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March 5, 2020
March 5th, 2020

Question: Who was it who said," The intelligent are so full of doubts, while the ignorant are so full of confidence?"

Quiz: What is benzine?
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History for 3/5/2020
Birthdays: Henry III of England, Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, Explorer Le Sieur de Cadillac the founder of Detroit, Hector Villa-Lobos, Howard Pyle, William Oughtred 1574- inventor of the Slide Rule, Red Rosa Luxemburg, Rex Harrison, Dean Stockwell, Paolo Pasolini, Andy Gibb, Samantha Eggar, Andrej Wajda, Fred Williamson, Penn Gillette is 64, Eva Mendes is 45, Kevin Connolly is 45

Today is the feast day of Saint Eusebius of Cremona.

493AD- BARBARIAN PEACE SUMMIT- Theodoric the Visigoth invited to peace talks Odoacer, King of the Germans in Italy. On a pre-arranged signal two Goths held Odoacer's hands pretending to shake them, then Theodoric whipped out his sword and chopped Odoacer in half. He said of his sword stroke: "Surely the mother of this knave hath made him with gristle, for I find no bones in his body." Peace was achieved.

1496- English King Henry VII hired Italian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) to go explore this New World that the Spanish were going on about.

1534- Renaissance painter Correggio died when after an argument in the cathedral of Parma with his patrons paid him with sacks of pennies. He grew overheated carrying them all home and died of a fever at age 45.

1562- The Teutonic Knights disbanded- Warrior monks were a creation of the Crusades but by the Renaissance they were outmoded. This German order of military monks formed in Jerusalem went to Prussia after the Crusades to convert the pagan Baltic peoples by chopping them up for Christ. But by now they had two big problems: Number one- everyone they used to chop were already Christians. Number two- the Reformation had started and all the knights were converting to Lutheranism, even the Order’s own bishop! So Grand Master Kettler went to Wittenburg to talk to the great reformer Martin Luther. Luther told Kettler to chuck the whole monk-thing, get married and become Duke of Prussia. Brandenburg-Prussia was the state that Germany unified under in 1870.

1616- The Holy Office of the Inquisition published its verdict on the new scientific ideas of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. It read:" The idea that the Earth goes around the Sun is Foolish, Philosophically Erroneous and Heretical since it contradicts Holy Scripture. The idea that the Earth revolves on its axis is also Ridiculous and Heretical." Galileo’s writings were not removed from the Index of Banned Books until 1835. In 1986, Pope John Paul II admitted Galileo might have been right.

1717- Giovanni Tiepolo joined the Guild of Saint Lawrence, the artists union in Rome.

1759- Francois Voltaire’s most famous satire on religion and hypocrisy- Candide- was published. It was immediately ordered publicly burned by the regional parliaments of Geneva and Paris. This only increased its popularity. To stay out of trouble Voltaire first refused to admit he was the author:" People must have lost their senses to attribute to me that pack of nonsense! I have, Thanks God, better occupations."

1770- THE BOSTON MASSACRE- A snowball fight near some British sentries turned into an ugly anti-British riot that made the redcoats open fire on the crowd. African American Crispus Attucks among several others were killed. Radical publisher Sam Adams inflated the incident into the Boston Massacre. The British authorities were accommodating enough to allow the soldiers put on trial in a colonial civilian court. The soldiers were defended by a young Boston lawyer named John Adams. They were all acquitted.

1836- At the Alamo, as the Mexican army of Santa Anna prepared for their final attack, legend has it Colonel Travis gathered the remaining defenders. He drew a line in the sand with his sword and asked all who wished to stay and fight to the bitter end to cross it. All crossed but one. He was an elderly Frenchman named Louis Rose, who slipped out through the lines to safety. Rose was a veteran of Napoleon's army and had fought at Waterloo. I guess he felt he had been through enough history for one lifetime. At dusk, 16 year old rider James Allen slipped out of the Alamo to bring the doomed men’s last message to the outside world.

1853- Harry Steinway & Sons began their piano making company.

1863- The U.S. Army finally admits having the men do their own cooking was bad for morale, as well as their digestion. The first field kitchens with real cooks set up.

1868- Englishman C.H. Gould patented the first stapler.

1877- Rutherford Hayes inaugurated. His wife banned hard liquor from the White House. For this she was known as Lemonade Lucy.

1891- The town council of Phoenix Arizona offered a bounty of $200 for every dead Indian brought in, and they didn’t care how they came to be dead.

1912- Italy became the first to use dirigibles for military purposes. Using them to get aerial reconnaissance of Turkish positions west of Tripoli, Libya.

1913- The day after his inauguration, President Woodrow Wilson began filling his cabinet. Secretary of the Navy Dearing proposed as Assistant Secretary of the Navy a young New York assemblyman named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wilson said:" Most Roosevelts I know try to run everything, but this fellow is a capitol idea!"

1915- NYPD broke up a plot by anarchists to set off bombs in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

1918- Lenin moved the capitol of Russia from Petrograd- Saint Petersburg, back to Moscow.

1922- F.W. Murnau’s eerie film Nosferatu premiered in Berlin.

1933- The day after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a nationwide "Bank Holiday", a nice way of saying shut the whole system down to stop the panic. One third of all U.S. banks had already collapsed. Roosevelt moved so fast, throwing program after program to combat the Great Depression, that his first 100 days in office became legendary, and now the media use it as a litmus to measure other presidents against.

1937-Allegheny Airlines born, later to become U.S. Air. Allegheny had such a bad safety record that by the 1970’s the joke on their motto was "Allegheny will get you there-maybe."

1937- SPITFIRE. The first flight of Britain’s most famous fighter plane, the Supermarine Spitfire Mark II. Designer B. J. Mitchell fought red tape and outdated thinking on the army’s requisition board. He died of exhaustion and heart failure at 42, never knowing that his Spitfire would become the decisive factor in winning the air war over Britain, and saving his country from invasion.

1963- Country star Patsy Cline died in plane crash near Camden Tenn. Also killed were singers Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

1966- As America was still getting used to the idea of fighting in Vietnam and anti-war sentiment was beginning, a Sgt. Barry Sadler wrote a pro-war song titled Ballad of the Green Berets, that today hit #1. “Put silver wings, on my sons chest….”

1973, New York Yankee pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson make a stunning declaration. The left-handers announce that they have traded each others wives, children, houses, even their family dogs.

1982 - John Belushi died of drug overdose at Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Strip. He had done 20 heroin-cocaine speedballs in just 24 hours. A woman named Cathy Smith was charged with administering to him the fatal dose. Robin Williams was with him that night partying but left early. Belushi was 31. Someone scrawled on Belushi’s tombstone:" You could have given us more laughs.....But NNNOOOO!

1995- Vivian Stanstall, lead singer for the Bonzo Dog Band, died in a fire in his London flat. He had been smoking in bed.

2004- Communist China changed its constitution to say that private property is now OK.
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Yesterday’s Question: What is Benzine?

Answer: A European form of gasoline, not made anymore because it is carcinogenic.


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