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June 6, 2019 wed
June 5th, 2019

Quiz: When someone is a sore loser over the results of a competition, we refer to it as “ Sour Grapes.” Why? Where does that come from?

Yesterday’s Question Answered Below: What modern disease used to be called Lou Gherig’s Disease?
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History for 6/5/2019
Birthdays: Socrates, Pancho Villa, Thomas Chippendale -furniture maker, not the male strip club owner, Igor Stravinsky, Little archduchess Anastasia Romanov, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Dean Acheson, Bill Moyers is 88, Hopalong Cassidy, Tony Richardson, Lancelot Ware the founder of Mensa, Kenny G., Spaulding Gray, Ron Livingston is 52, Mark Wahlberg is 48

221BC - The Chinese poet Chu Yuan drowned himself as a protest of an unjust Emperor. His memory is remembered by the annual Dragon Boat Festival. People decorate boats like dragons, and created dumplings to drop into the river to dissuade fish from eating the remains of the poet.

754AD-. Today is the feast of Saint Boniface, who chopped down the sacred tree of Thor at Mount Gundenberg in Thuringia.

1098- After the Crusaders starve the city of Antioch into surrender, an even bigger Saracen army led by Kerbogha the Emir of Roum trapped the Crusaders inside. Things looked real desperate boys and girls, luckily the Crusaders discovered the Holy Nail. But that's for a future story....

1305-"The BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY"- King Phillip the Fair of France makes a deal with a cardinal to help him become elected as Pope Clement V. The cost is Clement has to move the entire Vatican from Rome to Avignon in French territory. The Holy See stayed in France about 150 years.

1455- Poet Francois Villon gets thrown out of Paris again, this time for stabbing a priest in a bar fight.

1502- LEONARDO GETS A JOB- This day Leonardo Da Vinci was hired by Cesare Borgia as a military engineer. Borgia was the son of Pope Alexander VI, and wanted to conquer Italy for the Church. The artist-scientist Leonardo had promised Borgia he could design horrific war making machines like tanks, flame-throwers and poison gas. Most of these things were unrealistic for the technology of the time, so Borgia used him to draw maps of the topography of the lands he intended to conquer. After a few months Pope Alexander died, and the new Pope Julius kicked out Cesare Borgia.
Leonardo went back on Renaissance Craigslist again.

1568- The Spanish Governor of the Netherlands the Duke of Alba invited the Dutch independence leaders to come and discuss their grievances with him. The leaders Egmont and Van Horn showed up. Alba promptly had them both executed. The other leader William of Orange escaped to lead the Dutch resistance.

1605- Battle of Fontaine Francaise- French King Henry IV defeats an entire invading Spanish Army with just 300 horsemen. One of France's most beloved kings, instead of staying in the rear of his army he always galloped into the center of a fight. He had a huge white plume in his helmet. When asked what was his strategy for the battle, he replied: "Just follow the white plume!"

1661- Isaac Newton admitted as a student at Trinity College Cambridge.

1805- The first tornado seen by white men in Tornado Alley, Southern Illinois.

1816- The Year Without a Summer- Volcanic explosions in Indonesia and the Caribbean threw so much ash into the atmosphere that large parts of the U.S. recorded winter temperatures throughout the summer months. This day in New England it was 83 degrees, then it plunged to 42, then the following day saw ten inches of snow. Still, Currier and Ives had more time to paint those cutesy sleigh ride scenes...

1854- The US Know-Nothing Party established. It's goal being the restriction of the immigration, especially the Irish Catholics. Former President Millard Fillmore became one of their adherents.

1863- It was an open secret that Union General Ulysses Grant was a habitual alcoholic. His loyal aide Colonel Rawlins was determined to cure him because he had lost his own father to drink. On this day during the Siege of Vicksburg, Rawlins smashed an entire case of wine given him as a gift. So Grant reacted by jumping on a steamboat and going on a two day drinking binge, a nervous newspaper correspondent named Sylvanus Cadwallader in tow trying to keep him out of trouble. After two days Grant stepped nonchalantly off the steamer and soberly resumed the siege. Cadwallader was warned to write nothing, a promise he kept until after Grants death 1885.

1876- At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, Americans first discovered an exotic new food- Bananas.

1884- Retired General William T. Sherman refused the Republican Convention's call to run for President. He was the first to say: " If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve." The "Hero of Georgia" hated politicians and newspapermen. He commented to a friend: "I have a happy life. The day after I announced myself a candidate for office I would read in the newspaper how I poisoned my grandmother. I never knew my grandmother, but there the story would be, in full lurid detail!"

1915- Britain’s top general Earl Horatio Kitchener the Sirdar of Omderman drowned when the HMS Hampshire was sunk by a German mine in the English Channel. The British recruiting poster with the image of Kitchener pointing at you with fierce eyes fixed saying I WANT YOU! was later copied by American James Montgomery Flagg, substituting Uncle Sam. Earl Kitchener was Secretary for War, but by this time had lost much of his influence in government. P.M. Lord Asquith commented "the man makes a better poster than a leader". Traveling with Kitchener to his watery grave was his personal aide Col. Oscar Fitzgerald. Earl Kitchener was not fond of ladies, and there was talk that he and Fitzgerald were … well... let’s just say, Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell.

1916- Grand Sherif Hussein of Mecca launched the Great Arab Revolt against the Turkish Empire. We in the west don’t remember Hussein as much as his British military advisor, a moody young man named T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia.

1940- The synthetic rubber tire invented.

1944- In London, General Eisenhower received reports that the storm system over Europe would lighten slightly. If he delayed the invasion any further he risked losing the favorable tides until September. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of soldiers were waiting in ships. Ike launched the largest amphibious invasion in history with the words: " I don't like it, but I don't see any other way. Okay, let's go."

1963- BRITAIN ENTERS THE 60'S, BABY...The Profumo Scandal. Sir John Profumo was defense minister, protégé of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and a rising star in Tory politics. This day Profumo resigned in disgrace and brought down the government, when it came out he was keeping a 19-year-old `party-girl' named Christine Keilor as his mistress. She was not only sleeping with married Sir John but was also dating a known Russian spy.

1964 - Davie Jones & King Bees debut "I Can't Help Thinking About Me," The group disbanded but Davie Jones went on to success after changing his name to David Bowie.

1967- The Arab-Israeli SIX-DAY WAR began. Egypt’s President Gamal Nasser sent tanks into the United Nations mandated Sinai Peninsula and cut off Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Tyran. Israel knew the coming war with its four neighbors was imminent. This day without waiting, Israel launched its own preemptive strike. Leaving only twelve jets to protect the entire country, at dawn they sent out their entire 300 plane air force to attack the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces on the ground. 400 planes were destroyed in two hours. Israeli commander Yitzhak Rabin said by then, the war was already over. The Israeli tank division Ugdah Peled rolled into the West Bank and attacked Jordanian armor near Jenin.

1968- SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATED at 12:15 AM in the kitchen area of the Ambassador hotel in LA after winning the California Presidential primary. Depressed by the slaying of Martin Luther King in April, Bobby Kennedy had said: "The only thing between me and the Presidency is a gun." The assassin was a Palestinian waiter named Sirhan Sirhan. He picked the one-year anniversary of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War to do the deed. "Kennedy you son of a bitch!" he shouted as he fired two shots into the back of his skull. People in the room shouted “ Oh God! Not Again! Not another Dallas!” Lying on the floor bleeding, Kennedy asked “ Is everyone ok?” RFK lingered and died the next day. He was 42.
His eldest son watched his father get shot on live television and never got over it. He died of a drug/alcohol abuse several years later.
Sirhan Sirhan is still in jail today and the Ambassador Hotel was bulldozed in 2009 for a High School.

1976- In a wine competition outside Paris, California wines won for the first time. Santa Magdelena Chardonnay for whites and Stags Leap Cabernet for the red. It marks the moment when the dominance of French wines was broken, and California wines went from being a joke to world class status.

1981- The U.S. Center for Disease Control published the findings of scientist Michael Gottlieb on the pneumonia’s of six L.A. patients to be something new called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Cases had been reported as early as 1975 and there is an ongoing argument whether Gottlieb or a French team at the Pasteur Institute discovered the disease first.

1989- Toronto’s Skydome Stadium opened. Home team Blue Jays lose to the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3.

1998- Walt Disney’s Mulan premiered.

1998- Reuters and ABC News erroneously reported the death of 96 year old Bob Hope. Arizona Congressman Robert Stump announced the comedian’s death on the floor of the House, to the great surprise of Bob Hope, who was eating breakfast while watching TV at the time. Bob Hope lived four more years, dying at age 100.

2004- Ronald Reagan, The Gipper, the Great Communicator, The Teflon President, FBI informant T-10, Arrow Shirt model, SAG president, Forty Mule Team Borax salesman, Hippie bashing California Governor and the then oldest living US president, died at age 93.

2010- The Dr. Who episode where the Doctor (Matt Smith) takes Vincent van Gogh in the Tardis to the present day to see his paintings hanging in the Louvre.
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Yesterday’s Question: What modern disease used to be called Lou Gherig’s Disease?

Answer: ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a rare progressive motor neuron disease. At the time Yankee baseball star Lou Gherig was the most famous person to have it. Most recently it was the ailment that had stricken Prof. Stephen Hawking.


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