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August 23, 2007 thurs
August 23rd, 2007

Birthdays: French King Louis XVI, Gene Kelly, Keith Moon, Rick Springfield, Shelly Long, Sonny Jurgensen, Barbara Eden, Alphonse Mucha, Vera Miles, River Phoenix, Queen Noor of Jordan, Oscar Grillo

Roman Festival Volcanalia, to pray to Vulcan to prevent fires.
Feast Day of Saints Apollinaris and Saint Lupus

In Kyoto Japan this is the first day of the Fire Festival, when candles are placed at each statue in the Temple of the Eight Thousand Buddhas
In Swaziland it’s Umhlanga Day

1872- The first commercial ship ever sent from Japan arrived in San Francisco carrying tea.

1914- Japan declared war on Germany. World War One, not two. The Japanese wanted to annex the German held Chinese province of TsingTao, where the big brewery was.

1922- Irish IRA commander Michael Collins was ambushed and killed by other Irish guerillas while driving through his home county of Cork.

1926- Screen idol Rudolph Valentino died in a New York hospital of an infection due to a burst appendix and bleeding ulcer. Today this condition could be controlled by anti-biotics, but they weren’t invented yet. He was always sensitive about criticism that he was secretly gay. One close friend cameraman Paul Ivano said Rudy was not only not gay but when making love to his wife he was so err..exhuberant… she once passed out . Paul recalled Valentino appeared in his doorway naked and complained “ Paul, I think I’ve killed her!” Natasha Rambova, Valentino’s wife encouraged his public image of aggressive sexuality “Rudy looks best when he’s naked ”. But this didn’t fit into the American male’s self image of Tom Mix or William S. Hart, so the gay charge got under Rudy’s skin. One Chicago columnist called him a “Pink-Powder-Puff”. When Rudy came out of anesthesia still in great pain he muttered “So, how’s this for a Pink-Powder-Puff”? Then he died. He was only 30 years old. Women around the world went mad with grief. From L.A. to Budapest women committed suicide before his picture. In Japan two women jumped into a volcano.

1937- At the urging of the Stanford dean of engineering Bill Hewlett had his first meeting with David Packard. They called their company started out of their Palo Alto garage the Engineering Service Company. The Hewlett-Packard Company would one day be one of the biggest names in computers and their garage hailed as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

1939-THE NAZIS-SOVIET PACT. Nazi minister Von Ribbentrop flew to Moscow and signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. This cleared the way for Hitler's attack on Poland. Many in the west saw this as Stalin's untrustworthiness, but the Russians said they were reacting to the lack of enthusiasm shown by the Western Democracies in stopping Fascism. This was evident in Ethiopia, Czechoslovakia and particularly evident in Spain, where the Soviets backed the anti-Fascists to the hilt, with no help at all from the democracies. But Stalin was genuinely duped by Hitler; maybe through the political rhetoric Stalin imagined he saw a fellow opportunist demagogue. It was obvious to Uncle Joe that the strategy of the West was to try and push Germany and Russia into war, so why would Hitler be stupid enough to do it? Even two days before the Nazis Invasion of Russia Stalin refused to believe the reports of his spies that Hitler was going to betray him. Josef Stalin’s action for temporary tactical advantage destroyed the intellectual justification for Russia’s leadership of Global Communism. All though the 1920’s and 30’s Communism seemed to some the best hope of the Left for stopping the Fascist dictators and winning Civil and Labor rights. But when Moscow ordered all good Communists to stop criticizing Hitler they lost the sympathies of many progressives. Americans, Britons and Zionist Jews began to leave the party in droves.

1942-THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD BEGAN. As clouds of Nazi planes bombed the city to flaming rubble, the tanks of the Nazi 16th Panzer Division reached the Volga River and began to fight their way into the northern suburbs of the City of Stalingrad. The 16th’s General was one-armed Hans Huber, whom his men nicknamed Die Mensch- The Man! The Germans were met by elements of the Red Army mixed with marines and civilians driving new unpainted T-34 tanks fresh from their factories assembly line. An estimated 40,000 civilians died just in this first attack, as many as had died at Waterloo, and it was only the beginning. The German 6th Army attack stalled in the city center and the fighting went on until next February. Hitler was obsessed with the Stalingrad defeat and was still talking about it the day he died three years later in 1945.

1947-President Truman’s daughter Margaret gave her first public singing concert. President Truman spent the following day personally telephoning and threatening music critics who dared to give her harsh reviews.

1953- David Mullany of Shelton Conn. invented the Whiffle Ball. He did it to help his son who was lousy at throwing a curve ball.

1964- Twist and Shout! The Beatles played the Hollywood Bowl.

1994- Jeffrey Katzenburg announced he was leaving Disney.


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