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Sept 1, 2017
September 1st, 2017

Quiz: What does it mean to Deep Six something?

Yesterday’s Question Answered below: “The rumble of the drums, and the skirl of the….?”
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History for 9/1/2017
Welcome to September from Septembrius Mensis, After August the Romans ran out of names for months. Septembrius means number 7, March being the first month of the Roman Calendar.Birthdays: Joachim Pachebel, Gentleman Jim Corbet, Sir Roger Casement, Seiji Ozawa, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Walter Reuther founder of the United Auto Workers, Englebert Humperdinck- the 19th century composer, Conway Twitty, Jack Hawkins, Leonard Slatkin, Yvonne DeCarlo, Gloria Estefan, Mike Lah, Boxcar Willie, Richard Farnsworth, Lily Tomlin is 77

338BC- BATTLE OF CHAERONEA. Phillip of Macedon, with his son Alexander the Great, defeated the combined armies of the Greek citystates. The Macedonian victory united Greece for the first time under their rule. It was said that night Phillip celebrated by getting roaring drink, then going out on the battlefield where he danced on the bodies of the slain. The elite corps of the Theban army was the Sacred Band, a unit where every warrior was married to the man next to him. This way you are less likely to run away from a battle if your lover is next to you rather than a stranger. The system worked, none broke ranks, the Sacred Band fought and died to the last man.

1642- THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR BEGINS- Charles I of England, tired of arguing with his Parliament over money, religion and legislative power, set up his standard at Nottingham and called for the nobles of the Realm to bring troops to put down his saucy subjects.

1661- King Charles II introduced England to a sport he picked up in Holland, Yacht racing. Yacght is Dutch for little ship. This day in front of the court the King and his brother James raced each other down the Thames.

1715- French King Louis XIV, the Sun King, died at 76. He said: "Idiots! Did you think I would live forever?" later " Hmmm, I thought dying would be harder." His mistress Madame DeMaintenon once complained to the Archbishop that the king still insisted on sex every day and at 68 she was tired. He replied: "It is all our duty to obey the king."

1730- Benjamin Franklin married Deborah Regan, the mother of his illegitimate son William. William nursed a lasting hatred of his father for his shoddy treatment of him. When the revolution broke out William Franklin was the Royalist Governor of New Jersey. When Ben Franklin died he left nothing in his will to his son: " It is as much as he would have left me were the roles reversed."

1772- Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa founded in California.

1774- EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE LEXINGTON AND CONCORD- Royal Governor in Boston General Thomas Gage had been ordered by London to get tough with these unruly colonials. This day he sent a force of redcoats to Cambridge to confiscate a store of gunpowder he believed would be used against him. The word spread that the troops were coming and the rumors grew to wild proportions. All the way in Connecticut and New York the rumor was Gage's men were burning farms and bayoneting innocent people in their beds.
As the redcoat troops marched off they noticed hundreds of heavily armed farmers emerging from the woods, only dispersing after hearing that the atrocity stories were false. An army of Minutemen had materialized with hours before the British officer’s eyes and disappeared as quickly. Gage wrote London that things were getting out of hand.

1775- British King George III asks Czarina Catherine the Great for 20,000 Russian troops to put down the American rebellion. She declined, but later said: "If I were my cousin George, rather than give up my American colonies I would sooner put a pistol to my head." The British crown did buy mercenaries from the Elector of Hess, the famous Hessians. The cost England for ten pounds, ten penny a man. The elector became very rich exporting his subjects, he received an extra charge whenever one was killed or wounded. Frederick the Great of Prussia charged cattle tax when they were transported over his territory. The Rothschild Bank was founded to handle the expenses. Of the 15,000 Hessians sent to America, only 5,000 ever returned. The rest weren't all killed, most decided to stay and become Americans.

1785 - Mozart publishes 6 string quartet Opus 10 in Vienna.

1799 - The Manhattan Company chartered. This was a clever bit of maneuvering by Aaron Burr to move in on the banking trade dominated by Alexander Hamilton’s rival The Bank of New York. The Manhattan Company was proposed as a concern to finance the building of new sources of fresh water. New York City’s mushrooming population was constantly beset by diseases of poor sanitation- yellow fever, dysentery, typhus. Hamilton controlled the State Legislature, but saw nothing wrong in building aqueducts. So the company was granted a charter.
Deep in the companies boiler plate text was an amendment allowing it to open a bank as well. Much to Hamilton’s chagrin the Manhattan Bank opened. The Manhattan Bank in 1840 dropped its water projects and united with the Chase Bank to form the Chase Manhattan Bank. This was another thing that annoyed Hamilton about Burr. They would settle their argument with pistols in 1804, but Chase is still around today.

1802 – The Aurora, a scandalous newspaper, first accused President Thomas Jefferson of having an 'improper relationship' with his slave Sally Hemmings. “Dusky Sally” was the child of Jefferson’s own father in law and his slave that Jefferson had inherited. When they met in 1786 he was in his late forties and she was fourteen. Friends said they lived together like man and wife for 38 years. In 1998 DNA testing of descendants proved Jefferson indeed created offspring with his servant Ms. Hemmings, although outraged Jefferson apologists are still trying to blame the paternity on a cousin.

1807- Chief Justice John Marshall finds former Vice President Aaron Burr not guilty of treason against the United States. President Thomas Jefferson was so mad that Marshall let his old enemy off the hook that he tried to have the chief justice impeached and had Burr's defense attorney, Luther Martin, put in jail. Burr always maintained his real purpose was the conquest of Texas. He lived long enough to see Texas independence and remarked” I was right! Only thirty years too soon”.

1836- A wagon train of Presbyterian missionaries reached the site of Walla-Walla Washington. One member of the party Narcissa Whitman, was the first white woman to cross the Rockies.

1836- In Jerusalem, Rabbi Judah Hasid began to build his synagogue and his reform movement- Hasidim.

1852-The Hot Dog or Frankfurter was invented by a group of butchers in Frankfurt, Germany. It didn't catch on in the U.S until it was served at the opening the Coney Island Exhibition in 1894, where it was billed as a Vienna Sausage or Red Hots. Dog was one newspaper's speculation upon the origins of the meat. It was first served at a baseball game in 1910.

1859- The first Pullman sleeping car train went into service.

1864- After Sherman threatened his last escape route at Decatur, General John Bell Hood abandoned the City of Atlanta to the Yankees. By now the 34 year old Texas born General Hood had his arm amputated at Gettysburg and a leg blown off a Chickamagua. He required straps to hold him up in his saddle. Yet he survived the Civil War, became a US senator and fathered nine children.

1870- THE BATTLE OF SEDAN. French Emperor Napoleon III lost his Empire losing to the Prussians and gets captured to boot. He had allowed himself to be bottled up in a fortress and pounded on all sides by new long distance German steel cannon. French General LaCroix wrote: " We are caught in a chamberpot and here comes la merde." When it came time to surrender the generals couldn't bear the humiliation, so they sent LaCroix out to do the honors.

1885- Mrs. Emma Nutt became the first telephone switchboard operator. At first telephone companies used telegraph errand boys to connect calls, but switched to women after customers complained of the boys saucy wisecracks and rude attitude on the phone.

1897- The Boston T-train opened. First subway line in the U.S.

1901 - Construction began on NY Stock Exchange.

1905-The Canadian territories of Prince Rupertland become the Provinces of Alberta and Sashkatchuan.

1913 - George Bernard Shaw’s play "Androcles & the Lion," premieres in London.

1916- The Keating-Owen act banned child labor from interstate commerce.

1919- Pat Sullivan's 'Feline Follies" cartoon staring Felix the Cat. Felix is the first true animated star, not depended on a previous newspaper comic strip. His body prototype, a black peanut shape with four fingers, will be the standard for years to come. By 1926 he was the most popular star in Hollywood after Chaplin and Valentino. Lindbergh had a Felix doll in his plane and it has been speculated that Groucho Marx copied his famous strut. The first television image broadcast by scientists in 1926 was of a Felix doll.

1923- Tokyo and Yokohama are destroyed by the largest earthquake recorded in the twentieth century. 100,000 died.

1928- Paul Terry premiered his sound cartoon RCA Photophone system for a short called "Dinner Time". Young studio head Walt Disney came by train out from Los Angeles to see it. He telephoned his studio back in L.A." My Gosh, Terrible! A Lot of Racket and Nothing Else!" He said they could continue to complete their first sound cartoon "Steamboat Willie".

1932-Mayor Jimmy Walker resigned as Mayor of New York. The corrupt but colorful Walker was a former vaudeville hoofer who wrote a hit song "Will you love me in September like you do in May.?" and flouted his chorus girl mistress at social functions. The man who served out Walker’s term was John P. ”Boo-Boo” O’Brian, another Tamany machine politician who was so inept that when a reporter asked who he planned to name as the new Sewer Commissioner O’Brian said “A decision hasn’t been given me yet..”

1939- FIRST CANNES FILM FESTIVAL- The premiere film event in Europe had been the Venice Film Festival but western democracies tired of the bias of the judges for Fascist and Nazi films. For example Walt Disney was annoyed his Snow White, the box office and critical champ of 1938, lost out to Leni Reifenstahl's Olympia. So the little French Riviera city was chosen as the site for a new festival. Two days after opening World War II was declared and the festival shut down until 1946.

1939- WORLD WAR II BEGAN. The Nazi Army blitzkreigs into Poland. Britain and France declared war two days later. Blitzkreig meant Lightning War- heavy motorized tanks and troops moving at full speed into an enemies interior while the airforce destroyed most of the Polish airforce still on the ground. The outdated Polish Army still fought with cavalry. The Nazis propaganda Ministry rigged up a border incident to claim Polish troops had fired first. They put dead concentration camp victims in German uniforms in a plan called Operation Canned Goods. So all through the massive invasion the operation was referred to in the German media as the “Counter Offensive”

1939- Hitler ordered the mentally ill sent to concentration camps.

1939 – The Physics Review published the first paper on a celestial phenomena called "black holes".

1941- Hitler passed a law ordering Jews in Nazi occupied countries to wear yellow stars on their clothing for identification. The King of Denmark reacted by wearing a yellow star.1942- Battle of Alam Halfa. Rommel the Desert Fox’s final flanking push to try to reach Cairo and the Suez Canal was stopped by Montgomery’s Eighth Army. Rommel had no further petrol for any more attacks. He now dug in and awaited Montgomery’s counter assault.

1947-In early 1947 the British Government turned over the problem of Palestine and Jewish statehood to the UN. The UN High Commission on Palestine UNSCOM studied the matter and on this day recommended to the General Assembly that two separate states, one Jewish, one Palestinian Arab be set up.

1955- Phillip Loeb was a TV star, playing Papa on the show The Goldbergs on radio and television. But the book Red Channels listed him as a Communist. He was blacklisted and the show dropped by CBS and NBC. This day Loeb checked into the Hotel Taft and swallowed a bottle full of sleeping pills.

1956- Elvis Presley bought his momma a pink Cadillac.

1967- After Israel’s big victory in the Six Day War she put out a diplomatic feeler. They offered to return the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai Desert in return for Arab recognition of Israel and stable borders. Today at a meeting of the Arab League in Khartoum Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan said a resounding no. No peace, no recognition, no deals. President Nasser said, “What was lost in war can only be recovered by war.”

1969- Col. Mohammar el Khaddafi seized power in Libya after deposing King Idris. He held power until the Arab Spring Revolution overthrew him in 2011.

1972 - Bobby Fischer (US) defeats Boris Spassky (USSR) for the world chess title.
The young eccentric genius Fischer was the Tiger Woods of chess and for a time a pop icon. He would after a few years of fame drop out of competition at the height of his powers and go into seclusion.

1977 - 1st TRS-80 Model I computer sold

1978 - Last broadcast of "Columbo" on NBC.

1979- The fantasy book The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende first published.

1979 – An LA Court ordered retired TV star Clayton Moore to stop wearing his Lone Ranger mask in public appearances. Paramount was pushing it’s remake the Legend of the Lone Ranger starring Klinton Spillsbury, so they wanted the old man to stop competing for the spotlight. Today that 1979 movie, as well as the 2013 movie are forgotten, while many still fondly remember the TV show,

1982 - Max US speedometer reading mandated at 85 MPH.

1983- A Korean KAL 747 passenger airliner had strayed into Russian airspace over the Sakhalin islands. Soviet authorities had the 747 shot down, killing 269 innocent people including 60 Americans and a US congressman. President Reagan decried this “barbarous act” and called for sanctions. Truth be told US and Korean allied intelligence did play games of chicken with the commies using civilian airliners. Also KAL pilots were given monetary bonuses if they got to their destinations ahead of time, so this pilot used the Sakhalin shortcut. Passengers were kept unaware of these dangerous games.

1995 – The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened in Cleveland Ohio

1998- THE STARR REPORT- The full text of Special Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation into the sexual wrongdoings of President Bill Clinton with his intern Monica Lewinsky was released on-line. It was the first major news story reported on the Internet, a full day before the other media could get it. Twenty million log-on’s in one day.
It caused huge internet user jams and sparked a furious response from millions, all on electronic mail. Americans learned of their President’s many uses for his cigar, and Monica snapping her thong underwear at him. Many felt the salacious details ranked as soft-core pornography, but it was sent out without any child-proof guards, championed by conservative politicians who normally demanded media censorship.
Hustler publishing tycoon Larry Flynt jokingly offered Kenneth Starr a job.”Heck, any man who could get that much porn into 50 million homes so quickly should be working for me!” In 2016, Kenneth Starr was forced to resign from the presidency of Baylor College, for attempting to cover up a sex scandal.
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Yesterday’s Question: “The rumble of the drums, and the skirl of the….?”

Answer: pipes, meaning bagpipes.


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