temperature like a radiator. He also confirmed that the heart was a pump and not a heater or a strainer.
1081- Alexius Comnenus Ist, captures Constantinople and establishes the Comnenoi dynasty. He took the city by bribing the Varangian Guards –English, Hun and Viking mercenaries, to open the gates and let his army in. Alexius I was the Byzantine Emperor when the Crusades began. His daughter Anna Comnena described the event in her journal :"Then one day all of Europe decided to walk to our door..."
1488- Ludovico Buonarotti, after going through a lot of trouble to get his son in the wool and draper’s guild, gives up hope that the boy would ever be anything other than an artist. He reluctantly takes him to fresco painter Domenico Ghirlandaio to be his apprentice. Michelangelo's career begins.
1621- The first treaty between English and Indians signed in Massachusetts. Massacoit of the Wampanoags made peace with the newly arrived Pilgrims.
1747-Georg Frederich Handel premiered his oratorio Judas Maccabeus with the song "Hail, Conquering Hero!" frequently used at royal functions.
1789- The first session of the U.S. House of Representatives. Felix Muhlenburg was the first Speaker of the House.
1793- Unsen Volcano in Japan erupted, killing 53,000 people.
1808- Sir Arthur Wellesley landed with a small British Army to try and defend Portugal from Napoleon. The Peninsular Wars would by 1814 drive the French from Portugal and Spain and make Arthur the Duke of Wellington.
1810- Napoleon, having divorced Josephine because she could not provide a son for his dynasty, married Princess Marie-Louise of Austria. Josephine was nicknamed "Our Lady of Victories" and was more beloved by the army but Marie Louise made up for it in spirit. She liked to smoke cigars and play billiards with Nappy’s officers. She was nearsighted but too vain to be seen in public wearing spectacles, so when she would dedicate art shows and public works like the Arch De Triomphes, she would smile regally and wave her hand, not knowing what she was looking at. Napoleon banned his kid sister Pauline Bonaparte from court because he caught her in a mirror making faces behind Empress Marie Louise’s back.
1861- As the American Civil War was breaking out, Secretary of State Seward sent Lincoln a memo proposing that the way to keep the South united to the U.S. would be to declare war on Spain or France. Lincoln said thanks for the advice, but no thanks...
1862- Confederate General John Sibley declared the counties of western New Mexico to be the new independent Confederate State called Arizona. Sibley's rebs were driven out but Lincoln kept the idea, setting up Arizona in 1864.
1865- BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS- Grant's Yankee Army closed in on Robert E. Lee's Confederates, Grant's cavalry master Phil Sheridan cut off and destroyed one over extended division of Lee's under George Pickett, taking 5000 prisoners. Pickett had won fame as the leader of the famous charge at Gettysburg. But he blew it at Five Forks because while his men were dying he was away with some friends at a fish fry. No cell phones or text messages in those days.
1867- Opening of the Paris World Exhibition. The first worlds fair was seen as the zenith of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. Visitors marveled to fascinating exhibits as Dr Lister’s new disinfectant, a new metal alloy called Aluminum, a new butter substitute called oleomargarine, and in the American exhibit a novel bit of furniture called a Rocking Chair. The Art galleries of the exhibition were filled with Ingres, Courbets and Delacroix. But nothing from Cezanne, Manet, Pizarro or any of the other weirdoes who would one day be called Impressionists.
1918- The British Royal Flying Corps (RAF) formed.
1923- Developers S.H. Woodruff and Canadian William Whitley start advertising lots for sale in Hollywoodland, beneath his his giant new Hollywoodland sign. The sign originally was covered with lightbulbs. It collapsed and was repaired in 1939, the 'land' part never restored. The Hollywood Sign was made over again in 1978.
1924- After the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Nazis party leader Adolph Hitler was sentenced by a German court to 5 years in prison. He serves only 8 months in a beautiful lodge in Bavaria named Castle Landsberg and uses the time to write Mein Kampf.
1932- The baby of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was kidnapped from their home.
1939- Generalissimo Francisco Franco announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, which had been raging since 1936.
1944- Tex Avery's "Screwball Squirrel" Only a few shorts were made. As one artist reminisced:" Everyone found that squirrel just too annoying!"
1945- OKINAWA- The Marines land and the battle began. Because it was not a conquered territory but part of the home Japanese islands, Washington weighed it’s decision to use the atomic bomb by it’s observation of how tough Okinawa was, indicating how tough it would be to land on mainland Japan, only 360 miles away.
The fighting was brutal, hand to hand with bayonets and flame-throwers. Of the 125,000 man Japanese garrison only 7,500 didn’t fight to the death, and many civilians threw themselves off cliffs in mass suicide. A children's class trip visiting from Tokyo who were caught in the battle, were shown by soldiers how to cluster themselves around a single hand grenade, so as to save on the number needed. Today there is a shrine to their memory. The Cave of the Maidens is dedicated to a group of schoolgirls who hid in a cave and when the Americans heard Japanese voices inside and none would answer their calls to come our and surrender, filled the cave with flamethrower fire.
Almost every American soldier who was captured was executed. The U.S. Navy suffered the worst number of ships sunk and men killed since Pearl Harbor. There were 1,900 Kamikaze plane attacks. U.S. casualties were so high the government re-imposed a press blackout.
This battle has the rare distinction like the Plains of Abraham in 1759 where both opposing generals died. US General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who’s father had fought Ulysses Grant in the Civil War, was killed by an artillery round three days before the battles end. Japanese General Usijima committed hari-kiri almost at the same time.
1945- Adolph Hitler moved his headquarters from the Reich Chancellery to a bunker deep below it’s street level.
1949- Zsa Zsa Gabor married George Sanders.
1954- The U.S. Air Force Academy was established at Colorado Springs.
1961- Rev Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker get married.
1970- A symbol of the 70’s, AMC’s compact car the Gremlin introduced.
1972- In a gesture of turnabout-is-fair-play for women, Playgirl Magazine ran its first male nude centerfold- Burt Reynolds.
1976- Two college dropouts, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started a company named Apple Computers. A third partner small businessman Ron Wayne sold his shares to Jobs & Woz before they filed papers of incorporation. He didn’t want to get stuck with the bill when they failed. He sold his third for $800. In 2011 Apple surpassed Microsoft as the worlds richest company.
1983 – Largest British civilian protests to Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher’s plans to put nuclear cruise missiles at Greenham Common. The Thatcher government requested the missiles after the perceived weak response of Jimmy Carter to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The conservative British and German government felt that the US could not be trusted to risk nuclear war if the Soviet Union invaded with conventional forces- i.e. American would not risk Kansas City for Frankfurt, so they asked for missiles.
1984- Motown star Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his own father in an argument over plans for the singer's 45th birthday party the next day.
1995- Chasen's restaurant closed. Former actor Frederick Chasen opened his exclusive Beverly Hills Restaurant in 1936. James Stewart and Mickey Rooney were regulars. During the filming of Cleopatra (1963) Elizabeth Taylor had Chasen's chili flown out to her in Rome. Walt Disney met Leopold Stokowski over dinner at Chasens and conceived the film Fantasia, Orson Welles and Joe Mankiewicz got into a fistfight over the script outline of Citizen Kane there, Bogart, Bacall and John Huston discussed how to fight the Hollywood Blacklist there. Today there is a booth from Chasens preserved in the Reagan Presidential Library.
1996- Animation World Network, Toontown’s virtual trade magazine, started up. www.AWN.com
1997- In Israel, honoring a deal made with a ultra right religious party to get into office, the right wing Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu passed a law that the only Jewish conversions that would be recognized under Israeli law would be conversions done by Orthodox rabbis. This law created such a firestorm of protest from Reform and Conservative Jews around the world that the government quickly backpedaled.
1998- Ukrainian serial killer Anatolyi Onoprienko was sentenced to death for the murder of 52 people.
2004- G-Mail invented.
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Yesterday’s Question: In Steven Spielberg’s classic 1979 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, during the finale he cuts to a closeup of a very specific scientist with a pipe observing the aliens, and never explains why. Who is this cameo appearance?
Answer: It is a cameo of scientist Dr J. Allen Hynek, who coined the term Close Encounter of the Third Kind. Hynek started out as a UFO skeptic working for the air forces Operation Blue Book, but gradually became convinced that UFOs are real. His story inspired Spielberg to write the movie.