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March 2, 2019
March 2nd, 2019

Quiz: According to ancient Greek myth, Hercules was a demigod and an immortal, but he did die. How did it happen?

Yesterdays Question answered below: What is the only city in Africa to be named after an American President?
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History for 3/2/2019
Birthdays: Sam Houston, Alexander Graham Bell, Kurt Weill, Desi Arnaz ( Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III ), Ted Geisel aka Dr. Suess, Mikhail Gorbachov, Willis O'Brian, Moe Berg, Karen Carpenter, Lou Reed, Jennifer Jones, John Cullum is 88, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Jon Bon Jovi is 57, Daniel Craig is 51, animator Stephen Chiodo

1818- It had been thought that the Pyramids in Egypt were solid monuments with no chambers. This day Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni discovered the long lost entrance to the Great Pyramid of Giza and explored it’s inner corridors and burial chambers.

1836- TEXAS DECLARED INDEPENDENCE FROM MEXICO. In 1821 the Mexican Congress had given Yankee settlers permission to live in the under-populated northern province of Teijas. Soon there were 100,000 Yanquis to just 3,000 Spanish Tejanos living there. After a military coup in 1833 brought General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna to power conditions in the outer provinces got harsh. Taxes were bad and the army sent to police them were drawn from the dregs, usually prison convicts. Mexico also wanted the American settlers to liberate their black slaves. Slavery was outlawed in Mexico.
When settlers leader Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to complain he was immediately jailed for fomenting insurrection. Even with Santa Anna’s army closing its grip on the Alamo, the Republic of Texas independence declaration was signed this day at Washington-on-the-Brazos. One of the signers there was John Wheeler Bunton, the Great Grand-Uncle of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Texas revolt was as much a revolt of the ethnic Mexican Teijanos as the gringos. Similar revolts broke out at the same time in California and Jalixsco, but we remember Texas mostly because it succeeded.

1863- The Union Pacific Railroad adopted a standard track width of 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches. This width became the standard for the United States and later for most of the railroads of the world. Although train travel was invented in Britain, Europe was slow to adapt to it, while America, Russia and India rapidly embraced a technology that could quickly cover their vast distances quickly.

1923- THE FIRST TIME MAGAZINE. Founders Henry Luce and Claire Booth Luce were among the more powerful of the nations cultural elite. Conservative to the core -to the end of their days they thought Franklin Roosevelt and Civil Rights were big mistakes, they still experimented with LSD when it was thought by Harvard professors to be mind expanding. In the late 1980's the Time merged with Warner Communications to form Time-Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate.

1925- The US Government started assigning numbers to motorways and planned interstate highways. Before that roads had names like the Boston Post Road or the Baltimore to Washington Highway.

1933- "KING KONG"s exclusive premiere at the new Radio City Music Hall in New York at the Roxy. It opened in the rest of the country in April. “Twas Beauty killed the Beast.”

1940- SEABISCUIT-. The small ungainly racehorse Seabiscuit had lost the Santa Anita Handicap Stakes twice and at 7 years old had ligament tears and was considered all washed up. But he was entered one more time to try to win this race. The jockey Red Pollard was an alcoholic who had broken his leg and collarbone and was told he couldn’t walk, much less ever ride again. Today this unlikely duo raced one more time against odds more like a Hollywood movie than a stakes race. The Biscuit not only won his last race, but set a track record, the second fastest time ever, and the richest win for that time. It’s called one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history. When discussing the Sports Legends of the Twentieth Century- Ali, Ruth, Michael Jordan, Seabiscuit is and Secretariat are the only non-humans.

1943- Battle of the Bismarck Sea. U.S. Navy planes shoot up a Japanese task force .

1947- Crusading Hollywood union organizer Herb Sorrell was plucked off the street in Glendale by gangsters posing as police. They may not have been just posing, many movie studios at the time hired off-duty LAPD at double time rates to rough up troublesome employees. They drive Herb up to Mulholland and work him over, leaving him by the side of the road. Shortly after leaving the hospital, Sorrell was jailed for disturbing public peace.

1960- Wilt Chamberlain ("Wilt the Stilt") scored 100 points in one game for the Philadelphia Warriors. Wilt averaged a phenomenal 55 points per game that year and the NBA instituted a number of anti-Wilt regulations to ensure guys under 6'2 could get back in the game, like offensive goal tending, etc. Wilt also claimed to have put his off the court time to good use. He claims to have had sex with 3,000 women.

1961- Pablo Picasso married his second wife Jacqueline. He was 80, she was 35. Jacqueline cared for the increasingly reclusive artist and kept even his family at a distance. When Picasso died in 1973, she turned away many family members from the funeral. Jacqueline committed suicide in 1986.

1962- The classic Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man first episode. It’s a Cookbook!

1965- US military bombers do the first bombing raid inside of North Vietnam in a campaign that got the designation Rolling Thunder.

1965- The movie The Sound of Music opened at the Rivoli theater in Manhattan.

1971- Charles Engelhard died, a venture capitalist whose wild investments and grand lifestyle made him the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain Auric Goldfinger.

1972- Pioneer 10 space probe launched. The first satellite to the outer planets, it sent back the first closeup photos of Jupiter in 1973 and left our solar system in 1983. It carries a plaque with a representation of men and women, a map of the Earth and Richard Nixon’s signature on it. It is in deep space now and will reach the star Ross 246 in the constellation Taurus in the year 34,600 A.D. Boy, I can hardly wait!

1973- The Women in Film organization founded.

1976- Francis Ford Coppola began shooting his epic film“ Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines. The film was plagued by cost overruns, a typhoon and his Philippine Army helicopters frequently flying off to fight real guerrillas in the middle of shooting, but somehow it all got done. Today it is considered a classic.

1979- The Anglo-French Concord supersonic airliner service introduced. It was discontinued because of bad economics in 2003.

1982- Science Fiction writer Philip K. Dick died of a stroke in Santa Ana, California. The author of stories the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report and Total Recall were based. Dick said he was at times possessed by a superalien who appeared in his mind in a beam of pink light. His autobiography was titled “ I am alive and you are dead.”

1989- At a photo session, NY Mets outfielder and recreational cokehead Darryl Strawberry threw a punch at the team's first baseman, Keith Hernandez. The scuffle started over comments about salaries and ended with the Straw walking out of camp. A sportswriter for Sports Illustrated describing the fight said" Darryl Strawberry finally hit his cut off man."
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Yesterday’s Question: Who first said,” Apres moi, le Deluge. After me, the deluge.”

Answer: King Louis XV. He squashed all attempts at representative government and announced “ All Authority Resides in Me.” But he could sense the anger of the people rising. He was long gone, leaving the French Revolution for his son Louis XVI to cope with.


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