BACK to Blog Posts

Aug 7, 2017
August 7th, 2017

Quiz: What is a foible? Something you put over your barbeque?

Yesterday’s answer below: What does it mean when you refer to someone as Icarus?
-------------------------------------------------------------
History for 8/7/2017
Birthdays: Roman Emperor Constantius II, Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene, Mata Hari, Rassan Rolling Kirk, Dr. Ralphe Bunche, Nicholas Ray, Dr. Richard Leakie, Grandma Moses, Alan Page, James Randi, David Duchovny is 57, Billy Burke aka Glenda the Good Witch, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Garrison Keillor is 75, Animator Rudy Ising, Charlize Theron is 42, Stan Freberg

1620- The mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler was arrested for witchcraft.

1674-The Bagel is invented in Vienna. Some say the hole is a tribute to the stirrup of Polish warrior King Jan III Sobieski who saved Vienna from the Turkish army. More likely the hole was just so a street peddler could stack them on a stick.

1782- General George Washington created the Order of the Purple Heart. The first US medal.

1815- Prisoner Napoleon Bonaparte was transferred from the HMS Bellerophon to the HMS Northumberland for the voyage to Saint Helena. After his defeat at Waterloo the British public warmed up to Napoleon as an okay chap now down on his luck. While waiting in Plymouth Harbor curious crowds of English people would row out to wave hello at the fallen emperor. One enterprising citizen learned Napoleon’s schedule and from his rowboat would hold up a large sign "BONEY’S OUT ON DECK" to let the crowd know.

1819-Battle of Boyaca'- Simon Bolivar defeats the Royal Spanish army in the New World. He enters Bogota to proclaim the Republic of Columbia.

1834 -Death of Joseph Jacquard, French silk weaver who invented the first loom capable of weaving patterns. The cards used in the looms were the inspiration for the computer punch card, a way of transmitting data, whether pulses of light or lengths of wool.

1880- British Lord Roberts began the famous Retreat to Kandahar from Kabul. The British and Russians used Afghanistan as a political football for most of the 19th century. It was referred to as "The Great Game".

1882- The legendary hillbilly feud in Kentucky between the Hatfields and the McCoys began, supposedly over a prize hog. Ellison Hatfield was stabbed 26 times and shot in the back by Tolbert McCoy. The Hatfields then rounded up three McCoys and shot them. Over the next forty years, over 100 men, women, and children from both families would be killed.

1912 –After serving out murdered President William McKinley’s term, Teddy Roosevelt pledged he would only serve one full term of his own, then his successor Taft became President. TR regretted this and ran for president anyway, even though the establishment GOP stayed with Taft. This day the Progressive Bull Moose Party nominated Theodore Roosevelt for president. TR’s splitting the presidential ticket not only enabled democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the White House, but the Bull Moose movement drew off the progressive left wing of the Republican Party, causing the Party of Lincoln to drift to more the right.

1914-. This day German forces in Belgium capture the fortress city of Liege. It is the first success of General Eric Von Ludendorff, who drove up in a touring car, and banged on the city gates with his sword pommel.

1914 – The famous poster of Lord Kitchner pointing and saying "Your country needs you," spreads over UK. James Montgomery Flagg later copied the poster for the American version with Uncle Sam in a similar pose. Lord Asquith commented that by now the elderly soldier Kitchener made "a better poster than a leader."

1919- the First Actor’s Equity Strike.

1928- The US Treasury issued a smaller, leaner dollar bill. Before this dollars were two times larger and wider than the ones we now use.

1931 Jazz trumpeter Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke, died at 29 of drink and drugs. Bix along with his idol Louis Armstrong was considered one of the first jazz musicians to popularize the solo-riff, where in the body of a song the soloist would depart from the arrangement and improvise like a cadenza in classical music. His family in Davenport Iowa were horrified that their son dropped out of school to associate with musicians and black people. Even after Bix was famous, he returned proudly home only to discover his parents had stacked up every record he sent them in a box under the stairs. They had never listened to a single one.

1933-The first "Alley-Oop" comic strip.

1942- GUADALCANAL BEGINS-10, 000 Marines landed on the Japanese held island in the first U.S. offensive of World War II. Americans at home had to learn names like Tulagi, Savo Island, Gaivutu-Tanonbogo, Chesty Puller and Washing Machine Charlie as their loved ones slugged it out for six months in one of the most brutal battles of the Pacific War. The evenly matched Japanese and Americans went at each other with everything from bayonets to battleships. So many ships were sunk in the island’s lagoon that they nicknamed it "Ironbottom Sound".

1942-The first days aerial dogfights over Guadalcanal, Japanese fighter ace Saburo Sakai won fame for shooting down his 58th, 59th and 60th planes. In this days dogfight his Zero was badly shot up by Gruman F-4 Wildcats. Sakai was paralyzed on his left side and had one eye shattered by a bullet. Yet even in this state he managed to fly his plane 500 miles to home base safely. In the air for 8 1/2 hours, he said he would occasionally thrust a thumb into his eye wound to give himself a shot of pain to keep awake.
Sakai survived, fought at Iwo Jima in 1944, volunteered for Kamikaze duty but flew back with honor when he could find no suitable targets. He survived the war and wrote a best selling memoir- Zero Pilot. He died in 2000 at age 84.

1953- President Eisenhower granted Ohio statehood retroactively 150 years later. It seems when Ohio joined the union in 1803 Congress screwed up the enabling legislation so Ohio was never officially a state. Local historians preparing for an anniversary celebration uncovered the glitch.

1963- Pres. John F. Kennedy and Jacky Kennedy tried to have one more baby, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, but he was born with a breathing disorder and died two days later.

1964-THE TONKIN GULF RESOLUTION-After the Tonkin Gulf Incident, President Johnson asked for permission to act in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution 93-2 in the Senate and 410-0 in the House to accelerate the U.S. combat troops role in Vietnam. President Johnson used the hotline to the Kremlin for the first time, to assure Premier Khruschev that the US did not plan to expand their role in IndoChina- (?) The American commitment went from 30,000 to 450,000, trillions of dollars and eventually destroyed Cambodia and Laos as well. Congressman Mark Hatfield- "I can’t get over the feeling we’re making a big mistake."

1970 - Christine McVie joined the band Fleetwood Mac.

1970 – The first computer chess tournament.

1974- French daredevil Phillipe Petit strung a tightrope between the two 110 story towers of NY’s World Trade Center and walked across it. As New Yorkers watched in amazement, Petit kept his concentration by carrying on a conversation with the buildings.

1979- THE RUNAWAY WARS. Hollywood Cartoonist’s Union strikes against studios sending their animation work overseas.

1998- Simultaneous car bombs explode in front of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. It killed 100 and injured 2,200, many more innocent African bystanders than Americans. The bombs proved to be the work of Osama Ben Laden and the Al Qaeda organization.
=================================================
Yesterday’s Quiz: What does it mean when you refer to someone as Icarus?

Answer: Icarus was the ancient Greek whose father Daedalus made him wings that could fly. But Icarus flew too close to the sun, and the heat melted the wax holding his wings together and he plummeted to his death.
So being an Icarus means someone who isn’t satisfied until he rises too high and it destroys him.


RSS