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Jan 16, 2018
January 16th, 2018

Question: What nation did Americans once refer to as “Perfidious Albion”?

Yesterday’s question answered below: What is the capitol of Switzerland?
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History for 1/16/2018
Birthdays: Yukon poet Robert Service, The inventor of the pneumatic tire Andre Michelin 1853, Ethel Merman, Dizzy Dean, Peter Ustinov, Henry Mancini, A.J. Foyt, Marilyn Horne, Sade, Michael Wilding, Eartha Kitt, Debbie Allen is 68, John Carpenter, Diane Fossey, Kate Moss is 44, Tsianina Joelson, Animator Raul Garcia

1761- The British capture Pondicherry, the last French outpost in India.

1786- The Virginia Legislature passed the Ordinance of Religious Freedom, which stated that no man can be forced to join or support any church he didn’t want to. The Ordinance became the basis for the First Amendment to the Constitution.

1865- After resting his army in Savannah, Georgia for Christmas, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman began to move his blue columns north towards South Carolina.

1883- Moved to act by the assassination of President James Garfield by a demented civil servant, Congress passed the Pendleton Act creating rigid merit standards for government jobs and creating the Civil Service Commission. Before this, things ran as the "Spoils System"- after every election hundreds of government jobs were given by the President and his party to party hacks and amateurs as payment for favors, much uhh…as things run today.

1891- Three weeks after the Wounded Knee massacre the last independent warrior bands of Sioux Indians came in and surrendered to the U.S. Cavalry at the Pine Ridge Reservation.

1917-THE ZIMMERMAN TELEGRAM- The reason other than the Lusitania that the U.S. entered World War I. The Kaiser's generals fretted that the unrestricted U-Boat sinkings were strangling Britain, but they may force America into joining the Allies. So they concocted a scheme to keep the Yankees busy on their own side of the world.

On this day, British intelligence handed President Woodrow Wilson an intercepted message from Baron Zimmerman the German charge d' affaire in New York to the German Ambassador in Mexico City. It relayed an offer from Berlin of an alliance, if Mexico would please invade Texas! The Kaiser promised President Huerta return of the entire U.S. southwest. The Mexican president wasn't enamored with the U.S. lately, but he still declined the offer.
Instead of checking U.S. participation in World War I, the incident all but decided it. Wilson had run for re-election as an anti-war candidate, but after this he was convinced Germany had to be defeated.

1919- In Argentina it was the end of the Sanglante- the Bloody Week. The government crushed a general nationwide strike – 700 killed.

1920- The League of Nations held its first meeting in Paris.

1935- “Ya better come out! We got you surrounded!” Kate Barker, called Ma Barker, died in furious shootout with the FBI at Ocklawaha, Florida. Legend has it they found Ma's body with the smoking tommygun still cradled in her lap. Others say she was only an ignorant hillbilly lady traveling with the boys gang as a cover.
Only one of Ma Barker's sons (Fred) was killed with her. Herman Barker committed suicide at Wichita, Kansas, August 29, 1927, after being blinded by police bullets in a gun battle in which he killed a policeman. Arthur "Doc" Barker was captured by the FBI in Chicago eight days before the shootout that killed Ma and Fred. He was killed attempting to escape from Alcatraz on January 13, 1939. Lloyd "Red" Barker was released from Leavenworth in 1939 after serving seventeen years of a 25-year sentence for mail robbery. He was murdered by his wife at their suburban-Denver home on March 18, 1949.

1936- the first racetrack photo-finish camera installed.

1936- Albert Fish, the Moon Maniac was executed at Sing Sing Prison. The 66 year old Fish had killed ten children and cannibalized their remains. He even went as far as to send a letter to the mother of his last victim describing how he had turned her daughter into a stew. The letter was traced back to him and he was arrested. He almost shorted out the electric chair because he kept his underpants filled with metal sewing needles. As he went to his death he told guards he was looking forward to the electric chair. "it is a thrill I never tried."

1938- Benny Goodman brought the new Swing Music to staid old Carnegie Hall. Count Basie and Harry James joined in to get the tuxedoed crowd dancing in the aisles, then afterwards they all went uptown to the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to watch Count Basies band square off against the legendary Chick Webb. After this triumph, Benny Goodmans’ band would never be the same- Lionel Hampton, Harry James and Gene Krupa all split off to form their own orchestras." That band I had the night I played Carnegie Hall was the best I think I ever had." Goodman said later.

1938- Nylon invented by the Dupont Company.

1939- Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr announced the successful fission of uranium. They asked that it be used for peaceful purposes only. One of their colleagues Dr. Leo Szilard immediately warned the U.S. that they better start a nuclear bomb program, because another friend of Bohr's, Dr. Rudolph Heisenberg, planned to build one for Hitler.

1940- Lee Francis, then Hollywood’s top madam, was busted for prostitution.

1942-Actress Carol Lombard and her mother died in a plane crash in the Sierra Mountains while returning from a war bond drive. Her husband, movie king Clark Cable was so disconsolate that he volunteered for air force combat squadron instead of doing USO work, and went on dangerous missions trying to get killed.

1942- Japanese armies attacked Burma.

1945- Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappeared. The diplomat had been covertly smuggling hundreds of Jews out of Nazi occupied Austria by giving them neutral Swedish passports. When the Soviets overran Vienna Wallenberg dropped out of sight. In 1991 The Russian government at last admitted that Wallenberg died in Leningrad’s Lubyanka Prison.

1954- THE WAR ON COMICS- Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee chaired the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. They concluded that one of the contributing factors to adolescent moral decay was four-color comic books! The media called comics “The Ten Cent Plague”.
The probe was sparked by a book called The Seduction of the Innocent by psychiatrist Frederic Wertham. He charged among other things that Batman & Robin were gay because when not fighting crime, Bruce Wayne & Dick Grayson lounged around all day in silk pajamas, with no women! That Superman was a fascist, and Wonder Woman’s strength and independence made her a lesbian!
Despite public testimony by Walt Kelly, Milt Caniff, Al Capp and Bill Gaines, 350 comic book companies including the EC "Tales from the Crypt" label were driven out of business. The strict comics-code was established. The comic book industry, which had been selling one million books a month, never regained that level of prosperity in the US again.

1962- Television pioneer Ernie Kovacs died when he plowed his Corvair into a tree at Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Blvd. Kovacs had a fondness for all night poker and vodka parties. Friend Jack Lemmon said Ernie was so fanatical for a good card game that once when over a friend's house, no table large enough could be procured for a game, Kovacs ordered the front door taken off its hinges and a tablecloth thrown over it so they could all play.

1962-First day of shooting on the film Dr No with a young actor named Sean Connery in the role of James Bond. Ian Fleming thought the casting of Connery would be a disaster, he had wanted Cary Grant or David Niven.

1970- Col. Mohammar Khaddafyi became premier of Libya, a job he kept until 2011.

1974- Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws first published.

1979- The Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlevi, fled Teheran in the face of the Ayatollah’s fundamentalist revolution.

1980-The silver market collapses, making the Hunt Brothers from two of the richest men in America to two of the poorest.

1991- GULF WAR I - U.S. French, British and Arab airforces began attacking Iraqi-held Kuwait. Sadam, Wild Weazels, Gen Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, Republican Guards, Scuds, Smart Bombs and CNN's Peter Arnett hanging a mike out the window of his Baghdad office as the bombs rained down.

1995- The UPN Network (Universal-Paramount Network) began telecasting.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is the capitol of Switzerland?

Answer: The city of Berne. Switzerland does not have an official capital. The federal legislature and executive branches meet in Berne, so that city serves as a sort of de facto capital.


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