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October 5, 2015
October 5th, 2015

Quiz: What does it mean to make an argument ad hominem?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What does it mean to “eat Humble Pie”…?
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History for 10/5/2015
Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the founder of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges" , Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana "my name Jose Jimenez", Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynnis Johns, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Bernie Mac, Karen Allen is 64, Kate Winslet is 40, Guy Pearce is 48, Jesse Eisenberg is 32

1600- King Henry IV of France married his second wife Marie de Medici by proxy in a grand ceremony in Florence. Flemish master painter Peter Paul Rubens was in attendance, and the Queen would ask him to create paintings commemorating the events.

1759- Col. Robert Rogers led his Roger’s Rangers on a forced march to surprise the Abeknackie Indians who had been raiding Maine homesteads. At 4:00 am near present day Saint Francis Maine, the Rangers burned the Abeknackie village and killed so many people that the Abeknackies ceased to be a force in the area. Years later Rogers wrote down his principles of irregular warfare- his maxims like "Move Fast and Hit Hard" are the basis of Special Forces training today.

1761- Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, called the Architect of the British Empire, resigned from office. He was replaced by Lord Bute, who Frederick the Great called a complete scoundrel. Bute was chosen mostly because young King George III liked to play whist with him. Whist was a card game similar to bridge.

1762- Christoph Gluck premiered his opera Orpheo et Eurydice in Vienna.

1795- THE WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT- The end of the French Revolution. The problem with revolutions is once you start one it’s a real problem how to stop them. The Paris mob had gotten used to overthrowing one government after another since 1789. In 1795 when yet another mob of rioters threatened to overthrow yet another French government the politicians turned to young general Napoleon Bonaparte, who dispersed the crowd by firing cannons at them loaded with buckshot. A self proclaimed "Child of the Revolution" Bonaparte was already considered politically left so his act of force could not be accused of royalist leanings. This action helped the little general with the funny Italian name becomes a national figure.

1813- BATTLE OF THE THAMES RIVER. Indiana - Tecumseh, an Indian visionary who foresaw that only by united action could native peoples hope to drive the White invasion back to Europe, spent his life convincing tribes to put away their tribal differences and fight as one people. He assembled a huge force of warriors, but was defeated and killed by Gen. William Henry Harrison. Congressman Richard Johnson, who said he personally killed the great chief (nobody saw it happen) later became Vice President and Harrison President. People sang:"Rumpsy-Dumpsey, Rumpsey- Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson Killed Tecumsee."
Tecumseh was one of the few who managed to organize real resistance to the white migration west and as such was one of America's greatest threats. Yet whites were so impressed by his nobility that people like Ohio settler John Sherman named his son and future Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman.

1842-THE BIRTHDAY OF BEER!- Lager Beer is perfected in the city of Pilsen -Pilsner Beer. Of course beer was made by the Egyptians and traced back to the Ice Age, but our concept of beer requiring an advancement in refrigeration is Pilsner or Lager.

1858- An arsonist burns down NY's Crystal Palace Museum.

1864- A cyclone destroyed the Indian City of Calcutta, killing 60,000.

1877- After a lightning campaign across 1,200 miles Nez Perce Chief Joseph found himself surrounded by U.S. armies just 40 miles from the Canadian border. At Bear’s Paw near Chinook Montana, Chief Joseph surrendered to General Nelson Miles…
"From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

1880- Alonzo T. Cross patented the first ball-point pen.

1882- Outlaw Frank James surrendered to authorities six months after his brother Jesse was killed. After doing some prison time Frank went straight and toured in a Wild West Show. He died in 1915.

1892-THE DALTON BOYS RAID COFFEEVILLE, Kansas and try to rob two banks at once. One quick thinking bank clerk told them the bank vault was on a time lock and would open shortly. There was no such timelock, but while the badmen waited, the townspeople broke into the hardware store and armed themselves to the teeth. As the Daltons emerged, they were shot down by the locals, much the same way the Jesse James Gang was wiped out at Northfield Minnesota ten years earlier. 8 were killed. Only Emmett Dalton survived despite 25 gunshot wounds. After getting out of jail in 1907, he also wisely went straight.

1904- According to comedian and playwright Steve Martin, this is the day Pablo Picasso met Albert Einstein at the Cafe Lapin Agile. There was a Cafe in Paris called Lapin Agile that Picasso did like to go, to but he never actually met Einstein.

1905- Happy Birthday T-Rex! Prof. Henry Osborne published a paper on the new bones found in Montana of a sleek hunter- dinosaur. He originally called it Dynamosaurus Imperiosis, but changed it to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

1908- Bulgaria declared its independence from Turkey and formed a monarchy under German Prince Ferdinand von Battenburg.

1914- The first airplane was shot down by another airplane. For weeks since the Great War began German, British and French airplanes flew missions of air reconnaissance. When planes encountered each other the pilots would fire pistols and even threw darts and bricks at one another. Finally some one thought of mounting a machine gun on a plane and aerial combat was born.

1915- Germany issued an official apology to the USA over the loss of life in the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania, and promised to pay restitution.

1930- THE R-101 The BRITISH HINDENBURG- Lord Thompson of Cardington dreamed of a fleet of passenger zeppelins uniting the British Empire much the way steam did in Queen Victoria's time. Dirigible moorings were built in Karachi, Montreal, Sydney and Ishmalia in Egypt. The R-101 was the largest zeppelin in the world when she was launched and had all the luxury of the Cunard ocean liners. Lord Thompson himself decided to take the inaugural flight from London to India and back in time to make a vital Imperial conference. On Oct. 4th as a crowd sang Sir Edward Elgar's hymn 'Land of Hope and Glory" Thompson launched the R-101 "I see this great ship of the air built with the same perseverance and permanency that has built our British Empire and will give us the mastery of the air lanes of the world!"

300 miles out the R-101 was struck by a violent thunderstorm and crashed at Beauvais France. A sergeant was heard saying : "We’re down lads." when the hydrogen gas exploded. All but 6 of her 54 passengers died in the flaming inferno, including Lord Thompson. (compared to 30 out of the 96 Hindenburg passengers and crew died). Even though her sister ship the R-100 made a perfect flight to Canada and back the British public was so shocked by the disaster that all further attempts at a British dirigible service was scrapped.

1932- MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton.

1933- Warner Bros musical Footlight Parade with James Cagney premiered.

1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK.- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. One of the strikeleaders arrested was a background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters, then arrested for incitement to riot.

1947-President Harry Truman gives the first speech broadcast nationwide on television. In it he asked Americans to forgo eating meat on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, to build up U.S. grain stocks to feed a still starving Post War Europe.

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River.

1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

1969- A Cuban Colonel who wanted to defect to America flew his advanced Mig-21 to Miami and landed it at Homestead Airforce Base. But what was embarrassing to the US was he flew completely through all US advanced warning defenses undetected and landed his plane next to Air Force One carrying President Richard Nixon! D’oh!

1969- Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy was seen going into a Manhattan cinema to see the Swedish x-rated film I Am Curious Yellow. Jackie-O beat up the photographer who caught her, but her example spawned a beautiful people fashion called Porn-Chic.

1970-The Canadian October Crisis.- A Quebec terrorist separatist group calling itself the FLQ kidnapped and murdered a Canadian cabinet minister. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent military troops into Montreal and Quebec City to impose order.
Worst civilian disturbances in Canada since 1867.

1986- IRAN-CONTRA- President Ronald Reagan feared Communist expansion growing in a new revolutionary regime in Nicaragua. When the U.S. Congress banned any funds for anti-Communist mercenaries, Reagan's National Security Agency staffer Oliver North created a covert pipeline of arms. On this day Nicaraguan communists shot down an unmarked plane full of smuggled weapons flown by a CIA agent named Eugene Hasenfuss. The revelation of the incident sets in motion the scandal that would tarnish the Reagan Administration.

1989- The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2000- The Yugoslavian Revolution. –Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’ had spent the eleven years since the death of Tito making war on the various ethnic parts of Yugoslavia as they broke off and founded sister republics. War, misery and genocide were meted out on Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and Kossovar Albanians in turn.
Serbia endured the condemnation of the world and American-Nato bombing raids.

This day after refusing to admit he had lost re-election, 200,000 Serbs marched into Belgrade and in a massive "People Power" revolution threw old Slobodan out. Woycheslav Kostunitse was declared the legal president and Slovo died in jail.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska those bears attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach. When Treadwell appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year, Letterman joked:" Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?" Werner Herzog did a film about his life. Grizzly Man.

2011- Steve Jobs died at age 56 of pancreatic cancer. His last words, as he faded away, he looked straight ahead as if he was seeing something and murmured
"oh wow....oh....wow...."
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Quiz: What does it mean to “eat Humble Pie”…?

Answer: During the Gilded Age, wealthy American industrialists wagered on the outcome of political elections much like horse races. One popular wager was if the candidate I am supporting lost, I promise to eat like a poor person. Poor people used to trap or shoot vermin game like squirrels or crows, and bake them in a simple crust. So eating crow, or eating humble pie.


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