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July 25, 2017
July 25th, 2017

Quiz: If you ran for office in the U.S. in the 1920s, after your political party affiliation, people would ask you if you were a Wet or a Dry. Why?



Yesterday’s Question answered below: What is the concept of “the obvious answer is usually the correct one” better known as?

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History for 7/25/2017

Birthdays: Bishop Theitmar of Merseberg- 975AD, Arthur Balfour, Thomas Eakins, Maxfield Parrish, Stuart K. Hine 1899 missionary who wrote the hymn "How Great Thou Art", Walter Payton, Walter Brennan, David Belasco, Adnan Khashoggi, Imam, Jack Gilford, Illeana Douglas, Estelle Getty, Matt LeBlanc, Louise Brown the first "test-tube" baby-conceived by invetrofertilization-1978



Today is the Feast of Saint James, called San Diego or Santiago de Compostela in Spanish.



325 A.D. The Council of Nicea- The Roman Emperor Constantine called all the Bishops of Christianity to answer the questions posed by the Arian (Gnostic) Christian sect. The Arrians asked: "If Jesus was God on Earth, then who was minding the store upstairs? And how can you kill God? Maybe he was just pretending to be dead..." They came up with the Nicean Creed (The Apostles Creed) and the Mystery of the Trinity, "One In Being with the Father" If you can't figure this out, a nun would be happy to rap your knuckles for asking.



1554- Queen Mary I of England "Bloody Mary" married King Philip II of Spain in Winchester Cathedral. Phillip didn’t linger long in England and Mary was much older than him, and beyond child bearing years.



1570- Czar Ivan IV once more demonstrated why his got the name Ivan the Terrible by ordering mass executions of his supposed enemies in Moscow. This day he had Boyar Prince Viskavati hanged from a gallows and slowly sliced up with knives, allowing him to live just long enough to watch Ivan rape his wife and daughter.



1593- Henry IV, after a bloody religious-civil war had made himself King of all of France except Paris, which was holding out against him. When he asked why they were so stubborn in their resistance they said it was because he was a Protestant. "Well then," the King said-"Paris is worth a Mass!" and he converted to Catholicism. Henry’s family, the Bourbons, became the royal dynasty of France and today is still on the throne of Spain. Recently Henry IV remains were found, a pierced ear for a pearl earring.



1788- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony #40 in G minor.



1792- THE BRUNSWICK MANIFESTO- The Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia sent armies invading into France to help their brother-king Louis XVI put down the unruly French Revolution. This day the military commander of the invasion, Charles Willliam the Duke of Brunswick issued a proclamation to the French people that if they didn’t knuckle under to their King like all good little peasants should do he was going to kick their butts! He especially threatened Paris with a "memorable-vengeance". This arrogant threat enraged the French people and all but decided King Louis and Marie-Antoinette would be executed. Danton and Marat called for a mass rising of the French nation. The Duke de Brunswick was defeated in battle by rampaging Frenchmen shouting Aux Armes-Citoyens!



1814- Battle of Lundy’s Lane. American forces defeat a British invasion force near Niagara Falls.



1822- General Augustin Iturbide has himself crowned Emperor of Mexico.



1846 -The Spanish-Californios residents of Los Angeles chase the U.S. occupying force out of town a second time.



1871- Samuel Colt patents the "peacemaker", the most famous Western sixgun. Gunfighters filed off the barrel sight so it wouldn't catch on your clothes during a quickdraw, and carried it "5 beans in the wheel" meaning while walking they kept it set at the one empty chamber, so it doesn't accidentally go off in the holster and shoot you in the foot, which might look embarrassing. Most gunfighters carried it in their belts or a waist high holster. Wild Bill Hickock carried his 1860 Navy Colts backwards in a red sash. The familiar low-on-the-hip two gun holsters didn't become common until cowboys saw them in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in the 1880’s.

Colonel Colt got very rich from his invention, and had an annoying habit of shooting his guns off in courtrooms and restaurants like Yosemite Sam.



1871 An electric carousel was patented by Wilhelm Schneider, Davenport, Iowa



1894-the Sino Japanese War. The Japanese surprise attack the Korean peninsula amphibiously at the Bay of Inchon, giving Douglas MacArthur the same idea 57 years later.



1897- Young writer Jack London went to the Klondike to look for gold. He didn’t find much gold, but did get material for a lot of good stories.



1898- The US army invaded Puerto Rico. Spain had granted the island home rule but America got possession of it in the treaty ending the Spanish American War. It’s been a US commonwealth ever since. Puerto Ricans were given full US citizenship in 1917 and self government in 1942.



1909-THE WRISTWATCH- Frenchman Louis Bleriot flew the English Channel. Bleriot had no fuel gauge in his plane. He knew the rate that his plane burned fuel so he kept a clock in his cockpit to mark the time. But a problem was the engine vibrations would rattle the clock to uselessness. So he asked his friend Charles Cartier the jeweler to make him a reliable timepiece free from vibrations. Cartier created a small watch that you could strap to your wrist with the clock face showing- the Wristwatch. By World War I wristwatches supplanted pocket watches as the standard male accessory.



1918- In Russia the anti-Communist White Guards entered Ykaterinburg one week too late to prevent the murder of Czar Nicholas II and his family. They discovered the bullet ridden blood soaked room and after capturing one of the Bolshevik agents involved in the murder spread the news to the world of the crime. Soviet apologists for years maintained that the murder of the Imperial Family was done upon the initiative of the local Soviet council under Commissar Yakovlev. But documents discovered in 1989 revealed the murder of Nicolas was a direct order from Lenin.



1920- The French Army occupied Damascus after Lawrence of Arabia and Faisal's All-Arab Congress government failed. Faisal's son was given the Kingdom of Mesopotamia (Iraq) after his claims to the Hejaz region were trumped by Saudi King Ibn Saud. The French would hold Syria as a colony after World War II, which is why the Syrians have never been very pro-western since.



1927- The Tanaka Memorial- Japanese statesman Baron Tanaka spelled out for the Japanese government a strategy of conquest for the next twenty years, calling for Japan to achieve economic dominance by creating a Greater East Asian Economic Sphere from Korea to Australia. This document was considered by Anglo-American strategists the "Mein Kampf " of the Japanese.



1934- Nazi agents assassinated the Austrian Chancellor Englebert Dolfuss for resisting Fascist encroachment, and having a very silly name.



1936- Orchard Beach opened in the North Bronx.



1940- In Nazi occupied Paris, a Gestapo agent walked into the French offices of MGM studios and confiscated the six release prints of "Gone With The Wind" sent from America. They were taken to Berlin for a screening for top Nazis officials. Gone with the Wind was one of Hitler’s favorite movies.



1943- The Birth of L.A. Smog! A newspaper headline from this date mentions a 'gas-attack' of exhaust and haze that reduced visibility to three short blocks.



1943 - Benito Mussolini was overthrown as leader of Italy and imprisoned, while the Italian government tried to open negotiations with the allies. Hitler responded by sending commandos to rescue Mussolini, and militarily occupying Italy.



1944- Operation Cobra- The Allies break out of the Normandy beachheads and hedgerows and unleash Patton's fresh Third army into the French interior countryside. Between now and the Battle of the Bulge, the German Army can do little more than retreat to the Rhine.



1951- CBS conducts the first broadcast of color television. NBC made color TV popular in the mid 1960's.



1953- Chuck Jone's "Duck Dodgers in the 24 and 1/2 Century".



1953- New York City subway fares rise from 10 cents to 15 cents. Subway tokens are issued for the first time.



1959-"The Kitchen Debates" Vice President Richard Nixon traded catty comments with Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev at the American kitchen of the future exhibit in a Moscow Trade Show.



1965 – Folk Music star Bob Dylan was booed off stage at the Newport Folk Festival for using an electric guitar. Alan Lomax, the great Smithsonian Folk Music historian got into a fistfight over it, and Pete Seeger threatened to pull the electric plugs.



1968- Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humane Vitae, which set the Church policy against all forms of birth control other than the Rhythm Method. No to the Pill, Condoms and other contraception. This made the Pope a real drag to the Swinging Sixties.



1969 - 1st performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at the Fillmore East in NYC.



1969 – Senator Edward Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident a week after the Chappaquiddick car accident that killed his campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne.



1972- The story was broken of the Tuskegee Experiments- that in the late 1940’s and 50’s the US Government did medical experiments on unwilling humans, injecting with them with syphilis and other diseases. The subjects used were exclusively African American men. One went mad and leapt out of a window. President Clinton officially apologized to the survivors in 1993.



1975 - "A Chorus Line," longest-running Broadway show (6,137), premiered.



1984- Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became 1st woman to walk in space



1985- Movie star Rock Hudson publicly acknowledged that he had AIDS. The first major public figure to do so.



1990 - Roseanne Barr sings the National Anthem at a San Diego Padre game, joke- impersonating ball players by spitting, grabbing her crotch and screeching during her rendition. It didn’t go over well with the more patriotically minded in that very conservative town.



2000- An Air France Concord supersonic airliner exploded on takeoff, killing everyone on board. The investigation proved a piece of metal debris that fell off the previous Continental Airliner exploded one of the Concords tires and the resultant wreckage was sucked into the planes engine. Both Britain and France suspended SST flights for over a year and in 2003 discontinued them forever as being too expensive.



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Yesterday’s Question: What is the concept of “the obvious answer is usually the correct one” better known as?



Answer: Occum’s Razor.


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