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Oct. 5, 2019
October 5th, 2019

Quiz: Politicians describe groups of followers as cohorts. What is a Cohort?

Yesterday’s Quiz Answered below: What was a G-Man?
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History for 10/5/2019
Birthdays: Wendel Wilkie, President Chester Allen Arthur, Ray Kroc the mastermind of MacDonalds restaurants, Louis Lumiere, Vaslav Havel, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges" , Bob Geldorf, Mario Lemieux, Josh Logan, Bill Dana "my name Jose Jimenez", Bill Keane, Clive Barker, Glynnis Johns is 96, Donald Pleasance, Maya Lin, Bernie Mac, Karen Allen is 68, Kate Winslet is 44, Guy Pearce is 52, Jesse Eisenberg is 36

1600- King Henry IV of France married his second wife Marie de Medici by proxy in a grand ceremony in Florence. Flemish master painter Peter Paul Rubens was in attendance, and the Queen asked him to create paintings commemorating the events.

1759- Col. Robert Rogers led his Roger’s Rangers on a forced march to surprise the Abeknackie Indians who had been raiding Maine homesteads. At 4:00 am near present day Saint Francis, the Rangers burned the Abeknackie village and killed so many people that the Abeknackies ceased to be a force in the area. Years later Rogers wrote down his principles of irregular warfare- his maxims like "Move Fast and Hit Hard" became the basis of Special Forces training today.

1761- Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, called the Architect of the British Empire, resigned from office. He was replaced by Lord Bute, who Frederick the Great called a complete scoundrel. Bute was chosen mostly because young King George III liked to play whist with him. Whist was a card game similar to bridge.

1762- Christoph Gluck premiered his opera Orpheo et Eurydice in Vienna.

1795- THE WHIFF OF GRAPESHOT- The end of the French Revolution. The problem with revolutions is once you start one it’s a real problem how to stop them. The Paris mob had gotten used to overthrowing one government after another since 1789. In 1795 when yet another mob of rioters threatened to overthrow yet another French government the politicians turned to young general Napoleon Bonaparte, who dispersed the crowd by firing cannons at them loaded with buckshot. A self proclaimed "Child of the Revolution" Bonaparte was already considered politically left, so his act of force could not be accused of royalist leanings. This action helped the little general with the funny Italian name becomes a national figure.

1813- BATTLE OF THE THAMES RIVER. Indiana territory- Tecumseh, an Indian visionary who foresaw that only by united action could native peoples hope to drive the white man back to Europe, spent his life convincing tribes to put away their tribal differences and fight as one people. He assembled a huge force of warriors, but was defeated and killed by Gen. William Henry Harrison. Congressman Richard Johnson, who said he personally killed the great chief (nobody saw it happen) later became Vice President and Harrison President. People sang:"Rumpsy-Dumpsey, Rumpsey- Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson Killed Tecumsee."
Tecumseh was one of the few who managed to organize real resistance to the white migration west and as such was one of America's greatest threats. Yet whites were so impressed by his nobility that people like Ohio settler John Sherman named his son and future Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman.

1842-THE BIRTHDAY OF BEER! Lager Beer is perfected in the city of Pilzn -Pilsner Beer. Of course, beer was made by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Gauls, and can be traced back to the Ice Age, but our concept of beer requiring an advancement in refrigeration is Pilsner or Lager.

1858- An arsonist burns down NY's Crystal Palace Museum.

1864- A cyclone destroyed the Indian City of Calcutta, killing 60,000.

1877- After a lightning campaign across 1,200 miles Nez Perce Chief Joseph found himself surrounded by U.S. armies just 40 miles from the Canadian border. At Bear’s Paw near Chinook Montana, Chief Joseph surrendered to General Nelson Miles…
"From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

1880- Alonzo T. Cross patented the first ball-point pen.

1882- Outlaw Frank James surrendered to authorities six months after his brother Jesse was killed. After doing some prison time Frank went straight and toured in a Wild West Show with fellow outlaw Cole Younger. He died peacefully in 1915.

1892-THE DALTON BOYS RAID COFFEEVILLE, Kansas and try to rob two banks at once. One quick thinking bank clerk told them the bank vault was on a time lock and would open shortly. There was no such timelock, but while the badmen waited, the townspeople broke into the hardware store and armed themselves to the teeth. As the Daltons emerged, they were shot down by the locals, much the same way the Jesse James Gang was wiped out at Northfield Minnesota ten years earlier. 8 were killed. Only Emmett Dalton survived despite 25 gunshot wounds. After getting out of jail in 1907, he also wisely went straight.

1904- According to comedian and playwright Steve Martin, this is the day Pablo Picasso met Albert Einstein at the Cafe Lapin Agile. There was a Cafe in Paris called Lapin Agile that Picasso did like to go, to but he never actually met Einstein.

1905- Happy Birthday T-Rex! Prof. Henry Osborne published a paper on the new bones found in Montana of a sleek hunter-killer dinosaur. He originally called it Dynamosaurus Imperiosis, but changed it to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

1908- Bulgaria declared its independence from Turkey and formed a monarchy under German Prince Ferdinand von Battenburg.

1914- The first airplane was shot down by another airplane. For weeks since the Great War began German, British and French airplanes flew missions of air reconnaissance. When planes encountered each other the pilots would fire pistols and even threw darts and bricks at one another. Finally, someone thought of mounting a machine gun on a plane and aerial combat was born.

1915- Germany issued an official apology to the USA over the loss of life in the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania, and promised to pay restitution.

1930- THE R-101 The BRITISH HINDENBURG- Lord Thompson of Cardington dreamed of a fleet of passenger zeppelins uniting the British Empire much the way steam did in Queen Victoria's time. Dirigible moorings were built in Karachi, Montreal, Sydney and Ishmalia in Egypt. The R-101 was the largest zeppelin in the world when she was launched and had all the luxury of the Cunard ocean liners. Lord Thompson himself decided to take the inaugural flight from London to India and back in time to make a vital Imperial conference. On Oct. 4th as a crowd sang Sir Edward Elgar's hymn 'Land of Hope and Glory" Thompson launched the R-101 "I see this great ship of the air built with the same perseverance and permanency that has built our British Empire and will give us the mastery of the air lanes of the world!"

300 miles out the R-101 was struck by a violent thunderstorm and crashed at Beauvais France. A sergeant was heard saying : "We’re down lads." when the hydrogen gas exploded. All but 6 of her 54 passengers died in the flaming inferno, including Lord Thompson. (compared to 30 out of the 96 Hindenburg passengers and crew died). Even though her sister ship the R-100 made a perfect flight to Canada and back the British public was so shocked by the disaster that all further attempts at a British dirigible service was scrapped.

1932- Talking pictures now in vogue, MGM Studios fired famed comic Buster Keaton.

1933- Warner Bros musical Footlight Parade with James Cagney premiered.

1945- The BATTLE OF BURBANK.- Three thousand striking union filmworkers (and a few animators) battled the Burbank police in front of Gate 2 of the Warner Bros. Studio lot. chains, bricks, tear gas, firehoses, burning cars. Jack Warner placed sharpshooters behind those large movie billboards on Barham and Pass. One of the strike leaders arrested was a background painter for Tex Avery cartoons. Herb Sorrel, the union leader, was pulled into a car and beaten up by gangsters, then arrested for incitement to riot.

1947- President Harry Truman gives the first speech broadcast nationwide on television. In it he asked Americans to forgo eating meat on Tuesday’s and Thursdays, to build up U.S. grain stocks to feed people still starving in Post War Europe.

1961- The film Breakfast at Tiffany’s opened, with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, the song Moon River.

50 Years Ago- 1969- Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on British television BBC-1.

1969- Cuban Lieutenant Eduardo Jimenez, who wanted to defect to the USA, flew his Mig-21 fighter jet to Miami and landed it at Homestead Airforce Base. But what was embarrassing was he flew completely through all the U.S. advanced warning defenses and missiles, and landed his Mig right next to Air Force One carrying President Richard Nixon. Doh!

1969- Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy was seen going into a Manhattan cinema to see the Swedish x-rated film I Am Curious Yellow. Jackie-O beat up the photographer who caught her, but her example spawned a fashion among New York High Society intellectuals going to see porn as a Sexual Revolution statement. They called it Porn-Chic.

1970- The Canadian October Crisis. A Quebec terrorist separatist group calling itself the FLQ kidnapped and murdered a Canadian cabinet minister. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau sent army troops into Montreal and Quebec City to impose order.
Worst civilian disturbances in Canada since 1867.

1986- IRAN-CONTRA- President Ronald Reagan feared Communist expansion growing in a new revolutionary regime in Nicaragua. When the U.S. Congress banned any funds for anti-Communist mercenaries, Reagan's National Security Agency staffer Oliver North created a covert pipeline of arms. On this day Nicaraguan communists shot down an unmarked plane full of smuggled weapons flown by a CIA agent named Eugene Hasenfuss. The revelation of the incident sets in motion the scandal that would tarnish the Reagan Administration.

1989- The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2000- The Yugoslavian Revolution. –Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’ had spent the eleven years since the death of Tito making war on the various ethnic parts of Yugoslavia as they broke off and founded sister republics. War, misery and genocide were meted out on Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and Kossovar Albanians in turn.
Serbia endured the condemnation of the world and American-Nato bombing raids.
This day after refusing to admit he had lost re-election, 200,000 Serbs marched into Belgrade and in a massive "People Power" revolution threw old Slobodan out. Woycheslav Kostunitse was declared the legal president and old Slovo died in jail.

2003- Timothy Treadwell was an author and advocate for the wild grizzly bears of North America. This day near Khalifa Bay Alaska those bears attacked Treadwell and his girlfriend Anne Huguenard and tore them to pieces. When authorities brought down the bear in question, after being shot 21 times, human remains were found in his stomach. When Treadwell appeared on the David Letterman TV Show the previous year, Letterman joked:" Is it going to happen that one day we read a news article about you being eaten by one of these bears?" Werner Herzog did a film about his life. Grizzly Man.

2011- Steve Jobs died at age 56 of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET) that spread to his liver. As he faded away, he looked straight ahead as if he was seeing something and murmured "oh wow....oh....wow...."

2017- The ME TOO Movement. Harvey Weinstein of Miramax and later the Weinstein Company was one of the most powerful movie producers in Hollywood. This day the NY Times broke the story of his history of sexually inappropriate conduct towards women. He was first fired from his company, then ejected from the Motion Picture Academy. Soon more women and men were encouraged to come forward with their stories of sexual abuse. All across Hollywood, celebrities secrets were exposed and careers collapsed, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Garrison Keilor, Les Moonves, Maestro James Levine, opera star Placido Domingo, and more.
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Quiz: What was a G-Man?

Answer: Short for Government agent, most commonly an FBI man.


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